"I
suppose
you're right," I said with a melodramatic sigh. Rusty chuckled and kissed me once more before gently pushing me away, turning to sit on the edge of the bunk to watch me dress. My pout was rewarded with a roll of his eyes and a snort of laughter which caused the corner of my mouth to curl up in response. And just like that, I was actually looking forward to the day ahead.
"See you down there," I tossed over my shoulder as I stepped out into the corridor and moved quickly toward my own quarters. At this time of morning, the hall wouldn't be empty long and I wanted to put some distance between myself and door I'd just stepped out of. It wouldn't do to have my so-called walk of shame witnessed by my crew on the day I was asking them to risk everything for me.
~*~
"Fuck." I dropped my head into my hands and focused on my breathing. It had taken everything I had to hide my shaking from Matt. I hadn't been lying - I was going to that station with him if it killed me - but pretending the idea didn't get under my skin was rough. I waited until there was barely enough time left for me to shower and dress to give him room to clean up and make his way off the crew deck. Didn't figure he'd want us showing up together, all things considered.
The whole rehearsal deal went about as well as could be expected with a bunch of people who were all mixed up between being excited to break a news story and terrified about the consequences. I figured there was also a pretty good dose of nervousness in there due to where we were going. Most people had heard of the Bottoms, but all they knew were the horror stories. Having lived there and experienced some of those stories firsthand, I was a damn sight more than nervous. Luckily, the whole stoic badass image I'd built up over the cycles allowed me to not do a whole lot of talking; keeping my mouth shut meant I was less likely to throw up all over everything.
And then our gear was packed up and we were docking and I had to focus on remembering to breathe. Cap was talking, the team was doing last minute equipment checks, but I tuned it all out. Going over my stuff for the hundredth time ain't much help if I run screaming in panic the moment the airlock opens. It was only my pride that kept me in place, gave me the ability to put one foot in front of the other as I followed everyone onto the docks. The Bottoms is home to most of the station's actual workers, so the docks down there are used almost exclusively for creaky old cargo freighters. I could just about guarantee they had never seen a ship the likes of the
Marzi
.
People didn't stare, though, at least not openly. Residents of the Bottoms know better than that: if someone shows up in a fancy-ass ship, it means trouble and only assholes go looking for trouble. I could feel them checking us out, though - covert glances and watching from the corner of the eye. It felt wrong to ignore them, to keep my face impassive and follow the captain, but talking to them would just cock everything up. So I pushed it all down and kept trudging along.
Before docking, Bailey had made a few orbits of the station at a distance, taking X-rays and LiDAR and whatever else he could think of to give us something resembling a usable map of the lower decks of the Ring. Cap had chosen an enclosed site that seemed abandoned for our initial destination. It would hopefully give us a spot to set up for our first broadcast without being told off by what passed for the law, but we fully expected to have to stay on the move after that. Everything had been pared down to the absolute essentials, and if anything still couldn't be carried, it was left on the ship and we'd learn to do without.
As soon as we were clear, Bailey got the fuck away from the station. The ship was our only way of getting our broadcast to the rest of the system and the captain didn't want to risk her getting boarded or impounded, even if that left us stuck down here. It was a smart call, but I can't deny it hurt my heart a bit to see her take off without us.
Most everything between leaving the docks and beginning the broadcast was a blur. I was like a robot - following orders without thinking or feeling anything. The captain standing there, microphone in hand - which was a prop, but it was what people expected to see from "serious journalists" - snapped me back to myself. It was like I was really seeing him for the first time. This was Matthison Carolinas as he wanted the system to know him.
I had to admit that the stylists had their shit down. Gone were the flamboyant styles and bright colors of the celebutainment look. Cap's suit was a simple cut, but it was tailored to fit him damn well. It was the color of slate with subtle burgundy highlights that looked incredible against his skin, and they had done something with his makeup to make his features sharper and more defined. Those blue eyes drew attention anyway, but standing there in that rundown corridor in the Bottoms, they were piercing. It felt like he could look right through a person and weigh the worth of their soul.
The captain's hair fell across his face in a toned-down version of his usual style. Again, the team had done their magic - adding color in a way that kept his hair from looking flat without the curls and height he had used with his previous subjects. All in all, he looked like a responsible man with something important to say, like a guy you should listen to. Physically, Matthison Carolinas had become the journalist he had imagined himself to be. All that was left was getting the rest of the system on board. Which was where I came in.
Using the custom HUD we'd designed, I directed most of the cameras to capture him from various angles. Two of them were set to fly around on their own, scanning our surroundings. Since everything had to be mobile and I didn't want to break my back carrying it, I focused on recording first and sending later. Cap had wanted real-time transmission, but I didn't figure we'd get the best results if I was trying to run the cameras and make sure we were connected to the
Marzi
at the same time. Or whoever I thought would be running the cameras, since this was before Cap had bothered to tell me I was that guy. We'd gone around and around about it, arguing past each other until I called him some choice names and stormed off. He'd been pissed enough to send Li over to deal with me for the rest of that day.
Our compromise had been to toss another hat on one of the creatives who was coming with us to the station. She was originally the single writer who hung around after The Scandal, but she had proved herself able to do at least a little bit of pretty much everything once this project got rolling, so Cap called her his "production assistant" and basically relied on her to be the creative version of an XO. In addition to being the one who had to make the captain camera-ready and do whatever touch-ups were needed to keep him that way, she was expected to deal with anything else that came up and now take on the responsibility of getting our content out to the ship each time I dumped the drone drives. Thankless work, that.
As for the
Marzi,
she
was in orbit, ready to receive the data so the production crew we'd left on board could get to work cutting everything together. Cap and the XO planned to broadcast a dedicated feed, but the hope was that the major newsfeeds would pick up on it and recast it. This was the gamble. We could break the biggest story in cycles or get completely ignored and we had no control over which happened. And, of course, there was the risk of getting murdered or arrested and possibly spaced. It was highly likely we'd all lost our damn minds.
"Ready?" Cap asked, looking at me, his face the picture of confidence. Gritting my teeth, I nodded and began recording. "This is Matthison Carolinas coming to you from the Ring station where a mysterious illness is striking down the children." His voice was strong and sure. Listening to him, I could almost believe what we were doing was actually going to work. "You may be saying to yourself that this doesn't look at all like any part of the Ring you've ever seen. Well, you're right." He strolled slowly toward the curved wall of the corridor where "Deck 184" was faded, but visible. Surrounding the text were the stylized rings of Saturn that marked every official communication from the Ring's government. Some would still claim we faked it, but it was an opening, a tiny crack into which the captain could begin to insert truth.
"As you can see, we are on Deck 184, in a place the locals call 'The Bottoms.' These decks are not on any tour. The Bottoms are not anyone's vacation destination. Here are the forgotten people: the laborers, the abandoned; the addicts and the criminals. This place is home to those on whose backs civilization rests, and yet they are not cared for, nor are they respected. Instead, they are packed away into neglected corridors and condemned spaces where the air recycling is barely functional, and the temperature and gravity controls often experience sudden and violent shifts.
"This is Matthison Carolinas reporting from the Bottoms and I am here to tell you, people of Sol, that it is past time to open your eyes, to face the shame of a system that fails its most vulnerable. The children of the Bottoms are dying and they are crying out for aid: cries that have gone unnoticed, unheeded, until now. I am Matthison Carolinas and I am here to say, 'no more.' No more will we ignore the pleas, the shouts, the screams from those ground under the boot of 'prosperity.'
"People of the Bottoms, this is Matthison Carolinas here on your station. I have heard the news of your plight and I ask that you speak to me, speak through me. Citizens of Sol, it is time to listen."
There was utter silence after he stopped speaking and I realized I had forgotten to breathe. The captain raised an eyebrow at me and I flicked my fingers to stop recording, giving him a nod once the cameras were off and the data was dumping to the main drive in my pack. He seemed to deflate - head dropping, shoulders rounding - and he took a few gasping breaths. It impressed the hell out of me that he had apparently been scared shitless and none of that had come through on camera. The man was damn good at his work.
