Remnant

by Dwayne A Thomason

  No surprise of that, though. She looked at the burn marks on her arm from the many stun rod strikes she’d received. It was festering, infected, and the fever was a result of that. Though they had tended to the injuries she’d received after blowing up the shuttle she had gotten no further medical treatment since then. Maybe they intended to let her die if she didn’t give Anatheret the answer he wanted.

  “I said, good morning, Ms. Numbar.”

  “Eat scuff and die, Tanno,” Cel said. The short sentence robbed her of breath.

  “All I want is the location of Ashla Vares.”

  Cel shook her head, then regretted it. She already felt dizzy, unstable on her feet. She tucked her hands under armpits, even though she didn’t feel cold.

  “What different does it make? Even if I told you where she went, she’ll have moved on from there. The kid’s smart for a teenager, much smarter than I ever was, and she’s not going to stay in one place knowing that you are gunning for her.”

  “How does she know that I am gunning for her?”

  “Because I sawking told her you were! I knew from our conversation that your disinterest in her was only temporary and pretty soon she would be nothing but a loose end to you. That the only way you could sell this blatant breach of Alliance law to the other member systems was to make sure she never got around to talking.”

  Cel’s breath caught and she had to stop talking to catch her breath. She started panting. She didn’t have the energy for monologs.

  “So?”

  Cel frowned. She hated having nothing to look at when talking to someone. It was doing something to her mind. She wasn’t sure what yet. “What do you mean, ‘so’?”

  “I mean just that. What does it matter to you? You’ve been here all this time suffering for a girl you barely know. Let’s make a deal. If you will give me the girl’s location, I will make sure all charges against you for the deaths of those four corpsmen are expunged. You will go free.”

  “Free?” The idea was dizzying. The room began to spin.

  “Free. And I’ll make sure your parents start getting the assistance they so desperately need once again. It will all go back to normal.”

  “Normal,” Cel repeated. She rested her hands on her knees. Standing straight was difficult. She was shivering violently now. And she still wasn’t able to catch her breath. “Normal.”

  Anatheret was talking again, but Cel found it difficult to listen to him. Her eyes lost focus. She blinked, trying to find it again, but couldn’t. She felt light-headed and began to sway.

  Cel didn’t know she was falling until she hit the floor, which awakened another course of agonies in her arm, her back, her side, her legs. It was difficult to think straight. She wanted to tell Anatheret something, something snappy and inappropriate.

  Anatheret was talking again, but not to her. “No, wait. Send the girl in. I can’t think of a better opportunity to observe...” his voice echoed through the empty reaches in her mind.

  A hole in the wall opened and in came an MP with a stun baton. As if by instinct Cel tried to push herself off the floor. She reached for him, willing her body to perform a complex takedown it was unable to do. The MP saw it for the attack her motion was intended as. The stun baton swung, connected with her left arm. New pain raced up her arm, straight to her brain. Cel fell back down, not a long fall considering she had barely managed to get to her hands and knees. She watched the baton rise again, refused to shut her eyes against the coming retribution.

  “Stop!” A girl so out of place Cel wondered if she had imagined her, interspersed herself between the MP and Cel. “Stop hurting her!”

  The MP stopped, his baton up high, sparking greedily.

  “That’s enough,” came Anatheret’s voice from everywhere and nowhere. The MP frowned, lowered his baton, and left. The wall reformed to patch the hole.

  The girl turned towards Cel, knelt beside her, and Cel recognized her, but only vaguely. She was young, maybe eighteen, and wore tattered clothes. She looked pale and emaciated, as if she was on the same diet as Cel but started earlier.

  “It’s okay,” the girl said, her voice echoed, as if coming through a long tunnel. “You’re going to be okay.” She put her hands on Cel and began muttering.

  The girl went all blurry and Cel felt her consciousness fading. How exactly she would be okay was a mystery.

  “Oh my master,” the girl said, “you who have created this woman in your likeness, designed every organ and bone in her body, and have numbered the hairs on her head, please now fix what you once had created. Please, heal her.”

  As she spoke Cel felt warmth permeating her body, and not the false warmth of fever. It started at the girl’s hands and flowed through her. At first, Cel assumed they had turned the heat back on, but what she felt wasn’t the scorching heat she was used to.

  Her mind felt clearer. Her shivering calmed and then stopped. The pain from her stun-baton burns disappeared. Even the aching of her sore muscles died away.

  The girl took her hands away and Cel sat up with ease. She looked at her arms. The festering burns were gone. She stood up, again with ease. She flexed and stretched and felt strength in her arms and legs again.

  Cel looked down at the girl, still kneeling. She looked up and smiled at Cel.

  “Who are you?” Cel asked.

  The girl stood. She still had to look up at Cel, though. “My name is Remnant.”

  Cel’s stomach rolled. “What?”

  Remnant tipped her head.

  Cel felt her blood boil. “So you’re the cause of all our troubles, huh?”

  “How have I caused you trouble?”

  “It was because Annister sent for you he attracted the ire of your enemies in the Alliance. Had that not happened the palace wouldn’t have been attacked, he wouldn’t be dead or who knows what, and I wouldn’t be fighting to survive in a box.”

  Remnant frowned and sighed, betraying an exhaustion Cel was well acquainted with. “I haven’t done any of those things. I didn’t attack your palace, harm your governor, or put you in a cell.”

  “But it’s because of you—”

  “I am not guilty for the evil done against you, even if it was done out of fear and hatred of me and my master. Ascribe to me only the good or evil done by my hands.”

  Cel lifted a warning finger at the girl and remembered. Mere minutes ago, she was wounded, sick and possibly dying. Now she was full of energy and health.

  “How did you do that?”

  Remnant smiled. “I did nothing. It was my master who healed you.”

  “Why? I don’t know you or...who ever your master is.”

  “But he knows you, Celeste. He has compassion on you. Stay strong. You won’t be a prisoner for long.”

  “Face opposite corners,” came Anatheret’s voice. Cel felt a wash of embarrassment come over her. She had forgotten him. He had probably been watching her whole conversation.

  Remnant stepped over to a corner and obliged, putting hands on each wall. “Don’t fight them, Celeste. Not yet.”

  Cel followed suit. She put her hands up on the walls and her face to a corner. She felt that familiar current of air as the wall opened behind her. Every muscle in her body ached to go into motion, to put her newfound strength to use by taking down a few MPs.

  Her mind put pictures together to meet what she was hearing behind her. Two MPs stepped in, one to cover Cel, the other to manage Remnant. He pulled her hands behind her back and bound her manacles together.

  “Let’s go.” Then he pulled her off the corner and pushed her out the hole on the wall. Cel’s hands shook, wanting to bust some heads. She stayed still.

  Footsteps retreated. The wall closed behind her. The air was still again. Cel pushed off from the corner as the air turned frigid. Cel started into jumping jacks again.

  “She was wrong, Ms. Numbar. You do understand that, don’t you?”

  “Wrong about what, Tanno?”

  “You will be my prisoner
for a long, long time. This will only get worse until you beg for mercy. That is the only way out. And I won’t let you die.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine:

  Shadow of Death

  Ashla watched as the door slid shut. The sounds of battle ceased. She stood inside a small airlock chamber. Lockers lined the side walls, filled with vac suits and air cannisters. The far door was identical to the one behind her. The small window in the door revealed a gray wall with pipes running down it.

  “Is that suit of yours a smartskin?” Nix asked from behind.

  “No, but it is vac-safe.” Ashla turned towards Nix and found him grabbing a pair of breathing kits from a rack cut into a side wall. Then he pulled two helmets and handed one to Ashla. The helmets each had a little flashlight built into them.

  She took it. “Is No Man’s Land evacuated?”

  Nix attached his helmet to one of the breathing kits by a hose, then strapped the kit to his back over top his backpack. “Not usually, but it’s not well maintained so if there’s a breach somewhere the pressure might be low in that section.”

  Ashla followed suit, attaching the helmet he’d handed her to the other breathing kit, then strapping it on. She lowered her jacket so she could attach the helmet to the seals of her flightsuit. Nix flicked the little switch on his helmet and the flashlight activated. Ashla did the same.

  “The console says this section is pressurized, so you don’t have to seal it yet,” Nix said.

  “I can’t hear the others,” Ashla said, checking her link to see if she’d lost connection to the group channel.

  Nix attached his own helmet to the smartskin under his shirt. “Yeah, No Man’s Land tends to mess with signals. You and I should still be able to communicate with each other, though, if we have to seal up.”

  “Okay,” Ashla said.

  Nix pulled a chain from around his neck. Attached to a chain Ashla saw a strange, metal device, which Nix inserted into a slot beside the far airlock door and turned it. An alarm sounded a brief blat and the airlock door opened. Nix retrieved his key, slung the chain around his neck and stepped up to the edge of the dim space beyond. Ashla followed.

  Beyond the outer airlock door she saw a semicircular vertical shaft. Pipes and massive bundles of cables ran up and down the far wall intersecting extrusions projecting from the wall.

  “Okay,” Nix said, “We’re at D-14 North and your ship is parked in a container on C-7 West. We go down.”

  Ashla edged closer to the end of the airlock and looked down. The shaft descended into darkness beyond the range of her helmet light.

  Ashla edged closer, keeping Nix between her and the abyss. “How do we get down?”

  “Well, you’ve got to be careful or, oh, wait, ah!”

  Nix slipped and fell into the abyss. Ashla screamed…before she realized he wasn’t falling. Nix hovered over the cavernous tunnel and laughed.

  Ashla stomped on the metal decking. “You idiot!”

  Nix spun around in midair to face her and then stopped himself by grabbing a pipe on the far wall. “Sorry. I guess I should have told you there’s no gravity in No Man’s Land.”

  “I guess so!”

  Nix frowned. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tried to scare you. Come on. We’d better go.”

  “Uh,” Ashla said, edging closer to the edge. “Okay.”

  “It’s easy, I promise.” Nix reached a hand out to her. “Just push away from the platform and I’ll catch you.”

  “Okay.” Ashla leaned forward, pushed away from the edge and was falling, flying and frozen all at the same time. She reached out and Nix caught her hand.

  “Here, see these braces holding the pipes in place? They can work like rungs on a ladder.” Nix guided Ashla to one and she grabbed on with both hands. The airlock door slid shut behind her. “You can use them to get you going, slow you down, or stop if needs be.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let’s go.” Nix turned himself and started climbing upside down. He wasn’t climbing, though, more like swimming, grabbing an occasional brace to stabilize himself.

  Ashla turned around herself, then managed a look at the airlock door, now upside down. She clamped her mouth shut, swallowed hard, and tried to focus on Nix. She pulled herself along the ladder-like series of braces.

  “Why is this part of the station so...weird?”

  “No Man’s Land? Well, this is the oldest part of the station, back when it was a spinner.”

  “A spinner?”

  “Yeah. You know, before artificial gravity they had to spin a space station for it to have gravity. Centrifugal force.”

  “Oh.”

  “But when they decided to retrofit the station with AG, they had to gut large sections of it because what used to be the floors are now the walls and vice versa.”

  Ashla pulled on another brace, speeding up a bit to catch up. She was getting the hang of it. “That’s what all these weird partitions are?”

  “Yep. But they already had all these pipes and stuff, and it’s all important, like super-high voltage cables. They didn’t want to have to shut the whole station down to rewire it, so they left it here, and walled this section off. Oh, slow down.”

  Ashla pushed on the braces as they came at her, slowing herself down. Then her light picked it up, a ceiling. Well, it looked like a ceiling. Ashla remembered that it was more like a floor if she thought about the orientation of the airlock she had come out of. Another airlock door protruded from the ceiling. Nix adjusted his position, making the ceiling a floor again. He hovered facing the door, put that key into a slot beside the console, and turned it.

  “What’s with the metal key?”

  Nix pulled the key out and pushed himself through the opening door. “Like I said, this is the oldest part of the station. And it’s also the last to be updated.”

  Ashla pulled herself through the door after Nix. It was like an airlock, but turned on its side, with the doors above and below. Then she noticed a third door pointing back into the station. Nix hovered over the door in the floor/ceiling, but did so as if the wall was the floor. He stuck the key into the slot and turned, but this time the airlock console turned red. Two warning bells sounded.

  “What does that mean?” Ashla asked.

  “It means the next section doesn’t have pressure. Time to seal up.”

  Ashla pulled the faceplate of her borrowed pressure helmet down and locked it into place. She turned her oxygen on. She grabbed her link and used it to tap into her suit’s controls. She used it to tell her suit to pair with the helmet, seal up and display her O2 levels. Everything was green.

  Nix did the same. “Are you ready?” It was strange to hear his voice in mono through the ear piece.

  “Ready,” Ashla said.

  “Okay. Here we go. Tap my shoulder if you notice a faulty seal or something and I’ll pull the emergency release and re-pressurize the airlock.”

  “Okay.”

  Nix tapped a few buttons on the console, actual, physical buttons, and then turned the key and pulled. Ashla heard a brief sound of air flowing, then silence. All Ashla could hear was the sound of her own breathing and the subtle sound of her oxygen supply flowing.

  “Let’s go.”

  Nix led her down another long, dark shaft.

  “Nix?”

  Nix pulled himself along on another brace. “Hmm?”

  “Why do they call it No Man’s Land?”

  Nix chuckled. It sounded nervous. “You don’t want to know.”

  She grabbed a brace, stabilized herself, then pulled herself on. “Nix?”

  “Dothin told me it got its name when a repair tech came through here once to patch some cable.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Well, he entered a section, like this one, that had lost pressure. And while he was working he accidentally made contact with a bit of exposed power cable and got zapped.”

  Ashla pulled herself along another brace. “Oh great.”

  “It’
s not what you think. You see, his suit protected him from the discharge, but all his gear got fried, including the magnetic leads of his key.”

  “Okay.”

  “You see, there were some dockworkers sitting in the breakroom and as they were eating and talking they started hearing some strange, irregular banging sounds behind the wall. It was several hours later that someone realized that wall abutted No Man’s Land but by then the tech’s oxygen ran out.”

  Ashla sighed. “I had to ask.”

  “Dothin told me that’s why repair techs have to come out here in pairs now. And Pattie told me they can sometimes still hear banging while they’re out here, as if the tech’s ghost still prowls No Man’s Land.”

  “Nix, that’s—”

  Boom, boom, boom came a distant sound. It came from the right. Ashla looked but saw nothing, just plain gray wall, bare metal.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “What was what?”

  Boom, boom, boom.

  “What was that?”

  Nix turned around towards her. “You mean this?” He tapped the faceplate of his helmet three times. Boom, boom, boom.

  Ashla shoved him. “You...you...agh!”

  Nix careened away, chuckling. He caught himself and continued down. Ashla followed.

  “Here we are.” Nix reoriented himself to another door in the ceiling/floor.

  He put the key in and turned it. The airlock door opened, and he pulled himself downward. This airlock was like the last one. Doors in floor/ceiling and ceiling/floor, and one in the wall.

  Nix floated towards the one in the wall this time. “Does your flight suit have mag boots?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, we’re about to reenter the station’s artificial gravity. It’s easier to walk in then float in.”

  Ashla activated her magnetic clamps and pushed herself to what had once been the ceiling. She imagined the click of her boots sticking to the floor. Nix pulled his key out again, slotted it in and turned, tapped a few buttons. The door that was now above her closed. A deep wail filled her ears and Ashla realized the sound was coming from outside of her helmet.