Welcome to Northern Wordsmiths

It was Christmas in the orbit of Saturn, and on a station somewhere between the moons of Enceladus and Tethys, everything was going tits up.

I was pulling into the dock ready to pick up my cargo when I received a several-days-late message from Huxian Mercantile, cheerfully informing me that my services were no longer required. That left me with an excess of fuel but nothing to haul, and with the contract revoked, I faced the daunting possibility of eating my losses on the days-long trip back to Ceres. 

I stepped out of the ship and onto the freight deck to hunt down the harbourmaster, an old friend of mine. I’d filled the Candela’s tanks on credit and burned hard to get here in time, so I needed to get something out of this trip. I was hoping to call in a favour and get something that would at least get me some ways towards breaking even.

I passed a whirlwind of harried stevedores, each rail-thin and carrying what looked like entirely too much weight for their low gravity musculature. There wasn’t a smile to spare between them, and I hadn’t the energy or inclination to feign niceties with strangers.

Davide was right where I expected him to be, bellowing at the top of his lungs in the middle of the largest crowd you could see in any direction. He was a perpetually-scowling, angry little man, so the day didn’t seem to be finding him any worse for wear. As I approached, the lackeys surrounding him jogged off, conspicuous in their ill-fitting hi-vis vests. 

‘Davide,’ I piped up, hoping to grab his attention as the crowd dispersed. 

He paused a moment to look at me,  an eyebrow raise of alarm quickly giving way to immediate exasperation.

‘Molly,’ he scowled. ‘This had better be good.’

‘Look, Davide, I know I had a berth booked for this run, but Huxian just pulled out on me–’

‘That was yours?’ He said, rapidly thumbing through inventory on his tablet.

‘What?’

’Yeah, came through on the high-priority band a couple days ago. An urgent dispatch order telling us to load their shit on the next ship out of here.’

My shoulders sank. ‘And you just did? You knew I was coming.’

‘Oh, and are you the one paying for it?’ He spat. The statement hung in the air, and he paused, almost as though he immediately regretted his words. ’Look, Molly,  I ain’t made of stone. I know it’s bullshit, but I can’t say no to one of our biggest customers just to help you out.’

An awkward silence passed between us. He took off his cap, slowly scratching the balding patch that seemed to have grown since I was last here. I decided to press him a little.

‘I mean, I’m here now though. Surely there’s gotta be something to haul.’ I said, swallowing the bitterness and trying not to let my desperation show. Davide eyed me up and down slowly. He’d always been decent enough to me, but he was never the kind of man you’d describe as kind or thoughtful. ‘Please, Davide. I have a ridiculous excess of delta-v. I can’t just let that money be spent for nothing.’

‘I might have something for you.’ He said, turning back to his pad.

‘Plea– wait, really?’ He didn’t say anything, just huffed and stepped away, motioning for me to follow.

‘It’s perfect timing, actually. We’ve recently come upon some… excess freight that I’d really rather not have clogging up my holding bays.’ 

‘Alright,’ I said. I wouldn’t say no to hauling junk. ‘Sounds good. Sounds great, actually.’

‘Yeah, right?’ He spoke disinterestedly, pausing to bark some instructions to a couple slacking deckhands as we passed. ‘Here you are, with an empty ship and nowhere else to be. Almost too good to be true.’

‘I mean, I can take it off your hands, but you’re gonna have to tell me what I’m hauling.’ I said. I bit my tongue at the thought of mentioning payment. Logically if they were just offloading it’d be my responsibility at the other end to dispose of or sell it on. It would be a fair amount of busywork but I was in no position to complain. I was honestly desperate just not to waste the fuel I bought to get here and back.

“That’s the thing.” He turned, tapping his head with the pad. “We don’t know what’s in it.”

I gawked at him. 

‘Yeah, yeah, I know.’ He waved a non-committal hand. ‘But I know who it’s registered to onboard, and once we confirm it’s not illegal or deadly, or both, you get to sell it on and keep everything. I just want it off my station.’

A streak of panic ran through me. We?

‘Uh, Davide – sure you don’t want station security with you for this? You know, unmarked boxes in storage look kinda bad…’ I tailed off when he stared daggers at me.

‘What, you afraid of a few boxes now? All that hard vacuum gone to your head?’ 

‘I mean, it’s more what’s in them.’

‘What could be in them? They’ve been there for years. It’s just another slop job from the bastard in charge before me, Molly. There’s absolutely nothing–’

We rounded a corner and came upon a decidedly unusual door. Davide stopped talking. I found myself shrinking into the shadow of the much smaller man. He eyed me distastefully. 

There was a strange garland of some kind around the door. In the gloom, it looked like row after row of tightly knitted barbed wire, brutally sticking out at all angles. I eyed the way the low deck lights caught its glinting edges and tried not to think about how it felt to be caught on it.

Davide looked around for the door panel, but saw it bolted up. After a moment he found a strange protrusion on the centre of the door, just below what seemed to be a bolted-shut peephole. He shrugged and pressed it without pause for thought. 

I reflexively ducked back but the bizarre little contraption just lit up from within, the button illuminated with light and a small, warbly tune began to issue forth. It lilted gently, and through the digital fuzz and distortion of its terrible speakers one could almost make out a Christmas tune played on a harp. 

Thumping quickly issued from behind the door, and after a series of grotesque metal screeches and a short click sound, the barbed wire garlanded all around the door lit up in all colours of the rainbow – revealing them to be tightly-wrapped fairy lights. They cast wild shadows all across the wall, the colours filling the tiny corridor with a warm haze of light.

I heaved a deep sigh and smiled, looking at Davide with a grin forming on my face. The Christmas tune and the beautiful lights had brought back long-ago memories of the holiday season. It was a relic of old Earth out here, and while spacers themselves didn’t really celebrate, I remembered my mother always made a song and dance about decorating and doing something special for the season. Just the memory of it made me smile. A small bit of warmth, out in the infinite uncaring blackness of the void. 

So it was a bit of a surprise when the sliding peephole scraped open, revealing perhaps the most miserable, ashen, age-bitten face I’ve ever beheld. An older woman, large and with thin stringy hair scowled back at us from the peephole. 

‘What?’ She spat. 

‘We’ve got a couple surplus tonnes of cargo in the hold. Manifest says they’re registered with you, Zara.’ Davide said.

She nodded curtly, waiting for Davide to go on. Nonplussed by her lack of response, he continued.

‘I, uh– don’t know how you managed to slip past disclosure when you brought that stuff aboard, but before we dump them off-station, we need to know what’s in ‘em.’

She looked impassively, her eyes slowly shifting from Davide to me and back. If she was thinking anything in particular, not a bit of it was betrayed on her face. That little chill of fear from before came back, even though I couldn’t explain it. Despite her face being ringed by cheer and bright light, none of it seemed to reach her eyes.

‘If I disclose the contents,’ Zara said, slowly and deliberately, ‘can I get some kind of assurance you won’t just dump it?’

‘Course. I just need to know you’re not trying to kill anyone, then Molly here can take it off-station.’ He jabbed a thumb back at me.

‘Where?’ She said, looking squarely at me as she spoke. Davide answered for me before I could pipe up.

“Anywhere, I don’t care. It just can’t stay here.”

She looked hard at him now. 

“Must it go?” The slightest edges of pain inched into her eyes, crows feet pulled back slightly as though she could barely stand to part with the words.

Something in Davide’s face softened in that moment. He turned to me, gesturing gently.

‘Zara, Huxian brought her out here to the ass-end of nowhere and then skipped on her contract. She could really use something to haul.’ He turned, looking Zara straight in the eyes. ‘I do need that bay clear, too. You haven’t used it since it arrived here.’

She thought in silence for a moment before speaking, her expression inscrutable.

‘Anders and I, we were going to go into business, leave the station…’ She trailed off mid-sentence, staring straight past us as some distant memory replayed in her own eyes.

‘So it’s old stock, then?’ I asked, trying to make myself helpful.

She locked eyes with me, her pained expression somehow making her face bloom into something strange and richly expressive, so powerful it seemed almost foreign on her features up until that moment. It may have been a trick of the light, but I swore I could see her eyes begin to well up with tears. She motioned with her head to the garland of light around the door. ‘Please, make sure it doesn’t go to waste any longer.’

‘So just to be clear, those boxes are full of–’ Davide started, exasperation tugging at his tone.

Zara kept looking at me, and her hardened face, unbroken by years of low and zero-g living, finally softened into the warmest, most delightful smile I’d seen in years.

‘Yeah. It’s all Christmas decorations.’

***

It’s hard to hang tinsel in zero-g. The obligatory lack of pull means that the garish things just kind of hang there, completely limp. I looked around the insides of my living space, red and green runners looking like a criss-cross of demented spider webs, and smiled. Sure, glitter would be stuck in the air filters for months. Sure, the effect was more morbid than merry. But it made the place feel like home. 

I’d found myself with some time to spare during the low-energy transfer up and out of the ring system. As the ship ascended into its escape corridor out of Saturn’s orbit, I’d taken the box I’d sneaked out before Davide’s crew had finished loading up and started sampling the goods. Mainly out of an enterprising sense of curiosity, of course, but in fairness I did need to know what exactly I’d be selling on. 

It was an embarrassment of riches. I fondly reminisced about my mom’s old box of assorted Christmas decorations – a humble pile of old things scrimped, scraped and reused every year until they were threadbare and falling apart. By comparison, this inventory was ostentatious in the extreme. Folding decorations, papercrafts, statuettes. I smiled as I painted the decks of my normally blank and sterile-looking ship with glittery, seasonal colour. I floated through the living quarters, admiring my own handiwork. It was gaudy, but strangely comforting. I pulled myself up on a nearby grip handle, one of many dotted around the ship to help get around in zero-g. Time to get back to work. 

With a slight flex of my arm, I slingshot myself past the living area into the cupola overlooking the cargo area. The freight spine, fully-loaded, shot stiffly out from behind the ship. It was a pretty flexible arrangement, both minimising excess mass and allowing me to slot effectively as much cargo as I needed onto the Candela. 

Behind it, the looming mass of Saturn hung high in the cupola’s window. The rings were in clear view; fully and fiercely illuminated by the distant Sun. We were close enough to watch the diamond dust fly from a million years of collisions and mass accretions, the crepuscular glow of ice and rock catching the sunlight in just the right way, bending and interrupting the light waves long enough to recast them in a spray of colour. It was beautiful.

Satisfied that the cargo was secure and our weight distribution was optimal, I tore myself away from the window and headed back for the cockpit. Grabbing another handle, I sent myself towards the flight deck. My angle must have been bad though, because I brought half a wall’s worth of tinsel loose with me. I turned too late, bracing myself on the rim of the flight deck airlock, too late to stop the snake-like tinsel cheerily feeding itself to the air scrubbers. 

A horrendous groaning sound issued forth, before a light click that left one side of the room a lot quieter. On the flight deck console just behind me, I heard the soft rhythmic beep of a non-emergency alert pop up. Somewhere a backup scrubber slowly whirred to life, though the sound was considerably louder.

I sigh and preemptively shelve any plans to fix the mess my haste just made. We were approaching the exit window, and I couldn’t dawdle. I turn around again and push off the airlock rim, successfully making it into the cockpit despite my best efforts. I grab the headboard of the flight seat, swoop over the top and push myself down into it in a smooth and practiced motion. I was in my element, and ready.

The console was aglow with festive lighting, a myriad of warnings popping up and rhythmically pulsing each in a bid for my attention. The little screen mounted just above the dashboard – the Solar System Weather Advisory uplink – was forecasting micrometeoroid showers on my trajectory. It was visible on the map, just over Ceres, a phalanx of angry-looking spears shearing right through my flight path. I thought for a second about the dizzying job of tracking debris natural or otherwise throughout the entire system, quietly thanked the uplink for their hard work, and adjusted my trajectory for a slightly shallower burn.

It might be a bit slower, but it was always better to make it back a little later than with some extra holes to show for your trouble. I thumbed the ignition switch and primed the main drive. 

‘Lighting the candle,’ I whispered to an otherwise empty cockpit. Then I was pressed deep into my acceleration couch by the giant engine behind me, as it slung the Candela’s great mass out of Saturn’s grip and on my way home in time for Christmas.

***

I made a smooth exit out of Saturn’s belt system, and some days later arced cleanly over Jupiter’s giant form. I took some time to photograph what used to be known as the Great Red Spot. I saw the white countercyclonic spots popping up around the storm that had once seemed so eternal, sapping its strength like some wasting disease. It was eerie, almost as though to watch a dying creature breath its last. The thought haunted me over the last few days of my trip, until I found myself deep on approach to the system’s inner asteroid belt, where Ceres waited. 

I was at the controls, feet up on the console when the comm pinged an ominous purple. I hadn’t seen it before, but I knew what it was. An emergency positioning beacon had just been detected. A deluge of information scrolled down the readout. It was a small pleasure yacht, single occupant, registered out of Deimos over Mars. I tapped a few keys and overlaid its last known position over the Candela’s current location. It was some ways ahead, beginning to veer off the approach corridor to Ceres. 

That was when the pieces fell into place. Looks like the pilot had the genius idea of buzzing the meteoroid swarm to cut some time off their journey. It was unbelievably stupid, and it looks like they’d paid the price for it. I double-checked and cross-referenced with my other consoles. The light delay on the transmission wasn’t extreme. I was close. If I made a move now, chances were good I could actually help. 

I stared at my console helplessly. It was nearly time for my own deceleration burn. I could stay the course and make for Ceres, or I could push a little harder and try to help the stricken ship. I thought for a second about Zara, the little old lady back on the muster station. That look on her eyes when talking about a partner that never came back. I thought about my mom. 

I was already changing course before I had finished thinking. 

It was a stupid idea, insanely stupid actually, because judging from their last known position, they’d likely lost engine power. If they had yet to brake, like me, then it was little more than a speeding bullet. Making a rendezvous at that speed would mean matching course and speed perfectly or risk atomising both ships. No pressure.

I chewed my lip. I’d already made the choice. I thumbed the input for the radio as I checked for the ship’s ID. ‘DM-0994 Mauna Kea,  this is CR-2512 Candela. I am inbound to render support. If you can respond please advise of your situation. If not… just hold tight.’ 

I shook my head. I’m sure it was cold comfort to whoever was listening. I flipped over to the channel for the Ceres flight tower.

‘Ceres Tower, this is CR-2512 Candela. I’m approaching DM-0994 to investigate an EPIRB launch.’

A voice crackled to life from the console, horrendously distorted by the signal degradation that occurs due to the effects of reflective ice and rock in the belt. 

‘Affirmative, Candela, we’re dispatching runners to assist. They’re out of the traffic control zone, so be quick – and for god’s sake, be careful.’

‘You got it, Tower,’ I said, clicking off the channel. 

I didn’t have long. The ship was distantly visible already through my narrow viewing pane. A miles-long plume of fuel gushed like neon-coloured blood from its lower compartments. A thin, almost gaseous looking cloud of glittering debris sparkled off distant sunlight. Its speed wasn’t evident from the lack of reference points in open space, but my console readily assured me it was travelling at an insane velocity down towards the inner asteroid belt. 

I checked my instruments, hand now steadily shaking. LIDAR pinged a storm of shrapnel trailing behind the ship. I’d have to match speed with it at distance then come in perpendicular just to avoid being shredded on approach.

The Candela was a ship with engines on both sides, and this manoeuvre would require burning the candle at both ends, engaging the main rear-mounted engine for thrust and the front facing engine for heavy braking power. 

It was hairy, but doable. I shut my eyes, breathing in and exhaling slowly, and closed the lid on my pressure suit’s helmet. Feeling a little more centred, I hit the main thruster, sending me off in pursuit of the ailing ship.

From every angle, blurs of rock shot by like bullets. The space between asteroids were enough to navigate through but their random motion meant that such gaps could just as easily close as they opened. The Mauna Kea had been lucky so far. I could only grit my teeth and hope both our luck would hold out.

First, I’d just need to make up the speed, almost going faster than the ship I was planning to meet, because I’d shed some of that velocity making the corrections I’d need to in order to get close enough to… to do what exactly? A chill rushed down my spine as I realised I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I didn’t have any crew. There were no extra hands. I had started racing down here as though the miracle of merely catching up with them would be enough to save them. 

I looked outside the window again at the Mauna Kea still some distance away. I was rapidly closing in. I’d have to figure out when I get there. For now I just need to survive this first insanely stupid decision. 

The computer chimed as I reached my target velocity, just as the ship pulled just out of view from the viewport. I was now more or less parallel with it. I needed to be exact with my translations from here on. Just a little bit of lateral thrust to nudge the Candela in the yacht’s direction while maintaining my heading.

I took a deep breath, and nudged the reaction control joystick to the right. The scanner pinged an immediate collision warning and I silenced it. I turned on the outboard camera to search for a docking hatch. I needed to work quickly as the flank of the ship was filling up the screen. Luckily it didn’t take long. The familiar brass halo of a mating clamp blew out the screen in bright white as it caught and reflected sunlight.

I extended the docking clamp, eyes darting between my side and where I was going. I thought my heart was going to beat fully out of my head, it was thrumming so fast. I manoeuvred in closer, and made my first approach to the clamp. But the angle was bad, and I glanced barely off the edge of it. The console beeped shrilly, letting me know I’d slightly altered my target’s trajectory. The pleasure yacht, a tiny little thing, was dwarfed underneath the shadow of the Candela.

I cursed to myself and made some hasty adjustments with the attitude control stick. The docking program pinged green, letting me know my approach was good. Not waiting to leave it to chance, I brought the clamp in again.

There was an ominous thud, and the entire ship shuddered. Despite myself, I squeezed my eyes shut, expecting the worst. I slowly opened them and checked the readout. All green, across the board.

I allowed myself a brief whoop of joy. I had just done something absolutely insane, a high-g rendezvous with an out-of-control ship. Time for the next miracle. I quickly unbuckled myself and flung myself toward the airlock, hurriedly slamming the equalise pressure button.

The Candela’s flying docking arm was cheap, which meant it was made of double-walled plastic instead of solid materials or cloth. Above and below me yawned the cosmos as I swept along the gangway to the other ship. Distressingly, I could see the occasional asteroid whip past, a constant reminder of the dizzying speed we were traveling at. I had to be quick.

The ship itself looked to be in bad shape. What had looked to be a single hole through the engine from a distance was actually a scattering of pockmarks all the way up the back end of the ship. The engines were shredded. They were lucky to be in one piece. I swallowed as I worked the airlock on the yacht’s hull, hoping beyond hope that there was something left to rescue inside.

The airlock swung open, awkwardly. I could tell something was wrong with the release as the mechanism juddered to life, but I didn’t have time to stop and look. I grabbed a fly rail and slung myself inside. Through three yawning gaps in the back of the wall, the starfield rolled on by at unbelievable speed. The habitat had been punctured. I hoped beyond hope the pilot had the sense to be in a vac suit.

I shook my head and fired up my helmet light, beginning the search in earnest. The cockpit area was small, but a mess nonetheless. Webbing in the storage areas had snapped, disgorging cargo that was free floating and mixed in with debris. The lack of lights indicated the reactor had been hit, which meant there was no hope of getting the ship going under its own power. Bits of metal pinged off my glass visor as I searched frantically. 

At last, I came to the lone acceleration couch at the front. In the murk I couldn’t make anything out. I slunk forward, my feet leaden with a great reluctance. I didn’t want to see a dead body with my own eyes. I put a hand on the seat’s headboard, frozen. It was so familiar, almost exactly like the one I’d jumped into a hundred times before back on the Candela. I swallowed. My throat was bone dry. I slowly turned the seat around, selfishly hoping there was nothing to see. There was a body, motionless, still strapped in. They had their vac suit on, but showed no signs of life at all. 

I stood frozen before it, unsure what to do. Waves of nausea rolled over me. I felt a terrible urge to get out and get as far away from here as possible. This could have been me. I could have been a body that some stranger indifferently abandoned to spare their own sensibilities. I closed my eyes, took a few shuddering breaths to level myself, and stayed, despite every screaming instinct in my mind. 

Below me, the corpse began to stir. It wasn’t coherent, but a slow shake of the head as though it half-remembered being awake. My mind jolted back into gear. Of course. Pulling this many g’s for so long probably did a number on the pilot.

I leaned over to release them from their harness, hoist them over one shoulder and bring them back to the ship, not looking back to what could have so easily been their coffin. I raced through the airlock and quickly belted up the limp survivor in the copilot seat before returning to my own. 

The thrum of the collision alarm was loud in my ears as I surveyed my route out. We were nearly clear of the field, but the LIDAR had painted a rock heading straight for us. I slammed the button to disengage the mating clamp in a hurry, hand hovering over the RCS control to manoeuvre as soon as we were free. 

There was a groaning sound as the hull struggled against itself, the terrible sound of metal on metal. I checked the panels and flipped a camera on. Surely enough, the docking clamp alert was flashing red, indicating a failure to retract. The Mauna Kea’s damaged airlock had punctured my cheap docking arm, shredding the plastic until the material had gummed up the moving parts. I could see them strain against one another. The rock was getting closer. 

I made a snap decision, unsure if I would live to regret it. I juked the RCS hard to the left, and hoped beyond hope that it could displace enough mass to move the Candela and the yacht. In response there was a terrible groan, positively vibrating through the entire superstructure. I was slammed sideways into the chair’s arm, feeling like I was going to be pulled in two. 

For a horrendous moment, the rock filled the viewport. I blinked, crushing my eyes shut as it passed by and opened them to see empty space and hear a thunderous explosion fill the air. The hull screeched and howled with the ungodly sound of metal on metal, there was a pull on every inch of my body and a roaring in my ear until all the sound drained away. I turned around in time to see that the airlock assembly was missing, along with the Mauna Kea. 

The rush of pressure straining to return to vacuum knocked me off my feet. There was a lurching moment of unreality as all sense of orientation was ripped from me. I tumbled helplessly, head over heels, flying towards the gaping hole in the side of my ship.

Shit.

Shit shit shit.

I breathed quickly, trying to control the rising panic as I scraped across the wall towards the gap. I tried to grab something as I fell, but found no purchase. The webwork of decorations ripped off the wall, strips of tinsel shooting past me and out into the void. Nothing worked. I closed my eyes and braced for the worst. I thought of my new passenger, wishing that even if I were to die right here that the Candela would carry them to safety. 

Then my desperately groping hand caught on something. I tightened my grip, holding for all my life was worth. I cried and screamed until the roaring in my ears went away and nothing but numbing silence remained.

I don’t remember how long I remained like that. I eventually opened my eyes, my vision fuzzy from all the motion. I followed a suspiciously red and green snake creature that emerged from a little cavern on the wall. It was wrapped firmly around my forearm, and I gripped it so tightly in return, yet it didn’t flinch or complain. 

I blinked hard, trying to clear my vision. Then as my senses returned, I realised. My saviour was the tinsel caught in the air filter. So thoroughly had it fed itself to the gear inside that it wasn’t budging even under direct pressure. I smiled, despite myself. It looked like one of my stupid ideas had actually paid off.

Eventually, the rush of explosive depressurisation had equalised with the numbing vacuum of space. Already I felt the chill beneath my barely insulated suit, and I crawled delicately up the length of tinsel, grabbing onto the nearest outcropping available. 

On grabbing something solid, I exhaled deeply. I was safe. I looked around. The cabin was fairly ruined. Almost everyone not bolted or otherwise strapped down was gone. But I was still here. 

I clambered, fast as I could to the cockpit to get myself seated and strapped back in, finally feeling some measure of security despite the torn-open hull. I looked to my right, and looked at my passenger, the person I had risked everything to save. I saw the even rising and falling of their chest, the clear signs of life and I laughed, a hearty, full-bodied laugh. I laughed so hard I almost didn’t see the comms trill. I thumbed the comms panel, piping it into my suit’s earpiece.

‘–Candela, are you okay? Do you copy?’ The voice of Ceres Tower came over the line, trying hard to mask the panic in their words.

I open my mouth to respond, but only manage to laugh tremulously, the words failing me. I was just happy to hear a voice.

‘Tower, I’m good. Scratched the paint, but all good.’ I said, breathing easy for the first time in what felt like hours.

The relief was palpable in their voice. ‘Did you make contact with DM-0994?’ 

‘Yup. Sole occupant rescued.’ 

‘Hell of an operation you pulled off there, Candela. Hats off.’

‘Thank you kindly, Tower.’

I clicked the comms off as I eyed the tinsel still hanging out of the air filter. I smiled as I thought about how all those Christmas decorations had brought me here by pure happenstance. At that moment, I felt like I understood Mom’s insistence on celebrating the holiday a little better. It wasn’t really about the day itself. It was about how kindness inspires you to do right by other people. 

So as I thought about Zara, Davide, and little acts of incidental kindness, my mind drifted away, to thoughts of a better tomorrow.