Memory's Exile

by Anna Gaffey

  A crackle over the comm line. “Yes, I’m here,” Con said, but his voice was distorted. He said something else, but it was lost in the razoring fizz of the ether.

  “Okay! We’ve got you. Okay? Rachel?”

  “You pushed me, Jake.”

  Jake stumbled over his crumpled suit. Catching his balance, he leaned his forehead against the wall. “I don’t remember that.”

  A dry laugh. “Whatever you say.”

  “I don’t. I…” Santos sounded so normal, so calm. His legs threatened to drop under him, and Jake pressed his fists against his face, against the cold metal of the wall. He imagined Lindy and Kai and Con on the comm, hanging mute and breathless on their words. He wondered if this was how he had been after the accident with Restore, on Earth, if he had been just as halting and uselessly recalcitrant in the aftermath. “I told you not to bring me out there.”

  “Kicked me off.” She gave a sobbing gasp of a laugh, and it gutted him. “Didn’t think you had it in you, not really. Stupid of me.”

  “Rachel, please.”

  “Going to die.”

  “No, no, no. You’re okay. We’re talking. I’ll get you back. Just—tell me what you’re doing.”

  “Spinning.” Another breath rasped over the comm. “I’m slowing, though. Been venting oxygen. Small bits. Takes a long time. Suit’s too warm.”

  “And you’re heading toward the Harmon still?”

  “Yes. Breaking the first rule of surviving in open space. Rules. Conserve your oxygen and protect your suit. No use. Too hot. Nothing.”

  She sounded appallingly vague, nothing like Rachel Santos. Jake leaned in closer to the comm. “You’re fine. Con? What’s the status on the net?”

  More crackling, and Con’s voice cut through. “—yes. We see—” Hissing. “—s’nothing—yes.”

  “Con. Can you see her? Do you have her?”

  “—can’t—read you—”

  “Do you have her? Rachel, are you—”

  A muffled shout rang out over the comm, and then an awful screech of metallic feedback. The comm console putted once and dimmed into darkness.

  “Rachel! Kai? Lindy?” He ran through the basic activation sequence, then the power bypass, then the ultimate comm clog bypass. But the screen remained obstinately black. “Con? I…please. Can anyone hear me?” What had been that last sound?

  Kai’s words returned belatedly. Watch out.

  Jake stepped back, and his feet tangled again in the cast-off suit. His blood still seething with wobbly rage and fear and shame, he kicked it viciously across the room. He had heard her voice, she had still been alive—he shook himself. Santos was still alive. Just because he’d been cut off didn’t mean Con had failed, even if Jake had barely managed to communicate anything regarding Rachel. Even if Con had never confirmed Jake’s message.

  He rubbed his hands through his hair. He couldn’t know for sure. He could stay here and kick the hell out of his suit and the wall and probably break bones in his feet, or he could hope that Con had gotten her. And he could move, continue with the mission he and Santos had begun. Mick was down here somewhere. Mei, too, if Nat wasn’t seeing spooks in the shadows. And Nat. She was alone down here.

  Jake assessed his artillery. He had a pressure suit with a dead comm, three mag override plugs in his EVA bag, his little lab wrench, and no idea what to expect from Mick. Mei had developed serious kick-ass ability with her mental break. What if Mick had, too? What the hell was Jake supposed to do with them? Pretend he too had gone bizarre? Cajole them into playing cards? Hope they tripped over a floor hatch and concussed themselves into submission?

  He’d have to make do with whatever he could find. Better to leave the area and lessen the possibility of being maliciously vented by his adversaries, assuming they could control the airlock doors. He stuck his feet back into the boots. What to do with the pressure suit? He settled for wrapping it over his shoulder, and carried the helmet under his arm. Breaking out another override plug, he forced the anteroom door, then scuttled through on his hands and knees.

  The Level 7 corridor was deserted. Clean and empty except for a supply cart cabled to the wall, it ran from the curved port side of the station to the center circular walkways outside the Common area and the lifts and the cargo bay staff entries. No sign of Mick—although if he wasn’t already in the bay, he could be coming down the lifts at any moment—nor of Mei, or anyone. Jake secured the anteroom door and loosened his belt, and then, as he started toward the nearest bay entrance, he could see there was someone already waiting at the end, facing him. Plaguing fuck.

  He couldn’t go back. Jake cleared his throat. “Hey, who is that?”

  The figure didn’t acknowledge his hail. Whoever it was, they were tall, indistinct, and dressed in station greys. Definitely a match for him physically. Perhaps it hadn’t been the best course of action to bellow a greeting, but it was too late to take it back. In any case, the man didn’t move.

  “Hello?” Jake took a step forward, and another, and then he was hurrying down the corridor toward the man. Definitely a man, he could see that now. As he drew closer, the details slotted into a straightforward list: brown hair, tan skin, dark skeptical eyes, sturdy build. Jake blinked, because it was him, Jake. He was sprinting toward himself, and the Other Him was flashing his own wide sardonic grin that stretched and gaped as he came near, and what in the triplicate hellish circles was going on?

  A hand clutched his arm, and he shrieked.

  “Oh! Thank heavens. Jake?”

  He skittered around to see Nat shrinking behind him. She took a hasty step back. “Jake, what are you doing?”

  “I—that man—” Jake turned back. He had reached the end of the corridor in his sudden rush. There was still a double of him there, the hazy outline of his reflection in the polished metal door to the Common area, as though the man had retreated into the alloy. But it was nothing like what he’d seen. This shape was too indistinct, too blurred to be the grinning thing that had awaited him. He’d seen his own smile from the hatch entrance, and he couldn’t have. It was too far for such detail.

  When had he last had a boost?

  No, that was silly. He’d been in sickbay for a day and Lindy would’ve shot him up, and she was still monitoring him. Jake shook his head hard.

  “Are you all right?” Nat asked. She stood at a tentative distance, her back against the nearest cargo bay door.

  “I’m not sure.” On closer inspection, Jake couldn’t help staring. Nat’s face was wasted with fatigue, her eyes lost in dark pouches of exhaustion. “What happened to you?”

  “I don’t know.” Nat twisted her hands. “I’m so tired. But it doesn’t matter, Jake—he’s down here.”

  “Mick?”

  She nodded. “And Mei, too. They went in on the starboard side. I was watching from a console in the Commons until it cut out. I think Mick has a frygun. Where’s Rachel?”

  “She’s…” He thought of the shout, the screech, the dead comm, and he couldn’t breathe. If she wasn’t all right, he’d killed her. He’d have killed Santos. Not now. Think about it later. He certainly couldn’t tell Nat. She already looked like she was holding on by a thread, and he needed her to be functioning. “Later. Come on, then.”

  Nat nodded again and pushed at the door at her back. Jake tossed her a mag override, and took a moment to appreciate her easy acquiescence. She must really be shell-shocked. It was good to know she could still be counted on in a crisis. Although she’d probably want to talk about it afterward. He thought of discussing death with her, discussing Rachel, and coldly stepped on the idea before it could choke him.

  They crept inside. His boots clanged on the corrugated flooring, and the sound echoed upward to the high vaulted ceilings. Nat knelt and helped Jake struggle out of them and ditch the suit and helmet. They dashed behind two large green shipping containers from the Harmon. Another green container sat open and partially unloaded in one of the far corners, but the rest of the
bay was clean and empty of stock. The tiny emergency console for hands-on docking, a lonely podium inside a glassed-in corner at the far right of the room, was ablaze with light. It was also empty.

  “If I keep Mick talking, can you take him out? Gently, carefully. A non-fatal-takedown.”

  “No question,” Nat said. “There’s a medkit in the wall with some KO stuff. And wait, just to be safe…” She went to the nearest supply cart and dug gingerly through it until she pulled out a conduit wrench.

  “Okay. Don’t mess around. We get into trouble down here, there aren’t any escape pods left.”

  Together they peeked around the container’s edge. “I don’t see him. Oh. Wait.” A man with unmistakable scruffy orange hair knelt by a floor panel in the corner, near the junction of the air recycling conduits. Jake put a finger to his lips, and Nat nodded. “Got him. I think, if you sneak around the side and stay close to the wall, he won’t notice you till the moment of truth. You okay?”

  “Of course,” Nat said. She gave him a lopsided smile. “I’m ready.”

  “Go.”

  She shot away to the right, and Jake stepped out around the container.

  “Mick?”

  Mick’s head shot up and he fumbled for something on the floor. Jake threw his hands up. “No, no, no, no! It’s just me. You wanted to see me, remember? You gave me the memory gem?”

  Mick frowned at him. “Stay back there.”

  “Sure.” Jake stopped, but he was too far away to serve as any decent distraction for a stealth attack. He tried to creep forward imperceptibly. Mick’s frown deepened, and his eyes narrowed.

  “I said stay there, man, and I wasn’t joking. Seriously, you’re pushing it.”

  “But you did want to see me,” Jake insisted. Slow, slow, slow.

  Mick whipped up the frygun and pointed it with a shaking hand. “I said stay, damn it, why don’t you people listen?”

  So much for accounting for Carmichael’s weaponry. He’d have to give Santos some serious shit—Going to die—yes, he would, because she was going to be okay. Jake raised his hands higher. “Virgin Magdalenas, Mick, I’m walking in my socks here. What am I gonna do to you in my socks? What the hell would I want to do to you?”

  “I don’t know.” Mick swallowed visibly, and the blunt, wide muzzle of the frygun wavered. “How do I know you’re you?”

  Jake slowly lowered his hands. “I. Um. Well. I thought that would be the easy part. We’re friends, remember?”

  “You don’t understand, man. People are walking around here like they’re dead or asleep or something. They’re not real, but maybe they are? We’re in a space ghost zombie flick or—or—or I don’t know what.”

  “But I’m not dead,” Jake said in what he hoped was a reasonable tone. A soft pung sounded somewhere off to their right, and Mick’s eyes darted away for a second, then back to Jake, far too quickly. Ticonti, either keep it up or keep it down. “And I’m not sleepwalking, either. I just want to know what’s going on.”

  “What’s going on is I’m going to fumigate this place from top to bottom. Kill the space roaches. Smoke ‘em out.” The frygun was steady again.

  “You’re certainly going about it in the most half-assed way possible. Your protocol is damn near antiquated.”

  Mick sniffed. “Got the job done, didn’t it? And I had help.”

  Where the hell was Nat? He couldn’t see her skulking anywhere, and she certainly wasn’t charging to his rescue around any corners. Jake could see something sticking out from behind the nearest green container: a pair of legs clad in white pajamas, feet in small black boots. “Is that—”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Mei’s gonna help me here, and then we’ll dust the rest of the station and ‘pod ourselves down to the habitat. We’ll just tell those douchetatties at UWD or UWS or whoever’s the pansy ass in charge today that, oops, there was a malfunction. Couldn’t be helped.”

  He grinned at Jake, but his chin was trembling. It was—almost—a companionable fear. Jake squashed the feeling of fellowship. He couldn’t think about Mick the friend right now, couldn’t get distracted about him like he had with Mei. “Unbeatable master plan there, Bonaparte.”

  “What’d you call me?”

  “Never mind.” Jake licked his lips. “What about the Harmon?”

  Mick sneered. “Pssh. They’re not sticking around. I can smell it, they’re just itchin’ to ride out of here and be done with us.”

  “I don’t think Mei’s going to be much use to you, though.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  Jake nodded, and then flinched his arms back up as Mick bounded forward and shoved the frygun almost into his chest. “Will you be careful with that? I’m just saying, she looks pretty comatose from where I’m standing. And you know how far gone she was the other night. Why’re you trusting her?”

  “You’re full of shit.”

  “Oh, sorry. I get it, she decided to take a nap in the middle of your decon party. You should pick your partners better, Mick.”

  “Shut up.” Mick rubbed a dirty sweaty smear from his upper lip. “And stop acting like you know everything. If you knew anything, dude, you’d be down here with us.”

  “With you,” Jake said kindly. “Mei’s down, over and out, kiddo.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Mick snapped. His gaze trembled away from Jake and around the bay. “Mei? You done with the tweaks?”

  “Wasting your time.”

  “Mei? Chen, answer me, girl.”

  “Kinda hard when she’s all passed out—oof—”

  Mick smacked him in the chest and pushed the frygun up under Jake’s chin. The smell of ozone clogged his nostrils, and the muzzle pressed into his jaw, warm and greasy and painful.

  Jake glared as nastily as he could manage. “Ow. In case you were wondering.”

  “Not really,” Mick said. “Now we’re gonna walk over there together, and you can flap your big mouth however much you want, but you try anything fancy? Like jumping back or going for the gun or something? I’ll cook those big brains of yours inside your skull like a soft-boiled egg.”

  Jake tried to digest that neutrally, and failed. Yes, the thought of a few joules to the head did make his spine freeze over, but if he was really going to die at the end of this, if Nat had just pissed off to cower in a storage locker, well, bravery was nothing next to honesty. “That’s just disgusting. Also I am highly dubious that you have ever even seen a soft-boiled egg. Much less eaten one.”

  “You Historical Society snobs.” Mick almost sounded like his old loose-lipped self. “We had a little house cage with poultry when I was a kid. Actual living-eating-shitting chickens, man. It was super-stellar.”

  He ground the gun into Jake’s jawbone, and Jake couldn’t help yelping at the pain.

  “Sorry,” Mick said, his face stricken and confused. “I don’t really want to hurt you or your brains. I gotta think—gotta hope—we’re friends. You’re right, I know that. But if you’re not with me on this, you’re not who you say you are.”

  “I’m not the one trying to kill people.” Whatever you say, Santos whispered, and Jake bit hard on his lip. “I’m not the one with a frygun in my buddy’s face. We can talk about this, Mick.”

  Mick scowled, but his confusion was growing. He lowered the gun a tiny bit, then a tiny bit more.

  “We can figure it out. We’re good at figuring things out. I trust you.”

  The gun lowered to Jake’s chest. Mick sighed. “I dunno, man. I want to trust you, but—”

  There was a strange whistling sound over Mick’s shoulder and then an unpleasant, crunching thud.

  Mick’s face went slack, and he sagged into Jake. The aching pressure dropped away from Jake’s chin, and the frygun clattered to the floor. Jake got his hands under Mick’s armpits, and slowly sank with him to the cargo bay floor.

  Nat stood frozen over them. In her right hand, she hefted the conduit wrench, the business end slick and dark with blo
od.

  “What happened to ‘carefully, gently, not-so-fatal’?” Jake shouted.

  Infuriatingly, she shrugged. “I spent the medkit KO on Mei.”

  “All of it? Damn it, you probably killed her, too.” The thought relieved and horrified him. He pressed his fingers to Mick’s neck. At first, he couldn’t feel a pulse, and he panicked. Ease, ease, relax. Mick’s skin was clammy. Jake couldn’t recall if that was bad or irrelevant. He willed his fingers stable and tried again.

  “I don’t see the problem,” Nat said. “He did have a zapper in your face, or did you miss that?”

  “He wasn’t going to hurt me.” Just threaten to scramble my brains. Jake shoved down the twinge of uncertainty and glared at her. “We don’t need to bash people’s skulls in. We don’t even know what’s going on yet.”

  There—he caught a pulse. It was weak and thready, but it was there. Mick was renowned for his hard head, and his wild mess of hair had probably softened the blow. Despite himself, Jake grinned. Mick would be all right. He had to be all right. Jake would make sure of it. He lowered Mick gently to the floor and looked around for the frygun.

  It had skittered to a stop against the nearest shipping container. Tugging his suited legs free of Mick, he crawled stiffly over to it. “Get Lindy on the comm. Tell her we need a stretcher.”

  “Of course,” she said, close behind him, and then she grunted, like she’d taken a punch in the gut. He started to turn, caught a flurry of motion—

  A crushing blow struck him behind the ear. Jake’s teeth rattled in his head. The cargo bay floor blinked in, out, turned black and stained red and black, black, and there was nothing in his vision but aching ballooning blackness, and he lay down in it and let the lights go out.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN