by Lydia Hope
Dr. Delano peered at her suspiciously, like he believed her capable of witchcraft. “What business is it of yours?”
“He saved my life. I’d like to know he won’t suffer.” Instinctively, she knew she needed to keep talking to distract Delano’s attention.
“Suffering is a relative concept. If he cooperates, he won’t suffer. Much.”
It was too far for her to see, but she thought Simon’s nostrils fluttered. The orderlies kept getting him ready for transport.
“Please let him go,” Gemma begged, knowing she was wasting her breath.
Dr. Delano’s mouth turned down at the corners. “Enough with the melodrama. Get his legs buckled and let’s get moving,” he shouted at the orderlies and gave Gemma a push with his boot. She fell back on the ground like a discarded wrapper. “Kill her.”
One of the men in Dr. Delano’s entourage pulled a gun on her and cocked it, keeping her in crosshairs. All breath left her, and a childish question popped up: Would it hurt?
Simon’s feet hit the ground as he left the gurney in one powerful lunge. Chained to it by the wrists, he swung it by the chains, flattening the orderlies in charge of shackling him, swiping at the guy targeting Gemma. Eyes black and wide open, there was no question how many of his hearts were functioning - all of them were. Full blast.
Shots rang out, panicked and wide. Simon wielded the stainless steel gurney as a shield, the laser hitting it in bursts of sparks.
“Don’t shoot!” Dr. Delano yelled. “Goddamn it, I need him alive!”
Simon freed his arms by way of popping the chains free of their moorings and sent the gurney flying like a frisbee at the largest cluster of the orderlies before they had a chance to regroup.
“You always wanted to see a Rix defender fight,” he addressed Delano in a thickly accented gravelly voice. “Watch.”
In a blur of motion, he traced into the thick of the crowd and began shredding them. Blood spurted like geysers in all directions, the smell of it saturating the air. Men cried in agony. And then Simon’s trademark, a ripped-out head, flew from the melee to rest at Dr. Delano’s feet, its sightless eyes still full of horror and pain.
Dr. Delano stumbled back, jaw working, hand groping for a weapon. He pulled it out from a holster at his back, fumbling with it. It took him several clumsy attempts to take the safety off.
When he raised it to aim at Simon, Gemma was ready. She swung the metal gurney leg and connected it with the back of Dr. Delano’s head.
He pitched forward and fell. The gun clattered to the ground. Blood slowly spread around his head.
Stunned by what she’d done, Gemma stared at Dr. Delano’s motionless form. The sounds of fighting receded. She was frozen in time, seeing nothing beyond the growing pool of blood, knowing that this time she’d created this horror.
Someone grasped the gurney leg she was still holding, and panicked, she lashed out at her attacker - or tried to. The hold was concrete. She went berserk, kicking and clawing at the tall body until finally, he lifted her off the ground and shook her. Hard.
“Breathe,” he said, his voice low and familiar.
She let out a whooshing breath. “Simon.”
He set her down, and she fell against his chest. “Simon.” His tall body with its solid expanse of muscle felt like heaven. His unique smell hit her nostrils, and even in this charged moment, she felt attraction so powerful that her legs trembled at the knees with it. She pressed her cheek to his chest and registered the sophisticated motor of his synchronized cardiovascular system in high gear. Having her body molded to his felt like home.
“Thank you,” he said, hoarse, and tightened his arms around Gemma.
“Welcome.” She took a shuddering breath in. “Is he dead?”
“Probably. It was a good swing.”
She peered around. Dark shapes of the bodies littered the ground.
“Are they all… dead?”
“Yes.”
“There were so many of them. It seemed like an army.”
“There were many,” he acknowledged, “but they didn’t shoot, and that made it easy.”
She swallowed audibly and glanced at Dr. Delano. Did she really kill him? The thought made her sick.
He followed her gaze. “You kicked ass,” he murmured.
“I feel terrible. Does it get easier with practice? When did you stop caring, Simon? After your second kill? Tenth?”
He gave it a thought. “We Rix hunt our food. I killed my first wildebeest when I was five. By the time I reached adulthood, the sight of death was nothing new.”
“Those were animals. This is a rational being. A person.”
“Bleeds the same to me.”
Gemma burrowed her face in the folds of his shirt. “When you say things like this, I feel like the ground shifts beneath my feet. I am not of your kind. I abhor violence. I am not strong.”
“You are resilient. You do what needs to be done. You keep going even when your body is failing you. You have such a bright spirit, Gemma. It guides me, and makes me feel strong.”
“You are strong, silly.”
“My strength is fed by a purpose. You’re the purpose.”
“Oh, Simon…”
Their bodies stayed pressed to each other for several moments that were too precious to waste, but neither made a move to break apart.
“Are you hurt?” Gemma mumbled into his chest.
“Only scratches.” He gently but firmly unlatched her from his chest. “I will let you doctor me later. I promise.”
She took several steps on her own, a little unsteady. “Can we go home now? My head hurts something awful.” She was spent. The idea of returning to the Tana-Tana’s hovel and crawling into bed began to eclipse all other thoughts that crowded together in her feverish brain.
With Simon carrying her, they made it to the junkyard without running into trouble. But all was not well.
A distant rumble of approaching reinforcements penetrated the din in Gemma’s ears. Her eyes flew to Simon’s face in alarm.
Without saying a word, Simon kept on walking past the Tana-Tana’s hideout, heading down a familiar path among the junkyard’s unique array of rusty and jagged sepulchral sculptures. He didn’t stop until they reached Butan.
“They are still looking for us,” Gemma said with dismay when the sounds of manhunt reached this remote place.
He already knew. “They are heavy-duty militant forces, spread out and working a grid pattern. The prison bust was a big deal.”
“Then we have nowhere to hide.” She wanted to cry. This nightmare would never end.
Simon put a lid on Gemma’s bubbling distress with a curt, “We’re done here. Get inside. We’re flying out.”
“Inside Butan?” She stared stupidly at the black cylindrical shape rising from the darkness. “You never said… about today.”
Everything slowed down. She smelled the crisp winter air tinted by the smog, so familiar and suddenly so very dear.
They were leaving Earth today?
A gentle touch of the clawed fingers on the side of her face brought him back in focus. “We’re surrounded. And liquid nitrogen evaporates fast. Now’s the time.”
She blinked. “But it’s dark!”
She thought he smiled. “It’s darker where we’re going.” He hesitated a tiny bit, unwittingly showing a hint of emotion. “You’ve been through so much, beautiful Gemma. Stay strong for me for just a while longer.”
“Funny. You never called me that,” she smiled, momentarily distracted as had likely been his intent.
“No, because that asshole Arc called you that. But that’s how I always thought of you. My beautiful Gemma.”
He opened his palm, inviting her to take his hand. Taking his hand meant rolling the dice for an unknown future, going on a trip into open space neither of them was likely to survive.
Not taking his hand never crossed her mind.
Their hands linked. She sighed, feeling all out of sorts. The
person she had once been was slowly slipping away into the past, and a new Gemma was emerging, more adventurous, a risk-taker with a thirst to live and love so powerful she hardly recognized herself.
Simon yanked the door open, and she clambered inside the dimly lit interior registering the smell of metals, plastics, and musty insulation. He got in after her and shut the door, sealing it by turning the levers.
“Buckle in. The oxygen mask is attached to your chair. Get it ready, you will need air at takeoff.”
Gemma did as he instructed by unhooking the mask from its slot on the side of her chair. She held it in her sweaty hands, telling herself that there was nothing to be afraid of.
Something whirred, and she heard Simon open and close another door and flip switches. Butan shuddered, and deep down, the rumbling started.
He dropped into the captain’s chair next to her, buckled in as well, and busily worked the control panel.
“Strap the mask to your face.”
She did and gripped the chair armrests tight.
“What do I do now?”
He didn’t look at her, preoccupied with what he was doing. The rumbling of the engines had become a roar.
“Count backward from fifteen.”
Sweat broke all over Gemma’s body. The air got thin despite the supplemental feed she was getting through the mask tube.
“Fifteen, fourteen,” she moved her lips to stave off a severe case of hyperventilation.
“Thirteen, twelve.”
Something pinged against the side of the ship.
“They’re shooting at us,” Simon’s voice was tight, the first sign that he was nervous.
She gripped the chair handles tighter, her back drawn taut as a bowstring.
“Eleven, ten, nine,” she kept counting, the correct sequence of numbers critically important to maintain. If she stumbled, she’d lose it.
Butan’s frame was shuddering faster and faster as the spinning engines gained the maximum velocity, and then the rumble evened out, became a fine-tuned whine. The shakes in the walls smoothed out to a whizzing vibration.
“Eight, seven, six.”
She registered the ship’s outer layer being peppered by lasers and bullets. She prayed the sheet metal was thick enough to remain intact.
“Five, four, three.”
Something large hit them, making the entire contraption wobble. Simon swore in his language, rough and guttural. Gemma closed her eyes.
“Two…”
Butan lurched as if a solid kick was applied to its backside, and left the ground.
I haven’t finished counting, was Gemma’s fleeting thought before acceleration sucked all concerns from her brain except for one: breathe. Her chest felt pressed inwards as if an elephant suddenly came and sat down on her. She couldn’t move, couldn't even cry out in distress. All she could do was stay plastered to her seat by laws of physics and rattle along this hellish carnival ride.
A bone-tingling scream of slipstream outside the cabin added a fitting soundtrack to the infernal experience.
When her body could take no more of this torture, the invisible band that was holding them earth-bound popped, and the pressure disappeared. The slipstream wail vanished. She was falling, falling…
“Easy, Gemma. We’re fine. We made it. You’re fine,” Simon’s words penetrated Gemma’s crazed brain, and she stopped screaming. The touch of his hand on her knee grounded her like no words ever could. She peeled off her hands from the armrests and clutched his fingers like they were life itself.
He briefly glanced at her, all his attention focused on the task of piloting. “You aren’t falling. You’re weightless.”
He gently tugged his hand away, needing it to operate the ship. She breathed through the mask, in and out. She felt weird, queasy. Taking stock of her surroundings, she found things inside their confined space to be normal, except that the stash of food supplies she’d piled on the floor but had never gotten a chance to secure was now suspended in the air. Simon’s body was, like hers, strapped to the chair, but his braid was floating level with his head.
He emanated tension.
“What’s wrong?” she spoke into the mask. Her voice worked. She hadn't been sure until she spoke.
“We almost hit one of Earth’s satellites.” He sounded outraged.
“Why? What happened?” Gemma had no idea they needed to watch out for satellites.
“Our navigation system has a margin of error in the angle.”
“How big is the error?”
“Not huge, but even a fraction of a discrepancy can result in a major course shift.”
Gemma digested that information, a bit distracted by rising nausea.
Simon typed a series of commands on the protruding keyboard decorated with unfamiliar symbols.
“The collision warning doesn’t seem to be working. We were almost upon that satellite when I realized it wouldn’t self-correct. This ship is a piece of junk.”
“Well, considering it came from a junkyard… I am amazed it can fly.”
As she said it, the reality hit, and the wonder of it nearly took Gemma’s breath away. She turned to face him, swallowing the annoying feeling of sickness.
“Simon, we’re in space!” She couldn't disguise her elation and her sheer awe. “You did it! You got us up and out.”
He was silent for a long time. “That was the easy part.”
Chapter 31
Gemma pushed herself off the wall with just enough force to float away from the calendar where she’d marked off another day. Since the paper-and-pencil version hadn’t made it on the trip to space due to their hasty departure, she improvised by scratching the numbers onto a metal plate with a knife.
The production of keeping a calendar in deep space was an exercise in futility and approximation. How did you mark a new day when there was no sun to rise over the earth in the morning, and no earth?
“Time is nothing but a measure of the distance traveled,” Simon had told her once after she had vented her frustrations. “On a planet, it’s usually the planet’s full orbit around its star. It’s repetitive, it’s constant, and therefore it works well as a benchmark.”
“But how do you measure time here?”
“You don’t.”
“Then how do you judge the distance we’ve traveled?” It was all too mind-boggling.
“Butan uses autonomous radio navigation to stay on course.” Simon had briefly explained to her how that worked. “It’s a time-tested technology, universally accepted as accurate and reliable. Except nothing is accurate or reliable on Butan,” he had added sourly.
Gemma estimated they had been traversing the space for three months, give or take.
Forced to rely on her internal clock, she marked a new day on the calendar every time she woke up from a “good night's” sleep. Since her body demanded rest at regular intervals, she figured she could trust those inborn cycles. That system worked fine except for the days when bouts of nausea interrupted her normal sleep pattern and threw her time-marking routine off track.
Gemma floated to one of the two small portholes located at the back of the ship. Thick sealed crystals acted as windows, protecting their craft’s interior from the harsh conditions of the open space while allowing a glimpse of the great cosmic beyond. Not that there was much to stare at besides the vast inky darkness dotted by white lights of the stars. Gemma looked out nonetheless, unimpressed by the sight, wishing for a glimpse of familiar images like trees, and buildings, and clear blue skies.
Her stomach gave a familiar weak somersault.
Evidently, she was not a born space cadet. Weightlessness caused her to be sick, and she stayed sick pretty much the entire time. Space was a bizarre place, and her body refused to cooperate where there was no ‘down.’
Simon had said that some people were sensitive like that.
“But you can handle it. Thousands of others can,” she had groused.
“Most can. The brain can be train
ed to not need a fixed anchor to position itself. But some can’t get used to it.”
Rix eyes weren’t designed to convey a wealth of emotion, but she had thought she detected pity in Simon’s when he said that.
Aren’t I special.
Ignoring the persistent queasiness, Gemma did a somersault that brought her close to the ‘pantry’ where they stored food. She had organized and reorganized the strips of dried chicken meat, dehydrated apple slices, croutons, and several varieties of canned goods multiple times, out of sheer boredom rather than the need to inventory their supplies. She knew exactly how fast their stash was diminishing.
She fingered several ration-sized airtight pouches before selecting one for herself. Simon wouldn’t want any now, as he ate so little.
Gemma chewed on the unappetizing dry food and took a small sip of water. It tasted stale. The water provisions were solely for her benefit, and whereas the food should comfortably last them for about a year, the water was worth its weight in gold. There wasn’t enough of it, and she knew it. She had meant to procure more storage containers to fill before they took off, but the time had run out.
She suppressed a sigh, chasing the worry away for there was absolutely nothing she could do about the water.
Life in this confined space was boring, but with Simon by her side, she didn’t feel frightened or lonely. They were comfortable in each other’s company, their conversations meaningful and their silences peaceful.
Gemma had asked him to teach her Rix language, and listening to her pronunciation provided an unending source of entertainment for him.
“I know, I have no aptitude for languages,” she always felt frustrated at the end of their sessions.
“You’re doing better. I can hear progress.”
“You’re such a liar.”
“How do you know? I’m the teacher. I get to tell you how you’re doing, and you are to believe me.”
“How can I improve if you aren’t being honest? Listen, here’s an idea! Do you have deaf people on Enzomora? Maybe I can learn your sign language.”
“Not with the five fingers you can’t.”
