Into the Black [missedstations & Bathos]

[Bathos]

The central spaceport on the primarily aquatic planet of Quien belied the planet's relatively diminutive size. It was one of the largest in the galaxy, largely because of its centralized location between the five controlling bodies of known space, and its close proximity to the Black--regions of space uncharted, explored at high personal risk and traditionally high casualty rates.

Quien was colonized by humans many hundreds of years ago and its culture was as old as any, though within the port itself there was no evidence of this fact. The sky was a pale lavender with dense, gray clouds that may have threatened stormy weather at any other outpost, and filled with ships of various size and luxury class entering and exiting the atmosphere. All around the primary docking bays there were kiosks boasting exotic treasures from across the galaxy and some from as far the Black. Foreign smells and sounds mingled in the crowded air until one odor was indiscernible from another, one voice was lost in the din of many.

From across the bistro table at the small outdoor cafe where Vince sat, there rose up a sigh, followed immediately by a most unladylike whine.

"This place is so boring," whined Rosemary, not for the first time. Vince didn't bother looking up from the datapad he studied, just arched one dark brown eyebrow in an expression of complete and utter apathy and went on about his business. Rosemary, a dark-skinned beauty who also happened to serve as Vince's First Officer--on the rare occasion that there was actually a call for such formalities upon the Dioscuri--went on, "Couldn't I just--"

"I don't want any trouble while I'm gone," Vince cut in, voice deep and stern in a way that brooked no arguments from his testy subordinate. He switched the pad off, pocketed it, and finally looked up at her, green eyes narrow with the promise of an unholy fury should she find it within herself to disobey. "Unless there's an impending supernova and a planet-wide evacuation, your ass and my ship don't leave this port. Understood?"

Rosemary slumped in her seat and pulled a petulant face. "Understood."

Vince rose to his full height then, well over six feet and clad in worn black trousers, tunic, and boots. "If you'll excuse me," he said, though they both knew he didn't need any excuses to do exactly as he damned well pleased, "I've got a crew to join."

Rosemary watched as Vince left, long strides carrying him into the horde of travelers, who parted ahead of him and closed behind him, until she could no longer see him.

The ship that served as Vince's ultimate destination was larger than the Dioscuri several times over with a crude patch job on the starboard hull and telltale scoring on all sides, as if it'd recently been under fire. Vince approached the boarding ramp, where a man stood at what may have passed, to a civilian, for parade rest.

"Mornin'," Vince said, already digging in his shirt for the documents he'd drawn up one night previous. "Heard you're light a couple hands."

The man's gaze swept up and down Vince, apparently unimpressed. "Papers?" Vince handed them over. After a long silence, they were handed back and the man said gruffly to Vince, "Report to the engine room for assignment. It's on the--"

"I can find it," Vince cut in, gave the recruiter a sound clap on the back, and headed up the ramp.

 

[missedstations]

Remarque had only served on the ship for a few months, but he already knew it well enough. His time was mostly spent in the engine room for shitty pay. The captain had seen the obviously forged papers, and gave him a job that was little better than slave labour. Paying for silence wasn't easy. It was a far cry from what he had once been used to, but these days he had to take whatever he could get. At least he knew that this particular captain valued his skills more than the price of his bounty. Well, he hoped. He could never be entirely sure.

Under their little pirate attack, the crew were surprised at how well he shot, but this was a job that generally did not lead to intimacy, and no one had asked him much. Who knew where he had come from, and what he could do? But he kept the ship's ancient maintenance systems in perfect order, and they hadn't needed any serious repairs until the attack. He was, most assuredly, competent. Why ask for more? It could only lead to trouble.

He mostly kept to himself, and there was no one who knew his real name. When asked for it, he would always reply with 'Jack' without the slightest hesitation. When asked for a second name he would merely shrug and keep on working. If anyone knew him as Remarque, he knew he was in trouble. Who'd have thought that doing what he was told would have led to so many problems. He would spend his days only speaking about technical details, eating his allotted rations without any real enjoyment, and generally looking forward to the end of the journey and of his service.

Remarque was most certainly good looking, even as thin as he was. He looked elegant rather than gaunt, but he was obviously a little too pale in comparison with his jet black hair. He got plenty of offers from crew members for companionship, but his lifetime of experience told him that there was little point getting attached to anything, least of all anyone.

His only possessions of value were his gun, stolen from a military arsenal somewhere, and his most basic tools. With their pieces woven into his hair, they looked more like decoration, but they were there for a practical purpose. He could easily break through any vent, open any control panel, cut or solder any wires he needed. If he lost those, he would be truly unfortunate.

The pirate attack was a catastrophe. Not even his apparent wizardry with machines could do much when half of an engine was destroyed. So the ship limped into Quien's port, and Remarque felt the fear that haunted him intensify. He knew what awaited him if he was caught. A show trial and either execution or a lifetime imprisonment. Since he managed desert at the end of the war, he had travelled only between the obscurest of ports, with men like himself for company. He could only be at home in places where there was neither law nor regulation, and lived a precarious life between bankruptcy and prison.

In a place like this, he could not possibly be safe. His slender hands were a little less steady as he worked. He could not wait to leave. He would desert this ship right now if he didn't know that staying was his only chance of getting out of here. As soon as he stepped off the ship, he would be asked for papers, and he knew that his ones were nowhere near good enough to get him through.

 

[Bathos]

To get into the engine room, Vince actually had to duck his head to avoid smacking it on the bulkhead. He was tall, not abnormally so, but these old ships tended toward a philosophy of conservation of space, cramming the ceilings down as low as they could reasonably get away with, leaving men like Vince ducking or sustaining regular concussions. Vince chose to duck.

The engine room was like something out of a history class, nearly ancient by a tech junkie's standards--not that Vince was a junkie. In fact, he found something kind of soothing in the elegance of older machinery, the simplicity of parts that performed single functions and performed them well. He felt a sourceless suspicion toward modern technology, advancing faster by the second; too fast for Vince to learn which parts did what and why. It was for that reason he had to hire on a technician of his own about a year back, a decision he regretted at least once daily.

Vince carded his fingers through his neatly trimmed hair, glancing around before he came too far into the engine room, a little habit born of a paranoia he could never shake. His attention fell on a man across the room, working intently and paying Vince no notice. He was slender, though with his hands raised to work, his shirt clung and rode up and revealed a pretty solid structure. His hair was black, which fit the description, and his skin was this creamy sort of pale that suggested several years absent of shore leave.

Vince hadn't even seen the man's face, but any doubt in his mind that he'd found his mark was purely for the sake of red tape. He took a step forward, opened his mouth to rattle off whatever generic greeting came first to his mind, but was halted when another man--a man nearly as big as Vince, himself--stepped into his line of sight.

"Papers?" Absently, gaze still fixed over this new guy's shoulder--he was probably the midshipman, his mind supplied from a distance--Vince withdrew his papers and handed them over.

"Hmm. McCabria, John. Says here you're a technician."

Vince dragged his eyes over to the midshipman, nodding. "Yeah, I, uh, heard you could use some help with repairs and I'm sorta lookin' to get off this heap so I thought--"

"Save your pitch," the midshipman told him. "I'm Brody, that over there is Jack. Welcome to engine crew. Jack here's got a handle on the fuel line right now, but we could use some help with the forward thrusters. You game?"

Jack, Vince thought with an internal smirk. My ass.

Out loud, he said, "Sure, let's have a look at it." Brody led him away from the skinny, dark-haired man who Vince was certain was Remarque, and he had no choice but to follow.

 

[missedstations]

Remarque glanced across as the men left, but with little real curiosity. The more involved he became with his task, the less interest he had in the outside world. It had been how he had escaped the war relatively mentally unscathed. He was glad that Brody had began to fully appreciate his preference towards working alone, the early attempts to keep him company had been irritating to Remarque, and deeply unsatisfying to Brody. He had exploded one day and told the entire crew, very loudly, that the engines were more conversational.

Only when all fuel gauges showed green was he satisfied, and he stood up and stretched as well as he could in that space. One small section of the overall whole was completed, and it made him feel a little better. Maybe everything would be fine so long as he didn't step off the ship. He replaced the panels slowly and yawned.

That was good nine of hours of work he had done, but before he could go to bed he supposed that he should really check how the rest of the ship was doing. Calling up the diagnostics, he checked that the work on the hull was going on a decent pace, but that to replace engine parts would take far longer. Maybe no rest then. Maybe he should do something useful instead, so the ship could leave as soon as possible.

His hands were starting to hurt though. His fingers had been broken far too many times to count, and not every time he had the best medical care. If you didn't want to attract attention, it was best to keep your mouth shut, and let anyone who outranks you beat the shit out of you if they really feel like it. Sometimes he won, sometimes he lost. It added up, but overall he preferred to keep his life and possessions. Maybe his life didn't look like it was worth much, but it was his and he wanted to keep it.

'Hey, Brody, how's it going?' he had appeared mysteriously, studying the innards of the thrusters. His own professional conclusion was not very well, but he tried to have normal conversations sometimes.

Despite the fact that the chaos irked him no end, and that couple of techs looked thoroughly incompetent, he didn't get involved. Only if he was asked. For the moment, it was nice to stand, watch, and massage his fingers.

'Fuel line's done, by the way. I doubt we'll have any trouble there for a long time.-' He trailed off and stared at one of the techs. He could not contain himself, and in an almost military tone asked 'Why the hell are you opening that? The diagnostics are fine. There is no need to look at the core, all the damage is to the outer parts.'

There really was no need to make the work longer by fucking things up, was there.

 

[Bathos]

If no one else did, Vince certainly noticed when "Jack" came into sight. He was the whole reason Vince was even on the old junker in the first place, though, and so he was particularly attuned to his presence.

Brody, on the other hand, jumped when he was suddenly made aware of Jack standing just behind him, and turned to scowl at him. "Just peachy," he said sarcastically, though there was no real venom in his tone.

Vince watched this, noting how Jack didn't really come off as any kind of war hardened criminal, and he was just about to start revising his suspicions, perhaps look elsewhere on the ship, when Jack suddenly started barking at another tech, a young kid who looked greener than a seasick tree frog. The kid looked up at Jack, wide eyed with terror or shock or both, and started to re-fasten the steel plate he'd just removed with shaking hands.

It was actually kind of funny, and Vince didn't blame Jack for his outburst. Hell, he'd blown up at his own crew more times than he could count. But still, he couldn't resist the temptation.

"Maybe I told him to," Vince said, voice pitched a little deeper, a little rougher than usual. He rose slowly out of the crouch he'd held while he'd been working some build-up out of one of the secondary thrusters and keeping a low profile. Now he straightened to his full height, rolling his broad shoulders to shake from of the stiffness from them, and room suddenly seemed to shrink around him.

Vince absolutely did not tell the young tech to access the core, but that was neither here nor there. The point of this exercise was to ruffle up Remarque and see how he handled it. The reason behind it?

It was fun.

Vince slowly looked his target down, then up, a slow, lazy smirk pulling his mouth to the right. "Never hurt to take a second look. You got a problem with that, Jack?"

 

[missedstations]

One thing Remarque knew beyond any shadow of doubt was that he was better at this than anyone else on the ship. The sheer number of vessels he had worked on, the amount of times his life had depended on it and his precise memory made him an utterly formidable source of knowledge. He was rather offended any time anyone questioned him, but after a while he had learned not to let it show. He was in this for the long term survival.

'I can assure you that I am better than you, and that I know exactly what I am doing.' He did not look the least intimidated, meeting Vince's eyes squarely. His face was expressionless, and his silver eyes perfectly cold. He had learned to wear that mask during military service: it scared most people efficiently enough. It was an easy face to wear, and he looked exactly capable of anything.

'There is no need to waste time on useless work, there is a cargo that needs to get to its destination.' A perfectly reasonable argument. And the boy was an idiot for not having read the notes that Remarque had posted to all the members of the repair team. 'Aditionally, I wouldn't trust him to get his hands in there. He might break something.'

And he was quite sure that Brody would rather throw the new guy off the ship than Jack, the most useful tech he had ever known. Remarque could afford to stand his ground. He got a sense that this crew would be loath to lose him. As un-companionable as he was, they had become used to his little oddities.

Brody clapped Jack on the back to in an attempt to lighten the mood. 'He's been working nine hours straight, so excuse him if he's a little short with y'all.'

Jack shrugged as if to agree and looked away smoothly, back to the ship diagnostics. The episode was, in his mind, over. It would take more than that to unnerve him.

 

[Bathos]

Vince stood his ground a moment longer, gaze still fixed on Jack, more confident now than he had been before: this was the war criminal known as Remarque, and before this heap of junk embarked into space, he would be in Vince's custody.

He took the opportunity created by his outburst--in which he was a testosterone-fueled alpha who was pretty much expected to stare Jack down--to get a good look at Remarque. He was thin, too thin by Vince's standards but not to the point of starvation, though he probably didn't pack a lot of strength in his swings, should they come to blows. He'd be a fast little shit, though, of that much Vince was sure. And probably crafty, too, with spatial reasoning off the charts and a natural inclination toward breaking and fixing things, he'd have to be bound tight and watched constantly. There was also the fact he was a war criminal, accused of committing nasty atrocities in the name of victory.

There hadn't been a trial yet, so there was a chance Remarque wasn't even guilty, but even calling his innocence a long shot would be an unnecessary stretch. Vince had come across his share of veterans of the war, and not a one of them had come through that conflict unscathed. So, along with being a tricky bastard with what appeared to be enhanced vision and a stick up his ass, Remarque would most likely be a cold, desensitized bastard.

Vince smiled. His favorite kind of job.

"Well, pretty boy, I can assure you that you're a dick," Vince said, enjoying the way the junior tech who had been about to access the thruster core now quivered with what appeared to be an attempt not to laugh or piss himself. He turned away then, too, because all their shifts were up and it was time to report to the mess for a steaming pile of unidentifiable xeno-culinary mush.

 

[missedstations]

Remarque was probably in fact more guilty than his bounty suggested, but too many crimes were committed by far too many, and of course there would never be time to catalogue them correctly. He had massacred is own crew for one, and apparently stole a battleship, as well as making many ships he had worked on death traps. There were one or two known ghost ships that had claimed the lives of many salvage crews, and Remarque was known to be one of the three survivors of one of those.

Pretty boy. Well, that wasn't a particularly new one. Didn't happen as often these days though... When he first joined the army, that had been the standard reference to him. Until the day he got one of the highest officer posts on the Requiem, and from then it was always 'sir'. He missed that time, when no one could question his orders, when the ship under his control was ferally armed and with the most beautiful of technology. The Requiem had always sung under his fingers, with her oh so perfect engines.

Jack simply shrugged, entirely unaffected by the insult. There was not that much that could possibly happen on the ship. It was best not to reminisce about the past.

He wasn't particularly inclined towards food and would have rather rested, so he slipped away from the rest of them, towards the tiny narrow room that was his alone. It didn't contain much apart from a bed and a desk, with parts of computers and machines strewn across the floor. That sort of chaos suited him in many ways. In his free time he was happy to fix whatever seemed broken, and occasionally even to help with the crew with their gadgets.

He checked his messages – none, of course – and then sat down on the bed to begin to unlace his boots. Sleep, then his next shift.

 

[Bathos]

The techs left the engine room in shifts, Vince hanging near the back of the group with the sole aim of ducking out when no one was looking. It wasn't the most elegant of tactics, he realized, but he found stealth was a wasted effort for a man his size. He fared better in these kinds of situations with a practiced air of Yes-I-absolutely-belong-here-now-go-about-your-business.

He glanced back toward the engine room, checking to make sure that his target was following--picking him up in the mess hall, with plenty of people around, would be the perfect scenario to prevent his escape--and found that he-

Well, he wasn't. Remarque was slipping off in another direction, and if the ship was designed at all like the other tired old freighters Vince had boarded in the course of his career, he was headed toward the crew's overnight bunks. Vince waited for Remarque to disappear around a corridor before he broke away from the rest of the techs, pivoting on his heel and following exactly the way his target had gone.

In a pinch, a private capture would have to do.

Vince rounded the final corner only just in time to find a completely deserted hallway and a narrow door sliding shut with a shuddering hiss. Judging by the spacing of the doors along the bulkhead, he could guess that they were single quarters. Remarque would be alone.

Vince crouched in front of Remarque's door, slid the hem of his trousers up over his boots, and withdrew the things he would need from the ankle strap he'd so carefully donned that morning. There was a pistol, compact and matte black and loaded with traditional soft metal slugs, a pair of wrist binders keyed to a combination known only by Vince and his first officer, and a badge that served as proof that Vince was, in fact, a hunter listed on the galactic registry and was fully within his rights to escort Remarque off the ship.

The pistol, he tucked into his waistband at his low back, along with the binders. The badge, he slipped into his shirt pocket. Only then did he palm open the door without so much as a chime to announce his presence, and stepped into the doorway.

Rather than explode immediately into motion, Vince folded his arms and leaned his shoulder against the open doorway, mouth curving into a smile. This time, when he spoke, his voice was low and lazy, almost intimate in the fashion of long-time friends picking up an ongoing discussion.

"So you're better than me, huh?"

 

[missedstations]

One of the things that Remarque had learned over his lifetime, both during the war and after – especially after – was that weapons should never be out of the reach of his hand. As soon as he woke, he reached for the side of his mattress and pulled out his gun with all the elegance only thorough military training could give and all the speed he had, born of fear. Once you fought in the war, you could never sleep deeply again, however exhausted. He was sitting up and pointing the gun at Vince's chest in less than 2 seconds. This had been what had saved his life so many times.

Recognising the new tech, he lowered the gun only slightly – so that if he shot the wound would not be fatal. His gun was obviously military issue, stolen when he deserted. While old and well used, it was in perfect repair, and always loaded. During the day, he had to do without it so as to not draw attention, but in his room he did not like parting from it.

Did the man want revenge for what happened earlier? Remarque would no doubt lose a fist fight, but maybe the loaded gun would be a sufficient deterrent. This was sufficiently far from most of the crew's regular haunts that no one would probably notice what happened until hours after the fact.

'What the fuck are you doing in here?' he said, now completely awake.

 

[Bathos]

Vince was willing to admit, what with hindsight being 20/20 and everything, that he may have made an error in judgment waltzing naked into Remarque's quarters. His pistol burned accusingly at his low back, reminding him that this was just another instance in which just a little more precaution may have saved him a big headache.

Or, in this case, a big hole in his torso.

His eyebrows shot up high on his forehead and Vince unfolded his arms, presenting his palms to Remarque in the universal sign language for, 'Don't shoot.' He stood a little straighter, too, face going alert and surprised and, he hoped, utterly innocent.

"Just came to talk is all," Vince said, cracking a smile that would be considered nervous by anyone who didn't know just how much the bounty hunter loved his brushes with death and his impossible situations. Vince, as his tight little crew knew all too well, was an adrenaline junkie.

"You talked a big game there in the engine room, Jack. You were also an ass in the engine room, but hey. Who isn't after being cooped up with a bunch of poorly washed men for hours on end, yeah?"

Vince took a slow breath, eyes narrowing on Remarque and sliding from his oddly colored eyes, down his pale neck, to his flat torso and up again, a different kind of smile, suggestive and dark and not altogether disingenuous, forming around his next words. "Thought maybe you could give me a few ... pointers."

 

[missedstations]

Remarque's instinct was to tell the man to fuck off. 'Pointers,' he repeated flatly.

He put the gun back down onto the bed, but with fingertips still resting barely an inch away from it. He knew that look, and he supposed that he could put the gun down. He felt the sudden urge to button up his shirt to the top, but did not act on it. It would not show that now he was nervous. Remarque rarely had sex because he wanted to: since the war, he had come to consider it as simply another way of paying for favours.

There was no smile from Remarque in response. He slid his feet back into his boots without looking away from Vince. 'I do my job, and I do it better than anyone else here. That's it.'

Which really made one wonder why he was on this shitpile, with an apparently complete lack of any personal possessions. Most would think that someone with his skill would be better suited to something state of the art, with ridiculous pay. But hey, a fugitive didn't exactly have the right to negotiate wages.

If Vince was here just to talk, as he said, then hopefully this would be over soon enough and painlessly enough. After all, his natural reticence usually bored people soon enough. He liked it when they concluded that it was best to have nothing to do with him. Hopefully the new tech would decide that soon enough.

 

[Bathos]

"May I?" Vince asked and, without waiting for a response, took a couple of steps into the room, careful to keep his back--and, subsequently, the gun--out of sight.

"I'm curious," Vince said, and here he was slipping out of character, but only to a degree that he considered acceptable. "Your allegedly unparalleled skill with engines--does that extend to newer ships or do you deal strictly in antiques?"

Vince watched Remarque closely, his own face deliberately casual as he waited for the criminal's hand to inch just a little further away from the gun.

There it was. That moment when Remarque considered, however briefly, that perhaps Vince really was there to talk about engines. Vince could have blinked and missed it but, luckily for him, he was not blinking, but watching Remarque like he was some kind of unstable, explosive device. In that moment, slick as the engine oil now stained into his worn old trousers, Vince had his pistol out, pad of his finger already resting snugly against the trigger, and trained on Remarque's head.

"Mr. Remarque, under the authority of the Intergalactic Peacekeeping Agency, I'm placing you under arrest for crimes against humanity during wartime." And here, Vince actually flashed Remarque a winsome smile, full of gleaming white teeth and even punctuated by a dimple in his right cheek.

"Between you and me, I'm the best at my job, too, so I wouldn't be reaching for that side arm, if I were you, Commander." He spoke the man's formal title as if it were the foulest of insults.

 

[missedstations]

Ice slid down his spine. He hadn't heard his own name spoken out loud since he deserted, so then maybe he would have tried to lie his way out of this, which would be far more sensible. If he could have maybe convinced Vince that he was mistaken, he might have been able to get out of this. Instead, he was lost, so he just laughed bitterly. He'd got away with it for five years. Five years. How damn short was that?

He leant back away from Vince's gun. 'I did nothing worse than anyone else, bastard.'

Insults were just low, but there was little else he could do. Even the small distance between him and his gun was too short. At this distance, Vince had no way of missing, and Remarque had never wanted to die. He had spent his entire life avoiding it, so why stop now.

'So tell me, if you're the best, why go for someone like me? Last time I checked, my bounty was still pocket money,' he was trying to be casual, but really, he was starting to wonder whether he should do something stupid just to get shot. It would be a faster death than prison, then trial, then the inevitable death sentence.

Or maybe he could try to convince the man that that he was better alive. 'Look, I'll do anything if you let me go...'

 

[Bathos]

"I was in the neighborhood," Vince explained, though that really wasn't a sufficient explanation, considering he'd had to route all power to his primary thrusters to make it to Quien before the freighter was space ready again. He had not, in fact, been anywhere near the neighborhood, but there was no way for Remarque to have known that, so he didn't trouble him with the truth.

The truth was that Vince hadn't always been this man. There was a time, in his youth, when he had been happy and family-oriented and filled with a general sense of mental and emotional stability. That had ended very quickly, around the age of twenty-two, when he had his own run-in with some particularly cold-hearted war criminals. Remarque, in that regard, was sort of like Vince's pet project. The money was shit, but when Remarque was safely in the custody of the IPA, Vince would sleep like a baby for a week. It was more than worth it.

With his free hand, Vince pulled the binders from his waistband, gesturing with the barrel of his pistol as he said, "I'll think it over when we're back on my ship. In the meantime, on your feet. Face the wall and give me your hands."

 

[missedstations]

There was nothing to argue with there. Remarque bent down briefly to lace his boots but then did what he was told. This was not a good time to fight. He thought his chances in winning this fight, should he start it, were zero. He hoped that Vince either slipped up at some point or really thought about it. The ex-commander really did not want to be handed over to the IPA.

He gave Vince a coldly assessing look, as if wondering what the best thing to offer would be, and then faced the wall, his hands behind his back. If the time came, he would not be above begging. But if worst came to worst, he would rather have the bounty hunter kill him than be handed over.

He hoped that Vince decided getting the tools out of his hair was too much effort, because he really wanted to keep them. And the gun, he supposed, but he really had no choice about leaving it on the bed. Nothing else in the room was actually his, apart from a shabby jacket he'd found second hand. He had neither keepsakes nor memorabilia of his friends and lovers: his perfect memory served him well enough.

'So what do you get out of this?' He asked Vince.

 

[Bathos]

"The personal joy of a job well done is reward enough for me," Vince returned, voice dripping with stinging sarcasm. With practiced ease, he clipped one binder around Remarque's wrist, tugged it across the other, and locked in his other wrist, setting them tightly enough that the metal bit into his skin.

He took Remarque by the upper arm, the breadth of his own wide hand nearly sufficient to encircle it entirely, his grip tight enough to leave finger-shaped bruises. Vince manhandled his bounty through the narrow door and down the corridor, ducking his head as he passed from the residential sector and past the engine room. It wasn't until he was drawing Remarque down the lowered boarding ramp that he was given any trouble--the halls were mostly empty while the crew was at mess. It was the recruiter standing guard at the ship's entrance who stepped directly into his path.

"Just what do you think you're doing?"

Vince tucked his gun away, this time in the front of his trousers for easy retrieval, and fished his IPA badge from his shirt pocket. He flashed it at the guard, whose face promptly crumpled into a look of utter dismay.

"I'm bringing this man in to stand trial for crimes against humanity." Vince's eyebrows lowered, his green eyes narrowing to mere slits as he growled out threateningly, "You plan on gettin' in my way?"

The guard looked at Remarque, then back to Vince, and took a shuffling step backward. This couldn't be the first time such a thing had happened on his watch, Vince was sure, and if he knew what was good for him, he'd let them through.

Turned out, the guard knew what was good for him.

It was a short walk to the Dioscuri; Vince had docked it close for convenience. The Dioscuri was a small ship, with a maximum capacity of about fifteen people, though Vince preferred a smaller group. Including Remarque, the crew just jumped to a whopping five people. There was the engine tech, called Pablo, though Vince was 99% certain that wasn't his real name. There was an extra guard, a man about ten years Vince's senior who had helped him out with a bounty about four months back and had yet to leave him in peace. They bickered a lot, but Rosemary and Pablo seemed to like his company, so Vince let him stay around. His name was Lyle and Vince gave him as wide a berth as the ship would allow and Lyle did the same for him.

The Dioscuri itself was a newer ship, about two years off the line from a little custom factory on a planet that had yet to join up with the IPA, called Winston. If ever there was a planet Vince would call home, that would be it, and the ships churned out of their factories were untested, often quite volatile, and faster than anything the IPA regulated regions had to offer.

"Well, that was fast," Rosemary said from her perch in the rec room, lounging against a soft couch. She was dressed in all black, much like Vince, but her outfit was form fitting, low cut, and, in Vince's honest opinion, a little bit risque for a woman alone on a ship full of men. She hadn't encountered any problems yet, though, and Vince was resolved to keeping it that way.

"Rosemary, Remarque. Remarque, Rosemary," Vince said tersely, and continued hauling his charge through the ship, toward the one bunk he'd converted for the purpose of detaining prisoners.

 

[missedstations]

Remarque did not even wince at the pain. He had been shot, stabbed, beaten, his bones broken... His body was covered with more scars than most people ever saw in their lifetimes. It wasn't that he invited trouble: he was just largely indifferent to pain. Even when he was a child, he would happily ignore the burns on his hands as he worked with his mother. That indifference to physical discomfort was what made him such a good officer: it allowed him to think more rationally about the situation. The metal hurt, the grip hurt, but so long as he would have no need for medical care he would not complain.

Personal joy of a job well done, huh. Bollocks to that. Remarque preferred to look at least slightly dignified, so he tried to keep up with his not-so-charming bounty hunter. He glared at the recruiter, knowing full well that the man was a coward, and that he would do absolutely nothing. His leaving that ship would only mean them staying slightly longer in port, the captain being upset that he had to hire someone for a proper wage, and, well, that was it. He wondered who had fucked him over.

Now that his initial shock was over, he was furious at himself. Why did he let anyone in his room at all? Why he didn't just shoot? Why did he just not pretend that he had no idea what the bounty hunter was talking about? He gritted his teeth.

The Dioscuri was the sort of ship Remarque had always avoided looking at, because whenever he saw one, the regret would rise in his throat. That was the sort of ship he had always wanted to fly, the sort of ship he always wanted to build. He felt the same sort of trill in his heart as he did so long ago when he boarded the Requiem. That felt centuries ago, and he had forgotten in. He shifted his hands, wondering what he would find behind those beautiful lines. He doubted that Vince would give him a chance to find out, but there was nothing wrong with hoping...

So long ago, he had joined the military because that was the only way of getting off the trade ship he was born on, a falling apart wreck that not all of the efforts of the crew could save. With his military salary, his mother had been able to renovate. He had no idea what had happened to his family. Space was big, and he had little interest in looking. Metal was more important to him than blood ties.

His kinship lay with the emptiness between the stars. Born in space, raised in space, ships were more his home than planets could ever be. In his life, he doubted that he had spent a cumulative year on solid ground. No wonder he was a bit strange, as dissociated as he was from from the rest of humanity.

He glanced at Rosemary without interest and almost did not acknowledge her presence at all. The ship was far, far prettier than her breasts. Fast. That assessment just made him feel stupid.

He had become distinctly harder to pull along since he entered the ship. He had begun the careful categorisation of the ship, seeing where the control panels lay, where the ship's innards could be entered. He quietly hoped that Vince would leave his hands free, and that where he was going to be kept had some part that could be lifted off.

It was nothing on the Requiem, of course, his one true love, but it would be a beautiful ship to play with. If only he could... If only he could.

When they arrived at their destination, he spoke again, 'Look I have no money, but I can pay you. I'll work for you.' Well, he would really rather not. 'You can use me as you like, just don't hand me over.' There was the implicit suggestion that Vince could use him for sex should he like to.

And, at the end, he added, 'Please?'

 

[Bathos]

Vince palmed the holding cell open about the same time Remarque tacked the 'please' onto the end of his-

Well, to call it a "request" wouldn't really do the thing justice. It was more like pleading, wrapped up in the flimsy disguise of negotiation. Vince had seen it before; it wasn't in a man's nature to go quietly to his execution. Some men, lesser men than Remarque, got to the point of outright begging before he ever slapped the binders on their wrists. Some had money, a lot of money, and appealed to Vince like businessmen hashing out a corporate merger. Women, especially ones of the beautiful variety, went straight for the proposition of sex, all suggestive smiles and dark promises.

Remarque, on the other hand, had covered all his bases--pragmatic and pleasurable--in one fell swoop. Vince concluded that he was either smarter than the average mark or just that much more desperate to live. Perhaps time would tell.

He couldn't say, in perfect honesty, that the offer didn't appeal to him. Remarque wasn't hard on the eyes, a winning combination of masculine angles and exotic prettiness. It didn't hurt that he was a heartless son of a bitch, either. Whereas another man in Vince's position might recoil in a fit of self-righteous disgust at the idea of sharing a bed with a cold killer, Vince found the image almost poetic. There were certain things--things Vince craved, in particular--that you just couldn't stomach with someone you actually liked.

With a sharp yank, he pulled Remarque around to face him directly, all the better to tower over him. Still guiding him by the arm, Vince backed him into the cell in three long strides, until they were standing in the center of the room. Inside there was a steel bunk, bolted to the floor, and a steel chair, also bolted to the floor. Neither was within arm's reach of the other and there were no view portals.

Vince didn't release Remarque right away. Instead, he held him there in that crushing grip of his, and took a long look into the face of his captive, attention crawling slowly over Remarque's eyes, the bridge of his nose, the shape of his mouth, the point of his chin.

He appeared to be considering Remarque's offer.

Vince brought his free hand up, curled his fingers against the underside of Remarque's chin and brushed the pad of his thumb against the seam of his mouth. The expression on Vince's face was thoughtful, measuring.

"Any way I like?" he asked, and somewhere in the course of all that staring he'd shifted closer, because he was speaking almost directly into Remarque's temple, his breath enough to shift the fine hairs there.

 

[missedstations]

His motivation had always been self preservation. He didn't give a damn what happened to his body so long as he was still alive in the end, and so long as his 'partners' held up their part of the deal. He wasn't sure the bounty hunter would, but at this point, anything was worth a try.

Of course Vince would be completely insane to let him near any important part of his ship. Remarque's military record clearly showed he was very capable of both sabotage and sheer destruction, and that he was rather good at twisting ships to his will. His thorough engineering education was useful for something at least.

Maybe in a better time, Vince would be the sort of man he desired, but at the moment, the best he could do was not to try to twist away from the touch. This scenario had happened often enough in the last five years. It wasn't hard to know what to expect.

'Any,' Remarque repeated quietly, almost entirely without expression.

He had known some twisted men – and women – in his time and whenever he offered himself like this he wondered whether he was really just risking his life. He did, once, have a set of morals which included only sleeping with people he loved, but it was hard to keep those as a fugitive. And anyway, sex lost its appeal when his life became too grim, once he'd killed one too many and got to know too much.

And Jack, of course, not the Jack he pretended to be, but the real one, the one whose mind snapped after he was tortured by the enemy, who towards the end of the war did not even know who Remarque was, despite all the nights they had spent together in the engine rooms where no one went. Whenever he tried to let it go, enjoy himself, he remembered that broken man. (When he read, a year after the war, that his lover had been executed for his part in a fabricated massacre, he was relieved.)

Remarque knew how to play this particular game though. It didn't need any desire on his part, he could act that out. He parted his lips and touched his tongue against Vince's thumb as if to confirm his words, as if to say yes, really, I'll even pretend I enjoy it if you like. He leant into Vince a little – if the man was interested in Remarque's body, let him feel it better.

He guessed that in front of his man justifications would be pointless. With a ship like this, he doubted that Vince knew the real depths a man could descend to. There would be no point trying to explain himself or speak of the war. His current course of action seemed the best.

 

[Bathos]

Vince's eyelids slammed shut momentarily. The effect was lost on Remarque as his face was just out of view, so he allowed himself this brief indulgence. For all that Remarque looked and behaved as if he had ice running through his veins where there ought to have been blood--milky white flesh and jet black hair, silver eyes and nothing at all to suggest an ounce of warmth in his thin frame--the tongue that slid across his thumb was hot and wet and being offered so willingly that an answering hunger gnawed in his gut.

He drew his thumb down Remarque's chin, the recent moisture smearing across his skin and leaving a rapidly coolnig trail. He didn't stop there, not until his thumb was pressed up snugly against the side of his neck, fingers following suit until Vince had a loose grip around Remarque's throat.

Abruptly, that grip tightened threateningly, and while he didn't cut off his air supply altogether, Remarque would have to struggle for breath. With his other hand, Vince still gripped Remarque's arm.

Vince drew back just a touch, their bodies still pressed awkwardly together at the chest, so he could look into Remarque's face again, his own expression still thoughtful, still measuring.

"Murderer," Vince murmured, soft and intimate like a lover, breath now hot over Remarque's face. "Deserter," he said next, and punctuated it with a scrape of his lips across the corner of Remarque's mouth, not quite a kiss. "And now whore?"

He leaned back again, so he could look into Remarque's eyes. "What won't you do in the name of saving that pretty little neck of yours, so you can continue floating aimlessly through a meaningless existence, hm?"

Although he appeared to genuinely want an answer, Vince didn't loosen his hold on his captive's throat.

 

[missedstations]

When Vince's grip tightened, his hands shifted reflexively against his restraints – now that would certainly leave a bruise or two against his wrists. He gasped for breath. Fuck, the man was strong, while Remarque was so unpractised at all this.

While he didn't flinch at murderer, he did at deserter – killing was a necessity in this war, but until he had no other choice, he had always been faithful to his ships and his captains. Funny that should bother him after so long. Whore, well, that didn't hurt him either. He knew what he was. The kiss, if it could be called that, he didn't respond to at all.

'Nothing is meaningless,' Remarque hissed out and attempted to knee Vince's crotch.

Remarque believed that things were only meaningless once they were forgotten, and he forgot nothing. The collection of actions over his life, the marks he had left on so many ships, were an affirmation of his existence.

Aimlessly? That didn't insult him so much either. He really did travel pointlessly, because he could never rest in the same place for long. Even if there was no one hunting him, his own demons would drive him on. If he could have settled down on some remote outpost he wouldn't be in this situation, but to him that would have been the same as death. He didn't want to die with dust under his feet.

 

[Bathos]

Remarque's knee connected, but Vince was at a special advantage, gripping his arm and throat the way he was, so he felt the minute bunching of muscles under his fingertips a scant moment before the attack and he twisted. The knee caught him in the thigh, hard and admittedly painful, just a few inches to the side of its intended mark.

Vince let out a huff of breath, equal parts pain and laughter, and put a little distance between them with a single step backward, hand falling away from Remarque's throat.

His expression was transformed before Remarque's eyes. A low, hungry heat still simmered in his eyes, but where previously his mouth had been set into a tight, grim line, he was grinning, wide and amused.

"There's that fighting spirit," he praised, like a coach to his athlete. "I knew you had it in you." Vince cocked his head to the side, eyes still narrow with mirth. "Am I to understand the offer has been rescinded, then?"

 

[missedstations]

Remarque gritted his teeth again. His only aim had been achieved: he could breathe again. Having asphyxiated so many people, he had found that it really was not the way he wanted to go.

Vince had never known Remarque at the height of the war. That man had been colder than ice, expressionless and emotionless, utterly fascinated by technical detail and perfectly capable of anything to protect his ship. The latter two were still the same, but he had regained some semblance of normality during his years of freedom.

These days, Remarque found that the man he once was, the one in the black uniform of the elite troops, scared even him. When threatened, he found that man was still very much alive, and something utterly bleak and ruthless flashed in his eyes for a moment.

'Of course not. I don't want to go to an IPA court.' He looked sideways, not wanting to meet Vince's eyes. Attempting to convince the man that he was a sociopath, perhaps?

 

[Bathos]

Vince nodded, grin fading into something a little more subtle, but still clearly content with life. He directed Remarque backward a little further, until the backs of his legs met with the steel chair. He forced him down into a sitting position with the pressure of his hands on Remarque's shoulders.

"I'll take that under advisement," Vince offered, putting a hand in the center of Remarque's chest so he could make sure he didn't try anything tricky while he fastened the binders to the back of the chair, narrowing his range of movement to leaning slightly forward.

Vince knew it would be kinder to turn Remarque down flat, not to give him false hope that he might make it out of this situation alive, but he couldn't bring himself to bestow such mercy on an unworthy subject. He wanted Remarque to suffer. The IPA, with its regulations, would put him up in a military prison, feed him three square meals, and when the time came, he would go quietly to death, like falling asleep.

Remarque was undeserving of that kindness.

Vince made sure Remarque was properly locked in, took a step back, and flashed him a tight, mirthless smile. "Until then, you sit and think about what you've done," he said, mimicking the tone of a scolding mother. With that, he pivoted on his heel and left the room, the door sliding silently shut behind him.