“Jesus Christ, you like this stuff?”
“It’s Serafinowicz. You can’t get better—”
Masao tossed the bottle over his shoulder. It shattered against the wall with a piercing crash, sending glass and liquid everywhere. Roan cringed and clutched his hair, looking wide-eyed at his (former) copilot.
“You’ll wake everyone up! Remember that guy who dropped the toolbox last week?”
“Yeah.” Masao stood and clasped his arms on the shoulders of Roan. It was the first time Roan could remember Masao touching him. Was the man drunk himself? “Nick, look. You’re making the right decision. You need to go to this planet and find whatever’s there. The origin of life, Atlantis, Eden, God, whatever. Don’t just do it for you. Do it for humanity. Maybe all the species will learn to live in harmony, just like your friend David keeps saying.”
Roan shook his head. “A pipe dream, Masao. We humans all know we’re part of the same species, yet we still kill each other. Once we nuked a third of our own planet. So what hope is there for four species to come together?”
“Listen. I didn’t know this Aaron well. Saw him maybe once or twice when he came on the Dunnock. But I remember him mentioning where his family came from. Some island country in the western hemisphere that’s now covered in nuclear fallout. He had nothing growing up, not even a bucket to piss in. But he had the stars. That was enough for him. And by God, he became something. Even the Japanese grew to like him. And we don’t like foreigners.”
“Masao…”
“Listen. You gotta prove his life’s work was right. You gotta make that story have a happy ending. When someone goes from nothing into something they better damn well amount to something great. Otherwise, you end up like me. Someone who wasted his life. Who could have been something.”
“Masao, come on now…”
Masao shoved his fat finger in Roan’s face. “Don’t say ‘come on, Masao.’ Just do what you have to do. Go to Kel and tell her you’re coming with her and David to this planet. That’ll at least give you a few months to sort out whatever the two of you had. I don’t know if you can salvage it. Maybe you two will be wandering souls forever. But you will never know unless you talk to her. And unless you be the initiator.
“Take it from me, Nick. Talking’s good, it lets both you and her know what you’re thinking. Too many times in the past I’ve let silence take over and it comes back to haunts me. It’s the stuff regrets are made of.”
In reality, Roan could’ve gotten that spiel from any crewman on the ship, or even an advice columnist in any of the global rags. Coming from Masao Mori, whose idea of a relationship was midnight to dawn followed by a there’s the door, the advice didn’t exactly exude credibility. And yet Roan knew Masao well enough to know the advice was sincere. The fat man was always looking for love. He didn’t get it from his Japanese parents, he didn’t get it from the Euros he grew up with, and he didn’t get it from the Company. But he knew it when he saw it.
“Masao, what can I say…thank you for that.”
The washer/dryer buzzed. The noise was startling. They both leapt up from their intimate moment.
“Someone’s clothes are done,” Masao said.
Roan raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you say they were yours?”
“They’re mine.” Both men turned to the door. Sundar Kher stood there, holding a basket. The young Sikh was consistently mystified by the two stowaways on the Colobus, and as usual he wore a look of surprise on his face.
“We were just going,” Masao said. Roan nodded and the two of them made for the exit. Roan grinned at the Sikh crewman and noticed he was staring at the glass and the alcohol on the floor.
“Sorry about that,” Roan said. “We’ll clean it in the morning.”
Sundar watched them warily.
In the hallway, Masao clasped his hand around Roan’s back as the two of them walked.
“So, you going to see Kel?” he asked.
“Not now. She’s probably asleep.”
“Ah, right. Speaking of sleep, we should probably do that, too.”
“Right you are. Let’s get you back to your quarters, ol’ drunky boy.”
They rounded some corridors.
“Masao?”
“Yes?”
“You followed me to the laundry room, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, ever since you took the liquor from the mess hall.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Imitation is the highest form of flattery, captain.”
Chapter 16
Morning. Oh six hundred.
Roan hoped to find Kel in the cockpit. She was a notoriously early riser—he remembered that well. But when Roan arrived at the front of the ship, Kel’s cot and yoga mat were leaning against the wall, bed sheets tied in a roll beside them. She sometimes slept outside the cockpit, away from the distracting beeps but still where she could be awakened by an alarm.
Roan knocked, thinking she’d already be at the controls of the ship. The cockpit door creaked open—a very tired and surprised Joseph was at the other side. The African crewman, busy doing a diagnostic on the flight controls, said Kel had gone to the cargo bay.
There weren’t that many things she could be doing in the cargo bay, except visiting the prisoner. For a month they’d kept the Kotaran locked up there.
Roan jogged through the quiet corridors of the Colobus. Most of the systems on the ship could be automated for a short period, so apart from one or two people who grudgingly volunteered for the night shift, there wasn’t much reason for people to be up at this early hour. And with most of the crew dead, it wasn’t reasonable to expect a night shift to even exist. He shuddered as he thought back to the carnage of a month ago. The blood and gore was long ago cleaned up, and the Kotaran bodies jettisoned out the airlock—but the presence of death remained.
He entered the cargo bay and descended a gangplank to the bay floor, where the container crates were neatly stacked and ordered. Low voices were coming from the prison crate. It was a red one that had been emptied of its cargo of pulse generators before being converted into a holding cell.
Jasper nodded as Roan passed. Jasper was one of the few crewmen willing to stay up at night and keep a pistol squarely trained on the doors of the crate. He and Roan had gotten past the days where they would scowl at each other as they passed in the hallways. Jasper was no longer just a thug with a wrench. Roan replied with a nod of his own and stepped on the crate, which had a ceiling barely high enough for him.
Kel turned and let out an exasperated sigh. She had been conferring with the doctor, Moira Kazen. They looked as though they’d just been dragged out of bed. Kel had her captain’s jacket pulled over a tank top and the leggings she wore to sleep, while Moira wore a crumpled lab coat half-buttoned over her body.
“Roan,” Kel sighed. “We don’t have a crate ready for you, but we can have one prepared later today.”
“Hardy har.” Roan couldn’t help but frown. Kel looked worn out. A month of being captain on a severely understaffed ship had added lines to her face and eroded the glint that first Roan to her. She’d become the mother to thirteen men and women and a Kotaran in four weeks, often acting as both captain and copilot and even rolling up her sleeves to do maintenance. They’d both kept their distance during this time.
“Look, Kel, I wanted to talk with you.”
Doctor Moira rolled her eyes, which were deep set and dark against her stern face. She and Roan hadn’t gotten along very well, and Roan couldn’t help but think this was because of her frequent talks with Kel. Being the only women on a month-long voyage kind of brought you together. Obviously, Roan had interrupted the two in the middle of such a conversation, and neither handled interruptions well.
“Talk, Nick?” Kel asked. “About what? What can we talk about at six in the morning?”
Roan shot a glance at Moira. He didn’t want to speak in front of company, but he might as well improvise. “Well, for starters, you could tell me wh
at you’re doing here.”
“Ship’s business,” Moira said, a bottle of pills crinkling about as she waved her hands. “Nothing that concerns you.”
“I’m a crew member on this ship.”
That made Moira chuckle. “Oh? So part-time engineer and full-time stowaway counts now?”
Kel threw her hands up. “Please, everyone! No fights this early.” Kel was skilled at playing the negotiator by now. “Nick, we can talk later. Honest. I’m in the middle of something and it would be extremely helpful if you came back at another time.”
Roan did his best to peek around at the metal door behind them, partially open, into the Kotaran’s chamber. He thought he saw movement in there but the room beyond was dark. “No, really,” Roan persisted, “I want to know what you’re doing here. You’re not, you know…seeing the Kotaran in there, are you?”
Moira rubbed her forehead. Kel just glared. “Seeing him?” Kel spat. “You’re very persistent, Roan. Yes, I am trying to make you jealous with this seven-foot-tall demon alien. How did you know? Since you’re a captain, can you do us the honor of marrying us?”
“Maybe the good doctor could help you out. Moira could even give you some advice about Kotaran physiology, I’m sure.”
Now Moira was glaring.
“You’ve had enough time to study him,” Roan continued. “Or have you been too busy pumping him full of drugs?” He gave a long, hard look at the pills Moira was hiding in her left hand, the pills she had now slid into the pocket of her lab coat.
“You know, I could call Jasper in here.” Kel began to circle Roan. “Maybe you could have a chat with him.”
Why did he even come down here, Roan thought? The hostility continued. “Jasper’s got my back, Kel. Come on. Tell me why you so urgently need to see the Kotaran. Does he know we’re near Bauxa?” A groan and a clang rattled from the part of the crate where the Kotaran had been sealed off. Roan turned quickly to the door, wondering what had become of the prisoner since he’d last seen him weeks ago.
Moira clucked. “Shush, you idiot!”
“What?”
Kel held her finger to her lips, like a teacher shushing a student. “Haven’t you seen how big their ears are?”
“Oh, right. So he can hear me?”
“Yes.”
“No point in having him eavesdrop, then.” He’d come here wanting to talk to Kel, but the pull of the Kotaran was too great to ignore. Leaving the two women behind, Roan made a move for the doorway to the prisoner’s room. Both women grabbed his arms before he could cross the threshold.
“Wait!” Moira cried. So something was going on. He threw a bemused look back at the women preventing him from crossing into the unknown. Moira’s face indicated she knew Roan was going in there with or without an explanation, and she sighed. “I value human life, Mr. Roan, so I might as well say this to prevent you from doing anything stupid. We’d rather you not visit the prisoner now.”
“Why?”
“For one thing, we have him doped up pretty good. He’s in no mood to talk coherently.”
“He sounds pretty coherent. For a Kotaran.”
Moira crossed her hands and picked up an electronic medical board. “Well, the effectiveness of our drugs fluctuates. We gave him a bunch of shots last night, pills crushed in his food. Diprivan, flunitgen, govinic.” Moira pushed the board to her chest. She lowered her voice. “We’ve been doing this for some time now, in order to keep him from escaping.”
“How’d you do that? He could probably tear your head off.”
Moira flashed a look at Kel. “Well, he hasn’t really been lucid for a month now. We’ve been constantly drugging him. We had no other choice, really.”
If that was so, Roan thought, the guy’s mind was probably a pile of mush now. “Shouldn’t he kill himself so as to not give away information? Isn’t that the Kotaran code?”
Kel shook her head. “That would mean weakness, because it would imply he could give up information. Instead, from what I’ve been able to read about their race, he wants to stay alive because he wants to complete his mission of killing us.”
It may have been early in the morning, but the news was still sobering for Roan. He needed to talk with that Kotaran, these ladies be damned. Since none were grabbing his coat sleeves anymore, he made for the door. Moira started to protest but Kel shushed her, and Roan pushed aside the metal hatch and stepped into the prisoner’s chamber. He yanked a chain to illuminate a bulb dangling from the ceiling.
Roan knew what to expect from his previous visit three weeks ago: a grimy third of a container outfitted to hold an alien of such large stature, a place where thick metal bars would have come in real handy. The Kotaran himself was manacled to hooks in the wall with chains meant to tie down valuables. This setup seemed to work well in the container, but if those chains were ever broken, only two doors stood between him and the rest of the Colobus.
The Kotaran was sitting on the floor, his eyes boring into Roan. The drugs, Roan thought, appeared to be having a mild effect at best. He appeared not only aware of his surroundings but also angry: his nostrils were flaring rapidly, his teeth were bared, and his tail was thumping every few seconds under his feet. He was resting his arms on his knees, leaving the chains in full view. If he were anything but a Kotaran, Roan would’ve thought he was doing so in order to demonstrate the cruel conditions he was being held in. His tunic and vest were the same since the day he boarded—the Colobus had no spare clothes, let alone anything that would fit the prisoner. In the air was the vaguely-mango scent of a freshener that masked the Kotaran’s odor as well as the smell from his chamber pot.
Roan stood in the doorway, hoping the Kotaran would speak first. He stood there for a few moments, watching the alien, and realized that Moira and Kel were waiting behind him to see what he would do.
“Does he have a name?” Roan asked, to no one in particular. If the Kotaran answered, all the better.
“No idea,” Kel said.
“He had a datapad and a communicator on him,” Moira said, “But we can’t unlock either one. David could probably read them if we could.” No name, no decipherable identification. No way to begin a friendly heart-to-heart.
“I know he speaks English,” Roan said. He lifted his chin up in the direction of the Kotaran, believing that would indicate he was talking to the alien. “You speak English, don’t you, Kotaran?” Nothing. “Answer me!”
All the Kotaran did was grunt and jerk on his chains. In the enclosed container, the rattling was deafening.
“I know he speaks English,” Roan reiterated to the women. Moira rolled her eyes like this was another in a line of things that Roan needn’t blather about.
“We know that, too,” Moira said. “He’s talked to us every time we’ve been in here conducting our…interrogations. Mostly he speaks Kotaran, but that doesn’t stop him from dropping a few threats or curses our way in English.” The prisoner growled again, apparently aware, despite the drugs, that the three were discussing him.
“Why don’t the drugs seem to be working?” Roan asked.
Kel shook her head. “Actually, that’s why I came down here this morning. I wanted to get him talking before we reached…well, I guess he already knows. Before we reach Bauxa. We’re going to hand him off to the authorities there.”
“We are?”
“You bet. We got into close com range of the planet a few days ago. I sent a message—along with David’s help—to someone we think can help us on that planet. It was encrypted, of course, in case our friends behind us listened in. The Bauxens have agreed to take the prisoner.”
“Really? Just like that?”
“What else would we do with him?”
Roan regarded a tray near the Kotaran, with biscuits and a meager slice of ham sitting untouched by his feet. “Feeding time already?”
“We fed him early today. He only eats when we’re not here,” Moira said.
Roan took a few steps forward, inching his way
toward the prisoner. He imagined himself to have crossed into the prisoner’s “kill zone,” the personal space where it was dangerous to stand. Since there could be an attack at any moment, Roan kept his hands clasped in front of him, ready to defend his body.
“Kel, what information did you expect him to provide?”
“Well, I don’t really know. I hoped he could tell us who exactly was chasing us, and what they knew.”
“Did you ask nicely? Or pump him with more drugs?” The Kotaran’s eyes followed Roan’s every move.
“I asked him, while he was under relaxing drugs. No response. So I had Moira here put him under some anti-inhibiting stuff—Pablinol, mostly—but he started talking in gibberish…excuse me, Kotaran. And then I wasn’t able to get anything from him. He talked too fast for David to translate.”
Now barely four feet from the Kotaran, well within the range for getting his nose bit off, Roan crouched and faced the alien, who met his eyes. He heard deep breathing from the Kotaran, almost wheezing but possibly just his normal breathing. There was the faint beating of a heart, too, and Roan wondered if it was his or the Kotaran’s. In truth, no sane man would do what Roan was doing. He wanted to impress Kel with his courage, and the women were allowing him to—well, the women probably wanted to see what his plan was.
“Tell me,” Roan said to the Kotaran, “Why do you want to kill us?”
First, Roan felt the lightning-quick chop of the Kotaran’s hand. He would’ve been knocked back had the Kotaran not grabbed Roan’s ears and held the human’s head firmly in front of his face. As the Kotaran lunged, his chains rippled to the wall and rattled the sides of the container. Moira and Kel’s yelling was muffled by the Kotaran’s grip on his ears.
“Blasphemer,” the Kotaran growled. It was more of a statement than a designation. “I remember.” Roan recalled what he’d said a month ago over the engine room intercom, about the Kotaran gods being bull. Oddly enough didn’t regret a word of it. He was terrified about its repercussions, though. And at the thought of his skull being crushed in this guy’s claws.
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