Off Rock

by Kieran Shea

  “Um, Jimmy?”

  “Same spot.”

  Condoms. They were in the top drawer of his desk, same as always, and again an awkward necessity. After kissing the tip of his nose, Leela let go of him, jumped up, and deftly secured a shiny condom packet from the drawer. It wasn’t something she liked to crow about, but Leela was pretty good at executing a gentle incisor rip. She unrolled the protection on Jimmy in five seconds flat and, spreading her knees and straddling him, she drew him quickly inside.

  A small moan escaped Jimmy’s mouth.

  Leela tittered. “Guess you missed this, huh?”

  “Damn, I think—wait. I think I’m going to—”

  “Oh c’mon. Already? Don’t you even dare.”

  Leela swept her dark hair across his face. It felt so good to feel him straining beneath her again, trying to push away his physical urge to be sated. With a pace slow and deliberate, she started riding him and briefly she wondered if she was being cruel. Hell, yes, she was being cruel. Tormenting him felt good. It felt sexy and empowering. And after the emotional meat grinder he had put her through, dominating him and keeping his forthcoming eruptive seizures in check felt unstintingly deserved.

  Out of slit eyes, Leela looked at Jimmy’s face as he wriggled through his pleasure-soaked vacillations. Like imbedded cords on vibrato, the tendons of his neck grew tight and it wasn’t long before she too felt a long overdue release surging inside. Rising and falling on his hips, she rode him faster and faster.

  Jimmy jerked his head. “No, I can’t—no! NO! I CAN’T!”

  “What?”

  With an outrageous heave, he pulled out and threw her off. There was a split instant of nothing as she landed back against the wall, and Jimmy scrambled off the bunk. Swatting at him as he bolted behind the frosted partition to the bathroom, Leela quickly clambered to her feet, baffled.

  Naked, buck-wild freak throwing her off, what was he? Sick or something? Leela didn’t hear any form of discharge behind the partition, so right then and there she’d half a mind to follow him into the bathroom and claw his eyes out.

  “Jimmy? What’s wrong?”

  When Jimmy returned from behind the partition he shoved a translucent, latched radioactive-proof container into her hands.

  “I can’t do this,” he murmured. “I’m sorry, Leela, but I just can’t.”

  Angrily Leela stared at him. Then she looked at the container in her hands and did a double-take. Wondering if what she was seeing was real, she shook the container up and down. The oversized pit inside clanked. It was unmistakable.

  Gold.

  25. EASY ONE DOWN

  Jock swung his hatch closed and left it unlocked. After picking his way to his workstation, he plopped down into a chair and lifted a ten-millimeter vial next to a spent syringe. The syringe was still gooey with traces of nougat. Counting the minutes, Jock estimated that any second now Zaafer would be back in his quarters, so he re-read the fine print on the vial’s label.

  WARNING

  Upon ingestion—lethal within 1–10 minutes.

  Onset symptoms include tachycardia, acute headache, serious and rapid metabolic acidosis, powerful seizures, disorientation, coma, and eventual cardiac arrest. Treatment (speed vital)—immediate removal from cause; 100% O2 respiratory support; inhalation of amyl nitrite (1 ampule) for 30 seconds of each min.; 3% Na nitrite 10 mL at 2.5-5 mL/min. IV; furthermore…

  Furthermore?

  With the amount of potassium cyanide Jock had injected into Zaafer’s Whiplash Pogoes, furthermore was no longer a concern for that soppy wanker.

  Sweet dreams, indeed.

  26. MEANY-WHILE (INTERMEZZO)

  With the fathomless, black desolation of space and considering the events about to unfold, one might consider the De Silento’s christened moniker to be a misnomer of unspeakable, shattering irony.

  The De Silento’s reconfigured core drives having been prepped well before it made the skip out and its recent calculated subterfuge successfully implemented, the Omega-Class’s navigational inputs deemed the vessel’s forward velocity could finally be increased. To avoid being misconstrued as anything other than routine system reengagement, the vessel’s rekindled momentum was accompanied by a transmission advising its previous distress signal had been unwarranted.

  Meanwhile, back on Earth, a fine-tailored cadre of Enlai Universal executives were finishing off their coffees and a tray of pains au chocolat in EU’s board room. The results of the cadre’s agreed-upon efforts still months out from being substantiated, it seemed a tad premature to celebrate, but in-house counsel and the company’s weapons consultant assured the executives in attendance it was not. Twelve magnums of champagne were ordered and delivered. Flutes were poured, clinked, and downed.

  Intercept with Azoick’s Kardashev 7-A station was, as in-house counsel and the weapons consultant described it, “a foregone conclusion.”

  27. PINK SLIP

  “Leela, please. Will you just calm down.”

  Leela refused to acknowledge Jimmy and finished dressing. After tying off her hair in a knot, she grabbed the tumbler with the gold sample and shook it at Jimmy like a huge clacking maraca.

  “Calm down? Calm down!? You freaking imbecile! What were you thinking? Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  “Look, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t even start with that. You can’t even begin to apologize, Jimmy. The way you’ve been acting, I should’ve known you were up to something. You are so fired.”

  Jimmy hadn’t put his boots or jumper back on yet and was leaning against his wall full of pictures in his boxers and socks. “As expected,” he said. “And?”

  “And what?”

  Jimmy pointed at the tumbler. “Well, that. That’s, um, like—”

  “A capital one corporate offense? Oh, I am well aware of that, buster. And while I should report your sorry, thieving hide immediately I’m not exactly enamored with the idea of hiring a lawyer to defend myself about being in the same room as this right now.” Leela shook the tumbler at him again. “You know, if you really wanted to screw me, Jimmy, you should have finished with the real thing because at least then I could’ve gotten off. I could lose my job over something like this. Goddamn it, and you said you found this where?”

  Jimmy looked up at the ceiling briefly. “Along one of the surface schist sites a few weeks back.”

  “So you didn’t think that maybe you should’ve told someone?”

  “All the trace analytics said there wasn’t any gold on K7-A. I didn’t find any more, and believe me I looked. Basically I thought it fell from space or something.”

  “Fell from space?”

  “Yeah, I mean we’re talking billions upon billions of epochs here, Leela. There could’ve been meteor fragmentations, random panspermia—”

  “Oh, don’t give me that. For falling from space, this piece looks like a pretty clean cut to me.”

  “Well, I tidied up the dross.”

  “Liar.”

  “I’m not lying to you, Leela. And if you don’t believe me, I don’t know what else I can say.” Cautiously, Jimmy picked up his jumper and stepped into it. “Anyway it’s not like it’s really quote-unquote stolen at this point. You could just choose to ignore it. I mean, doesn’t me having a crisis of conscience count for anything?”

  Leela set the tumbler down on Jimmy’s desk and cracked an open hand right across his cheek.

  “OW!”

  Reaching up, she grabbed the HMS Victory model from the shelf and flung it at him. On reflex Jimmy stepped aside and the ship model smashed against the wall. Deducing that it might be better to not say anything more and just let her vent all at once, Jimmy zipped up his jumper. Next door the fragmite incinerators switched on, and Leela looked to the wall. She grabbed the tumbler and made for the hatch.

  “Don’t you move,” she said icily.

  Earlier, when he told Leela that she knew him better than he did himself, Jimmy had been thinking the
knowledge exchange was more the other way around. He knew exactly what Leela was going to do. About a minute and a half later when she returned from the fragmite incinerators with an empty tumbler, she didn’t even bother to look at him.

  “The Adamant has secured its orbit and the tenders have descended. After the cargo is loaded on the tenders and the upcoming blows in a few hours, and once I finish filing your termination paperwork, I’ll make arrangements for one of the Adamant’s transfer modules. You’ll make the skip back with the Adamant right after the final assembly. All expenses for your passage back to the Neptune Pact Orbital will be docked from your accounts. Pack your shit.”

  “Leela…”

  “You’re fired, Jimmy. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

  “Okay, okay… so what do I tell people I’m getting canned for?”

  Leela stepped right up to him and planted a finger on his chest. “Your contract is an ‘at will’ agreement, so you’re not owed anything in the way of an explanation. God, Jimmy, do you think people actually care what you’re getting fired for? The only reason anyone would want to know is so they can adjust their own behavior so they don’t get the ax too. Tell people what you want. Tell them you fucked up. Hell, get blitzed off your ass at the post-assembly bash and whine about the injustice of it all, but your career with Azoick is over.”

  “But—”

  “I said no buts, Jimmy. Not another peep.”

  28. THE BLOWS/A BASHO MOMENT

  AZOICK PROGRESS REPORT

  SPO Ref. Code: 234.6

  SOURCE:

  K7-A Station, ASOCC, Sector 34-T

  DATE:

  3.25.2778GMT

  SUBJECT:

  Final inlay and surface area demolitions.

  MESSAGE:

  Commencing primary and secondary charge blows at 0:800 hours, OST.

  In a domino arrangement, each interconnected charge below and above Kardashev 7-A’s surface cut loose on a controlled frequency-cued mark.

  The primed yield areas, including strip bores, grind quarries, and all shaft and schist sites, upon their hundreds and hundreds of muted detonations, quietly collapsed inward, moving outward in a circular pattern. The rippling progression looked similar to the aftereffects of a frog leaping into a lifeless pond.

  For their own amusement, the ASOCC management team synced the blows’ countdown and detonations to music.

  ‘Entry of the Gladiators’ by Julius Fučík.

  29. GETTING THE J-O-B DONE

  Piper was supervising Østerby and Stormkast as they piled the parasol gear into a crawler parked in the shipping hangar maintenance area when the automated voice from the overhead PA system verified that all inlay blows had been completed. There was only one last pylon case to be lifted into the rear compartment when, suddenly detecting the odor of hickory, Piper turned and saw Jock standing directly behind her eating a strip of jerky.

  “I suppose it’s a good thing that crawler you’re using just got its seals checked,” said Jock. “Now you don’t have to lug all your elaborate equipment over to ASOCC.”

  Piper resumed her observation of Østerby and Stormkast. The two men closed the crawler’s rear hatch and made twirling motions with their index fingers. Like Piper, both were wearing spacesuits. They picked up a couple of helmets from the hangar floor and headed for the crawler’s cockpit. Piper spoke impassively.

  “All our pre-deployment checks were solid. With the blows now executed, we should be out there five, maybe six hours, max.”

  “Ah, you’ll be back in plenty of time then.”

  “In plenty of time for what?”

  “The pre-liftoff assembly and party.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “I downloaded a merengue tutorial by the way.”

  “What?”

  “Merengue. You know, as in dancing?” Jock took another masticating rip of his jerky and chewed loudly. “I trust you’re still up for some fun.”

  Even though she knew he couldn’t see her face in full, it took some effort for Piper not to grind her teeth. She still had her cover assignment tasks to conclude before she could kill him, but with Roscoe reminding her of the upcoming pre-liftoff celebration the cauldron of her mind began to smolder with ideas.

  Grisly, heinous ideas.

  “Oh, I’m up for some fun, all right,” she replied. Heading for the crawler and not looking back, she added, “In fact, I’m looking forward to it.”

  30. THE BOTTOM GOTTEN

  Somewhat red-eyed, sniffling, and quite beside herself, Leela sat at her ASOCC console. She was on the third edit of Jimmy’s termination order when one of her colleagues in the command center spoke up.

  “Hey, check it out, guys. That Enlai Omega-Class is on the move again.”

  Leela flicked her eyes to an adjacent screen. On the display, a luminous blip slid by and registered a less than normal measure of speed. While slow, a comprehensive analysis of the Omega-Class’s renewed momentum appeared in a gray sidebar and a secondary guidance file showed the De Silento was shadowing the Adamant’s previous heading before it secured its orbit around K7-A. Leela did a brief digest of the numbers. Weird. The course heading differential was scant—a mere ten thousand kilometers.

  “Is the Adamant’s crew aware the De Silento has reengaged?” Leela asked.

  “Checking on that now, stand by.”

  A pause.

  “Oh, yeah,” her colleague continued. “The Adamant’s bridge confirms.”

  The fine hairs on the back of Leela’s neck prickled. She wondered if it was only because she was always cold in the command center or whether her instincts were telling her something. She’d been so mad from her encounter with Jimmy that when she arrived for her work cycle in ASOCC she’d neglected to put on her fingerless wool gloves.

  “What’s the nearest EU spheroid claim in our sector?” Leela asked.

  “Why? You looking to trade up, Pendergast?”

  “Don’t be a jackass,” she snapped. “Just check for me, will you?”

  “Okay, hang on. Hmm… all right, I think I’ve got it. The nearest Enlai spheroid claim looks to be on a large moon nine days from here called Alardo-9.”

  Clicking a pen, Leela made a note on a scrap of paper, put on her fingerless gloves, and went back to editing Jimmy’s termination order.

  To flush out the rest of her slowly diminishing rage, she resolved to highlight select words in the document with bold italics and underlines.

  Words like inadequate, reckless, inattentive, and flagrant disregard.

  After proofreading what she wrote, Leela printed out two hardcopies for her backup binders and hit enter on her keyboard.

  It was a huge pain, but since Jimmy wouldn’t be on Kardashev 7-A for the final spider liftoffs now, she had to make special arrangements for a personnel transfer module to be dispatched from the Adamant. When she saw an advisory statement that a personnel transfer module had already been ordered from the orbiting freighter, Leela reviewed the code signature on the request. Jock Roscoe’s name and his approved application for personal leave sprung a trapdoor in the bottom of her stomach.

  It took less than a half a second for Leela to connect the dots.

  Jimmy.

  Jock Roscoe.

  The gold.

  No, could it be?

  Please, Jimmy, for the love of God, no…

  31. SHAM-A-SCAM-A-DING-DONG

  Changed into his well broken-in black leathers and best flight boots to go home in, Jimmy dumped the rest of his gear into a large, green, stitched-seam burn bag. Knowing he had little time, he disposed of almost everything he had and worked as quickly as he could. He chucked in his terrariums, the shards of his ruined HMS Victory model, his desk contents, his pictures, and all the rest of the miscellaneous paraphernalia he now knew he had little use for. The only things he decided to keep on his person were the straight razor his father had given him and his deck of playing cards with his secreted-away processing chit, both of which he stashed
in the breast pocket of his jacket. He’d requested an automated hover bin for the burn bag, and the AHB was lingering just outside his open hatchway.

  When Jock appeared next to the bin, Jimmy glanced up.

  “Oh, hey, Jock…”

  “Hey there, my man. I assume you got your walking papers.”

  Jimmy crammed a wad of unwashed towels into the burn bag. “Yeah,” he replied. “Turns out getting canned doesn’t take all that much. Leela has a short fuse.”

  “So how’d you work it?”

  “Let’s just say I called Leela a few choice names.”

  Jock hooted his approval. “Nasty. So, are we all set to ride the same transfer module up to the Adamant, then?”

  “Seems to be the case,” Jimmy said. “I take it your gambit with personal leave worked out okay.”

  Jock stepped over the threshold and into Jimmy’s quarters proper. “Smooth as polished marble. FYI, the transfer module is already on the landing pad and engaged with the ASOCC airlocks. I just dropped off my own strongbox there a short time ago. All we have to do now is climb aboard and the next thing we know we’ll be getting prepped for our six-month pajama nap back to the Neptune Pact Orbital.”

  “Great.”

  “So, are you still planning on showing your face at the final assembly?”

  “I thought I better bear through it and stick around for a few pops afterwards. Maybe say some nice-knowing-yas.”

  “One last hurrah then, huh?”

  Jimmy sighed. “Yeah, for the both of us. Anyway, I need to finish clearing everything out, and I still have to take my strongbox down to the transfer module. So if you don’t mind…”

  “Oh, sure, sure,” Jock said. “Hey, a quick thought before I amble off, though. Do you still got that original sample you showed me knocking around back there in your privy?”