h2>Dating : The Rats that Bear Scars
A decade after its first death, the corpse of the La Main D’or was inevitably infested by rats.
The ramshackle dinghy was attached to the wall of the forsaken freighter with hooked metal appendages, like a parasitic spider on the skin of a whale, at once inconsequential and sticking out like a sore thumb. Itching with anticipation, the scavenger crew gathered around the freighter’s auxiliary exhaust port, a small circular protrusion in its hull. This was the place they would scurry through.
“So why’s it abandoned?”
Marco’s question was met with an uncertain silence. The glances exchanged by the others were hidden away behind the bulky helmets, but the kid could tell he had caught them off guard. A voice came through the radio, rough and brittle like charcoal: “You don’t know?”
The voice belonged to Wolf, a scavenger for whom the word “grizzled” was a light understatement. His suit was battle-scarred from innumerable spacewalks, covered in patches from all over the asteroid belt — Marco recognized some, but others were entirely alien to him, and some simply seemed to belong to obscure metal bands. Wolf leaned in a little too close for comfort, and looked around like he was about to tell a deep, dark secret.
“‘S cursed, lad. Some even say…. haunted.”
Then he burst into boisterous laughter. Marco felt his cheeks swell — he didn’t like being patronized, especially not by some ship rat.
The pilot, Dominique, interjected: “Lay off him, asshole. He’s new.” She had instantly caught his eye, although he hadn’t yet mustered the courage to strike up a conversation. The man to his right, Andrzej, the shipbreaker, turned to him.
“They used to send these to pick up cargo”, the man explained, his tone soft and well-composed. “The local miners had a strike, and the retrieval conditions probably weren’t up to par, so the company just abandoned it. Cheaper to make a new one, I suppose.”
“Enough.”
The old ship rat, Rashid, cut the conversation short. It was by his courtesy that Marco was here, a protege of his harsh tutelage. “Do not forget our purpose here. Arm the explosives.”
The weathered scavenger obeyed without question, reaching into his backpack with only a curt nod. He produced a suitcase-like device entangled with cords, then floated to the exhaust port and let go, letting the improvised explosive stick to the blast door. Marco felt the hull impact his back, Rashid’s arm pushing him against the wall; the others, he saw, already laid as flat as they could around the airlock. He waited, teeth clenched and back pressed against the hard metal, and watched in nervous silence as Wolf floated quickly to take his place.
There was no sound, only a small round flash, as the explosion came just a moment too early. A moment later, Marco’s ears rang as the vibration echoed violently throughout the hull. As it subsided, he realized the ringing was actually a scream, distorted over static.
He turned his head to see Wolf thrashing in utter pain and anguish as he floated helplessly away. A wayward piece of shrapnel had pierced his suit. Marco looked to the others, only to see them transfixed on the dying man, and knew in that instant that they all shared a single thought — there was nothing to be done. As the screams went quiet, Marco noticed another, barely noticeable sound — a whisper over static. The old man was reciting a dua. Though Marco could only guess the contents of the prayer, he sensed in it a certain melody — a song, almost. Rashid continued on, singing for the soul of the once-cheerful ship rat, as the body floated away into eternity, until the glimmer of his helmet became just another star among millions in the void.
The silence carried on, broken only as the old man turned to the kid. “To die for the sake of others is a good death.” But all Marco could see before him was Wolf’s body, drifting away into darkness. Hopeless. Pointless. Lifeless. A death was a death, no matter for whom it was done.
Their moment of silence concluded, and the ship rats swarmed into the newly open wound in the carcass of the La Main D’Or.
The hallways were bare and metal, its makers clearly motivated by utility and cheapness of production. Marco could easily touch both walls with arms outstretched if he wanted — the ship had seemed much bigger on the outside. And yet, compared to the suffocating caverns of the asteroid mines and the packed alleyways of Charity Station, these might as well have been a palace’s halls. A profound sense of unease hung over the dead ship’s corridors — a lack of people where there were supposed to be.
“Where’s all the crew gone?”, Marco asked, marveling at the emptiness. Andrzej seemed to have a tinge of sadness in his voice as he replied.
“Packed it up, most likely. Half of them made it home, the other half… Well, there’s a reason Charity’s so crowded. Hard to get out of the Belt once you’re in”.
“The Belt is full of discarded people”, the old man interjected. “And it’s our job to help them. Remember that.”
Rashid split the crew in two — the pilot and the shipbreaker headed to the bridge to awaken the ship, leaving Marco and himself to pilfer its contents. The kid watched the two leave, a minor pang of disappointment in his chest that he’d be separated from the pilot and stuck with the old man. A dull thud hit the back of his helmet as the old man flicked him upside the head.
“No dreaming now.”
He hated when the old man did that.
The two traversed the long hallways of the La Main D’or in search of loot. Marco had a keen eye for electronics — the right piece of hardware could fetch a lot of coin on Charity’s markets, coin he desperately needed. The kid had just finished stuffing a display screen into his cumbersome bag, which he struggled to keep harnessed at his side. The old man watched with amusement.
“What is the most valuable thing on this ship, do you think?”, Rashid asked.
Marco didn’t have to think long to come up with an answer. “Ain’t there, like, 20 billion dollars of lithium and gold in the cargo hold?”
Rashid’s response was another flick, of which Marco was getting increasingly tired. He meant to argue, but his mentor’s voice, cold and adamantine like hull metal, erased any desire to talk back.
“Tell me, what good is 20 billion to a man suffocating from C-O? What use is gold to a mother whose son is sick with pneumonia?” Marco felt a bubble of shame stuck in his throat, unable to reply, as the old man continued. “Air filters. Medicine. Packaged rations. These are more valuable than a hundred tons of lithium and gold. But what we’re really here for is the power core. Without them, the life support on our station stops working. Everybody dies.”
Marco simply stared in return. The old man’s patronizing got on his nerves, but he begrudgingly realized that was something he had not considered. Rashid had told Marco to “stop thinking like Earth” many times. He was beginning to realize what that meant.
The ship awakened with a distant roar that resounded through the room as the fluorescent lights blinked into life. Before he knew it, gravity came as well, sending Marco down onto the hard floor. He lifted his head to find Rashid’s wizened face staring back at him. It was then that he realized he couldn’t tell the wrinkles from the scars.
“Don’t let your air go to waste.”
Marco picked at the lock on the back of his neck, trying to hide his embarrassment. A familiar click, and the helmet slid off. A common truth one discovered as a spacer was that the first breath of non-processed air could only be compared to taking off a suit after a double shift of hard labor in the mines. Marco relished that first breath, feeling the air pour in through his nostrils. Small pleasures.
“Get up”, the old man barked. “We have a ship to dismantle.”
The next several hours were spent unscrewing air filters, digging around in wire, and forcefully opening doors that were not meant to be opened. As Marco toiled, the old man perched behind his back like a vulture, only opening his mouth to utter some piece of criticism or harrumph disapprovingly. The harrumphs were what Marco hated the most. It was as if the old man did not even see fit to bother with words. With acidic sweat stinging his eyes, his arms on fire, and fingers bitten over and over with electric shocks, Marco felt his patience wither away. At some point, enough was enough. He didn’t dodge his mining job to be treated like a serf again.
“Hey, come and do it yourself, viejo”, he barked out. “Estoy cansado de esta mierda.”
Rashid smiled, his condescension practically dripping off his face. “I have. Hundreds of times.” He pressed on the cuff clamps of his suit and pulled off a glove, revealing his arm up to the elbow. Spotty and stretched, his copper skin was full of little islands of tender scar tissue, from his fingertips all the way to where his arm was cut off by his suit.
“Electrical burns”, he explained. “That is how you tell a true scavenger. I have them. So does your friend Dominique. You will get them too. Then you will truly be one of us.”
”A ship rat”, Marco scoffed. The old man smirked in return.
”Yes. A ship rat.”
After a grueling workday of theft, the crew made themselves at home in the mess hall of the ship. While most of the uncovered food supplies would go to those that needed it most, the scavengers had allowed themselves a meager feast — one bit of indulgence, cooked on a real stove and seasoned with real spices.
“A way to honor the ship as its guests”, Rashid explained to Marco, who wasn’t about to question it. The atmosphere around the table was that of exhausted relief, a ray of sunshine in between storms. Yet a heaviness hung above them, most of all in the empty seat next to Marco. Between the smiles and the occasional grunt of enjoyment, there was silence, felt by every person in the room.
Dominique ripped it apart, plastic cup full of wine in hand: “Alright, y’all. I have a good one. How many ship rats does it take to fix a lightbulb?”
“This one’s as old as me”, Rashid muttered to himself. Marco replied: “How many?”
“Three. One to unscrew it, one to tear out the wires, and one to keep a lookout.”
A round of grim chuckles reverberated throughout the room. Rashid raised a cup of his own.
“Here is another. What is the difference between a ship rat and a piece of space trash?”
Silence and anticipation.
“They both make holes in ships, however, the trash stinks less.”
Quiet laughter all around. A golden opportunity for Marco. His eyes darted a bit, then he raised his cup of the artificially-colored liquid.
“Where do ship rats go after they die?”
No answer. Marco breathed out, anticipating failure, then let the punchline escape his mouth.
“The airlock.”
The room exploded in laughter. Dominique reclined in her seat, nodding in respect before downing her cup. Rashid slapped him on the back, knocking the wind out of him. Even Andrzej, ever serious, let out a warm smile. For the first time since he set foot on Charity Station, Marco felt like he belonged.
The crew had taken a few precious hours to relax — a warm shower, a raid on the La Main D’or ’s entertainment drives, and time for quiet, communal reminiscence. Andrzej had spent the time showing videos of his kids back home on Earth to anyone who was willing to look.
“This is Kasia”, he pointed at a blue-eyed girl whose mischievous grin lit up the screen, her auburn hair much like her father’s. “She’s four in this. Sixteen now, I believe…” He stared at the screen, his eyes lost in the memory. The girl’s sunshine of a smile remained for him eternal.
For most of the ship rats’ downtime, the old man meditated in solitude, looking out the starboard window. Towards Earth. The planet was distant beyond comprehension, a speck of blue amongst the maelstrom of dust and discarded planetary flesh that construed the Belt. Yet the old man looked out for it, never once taking his eyes off the window, as far as Marco could tell.
At some point, the kid found himself sitting next to Dominique. With a tightness in his chest, he cast her sideward glances, still trying to find the strength to talk. The iridescent lights overhead reflected dimly off her skin, a moonlit desert in the night. The gentle slope of her nose extended into a valley of furrowed brows, her gaze focused on a place far from the ship and, it seemed, far from the Belt entirely. Under that cold ceiling light, between the empty plastic cups and discarded spacesuits, the engine humming down below, there was an unspoken calmness. Or, Marco thought, perhaps the spacer’s wine was working.
“So what are you doing all the way out here?”, he asked. An excellent thing to lead with.
“What?” The pilot’s expression was not reassuring him about his chances.
“I mean, you don’t strike me as… the ship rat type.”
Dominique scoffed. “And you’re not the type, either?”
Marco smirked. “Old man says so himself.” He unrolled his sleeve to reveal a smooth arm, marred only by stray tattoos. “Ain’t got the scars.”
The pilot’s forearms were adorned with bright oases of scars, open and proud without a hint of shame. “Takes a little more than that.” She tucked away a string of loose hair and reclined. “Alright, same question. Whatcha doing here?”
“We’re all here for money, right? Everyone in the Belt.”
“Are we?” The pilot’s amber eyes picked him apart.
“I guess. I’m just trying to pay for school. Don’t want it all to be for nothing.”
“So this is nothing, then?”, she asked, still half-smiling, although her tone felt a little colder.
“Don’t you wanna go back as well at some point?”
Dominique seemed to have inched away from Marco, towards the portside window open to the Belt’s expanse.
“Hell no. Got nothing back there.”
“So what’s here, then?”
He found Dominique lost in the vista, a tapestry of spinning rocks and distant stars.
“I can help people here. I have a purpose. People accept me for who I am. There’s nowhere on Earth where I can feel like that.” She tightened up a bit, her fingers tracing over her scars like a needle on vinyl, then downed the last of her wine. “But that’s just me.”
There was another silence, this time devoid of comfort. The engine’s hum remained ever-present.
“Hey, Marco?”
“Yeah?”
“What do you want to do, after you go back and finish school? If you don’t mind me asking.”
Marco didn’t have an answer.
The clocks on the distant Charity Station had struck midnight, leading the evening to a close. Even away from Earth, the cycle had to be followed for everyone’s collective sanity. The scavengers camped out in the freighter’s living quarters. The beds were little more than capsules etched into the ship’s metal walls, just long enough to fit one human body. But they were real beds, and that was good enough. Marco reclined in the capsule, his body finally recognizing the exhaustion. He felt it deep in his bones, a dull soreness spreading from his spine down his arms and legs. A feeling of being stretched by years of microgravity, slowly but surely, like a heretic on a rack. He clenched his jaw, ignoring the pain, and let his mind drift to sleep.
An intense feeling of disquiet overtook the young scavenger as he woke up, replaced immediately by a splitting headache. Marco’s center of balance was nowhere to be found; he wasn’t sure if it was lightheadedness, or an actual lack of gravity. Stumbling out of his capsule-bed, he found it difficult to breathe, as if the deep breaths he took somehow weren’t enough. As he held on to the edges of his bed, his head spinning, he realized the tips of his fingertips were blue.
“Huh”, he thought to himself. “I’ve never seen that before.”
He let go to take a closer look, dark spots clouding his vision, and didn’t fall. Zero-G. Something was very wrong. His body working against him, Marco pushed outwards, hoping to reach the other capsules on inertia alone. Rashid seemed to be lost in sleep as the kid approached, trying to muster a few words of warning but finding it impossible to speak. With lightning reaction, the old man jerked his eyes open, seemingly not an inch of sleep left in him. He looked him over, face inscrutable as ever, and uttered a single word.
“Hypoxia.”
Marco’s next breath was deep and painful. He moved to gasp his throat, only to feel the metal ridges of his helmet’s ring. A hand grasped his shoulder as Rashid’s gravelly voice came in over the radio. “Be mindful of your breaths, my friend.” He was in the mess hall, the others already in full gear; as it seemed, so was he.
“What happened?”, he asked, voice still hoarse.
“Life support failure”, Andrzej chimed in. “Gravity’s down, C-O filter’s disabled. The works.”
“How?” asked Dominique. The shipbreaker’s arms were in a neurotic criss-cross, fingers tapping against their sides. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I made sure we were in the system. There must be some malfunction.”
A grinding sound erupted from below, the hum of the engine turning into a roar. An invisible force hit Marco in the chest, sending him and the others tumbling back toward the ship’s stern. The Le Main D’or was moving at its fullest speed.
“It’s no malfunction”, Rashid replied, teeth clenched. “It’s sabotage.”
Dominique gasped, struggling to regain her composure. “Those pigs are controlling the ship.”
Rashid pushed forward, maneuvering until he was firmly in front of the others. His tone was urgent and commanding: “We don’t have time. The power core remains our priority. Dominique will ready the getaway and bring it back around. Marco, Andrzej and I will find the engine room. We take the power core, and then we leave this ship. Understood?”
There was no need for answers.
The group advanced, illuminated only by dim, crimson lights that blinked in emergency unison. Marco rushed headfirst through the doorway, only to be pulled backwards, hard, by Rashid’s grasp. As he regained his balance, he understood why. Small metal spheres, protrusions of spiky copper on their ends, drifted lazily around the La Main D’or ’s halls.
“Rat traps”, explained Dominique. “Those spikes will fry your brains. Bad way to go.”
The group split again. Dominique disappeared behind the corner, her body fluid as she danced through the traps, unharmed. Marco knew this wouldn’t be quite as easy as she made it look. The others ventured into the depths of the ship, towards the engine room, their movement excruciatingly slow. Marco watched his oxygen gauge move steadily towards zero, all the while struggling to keep his unwieldy bag from catching on the traps.
The old man broke the air-conserving silence. “Say, shipbreaker, do you know where this craft is going?”
Andrzej deliberated for a second, then answered: “I can only guess.”
“Then do your best to guess”, Rashid replied.
“Earth, I assume.”
The old man grumbled. “I see.” He paused to evade a particularly close sphere in front of him. “And what do you suppose will happen once it gets there?”
Another careful pause by Andrzej.
“The ship will be recovered by a company crew.” Rashid remained silent for a while. Marco trailed the two, picking up some hints of tension from his mentor. His thought process was as mysterious as it was impenetrable.
“Do you remember the parable of the wolf and the hound?”, Rashid asked, turning face to face with Andrzej.
“Excuse me?” The timid man seemed to pull back a little.
“Listen, then. A wolf and a hound meet somewhere in the woods. The dog’s fur is beautiful and rich, while the wolf stands dirty and famished.”
The mines passed idly by, their shiny daggers glimmering with ruby reflections. Over Marco’s radio, the old man’s hypnotic voice was a mixture of gravel and feedback.
“The wolf asks the dog why its fur is so lush. The dog replies: “My master feeds me only the finest meals. You would do well to join me.” The wolf considers it. But as they go their separate ways, the wolf notices the fur on the dog’s neck is missing.”
The shipbreaker’s response was quick and tense. “‘His master’s collar. One of Aesop’s fables.”
“Ah, so you do remember.”
“Yes.”
Rashid laughed, a crackle in the static. “Tell me, Andrzej, what ship did you serve on before washing up on Charity Station?”
There was no answer from the shipbreaker. Instead, the man had stopped and reached into his pocket, producing a rivet gun. The tool, designed to punch holes in hull metal, was now pointed squarely at Rashid, who simply stood there, frozen. Marco prepared to lunge, but a gesture from his mentor stopped him in his tracks. The rat traps.
“This isn’t how I wanted this to happen.” The shipbreaker’s voice trembled, while his aim did not.
“It does not matter. We are here, right now. There’s no going back.”
Through the helmet radio, Marco could tell Andrzej was breaking.
“I had to take my chances. You don’t know what it’s like to lay there and wonder if your daughter remembers you. That there is nothing you can do to get her back.“
“I know. The Belt is full of discarded people.”
“My family thinks I’m dead, Rashid.”
“To Earth, we always were.”
The old man rushed at Andrzej, tackling him, then threw him into the mass of rat traps. For a brief moment, Marco saw the face behind the bulbous helmet. His expression was entirely devoid of malice — simply surprise and sadness behind those honest eyes. A moment later, the man’s screams split Marco’s eardrums before being buried in scramble. Andrzej convulsed, the electricity melting his nerves away, and pulled the trigger accidentally.
The red-hot rivet released with a blast, ripping a clean hole in the spaceship wall. The howling vacuum pulled the shipbreaker’s body further into the room, taking the spikes along with him. Marco leapt for the door, grabbing the old man. As his fingers found the doorframe’s metal ridges, Marco’s duffle threw them both into the wall with a kick of inertia. A second later, it was over. The debris held the hole firmly in place, Andrzej’s body buried underneath. Marco looked over at his mentor, his heart pounding in his chest, and froze.
“No matter”, the old man grumbled. His helmet was badly cracked, air hissing out of small holes in the polycarbonate. “We have a job to do.”
The two found themselves in the engine room, a roaring maze of machinery. Marco felt little beads of sweat form on his forehead — the room’s atmosphere vibrated with heat. The old man’s breaths were short and ragged, few and far between. His mask of stone-cold confidence was breaking, yet he pressed firmly on. Finding his way around the hammering motors, he led Marco to the centerpiece of the ship. The main engine stood in the dead center, a pipe organ with a heart of hydrogen. Rashid held onto a support, each inhale sounding more difficult than the last.
“This is the engine. It houses the power core, which you will have to take out yourself.” Rashid paused to catch his breath as he spoke. “I shall guide you through it.”
Marco approached the engine. The layout was entirely alien to him, resembling the anatomy of some strange beast. Although his body recoiled, aching with the urge to pull back, he put his hands to work. The old man’s directions were sparse, each one delayed more than the last, but the occasional harrumph was still there. Marco found himself hoping to hear them still. One by one, the final layers of the ship’s defenses peeled away, until the ship’s power core was in sight — a cylinder no longer than a bottle nestled firmly in its housing. Marco reached into the heart of the freighter and pulled out the power core, inch by inch, like a surgeon removing a live organ. It lay in his hand, its lifeblood valves limply dangling in zero-G. As Marco ripped them off one by one, the engines came to a stop. The lights twinkled out of existence as the freighter released one final howl. The La Main D’or met its second, and final, death.
In total darkness, save for his helmet’s flashlight, Marco approached his mentor. The latter’s breaths were now miniscule, seconds apart. A weak voice crackled through the radio.
“Good job.”
The young scavenger did not know what to say. If the old man was giving him praise, he really was about to croak.
Rashid waved him off casually as ever. “Get out of here. Leave an old rat to die.”
Power core in hand and duffle bag at his side, Marco headed for the exit, aware that his own oxygen gauge was dangerously approaching the bottom. If he could, he thought, he would come back for the old man. But a second trip was not an option. Plus, the old man had said he wanted to die. There was no time to hesitate — he had to leave.
And yet, a weight pulled him back. Marco realized that the old man was right. Through grinding teeth, he unhooked his harness and let the bag drift away.
Hyperventilating, he slowly worked up his lungs, then mustered the greatest inhale he had ever had to do in his life. He popped his helmet off, and switched it with Rashid’s.
“What are you doing, you fool?” the old man uttered, as the helmet locked in place over his confused gaze. Marco did not reply. He needed the oxygen.
The ship rat propelled himself out of the room, the old man strapped by the harness to his back. With all the speed he could muster, he maneuvered out of the corridor. Each obstacle, each corner, each drifting piece of debris was a handhold to throw himself farther. Marco carried on, his held breath burning in his lungs. He only needed to hold out for these precious few seconds. Finally, the airlock appeared in view, the dinghy of salvation glimmering ahead. Marco threw himself ahead in a mad dash, only to see the final obstacle between him, Rashid and survival: a little ball of death, drifting towards them. In a last-ditch effort, Marco unhooked the harness, releasing the old man, then flew towards the rat trap head on. The young ship rat closed his eyes, regretting nothing.
The spikes themselves didn’t hurt. The shock, though, that made him feel like his nervous system was being torn apart, atom by atom. The air left his lungs, as if to save itself. Then, darkness.
A blinding light filled Marco’s vision. At first, it seemed like something to walk towards, until he recognized it to be one of the harsh iridescent lights of the dinghy. There was no pain; in fact, there wasn’t much feeling at all. His body felt light years away. Two pairs of scarred arms hovered over him: one bony and wrinkled, one smooth and soft. One trembling voice told him to stay awake, another simply sang a peaceful song. Both melted into static.
He raised his arm and marveled at the sight — a winding pattern of dendrites decorated it, going over even his tattoos, a sprawling snowflake of a scar. As the others rushed to put it down, he noticed an odd detail. The scars on each arm formed a pattern, completing the journey from one arm to the next, all parts of one great story of loss, of newfound meaning, of family. As Marco closed his eyes, a single thought gave him comfort — he was a ship rat after all.
