by Ilsa J. Bick
Oh, yeah, duty rosters are really important. Letting your first officer go on R and R because you’d rather not have him around is really important.
“You’re important,” said Garrett, and that was the truth. She couldn’t bring herself to say that he was more important than her ship; he’d see through that because, after all, she hadn’t made the choice to be there for him. But she told him the truth.
“Sure,” said Jase, still staring into his hands.
Garrett waited a beat. “Where are you all headed, by the way? I forgot to ask your father.”
Jase shook his head. “I don’t know. Dad didn’t say. We’re just,” he made a helpless-looking gesture with his hands, “on a ship.”
“Are there other scientists on board?”
Jason nodded. “Yeah, one other, and the pilot. He’s Naxeran. And another kid. His name’s Pahl. He’s Naxeran, too.”
“Oh,” said Garrett. “Well, that’s good. I mean you’ll have someone to talk to.”
“Yeah,” said Jase, without much conviction. “It would be okay if we stayed home, though.”
Home, as in Betazed, Garrett translated silently. Betazed was home for Jase. She could count on one hand the number of times he’d visited her family on Earth. That was okay, though; she didn’t much enjoy seeing her family either.
“Are you getting tired of going off with your dad?”
“Only a little.” Jase looked wary. “Why?”
“How many expeditions does this make this year?”
“This is only the third.” That same defensive tone again. “It’s not so bad.”
Garrett let it go. She didn’t have a better alternative anyway, though maybe she ought to talk to Kaldarren about not agreeing to so many trips. Uprooting Jase and traipsing across the galaxy at every turn couldn’t be any better for him than following her to every starbase. In fact, when she thought about it, Kaldarren’s dragging Jase with him wherever he went wasn’t all that much different from packing a family aboard a starship—not that anyone did that, of course. Whether you were on a starship or a science transport, space was dangerous.
“Okay,” she said. She paused, at a loss to know what to say next. “Did you get some nice things for your birthday?”
Jase’s face lit up. “Yeah. I got this really cool easel and some new paints from Dad and Nan. You should see…”
Garrett listened as her son rattled on about his painting, and she felt a tug at her heart. Jase was so sensitive, she knew. He was more like his father. Kaldarren’s work was xenoarchaeology, but what he loved was art. Jase had the same soul, the same ability to appreciate and create beauty, and these were abilities she lacked. Oh, she liked art, all right. But make something? Hell—Garrett almost shook her head—she’d been working on the same piece of bargello embroidery for the past three years.
“I’d like to see your work,” she said, when Jase paused for breath. Her keen eyes picked up how much color there was in his cheeks, how his eyes sparkled with excitement.
Oh, my son, you’re going to be an artist someday, I can feel it, and one day when you’re grown and not my little boy anymore, you’ll have your first show and I’ll be there. I promise.
The shrill edge of a hail sliced into her thoughts. “Wait, Jase,” she said. Muting the audio so Jase couldn’t hear, she punched up another channel. “Yes, Mr. Bulast?”
“I’m sorry, Captain,” said Bulast, still sounding a little shell-shocked, “but you asked to be notified when astrocartography wanted to steal some power from the deflector array for their long-range mapping, and it would have gone all right, but engineering’s having fits because of some problems with circuit overloads and…”
Yet another thing a first officer would have attended to. Garrett suppressed a sigh. “All right, thank you. Give me a minute, Mr. Bulast. Tell engineering I’ll be right down.”
“Aye, Captain.” Bulast signed off.
“You have to go,” said Jase, when she’d turned back and switched on the audio.
Garrett nodded. “I’m sorry, Jase. There’s something I have to take care of down in engineering. Honestly, they’re like kids, and they need me to…” She heard what she was doing, stopped herself. “I’m sorry, Jase. I just…I have to go.”
Jase’s eyes were solemn. They looked very black and much too large for his face. “Okay. When will I see you, Mom?”
“Soon. I don’t know when,” she said, truthfully. “Soon, I hope. When you and Dad get back.”
“Okay.”
“Can I speak with your father?”
“I…” Jase’s eyes flicked to somewhere off-screen, and then it came to Garrett that Kaldarren must be there, just out of sight. Then Jase looked back at her. “He’s busy right now.” Jase’s hand moved forward to break the connection. “Bye, Mom.”
“Bye-bye, sweetie.” Then she had a thought. “Jase, wait…” But she was too late. Her companel winked, and went black.
Damn. Garrett stared at the empty screen. How bad had this day been? Let me count the ways. No first officer on board; duty rosters out the wazoo; a justifiably pissed-off ex-husband; her son and his father headed off for God-knows-where; and a headache that was leaking out of her ears.
Enough. The light was too damned bright, and she’d had enough badness for one day. She just wanted to be alone, a couple of minutes. Just. Alone.
“Lights, out,” she said. And then Garrett sat, alone, in the dark.
Chapter 5
She hated being in the dark, in every sense of the word.
Batra and Halak arrived in the Kohol District well after the sun had slid behind blocky monoliths of apartments and tenement complexes. Most of the alleys were already dark—the better to hide the filth—and they moved in and out of slices of thick shadow and fading sunlight. The air was chilly, perhaps because the buildings were tall and blocked out what little sun might have warmed the streets and alleys, and smelled very bad. Instead of the scent of mint tea and spiced kabobs of the bazaar Batra caught the fetid odor of human waste, boiled garbage, and something else. Cautiously, she sniffed, cringed. Copper, or iron. And a rotted, sickly-sweet smell she associated with gangrene. The smell was strong enough to leave a taste, and she turned aside and spat.
The sounds were different here. If the bazaar swirled with life, the ghetto teemed with shadows: people rustling in and out of doorways, their backs hunched, their shawls or cloaks drawn up to hide their faces. She listened, hard, but she heard very little conversation. A few whispered exchanges, the slithering of bodies sliding along walls, the slip of footsteps against slick stone. The walkways were cluttered with mounds of things that looked like clothes, though Batra didn’t trust herself to take a closer look. Although Halak still had her by the hand, she picked her way through green muck and skirted gray pools of water. Her open-toed sandals squelched through gluey mounds of water-logged paper—paper, they still use paper here—and she winced, her teeth showing in a grimace, as she felt something wet and sticky ooze between her toes.
“Are you all right?” Halak asked, sparing her a quick glance that bounced away to scan the area immediately around them.
“Sure,” she said, giving his hand a little squeeze. “It’s just…I didn’t expect it to be this bad. You’re sure she lives here?”
“Gemini Street. A few more blocks, I think, and then to the left.”
“Any idea why?”
“Why she lives here? I’m not sure. Last thing I heard, she was living on the south side of town, near the bazaar. I didn’t realize she’d moved until that message of hers. It doesn’t make any sense. She knew she could contact me if she needed help.” He sounded worried. “I can’t imagine she lives here because she likes it.”
Batra had opened her mouth to reply when a low rumble shook the ground and panes of glass set in windows rattled. The ground twitched beneath her feet, and she saw ripples dance in a pool of gray water in the center of a pitted, rubble-strewn road that she was sure no vehicle had us
ed in years. Then she heard the muted roar of an engine, and understood.
“Spaceport?”
Halak nodded. “There’s the central hub to the south, where we came in. Then there’s another, smaller transit center round about here about five kilometers to the east, near the Galldean Sea. Mainly private vessels.”
“Here?” Batra couldn’t disguise her surprise. “What for?”
“Drugs. Red ice, mainly.” Halak pulled her closer, and they started walked again. “It makes good business sense. Funnel the drugs in and out of the areas where your customer base is, though I would suspect that most of the people here get the stuff cut and diluted by a good half, if not more.”
Batra dodged a dead warden rat, its body so bloated with gas that all six of its legs bristled like the quills of a spiny urchin. “Red ice?”
“Genetically modified heroin. Amazing, when you think about it. There are so many other drugs you can manufacture that are cleaner, easier. Anyway, red ice is heroin that’s produced by crossing Asian poppies with the hallucinogen extracted from Morolovov gapsum plants from Deneb V. Only the powder’s not white or brown, like heroin from poppies. It’s orange. But the nickname came from what happens after you use the stuff for a long time.”
Batra wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but she asked anyway. “What happens?”
Halak bobbed his head toward a slumped figure just ahead. The figure—and it looked like a Caldorian to Batra, because of the facial hair and claws—sagged against a metal railing along stone steps of an apartment complex. As they came alongside the still figure, Batra saw that the Caldorian—Batra could never be sure what sex a Caldorian was because of all that fur—didn’t seem to register that they were even there. Its facial fur was copper-colored with tiny black spots, and she saw thick tufts of orange hair covering its knuckles and arms. But the fur over its chest was matted and black. Shiny. As they passed, she caught that metallic odor again, the one she’d smelled earlier but couldn’t identify: like crushed, wet aluminum, or slicked rust. And then it came to her. “Blood,” she said.
“That’s right. It’s called red ice because, eventually, it reacts with blood. Or rather, iron: any humanoid with hemoglobin based on iron is affected. I don’t know the precise pathway…this way,” he gestured left, and Batra saw a corroded plaque affixed to a wall that said meni Stre. Gemini Street was like the alleys they’d passed: narrow and close. Batra heard the sound of water dribbling into sewers and pattering on stone.
“But the result is the same, regardless,” said Halak. “Use red ice long enough, and your tissues begin to break down, you start to hemorrhage. Ironic, isn’t it? An addict spends his life giving away what little money he can beg, borrow, or steal to get this stuff, and then it ends up eating him alive. You don’t know how sad…”
His voice died and then, in the next instant, Batra heard it, too: the rapid patter of footsteps, just behind. Coming fast.
Batra whirled right. There was a blur of motion, and then Halak was jerking her to his left, fast, his right hand whipping round to the small of his back for his phaser.
Then she saw another one coming in from the left, too late. More than one! “Samir!”
Halak turned but not fast enough. Three men hit him at once: one from each side, and the last barreling into Halak’s midsection dead-on. The force of the impact sent his body careening into Batra. Off-balance, she slammed against a brick wall. She crumpled, the wind knocked out of her. As she sagged into a pool of filth, she was aware of hands on her, grappling with her choli, at her waist, running up and down her body.
Searching. She struggled to remain conscious. Her lungs felt like they were on fire, and she couldn’t get her breath. They’re searching for credits, whatever they can find….
Dimly, she heard Halak’s harsh grunts as he wrestled with their attackers. There was a thud, the sound of fists hitting flesh, and then a gasp of shock, though she didn’t think it was Halak. Someone backpedaled into the wall to her left, and she twisted, saw that one of their assailants was tangled in his own robes, his hands flailing.
Clawing hands scrabbled over her waist, tugged at her pouch. The cloth bit into her side, and then there was a ripping sound, and she felt her pouch give.
Anger replaced shock. “No!” she cried. Surging up, she grabbed at the wrist before it could snatch itself away. She was focused only on that, on getting that hand. Snagging it, she hauled herself around until she saw an expanse of grimy, filthy skin. She opened her mouth and then clamped down hard. Whatever was attached to the hand—man, alien, she didn’t care—screamed. Batra’s mouth filled with the acrid taste of sweat, dirt, and a warm spurt of fluid that tasted like scummy pond water. Then there was a rush of air, and her attacker brought his fist crashing into the side of her head. The right side of her face exploded with pain, and she screamed and lost her grip. The force of the blow sent her spinning, and she smacked into the wall just behind hard enough that the point of her chin banged into stone. Her teeth clicked, and there was another flash of pain, then the brackish salty taste of blood in her mouth. She’d bitten her tongue. Batra groaned; her vision blacked, seemed to contract.
Still, she heard Halak grappling with their assailants, the sounds of the fists on his body. Her eyelids fluttered. There was a flash of something shiny, and at first she thought it was at a trick of the light until she remembered—her mind moving so slowly it was like a computer with faulty chips—that the alley was dark and there was no light this far into the Kohol District.
“Knife,” she croaked. She coughed, turned to her side, felt muck clinging to her cheek, her hair. “Knife…Samir…knife, knife!”
The flash arced up, then down. Halak turned aside, to the right, only just in time to avoid having the knife bury itself in his neck. He screamed.
No, no, no! Batra rolled, sat up. She swung her head around and tried to focus. She saw that one of the men—and they were men, she saw now, though their faces were shrouded by cloaks, and the light in the alley was too dim—was behind Halak, pinning Halak’s arms back through the crooks of his elbows. The one Halak had sent flying was staggering to his feet, clawing his way up the wall he’d hit. The last held a knife that was black and slick with Halak’s blood.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she heard the man say. The man thrust his face toward Halak. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
“Let her go,” Batra heard the pain in Halak’s voice. He was gasping. “Please, she’s not part…she doesn’t know. Just let her go.”
No one was paying attention to her. Because Batra was on the ground and because Halak’s arms were pulled back so tightly that the slits in Halak’s tunic had parted, she saw what Halak had been reaching for, behind his back. What the men didn’t see.
Without stopping to think if she could reach it, she did. Springing forward, she snatched the phaser from Halak’s belt, thumbed it to stun. She was already rolling, crouching in an attack stance, before the man with the knife realized what she’d done.
Batra spotted, and fired. Her aim was true. The phaser beam lanced through the dim light of the alley, catching the one with the knife full in the chest. He jerked back, his arms flying wide. She heard the clatter of the knife on stone. The man staggered, then crumpled. Batra’s nostrils twitched with the acrid odor of singed cloth.
Seizing the moment, Halak yanked his right arm free, spun to his left, and straight-armed his attacker under his chin with the heel of his right hand. There was an audible thunk of teeth, and the assailant’s head snapped back. Reaching up, Halak grabbed the man’s head between his hands and then brought his right knee up as he forced the man’s head down. There was a sickening crack as Halak drove his knee into the man’s face. The man went down in a heap and didn’t move.
Batra heard movement to her left and she pivoted on her heels: just in time to see the third attacker angle his way into a side alley and disappear.
For a minute, the only sound was their harsh, labored breathing. Ph
aser still in her hand, Batra collapsed into a huddle, her head aching, her ears still ringing. Her mouth tasted sour, and she worked her tongue, dislodging a clot that she spat to one side.
From her left, she heard Halak’s groan. She looked over. Halak had sagged to the pavement and lay on his stomach. A dark bloom of color stained the left arm of his tunic.
“Samir!” She crawled over on hands and knees to his side. Tucking the phaser into her waistband, she touched his arm with tentative fingers. They came away wet and black.
“Oh my God.” Carefully, Batra rolled the sleeve of his tunic up until she saw the wound: easily a six-to seven-centimeter slash along his left bicep, from which blood flowed but didn’t pulse.
“I don’t think it hit an artery,” she said. She was aware of how filthy her hands were, and she tried wiping them clean on her pantaloons: a hopeless task. “We need to get you to a doctor, and…”
Her eyes dropped to a spot on his right side. Her breath sizzled between her teeth. “Oh, no.”
There was another stain on his tunic, further down, along his right side. At first, she thought it was merely blood from his arm, but then she saw the stain grow before her eyes.
“Oh, no,” she said again, “oh, no, no.” With trembling fingers, she tugged up his tunic until she found the wound. Her heart iced with fear. The knife had sliced into Halak’s side, arcing down from the edge of his rib cage to the small of his back. She guessed that he must have turned, trying to deflect the blow with his arm, and only been partially successful. If he hadn’t turned, the knife would have stabbed down into the exposed angle of his neck made by his collarbone and shoulder blade: a lethal wound.
But this wound, my God, it looked bad, and they were far from anyone who might help them and…Stop. Batra gnawed on her lower lip, forcing her galloping thoughts to slow, shoving down the scream that balled into the back of her throat. She couldn’t help if she panicked.
