Space Bound: A Dragon Soul Press Anthology

by J. E. Feldman

  "Why would he do that?"

  "You fly a prison ship for a living, and you have to ask?" Eddie scoffed. "Have you not met crazy people before? I'll bet that most people who end up being transported by you are mentally defective. That probably includes some of the guards too. But as for the why of it? I don't know. Maybe all that extreme body mod makeover is because that crap they put in the water made him think he's a mech of some kind, and he'll eventually think he doesn't need the air or heat anymore."

  "It's going to be fun trying to fall asleep with that thought in my head," Andrews said. "So, what are you suggesting? Make a break for the medbay and grab some stims?"

  "No, the last thing you probably need is more chems in your system," Eddie warned. "And with everything the captain's doing to himself, I'd say it's safe to assume that area's being monopolized."

  "So, what do we do?"

  "Finish what we started," Eddie instructed. "You've just got to be smart about it. The second you don't feel well or feel any of the stuff you felt leading up to that pass-out, that nearly got you killed, you say so. You get out of there. You hide and live to fight another day, you understand?"

  Andrews nodded.

  "Do you understand?"

  "Yes," Andrews said, annoyed at Eddie's persistence.

  "Alright, well, how are you feeling now?"

  "Not great, but as good as I think I'm going to," Andrews shrugged. "Next one?"

  "That's the spirit," Eddie said.

  Andrews found himself in another dream. A generic memory or merely wishful thinking that everything had gone back to the way it should be. He was sitting in the cockpit with the captain, monitoring controls, and doing all the mundane little things that came with the job. As the ship practically flew itself in the long stretches between stops, they found themselves often free enough to pull their seats back and play cards on the small bench between them.

  The captain's voice began to lose clarity as it always did in these dreams. Drowning in reverb and echo, distorting as it again seemed to slip out of range, sounding distant while his face was right before him. As Andrews picked up a replacement card from the deck, the captain grabbed his hand and slowly turned it over to reveal a king of hearts sitting in Andrew's palm. As he looked closer, he saw the patterns in the depicted king's clothing were moving like parts in a machine. The king was crying black oil and the heart in each corner had been replaced by turning cogs. When the captain removed his hand, Andrews realized the metal card was bolted to his hand. Rivets ran through his skin and bone. He looked to it in disgust, horrified as he raised and turned his augmented hand.

  The captain was looking him right in the eyes and talking in his distant, distorted voice. When Andrews woke up, he could still hear the voice. It was the captain talking over the comms. His voice echoed in the empty corridors while Andrews squinted tired, trying to make it out. It was clearer now that he was awake, hiding deep within a service tunnel. All the dreams of his distant voice suddenly made sense. The captain's insane broadcasted ramblings, bouncing down air ducts and finding their way to him as he slept, had been influencing his dreams.

  "Andrews…" the captain said. "Can you hear me?" There was a pause as if he was genuinely expecting an answer. "I think I'm nearly done with my upgrades," he said. "Soon I'll be able to get started on yours."

  Andrews shuddered with dread at the thought of becoming the madman's experiment.

  "I think upgrading you will get us back onto the same wavelength again, don't you? Mechanized flesh is the answer to insubordination. We will have order again. We won't need the guards and staff who stayed behind. The two of us can run Custodian One. We'll be part of the ship." The captain continued talking, repeating what he'd been saying in various rotating permutations as he seemed to get caught in a loop, as drunk people do when they try to explain something they're suddenly passionate about.

  Andrews shook his head and closed his eyes as the spiraling descent continued. "I think I'll pass, captain," he said, quietly.

  "I don't know…" Eddie said, feigning devil's advocacy. "He's still getting about after doing all that stuff to himself, so he clearly has some idea of what he's doing."

  "He has more medical training than me, at least," Andrews said as he fished the first removed injector from his pocket, while the rest of what he'd removed so far sat in a bag. He turned it in his fingers as he contemplated its contents. "But I think it's the mystery cordial holding him together somehow. If that's the case, the captain catching me now will be the one thing that'll make me regret giving up the crazy sauce."

  "That's why I think it has some military application," Eddie suggested.

  "Then why not test it on soldiers?"

  "They probably already have. Prisoners too, I'll wager. In some lab somewhere. I guess they'll want to see how it'll effect different… demographics. Like I said, I bet they'll be pissed off when they find out that the guards and staff unknowingly opted out. Not much variety of data in two test subjects, let alone one."

  "This is already a nightmare trying to avoid one non-consensual juicer. I'd hate to think how crazy this would have been with the rest still here onboard jacked up on this stuff." Andrews put the dosing unit back in his pocket. "But more than that, I'm just glad they aren't going through this too."

  "Being alone in this is exactly why it's so important that you survive this. Hopefully exposing them for doing it. If we find a safe way to do that, that is. It's not like you can just take them to court and sue them."

  Andrews shook his head bitterly. "I just better still get my damned overtime for this."

  It took weeks. Running out in short bursts, uncoupling the injectors that were dosing their water with the unknown compound, then running back into the service tunnels to hide. The captain's voice periodically taunting Andrews over the comm system, making him work all the faster. With each passing day, exhausted as he was from pushing himself, Andrews could feel himself getting better. Though, he knew he wouldn't have come far without Eddie, which meant he'd probably sustained long-term damage. He wondered if Eddie was a permanent addition as well. Or would the gaps in which he sometimes seemed to disappear grow longer and longer?

  "Eddie, how long have I got you for, do you think?" Andrews asked, after they managed a risky visit to the medbay. Clearing the water dispenser in there, Andrews took as many supplies as he could carry.

  "As long as you need me, buddy," Eddie said as Andrews made his way back to one of his hiding holes. "We're probably going to have to stick together for some time. We're going to be on the run after this. Like I said before, lab rats don't have great retirement plans. We need to sneak off this ship, and onto another one. How well do you know Uberluft-Twelve?"

  "I've never been there," Andrews admitted.

  "Then we're going to have to play it by ear. If the ship was landing on a planet, we could sneak out in a bunch of ways. Hopefully it's big enough to have a landing bay. Otherwise, things will get tricky."

  "Just a few more weeks till we find out," Andrews said. "I think."

  Andrews stayed hidden, sneaking out only for food and water. Whatever part of him had the wherewithal to sense the captain was close, seemed to filter itself through the voice of Eddie, warning him each time. The captain's voice became more erratic and desperate, screaming for Andrews across the comms, echoing down the corridors as his dosage was slowly cut off.

  On one trip out, through the storage wing, Eddie's warning came a little too late. Andrews could already hear the captain's voice, not over the comms, but in person. His metal plating clunked and scraped against the walkway.

  "Hide," was all Eddie could really suggest. The storage wing was a dead-end and a place Andrews rarely visited. All his escape routes and hiding halls worked because he'd modified hatches and grates. Here, he'd done no such work.

  "I don't know this place well enough," Andrews said in a panic, looking about the large room in which space had been maximized for supply storage. "It doesn't even hav
e service access. All the conduits and cabling are exposed." He looked up at the high-mounted external conduits.

  "The airduct," Eddie whispered, making Andrews look up. "Use the airduct."

  Andrews quickly climbed the large cube crates to where a black airduct emerged from the bulkhead. It ran horizontally around half the room, suspended two meters from the floor by brackets. He fished a small cylinder tool from his bag and held it over each fastener. Thumbing the button at the end of the grip to retract them all, he pocketed them. The captain's eyesight would have to be particularly sharp to spot the vent being fastened from the wrong side.

  "Hurry," Eddie warned. "He's getting close."

  Pushing the vent back into the hole it covered, on an angle, Andrews quickly climbed into the tight passage. He could barely move, but managed to get the vent in place. It was then that he noticed he'd bent it. All he could do, as the clunking steps of the captain drew close, was lean it against the hole from the inside and lie still, peering at the entrance to the room.

  It was the first proper look Andrews got at the captain, as he walked into the storage bay. Metal plating had been fixed to his frame, screwed through his flesh, while metal-shelled cables went in and out through his skin. He looked as if he'd had a total rehaul by a cyberneticist who worked in a scrapyard. He had become a walking nightmare of self-mutilation. Andrews had next to no medical training, but he recognized the tools and equipment that had been welded to the captain's patchwork carapace. A long-curved blade for cracking open chests in autopsies on one arm, a bone saw on the other, with scalpel blades, and a variety of parts that had been separated from their original tools scattered about his body's new shell.

  The only weapons on the ship were shock batons, and Andrews had told Eddie that he had never intended to get close enough to use them, when they discussed safety measures. A choice he now regretted as he watched the captain's face sniff the air.

  "When was the last time you washed, Andrews?" the captain asked the seemingly empty room, as he stepped into the middle of it. "I know you're close. You leave a trail wherever you go, but this is the strongest it's been in a while." He sniffed at the air again and held out his metal-infused arms. "I've made some adjustments to the uniform. I need to bring you in for a fitting."

  Andrews wanted to shimmy his way through the duct to another room and keep going, but he wasn't sure how well he'd manage the bends, how quietly he could pull it off, or what would happen if he released the bent vent plate. Eddie only ever seemed to responded to spoken words, not thoughts, so he couldn't ask for suggestions and Eddie wasn't offering any.

  "Let's do this professionally for once," the captain said, slurring his words as he scanned the room. He seemed to take in every detail as his eyes flicked erratically about his slowly turning face. "Just come out, and we can march down to the medbay and get started." His head stopped and seemed to fixate on the unfastened vent.

  There were so many things Andrews wanted to say. He wanted desperately to reach out to the man he had served under for years and try to explain what was happening to him, even though he didn't really have the complete picture himself. Now, as the captain began to move slowly towards him with curiosity washing across a face buried under all the wires and cables that were threaded through it, Andrews surmised he was never getting him back.

  "Nipping out for a little fresh air, eh?" the captain said, with a grin of realization. He moved with surprising speed as he lunged forward, shoving the crates aside as he barged them. Andrews released the vent plate and began to squirm, shimmying his way backwards, away from the flailing captain. His plated arms rose and crashed into the vent, narrowly missing Andrews as the duct dented inwards. The captain smashed at the duct again, almost completely collapsing it in with a savage dual blow on either side of the vent. Plunged into darkness, Andrews could no longer see anything as he squirmed, feet first, through the narrow square passage. He pushed himself backwards with his flat palms against the close walls about him. The captain yelled angrily and savagely, as with a third blow the whole duct shook, snapping its support brackets. Now Andrews was pushing himself upwards as well as backwards as the ducting before him was pulled downward.

  Light began to pour back in from behind him as the section of duct swung down, tearing away from the rest of the conduit. Unable to support himself upside down, Andrews fell to the crumpled end that had hit the floor. The twisted metal caught his forearms, painfully cutting and stabbing them as they shielded his face, falling with the full weight of his body behind it. His knees and feet hit the duct walls in the fall, eliminating any doubt that he was hiding within. He tried to push himself up, but he wasn't going to climb vertically out, upside down, feet first.

  Andrews was thrown about once more in his square metal tubing as the captain tore the top end free. After a few jolts in several directions, his crumpled metal coffin began to vibrate, screeching as it scraped along the metal floor of the storage bay. He was being dragged away as if in a sack.

  "We could have walked," the captain said. "But if you prefer to go this way, so be it."

  "You alright?" Eddie whispered; his hushed voice buried in the surrounding noise.

  "No, not really," Andrews whispered back to the disembodied voice that followed him around. "You got any suggestions?"

  "I can barely hear you over that scraping," Eddie said to Andrews's confusion.

  The logistics of a voice in his head continued to confound Andrews. "How's this?" he asked, daring to raise his voice a little above a whisper.

  "Better, I guess," Eddie said. "We need to think of something before he straps you down and starts sewing you up with wires and drilling you full of holes."

  "Well, I'm upside-fucking-down in here, so if you can think of anything, I'd really appreciate it."

  "Talking to yourself?" the captain queried Andrews, making him realize he'd been raising his voice a little more. "That's from spending too much time alone, Andrews. You're going a little funny in the head."

  Andrews struggled to hold his position as the metal duct around him tripped over the seams in the flooring. It was agony on his arms that were taking his weight against the twisted, crumpled mess. His body banged about each time, denting the panels.

  "I think one of the panels is starting to come loose," Eddie eventually said. "But you might want to be subtle about encouraging it. It's a long walk--well, drag--to the medbay. Just put your… left knee, I think… into it, every time there's a bump."

  "Uh, alright," Andrews replied and did as instructed. He was skeptical at first, but he could feel the left side loosening a little. He worked away at it for a few minutes, timing his efforts with the raised seams in the floor.

  "Okay, you might have to pick it up a little," Eddie said. "You're not all that far from the malpractice suite."

  "Clever," Andrews muttered, as the new nickname for the medbay sank in. He managed to twist around so he could start stomping the loosening panel with his foot. Two kicks in and it almost came off.

  "That's more like it," Eddie encouraged. "Now you just have to…" He seemed to trail off, distracted. "What's going on?"

  "What do you mean?" Andrews asked confused.

  "Something's happening."

  "What kind of something?"

  "I don't know," Eddie said confused. "But I think the ship's doing something."

  "What?" Andrews asked, accidentally louder.

  "What?" the captain responded to Andrews.

  But then Andrews heard it. The proximity alarm beeping away as the captain slowed his clunking pace.

  "Station contact confirmed," the ship's computer announced over the comms. "Initiating preliminary docking protocols."

  "What?" the captain yelled. For whatever madness was occupying his waking thoughts, he at least recognized that a command procedure was being conducted without his participation. Someone, somewhere else, had seized control of the vessel under his captaincy. "What the hell is going on?"

  Andrews fell
with his entombing air duct as the captain dropped it. He slammed his whole body onto the floor without warning before the captain stomped the other end of the ducting shut. "Andrews," he angrily yelled, "you wait here. I need to check the cockpit."

  With the section of duct flat on the floor, Andrews began pushing out the busted panel, once he heard the captain's loud clunking steps diminish down the main corridor.

  "Alright, you need to get out of there," Eddie said.

  Andrews thought it was weird that he said there instead of here, but began violently stomping and punching the ducting apart from the inside. "Yeah, I'm ahead of you on that," he said, pushing himself out backwards and pulling his bag out with him. He awkwardly escaped his metal coffin and looked about the corridor in which he'd been abandoned.

  "Welcome to Uberluft Twelve," a secondary computer voice said, as docking clamps connected with the ship.

  "You remember where the security office is?" Eddie asked. "You might want to make your way there, then hide somewhere nearby."

  Andrews furrowed his brow, confused. Certain his memory was becoming more fluid, he struggled to recall anything that would necessitate a visit to that part of the ship? "Why?" he asked.

  "Look at your left forearm," Eddie reminded him.

  Andrews shook his head. He didn't need to look anymore. "Okay, I'm coming," he said, petulantly.

  The station's computer began making some announcement, but was cut off and fell silent.

  "Boarding party," Eddie whispered. "Stay out of sight. Don't let them see you. Don't let them hear you. But get here as fast as you can."

  Andrews ran the corridor until he found a hatch he'd previously modified and climbed into it. He crawled for all he was worth, through the service tunnels, dragging his bag of evidence with him through what seemed a spacious passageway after his air duct incident. He heard footsteps echoing through the corridors. Free to run out in the open, they overtook him. Sometime later, he heard yelling and what sounded like weapons’ fire.