Approaching Oblivion (Jezebel's Ladder Book 4)

by Scott Rhine

  Yuki smiled. “A Japanese Wizard, but the fighter jocks had to approve it.”

  “Lou did after I adjusted his motorcycle to win some race. It was nothing.” He remained silent for another half hour, at which point he complained, “Why is there a jar of unpopped popcorn in the standby bedroom?”

  “That’s Lou’s,” she said with a snort. “We have a running bet. You put a penny in a jar every time you have sex during your first year of a relationship. After that, you take a penny out each time you make love. The old wives tale is that you’ll never get to the bottom of that jar.”

  “What does that have to do with all the popcorn?”

  “There isn’t that much copper in our entire habitat. He had to substitute kernels of popcorn.”

  His eyes bugged a little as he rattled the jar. After doing a little math on his fingers, he looked crestfallen. “I’m going to bed early.”

  She sighed. Lou may have been a shallow asshat, but he knew how to entertain a girl. She had advanced intelligence training, world-class gymnastics skill, a degree in electronics with a minor in geology, and all these men could find for her to do on a Friday night was alphabetize bottles on a shelf.

  When she heard the call for help on the emergency channel, Yuki sprinted out of the infirmary, launching herself toward the control harness in the center of the saucer. She shouted, “Snowflake, zoom all windows onto Yvette’s position. Add sound.”

  She listened to the drama unfold as she strapped herself into the control couch. Dread churned her gut, combining with the dizziness from her too rapid zero-g transition to make her feel ill. “Mercy isn’t going to make it, guys. We have to do something.”

  Yuki might not be cleared for much on the interface, but she’d been Mercy’s assistant from the beginning. She had seen true wizards at work. As Yuki slid under the head cowl, she asked, “Snowflake, can we do anything to help Mercy?”

  It chimed in the positive. Her interactions were pretty crude.

  “How can we help Mercy?”

  It gleeped. She had to narrow the parameters.

  “Display the menu you first showed Mercy before she designed the helix stairs.”

  Three choices appeared on the interface screen. Pointing at the one Mercy had labeled dangerous, Yuki expanded the menu item. A scale model of the ship’s interior appeared, with a dotted line leading from the saucer to the concave mountaintop.

  She examined the diagram, blotting out the screams of the women on the ground. Mercy had saved her life repeatedly; Yuki wouldn’t let the girl die without lifting a finger. Mercy treated the ship like a BMW, assuming that anything she needed was in convenient reach. Sojiro was always so Zen with the interface. Imagine a goose in a bottle. How do you get it out without hurting it?

  Yuki’s eyes flicked to the mountaintop in the diagram and zoomed in. “Add scale in meters.” The indentation was exactly the same shape and size as the bottom of the saucer. Okay, that means it’s meant to land there. How? All I can control are the antigravity dominoes, and they have to be close to the ship to work.

  Touching the ship icon, she punched the reset button to restore the tiles to their default position, tight against the hull. Thumps sounded outside the ship as a handful of dominoes on elevator duty returned to their nests.

  Auckland bellowed, “What are you doing? We need the elevator to bring up the patients once they arrive.”

  The circular pergola around the top of the saucer resembled what it really was—a giant turbine. The boardwalk below it was some sort of directional vent system or perhaps a second turbine in the off position. “Snowflake, spin up the turbines. Prepare to take Olympus down to the mountaintop cradle.”

  A whir began like the sound of breath over a blade of grass. After a few tries, the vibration became a whistle and gradually increased in pitch. Emergency crash couches shooshed open in several walls as the entire saucer shook. The doors to the dining and medical areas slammed shut and locked. Well, the remaining blades are mostly in balance. If I haven’t triggered a red warning yet, this thing should get us there.

  After the noise grew loud enough to wake him, Park pounded on the inside of his door. “Snowflake, open.”

  The interface gleeped. “No moving about the cabin while the engine is engaged.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Park demanded over the ship-only channel.

  Yuki ordered, “Mountainward, now.” She heard metal creak and strain as at least six yellow warnings overlapped on her screen.

  “Preflight sequence takes twenty minutes,” Snowflake advised. “Preferred safe operation takes an additional eight in checks.”

  In the diagram, flashing red docking clamps and the life-support umbilical appeared to be the things holding them in place.

  “Snowflake, give me a visual feed on the clamps.” They looked simple enough. All she had to do was pry open three sets of fingers. “Unlock the clamps.”

  Snowflake gleeped. “Unauthorized.”

  Over the emergency band, Yvette said, “Bring ropes. We slid down the slope a little.” She made a spitting sound as gravel cascaded past her.

  “Park,” Yuki shouted. “Give me authorization.”

  “I’m not set up for voice interface. By regulation, we have to turn that off to sleep.” They didn’t have the time to shut completely down and let him loose.

  “Who can give me auth?”

  The drive specialist frantically consulted his computer pad. “Lou’s asleep, too. Mercy’s the only planner with access.”

  Over the emergency channel, Yuki said, “Mercy! I need you to tell Snowflake to grant me docking privileges.”

  Giving birth to the words with gasps in between, Mercy wailed, “Snowflake. Help. Me.”

  The screen turned green, but Mercy officially had control. Yuki couldn’t change anything, no matter how many buttons she pushed. The clamps released one at a time. Evidently, this was supposed to happen before full spin-up because metal groaned as the saucer tipped sideways. Men cursed, and cargo thumped around the craft.

  “Brace for impact,” Yuki shouted, grasping for her own safety straps. Cables snapped after the second clamp released. She watched a hose snake through the atmosphere, spraying valuable water into the air. In the low gravity, the drops spread out in front of the solar window, forming a circular rainbow. She smiled in spite of the danger. If they survived, it wouldn’t be the new mobility people would remember. No. The wasted water was going to seriously piss Rachael off. That alone would be worth the ride.

  ****

  Yvette was trying to make a leg splint out of olive branches and a bra when something blotted out the sun. The spinning disco ball had a ring like Saturn that kicked up a dust tornado. The hum was deafening and warbling like a buzz bomb about to impact. She dove atop Mercy’s body shortly before thunder shook the mountain.

  Moments after the blades spun down to a dull whoosh, the storage-bay door lowered like a ramp, and Toby ran out holding a rope and several blankets.

  “You came to help?” Yvette asked as he made his way down the dusty slope.

  He struggled, wanting the gratitude in her face to be for him, but admitted, “That damn pet computer of hers came like Lassie when she called, and to Hell with the rest of us. I was kissing the ceiling during the freefall. Park, come down here! Help me get them both inside.”

  “Just her,” Yvette said, unwilling to reenter the storage bay.

  Toby looked sick. “Please. I’ll stay out here if you want.”

  “No. You need to save her and the baby.”

  “For you, anything. I’ll send Park back out to sit with you while you wait. Herk, you take care of Yvette’s evac.”

  As Toby wrapped a blanket around each woman to prevent the onset of shock, the nurse stared at him. How could he be so thoughtful now? This was training. Here, his detachment and resistance to the Collective would be an asset. In his own realm, Hades was king for a reason.

  After examining the pale Mercy, Toby whispe
red, “We’ll take her directly to the stasis chamber.”

  He toted her to the ship before collapsing, and then the quiet Korean took over inside.

  ****

  Park dropped Mercy from his shoulder into a black chair. He had some sort of abrasion high on his forehead with a thin trickle of blood leading to his prominent eyebrow. She blinked. One moment Yuki was fussing over him for his bravery while wounded, and the next something gripped Mercy’s brainstem in static.

  Something hissed in her ear like warm water rushing out after a long swim.

  Before the pregnant woman could analyze the sensation, Toby stood over her with a mining helmet. “I need a small sample.”

  She screamed as she struggled against the restraining straps that were suddenly wrapping her arms. Lou rushed in to grab her hand in the dimness. Just after their hands met, another wave of pain washed over her, and Mercy saw stars—not like spots of light, but almost like two spiral galaxies, one above and the other below. She could feel reassurance pouring from Lou as well as the galaxy below. Before she could analyze the sensations, Toby separated the two of them and activated the stasis field.

  After a moment of dizziness and another sound like a sip through a straw, the scene changed again. This time, the chamber was well lit, and Lou sat beside her. The wide cylinder was surrounded by six shower tubes. Either a ladder or drying niche nestled between the other pairs of stalls. She huddled in the stasis niche, a pitch-black recess under the dining hall. “How much time just passed?” Mercy asked.

  With no stasis field to interfere, Lou fumbled for her hand. “Three weeks. It took that long to reattach the saucer without your expert help.” Her husband tried to radiate calm, but she could feel the fear and loneliness underneath. “They gave us a few minutes, until the anesthesia kicks in.”

  Three meters way in an open shower stall, Auckland watched an instrument panel.

  “Why is he standing so far back?” she asked.

  “He doesn’t like debilitating cramps. The medicine is to enable them to treat you once they find the solution.”

  “Am I hurting you?”

  He squeezed her hand. “This hurts less than not seeing you.”

  How is the doctor monitoring me? When she investigated, she found that her chest and forehead were dotted with electrodes.

  “Inanimate objects can enter the field safely,” she deduced as warmth spread through her body from the IV.

  Lou smiled and stroked her sweat-bedraggled hair. “That’s you: always thinking.”

  “What did I miss?”

  “Snowflake came down to get you at Yuki’s urging. We lost a lost of water into the middle of the sphere. You can see it just floating there.” His voice grew panicked, and he breathed faster. “Damn it, don’t scare us like that. We need you. I need you!”

  “Shh,” she said, stroking his gorgeous face. “You’ll be fine. We’ll get through this.”

  “How? They have to cure rejection. Earth hasn’t done that, and they have teams of scientists. Red’s mom lost three kids because of her page talents. Did you know that?”

  “Yes. Before Red, one in five talented girls with talented mothers died before their first birthday. When they found out I was Active but my three sisters weren’t, the doctors put us through all kinds of chemical comparisons to find out how I was a freak.”

  Auckland looked up from his controls. “I read about you in the case files. You’re Betty Beta?”

  Mercy laughed at her designation in the literature. “The second natural-born Active in history. I heard Alpha died before my parents even met. Being the oldest survivor had its price. Sometimes Fortune Enterprises would skin-test new drugs on me because I was so sensitive. If I didn’t react to it, other Active children wouldn’t either.”

  “Sounds unpleasant,” Lou said.

  “The Hollises were like family. It was worth it. The things they found helped Red survive.”

  “You were pretty brave.”

  “It hasn’t been a picnic for her either. Treatments developed from her biochemistry lowered the female loss rate to one in twenty, but the lost children usually have something wrong with them anyway.”

  “And boys? We’re having one, by the way.”

  She took a ragged breath and counted to ten to avoid spilling her emotions. “Boys are trickier. Four out of five boys die when the mother has multiple talents—usually caused by rejection similar to when the mother and baby have conflicting blood types.” Her tongue and eyelids felt thick and heavy.

  Lou jerked back. “Wow. You knew the risks, and you still went through with this?”

  “He’ll have your hair.”

  Tears poured down his cheeks. “Not very logical.”

  “No. Come here.”

  He leaned closer and touched foreheads with her. The world closed to just the two of them, linked. “How will it be okay?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted, quoting one of Red’s favorite movies. “It’s a mystery.” Beyond hope, she thought, Sensei fixed my breast cancer. Maybe he fixed something else in me.

  Lou sang “Have I Told You Lately” to her, and they held each other until the doctor separated them.

  She prayed silently that the doctors could save her little boy’s life. This time, the veil fell more slowly.

  Chapter 8 – An Unholy Alliance

  For twenty days, Lou had waited to be with her. The worry and loneliness had almost killed him. He couldn’t smell, feel, or sense her through the link when she was in stasis. There was a Mercy-shaped void in the world. He had been so despondent that the other crew members had to forcibly bathe him and trim his hair before his visit. After he said good-bye to Mercy, Auckland gave him the news. Any new medicine would take at least six months to synthesize—ten times the hell that he’d already faced. Wanting to kick the shit out of something, Lou went to the Olympus cafeteria. Maybe coffee would help.

  Coasting into the dining area, he heard Toby grumbling, “Everyone has an emergency. It never ends.”

  Lou held out a hand toward the voice and recognized the warm glow of familiar human presence within a meter—Zeiss. It wasn’t great range for a sensing talent, but it kept him from smacking into people. If only doorframes were this easy. “Z, could I have a word alone with the prisoner? It’s personal. I promise I won’t hurt him.”

  Zeiss sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “Come on,” Lou pleaded. “I just found out that my wife is some famous guinea pig called Betty Beta.”

  “Mira owes her. Mercy didn’t say a word to us,” Zeiss said.

  “She wouldn’t have told me, but the drugs were pretty strong,” Lou explained. “I wanted to chat with the test-tube wonder here to see if that buys us anything medically.”

  Zeiss’ chair squeaked as it slid away from the table. “I’ll take a stroll around the boardwalk. You can play guard till he’s done with his lunch break. No bruises.”

  “How do you know I won’t overpower him?” asked Toby.

  The commander harrumphed. “He still practices hand-to-hand and bench-presses more than you weigh.”

  After Zeiss departed, Lou said casually, “Can I get you a beer?”

  “On my meds? Not a chance.” Toby wasted no time squashing Lou’s hope. “Nothing I learned in school or since will do Mercy any good.”

  “You promised Yvette that you’d help.”

  “I have. From what I’ve determined, only two things have a chance of success. Red was only born because her aunt carried her as a surrogate. There are several interesting theories in the literature for why this avoided problems. The most popular theory is that the Magi, with all their fixation for threes, have three genders. The talent-neutral surrogate serves the role of this third parent, the repository for the gametes of the other two. An alternate theory claims the Magi progress past gender in the final stage of life, and only this mature, sterile form can manifest talents.”

  Lou converted the theory into actions. “So we find someone h
ere to serve as an incubator. How hard could that be?”

  “Well, of the bottom half of the talent pool, half have no usable uterus and the other half hate Mercy’s guts—not likely,” Toby replied. “The closest candidate I found was Risa Herkemer. She might do it if Red asked her, but she’s still a little too strong talent-wise. When we try to transplant the embryo, there’s about a 40 percent chance you’ll lose your first offspring immediately and another 20 percent chance Risa won’t be able to carry to term.”

  “That’s still double the chance he has now.”

  “Maybe, but Mercy might not be able to have another child afterward. The other method takes longer but is less dangerous for everyone.”

  Lou scratched his beard. “You actually care about Mercy after she broke your nose?”

  “Mercy is helping Yvette to heal. I need that hope.”

  “You actually think you’re ever going to get laid again in this lifetime?”

  “My odds are better than yours at this point, loser,” Toby said in a low growl.

  Lou wanted to paste the smug wanker. He wanted to make him squeal and beg. Instead, he swallowed. “I gave you a huge pass on the blinding and torturing thing. This rivalry is over between us. I was wrong to mock your hope. I understand how important family is. Mercy said what Yvette sacrificed saved your immortal soul. I know how that feels, too. We can start with that common ground. What’s option number two?”

  Toby leaned close to whisper, “Let me read Fortune’s memistor cache. That fabric holds more than the electronic files we brought with us.”

  “The whole Library of Congress. So?”

  “More. It has black files on Active genetics that even the UN doesn’t know about.”

  “The double-naught files?”

  “You’ve seen them?”

  “Yeah. I’m second in command. I used them to confirm Red was who she said she was. I can grant access. What do you need?”

  “The Wannamaker files.”

  “That Nazi who designed those bloody evil guard dogs with a paralytic bite? The one who actually constructed those Oz poppy fields in Siberia that put people to sleep?”