by TJ Berry
She pulled herself to sitting using the cart as leverage. It had two shelves – the high one where you’d put the body and a lower one underneath that was just the right height for lying in and pushing yourself along, but it would be a trick to maneuver herself into. Not to mention the body she needed to take with her.
“Did you find it?” asked Mary.
“Yeah,” said Jenny.
Jenny sat next to the nearest corpses. Her head pounded in time to her heartbeat, which wasn’t such a bad thing because at least she had a heartbeat now.
“Where are the two elf bodies, Actually?” she asked. “They’re both behind you,” said the ship. “The corpses are sorted by type of meat.”
“Are elves white or dark meat…” mused Jenny.
“If their magic is any indication, they’re dark. Very dark,” said Mary.
Jenny chuckled. These were the sorts of terrible jokes you heard from grunts on Reason ships and the habit hard to break. She rolled herself toward the stacked elves.
“A little faster, please,” said Mary. “This is not a lightly trafficked area. We have to get you all the way down to the dock without someone seeing. I don’t know how we’re going to do that when you’re literally presenting yourself on a silver platter.”
“The ship can tell us when someone’s coming,” said Jenny.
“I can, but I can’t stop them. I can’t lock any doors other than the ones I’ve already sealed,” said Actually.
“Just keep us in the loop,” said Mary. “Are the hallways between here and the dock clear?”
“Not yet. One person moving from the maintenance room to the atrium.”
“That’ll be Stan.”
“Who’s Stan?” asked Jenny.
“I’ll tell you later,” said Mary.
Jenny looked at the bodies stacked two deep on the floor and found the elves right away. Both of them had that pinched and angular look that was considered hot in elfin circles.
“Which elf, Actually?” asked Jenny.
“The bottom one.”
“Of course,” said Jenny, bracing herself to push the topmost elf body off the other one. It fell to the floor with a thunk, exposing Kamis beneath. His flesh had been hacked open with violent strokes. Wounds gaped on his neck and torso. His clothing was crusted with thawing blood.
“This was not a good way to die,” said Jenny, sitting a moment to think of this couple who had lost their lives. Two more casualties of human cruelty.
She locked the truck’s magnetic wheels to the floor and pulled Kamis’ stiffened body onto the lower shelf by the arms, wiggling him back and forth until his head stuck out the front and his legs went through the back.
“Jenny, you have to be ready to move when the Well Actually says it’s clear,” said Mary.
Jenny pulled herself on top of Kamis’ frozen body. His icy limbs felt good on her burned extremities at first, but after a moment they stung with the bite of cold.
“Ugh,” she said, using her hands to push off against the wet metal floor. The cart didn’t move but Kamis shifted under her.
“Shit,” she leaned down and unlocked the magnetic wheels.
“Get to the door,” said Mary.
The cart’s wheels creaked as Jenny pushed off. With all the frozen moisture in the room, the wheels had rusted over. It sounded like the front door of a haunted house, opening and closing over and over. She cringed at the ruckus.
“So much for stealth,” said Actually.
“This is definitely not going to work,” said Jenny. “I have to do this for how far?”
“Thirty meters,” said Mary. Jenny pulled herself to just inside the doorway and stopped, panting.
“Hallway is almost clear. Wait. Three, two, one, go,” said Actually.
Jenny pushed off against the floor with a grunt and rolled into the hall. Turning a cart like this was usually accomplished by letting the castors swing in the opposite direction, but these wheels were stuck forward. Jenny braced her arms on the wall. She pushed the cart to get it around the corner, but the wheels skidded sideways across the metal. The cart barely moved.
“Gods, this is ridiculous,” she said. Her arms were in excellent condition from years of pushing her chair, but they were also limp noodles from being nearly dead.
“How long will it take me at this rate?” asked Jenny.
“Thirty-four minutes,” replied both ships in unison.
“This is not going to work,” said Mary.
“No. People walk through this area on average every seven minutes. Can you go faster?” asked Actually.
“Bite me,” said Jenny. Two of her fingernails bent backward on the floor and she sucked in her breath. She kept pulling.
“Turn around,” said Actually. “Someone is heading for the cargo bay.”
“How do you know they’re going to the freezer?” asked Mary.
“Because they’re moving a body from the processing floor,” said Actually.
“What?” cried Mary. “How did you forget the one incredibly important detail that they’re slaughtering someone today?”
“I didn’t know. There’s no one else on the schedule. Just Captain Perata. I’m trying to figure out who it is,” said Actually.
Instead of turning around, Jenny pushed herself backward the dozen or so feet that she’d already made it down the hallway.
“This is not good,” said Mary. “As soon as they walk into the room they’re going to discover she’s alive and kill her again.”
“Just lay back down with the bodies and pretend to be dead,” said Actually, with a distant sounding voice. He was probably preoccupied searching for the most recent victim’s identity. With much less processing power than Mary, he had trouble doing multiple tasks at the same time.
“There’s warm water all over the floor. They’re going to notice and check all the bodies for thawing,” said Mary.
“How long do I have?” panted Jenny between shoves.
“Three minutes. Maybe four. The body is light. Only one person is carrying it… Oh.” The Well Actually’s programmer had done a stellar job with the sound files for surprise. Jenny kept pushing, but listened intently.
“What?” asked Mary.
“It’s Junior.”
“Oh dear,” said Mary.
“The kid? What the hell? Why would those wankers kill a kid?” asked Jenny.
“They didn’t,” said Actually. “The tea was poisoned.”
Jenny stopped pushing. The tea had been meant for her. She’d given it to the kid. It was her stupid fault he was dead. Mary’s voice came over the intercom, calm but firm.
“Jenny, they’re going to find you in three minutes. It’s time to switch to plan B. I’m repositioning myself outside of the cargo bay. Get as close to the exterior door as you can.”
“I hate this, I hate this, I hate this,” said Jenny, dragging the cart, herself, and Kamis along the floor toward the exit.
“Two minutes,” called Actually. “Should I open the cargo bay door?”
“No,” said Jenny and Mary in stereo.
“They’ve noticed I’m moving,” said Mary. “People are looking out of the windows.”
“Those are just the other captives. They can’t do anything to stop you,” said Actually.
“Governor Dan to Security.” The call went out over the intercom, drowning out Actually’s voice for a moment.
“They know I’m en route,” said Mary. “But I plan to be gone before they can do anything about it. Jenny, are you in place?”
“Almost.”
“Good. You’re going to be sucked out and hopefully end up right in my cargo bay. It’s going to get cold, but I’ll warm you as fast as I can. You have, at most, fifteen seconds before you lose consciousness, but this shouldn’t take more than five. When you make it into my cargo bay, I’ll take it from there.”
“I’m not sure that this is a viable method of transportation,” said Actually.
“I love n
onviable methods of transportation,” said Jenny. “She does. I have determined that this typical for Captain Perata,” said Mary. “For most people, getting sucked out of an airlock means something in their lives has gone very wrong, but this seems to be my captain’s favorite way to get back on board.”
“What can I do?” asked Actually.
“Lock doors. Turn off lights. Anything that will delay the arrival of other crewmembers. Decompression will take care of whoever is coming down the hall now.”
“One minute,” said Actually.
“Jenny, are we a go?” asked Mary.
Jenny shoved the decrepit cart up against the cargo bay doors. The closer she was to the opening, the faster she’d fly out into the vacuum and into Mary’s waiting arms.
“I’m a go.” Her voice came out more certain than she felt. She wondered if they’d made the wrong choice after all. It might be easier to simply fight her way down to the docking tunnel. She could still turn around and try.
“Twenty seconds,” said Actually.
She’d done this before, and recently too. It was barely two months ago that she’d dragged Gary Cobalt out into openspace from Beywey to the Jaggery. Other ships had been shooting at them, plus she’d been carrying a merchant named Bào Zhú sealed in an airtight ball. That had been a weird day, but flying across openspace in her knickers with second-degree burns and riding a corpse on a cart might have knocked it out of the top spot.
“Ten seconds,” said Actually.
“Jenny, when I say go, exhale all of the air out of your lungs so it doesn’t expand in the vacuum and kill you,” said Mary.
“This isn’t my first rodeo,” said Jenny, having a sudden flashback to Cowboy Jim that both gave her a wave of nostalgia and fear. He was out there somewhere, planning god knows what.
“He’s coming around the corner,” said Actually.
“Go,” yelled Mary.
Jenny blew all the breath out of her lungs as the cargo bay doors cracked open inches from her face. She could see the warm yellow lights of Mary’s cargo hold and boxes of settler supplies strapped down to the floor. The first sensation was that of the wind rushing past her. The cart scooted up against the opening. As the doorway widened and the effects of the Well Actually’s artificial gravity diminished, the cart tipped upward, heaving her legs in the air and pressing the top of the cart against the screeching doors.
It was a strange sensation, hearing the rushing of the air and the screeching of the doors, but also the muffled nothingness of vacuum in front of her. Blood whooshed in her ears. She assumed she’d shoot right out and across, but the sticky old doors were opening more slowly than any cargo hold she’d ever encountered. Peering over the edge of the cart, back into the dimly lit freezer, she could see corpses flying toward her, loosened by the rush of pressure out of the doors. They banged into the underside of the cart and stuck in the opening near her. Glassy grayish eyes got their first glimpse of openspace in years. Finally the cart slipped free of the door and tumbled end over end across the gap between the two ships, trailing bodies behind it.
As the cart twisted around, she spotted the man who had come to drop off Junior hanging onto the edge of the doorway, his face frozen in a grimace as he tried to hold on.
In the remaining air, she heard a noise like the Well Actually screaming. Mary yelled back. Both ships sounded alarmed.
Jenny was a pro at weightlessness, but when Kamis started shifting below her, she panicked, feeling herself separate from the cart. She was making it across the gap between the two ships but not as fast as she’d hoped. Her skin burned with cold and her eyes were clouding over, probably freezing. She’d bumped into a few dead people in the chaos, which had sent her in random directions, none of which were directly into Mary’s hold.
She wasn’t in openspace for more than a few seconds before whiteness began creeping in on the edges of her vision. She craned her neck, straining against the stiffness of the cold, but the cart was in her way. She couldn’t tell if she was inside of Mary’s hold or still floating outside of the ship. The white edges crept inward and she felt herself letting go. It was all up to Mary now.
CHAPTER TEN
Teenage Runaway
Bào Zhú sat down at the desk in his cabin and allowed his defenses to drop. All of his wrinkles returned. His dark hair flattened into a tightly-cropped salt and pepper style. Humans were easy to fool with a simple illusion spell, but keeping it up all day was draining work. Especially when he was navigating the ship toward the new Bala planet at the same time.
In the quiet, he cleared his mind from the detritus of pretending to be a twentysomething. Not only was the spell taxing but he had to keep checking himself to ensure that his references and desires were not those of a fifty-five year-old man. Bào wanted nothing more than to sit back with a hot cup of tea and a biscuit; however, the subterfuge of being Chen demanded that he drink the latest bubbly drinks and eat candy nonstop. He also had to engage in a precarious game of oneupmanshp in which a few of the rowdier cadets turned a room’s gravity off and on at increasingly dangerous times. For example, when one was working in the shuttle bay or wedged into an access panel behind a wall. Best case, tools went careening off in various directions. Worst case, you slammed into a floor or ceiling. One cadet broke a leg due to someone being too slow on the gravity trigger. After that, Bào found a quieter crowd to run with. Kids who didn’t have a death wish.
Bào had chosen to name his alter ego Kevin Chen. It was a simple name that would be palatable to Reason ears. Their tongues could wrap around its syllables with confidence. A Kevin Chen was good at his job but forgettable in person. A Kevin Chen earned straight As in school, but wasn’t quite valedictorian. A Kevin Chen was cute, but not hot. A Kevin Chen was not a threat to anyone.
A Bào Zhú, on the other hand, with his enigmatic accent-marks that baffled intake forms and supercomputers, was someone to keep an eye on. His scars spoke of a vicious battle – and no one could be quite sure whose side he had been on. Add in the ability to harness nullspace energy and a Bào Zhú could never really be trusted by the folks who were in power.
But smiling Kevin Chen was invited out to lunch with the other junior officers, even if they didn’t ask him any questions about himself. He interjected with funny asides and made sure everyone had napkins. That Kevin Chen, he always was a good guy.
The subterfuge exhausted Bào but, unlike sloppy temporary disguises like elf semen, the Kevin Chen illusion was impeccable, even up close. Yet it was still just an outer skin over his actual body. Underneath, he was still a fifty-five year-old man who’d sustained major shrapnel wounds in the war. Even walking to the canteen between shifts left him aching and winded. The façade was costly, as all lies eventually were.
A ping at his door startled him. He concentrated and allowed Chen’s form to settle over him like a veil.
“Come in!” he called cheerily.
The door slid open. Two cadets tumbled in and dropped their bodies onto the bed with the gracelessness of those who didn’t have bone spurs. One was Priya from engineering; a delightful girl who laughed at everything, no matter how serious. She was supposedly on the fast track to bridge crew. At least that’s what she claimed to the other cadets.
The other was a shy twenty-something from sanitation called Rhian who had attempted to kiss Bào-as-Chen twice so far. Not that Bào had minded the attempts. He’d been alive long enough to know that he didn’t have a preference between any of the genders. Not to mention the fact that making out was a perfectly lovely way to pass the time in space. And it barely stressed the joints. No, Bào’s reluctance stemmed from the fact that it would be impossible for Rhian to fully consent to kissing Bào when he believed him to be Chen. So with great regret and a polite protest, Bào had pushed him away. Still, there wasn’t a day gone by that Bào didn’t catch Rhian staring longingly at the illusion of Chen that he didn’t wish he could say yes.
“We’re getting food, do you want t
o come?” asked Priya, bouncing on the bed. Bào wanted to crawl into that bed and curl up with a mystery that telegraphed the killer from three pages in.
“Naw, I’m not hungry,” he replied, feigning disinterest rather than fatigue.
“You should eat to keep your strength up,” said Rhian. “Tracking is difficult work.”
Bào hated to keep turning that kid down. The least he could do was go to dinner with them.
“Fine, I’ll come,” he said, trying not to groan as he lifted himself out of the chair.
Priya bounded out of the room first, leaving he and Rhian alone for a brief moment. Bào moved quickly to avoid him, but Rhian touched Bào’s arm to make him stay.
“Are you all right? You look tired,” said Rhian.
“It’s what you said. Tracking is hard,” said Bào.
“It’s more than that, I think.”
“You think I’m getting old?” asked Bào with a devilish smile to hide the fear that welled in him.
“No. Just that I see it’s taking a toll on you and it’s only been a couple of weeks. We have a long haul. You need to pace yourself, slow down, make fewer dips into the null,” said Rhian.
“I can’t,” said Bào. “I need to keep adjusting our course. Looking through the nullspace isn’t an exact science and I’m still trying to zero in on which quadrant, let alone which system, the Bala are in. We’re still so far away that even the slightest deviation–”
“I think I came up with a way to help you,” said Rhian.
Bào tensed, sure that he was planning to ask for another kiss. Instead, he pulled out his tablet and began showing Bào pages of calculations.
“What I’m saying is that I came up with a way for you to triangulate more efficiently so that you don’t have to spend the whole day tracking,” said Rhian. “Come on, I’ll show you as we walk.”
Priya was already far down the hallway, talking with an officer she’d picked up along the way. She was telling a very emphatic story that involved a lot of hand gestures.
Rhian explained. “The problem is not that the planet keeps moving, obviously, it’s that our progress through the null isn’t linear. We aren’t going from A to B in a line, we’re bouncing from point to point while still getting marginally closer to our destination.
