Off Rock

by Kieran Shea

  Piper whirled at him. “What the hell?”

  Jimmy swung an arm and knocked her helmet off. Taking a stutter-step, he stomped on her left knee joint as hard as he could, and Piper’s leg folded inward and wrong.

  Piper howled. Releasing the controls, she gripped her damaged knee as the tender sloped upward at a vertiginous angle. Both of them lost their footing, but Jimmy grabbed the edge of the console just as Piper rolled down the flanking passageway toward the stern’s hatch.

  Jimmy got to his feet and took hold of the joysticks. Even with her bad leg, he knew Piper was already scrabbling her way back forward and in a matter of seconds she’d reach him. Jimmy searched the projected navigations. He had to slow her down.

  Yanking the joysticks left and right, he veered the tender riotously to port and starboard and heard Piper spilling backward down the passageway. She screamed.

  “ASSHOLE! I’M GOING TO RIP YOUR GODDAMN SPINE OUT!”

  Shit. There was no way Jimmy could keep her off balance forever, so with his right fingers he trawled into the breast pocket of his leathers. Pinching out his straight razor, he looked back and saw Piper limping toward him like a winded mountaineer with her cylinder weapon. When she finally took aim she was barely three feet away, so Jimmy rotated and kicked out a heel. His foot caught the cylinder weapon and knocked it out of her hands.

  Stumbling, Piper charged and threw her shoulder into Jimmy’s side, knocking him away from the console. The tender rocked frighteningly from side to side. Jimmy flicked out his razor and slashed upward, hoping to slice something critical. Whiffing on his follow-through he spun around, fell, and slammed onto his back. The words “done for” came to mind.

  Great, he thought miserably, now she’s going to kill me.

  Surging up one more time, Jimmy bear-hugged Piper’s waist and plowed her back into the controls.

  The tender entered a dive.

  51. UPLOAD

  In the transfer module, Leela made sure her orbit was secure before she tried syncing into K7-A station’s relays. It was imperative that she at least try to upload all the files from the station’s mainframes before the inbounds destroyed everything. The syncing upload commenced and just as she peered out a starboard porthole the projectiles at last blitzed into the spiders.

  Given the module’s orbital altitude the destruction below was a bit underwhelming: a half an instant’s worth of brief bursts, squelched fire, and then nothing but dust clouds. Leela immediately turned back to check the upload sync.

  The connection and all the files from K7-A were lost.

  52. DONE FOR

  Piper jabbed a four-finger spear strike into Jimmy’s throat.

  Jimmy dropped to his knees. It felt as if a blob of molten steel was suddenly lodged in his windpipe and he couldn’t breathe. Canting to the side and rolling onto his back, he looked up at Piper as she took control and leveled the tender out. Engaging the automatic pilot, she turned.

  Jimmy tried to get to his feet, but lightning fast Piper kicked him and he fell back. She leered.

  “Nice try.”

  A merciful trickle of air reached Jimmy’s lungs. “You murderer…”

  Unfazed by the character update, Piper shot a boot into his kidney and glanced briefly back at the console. “Well, yeah, technically I suppose that’s true.” She kicked him in his side again. “But by association you’re on the hook for that as much as I am. Not that it matters now. Take a look.”

  On the navigations a callout screen showed the spiders just as the De Silento’s projectiles slammed into the station—soundless fire and blooming white clouds of obliteration. There was no way anyone could have survived.

  God, Jimmy wished with every fiber of his being he’d never found the gold. All he wanted was another chance, another chance to do a million things. To save Leela and everyone else on K7-A station, to say proper goodbyes to his parents even though they were long dead and gone. Jimmy realized these flashes of regret were coming to him because instinctually his brain knew the end was nigh.

  As improbable as it was, just then Jimmy felt a raindrop land on his lips. His attention drawn, he licked the improbable drop of liquid and tasted warm iron. He imagined it might be blood dribbling from his broken nose, but looking up at Piper he noticed a barely perceptible swoop of red stretched across her neck. The swoop widened and when Piper saw the blood dripping down onto Jimmy’s face she slapped a glove against her neck.

  “Oh no—what did you do?!”

  Jimmy beetled back on all fours. When he turned around, the remaining integument cells on her wound gave way and a wash of blood gushed over Piper’s glove. The blood spilled remarkably fast and down into the collar of her spacesuit, and an ineffable look of terror rose in her eyes. The wound was deep. It was growing more fatal by the second, and Piper knew it. There was so much blood.

  Jimmy edged toward the passageway and pulled himself to his feet. He swung his razor out in front of him like a foil. “Stand back.”

  Piper beat a look at the razor and then at Jimmy. Her lips parted ghoulishly. “Where did you get that thing?”

  “This?” Jimmy answered. “It was a gift from my late father. Sorry, but you were going to kill me eventually, weren’t you?”

  Piper made a move toward the cylinder weapon, but Jimmy blocked her path. She swayed back drunkenly. “Well, maybe not right away. But, yeah, I suppose sooner or later I would’ve, sure.”

  “It didn’t have to be this way, you know.”

  Piper regarded him. She lowered her glove from her neck and let her blood pump freely like a spring. Reaching into her collar, she jerked something free and dangled it—a necklace. Looking at a ring and an amulet attached, she caressed them both. “Listen, I know this sounds awful of me, but if… if you and the hijacked loot make it… could you do me a favor?”

  “For you?”

  Piper nodded weakly and tossed the necklace at his feet. “Get that to my fiancé.”

  “You have a fiancé? What the—why the hell should I?”

  Piper fell to her knees and wheezed. “Just be decent, saw-grinner. Tell him… tell him that I tried.”

  Clutching her chest Piper pitched forward onto her face.

  Believing she might be pulling a fast one, Jimmy waited nearly a minute before he crept toward her. After kicking Piper in the temple, to be certain she was dead, he turned and picked up the necklace from the deck.

  Fiancé?

  Whatever, man.

  As he stuffed the strung jewelry into his breast pocket, a winking light outside the forward casement drew Jimmy’s eyes. It was a navigational beacon on the Adamant’s transfer module. The module was approaching fast, no more than three klicks out. An alarm on the navigations throbbed. Jimmy dropped his razor.

  Collision course, part deux.

  53. EVASIVE LEELA-ACTION

  A threat alert squeaked blithely. Leela flipped up her visor.

  “Now what?”

  The module’s forward displays advised:

  Azoick tender closing. Bearing seven, nine-eight-delta. Three thousand meters.

  Like a slab-shaped warhead, the tender was cruising straight for the module. The forward displays continued:

  Two thousand meters. Emergency orbit abort advised.

  Leela engaged the module’s navigations. “Go for emergency orbit abort.”

  To engage emergency orbit abort, please re-enter your Azoick employee identification number and password.

  “Are you freakin’ kidding me?!”

  Negative. Repeat, please re-enter your Azoick employee identification number and password to initiate emergency orbit abort.

  Leela typed as fast as she could.

  “Emergency abort now!” she shrieked. “Abort! Abort! Abort!”

  Thank you. Emergency abort now initiated.

  Reserve ion-thrust nozzles kicked in and the module skated into a mighty slant. Leela heaved her body to the side as if moving her slight weight could help avoid disaster.r />
  Warning. Impact probability ten percent. Compensating for combined velocities.

  Leela slapped her visor down, locked it off, and held her breath.

  Correction, impact probability four percent.

  Compensating…

  Compensating…

  54. OH, DENOUEMENT—OH, SWEET DENOUEMENT

  Well, Jimmy thought, this is it.

  The big adios.

  Nothing to do now but take it on the chin.

  Sorry, Leela.

  Sorry, Mom and Dad.

  Oh, and by the way, universe?

  Go fuck yourself.

  In the final seconds before impact, the transfer module looked so close Jimmy thought he could reach out and touch it. When ion propulsions fired and the module listed hard to port, Jimmy remembered.

  Leela made the Code Zulu announcement from ASOCC.

  God—was it her?

  If it was, Jimmy figured Leela must’ve launched the module to save herself. Never one to quit, she was alive and taking evasive action. Goddamn, that girl had some moxie. Jimmy’s heart swelled.

  Go, Leela, go!

  The module’s propulsions burned bright as they slid past the forward casement, and Jimmy hunted the console’s navigation screens for a way to reverse the tender’s momentum. He activated inverse power, but the tender’s response was sluggish. It wasn’t going to be enough.

  The two hulls collided and a clangorous scraping filled the tender. Flung into a centripetal spiral, Jimmy tumbled sideways, fell, and sledgehammered his head against his rucksack on the deck.

  The last thing he heard before blacking out was Leela’s voice streaming over comm.

  “Adamant tender, I’m coming about. Prepare for boarding.”

  55. NAPTIME OVER, ’FESS UP

  Later, when Jimmy came to, he noticed that he was no longer in the forward area of the tender. He found himself enveloped in a gray wool blanket with a second gray blanket folded beneath his head. Leela was bending over him and wrapping a self-adhering elastic bandage around his head.

  “Leela! I can’t believe you made it! You’re alive!”

  He tried to pull her to his chest, but she smacked his hands away.

  “Hold still, dumbass.”

  Jimmy lowered his arms. “Oh man, I thought I lost you forever.”

  Leela shook her head and smirked. “Gee, you talking all mushy like that, you must’ve whacked your skull pretty hard. You might have a grade-three concussion.” After securing his dressing, she closed the first-aid kit and slid it across the deck. “I guess it’s safe to say we can add ‘throat slitter’ to your resume.”

  Jimmy remembered Piper’s slashed neck. “Oh that… that was in self-defense.”

  “Oh, really? Self-defense? Do tell.”

  “Listen, I know what it looks like but that woman… she… she used to be in the PAL. She was an operative for The Chimeric Circle, Leela.”

  “Piper?”

  “You know her?”

  “We met a couple of times. I thought she was a freelancer.”

  “She was, but I think that was just a cover ploy to get her to K7-A. The real reason she was on station was to kill Jock.”

  “Kill him?”

  “Yeah. Jock had, like, some serious debts to The CC. I’m not sure, but I think Piper killed him when everyone was at the pre-liftoff party. I saw his body.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Leela said flatly.

  “Huh?”

  “Jimmy, the whole station was annihilated. The Adamant is gone. Enlai Universal attacked us on purpose and there’s no active record of what happened.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning if we’re rescued, and that’s a pretty big if, there’s no way for us to prove what EU did. We’re the only survivors, don’t you see? It’ll be our word against Enlai Universal’s until someone launches an investigation.”

  “No one else made it?”

  Leela shook her head once more and sat cross-legged next to him. “How are you feeling?”

  Taking a serious breath, Jimmy took personal inventory. “My head feels like I’ve been clobbered with a brick and my nose is broken and my sides are sore, but other than that I think I’m okay.” He tried to sit up, felt woozy, and laid back down.

  Leela continued, “Look, if Azoick mounts an investigation, forensics might be able to pull the pieces together, but with the Mandelbrot skip delays, something like that could take months, maybe even years. I imagine when they learn of the losses Azoick is going to go ballistic and they’ll want to blame someone. If they don’t take us at our word, Azoick might even prosecute us. They’ll definitely negate our contracts, that’s for sure.”

  “But you already fired me, Leela.”

  “There’s no record of me doing that. Everything was lost when the station was destroyed because I couldn’t upload any of K7-A’s records. Phew—I tell you what, though. We better seek legal counsel if and when Azoick debriefs us.”

  Jimmy reached for Leela again, but she rebuffed his hand and furrowed her brow. Damn, all he wanted to do was to hold her, but seeing as that looked out of the question Jimmy decided to come clean about everything instead. The harebrained plan, the gold vein being a bust, Piper boosting the tender and blowing Bay X’s door open, the supposed Hong Kong dragon lady and Jock’s double-cross, everything. When Leela asked him why he fled from her when she confronted him at the party, Jimmy told her he wanted to get rid of the gold in the fragmite incinerators, but Piper shanghaied him before he had the chance to do so. Leela seemed glad to hear he’d had a change of heart, but she wondered aloud whether, if she hadn’t confronted him at the party, he would’ve followed through with his criminal intentions. Jimmy didn’t want to lie to her so he admitted shamefully that, yeah, he probably would’ve. Leela assumed as much. She then asked him what happened to the gold.

  “Like I said, Jock thought it was all loaded in a drill case that Zaafer placed in a quarantine hold on the tender,” he said, “but what little I managed to pull from the shaft is still in my rucksack.”

  “And where is your rucksack?”

  “On the tender. We’re still docked with the tender, aren’t we?”

  Leela rubbed her eyes. “Oh, Jimmy… we de-docked with the tender over an hour ago.”

  “We did?”

  Leela glanced about. “This module, the reserve batteries don’t have that much power. The tender was slowing us down and there was still tons of debris from the Adamant flying around, so I cut it loose. Fortunately we’re now drifting toward the sector’s main shipping channels, and I’ve activated a distress beacon. The spiders on K7-A were scheduled for repurposing. If we’re lucky, the scow that was due to tow the spiders to their next location is bound to pick up our signal in a few days.”

  “But what about—”

  “Piper?”

  “Yeah, she’s still on the tender.”

  Leela made an “ick” face and got up. “I jettisoned her body and what I assume was all her gear after I cleaned up the blood. In the long run, a salvage crew may find the tender, but I thought it best not to leave any incriminating loose ends.”

  “But my rucksack, that’s a loose end.”

  Leela went still. “Jimmy, I jettisoned everything, even the damn cargo.”

  Jimmy went silent for a moment. “Wow,” he said. “I guess… I guess I ought to thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For saving me from myself. I’m so sorry, Leela.”

  Jimmy made a go of sitting up again, but Leela wagged a finger and told him to stay down. She sighed. Jimmy had never seen her look so tired.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Leela said after a minute, “this stupid gold business of yours and all your lying, I feel it might be for the best if we just leave things as they are, you know? Stay away from each other.”

  Jimmy held Leela’s eyes. “You really mean that?”

  “Yeah, I think I do.”

  After everything that had happened,
her words were crushing.

  “Yeah,” Jimmy admitted glumly as he fingered the tape over his swollen nose. “I suppose you’re right. You deserve better than someone like me.”

  Clunking her cowboy boots on the deck, Leela traipsed away. “Lucky for us there’s a nice supply of fresh water and a urine purifier onboard if we get desperate. There’s some energy paste packets too, but we’ll need to ration things.”

  “Okay…”

  “Don’t fall asleep on me now. Concussions can be tricky.”

  “I won’t.” Jimmy licked his lips. “Hey, Leela?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I really am sorry.”

  “I know.”

  “I hate to be a dick about it and all, but after all this are you still going to—”

  “Tell Azoick about what you did?” Leela tilted her head. “We’ve both been through a lot, Jimmy, and on balance none of it seems to matter now anyway, so no. I won’t tell them anything. It’ll be our secret.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Guess we should get our stories straight then, huh?”

  “Well, you’re the storyteller,” Leela said. “To keep your mind occupied and keep yourself awake, why don’t you think it all out. In the meantime, I’m going to check our readings. I’ll bring you some water in a little bit, okay?”

  56. JUDGMENT AT THE NPO

  Six months later, on the Neptune Pact Orbital, a jaundiced-eyed committee of company investigators glared unpleasantly at Leela and Jimmy.

  They were seated in a rented, cubiform conference room at a round steel table, members of the committee on one side and Jimmy and Leela on the other. The chairman of the committee mumbled something into a microphone, switched the microphone off, and stood.

  “What a mess,” he said.

  Jimmy nodded. “Yes, sir. A real mess. One for the books.”

  Leela cleared her throat. “So is Azoick going to do an investigation of what actually happened out there?”