Gravlander

by Erik Wecks

  Jo clicked on her comm. “Neela, we’re almost ready to launch. What do you have for me? Tell me you have a place for them to go.”

  “Did I ever tell you that the whole Unity medical system is completely backward?”

  Jo wasn’t in the mood to play games. Her tone boiled. “Neela! Yes or no? Do you have a place for that container? It needs to be a trauma level 1 hospital.”

  Neela sounded hurt. “Yes! Yes! They’re going to the university hospital in the capital. It will be a short flight.”

  Jo almost barked her reply. “Thank you, Neela. Paige out.” She clicked off her comm before Neela could reply.

  Jo squatted down next to a man with a very bloody bandage covering what might have once been a beautiful face. “I’m Katrina Paige, and I’m going to take a look at your wound. Can you understand me?”

  Jo didn’t really look up again for several hours. She was just finishing with another of the uncountable broken limbs when a pair of black boots and white coveralls stepped up to her.

  The doctor was an undeniably good sight. Jo wasn’t sure if she thought he was handsome because he was there to help, or if it was his square jaw and wavy black hair. Whatever it was, she had to resist the impulse to jump up and hug him.

  Carrying a full EMT kit, the man looked down at her with a small grin. “So you’re the person in charge? I’m Dr. Kuro Hamasaki from University Hospital in New Kobe. I’ve got myself and a crew of thirty EMTs ready to relieve you. Can you tell me what you’re using for your procedure?”

  Jo stood. “Relieve me? I can’t. There are still too many.”

  “Dr. Paige, you and your crew have been at this for nearly thirty-two hours. Why don’t you let someone else play the hero for a little while? You can’t hog all the glory for yourself.”

  Jo blinked for a minute. She had no idea that she had been at it so long. Her limbs felt suddenly heavy. When she closed her eyes for a second, she swayed on her feet. All she could see were gruesome visions of broken limbs. She felt suddenly numb and tired. Dr. Hamasaki put a hand out to steady her.

  The doctor shook his head. “Dr. Paige, I’ve got this.”

  Alia appeared at Jo’s side. She took Jo by the elbow. “Come on, Katy, the cavalry is here. You can let go now.”

  Feeling only a numb release, Jo let herself be led away. She was asleep before the ship’s boat undocked from the crumpled station.

  Two days later, Soren called a meeting for her senior staff as the Clarion started to accelerate away from the crippled station. Still exhausted, Jo wandered in just as the meeting was getting underway. She was struggling to shed the lingering malaise that she carried with her. Since her nap on the ship’s boat, she’d slept horribly. Every time she did manage to fall asleep, she saw a little boy dying in his mother’s arms, and she would jerk back awake. She often woke up in a cold sweat, once even screaming.

  Freddi was speaking when she entered the small office. Soren spared her a quick glance and short smile.

  “The repair is temporary, but it will hold until we can get to an atmo dock and do something permanent.”

  Soren sighed. “When will that be?”

  “Well, it can’t be too long because we do need a complete overhaul on the number two forward engine. That’s actually a more pressing concern than our little dimple in the hull.”

  “All right, you and I and Neela can talk over lunch.” The captain looked sideways.

  The senior longshoreman grunted her ascent and cut in. “Affording the repairs would have been a lot easier without our missing containers.”

  Jo noticed the muscle in Soren’s jaw tense. “What’s the last count on our lost lambs?”

  “One thousand two hundred and eighty-one. All but ten of them come from the off-books side of things. That’s a full ten percent of our smuggling operation.”

  Soren shook her head. “You try to do something good and one of your fellow captains screws you while you’re not looking. There can’t have been too many ships in the area in the last three days. Any ideas?”

  Neela answered. “Actually, there were only two ships, Titanic and”—she paused for effect—“Brutus.”

  Jo noticed that Soren gave her a furtive glance. “Harvey Mercer. Why doesn’t that surprise me? He’d go out of his way to screw a fellow captain, especially me.”

  Neela spoke to her hands and then looked at Soren. Jo got the feeling that she was avoiding looking at her. “With Mercer involved, we have to consider the possibility that Maximus is behind this.”

  Soren waved the comment away. “We have no beef with Maximus on this ship. There’s no reason for them to want to hurt us. We’re one of their best couriers.”

  Jo’s already dour mood worsened. Yeah, no reason at all, as long as I performed a complete memory rewrite without making any mistakes. Nope. None at all.

  Memory rewrites were notorious for leaving the victim with a strong sense of the uncanny when they thought back. They also tended to function like a knit sweater—one pull on the right thread of memory and the whole thing could unravel. A skilled mem-editor had to practice for years to blend their desired memories seamlessly with the victim’s existing memories.

  Neela opened her mouth to speak again.

  Jones tipped his head and leaned in. He started speaking before Neela could argue. “Well, it could have been much worse. If the dock workers’ union hadn’t thrown a fit, we would have been screwed by late charges from the transportation board.”

  Soren raised her eyebrows and smirked. “Yes, there is that. The whole thing just makes me mad. With what we lost in cargo and got from the station and the union, it’s going to be at best a wash. Not much thanks for doing the right thing.”

  Freddi grimaced. “Remember, Mother Unity cares for us, Captain.”

  The captain snorted. “Yeah, right. I keep forgetting.”

  Soren breathed slowly, deliberately, clearing the air. Then she turned to Katy, who was standing crammed near the door of the tiny cabin. “I guess we owe you a huge debt, Katy. Without you, the docks wouldn’t have come to our rescue. I heard back from the health ministry on Sunto. 567 patients arrived at Sunto hospitals before you were relieved. They were trying to recommend you for some kind of medal. Although I kinda put a stop to that because the attention wouldn’t have done your new identity any good. You know that during the same period, the onboard hospital only handled 1,200 patients? You triaged nearly half that by yourself.”

  Owe me a huge debt? I might owe the boat 1,000 containers of contraband. Jo felt her heart sink. She wasn’t really ready to be the center of attention. She needed some quality sleep. She managed a tentative grin. “Well, I was only doing triage. I didn’t really treat anybody.”

  Soren sat still and watched her for a moment. “You do know that you did a good job, right, Katy? You understand that what you did has been said to be miraculous. That you saved hundreds of lives.”

  Jo worked hard make her smile more genuine. “I know, Captain. I just keep thinking of the ones I lost.”

  Soren was silent again. Jo wondered if she might try to argue her into a good mood. Instead, she said, “Well, thank you. This ship owes its existence to you. Because of what you did, the transportation board hasn’t pulled our license or punished us.”

  Murmurs of ascent followed around the table.

  Before she could say anything more, Soren moved the meeting on to their next destination, and Jo was left alone with the lump in her throat and her dark thoughts. She saw again the little boy cradled in his mother’s arms. She was sure he hadn’t made it, and she was pretty sure that she would remember him for the rest of her life. She wasn’t sure she could handle that. Next time, she decided, she’d have to do better.

  Jo didn’t catch up to the meeting going on around her until the captain’s comm pinged.

  Soren looked annoyed. “Yes?”

  “Captain, we have a recorded priority message for you from a Mr. Chapman. I wouldn’t interrupt, sir, but he’s u
sing a Maximus handling code.”

  Soren stiffened in her chair. “Put it through.”

  When Basilio Chapman’s face appeared, projected upward by Soren’s desk, Jo wished for all the world that she could be anywhere else but there. She held her breath, trying to hold back the tears.

  Chapman spoke quietly without his usual swagger. Fire smoldered behind his gray eyes. “Gloria, I never thought you to be this stupid. Editing my memories? I thought you would be smarter than that. I don’t know yet what it is that you’re trying to hide from me behind that erotic encounter, but whatever it is, I will get to the bottom of it, and I will hunt you down when I do. Consider the cargo a down payment.” Chapman frowned. “I’ll be seeing you, Captain.”

  Jo felt so ill she thought she was going to throw up. Without saying anything, she simply stood and stumbled to the door.

  “Katy, wait,” Soren’s voice pleaded. “Jo, stop!”

  But she couldn’t stop.

  She could feel the pity and shock in the room, and she hated herself all the more for making a scene.

  As soon as she escaped Soren’s tiny office, Jo rushed toward her quarters, wanting nothing more than to pull the covers over her head and never resurface, but then she remembered that Alia would be there trying to sleep. That wouldn’t work. Instead, she pulled up short at the door to the med lab.

  Entering, she locked it behind her and promptly lost her breakfast into the can by the door, and slowly thereafter the whole world seemed to stop. All she could see was Chapman’s face appearing above Soren’s desk over and over again. Her mind felt frozen in place, hard, like a granite monolith, standing on some alien world, unchanging for millions of years. No thoughts would come. It was the bright pain of the scalpel that allowed Jo to escape that horrible data loop. Reality was only pain, pain was the only real thing.

  Jo couldn’t say how many times she had cut herself when the door lock turned from red to green, and she was suddenly faced with a shocked and then red-faced Soren.

  “Katrina Paige! What are you doing?”

  Jo let the scalpel fall onto the tray and began to weep at the same time her anger rose up. She glared at Soren. “Not killing myself! That’s what I’m doing! I’m not killing myself!”

  At one point, she had held the illusion that she could make this woman proud of her, but no longer—all she felt was pain and more pain. It was the only real thing; everything else was an illusion.

  Soren stood there for a moment, tense and stern, and then her body seemed to melt as tears filled her eyes. It was as if someone had opened a spigot on the bottom of one of her feet and let all the anger drain out. “There are better ways, Katy. There are better ways.”

  Jo’s soul only knew one dam to hold back the overwhelming tide of shame that threatened to wipe away everything in a towering tsunami of emotion, and so she clung to it, desperate to stay above the tide. “Well, I don’t know any better way to stay alive than this! So this is what I do! And it’s none of your business as long as it doesn’t interfere with my job.”

  Soren held her hands up as if she were exhausted and confused. “When will you ever understand? We’re a family. You are part of that family. To me, this isn’t about your job—”

  “Well, maybe I don’t want a family! Did you ever think about that? Maybe I’m just here to get paid!”

  Soren squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “I don’t believe you, Katy. Before you came on board you told me you didn’t really care about money. Besides, if you wanted to get paid, there were plenty of other places you could have gone.”

  Katy was tired. She felt the fight ebbing out of her far more quickly than she would have liked. She crossed her arms and said sullenly, “Well, believe it. It’s true. I’m only here because there was no place else to go. And I warned you, didn’t I?”

  The wound on her arm had closed, leaving behind little but a long, thin scratch that would become a scar in a few hours. The scar would disappear in a day, leaving behind a little more self-hatred in Jo. Glancing at her arm, Jo could count at least ten such scars there.

  Soren smiled in a sad way. “Yes, you did warn me, didn’t you? Well, now I know, and I’m still here, and I’m not going anywhere. So step away from the pain and get to your bunk, Dr. Paige. That’s an order. You need some sleep and some time off.”

  Jo felt her feet go cold. “I can’t. I have a clinic this afternoon.”

  Soren straightened up. “We will discuss your return to duty after you’ve had some rest. Is that clear?”

  Jo felt her heart start to race. “I can’t. They’ll know. I have to be at my clinic.”

  Jo thought she saw a bit of understanding dawn in Soren’s eyes. “The crew will know that you cut yourself?”

  Jo just nodded.

  “No, they won’t. I won’t tell them. For now, this is between you and me. You have my word.” Soren stepped forward.

  It took almost all her will not to bolt from her chair, yet somehow Katy managed it.

  Soren put her arm gently around her shoulder. “Come on, Katy. It’s time to sleep.”

  Having no more will to fight, Katy let herself be led to the auto-doc and then to her bunk.

  18

  The Camp

  Six weeks later, Katy stepped out onto the hull of the Clarion for the first time.

  The conditions for her return to work had been strict. There would be no more cutting—a promise Katy was eager to make, as she made it each time she awoke from her malaise. She also had to attend weekly intraspace counseling session with a counselor that Soren had recommended, a thought that shamed Jo at first but didn’t turn out to be as bad as she thought. She kind of liked the young man who listened to her whine about her life each week.

  Upon stepping out of the airlock, the immediate sensation was one of falling, as the lack of gravity fractured the meaning of the word up. She felt the rush, and while she wanted to reach out for something solid to hold on to, she laughed. There was nothing to grasp, just the endless void stretching out in all directions except for under her feet. Katy shuffled forward carefully, almost giddy with the tingle in her toes, still grateful for the tethers that tied her to both Alia and Todd.

  Katy hadn’t spent much time in space. If you didn’t count training in the Ghost Fleet, she’d suited up maybe three or four times in her life, and none of those really counted because every time she had been strapped to an instructor.

  When Todd asked how many registered suit hours she had, she watched his jaw drop when she told him she had none.

  From then on, Todd and Alia had treated her like a small child, double checking every seal and gasket on her suit.

  The crew of the Clarion was small for the size of the ship, and many on board were cross-trained in case an extra hand was needed here or there. Todd had over 500 hours of suit time helping out in cargo and was often sent on these kinds of off-ship excursions while his assistant held down the fort in the kitchen.

  Todd and Alia’s overprotective supervision irritated her until now. Particularly because she knew the relationship between them had been tense, to say the least, since Todd’s little run-in with a bacteria. But now, standing on the all-too-tenuous skin of the Clarion, she wanted every bit of mothering they could give her.

  Alia’s voice crackled in her ear. “Easy there, Katy. Take it slow. We’re not in any hurry. Keep your eyes on the midsection jets. It will help.”

  In front of her stretched a half-kilometer of shapeless, nameless shipping containers ending at the midsection maneuvering jets. Although she couldn’t see any of the other container sets, that same view repeated itself three more times as the Clarion divided its axis into four sides and stacked cargo on all sides of its central spindle. Katy’s mind boggled when she remembered that she could only see half of the length of the ship. The same scene, endless containers stacked end to end, repeated itself on the far side of the midship jets until one finally came to the aft engines.

  Nervous, Katy laughe
d again as she shuffled slowly forward.

  Fifteen minutes later, Katy watched Todd through the yellow cast of her helmet and fresh-air respirator, which every spacer called a HeFAR. The young cook chomped grimly on his gum as he yanked hard on the straps that pinned her into the undersized, fold-down jump seat built into the wall of a standard twenty-foot container. At the hatch, Alia waved a goodbye from inside her pressure suit, giving Katy a silent thumbs-up.

  Katrina smiled back, and as the hatch shut on the suddenly too small metal box, she closed her eyes, shutting out the world in the silence of her HeFAR. Only eleven weeks before, she had been living on Korg Haran with the Timcree. It felt like an eon.

  Even as Todd continued to tighten her into the jump seat, her stomach did a small flip-flop as she thought about what she had just done. She wondered when she would quit smiling. There was something life-giving and invigorating about the tenuousness of the void. She felt more alive now than she had in weeks. She found herself wondering what it would be like to work as a longshoreman, standing on the skin of a container ship, organizing cargo. Her roommate Alia did it on an almost daily basis.

  I’m young. There’s still time to learn, she thought. Stacking containers felt tangible and much less nebulous than being a ship’s doctor. When giving someone advice about minimizing radiation exposure or changing their diet, being a doctor felt futile. There was really nothing she could do but preach. At least a longshoreman could look back at the end of a day’s work and tell exactly how many containers they had loaded and unloaded from the ship.

  Katrina felt Todd step back. She opened her eyes. The young cook took far less time strapping himself in than he had Katy. It wasn’t more than a minute before she heard him call out on the comm link in his heads-up device. “Docking Control, Container Two is set. Launch when ready.”

  Neela’s voice answered, tinged with a note of irritation. “Thank you, Container Two. We’re waiting for Container One, and then we’ll get you both on your way.”