by Sara King
“Wait,” Magali cried. “What was that?”
Jersey rewound the tape and replayed it at 1x speed, starting at the moment of takeoff from the heist.
“Aanaho,” Magali whispered as she listened to Jeanne’s darkest secret, icy fingers trailing her spine. “She killed herself?”
But Jersey was frowning, staring at the screen in confusion. “Look at that,” he said. “After they go down. She’s walking around the ship, but I can see her foot.”
Magali leaned forward to get a better look. They both watched as she suddenly appeared on the bridge and popped Joel’s prison compartment open, then Joel crawled over to her body and started babbling his apologies.
“Oh shit,” Magali said, watching Jeanne appear beside Joel, squatting to get a better look at her own body. “Jersey, are you seeing that?” She’d heard about vengeful spirits from the local potter, a real superstitious sort, but she’d never once thought they were real. “She must’ve gone after Joel.”
But the odd thing was she didn’t. She simply talked to Joel, and Joel either walked through her or looked past her like he couldn’t even see her.
“Holy crap,” Jersey said. “Just holy crap.”
“Yeah,” Magali whimpered. “Can we go now?”
“Oh jeez,” Jersey said. “Oh jeez oh jeez.” He stood up from the bloody console, swallowing hard. He and Magali both turned to listen carefully to the repertoire of insults being hurled at the ship’s engine below.
“Okay,” Jersey said softly. “Whatever…” he hesitated as a really foul string of invectives colored the air between them, “…that is, it honest-to-God thinks it’s Jeanne.”
“What is it? A ghost?” Magali whispered.
“I’m not sure,” Jersey whispered back. “…maybe? You heard what Jeanne said on that recording. If that asshole really did all that, this is his mess.”
“Then he should clean it up,” Magali agreed. “We should go.”
“If I know anything about Runaway Joel, it’s that he’s not gonna clean it up unless someone makes him clean it up,” Jersey said. “And I sure as shit do not want a trigger-happy ghost-ship arriving at the local scrapyard because somebody decided to salvage it twenty years later.”
“So what do we do?” Magali breathed.
“We could blow it up,” Jersey whispered back.
“Blow up Jeanne?!” Magali cried.
“We’re both in agreement that Jeanne is dead, right?” Jersey demanded, gesturing at the body.
Magali hesitated, listening to the colorful language from down below. “That…sounds a lot like Jeanne,” she said reluctantly. “And I don’t wanna blow it up unless we’re sure. What’s Option Two?”
Jersey’s face hardened. “Option Two is we drag Joel’s ass back here and make him face the music, ’cause I’m sure as hell not hanging around to mop this up for him.”
CHAPTER 15: That Night in the Jungle…
20th of May, 3006
Uncharted Jungle
Fortune, Daytona 6 Cluster, Outer Bounds
Joel woke to the sound of happy female humming, a burning in his face, a general bone-deep throbbing, and an annoying stinging in his chest. He started to sit up, only to realize that there was a paper stapled to his left pectoral, just above his nipple.
“Ow!” he cried, yanking out the staple and rubbing his wounded chest. “What kind of asshole…” Pissed, he flipped open the note and read it.
You made your bed, Joel. Now, for once, you’re gonna lie in it. Once you figure out what’s going on, call us on the Upper Tear band and we can chat about a tow. Until then, have fun.
Joel blinked at the note, completely flummoxed. “I made a bed?” He vaguely remembered telling Jeanne something about making a bed…
Jeanne.
It all came back to him in a rush and Joel screamed and started scrabbling for the exit. He was brought up short by a heavy chunk of metal—ship wreckage??—that some inhumanly strong force had simply bent around his torso, then welded to a chain, which had been, in turn, welded to the base of the pilot’s console with what looked like laser fire.
“Aanaho,” Joel babbled. “Aanaho Ineriho.” He started tugging at the chain, then, when it didn’t budge, he began lunging against it like a panicked animal, throwing all the weight into it he could.
“So you’re awake,” Jeanne said, from the wall near his ear. “Good.”
Joel screamed, fell, and flailed in the coagulated Yolk.
“Seriously, Joel?” From the utterly flat tone of her voice, he could almost see Jeanne standing there, a brow raised in disapproval. “I knew you had a thing for drama, but that’s just pathetic.”
Joel whined in terror and scrabbled away from the ship’s wall, sliding through the cold, slick puddle of broken nodules, fingers searching for some kind of weapon.
“So here’s what’s up,” Jeanne’s voice said, “these two nice folks showed up—a Landborn and a Brackett, if you can believe that—and told me you had a reckoning coming to you, and you had something very important to tell me, and that I shouldn’t let you off this ship until you do.” The cockpit doors slid shut, as if on cue. There was a long, pointed pause. “So, Joel? What’d you do? Get us drunk and knock me up a second time?” On the vidscreen, Jeanne Ivory was looking at him, her arms crossed, a single brow raised.
Joel laughed, but it was half scream, half sob. He started yanking at his chain with frenzied, rabid intensity, knowing he had to get away, had to get away…
“They took that heavy bitch outta here,” Jeanne said. “Put her in stasis in the hold so she could ‘have a proper burial,’ which is more than I would’ve given the Coalition twat, but hey, they’re not fucked up criminals like we are, right?”
Joel just started to cry.
“Soooo,” ship-Jeanne said, “anything you wanna tell me, Joel?”
“No,” he whimpered.
“You stole something from me, didn’t you, you shit?” she growled. “What, Yolk wasn’t enough? You drugged me to figure out where I stashed that palladium hoard? That why most of it’s missing?”
“I didn’t steal from you,” Joel babbled. “Please, Jeanne…”
“But you did steal from me,” Jeanne snapped. All around him, the electronics hummed and fizzled. “You stole my life from me, Joel. After giving me the best night ever!”
“Jeanne, I’m sorry!” Joel cried. “I didn’t know you were gonna pull the trigger!”
The ship remained in a stunned silence for several moments. “What? I was talking about running away with my first real stash. You mean I killed that bitch? I don’t remember shit, Joel. What did you do to me? You drug me again, Joel?” There was a dangerous tone to her voice, now.
“No,” Joel whimpered. “Aanaho, no.”
“That fat Aashaanti hive-god isn’t gonna save you on my ship,” Jeanne snapped. All around him, the lights were flickering with demonic energy. “What did you do?!” Her last came in a furious roar that vibrated the very ship with its intensity.
Joel passed out.
He woke up again a few hours later, still chained to the console.
“Well, Joel?” Jeanne demanded, this time from a speaker on the floor. Joel yanked his face out of the jellied Yolk and flopped away from the wall, sobbing. “You feeling like telling me now, you blubbering pussy?”
Joel let out a terrified sob and scrabbled as far as his chain would let him, spraying gooey blue Yolk everywhere.
Ship-Jeanne gave an odd pause. “It must be bad. You’re acting like you actually think I’m gonna shoot you.” She sounded surprised. “You know that wasn’t actually my palladium, right? It was just a decoy, some worthless alien bullion I got for cheap, but it’s got the right heft and luster. The palladium’s in the most secure bank in the Inner Bounds. Good luck trying to steal that shit from the Shellihaussen, you backstabbing asshole.”
Realizing his chain wasn’t gonna let him get past the exit to the cockpit, Joel sobbed and dropped his hea
d against the wall in despair.
“So it’s obviously not the palladium.” Jeanne sounded confused. “Borden’s balls, Joel, what did you do? Was it the guns?” She groaned. “It was the guns, wasn’t it?”
Joel shuddered and curled in on himself in terror, dragging clumps of hardening blue Yolk around with his feet.
“Tell ya what,” Jeanne said, her voice going dangerous. “I don’t got time for this shit. You’re gonna tell me what you did, or I’m going to put a bullet through your brain and be done with it. You got to three. One. Two. Th—”
“You’re dead!” Joel sobbed. “Sweet Aanaho, you’re dead!”
Jeanne went dangerously silent. “Are you threatening me, Joel?”
“You’re not Jeanne,” Joel cried. “You’re a ship. Jeanne is dead!”
Jeanne snorted. “Obviously, you’re mistaken. I’m standing right here.”
“And I don’t see anything but a wall!” Joel cried back. “You’re some sort of avenging spirit!”
“Avenging spirit?” Jeanne’s face on the vidscreen twisted in rage. “What kind of idiotic, mind-numbing crap is that, Joel?”
“Please just kill me,” Joel whimpered. “You’ve made your point. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for what I did.”
Jeanne was silent for much too long. “All right,” she muttered, “what the fuck is going on, Joel? I just ground my foot in that stab wound Geo gave you and you didn’t even flinch.”
“You’re dead,” he whimpered, twisting back to cling to the wall. “Aanaho, you’re dead.”
“No, fuck that, Joel!” Jeanne snapped, the lights popping and sizzling around them. “I’m alive. Look at me!”
Joel started to sob again.
“Look at me!” she roared. “I swear to Aanaho, Joel, I will pound your skull into a meat patty unless you look at me.” The lights were going wild again, and there was an odd static on the coms, but aside from that, Joel remained unhurt throughout the minutes-long rampage.
A long silence followed, eerily quiet. Finally, Joel managed to shakily lift his head from the wall and look around him. The lights had stopped flickering and everything had once again powered down to hibernation levels. He swallowed hard. Then, very carefully, whispered, “Jeanne?”
There was a long silence. Then, a quiet, “Just get off my ship, Joel. There’s a cutting torch in the toolbox hidden behind the air conditioning unit.”
Joel immediately turned to locate the toolbox and had actually started towards it before he hesitated and glanced back at the wall of the still powered-down ship. “Jeanne?” he asked softly.
“I committed suicide, didn’t I?” Jeanne asked softly.
Joel swallowed, then nodded slowly.
“Great.” Ship-Jeanne took a deep breath, audible over the speakers, then let it out in a sigh. “I was lonely, feared, despised, orphaned, abandoned, avoided, generally bitchy, and expected to wear a set of molars I’d pulled from my enemies’ corpses in order to maintain my credibility. Honestly, I hadn’t thought it could get any worse.”
Joel took a nervous breath and let it out slowly, stabbed by a pang of genuine sorrow. “I’m sorry, Jeanne.”
“So, what, I’m stuck here forever, now? That old superstition against offing yourself really had some merit?” She gave a disgusted laugh and the lights died down a little bit more.
“I…don’t know.” Joel gave the ship an anguished look.
“So what am I supposed to do? Pray for deliverance?”
“Jeanne, I…”
“Don’t know,” she muttered. “’Cause who knows what to do with a possessed ship?”
Possessed ship… Suddenly, those same words jogged something buried in his memory and Joel twitched, remembering a report from several decades ago, one in which a smuggler had gone down with a huge quantity of Yolk after a high-speed chase with authorities, only for his family and Coalition officers to consign the ship to the jungle rather than try to retrieve it. Some bullshit story about possession…
“Oh fuck,” Joel blurted.
“Never again, it seems,” Jeanne sighed. “You were right about that being the best night of my life, by the way. Just wish it hadn’t been spent with a conniving lowlife like you.”
“Jeanne,” Joel cried. “You remember that smuggler that went down with an asston of Yolk like thirty years ago? Guy was dead on impact. Wrecked his really expensive ship to hell, but nobody would go in and salvage it?”
Ship-Jeanne grunted.
“They said it was possessed,” Joel blurted. “The Coalition just left the bags of nodules there. Left them.”
“Always figured it was ’cause the crooked, self-serving fucks had stashed them away for themselves somewhere,” Jeanne said, but he could tell he had her interest.
“They claimed the door was cutting people in half when they tried to salvage the Yolk, even with the computer severed from the system in the crash.”
“Now there’s an idea,” ship-Jeanne said.
Joel looked around the cockpit at the jellied blue Yolk coating most of the surfaces. “Jeanne, it’s the Yolk. Something about the Yolk!”
“And that helps me how?” Jeanne asked.
It didn’t. Not really. But Joel was sure he was onto something, now. “Okay, so your body is obviously dead. But Shriekers have that weird mind-scream, and Yolk does weird shit to the brain… What if your mind got transferred? Imprinted, somehow?”
“Joel, if I weren’t trapped in the walls of my own ship, I’d tell you you’re on something ridiculously expensive and can I have some, ’cause I seem to be having a really crappy day.”
“No, stick with me a sec,” Joel said. “Okay, so you’re dead.”
Jeanne made an unhappy sound.
“But,” Joel offered, “parts of your mind were saved.”
He felt the space in the ship around him grow incredibly alert. “What do you mean, ‘parts,’ Joel?”
“Uh…” Joel flushed. “Well, you don’t remember shooting yourself, for one.”
“Gee,” ship-Jeanne said, “I wonder why.”
Joel decided to leave that one for later. “So what if you’re like, I dunno, some sort of AI? Like maybe the Shrieker emanations can affect programming.”
“You turned the computer off,” Jeanne noted.
“But it’s psychic energy,” Joel cried. “Everyone knows the Aashaanti somehow had living ships. What if—”
The ship around him shuddered as something important-sounding whined to a halt in the engine room. “Oh God, Joel. Please tell me you’re not serious. I’d rather be an avenging spirit.”
Joel swallowed hard and looked at the ship surrounding him. He’d heard stories, decades later, of people trying to salvage metal from the infamous possessed Yolk-ship, only to run into the ‘Smuggler’s Curse’ and come back without arms or legs. “Uh, Jeanne? I think you should prepare yourself for life as an inanimate object.”
“This ‘inanimate object’ is about to put a ship-grade, two-forty millimeter explosive round up your ass, Joel.”
“Look” Joel said, “I’m just laying out the possibilities.”
“So am I,” Jeanne told him.
“Okay, let’s start over,” Joel said. “You’re a ship that thinks it’s a pirate named Jeanne Ivory.”
“I’m going to kill you, Joel.”
“Uhhh,” Joel said, looking at the Yolk all around them, “that might not be a good idea right now, unless you want to become a ship that thinks it’s Joenne, the hermaphroditic smirate with an identity crisis.”
There was a couple moments of pause, then, “I hate you.”
“Okay, well, that’s a start,” Joel said. “Seeing how I’m going to get you out of here, though, you probably shouldn’t plan my untimely end too quickly.”
“You’re getting me out of here?” Jeanne demanded. “To do what? Sit in some scrapyard somewhere?” The dejection and despair in her voice was almost overwhelming.
Joel laughed. “Jeanne, baby. You thin
k I’d relegate this work of art to some idiot with a hacksaw?”
She seemed almost interested. Almost. “So, what, you’re gonna fix me up and sic me on the Coalition?”
“Noooo,” Joel said, “I’m going to fly you. Make love to you with the console, baby. Again and again and again—”
“Ugh, fuck, Joel, that is so disgusting.”
“Oh, you’ll like it,” Joel insisted.
“Oooor,” Jeanne offered, “maybe, instead of making love to you, I’ll just bust a power core and unleash about twelve megawatts of electricity on your pathetic ass and then spend the rest of my days talking to a charred corpse. Much better company.”
“It would take an idiot not to recognize I just landed myself the ship of my dreams.”
Jeanne was quiet much too long. “Joel, that sounded eerily like the ‘woman of my dreams.’ I’m not the woman of your dreams. I hate you.”
“Right,” Joel said, “but you’d still fly us out of a firefight with Coalition soldiers if I was too tired to take the helm, right, baby?”
Again, the cockpit was quiet for much too long. “Get off my ship.”
“Technically,” Joel said, “it’s my ship now. The previous owner is dead.”
“I’m pretty sure I can electrify the floor,” Jeanne replied. “Get off.”
“No,” Joel said. “Someone chained me to the pilot’s console, see?” he jerked at the chain. “I’ll just have to stay.”
“You have ten seconds to grab that cutting torch and get the hell outta my—” Jeanne hesitated in her irate tirade, “—head.”
