"Bramble?"
"Hey."
"Something wrong?" Asking is a formality. Live calls over the ansible relays aren't cheap, even at low-colour dithered thumbnail resolution, and there's really no reason for it. Not if everything's running smoothly.
Bramble runs a hand over their buzzcut, and makes a tense face. "So. The Consolidated job."
July delicately massages the acupressure points in her wrist. "The Consolidated job," she echoes. "The one we have in the bag? The one where you picked up their runaway worker in one piece and she's in the ship's brig? The one you're on the way back with, and we'll be able to hand her over to Asset Handling on Tuesday?"
Bramble's tense face pulls helplessly tenser, eyes screwed nearly shut.
"Bramble," July says, as if she can wheedle this into not being whatever cockup it already is.
"I picked their scientist up," Bramble says. "I did. She was — I figured she hadn't been prepped for jumping ship, she was like oh that ain't healthy skinny. Gave her a ration bar on the way back to the ship, and then the weapon scanner pinged metal in her bra, and it — I figured, you know, razor blade? Cheap trick, but who knows what she picked up out there." They shrug their shoulders a few times, as if trying to loosen them. "Wrapper. She'd had the first quarter of the bar, and stashed the rest. Because she figured that was — that was her food. For the trip. I told her she's got rights and of course I was gonna feed her, and she laughed, Ju. She didn't believe me. Like, sure, asshole, you ticked your legal compliance box with a fucking snack bar, and now you're lying to me for shits and giggles."
"Bramble—"
"The brig scared her," Bramble says. "The brig scared her because the bed was too good. She didn't understand what kind of — what kind of psych torture — I was trying on by saying she could sleep there. What I was aiming to get out of lying about it."
July gives up on the acupressure, puts her hands flat on the table. What's she supposed to say? Oh no, corporate mistreatment, shocking? No, they wouldn't have taken the job knowing for sure it was bad bad, but there's no pretending they don't take ones to send people back where it's merely bad.
"So you're telling me," she says wearily, tapping out a command line to launch their accounts in the background, so she can start to figure the smoking crater of this job into this month's projected finances, "that a gulag stick figure overpowered you when she out of the brig for — some valid reason — and vanished unfindably into the crowds on. Reynold Station? That where you're at?"
"Oh," Bramble says, and a wave of relief breaks over them. "Yeah. Yeah! That's what I'm telling you!"
"Oh for fuck's sake," July says. "You're trying to bring a fucking stray home. What the fuck are you going to do, Bramble, tuck a wanted corporate fugitive under a blanket on your couch for ever?"
"Vanished!" Bramble says. "Vanished into the crowds!"
"We need job money to pay for the bribes for shit like this!" July throws her hands up.
"La la la never said nothing that could be subpoenaed!"
July puts on her most horrific cold corporate scowl. "You are ridiculous," she says, and hangs up.
