Convicts: Chet and Kiyva's Story

It wasn't as boring as one might think, hiding out in a galactic junkyard for a few hours, even with the systems so low that it would be near-impossible to detect the energy expenditure from outside the ship itself. Chet and Kiyva found things to keep themselves occupied. Kiyva especially was pretty creative that way, though Chet was proud of her own creativity, too.

But hiding out in a galactic junkyard for two days was pushing it. One could only be so creative, and they were starting to run out of food. Besides, they really needed a bath. The ship was too small to accommodate more than a sonic shower which didn't really work very well, and the smell was really starting to get on Chet's nerves.

"Where the fuck are they??" she finally exploded when, for what was probably the thousandth time, Kiyva finished a low-level scan for pursuit that turned up nothing at all. "Are we so unimportant that they weren't even gonna try to chase us down? Are they so incompetent that they couldn't track us this far? Did they get lost?"

"Dunno," Kiyva frowned, staring at the computer array in confusion. "I expected them right after we created our cover...."

"Maybe they're not coming," Chet grumbled, obscurely offended that they'd been let go with so little fuss. They were dangerous criminals! A hacker and a murderer! Surely they were worth more than a half-hearted pursuit and then abandonment in a junkyard.

"I think it's time to turn some things back on and maybe have a look at the universal frequencies," Kiyva said firmly.

"Go ahead," Chet waved her on disinterestedly. "Anything for a break in the monotony, even talk radio!"

The lights flicked up a notch as Kiyva flipped a few switches, turned a dial or two, and ran her fingers over the ship's computer's interface board to wake up some more systems. The receiver projected a minute of heavy dead air before connecting to the open channels and filling the small cabin with thunderous chatter. Chet hissed annoyance at the volume before Kiyva found the control for it and turned it down, then started searching through the channels for something useful. Chet listened out of sheer boredom as she skipped past a few music stations, one of the infamous void-broadcasted talk radio shows, and an advertisement station before finding a galaxy-local news station.

"We'll leave it here for a while," the big woman said, getting up from the pilot's seat and coming back to join Chet. "If there's anything about a prison break, we'll know there's just a delay. If there's not... well, we'll get out of here in an hour or two."

"Good!" Chet snorted, leaning back in the reclining bunk-chair that was the best seat in the ship. Kiyva stood over her, looking quite like she was ready to be creative again. "Uh-uh," Chet scowled, planting a foot in her fellow escapee's belly and shoving. "You stink, and I feel disgusting. Besides, it's getting boring."

"Boring!" Kiyva repeated incredulously. Chet wasn't sure if she was being mocking or not, and eyed her suspiciously.

"Yes, boring."

"I bet I could make it not boring."

"You'd still stink."

"I bet I could make you forget."

"Yeah?" Chet squinted dubiously.

"Yeah."

She almost did, too. Chet needed to stop doubting her when she said things like that. She might have succeeded entirely, if the news hadn't started playing something that made her stop.

"--breaking news at the Void Galactic Penitentiary--"

"Kiyva," Chet protested, grabbing for a retreating hand and missing.

"They're talkin' about our prison."

"Fuck that, get back here."

"I thought you were bored."

"I'm not bored. I'm very not bored. I'm the opposite of bored!"

"Shush."

"--sole survivor," the announcer was saying.

It cut to a recorded voice, presumably from that "sole survivor", saying, "It was a bloodbath. They really tore the place up, tore the people up. I was lucky to get away."

"The two suspects, a pair of humans known only by the names Chet and Kiyva--"

"Hey, they're talkin about us!" Chet exclaimed, sitting up.

"No shit," Kiyva muttered back.

"--bounties have been raised from four-hundred-fifty each to one-point-two million each, a record jump but a justified one. They are highly dangerous. How do you think a pair of human women could have caused that much damage, Frank?"

"No idea," the second anchor said. "A whole prison station, dead and destroyed? It just seems unreal."

"For those of you just joining us--"

Ketvia switched the radio off. "Well, that's why it took them so long to come looking for us," she said grimly into Chet's stunned silence. "They were all fucking dead."

"But-- we only killed a couple," Chet managed through her shock. "We didn't massacre the whole station. We couldn't possibly have. Even if you'd let me try, there's no way. I'm good, but I'm not that good."

The look Kiyva shot her said clearly that she'd never expected to hear that come out of her mouth, but she didn't comment aloud. Instead, she said seriously, "We're in deep shit. If they think we killed all the Void's guards, prisoners, maintenance, whatever... do you have any idea what kind of firepower they'll send after us?"

"Fuck yes, I do," Chet answered, feeling sick. "We'll be blown to bits."

"We've gotta get out of here before anybody gets wind of that bounty and comes sniffing around," Kiyva said, dropping hastily into the pilot's chair and waking the rest of the systems in record time.

"And we gotta get us some good guns," Chet added, her usual answer to everything.

"Or at least a better place to hide," Kiyva agreed absently.

"Maybe someplace without space travel or inter-stellar communications. Anywhere we can get to on our fuel?"

"The ship is full-up," Kiyva told her absently. "Probably refueled along with making repairs. We can get halfway across the universe, if we wanted to, as long as we didn't want to eat. I'll find us a good place to hide...."

Chet hovered over her shoulder, staring down at the scrolling names and numbers of various inhabitable planets. "And how long are we going to have to fucking hide?" she asked bitterly. "We busted out of Void to be free, not to go into hiding."

"Until this shit with the massacre dies down a little," Kiyva replied.

"That shouldn't be long, right? They'll get investigators at the Void that'll prove we were gone before the shit went down, right?"

"You weren't listening, I take it," Kiyva grumbled. "Too busy interrupting, weren't you? Whoever really killed all those people also blew up the fucking station. They'll be a while finding out what really happened, if they bother to find out at all."

Chet sat down on the floor beside Kiyva's chair. "Fuck."

"Yup. Fuck. Here, what do you think of this one?"

Chet craned her neck to see the screen Kiyva pointed to. "Kynn. I dunno, the moons have a lot of tech...."

"But they're not on the galactic channels, so they don't know about us. Something about being slightly removed from the plane or something. And they're a big planet. Better, though, it's not too close to where Void used to be, but it won't take us that long to get there, either, and it's in the opposite direction from anywhere we've actually been before."

Chet squinted up at the screen dubiously, but despite the tingle of warning, she couldn't discount it out of hand. She didn't know why. The thought that they could always go back to Fosonus and he'd protect them flitted around her consciousness, but was squashed immediately. They would never go back there. This Kynn seemed like a perfectly good place to hide. "How long?" she asked. "Can we stand being bored, smelly, and hungry that long?"

"Two days," Kiyva answered, then snickered at the face she made. "Go take another shower, and I'll do the same, that'll help a little. Then I'll just hafta wear you out so bad you'll sleep the rest of the way."

"Ha, I'd like to see you try."

"I bet you would," Kiyva smirked. "Get. You stink worse than I do."

Despite her disbelieving snort, Chet still went.