by TJ Berry
Years later, when she arrived back on Beywey with Gary, Bào was mystified. Gary knew who this woman was, yet he stood beside her, negotiating for trisicles as if it was nothing. Bào wanted to get Gary alone and ask questions, but the opportunity never arose. Before they could even complete the transaction, the Reason blew out Beywey’s airlock as part of a raid on the market. Bào had climbed into one of his plexiglass pressure bubbles and floated silently in the dead market. As bodies and the remains of the market floated with him, he again hoped that someone would rescue him.
He’d waved at Jenny and Gary as they ducked into the defunct service corridors at the back of the market with their helmets on. He tried to warn them that the Reason always came in through two sides of the market, cornering vendors in the little pressurized hallway behind the tents. Going back through the main atrium would send them right into the control room where the top brass would be, overseeing the operation on the security cameras. But neither of them saw his warning.
It wasn’t until thirty minutes later that Gary came back through in the custody of two high-ranking Reason officers. These weren’t riot gear-clad grunts. They were soldiers of stature, with new and fully functional EVA suits.
As he floated past, Bào watched Gary unclip his own suit helmet rather than allow himself to be taken captive by the Reason officers out to harvest his horn. He had again tried to wave within his sphere frantically enough to get him to notice, but Gary was focused on his task. He unclipped his helmet and allowed the vacuum to suck the air out of his lungs. Bào had to give him credit; Gary was much calmer than Bào had when he’d been drowning in Copernica’s ocean.
Bào flung himself backward in his sphere so that it flew into the dark depths of his tent. The Reason officers’ conversation wasn’t audible in the vacuum but he was able to see the infuriated look on the pale man’s face. He was the older one, with a colonel’s rank painted on his EVA suit. He pulled a knife out of the side of the pocket of his EVA suit, unsheathed it, and dug into Gary’s head to get the last of the unicorn horn bits out of his skull. They left his body there, thinking it was dead and useless.
Bào had spent the next few minutes floating in the remains of his stall on Beywey, watching his friend’s body turn into a block of ice. He wondered where Captain Perata had gotten to. She had gone in with him but didn’t come back out. He suspected she’d escaped by giving them her unicorn prize while she ran in the opposite direction. Typical.
He wondered if anyone was going to come for him. Most of the market vendors were either floating stiffly inside or outside of the remains of Beywey. There was no one left to help him. He could probably knock himself toward the exit and hope that a pirate ship picked him up, but that was a big risk. Pirates operating on razor-thin margins and were not likely to take on the extra weight of a human (no matter how bony and lean) for no good reason. It might be worth the risk to reveal his necromancer skills and earn himself a place in a crew, but that was always a gamble. Humans, particularly xenophobes living close to Earth’s orbit, tended to hate Bala and distrust magic. They would likely chuck him back out the airlock and consider the airtight plexiglass cage he’d arrived in as the real treasure.
He was considering how to get the bubble through the closed door between the market and the control center, when Captain Perata herself came barreling through the door, looking like death itself, pale, blood-splattered and hanging on to every exposed girder within reach.
Bào flung himself forward and nearly dislocated his arms waving at her. He shouted as well, though he knew very well that she wouldn’t be able to hear him across the vacuum. She stopped at Gary, replaced his helmet, and dragged him along toward the blown-out airlock. She noticed Bào’s motions and stopped. He could see her sigh and the exasperated roll of her eyes. For a long moment, he knew she was considering leaving him. He put his hand on the plexiglass and willed her to take him with all of his might. He could read the curse on her lips as she reached for his bubble and dragged him along with the corpse of Gary Cobalt.
He was jubilant. He had plenty of reservations about her, but at least Captain Perata wasn’t likely to chuck him out into openspace. He held that thought for about five minutes, until they got through the airlock and realized that a dozen pirate ships were closing in on Beywey in order to grab whatever valuable goods were floating out of the broken airlock.
Ships fired on the trio emerging from the station. What was presumably Captain Perata’s stoneship – an impressive thing carved out of an asteroid – fired back, destroying a two-person cruiser nearby and sending massive pieces of shrapnel straight toward them. Bào’s bubble was hit by a loose strut and he floated away from the station, out into openspace. Captain Perata made a grab for him and the last thing Bào saw was a spray of frozen blooddroplets coming out of a hole in her suit. More ships opened fire, and in a few moments Bào had floated far enough away to realize that she could no longer reach him.
He floated for hours out there among the bodies and the bits of ships. Eventually, a Cascadian ship found him as they sifted through the debris field. Bào was still holding the subzero temperatures at bay, but just barely. They took him on as a crewmember in exchange for his necromancer tracking services.
It was an arrangement only a hair above kidnapping and false imprisonment. They made it clear that if he refused, they would be more than happy to give him back his bubble and put him back where they’d found him.
“Hey,” said Rhian.
Bào looked up. They were at the mess hall already. He was standing in front of the steam table, tray in hand, holding up the line.
“Sorry,” said Bào.
“You got quiet. I figured you were thinking about something,” said Rhian.
“What do you want?” asked the server, holding up a ladle of brown stuff that had probably intended to be potatoes, but was now just a vector for massive quantities of salt. The hardest part of the Kevin Chen costume was disguising his swollen ankles.
“Just potatoes, no gravy,” he said. Plain potatoes were the only food that didn’t wreck his digestion for the night. The server dumped half the gravy and scooped up mashed potatoes with the same spoon. There was no nuance in the Reason. And no complaining.
Bào took a seat with Rhian and Priya, moving the potatoes around on his plate. He wasn’t hungry any more, but he did know that he had to stop this ship from reaching the Bala.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Heart of the Matter
Jenny awoke curled on top of a plastic crate full of seeds that had come with the Settler’s Deluxe package. It was patently ridiculous – not to mention immoral – to bring a box of Earth seeds to a new planet. One handful might introduce some unchecked plant that could take out an entire population of sapient flowers. She hadn’t had time to leave them behind in the rush to get off Jaisalmer, so here they were, sitting in Mary’s hold.
She watched as the letters on the box darkened with moisture. It seemed to be raining here. She lay back and let the cool rain drip onto her body, soothing her burning skin. She couldn’t remember falling asleep in the cargo hold, but she was still drowsy and the sunlight felt good on her cold, wet hair. Only there shouldn’t have been sunlight in the cargo hold. It should have been chilly and dry as a bone. It didn’t make sense.
“Jenny, can you hear me now?” called Mary. Her voice sounded as if it was coming from underwater. Some corruption in the circuits. There was also a ringing sound overlaying all of the other noises in the room.
“Yeah,” said Jenny. Her throat seized up on the words and only a croak came out. She sputtered and tried to lick her lips, but her tongue felt dry and boiled. Her eyes stung with a thousand pinpricks of light.
“Jenny, you made it. Just hang tight, I’ve pressurized the hold and turned up the heat, but I’m trying to get some distance between us and the Well Actually before I attend to you. Hang on for one minute,” said Mary.
Jenny lay back and closed her eyes. She didn’t understa
nd why it was raining inside of the FTL Stagecoach Mary. Or why the world was ringing like after a concussion grenade went off. She squinted up toward the rain. Something dark and gray hung from the ceiling above her. It looked like a storm cloud. Everything was so hazy that she figured she was dreaming, except that, after the Siege of Copernica Citadel, Jenny only ever had one dream and this wasn’t it.
She pushed herself to sitting and reached up to touch the storm cloud hanging above her. Her fingers slid across the slick, soft flesh of a human arm. She yanked her hand away and fell back onto the crate. Her backside and the underside of her thighs burned. That damned unicorn blood was letting her feel pain, but not giving her any muscle control. More gray forms lay on the floor around her. These weren’t clouds, they were lifeless bodies.
“What the fuck,” she cried. Her voice was loud in her head but muffled in the room. She was six different kinds of messed up.
“What the ever-loving fuck is going on?”
“Jenny, you came across openspace. Blood vessels have ruptured in your eyes and ears. You also might have a touch of brain damage. I’m not sure yet. The Well Actually is firing on us. I promise, I’ll be right with you,” said Mary. Jenny felt the spin of the room as Mary took evasive maneuvers. She rolled off the crate and into a tangle of stiff arms and legs that snagged in her knickers and her hair. The rain she’d been feeling was the moisture dripping off the bodies above her. She gagged and spat.
“I’m turning off gravity so you can move better,” said Mary.
“Grab onto something.” The gravity alarm sounded and Jenny dug her fingers under a strap tie mounted to the floor. Mary twisted her fuselage and Jenny’s slippery fingers couldn’t hang onto the hook. She and the bodies careened toward the ceiling. Jenny landed on a woman who cushioned her from getting a face full of bulkhead.
“Thank you, ma’am,” she muttered, wondering if the awful taste in her mouth was rotting corpse or the dry mouth from the vacuum.
Her vision had cleared enough that she could count thirteen corpses in the room with her. The last few minutes were coming back to her in bits and pieces. She’d felt the burn of hard vacuum on her skin once again. But her back and legs were pockmarked with blisters as if she’d been burned. She didn’t remember that. She was in bad shape, even by her own admittedly low standards.
Mary straightened out and continued to fly in long, erratic patterns. Not enough to slam her into the walls, but enough to keep the pursuing ship from getting a weapons lock on them. Jenny guessed that the Stagecoach Mary was faster than the Well Actually by a factor of ten.
“We’re out of projectile weapons range, but they have a laser cannon mounted on their hull. So that’s dismaying. How are you feeling?” asked Mary.
“Amazing. Just peachy,” croaked Jenny. Her old Reason ship, the Pandey, would have taken her at her word, but Mary had learned to translate the stoic phrasing of a starship captain.
“That bad? Can you get to the medbay on your own?” asked the ship.
“If you keep the gravity off,” said Jenny. She pulled herself along the ceiling, hand over hand. It was a good thing momentum kept her going, because her muscles were tight and swollen.
“What the hell did I do to myself? I only remember pieces,” she asked.
“First, you boarded an unfamiliar ship in search of unicorn horn. (Which I have noted in the logs was against my explicit recommendation.) Then you narrowly avoided drinking poisoned tea, but then you fell fifteen stories, got kidnapped, froze yourself to the point of death, made me and the Well Actually electrocute you, then you floated nearly naked across openspace to get back to me.”
“Typical Tuesday,” said Jenny.
“It’s Saturday,” replied Mary.
“In space, it’s any day you want it to be,” said Jenny, searching through corpses for the one she prayed had made it in here. She dipped into nullspace and saw the white glow coming from a stack of bodies wedged between cargo crates. The effort of it made her dizzy.
“Get to the medbay, please,” said Mary insistently. Jenny had never heard her use the word “please.” It gave her chills.
“I’m heading to the cockpit after I find someone,” said Jenny.
“That is not what I said at all,” replied Mary.
Jenny pushed through the corpses. They were slimy with moisture as they thawed. And then there was the matter of the smell. Most of these people had been frozen right after the moment of death, so they weren’t decomposing, but there was still a stale and freezer-burned meaty taint to the air. A miasma that coated her throat.
She found the one she was looking for. Her hands shook so badly that she could barely get hold of the elf’s arm. She pushed Kamis over to the wall and locked his stiff torso into a five-point harness. She wasn’t going to let him go anywhere until she got that horn out.
Mary lurched left by a few hundred meters. Jenny hung onto Kamis’ straps as the corpses slammed into the opposite wall. Her arms nearly pulled out of their sockets.
“Mary!” she shouted.
“I’m sorry, they’re firing at us. I have it under control, just get to the medbay!” yelled Mary.
The ship and accelerated in the opposite direction. Jenny found herself pressed flat against Kamis’ body as corpses thudded onto the boxes around her. Kamis belched out a stream of fetid gas into her face. Jenny retched and strained against the force to turn her head away from the foul smell. She shoved off toward the exit.
“This is under control?” Jenny asked, her voice breaking and hissing under strain. “I’m coming up there since you clearly need help.”
Mary protested but Jenny ignored her and continued down the hall toward the cockpit. Mary flipped and zagged. More than once, Jenny had to stop and grab a handhold to brace herself against the wall. As the ship spun, her vertigo became worse. She tried the old trick of breathing in through her nose and out her mouth, but her head just kept spinning. She dragged herself to the cockpit.
As the door opened, Mary turned on the viewscreen and filled it with an image from the rear cameras. The Well Actually followed, matching their path with a sloppy slowness that indicated a human pilot.
Normally, Jenny wouldn’t worry about a decrepit old ship like the Well Actually, but a laser cannon changed the rules of the game. They’d been outlawed decades ago for their wanton destruction. You’d aim for an enemy and end up scorching half of a metropolis on a nearby planet. Too hard to control and too much collateral damage to be useful in battle.
“This is not the medbay,” said Mary.
“I’m not going to lie on a cot while you get us sliced in half.”
“I think they want their bodies back Oh shit. Get in the chair and strap in,” said Mary, sounding a little out of breath. It was a subtle-but-effective indicator that she was under stress and working hard.
Jenny floated into her chair and sat down, pulling her harness snug. The skin on the backs of her thighs prickled like a hundred tiny knives. If there was any upside to all this physical trauma, it was that she could barely feel her usual aches and pains over the blinding anguish of these new injuries and the rush of adrenaline.
As long as they kept moving erratically it would be tough to get the focal point of the laser fixed on them, but even a minor hit would be devastating. Like popping a balloon.
“I’ll tell them we’ll dump the bodies and be on our way. No need to shoot. Open a channel,” said Jenny.
“To the ship or his crew?” asked Mary.
“Are you still in communication with Actually himself?” asked Jenny.
“Yes.”
“Hold that thought. I want to talk to the humans first,” said Jenny.
“Comm link established.”
“Governor Dan, I’d advise against pursuing me. I’m not going to tell the authorities on you and your little gang of people-eaters. But if you continue dogging me, I’m going to have to take action,” she said.
Governor Dan’s voice came back strained
and tight.
“Captain Perata, there was a chance – albeit a small one – that our family of believers would survive until our arrival at Jaisalmer. However, with your actions, which I pray were unintentional, you have sentenced us all to gruesome starvation in the cold grasp of space.”
“I’ll send back your bodies – we have about a dozen in my cargo hold. And by the way, taking them with me was totally accidental, I was just trying to avoid being eaten. Which is understandable, right?” she asked.
“You were dead, Captain. I felt your lack of pulse with my own consecrated hands. It is the work of Satan to have brought you back from Hell.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” said Jenny.
“You are the spawn of evil.”
“Didn’t Jesus rise from the dead? Maybe I’m Him,” ventured Jenny.
“Blasphemer. Beware of the wolf in sheep’s clothing. I’ll admit I was blinded by your pretense, Captain. You stole our food supplies. You cast our sustenance out into the ether. I thought that the Lord brought you to us, but it turns out it was Satan. You are the devil incarnate sent to test us, Jenny Perata.”
“As if I’ve never heard that before,” grumbled Jenny.
The beam of a red laser raked across openspace, streaming past her ship and hitting a natural satellite in orbit around a chilly little nearby dwarf planet. Mary hit the throttle, careening forward then down, like the initial drop of a roller coaster. Jenny’s body jerked along with her chair. The laser shut off, leaving ghostly afterimages on her retinas.
“I can do this all day,” said Jenny into the comm, swallowing down a mouthful of hot saliva. She hadn’t puked in a ship since she was a cadet. “Just take your bodies and go.”
“I’m afraid that is no longer an option,” said Govvie. “Without adequate food stores, we must move to more aggressive survival strategies. It appears that thirty people would be able to live quite comfortably in your ship for the ride to Jaisalmer.”
