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jedishampooTitle: The Haul
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jedishampoo
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Hakkai/Gojyo
Warning: Language
Summary: We’ll always have the communications systems. It’s a space romance.
Author's notes: Written forchibi_zoe in the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
7thnight_smut AU Saiyuki exchange. This is a little bit of a mish-mash of a space story and the 7th night legend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi_Xi). Thanks to my awesome beta whymzycal, and my other awesome beta sharpeslass. And thanks to everyone for their lovely comments at the comm!
The Haul, Part 1
Gojyo was supposed to be doing official-type work. He was supposed to be running one of the monthly systems-checks required by ATI regs, the systems check that was already a week or so overdue.
Just that morning his asshole boss had said, run the fucking checks before they fucking ground us for NRC. But Gojyo knew a non-compliance grounding was pretty damned unlikely. The ATI powers were scared shitless of the captain, even if they were supposed to be the ones in charge. Hell, everyone for a dozen light-years in any direction was scared shitless of the captain, except the captain’s own crew.
So instead of checking systems, Gojyo was playing with the transcom, the one he’d spent the last week personally upgrading – scavenging and trading for parts to boost its range. He’d fiddled for days with the compute-bands and sensor-levels, trying to pick up as many freqs as possible.
Hell, all the upgrades he’d made to this boat should have been considered freelance work, and ATI should be paying him for it. Or at least the captain should be paying, since he was the owner-franchisee. None of the other OmniCorp TG-3 Eck-haulers had the transmission range, speed, or climate control the good old Buddha’s Dragon II was sporting. And it was all thanks to him.
“Oh, you naughty boy! Watch where you’re putting that laser-bore,” a tinny but sultry female voice said from the transcom.
Gojyo checked the compute-band. “Sweet,” he said, even though the tinny chick couldn’t hear him. She was pre-recorded, and he’d just picked up porn from somewhere in the Sagittarius Arm.
“If you do that again, I’ll spank you. Hee!”
“Sweet,” Gojyo sighed again. He left the trans on the porn-freq, stretched out his long, sexy legs, and rocked back in his three-sixty chair to have a listen. He didn’t even need a viz-link; it was good porn. And of course his asshole boss had to choose just that moment to walk in on him.
“What the living fuck are you doing?”
Gojyo rocked the chair forward and keyed off the porn-band at the first sound of the door whooshing open, but not before the sound effects had gotten a whole lot louder and slappier and heavy-breathier.
“You’re listening to fucking porn, aren’t you, asshole? Instead of running the checks like I fucking told you to? I don’t know why I pay you, you fucking pervert.”
Pervert, right, like his ears are lily-white, what with a mouth as filthy as that. Still, Gojyo kept his cool and grinned up at Mr. Boss-Captain-Sanzo.
“Hey! I was checking the trans. That was porn from Talverry, Cap’n S. In the Sag Arm? Boosts like that are why you pay me.”
“Hnh,” Sanzo grumbled, pretending to not be impressed. “Not after ATI has my ass, you pervert cocksucker.”
“And my cocksucking ain’t bad, either,” Gojyo said with an eyebrow-waggle, pushing it. When Sanzo reached for his pistol, Gojyo raised his hands in surrender. At Sanzo’s nasty-looking snarl, he waved them in apology. Someone as gorgeous as Sanzo shouldn’t be able to look so damned scary. “Sorry. Sorry! I’ll run the check.”
Sanzo edged his hand off his piece and swiped at the air, ignoring Gojyo’s apology. “Fuck that. Get the Dragon running. We’ve got a split-hire. Long-haul.”
Gojyo leaned forward. “How long?”
“Huian, off of Altair.”
Gojyo whistled. That was a long haul, a quarter of the way across the known galaxy. And the split-hire meant a higher percentage. It was no wonder Sanzo was in such a good mood. “What is that — twenty-one weeks round-trip?”
“Twenty-four.”
Gojyo did a quick scan of his mental calendar and an even quicker mental calculation. This trip was gonna net him a lot of card-playing money and a whole lotta sex when he got back home. “That’s three holidays. Awesome. How much haul?”
Sanzo actually smirked. “Let me put it this way: you’ll be bunking with the kid.”
“We gotta knock down the bulkheads, huh?” So not only would there be so much equip-haul they’d have to share crew quarters, there’d be no common room and only half a galley. Still, for the money they’d be making, Gojyo would even bunk with Goku. “Your cabin, too?”
“Stop asking so many fucking questions.” Sanzo waved his hand again. “Just fucking get us to the station. Now, so we can pick up the haul.”
“Aye aye, Cap’n,” Gojyo said, and keyed in the start-up sequence.
***
Gojyo was used to long hauls. He could fill most of his days with piloting or tinkering or cruising the freqs or dreaming of what he was going to do with his cash. But the kid was bored.
“Got anything for me to do?” Goku asked Gojyo for the third time that shift, and at least the thousandth time in the four weeks they’d been hauling. His weird gold eyes were wide and begging. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a hell of a lot for him to do when they weren’t loading or unloading.
“Didja calibrate the melon-room like I told ya?”
“Yeah. Melons’re good. Wish I could eat a few.”
“Not on your life, kid,” Gojyo warned. “Captain S’ll count them bastards and kick your ass if any’re missing.”
“Nah. I’ve been good. And I can handle the captain.”
That was true, to a point. Goku pissed Sanzo off, ‘cause everybody pissed Sanzo off. But Goku had a way of keeping himself out of real trouble where Sanzo was concerned, and Gojyo couldn’t explain why. Sanzo had cashed Goku outta detention somewhere without telling anyone until he’d hired him. He’d certainly got his money’s worth out of the deal, too. Goku was a smart kid — too smart for this work.
Sometimes, when Sanzo wasn’t looking, Goku would try to kill boredom by arranging and rearranging the cargo to maximize area and create little pockets of living space. Or he’d make room in one of the growing-holds to plant a little something for himself. And Gojyo had promised not to tell for a share of the booty, though he suspected Sanzo knew already and let the kid do it, just to keep him busy and happy.
Sanzo sure didn’t give a shit about Gojyo. Gojyo could handle that, though, for the pay and the room and board. He just flew the ship and stayed outta Sanzo’s way as much as possible, and if he made a few customizations and a few side deals along the way, well, Sanzo showed approval by not bitching about it.
“When are we gonna get there?” Goku whined.
“Fifty-five days. Give or take a day,” Gojyo said. At Goku’s despairing eye-roll, Gojyo sighed. “Inventory the fuel or something. Tell you what: check the burners for me now and then. Help me keep ‘em at max run and max-effish. Cap’n’ll let us sell half the overage at Huian so we can zip home. Then he’ll split it with me, and I’ll split my split with you.”
“Awesome!” Goku said and ran out of the cockpit. The door whooshed closed behind him, and Gojyo sighed again. Kid would do it, too, and he’d do a good job. That meant only a quarter of the fuel money to Gojyo.
He was too fucking nice, was the problem. He was a real pushover.
With the kid gone, Gojyo dug out his stash of smokes, then coded for the cockpit’s vent system. When he felt a blast of cold, clean air, he lit up. Technically, smoking on board — especially on haul — was against regs in a big way. Sanzo let him do it, though, but only ‘cause he was a smoker, too.
Gojyo inhaled smoke, exhaled smoke, and watched it whisk away into the ventilation duct. He let his eyes drift across the tilted readout console — modded to forty-seven degrees for his personal comfort. The red, green, and amber number- and dot-patterns meant all was good. Idly he keyed in the area-freqs for Huian and Altair systems, just to see what was going on.
Gojyo would bet the range of his transcom against anything even the military could put together. He heard the good grease light-days ahead of everyone else, with barely a lag in trans-time. Sometimes he made money off it, too.
He closed his eyes and listened for a signal. He remembered reading in school, before he’d quit school, that people had once believed in FTL travel for humans. No thanks, Gojyo thought. No way he’d wanna be squeezed into a wormhole the width of an atom or become a black hole, or whatever nasty shit happened to solid objects at that speed. Save FTL and atomic conduits for the trans; let people hire buses and haulers for themselves and their shit.
Someday, he decided, he’d start saving his gains instead of blowing ‘em on cards, ass, and booze. He’d get out of the long-haul business, set up in a nice, clean city on a nice, clean colony somewhere. Make a home base for traveling in style, letting someone else program the coords for him.
His daydreaming was interrupted by a crackle of connection from the comm.
“—to reach Navy or Galcorp officials en route to or departing from Huian system, specifically Huian Delta—”
The voice was male, and small but clear. Gojyo tapped the comm-pad, fine-tuning the connection. The voice grew louder as it repeated its message.
“—is a representative of Huian Delta Terraform Cooperative Partnership GLP, transmitting on behalf of Huian Delta government officials. I wish to reach Navy or Galcorp officials en route to or departing from Huian system, specifically Huian Delta, to provide official notification of management changes and of procedures. There will be new contacts and new regulations.” The voice seemed to sigh. “I will repeat this message once more this period. This is a representative—”
“Hey! Wait a nanosec,” Gojyo told the voice, then realized he hadn’t keyed for two-way. He slid his fingers across the board, trying to establish vid or outgoing, either or both — anything. For some reason, he felt the need to answer the voice. It sounded desperate or lonely, or something. Well, actually, it didn’t — the voice was dry, and the guy sounded like a professor or someone important like that, reading out the official daily bullshit. But Gojyo heard something behind the voice, and he had to let him know he was listening, even if there was a lag and the guy was gone already—
“—Huian Delta government officials. I wish to reach—”
“Yeah! Yeah,” Gojyo said into the comm, hoping the guy had a good pickup. “This is ATI hired, uh, transport Buddha’s Dragon II. Shit, I’ll give you the goddamned registry code later. We’re en route to Huian Delta. Copy?”
“—changes and of procedures. There will be new—”
The voice cut out suddenly, and there were a few seconds of silence. Gojyo listened, hoping the guy had heard and his message was just on a lag. It must have been, because the guy finally answered.
“Ah. Agricultural, Technology and Industrial Company, I believe? Do you have government officials on board?”
“Hey, I gotcha!” Gojyo crowed, then realized he’d left the two-way on. He forged ahead. “Nope, but we got one hell of a haul of equip and organics coming your way. Hope policy changes mean we’ll still get paid.”
A dozen or so seconds later, Gojyo got his reply. “Oh. The shipment? I — yes. I must say I’m surprised you received this transmission.” The guy was relieved, and maybe annoyed, and Gojyo wondered how he knew that.
“So you guys know you hired the best.”
“Yes, ah hah hah. I — anyway. I suppose you’ll need to know as well. There are new regulations in effect, based on financial considerations of—”
“Dude, you’ll have to talk to my boss. Er. Captain Genjyo Sanzo. You got a great voice but sound like you’re pretty damned tired, so if you’ll hang on a few, I’ll go get ‘im.”
This time the lag-silence sounded surprised. “Thank you. Ah. Before you get him — how did you know I was tired?”
“Hell if I know. Tell you what: trans again on this freq tomorrow, and you can tell me about it,” Gojyo said before he’d really thought about it.
Shit! Shit. Damn it, Gojyo cursed at himself. He was potentially screwing up a good haul by flirting with some high-and-mighty corporation owner-dude over a planetary trans. Corporation owner-dudes didn’t want the likes of Gojyo flirting with them, usually. If Sanzo found out, Gojyo’s ass was scrap. Gojyo paged Sanzo anyway ‘cause he’d promised to. Gojyo wondered — hoped — if maybe the guy hadn’t known he was being flirted with. Maybe he thought haul-pilots were just saucy bastards.
Sanzo made record time, whooshing in the door and bitching up a storm. “The hell? Get the fuck out while I talk to this asshole,” he ordered.
Gojyo got out. Part of him hoped the guy would call back, even if it was to just tell him off.
***
The guy never called him back. Gojyo kept the freq-numbers locked in for most of the next day shift-period, and the shift after that, and the one after that. For the first week or so afterwards, he’d even checked it once or twice during the night-drift, just to see if anything had come through. But he’d never heard a thing, and Sanzo had started bitching that he wasn’t getting the regular comm traffic he needed to do his job correctly. So Gojyo had stopped tying up the lines for someone he barely knew.
Once he’d tried to be all nonchalant, asking Sanzo, So, what did that customer guy have to say? Sanzo had looked at him with a weird expression and said, I’ll fucking tell you when you need to know, pervert asshole. Gojyo had decided not to push it after that.
Eventually they were only a couple weeks out from delivery, and Gojyo had mostly forgotten about it in the day-to-day routine of trying to keep Goku entertained. He and Goku were hanging in the cockpit like they usually did when Goku was on break. To try to make himself less annoying, Goku had brought some newly harvested radishes from his stash.
“Why the hell’d you grow radishes?” Gojyo asked, holding a long, fat radish in one hand and running his fingers over the trans controls with the other hand. The radish still had leaves and dirt on top of it. He crunched into it. It tasted pretty good, but still, it was a radish. Outta all the organics Goku could’ve picked …
Goku shrugged. “Don’t take up too much space. An’ they’re easy to graft without gettin’ into the client’s capital.”
“Suppose,” Gojyo said. He snapped off another bite. The radish was sharp, all right, with some real zing. And at least it was fresh and way better than their assigned, pre-packaged Nutri-Meals.
They ate, snap-crunching in the silence of the cockpit. Gojyo watched as Goku rocked back and forth, back and forth, in the copilot’s chair. His brown hair was wet from where he’d got caught in the veg-room’s envirosystem cycle, and water was dripping down onto the shiny, synthetic leather of the chair. Goku’s hair was getting really long, like he hadn’t bothered to give it regular trims. Gojyo supposed he should teach the kid things like that and felt guilty that he hadn’t. Goku looked older, too, in his forehead and eyes. It was like he’d aged on the trip, losing his youth little by little while Gojyo watched.
Gojyo wondered what he himself would look like by the time he finally stepped off his last haul. He realized he didn’t want to think about it.
“I heard that if ya pinch your nose when ya eat it, it’ll taste like potatoes. Or maybe that was carrots,” Goku said, pinching his nose and taking a bite.
“Huh,” Gojyo said, and tried a bite that way for himself. He took a few experimental chews. The spicy zing was unmistakable. “Nope. Still tastes like a goddamned radish.”
“Good radishes, though,” Goku said, still holding his nose and chewing.
Gojyo was trying to think of a witty comeback to that when the comm crackled.
“Agricultural Technology and Industrial Company hauler Buddha’s Dragon Two registry number one-one-nine-seven-eight-XT-five-two-one are you receiving this transmission? This is Cho from Huian Delta—”
“Whoa!” Gojyo said, and slammed his palm onto the console to get a two-way going. It was the guy’s voice, the guy from weeks back, and he was talking all fast and breathless. “Copy, uh, Cho. This is us. The Dragon. How’s it going?”
“Ah, good. Thank goodness,” Cho said, and sounded like he meant it. He’d said it right away, too, which meant there wasn’t a lag to speak of. “What is your ETA?”
“Eleven point eight days at this capacity. Uh, we’re almost never late, I promise ya—”
“I understand. Are you carrying medical supplies, by any chance?”
“Medical supplies?” Gojyo asked.
Goku was all wide-eyed and nervous-looking. “Should I go get Sanzo?” he whispered. When Gojyo ignored him, Goku jumped out of the chair and ran out of the cockpit.
“Not unless you ordered ‘em, I don’t guess,” Gojyo told Cho. “I don’t remember the whole manifest, but I can pull it up if you want. We’ve got some basic regulation sickbay supplies, for the crew. What happened? Are you okay?”
“Ah ha ha, your paying clients are still alive, if that’s what you are asking.”
“Screw clients!” Gojyo said, again before he thought about it. “I mean, don’t screw ‘em, but — you know what I mean. I was asking ‘cause I was concerned, okay?”
“—yes. I’m sorry. I am…” There was a couple seconds’ pause. “I’m fine. I think. Do you have long-range, broad-limit transmission capability? Would you be willing to—”
Whoosh.
“What the blue fuck is going on, you idiot?”
“Ah. Is that Captain Sanzo?”
Sanzo glared at Gojyo, probably for having the hands-free two-way on and letting Cho hear him. Then he plopped into the copilot’s chair and coded for manual two-way. He took a deep breath.
“This is the Captain. How can I fucking help you?”
“There has been a bit of a — hah hah — a buyers’ war here on Huian,” Cho said. “The Huian legislators asked me to contact you to see if you had medical supplies, and if not, if you would transmit an order for us — coff — to all available suppliers. We will pay you for your time and the time of your employee to use his skills to do so. If you can, just add it to our statement.”
Sanzo sighed and rubbed his temples under his shaggy blond hair. Like Goku, he’d gone a while without a trim. Then he punched and held the node for two-way trans.
“Negative. I’ll do it as a courtesy. My idiot fucking employee will trans if you’ll provide an itemized list of what you want.”
“Thank you. I appreciate — coff — your assistance, and the legislators — coff — anyway. Thank you.”
Cho coughed a couple more times — he didn’t sound good at all — and then read off a breathless list of medical chemicals and materials. He didn’t name any weapons, which surprised Gojyo. Buyers’ wars could be nasty businesses.
“Is the war over?” Sanzo asked Cho. He’d also noticed the lack of ordnance requests.
“Yes. Yes, it is. We are business — coff — as usual. Ah. I need to sign off now.”
Gojyo punched the two-way node on his side. “My name’s Gojyo! Trans me on this freq if you need any help, if there’s anything I can do, at least.”
Sanzo glared and Gojyo mouthed client courtesy at him. Sanzo’s lips thinned, but then he nodded.
“Thank you,” Cho said. “Truly. End transmission.”
***
Cho did trans back the next day-shift, and Gojyo was waiting for him, was waiting for the comm-crackle on Cho’s freq. He popped open a two-way as soon as he heard it.
“This is Hakkai Cho. Please say Gojyo is there, on this frequency. I’m trying to reach Gojyo, on the—”
“I gotcha! Gotcha,” Gojyo yelled, at the desperation in Cho’s — Hakkai’s — voice. “I’m here. Are you okay? Didja get the call from Opus-Indus?”
“Er — I’m sorry? Opus-Indus?”
That Hakkai — Cho — shit, Gojyo already thought of him as Hakkai — hadn’t heard of Opus-Indus worried Gojyo. So did the way he sounded strained and a little wobbly.
“We got an outfit outta Altair — Opus Industries L-L-something-or-other — with your meds and kits on the way. At least, about ninety percent of what you ordered. They shoulda transed you hours ago.”
Hakkai coughed, weakly. “I may have missed — ah. Well, I’ve been a bit … inj— indisposed. I’ll be fine, I think. I am awake now, at least. I think.”
“You don’t sound so good,” Gojyo said, though it was obvious Hakkai hadn’t yet lost his dry sense of humor. “You better take care of yourself so you can meet the shipment, dude.”
“I’ll be fine,” Hakkai said, a little more firmly than before. “There are others worse off than myself.”
“Opus is on transcom band-freq four-four-two-gamma-twelve. Call ‘em or have your government guys call. They said they’d be there in — hey, their ETA is only about twenty hours from now. What’s your local time?”
“Ah. Er …” There was a pause, and Gojyo pictured Hakkai looking for a chrono-display, and then realized he didn’t have any idea what Hakkai looked like. He hadn’t been in any of their databanks. Gojyo only had an idea of a vague, thin blur. An injured blur.
“Sixteen-thirty,” Hakkai eventually answered.
“Oh, you’re only a coupla hours off us. Hey — do you have viz-hookup capability?” Gojyo really wanted to see Hakkai. He liked the way Hakkai had said his name — they way he’d sounded so hopeful. He wanted to see if Hakkai was really as okay as he said he was.
“I fear not. Only for local transmissions.”
“Oh.”
“Thank you for your help, Gojyo, and the nnngh — news. I believe I had better go.”
“Hey! Hey. You all right?” Gojyo yelled into the comm. Hakkai’s voice had seemed to become nearly a whisper.
“I have to call — thank you—”
“Hey! Take care of yourself, Hakkai — I mean, Mister Cho!”
The familiar sound of the door sliding open interrupted him, but it was only Goku bouncing in with some new vegetables.
“Good — nngh — bye,” they heard, and then a crackle that signified the end of the trans.
“Hey!” Gojyo said to the dead comm.
“Poor guy. You better tell Sanzo,” Goku said after a few moments.
“I’ll tell the captain in my own time, ya little ape,” Gojyo snapped. When Goku’s eyes narrowed, Gojyo realized he was letting his worry make him into an asshole. “Fine! Don’t look at me like that! I’ll tell ‘im. Now! I’m telling ‘im now.”
Goku sat in the copilot’s chair with his arms crossed and a lapful of what looked like turnips while Gojyo buzzed Sanzo on his office-cabin comm. When Gojyo told Sanzo what was up, he only grunted and said that their clients had better not all be fucking dead when they got there, or they’d see a fucking war, and that was the fucking truth.
Gojyo didn’t want them to be dead, either. All that shift he kept the freq locked, but heard nothing. When it was Sanzo’s dogwatch at the helm, Gojyo sat with Goku in the galley and ate Goku’s turnips or whatever and chain-smoked and got bitched at by Sanzo for running the galley’s vent-system on constant. Gojyo knew he was wasting fuel, but he didn’t care. He did care that he was gonna run out of cigarettes soon and hoped they sold them on Huian: a lot of these new colonies had gone smoke-free. Every planet in the galaxy had tried to go smoke-free at least once, but it had never stuck for long. Nicotine as a drug habit was less problematic than some of the crazy shit the giant pharma-corps had developed over the years.
Eventually Sanzo cut his own four-hour watch short at three hours and let Gojyo get back in the cockpit. And at night, Gojyo slung a hammock in the cockpit and kept the freq-lock on during his sleep-shift, even though he wasn’t sleeping, because he figured it was more important to keep tabs on injured clients than to route the usual corporate- and government-bullshit comm-traffic.
When he didn’t hear back from Hakkai at the same time he’d called the two day-shifts before, Gojyo called him. He didn’t get an answer, so he transed again an hour later, and then an hour after that.
It was costing money, transing out like that, and it wasn’t his place to call clients directly. But Gojyo didn’t care. He had a feeling of dread about not hearing from Hakkai. Hakkai, from what little he knew, didn’t seem like the type to let people know he was injured. Hell, he was the kind of guy who didn’t want to sound tired. He must be hurt really badly, to have been desperate like that. To have called Gojyo for help.
The comm wasn’t dead, of course. Not Gojyo’s comm. Enough business trans-traffic got through that they got good news from elsewhere: they already had a couple of jobs for the trip home, to double their use and money on the fuel. That put Sanzo in a good mood, good enough that he told Gojyo he could make two — only two — comm-trans per shift to Huian, if he wanted.
Gojyo wanted. Huian Board-Legis said they’d been trying to contact Mister Cho as well, but that power problems in the outlying regions were still an issue, and they were dealing with their own troubles, thank you.
The silence on the other end of Hakkai’s comm took a toll on Gojyo’s stretched nerves. He had to sleep eventually if he wanted to keep the Dragon flying. He had to remind himself that it was an ugly galaxy for colonization, and since Hakkai was head of a terraforming partnership, he could probably take care of himself. Gojyo hoped.
Still he tried. And after three days, one of Gojyo’s hails got through. He was on sleep-shift, not sleeping, and Hakkai answered him on the first hail.
“Nnngh. Is that Gojyo? My, it’s dark,” Hakkai said, his voice trickling through on the trans. Gojyo could have whooped for joy, but he didn’t.
“You alive there, man?”
“Ah hah hah,” Hakkai laughed weakly. “It appears I am still alive, after all.”
Gojyo wondered if that meant Hakkai had actually been planning to die. “Stay that way, man. I hear the meds got there. Didja get yours?”
“Oh, I hadn’t — oh, that’s good news. It seems … well, I will contact headquarters. Thank you.”
Gojyo wasn’t letting him go that easily. “And I’ll call you back. To be sure you got through. Okay?”
“You don’t have to. Er.” The sound of a thump transmitted loudly over the comm-link, and then what sounded like a laugh from Hakkai. “Yes, actually. Yes. I think I would appreciate that. And I think you must be an exceptional person, Gojyo.”
“Awww. I’m not exceptional. I’m just a haul-pilot.” Gojyo felt his cheeks fry up in a blush and was glad they didn’t have a viz-trans so Hakkai couldn’t see it. His face was probably redder than his hair. He hadn’t blushed, that he knew of, in fifteen years. “Talk to you in ten.”
The comm clicked off. Gojyo punched on the vent and smoked a cigarette, slowly and deliberately. He looked out of the cockpit shield at the stars. It was something he rarely did because there was usually nothing to see. Space was an empty goddamned place, and instruments took care of everything. But this time he found Altair with his naked eyes. It was huge compared to the other stars since they were only a week’s travel away. He wondered how he’d missed the stupid thing, hanging there all bright and white-blue in the speckled black empty. Then he looked a few degrees off, trying to find the Huian star hunched only a light-year or so next to it, trying to visualize its system and its fourth planet, and on that the dark half where Hakkai was maybe crawling through his place, trying to find a light or a bandage or a NichePad with the Legis freq numbers scrawled on it.
Gojyo called back in exactly ten, and Hakkai answered.
“Hello again, Gojyo.” Hakkai’s voice was less slurry than before, small but nearly as clear as the first time Gojyo had heard it. Gojyo was still looking at the stars — he was sure he’d found Huian on his own — and he had a surreal feeling, like Hakkai’s voice was coming through the black to his ears and bypassing trans-wormholes and electronics altogether. He liked the thought of that.
“Are they gonna help you out?”
“Hmm. Truthfully, the wound has almost — well. Let’s just say, I slept a very long time and feel much better. I think I needed the rest.”
“I know how you feel,” said Gojyo, who had barely slept for three days.
“I certainly hope not. I do believe I could eat, though. Will you talk to me for a few minutes while I get the ZipCooker going? Tell me about what you do.”
“Uhh. ‘K,” Gojyo said, blushing again, though he didn’t know why for sure. He supposed it might have something to do with someone like Hakkai wanting to hear him talk.
“Where are you from?” Hakkai asked, amid the sound of background clicks and whirrs. “I was trying to place your accent.”
“Oh, offa Vega,” Gojyo said. “New Saturn Epsilon.”
“That’s very far from here.”
“Good,” Gojyo said.
“Do you not want to talk about it? Am I imposing?” Hakkai asked. He actually sounded concerned, too. For Gojyo.
Gojyo sighed. “Nah, that’s okay. I just … It wasn’t a bad place to grow up, but I wanted to be gone, you know?”
He told Hakkai about how he’d grown up in a seventh-generation tee-forming family on a shithole planet that was a dozen light-years from anywhere. He’d never been a very good farmer, though he’d been pretty good at fixing equipment. As soon as he’d learned to walk, he’d haunted shipshops and the dock districts in what counted for New Saturn Epsilon’s cities, learning ship-maint and building. And planning how to get out.
He’d gone out, and out, and had never stopped. He’d ended up spending more than half his life cruising the spacelanes just to deliver ag and tech equipment to some of the emptiest corners of the known galaxy. That was the way of the universe, of life, over and over: some people stopped farming and built and flew ships, and others used the ships to colonize new places for farming or for building more things. Sometimes people — or companies — fought over who was going to do what. And Galcorp condoned and half-assedly oversaw the whole mess, controlling the money and the military.
“Me doing this. It just sort of happened, you know?” he asked Hakkai, when he realized he’d been yakking up a streak to silence on the other end of the trans.
“Mmm-hmm,” Hakkai answered after a moment, still there. It sounded like he was eating. “So you don’t like farming.”
“Uh,” Gojyo said, realizing that Hakkai was maybe like his own ancestors, one of those tee-formers that didn’t just change the land but stayed on and worked it. He didn’t know for sure, because Hakkai hadn’t talked about himself at all. “I don’t hate farmers. I just don’t much like me farming.”
“I suppose I’ll find out whether I like it or not. Oh, it sounds as though my official visitors have arrived.”
“Huh?” Gojyo said, but Hakkai didn’t answer right away. So Gojyo turned up the comm volume. He heard what sounded like the hum of a transport in the background. When Hakkai’s voice returned to the transmission, it filled the cockpit and echoed off the bulkheads.
“The legislators are here, and they have some supplies, I believe. I should go. Thank you for talking, Gojyo.”
“Uh, sure,” Gojyo said. He wanted to ask Hakkai to call back, but he felt stupid all of a sudden. He’d talked like some kind of moron, and Hakkai was a paying customer — a rich paying customer — not just a guy like he’d hang with or one of his fucks.
But Hakkai surprised him again by beating him to it. “I promise to check in,” he said.
“Damn straight,” Gojyo told him, and signed off.
He smiled as he re-slung his hammock. At last he slept, at least until he dreamed that he was fucking a voice in the black empty, a voice that tried to fill it. He woke up with a boner like Olympus Mons and looked out at the stars, and ran his fingers in a vee over the outline of his cock through his denim work-pants. And the voice echoed through his mind and fingers and fuck, it was intense, his own touch rough, his body sinking into space like plus-gravity, two- or three-gee. He was both asleep enough and awake enough to hear the voice in his head and feel his hand stroking his cock at the same time, and his huffing breath as he jerked himself became two breaths echoing in the cockpit. The hammock rocked, and all he could feel was the voice, hard on his skin. He came, yelling. He’d kicked the chair hard enough to roll it forward. He was alone in the cockpit, but shit, he hoped he’d turned off the two-way. Then he fell back asleep.
***
Hakkai called back the next day, and the next, and the day after that. Gojyo came to expect his daily trans and to look forward to it — made it one of the little things he did, as easily he’d taken to maint or smoking or sex. As far as Captain Sanzo was concerned, Hakkai was just a client checking on the progress of his shipment, and Gojyo was just making sure that Hakkai was still alive. If Sanzo thought otherwise, he hadn’t said anything.
‘Cause mostly it seemed that Hakkai just called to talk. He didn’t offer too much about himself; they discussed Gojyo’s work or current events. Hakkai was something of a trans-addict and liked to listen to a little bit of everything from everywhere. His own equipment was better than what the Legis had, which was why they’d had him transing out for them. He seemed very interested in Gojyo’s personal boosts.
He did say he’d acquired a sort of contract to farm after he was done ‘forming; it was a pretty big-scale operation, too, and he was doing it mostly on his own. When he mentioned that he was fine with that because it was what she had wanted, Gojyo felt ballsy enough to ask who she was.
“Hmm,” Hakkai said, and Gojyo heard him take a breath. “Well, I don’t know if you know this, but I am the only partner in the Huian Delta Terraforming Cooperative Partnership GLP. My original — ah — partner, Kanan, wanted to found a colony. I was in — well, I agreed. But she was killed in a buyers’ war before we ever left the Core. Just over a year ago, in fact.”
“Aww, man,” Gojyo commiserated. “Lost that one, did ya?”
“No,” Hakkai said.
“Oh,” Gojyo said. Hakkai didn’t offer more, and Gojyo wasn’t about to nose his way into that whole story. Yet. Still, he was nosy. “If ya don’t mind me asking, what did you do before coming to colonize this place?”
“We’ll, it’s — coff,” Hakkai said. He coughed a couple more times and Gojyo got a little worried, but then he heard the sound of Hakkai swallowing something. Soon Hakkai started talking again. “I guess you could say I grew up sheltered under the umbrella of academia. When I met Kanan, I was on faculty at the university on Mars Colony Four. I taught pre-colonial literature.”
“Huh,” Gojyo said, laughing inwardly. His first guess had been right. “Thought you sounded like a smart one.”
“Ah hah hah. I suppose some might have thought so,” Hakkai laughed, and Gojyo thought it was real, not one of Hakkai’s I’m being polite laughs. So Gojyo pushed it, because he was good at that.
“It wasn’t really you, though, was it?”
“Hmmm. It was a restrictive life,” Hakkai said, in a voice that was suddenly close and cozy sounding, a voice that oozed out of the stars. “I think that in addition to many other things, you are very perceptive, Gojyo.”
“Nah,” Gojyo said out of habit. Shit, he wanted to fuck that voice. Or at least listen to it in a not-very-platonic way. The guy talked to him like he was a real person. Gojyo realized he didn’t even care at all what Hakkai looked like. “I was just paying attention, ‘cause I was interested.”
“Oh. People don’t usually find me interesting, I don’t think.”
“I dunno,” Gojyo said. “What you’re doing is pretty ballsy. And expensive.”
“Yes, it is.” Hakkai sighed, and his voice got low again. “I lived wisely, once upon a time. Now it’s what I must do. Kanan wanted — ah—”
“She wanted it, yeah,” Gojyo provided dutifully.
Hakkai sighed again. “I should sign off. I’m very tired, all of a sudden.”
“You okay?” Gojyo asked automatically.
“Yes — yes, I’m fine. I was very busy today, straightening my affairs. You are bringing a lot of work for me, after all.”
“Good tired.”
“Yes, good tired. Good evening, Gojyo. I very much look forward to meeting you in person. And thank you for caring.”
Could say the same to you, Gojyo thought, but didn’t say aloud. Soon the static of the broken trans connection made a reply unnecessary.
Gojyo leaned back and indulged his new hobby of looking at the stars and finding them incredibly sexy, when they had voices like that in them.
Gojyo knew he was perceptive, to a point: he’d learned to pay attention to people. What people were saying behind their words sometimes meant the difference between a win or a lose, or a fuck or a lonely night. Or life and death, even.
He wondered what this Kanan had been like and how much Hakkai had loved her, and how much her death haunted him. He wondered if Hakkai only liked women, though most people these days didn’t seem to care. He wondered if Hakkai really knew why he was doing such a crazy thing on his own. He knew two things for sure, however: one, that you didn’t terraform a quarter of a continent on a backwater planet all on your lonesome just ‘cause your dead girlfriend wanted you to. And two, Hakkai sounded amazing when he was good tired.
***
He didn’t get to hear Hakkai’s voice the next day-shift, though, because Sanzo kept Gojyo off the comm. In fact, he kicked him out of the cockpit during call-time, saying he needed to do his own business. And when he finally commed Gojyo out of the galley to come back, he seemed to have a nitromite up his ass.
He leaned against the door-track of the cockpit hatchway, half-in and half-out so that the door couldn’t shut. It whoosh-whined at the obstruction, wanting to close. Sanzo ignored it and lit a cigarette. He looked at Gojyo with a weird expression.
“That Cho motherfucker is bad news,” he said after a bit.
“You talk to ‘im?” Gojyo asked.
“None of your fucking business,” Sanzo said. He smoked. The door grunted. Sanzo and Gojyo stared at each other.
“You’re gonna set off the smoke sensors,” Gojyo said. He leaned back against the bulkhead next to the door and shoved his hands into his coverall pockets.
“Then you’ll have to fucking shut them off, won’t you?”
Sure enough, a few seconds later the sensors caught the smoke and started BEEP-BEEP-BEEEEPing, their alarm growing louder and louder, the noise bouncing off the cargo and the walls and drowning out the sound of the door trying to shut.
“You gonna let me in to turn ‘em off?” Gojyo said.
Sanzo plucked his cigarette out of his mouth between two fingers, then shoved the fingers at Gojyo’s face, so close Gojyo could breathe the smoke. “I tell you this because I’m trying to help you out here, dumbass.”
“That’s awfully kind of ya, Sanzo,” Gojyo told him.
“That’s fucking captain to you,” Sanzo said. He pushed up and off the door edge so it could slide shut with a relieved swish.
Goku had run up at the noise, and was looking between the two of them. “What’s happening? Why’re the alarms going off? Gojyo? Sanzo?”
“It’s fucking captain to you, too,” Sanzo said. He shoved his cigarette back into his mouth and stomped off, somehow still graceful as he navigated the narrow passage between the cargo and the bulkhead. “And cut the kid’s fucking hair, would you?” he tossed behind him.
“Sure thing, Captain Asshole,” Gojyo said to Sanzo’s back. He keyed himself into the cockpit and reached up to tap the alarm-kill code into the ceiling panel. When the flashing red indicators calmed to green, the alarms stopped screaming. Gojyo threw himself into his chair — still warm from Sanzo’s ass — and looked at the time. It was too late to trans Hakkai, or at least too late to do it decently. And Gojyo didn’t want to appear desperate or anything.
Or did he care? Hakkai had never seemed to. They were just talking, for fuck’s sake. Gojyo looked at the stars and tried to decide if he’d ever been decent, and if he wanted to start now. Before he’d decided, Goku whooshed in and flopped into the copilot’s seat. He was quiet.
“Wanna haircut?” Gojyo asked eventually.
“I guess,” Goku shrugged. He still looked worried.
“Cool,” Gojyo said. He swiveled in his chair and poked the latch to open the lower wall storage-unit. He dug around inside it until he found the fine-thread laser-bore. Hakkai had won the buyer’s war that had killed his partner. He was some kind of badass, or at least someone who could afford to hire badasses. He worried Sanzo, who was one of the baddest asses Gojyo knew. Gojyo tuned the laze to three mils.
“Bend over, ape-boy,” he told Goku. Goku bent his head in Gojyo’s direction, and Gojyo started stretching out thick locks of his brown hair, slicing off four- and five-centimenter chunks. Goku’s hair was clean, Gojyo would give him that. For all the dirt and grease he dug in every day, he kept himself decent. “If you wanna watch next time, I do my own like this. You just haveta keep the pieces stretched even or you’ll look like a shaggy dipshit.”
“Uh-huh,” Goku said from upside-down.
Gojyo realized that he didn’t care what Hakkai’s problem was, though he clearly had one. Huian-Legis was obviously nervous about him, too. Gojyo still wanted to meet him. Just to see what … just to see. Gojyo had never really gotten to know someone before he met them, and sometimes not even after he’d met them. He’d never stuck around long enough. Haulers spent a lot of time mostly alone — it was part of the life. He wished Hakkai wasn’t so damned lonely.
“Sanzo doesn’t totally hate you, ya know. I think he wants to help,” Goku said. He was sliding his shoes back and forth through the hair coating the deck.
“That don’t mean he ain’t a dickhead,” Gojyo said. “And I ain’t totally stupid.”
Gojyo didn’t send any transmissions during the night. He didn’t expect Hakkai would, either, after dealing with Sanzo. So he was surprised when Hakkai transed in the next day. He was quiet and brief. He couldn’t talk long, he said, because he was busy with preparations.
“But I just wanted to quickly say hello. To let you know I was still here,” Hakkai said.
“I didn’t think you wouldn’t be, but thanks,” Gojyo said. He was stupid, totally stupid, ‘cause his heart felt like it jumped back and forth from his stomach to his throat when he heard Hakkai’s voice. He was totally falling for a guy he’d never seen. It must be what happened when you got to know people by actually talking to them.
Gojyo tried to forget that feeling, but when Hakkai called the next day and said pretty much the same thing, Gojyo felt like he had the galaxy whirling inside him. He didn’t want it to be like that, but it was, and there was nothing he could do about it. He wondered if, when this delivery was all over, he’d ever feel that excited about anything again. He certainly hoped so. Or hoped not. He couldn’t decide.
But on the day they were scheduled to land, he didn’t hear from Hakkai at all. Not even when they were in orbit, making preps and waiting for Sanzo to give the word. Sanzo had tried to trans down-planet once and had said to fuck it after that; they had the landing instructions and regs from weeks ago, and as far as they knew those hadn’t changed. The land-and-unload point was on the M-D Co-op property. They wouldn’t even have to hire RG-line trucks to make a drive — all Goku would have to do was operate the hover-skids to move the haul from the hold to a warehouse on-site.
Goku also had to deliver the invoice. Sanzo had given the Nichechip to him instead of Gojyo, making a point that was asshole-ishly obvious.
“I suggest you stay with the Dragon,” Sanzo said when Gojyo confronted him in his cabin. He was wearing his brown grubbies but packing a bag with his good white shirt. He was also packing his piece and ammo, that old-timey projectile shit his gun fired. “Get her ready to go. I got fucking schmooze-meetings with Huian-Legis at the capital, and I don’t want to hang around when they’re over.”
Gojyo snorted and tried not to think about punching his boss. “You know the ship’ll be ready soon as we unload. When’s she ever not been?”
“I could make it an order,” Sanzo said with another of his new, weird looks. He was patting his pockets as if to be sure he had everything all tucked away right and tight.
“Fuck that. I always help with the unloads,” Gojyo told him. Sanzo would never order him; Goku might need help.
“Your ass, then.”
“Or someone else’s, maybe,” Gojyo said, and waggled his eyebrows. He was just pissed off enough to do it and not care, and maybe past that pissed off.
Sanzo looked like he might want to punch something, too, but he only shoved his way past Gojyo out of the office. “Just land the fucking ship,” he said.
“Pick me up some smokes at the capital, then, would you, Cap’n? Since I’m too delicate to do my own goddamned job?”
Sanzo only grunted and walked off into the hold to wait in the seats by the doors.
Gojyo headed off to the cockpit at a jog. Sanzo had given the word, anyway, and Gojyo wanted to land as much as anyone else. When he passed Goku, who was bent over a crate and shoving something green and disgusting-looking into his pockets, Gojyo grabbed his collar and dragged Goku with him.
“Gotta get strapped in.”
***
On To The Haul: Part Two
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Author:
jedishampooRating: NC-17
Pairing: Hakkai/Gojyo
Warning: Language
Summary: We’ll always have the communications systems. It’s a space romance.
Author's notes: Written for
chibi_zoe in the 7thnight_smut AU Saiyuki exchange. This is a little bit of a mish-mash of a space story and the 7th night legend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi_Xi). Thanks to my awesome beta whymzycal, and my other awesome beta sharpeslass. And thanks to everyone for their lovely comments at the comm!The Haul, Part 1
Gojyo was supposed to be doing official-type work. He was supposed to be running one of the monthly systems-checks required by ATI regs, the systems check that was already a week or so overdue.
Just that morning his asshole boss had said, run the fucking checks before they fucking ground us for NRC. But Gojyo knew a non-compliance grounding was pretty damned unlikely. The ATI powers were scared shitless of the captain, even if they were supposed to be the ones in charge. Hell, everyone for a dozen light-years in any direction was scared shitless of the captain, except the captain’s own crew.
So instead of checking systems, Gojyo was playing with the transcom, the one he’d spent the last week personally upgrading – scavenging and trading for parts to boost its range. He’d fiddled for days with the compute-bands and sensor-levels, trying to pick up as many freqs as possible.
Hell, all the upgrades he’d made to this boat should have been considered freelance work, and ATI should be paying him for it. Or at least the captain should be paying, since he was the owner-franchisee. None of the other OmniCorp TG-3 Eck-haulers had the transmission range, speed, or climate control the good old Buddha’s Dragon II was sporting. And it was all thanks to him.
“Oh, you naughty boy! Watch where you’re putting that laser-bore,” a tinny but sultry female voice said from the transcom.
Gojyo checked the compute-band. “Sweet,” he said, even though the tinny chick couldn’t hear him. She was pre-recorded, and he’d just picked up porn from somewhere in the Sagittarius Arm.
“If you do that again, I’ll spank you. Hee!”
“Sweet,” Gojyo sighed again. He left the trans on the porn-freq, stretched out his long, sexy legs, and rocked back in his three-sixty chair to have a listen. He didn’t even need a viz-link; it was good porn. And of course his asshole boss had to choose just that moment to walk in on him.
“What the living fuck are you doing?”
Gojyo rocked the chair forward and keyed off the porn-band at the first sound of the door whooshing open, but not before the sound effects had gotten a whole lot louder and slappier and heavy-breathier.
“You’re listening to fucking porn, aren’t you, asshole? Instead of running the checks like I fucking told you to? I don’t know why I pay you, you fucking pervert.”
Pervert, right, like his ears are lily-white, what with a mouth as filthy as that. Still, Gojyo kept his cool and grinned up at Mr. Boss-Captain-Sanzo.
“Hey! I was checking the trans. That was porn from Talverry, Cap’n S. In the Sag Arm? Boosts like that are why you pay me.”
“Hnh,” Sanzo grumbled, pretending to not be impressed. “Not after ATI has my ass, you pervert cocksucker.”
“And my cocksucking ain’t bad, either,” Gojyo said with an eyebrow-waggle, pushing it. When Sanzo reached for his pistol, Gojyo raised his hands in surrender. At Sanzo’s nasty-looking snarl, he waved them in apology. Someone as gorgeous as Sanzo shouldn’t be able to look so damned scary. “Sorry. Sorry! I’ll run the check.”
Sanzo edged his hand off his piece and swiped at the air, ignoring Gojyo’s apology. “Fuck that. Get the Dragon running. We’ve got a split-hire. Long-haul.”
Gojyo leaned forward. “How long?”
“Huian, off of Altair.”
Gojyo whistled. That was a long haul, a quarter of the way across the known galaxy. And the split-hire meant a higher percentage. It was no wonder Sanzo was in such a good mood. “What is that — twenty-one weeks round-trip?”
“Twenty-four.”
Gojyo did a quick scan of his mental calendar and an even quicker mental calculation. This trip was gonna net him a lot of card-playing money and a whole lotta sex when he got back home. “That’s three holidays. Awesome. How much haul?”
Sanzo actually smirked. “Let me put it this way: you’ll be bunking with the kid.”
“We gotta knock down the bulkheads, huh?” So not only would there be so much equip-haul they’d have to share crew quarters, there’d be no common room and only half a galley. Still, for the money they’d be making, Gojyo would even bunk with Goku. “Your cabin, too?”
“Stop asking so many fucking questions.” Sanzo waved his hand again. “Just fucking get us to the station. Now, so we can pick up the haul.”
“Aye aye, Cap’n,” Gojyo said, and keyed in the start-up sequence.
***
Gojyo was used to long hauls. He could fill most of his days with piloting or tinkering or cruising the freqs or dreaming of what he was going to do with his cash. But the kid was bored.
“Got anything for me to do?” Goku asked Gojyo for the third time that shift, and at least the thousandth time in the four weeks they’d been hauling. His weird gold eyes were wide and begging. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a hell of a lot for him to do when they weren’t loading or unloading.
“Didja calibrate the melon-room like I told ya?”
“Yeah. Melons’re good. Wish I could eat a few.”
“Not on your life, kid,” Gojyo warned. “Captain S’ll count them bastards and kick your ass if any’re missing.”
“Nah. I’ve been good. And I can handle the captain.”
That was true, to a point. Goku pissed Sanzo off, ‘cause everybody pissed Sanzo off. But Goku had a way of keeping himself out of real trouble where Sanzo was concerned, and Gojyo couldn’t explain why. Sanzo had cashed Goku outta detention somewhere without telling anyone until he’d hired him. He’d certainly got his money’s worth out of the deal, too. Goku was a smart kid — too smart for this work.
Sometimes, when Sanzo wasn’t looking, Goku would try to kill boredom by arranging and rearranging the cargo to maximize area and create little pockets of living space. Or he’d make room in one of the growing-holds to plant a little something for himself. And Gojyo had promised not to tell for a share of the booty, though he suspected Sanzo knew already and let the kid do it, just to keep him busy and happy.
Sanzo sure didn’t give a shit about Gojyo. Gojyo could handle that, though, for the pay and the room and board. He just flew the ship and stayed outta Sanzo’s way as much as possible, and if he made a few customizations and a few side deals along the way, well, Sanzo showed approval by not bitching about it.
“When are we gonna get there?” Goku whined.
“Fifty-five days. Give or take a day,” Gojyo said. At Goku’s despairing eye-roll, Gojyo sighed. “Inventory the fuel or something. Tell you what: check the burners for me now and then. Help me keep ‘em at max run and max-effish. Cap’n’ll let us sell half the overage at Huian so we can zip home. Then he’ll split it with me, and I’ll split my split with you.”
“Awesome!” Goku said and ran out of the cockpit. The door whooshed closed behind him, and Gojyo sighed again. Kid would do it, too, and he’d do a good job. That meant only a quarter of the fuel money to Gojyo.
He was too fucking nice, was the problem. He was a real pushover.
With the kid gone, Gojyo dug out his stash of smokes, then coded for the cockpit’s vent system. When he felt a blast of cold, clean air, he lit up. Technically, smoking on board — especially on haul — was against regs in a big way. Sanzo let him do it, though, but only ‘cause he was a smoker, too.
Gojyo inhaled smoke, exhaled smoke, and watched it whisk away into the ventilation duct. He let his eyes drift across the tilted readout console — modded to forty-seven degrees for his personal comfort. The red, green, and amber number- and dot-patterns meant all was good. Idly he keyed in the area-freqs for Huian and Altair systems, just to see what was going on.
Gojyo would bet the range of his transcom against anything even the military could put together. He heard the good grease light-days ahead of everyone else, with barely a lag in trans-time. Sometimes he made money off it, too.
He closed his eyes and listened for a signal. He remembered reading in school, before he’d quit school, that people had once believed in FTL travel for humans. No thanks, Gojyo thought. No way he’d wanna be squeezed into a wormhole the width of an atom or become a black hole, or whatever nasty shit happened to solid objects at that speed. Save FTL and atomic conduits for the trans; let people hire buses and haulers for themselves and their shit.
Someday, he decided, he’d start saving his gains instead of blowing ‘em on cards, ass, and booze. He’d get out of the long-haul business, set up in a nice, clean city on a nice, clean colony somewhere. Make a home base for traveling in style, letting someone else program the coords for him.
His daydreaming was interrupted by a crackle of connection from the comm.
“—to reach Navy or Galcorp officials en route to or departing from Huian system, specifically Huian Delta—”
The voice was male, and small but clear. Gojyo tapped the comm-pad, fine-tuning the connection. The voice grew louder as it repeated its message.
“—is a representative of Huian Delta Terraform Cooperative Partnership GLP, transmitting on behalf of Huian Delta government officials. I wish to reach Navy or Galcorp officials en route to or departing from Huian system, specifically Huian Delta, to provide official notification of management changes and of procedures. There will be new contacts and new regulations.” The voice seemed to sigh. “I will repeat this message once more this period. This is a representative—”
“Hey! Wait a nanosec,” Gojyo told the voice, then realized he hadn’t keyed for two-way. He slid his fingers across the board, trying to establish vid or outgoing, either or both — anything. For some reason, he felt the need to answer the voice. It sounded desperate or lonely, or something. Well, actually, it didn’t — the voice was dry, and the guy sounded like a professor or someone important like that, reading out the official daily bullshit. But Gojyo heard something behind the voice, and he had to let him know he was listening, even if there was a lag and the guy was gone already—
“—Huian Delta government officials. I wish to reach—”
“Yeah! Yeah,” Gojyo said into the comm, hoping the guy had a good pickup. “This is ATI hired, uh, transport Buddha’s Dragon II. Shit, I’ll give you the goddamned registry code later. We’re en route to Huian Delta. Copy?”
“—changes and of procedures. There will be new—”
The voice cut out suddenly, and there were a few seconds of silence. Gojyo listened, hoping the guy had heard and his message was just on a lag. It must have been, because the guy finally answered.
“Ah. Agricultural, Technology and Industrial Company, I believe? Do you have government officials on board?”
“Hey, I gotcha!” Gojyo crowed, then realized he’d left the two-way on. He forged ahead. “Nope, but we got one hell of a haul of equip and organics coming your way. Hope policy changes mean we’ll still get paid.”
A dozen or so seconds later, Gojyo got his reply. “Oh. The shipment? I — yes. I must say I’m surprised you received this transmission.” The guy was relieved, and maybe annoyed, and Gojyo wondered how he knew that.
“So you guys know you hired the best.”
“Yes, ah hah hah. I — anyway. I suppose you’ll need to know as well. There are new regulations in effect, based on financial considerations of—”
“Dude, you’ll have to talk to my boss. Er. Captain Genjyo Sanzo. You got a great voice but sound like you’re pretty damned tired, so if you’ll hang on a few, I’ll go get ‘im.”
This time the lag-silence sounded surprised. “Thank you. Ah. Before you get him — how did you know I was tired?”
“Hell if I know. Tell you what: trans again on this freq tomorrow, and you can tell me about it,” Gojyo said before he’d really thought about it.
Shit! Shit. Damn it, Gojyo cursed at himself. He was potentially screwing up a good haul by flirting with some high-and-mighty corporation owner-dude over a planetary trans. Corporation owner-dudes didn’t want the likes of Gojyo flirting with them, usually. If Sanzo found out, Gojyo’s ass was scrap. Gojyo paged Sanzo anyway ‘cause he’d promised to. Gojyo wondered — hoped — if maybe the guy hadn’t known he was being flirted with. Maybe he thought haul-pilots were just saucy bastards.
Sanzo made record time, whooshing in the door and bitching up a storm. “The hell? Get the fuck out while I talk to this asshole,” he ordered.
Gojyo got out. Part of him hoped the guy would call back, even if it was to just tell him off.
***
The guy never called him back. Gojyo kept the freq-numbers locked in for most of the next day shift-period, and the shift after that, and the one after that. For the first week or so afterwards, he’d even checked it once or twice during the night-drift, just to see if anything had come through. But he’d never heard a thing, and Sanzo had started bitching that he wasn’t getting the regular comm traffic he needed to do his job correctly. So Gojyo had stopped tying up the lines for someone he barely knew.
Once he’d tried to be all nonchalant, asking Sanzo, So, what did that customer guy have to say? Sanzo had looked at him with a weird expression and said, I’ll fucking tell you when you need to know, pervert asshole. Gojyo had decided not to push it after that.
Eventually they were only a couple weeks out from delivery, and Gojyo had mostly forgotten about it in the day-to-day routine of trying to keep Goku entertained. He and Goku were hanging in the cockpit like they usually did when Goku was on break. To try to make himself less annoying, Goku had brought some newly harvested radishes from his stash.
“Why the hell’d you grow radishes?” Gojyo asked, holding a long, fat radish in one hand and running his fingers over the trans controls with the other hand. The radish still had leaves and dirt on top of it. He crunched into it. It tasted pretty good, but still, it was a radish. Outta all the organics Goku could’ve picked …
Goku shrugged. “Don’t take up too much space. An’ they’re easy to graft without gettin’ into the client’s capital.”
“Suppose,” Gojyo said. He snapped off another bite. The radish was sharp, all right, with some real zing. And at least it was fresh and way better than their assigned, pre-packaged Nutri-Meals.
They ate, snap-crunching in the silence of the cockpit. Gojyo watched as Goku rocked back and forth, back and forth, in the copilot’s chair. His brown hair was wet from where he’d got caught in the veg-room’s envirosystem cycle, and water was dripping down onto the shiny, synthetic leather of the chair. Goku’s hair was getting really long, like he hadn’t bothered to give it regular trims. Gojyo supposed he should teach the kid things like that and felt guilty that he hadn’t. Goku looked older, too, in his forehead and eyes. It was like he’d aged on the trip, losing his youth little by little while Gojyo watched.
Gojyo wondered what he himself would look like by the time he finally stepped off his last haul. He realized he didn’t want to think about it.
“I heard that if ya pinch your nose when ya eat it, it’ll taste like potatoes. Or maybe that was carrots,” Goku said, pinching his nose and taking a bite.
“Huh,” Gojyo said, and tried a bite that way for himself. He took a few experimental chews. The spicy zing was unmistakable. “Nope. Still tastes like a goddamned radish.”
“Good radishes, though,” Goku said, still holding his nose and chewing.
Gojyo was trying to think of a witty comeback to that when the comm crackled.
“Agricultural Technology and Industrial Company hauler Buddha’s Dragon Two registry number one-one-nine-seven-eight-XT-five-two-one are you receiving this transmission? This is Cho from Huian Delta—”
“Whoa!” Gojyo said, and slammed his palm onto the console to get a two-way going. It was the guy’s voice, the guy from weeks back, and he was talking all fast and breathless. “Copy, uh, Cho. This is us. The Dragon. How’s it going?”
“Ah, good. Thank goodness,” Cho said, and sounded like he meant it. He’d said it right away, too, which meant there wasn’t a lag to speak of. “What is your ETA?”
“Eleven point eight days at this capacity. Uh, we’re almost never late, I promise ya—”
“I understand. Are you carrying medical supplies, by any chance?”
“Medical supplies?” Gojyo asked.
Goku was all wide-eyed and nervous-looking. “Should I go get Sanzo?” he whispered. When Gojyo ignored him, Goku jumped out of the chair and ran out of the cockpit.
“Not unless you ordered ‘em, I don’t guess,” Gojyo told Cho. “I don’t remember the whole manifest, but I can pull it up if you want. We’ve got some basic regulation sickbay supplies, for the crew. What happened? Are you okay?”
“Ah ha ha, your paying clients are still alive, if that’s what you are asking.”
“Screw clients!” Gojyo said, again before he thought about it. “I mean, don’t screw ‘em, but — you know what I mean. I was asking ‘cause I was concerned, okay?”
“—yes. I’m sorry. I am…” There was a couple seconds’ pause. “I’m fine. I think. Do you have long-range, broad-limit transmission capability? Would you be willing to—”
Whoosh.
“What the blue fuck is going on, you idiot?”
“Ah. Is that Captain Sanzo?”
Sanzo glared at Gojyo, probably for having the hands-free two-way on and letting Cho hear him. Then he plopped into the copilot’s chair and coded for manual two-way. He took a deep breath.
“This is the Captain. How can I fucking help you?”
“There has been a bit of a — hah hah — a buyers’ war here on Huian,” Cho said. “The Huian legislators asked me to contact you to see if you had medical supplies, and if not, if you would transmit an order for us — coff — to all available suppliers. We will pay you for your time and the time of your employee to use his skills to do so. If you can, just add it to our statement.”
Sanzo sighed and rubbed his temples under his shaggy blond hair. Like Goku, he’d gone a while without a trim. Then he punched and held the node for two-way trans.
“Negative. I’ll do it as a courtesy. My idiot fucking employee will trans if you’ll provide an itemized list of what you want.”
“Thank you. I appreciate — coff — your assistance, and the legislators — coff — anyway. Thank you.”
Cho coughed a couple more times — he didn’t sound good at all — and then read off a breathless list of medical chemicals and materials. He didn’t name any weapons, which surprised Gojyo. Buyers’ wars could be nasty businesses.
“Is the war over?” Sanzo asked Cho. He’d also noticed the lack of ordnance requests.
“Yes. Yes, it is. We are business — coff — as usual. Ah. I need to sign off now.”
Gojyo punched the two-way node on his side. “My name’s Gojyo! Trans me on this freq if you need any help, if there’s anything I can do, at least.”
Sanzo glared and Gojyo mouthed client courtesy at him. Sanzo’s lips thinned, but then he nodded.
“Thank you,” Cho said. “Truly. End transmission.”
***
Cho did trans back the next day-shift, and Gojyo was waiting for him, was waiting for the comm-crackle on Cho’s freq. He popped open a two-way as soon as he heard it.
“This is Hakkai Cho. Please say Gojyo is there, on this frequency. I’m trying to reach Gojyo, on the—”
“I gotcha! Gotcha,” Gojyo yelled, at the desperation in Cho’s — Hakkai’s — voice. “I’m here. Are you okay? Didja get the call from Opus-Indus?”
“Er — I’m sorry? Opus-Indus?”
That Hakkai — Cho — shit, Gojyo already thought of him as Hakkai — hadn’t heard of Opus-Indus worried Gojyo. So did the way he sounded strained and a little wobbly.
“We got an outfit outta Altair — Opus Industries L-L-something-or-other — with your meds and kits on the way. At least, about ninety percent of what you ordered. They shoulda transed you hours ago.”
Hakkai coughed, weakly. “I may have missed — ah. Well, I’ve been a bit … inj— indisposed. I’ll be fine, I think. I am awake now, at least. I think.”
“You don’t sound so good,” Gojyo said, though it was obvious Hakkai hadn’t yet lost his dry sense of humor. “You better take care of yourself so you can meet the shipment, dude.”
“I’ll be fine,” Hakkai said, a little more firmly than before. “There are others worse off than myself.”
“Opus is on transcom band-freq four-four-two-gamma-twelve. Call ‘em or have your government guys call. They said they’d be there in — hey, their ETA is only about twenty hours from now. What’s your local time?”
“Ah. Er …” There was a pause, and Gojyo pictured Hakkai looking for a chrono-display, and then realized he didn’t have any idea what Hakkai looked like. He hadn’t been in any of their databanks. Gojyo only had an idea of a vague, thin blur. An injured blur.
“Sixteen-thirty,” Hakkai eventually answered.
“Oh, you’re only a coupla hours off us. Hey — do you have viz-hookup capability?” Gojyo really wanted to see Hakkai. He liked the way Hakkai had said his name — they way he’d sounded so hopeful. He wanted to see if Hakkai was really as okay as he said he was.
“I fear not. Only for local transmissions.”
“Oh.”
“Thank you for your help, Gojyo, and the nnngh — news. I believe I had better go.”
“Hey! Hey. You all right?” Gojyo yelled into the comm. Hakkai’s voice had seemed to become nearly a whisper.
“I have to call — thank you—”
“Hey! Take care of yourself, Hakkai — I mean, Mister Cho!”
The familiar sound of the door sliding open interrupted him, but it was only Goku bouncing in with some new vegetables.
“Good — nngh — bye,” they heard, and then a crackle that signified the end of the trans.
“Hey!” Gojyo said to the dead comm.
“Poor guy. You better tell Sanzo,” Goku said after a few moments.
“I’ll tell the captain in my own time, ya little ape,” Gojyo snapped. When Goku’s eyes narrowed, Gojyo realized he was letting his worry make him into an asshole. “Fine! Don’t look at me like that! I’ll tell ‘im. Now! I’m telling ‘im now.”
Goku sat in the copilot’s chair with his arms crossed and a lapful of what looked like turnips while Gojyo buzzed Sanzo on his office-cabin comm. When Gojyo told Sanzo what was up, he only grunted and said that their clients had better not all be fucking dead when they got there, or they’d see a fucking war, and that was the fucking truth.
Gojyo didn’t want them to be dead, either. All that shift he kept the freq locked, but heard nothing. When it was Sanzo’s dogwatch at the helm, Gojyo sat with Goku in the galley and ate Goku’s turnips or whatever and chain-smoked and got bitched at by Sanzo for running the galley’s vent-system on constant. Gojyo knew he was wasting fuel, but he didn’t care. He did care that he was gonna run out of cigarettes soon and hoped they sold them on Huian: a lot of these new colonies had gone smoke-free. Every planet in the galaxy had tried to go smoke-free at least once, but it had never stuck for long. Nicotine as a drug habit was less problematic than some of the crazy shit the giant pharma-corps had developed over the years.
Eventually Sanzo cut his own four-hour watch short at three hours and let Gojyo get back in the cockpit. And at night, Gojyo slung a hammock in the cockpit and kept the freq-lock on during his sleep-shift, even though he wasn’t sleeping, because he figured it was more important to keep tabs on injured clients than to route the usual corporate- and government-bullshit comm-traffic.
When he didn’t hear back from Hakkai at the same time he’d called the two day-shifts before, Gojyo called him. He didn’t get an answer, so he transed again an hour later, and then an hour after that.
It was costing money, transing out like that, and it wasn’t his place to call clients directly. But Gojyo didn’t care. He had a feeling of dread about not hearing from Hakkai. Hakkai, from what little he knew, didn’t seem like the type to let people know he was injured. Hell, he was the kind of guy who didn’t want to sound tired. He must be hurt really badly, to have been desperate like that. To have called Gojyo for help.
The comm wasn’t dead, of course. Not Gojyo’s comm. Enough business trans-traffic got through that they got good news from elsewhere: they already had a couple of jobs for the trip home, to double their use and money on the fuel. That put Sanzo in a good mood, good enough that he told Gojyo he could make two — only two — comm-trans per shift to Huian, if he wanted.
Gojyo wanted. Huian Board-Legis said they’d been trying to contact Mister Cho as well, but that power problems in the outlying regions were still an issue, and they were dealing with their own troubles, thank you.
The silence on the other end of Hakkai’s comm took a toll on Gojyo’s stretched nerves. He had to sleep eventually if he wanted to keep the Dragon flying. He had to remind himself that it was an ugly galaxy for colonization, and since Hakkai was head of a terraforming partnership, he could probably take care of himself. Gojyo hoped.
Still he tried. And after three days, one of Gojyo’s hails got through. He was on sleep-shift, not sleeping, and Hakkai answered him on the first hail.
“Nnngh. Is that Gojyo? My, it’s dark,” Hakkai said, his voice trickling through on the trans. Gojyo could have whooped for joy, but he didn’t.
“You alive there, man?”
“Ah hah hah,” Hakkai laughed weakly. “It appears I am still alive, after all.”
Gojyo wondered if that meant Hakkai had actually been planning to die. “Stay that way, man. I hear the meds got there. Didja get yours?”
“Oh, I hadn’t — oh, that’s good news. It seems … well, I will contact headquarters. Thank you.”
Gojyo wasn’t letting him go that easily. “And I’ll call you back. To be sure you got through. Okay?”
“You don’t have to. Er.” The sound of a thump transmitted loudly over the comm-link, and then what sounded like a laugh from Hakkai. “Yes, actually. Yes. I think I would appreciate that. And I think you must be an exceptional person, Gojyo.”
“Awww. I’m not exceptional. I’m just a haul-pilot.” Gojyo felt his cheeks fry up in a blush and was glad they didn’t have a viz-trans so Hakkai couldn’t see it. His face was probably redder than his hair. He hadn’t blushed, that he knew of, in fifteen years. “Talk to you in ten.”
The comm clicked off. Gojyo punched on the vent and smoked a cigarette, slowly and deliberately. He looked out of the cockpit shield at the stars. It was something he rarely did because there was usually nothing to see. Space was an empty goddamned place, and instruments took care of everything. But this time he found Altair with his naked eyes. It was huge compared to the other stars since they were only a week’s travel away. He wondered how he’d missed the stupid thing, hanging there all bright and white-blue in the speckled black empty. Then he looked a few degrees off, trying to find the Huian star hunched only a light-year or so next to it, trying to visualize its system and its fourth planet, and on that the dark half where Hakkai was maybe crawling through his place, trying to find a light or a bandage or a NichePad with the Legis freq numbers scrawled on it.
Gojyo called back in exactly ten, and Hakkai answered.
“Hello again, Gojyo.” Hakkai’s voice was less slurry than before, small but nearly as clear as the first time Gojyo had heard it. Gojyo was still looking at the stars — he was sure he’d found Huian on his own — and he had a surreal feeling, like Hakkai’s voice was coming through the black to his ears and bypassing trans-wormholes and electronics altogether. He liked the thought of that.
“Are they gonna help you out?”
“Hmm. Truthfully, the wound has almost — well. Let’s just say, I slept a very long time and feel much better. I think I needed the rest.”
“I know how you feel,” said Gojyo, who had barely slept for three days.
“I certainly hope not. I do believe I could eat, though. Will you talk to me for a few minutes while I get the ZipCooker going? Tell me about what you do.”
“Uhh. ‘K,” Gojyo said, blushing again, though he didn’t know why for sure. He supposed it might have something to do with someone like Hakkai wanting to hear him talk.
“Where are you from?” Hakkai asked, amid the sound of background clicks and whirrs. “I was trying to place your accent.”
“Oh, offa Vega,” Gojyo said. “New Saturn Epsilon.”
“That’s very far from here.”
“Good,” Gojyo said.
“Do you not want to talk about it? Am I imposing?” Hakkai asked. He actually sounded concerned, too. For Gojyo.
Gojyo sighed. “Nah, that’s okay. I just … It wasn’t a bad place to grow up, but I wanted to be gone, you know?”
He told Hakkai about how he’d grown up in a seventh-generation tee-forming family on a shithole planet that was a dozen light-years from anywhere. He’d never been a very good farmer, though he’d been pretty good at fixing equipment. As soon as he’d learned to walk, he’d haunted shipshops and the dock districts in what counted for New Saturn Epsilon’s cities, learning ship-maint and building. And planning how to get out.
He’d gone out, and out, and had never stopped. He’d ended up spending more than half his life cruising the spacelanes just to deliver ag and tech equipment to some of the emptiest corners of the known galaxy. That was the way of the universe, of life, over and over: some people stopped farming and built and flew ships, and others used the ships to colonize new places for farming or for building more things. Sometimes people — or companies — fought over who was going to do what. And Galcorp condoned and half-assedly oversaw the whole mess, controlling the money and the military.
“Me doing this. It just sort of happened, you know?” he asked Hakkai, when he realized he’d been yakking up a streak to silence on the other end of the trans.
“Mmm-hmm,” Hakkai answered after a moment, still there. It sounded like he was eating. “So you don’t like farming.”
“Uh,” Gojyo said, realizing that Hakkai was maybe like his own ancestors, one of those tee-formers that didn’t just change the land but stayed on and worked it. He didn’t know for sure, because Hakkai hadn’t talked about himself at all. “I don’t hate farmers. I just don’t much like me farming.”
“I suppose I’ll find out whether I like it or not. Oh, it sounds as though my official visitors have arrived.”
“Huh?” Gojyo said, but Hakkai didn’t answer right away. So Gojyo turned up the comm volume. He heard what sounded like the hum of a transport in the background. When Hakkai’s voice returned to the transmission, it filled the cockpit and echoed off the bulkheads.
“The legislators are here, and they have some supplies, I believe. I should go. Thank you for talking, Gojyo.”
“Uh, sure,” Gojyo said. He wanted to ask Hakkai to call back, but he felt stupid all of a sudden. He’d talked like some kind of moron, and Hakkai was a paying customer — a rich paying customer — not just a guy like he’d hang with or one of his fucks.
But Hakkai surprised him again by beating him to it. “I promise to check in,” he said.
“Damn straight,” Gojyo told him, and signed off.
He smiled as he re-slung his hammock. At last he slept, at least until he dreamed that he was fucking a voice in the black empty, a voice that tried to fill it. He woke up with a boner like Olympus Mons and looked out at the stars, and ran his fingers in a vee over the outline of his cock through his denim work-pants. And the voice echoed through his mind and fingers and fuck, it was intense, his own touch rough, his body sinking into space like plus-gravity, two- or three-gee. He was both asleep enough and awake enough to hear the voice in his head and feel his hand stroking his cock at the same time, and his huffing breath as he jerked himself became two breaths echoing in the cockpit. The hammock rocked, and all he could feel was the voice, hard on his skin. He came, yelling. He’d kicked the chair hard enough to roll it forward. He was alone in the cockpit, but shit, he hoped he’d turned off the two-way. Then he fell back asleep.
***
Hakkai called back the next day, and the next, and the day after that. Gojyo came to expect his daily trans and to look forward to it — made it one of the little things he did, as easily he’d taken to maint or smoking or sex. As far as Captain Sanzo was concerned, Hakkai was just a client checking on the progress of his shipment, and Gojyo was just making sure that Hakkai was still alive. If Sanzo thought otherwise, he hadn’t said anything.
‘Cause mostly it seemed that Hakkai just called to talk. He didn’t offer too much about himself; they discussed Gojyo’s work or current events. Hakkai was something of a trans-addict and liked to listen to a little bit of everything from everywhere. His own equipment was better than what the Legis had, which was why they’d had him transing out for them. He seemed very interested in Gojyo’s personal boosts.
He did say he’d acquired a sort of contract to farm after he was done ‘forming; it was a pretty big-scale operation, too, and he was doing it mostly on his own. When he mentioned that he was fine with that because it was what she had wanted, Gojyo felt ballsy enough to ask who she was.
“Hmm,” Hakkai said, and Gojyo heard him take a breath. “Well, I don’t know if you know this, but I am the only partner in the Huian Delta Terraforming Cooperative Partnership GLP. My original — ah — partner, Kanan, wanted to found a colony. I was in — well, I agreed. But she was killed in a buyers’ war before we ever left the Core. Just over a year ago, in fact.”
“Aww, man,” Gojyo commiserated. “Lost that one, did ya?”
“No,” Hakkai said.
“Oh,” Gojyo said. Hakkai didn’t offer more, and Gojyo wasn’t about to nose his way into that whole story. Yet. Still, he was nosy. “If ya don’t mind me asking, what did you do before coming to colonize this place?”
“We’ll, it’s — coff,” Hakkai said. He coughed a couple more times and Gojyo got a little worried, but then he heard the sound of Hakkai swallowing something. Soon Hakkai started talking again. “I guess you could say I grew up sheltered under the umbrella of academia. When I met Kanan, I was on faculty at the university on Mars Colony Four. I taught pre-colonial literature.”
“Huh,” Gojyo said, laughing inwardly. His first guess had been right. “Thought you sounded like a smart one.”
“Ah hah hah. I suppose some might have thought so,” Hakkai laughed, and Gojyo thought it was real, not one of Hakkai’s I’m being polite laughs. So Gojyo pushed it, because he was good at that.
“It wasn’t really you, though, was it?”
“Hmmm. It was a restrictive life,” Hakkai said, in a voice that was suddenly close and cozy sounding, a voice that oozed out of the stars. “I think that in addition to many other things, you are very perceptive, Gojyo.”
“Nah,” Gojyo said out of habit. Shit, he wanted to fuck that voice. Or at least listen to it in a not-very-platonic way. The guy talked to him like he was a real person. Gojyo realized he didn’t even care at all what Hakkai looked like. “I was just paying attention, ‘cause I was interested.”
“Oh. People don’t usually find me interesting, I don’t think.”
“I dunno,” Gojyo said. “What you’re doing is pretty ballsy. And expensive.”
“Yes, it is.” Hakkai sighed, and his voice got low again. “I lived wisely, once upon a time. Now it’s what I must do. Kanan wanted — ah—”
“She wanted it, yeah,” Gojyo provided dutifully.
Hakkai sighed again. “I should sign off. I’m very tired, all of a sudden.”
“You okay?” Gojyo asked automatically.
“Yes — yes, I’m fine. I was very busy today, straightening my affairs. You are bringing a lot of work for me, after all.”
“Good tired.”
“Yes, good tired. Good evening, Gojyo. I very much look forward to meeting you in person. And thank you for caring.”
Could say the same to you, Gojyo thought, but didn’t say aloud. Soon the static of the broken trans connection made a reply unnecessary.
Gojyo leaned back and indulged his new hobby of looking at the stars and finding them incredibly sexy, when they had voices like that in them.
Gojyo knew he was perceptive, to a point: he’d learned to pay attention to people. What people were saying behind their words sometimes meant the difference between a win or a lose, or a fuck or a lonely night. Or life and death, even.
He wondered what this Kanan had been like and how much Hakkai had loved her, and how much her death haunted him. He wondered if Hakkai only liked women, though most people these days didn’t seem to care. He wondered if Hakkai really knew why he was doing such a crazy thing on his own. He knew two things for sure, however: one, that you didn’t terraform a quarter of a continent on a backwater planet all on your lonesome just ‘cause your dead girlfriend wanted you to. And two, Hakkai sounded amazing when he was good tired.
***
He didn’t get to hear Hakkai’s voice the next day-shift, though, because Sanzo kept Gojyo off the comm. In fact, he kicked him out of the cockpit during call-time, saying he needed to do his own business. And when he finally commed Gojyo out of the galley to come back, he seemed to have a nitromite up his ass.
He leaned against the door-track of the cockpit hatchway, half-in and half-out so that the door couldn’t shut. It whoosh-whined at the obstruction, wanting to close. Sanzo ignored it and lit a cigarette. He looked at Gojyo with a weird expression.
“That Cho motherfucker is bad news,” he said after a bit.
“You talk to ‘im?” Gojyo asked.
“None of your fucking business,” Sanzo said. He smoked. The door grunted. Sanzo and Gojyo stared at each other.
“You’re gonna set off the smoke sensors,” Gojyo said. He leaned back against the bulkhead next to the door and shoved his hands into his coverall pockets.
“Then you’ll have to fucking shut them off, won’t you?”
Sure enough, a few seconds later the sensors caught the smoke and started BEEP-BEEP-BEEEEPing, their alarm growing louder and louder, the noise bouncing off the cargo and the walls and drowning out the sound of the door trying to shut.
“You gonna let me in to turn ‘em off?” Gojyo said.
Sanzo plucked his cigarette out of his mouth between two fingers, then shoved the fingers at Gojyo’s face, so close Gojyo could breathe the smoke. “I tell you this because I’m trying to help you out here, dumbass.”
“That’s awfully kind of ya, Sanzo,” Gojyo told him.
“That’s fucking captain to you,” Sanzo said. He pushed up and off the door edge so it could slide shut with a relieved swish.
Goku had run up at the noise, and was looking between the two of them. “What’s happening? Why’re the alarms going off? Gojyo? Sanzo?”
“It’s fucking captain to you, too,” Sanzo said. He shoved his cigarette back into his mouth and stomped off, somehow still graceful as he navigated the narrow passage between the cargo and the bulkhead. “And cut the kid’s fucking hair, would you?” he tossed behind him.
“Sure thing, Captain Asshole,” Gojyo said to Sanzo’s back. He keyed himself into the cockpit and reached up to tap the alarm-kill code into the ceiling panel. When the flashing red indicators calmed to green, the alarms stopped screaming. Gojyo threw himself into his chair — still warm from Sanzo’s ass — and looked at the time. It was too late to trans Hakkai, or at least too late to do it decently. And Gojyo didn’t want to appear desperate or anything.
Or did he care? Hakkai had never seemed to. They were just talking, for fuck’s sake. Gojyo looked at the stars and tried to decide if he’d ever been decent, and if he wanted to start now. Before he’d decided, Goku whooshed in and flopped into the copilot’s seat. He was quiet.
“Wanna haircut?” Gojyo asked eventually.
“I guess,” Goku shrugged. He still looked worried.
“Cool,” Gojyo said. He swiveled in his chair and poked the latch to open the lower wall storage-unit. He dug around inside it until he found the fine-thread laser-bore. Hakkai had won the buyer’s war that had killed his partner. He was some kind of badass, or at least someone who could afford to hire badasses. He worried Sanzo, who was one of the baddest asses Gojyo knew. Gojyo tuned the laze to three mils.
“Bend over, ape-boy,” he told Goku. Goku bent his head in Gojyo’s direction, and Gojyo started stretching out thick locks of his brown hair, slicing off four- and five-centimenter chunks. Goku’s hair was clean, Gojyo would give him that. For all the dirt and grease he dug in every day, he kept himself decent. “If you wanna watch next time, I do my own like this. You just haveta keep the pieces stretched even or you’ll look like a shaggy dipshit.”
“Uh-huh,” Goku said from upside-down.
Gojyo realized that he didn’t care what Hakkai’s problem was, though he clearly had one. Huian-Legis was obviously nervous about him, too. Gojyo still wanted to meet him. Just to see what … just to see. Gojyo had never really gotten to know someone before he met them, and sometimes not even after he’d met them. He’d never stuck around long enough. Haulers spent a lot of time mostly alone — it was part of the life. He wished Hakkai wasn’t so damned lonely.
“Sanzo doesn’t totally hate you, ya know. I think he wants to help,” Goku said. He was sliding his shoes back and forth through the hair coating the deck.
“That don’t mean he ain’t a dickhead,” Gojyo said. “And I ain’t totally stupid.”
Gojyo didn’t send any transmissions during the night. He didn’t expect Hakkai would, either, after dealing with Sanzo. So he was surprised when Hakkai transed in the next day. He was quiet and brief. He couldn’t talk long, he said, because he was busy with preparations.
“But I just wanted to quickly say hello. To let you know I was still here,” Hakkai said.
“I didn’t think you wouldn’t be, but thanks,” Gojyo said. He was stupid, totally stupid, ‘cause his heart felt like it jumped back and forth from his stomach to his throat when he heard Hakkai’s voice. He was totally falling for a guy he’d never seen. It must be what happened when you got to know people by actually talking to them.
Gojyo tried to forget that feeling, but when Hakkai called the next day and said pretty much the same thing, Gojyo felt like he had the galaxy whirling inside him. He didn’t want it to be like that, but it was, and there was nothing he could do about it. He wondered if, when this delivery was all over, he’d ever feel that excited about anything again. He certainly hoped so. Or hoped not. He couldn’t decide.
But on the day they were scheduled to land, he didn’t hear from Hakkai at all. Not even when they were in orbit, making preps and waiting for Sanzo to give the word. Sanzo had tried to trans down-planet once and had said to fuck it after that; they had the landing instructions and regs from weeks ago, and as far as they knew those hadn’t changed. The land-and-unload point was on the M-D Co-op property. They wouldn’t even have to hire RG-line trucks to make a drive — all Goku would have to do was operate the hover-skids to move the haul from the hold to a warehouse on-site.
Goku also had to deliver the invoice. Sanzo had given the Nichechip to him instead of Gojyo, making a point that was asshole-ishly obvious.
“I suggest you stay with the Dragon,” Sanzo said when Gojyo confronted him in his cabin. He was wearing his brown grubbies but packing a bag with his good white shirt. He was also packing his piece and ammo, that old-timey projectile shit his gun fired. “Get her ready to go. I got fucking schmooze-meetings with Huian-Legis at the capital, and I don’t want to hang around when they’re over.”
Gojyo snorted and tried not to think about punching his boss. “You know the ship’ll be ready soon as we unload. When’s she ever not been?”
“I could make it an order,” Sanzo said with another of his new, weird looks. He was patting his pockets as if to be sure he had everything all tucked away right and tight.
“Fuck that. I always help with the unloads,” Gojyo told him. Sanzo would never order him; Goku might need help.
“Your ass, then.”
“Or someone else’s, maybe,” Gojyo said, and waggled his eyebrows. He was just pissed off enough to do it and not care, and maybe past that pissed off.
Sanzo looked like he might want to punch something, too, but he only shoved his way past Gojyo out of the office. “Just land the fucking ship,” he said.
“Pick me up some smokes at the capital, then, would you, Cap’n? Since I’m too delicate to do my own goddamned job?”
Sanzo only grunted and walked off into the hold to wait in the seats by the doors.
Gojyo headed off to the cockpit at a jog. Sanzo had given the word, anyway, and Gojyo wanted to land as much as anyone else. When he passed Goku, who was bent over a crate and shoving something green and disgusting-looking into his pockets, Gojyo grabbed his collar and dragged Goku with him.
“Gotta get strapped in.”
***
On To The Haul: Part Two
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