Space Junque by L. K. Rigel Read Free Book Online

"You don't have to whisper," he said. "They can't hear you. I'll ID them through their data link."
    "They might be headed for the docking bay."
    "I'm sure they are. It's no secret this is where the food is. But no one can dock without a link." He was himself again, working the keyboard as if nothing was wrong, the station wasn't gone, and he was still Governor Augustine. "No response. Either they have no link, or they don't want us to know who they are."
    "Do we have any electric blankets?" Suddenly those things didn't seem so evil.
    "I'm ahead of you," Mike said. "Without the data link, we won't know where they'll come in. We need to go to dock side and eyeball it."
    They took the Ppod back to the docking bay. Mike booted up command controls and Char crawled into an "eyeball" -- a round observation alcove that sat like a bubble canopy on the annex hull.
    From this vantage, and knowing what to look for, the small portals beside each bay door were obvious. Electric blankets, like giant raptors, must be another subject reporters didn't talk about.
    "Here they come!" The ship rounded the annex, its running lights dim. Had Mike heard her? She climbed out of the eyeball. "It looks like they'll be parallel to our bay in about sixty seconds."
    She had a new appreciation for the precise language required to fire weapons. But Mike gave her a thumbs-up, so   our bay   must have been good enough. She climbed back into the eyeball.
    The ship had a sunflower logo. The dead woman from the other ship was floated toward the eyeball. Char jumped as the face knocked against the glass.   Shib!   It was a flashback. These must be civilians looking for safe harbor. She started to climb out to warn Mike to hold back, but as the ship turned something didn't seem right.
    "Do they have a data link?" she yelled.
    Mike shook his head.
    The ship maneuvered slightly, as if fine-tuning its orientation to the annex.   Shibadeh.   She understood now about hostile acts. She was vulnerable in the eyeball, not all that far from a freezing, suffocating death.
    "Launch the blanket! They're getting ready to ram us!"
    The ball shot out of the portal before she finished the sentence. From her position the unfolding mechanical net looked like bat wings extending in a macabre embrace. With its first charge, tears streamed down her face.
    The tiny blue arcs flickered over the ship. A vulnerable spot toward the rear blew out. She turned her head. She didn't want to know what had evacuated into space.
    She and Mike had won, and the sunflower ship had lost.
    You die so we can live.
    She stumbled out of the eyeball. Until now, in the constant violence that punctuated her life, she had only been an observer -- at most, a victim. Not anymore. She left Mike at the controls and headed for the Ppod. She hated him, hated being here, hated what was going to happen to her.
    Had already happened.

The Glory and the Goddess
     
    Char must have left something in the microwave. Its intermittent beep was giving her a headache. She opened her eyes and realized she wasn't in her apartment. She'd fallen asleep in the com center, the side of her face smashed against the hard table that held the hydroponics monitors.
    The irritating noise came from the agronomist's entertainment screen. Probably time for another of his shows. The words   no signal   blinked in time with the beep. She turned off the screen and stretched.
    The annex was nightside. Glowlights illuminated the floors but didn't obscure the light show out the ceiling window. Up here, free of the filthy atmosphere, the stars were brilliant, the reds and blues obvious. She couldn't remember which color meant a star was old and which meant it was new.
    There were no stars where the planet took up the view, only a faint corona of light outlining the earth's curve. Char stood up then laughed at herself. As if in standing she would be closer, the better to detect any city lights still working on the planet surface.
    She