Nebula

Just Another Martian - Part 2

 It was an accident of circumstance.

That's what the authorities told me once. That everything that happened on that abandoned desert moon was just an accident of circumstance. That it was all just a huge misunderstanding. That the Braids were just at the wrong place at the wrong time.

I was a kid then. Twelve, maybe thirteen. I hadn't much experience with death. My granddad was dead before I was born, grandma gone before we left Earth. We never had anyone else. I never had anyone else. Not anyone that I loved in particular except mum and dad.

A kid shouldn't need to see that. But I did.

It was all supposed to be an easy drop. Pick up the goods; drop them off, pick up the credits. It was the same every time. Load the cargo, hyperspace to the next system, fly to the planet and pick up the payment. Sometimes barter. Sometimes refuel at the nearest station. Sometimes maintaining the cargo's cryogenic system or the oxygen garden in the lower decks. In any case it was easy money.

Honest work. Honest pay. So it was never substantial. We got by. We had enough fuel to power our cargo ship the Presley Jackson. Dad named it after his favourite singers - sorry, artists. He'd insist that I call them artists and not just 'singers'. Musical legends, he told me once. Able to turn a crowd with a single song, move them to tears with a couple of notes from a long forgotten classic.

I already know what you're thinking. Having a kid on board a spacecraft? Bad idea. Worse than bad, it was plain stupid. And yeah, I get it; Living in space isn't exactly a safe family environment that everyone craves.

People can get killed by just a tiny adjustment of the oxygen garden, by an outer bay hatch not being sealed properly. A miscalculation of the plasma core and then - BOOM - nothing but limbs and debris. Tiny things that are the huge differences between getting through a day and getting killed.

But you know what? I didn't have anyone else on Earth or even Mars. Billions upon billions of humans on every inhabited human planet, yet not one of them was happy enough to let me stay with them. We couldn't afford a fancy boarding school to take me on. So my life remained in space.

I didn't really mind much. I love outer space. Always have, always will. Who can't like it? Billions of stars that blaze and sway like a sea above you. Impossible to sleep with that kind of light, but who needs sleep when you have that view! Might sound poetic and cheesy as hell, but that's the truth.

Don't get me wrong, my mum and dad wanted me to have an education. They were good parents, they always wanted the best for me, but we could never afford it. I understood that. I didn't pester them about it. I got one on board, didn't I? Learning about how a ship works, how the Presley Jackson worked and what someone would need to do to maintain it.

Supposedly it was for ten people. But the automatic bits and software that my dad installed got it running like clockwork for three. So, yeah. It suited us just fine.

The job wasn't supposed to be dangerous. Just a drop off a couple of crates of medicine. It had a really fancy name on them but dad said it was for really severe plasma burn. It's not fun. Plasma fire looks like it hurts like hell. I don't exactly feel like trying it out so I'll just trust the guys who've lost limbs over a misfire.

Nobody expected the Braids to give the payment. For plasma medicine? Sure, they'd buy it. But personally show up, exposed, in the middle of nowhere? No way. My dad was especially surprised. But maybe more afraid.

The Braids recognised him. He was once a part of the rival gang, the Cobras. They didn't stand a chance.

I guess you're now expecting some magical answer to how I got away. But I don't know. I still don't know how I got away from it, no matter how hard I try to remember. I could only stare in horror as their heads exploded like watermelons. Brain tissue landing on my shoulder, pieces of their skulls landing beside me, landing in my hair. My mouth was open. I tasted their blood.