by Blaze Ward
Javier’s eyes finally focused. Not that bad looking, though. If you liked them 2.1 meters tall and built like rugby players. And scowling.
Javier was having enough trouble not retching to be faux–polite. “Then stop trying to poison me and get me some clean air to breath, lady.”
The hand came up again. Javier braced internally for the blow.
“Sykora, enough.” The voice cut her off. She looked to her right, scowled, subsided.
Javier processed the words. Slowly. Eventually. Heavy stun was like waking up still drunk the next morning, fifty kilometers from home, in someone else’s clothes. Wearing clown shoes. Been there, done that.
He turned back to the voice and realized he was sitting in a small office, staring at a man behind a desk. An average–looking man. Shaved head where Javier kept his black hair comfortably long. Salt and pepper van–dyke, neatly trimmed where Javier was generally clean–shaven. Average build, average height. So close to Javier’s 1.8 meters that they might see eye to eye. That would probably be important.
The man studied him, just as closely. “What do you know about programming bio–scrubbers?” He held a mug of something warm and probably caffeinated. Javier noticed a big, heavy gold ring on his hand holding the mug. The kind you got from the Academy on Bryce when you graduated. And became an officer in the Concord Fleet. Huh.
Javier bit back the first rude thought that sprang to mind. Rugby girl would just hit him again. Or worse. “Have you been on my ship yet?”
The man’s dark eyes got a guarded look. “I have not,” he said. The voice was a rich baritone. Javier could hear the command tones underneath it. This was a man who was used to being in charge, and could pull it off.
Javier leaned forward a bit, until her hand landed on his shoulder and planted him into the chair. Damn. She might outweigh him, too. “Go smell the air over there and get back to me,” he said. “Mind you, stay away from the bee hives and try not to torment the chickens any more than you have to, but go smell how nice my ship is, compared to this poisonous swamp of a death trap you’re sailing in, Mister.” Javier added the whip–crack to his voice they had both learned on Bryce.
He was rewarded by the man’s glance down at where his hands would be, it they weren’t tied behind him. Looking For The Ring. It was a rite of passage in the wider universe. Academy graduates. Strangers in strange lands.
The man leaned back and smiled, just a touch. Obviously, the same thoughts had crossed his mind. “I didn’t see your ring, Mister.” Yup, the universal greeting. Long–lost brothers in arms.
Javier shrugged, on firmer ground, if no safer. “My second wife kept it when she divorced me,” he said. “Class of ’63.”
The man nodded, an entire silent, exquisite conversation. “I see. Class of ’49.” He turned to the woman hovering nearby, her weight just a suggestion now on Javier’s shoulder. “Your observations, Sykora?”
Javier noticed her nails. Perfectly manicured, if kept extremely short. Again, working all the time in a lifesuit. He checked her wrist and saw the tell–tale calluses from an armored suit, the reinforced kind you wore when wrangling heavy equipment in zero–g, or heading into combat. She didn’t look like an asteroid miner. Too tall.
She locked eyes with him for a second, as if reading his mind. Not that it was much deeper than a mud puddle, according to both his ex–wives. He winked at her. Her scowl deepened.
“He is correct, Captain,” she said. “The ship is extremely clean and well kept. Well–founded, according to the engineering team, although the maintenance logs were destroyed when he smashed the personality computer.”
The man, the Captain, scowled at Javier when he looked back. “Along with all the calibration records for the sensors and jump–drives?”
Javier just goggled at the man. “Hey,” he said, “You people are pirates. SOP, buddy. Deal with it.”
Sykora back–handed him, more of a love–tap than a blow. She growled under her breath.
The Captain tapped his finger, hard, on the desktop, to bring her up short. She glared at Javier anyway. If looks could kill.
Javier decided to ignore her. “So, Captain,” he said, “what can I help you with?” He resisted leaning back and kicking his feet out. That might just get him killed.
The Captain glowered at him. Javier could see why he was the Captain when he turned all that charisma on. Power. Presence. The eyes got serious, piercing. They eyebrows flexed like muscles and moved together just a little, like they were pointing at him. Javier felt the man’s whole presence centered on him. The voice sounded like a tool, or a weapon. Perfectly crafted, razor sharp, elegant.
“You could fix your highly–automated and customized ship so we could use it. Otherwise, we’ll have to part it out and decide if you should be sold into slavery or just killed out of hand. What’s your preference?”
Let’s see. Lose, lose, or lose. A whole handful of bad choices. Kinda like the how both marriages ended up. “How about I fix your bio–scrubbers and then you drop me someplace civilized so I can hitch–hike home? A way to say thank you?” Nobody every appreciated his ability to find silver linings.
The Captain was not amused. “Throw him in the brig for a while. Maybe he’ll reconsider.”
Javier watched, amazed, as Sykora picked him up out the chair, bodily, with one hand and sat him on his feet. “Gladly,” she sneered.
Outside in the hallway, the air was even worse. Javier felt like he could walk on it. “How do you people breathe this squamph?” He coughed a few times, but that just sucked the crud deeper into his lungs instead of clearing them out.
Sykora didn’t help matters. She grabbed him by the wrists behind his back and levered them up until he was on his knees. Through the pain in his shoulders, he did notice that the position compressed things enough that he stopped coughing. Probably not her original plan. Silver linings.
She lifted him again bodily by the scruff of the neck, and shoved him ahead of her. “Move, punk.”
He glanced back. “If my ship’s dead, can you put me a cabin over there so I can at least breathe?”
That was good for a cuff to the side of the head. Not enough to rattle anything loose, just enough to shut most people up. Most people.
“Seriously,” Javier said, looking over a shoulder, “can I at least fix yours if I have to breath this gunk? I promise that clean air will make you a nicer person.”
His first wife used to give him that same look. Uncanny.
She grabbed him by the collar to halt him, pushed a button to open a hatch, and casually shoved him through, bouncing him off the far bulkhead.
After a few of the stars faded from sight, he looked over a shoulder. “Handcuffs off, please?”
She glared down at the top of his head. “Face the wall,” she growled.
Javier stood perfectly still when she unlocked him, and clenched a little as he expected a rabbit punch or another shot to the head, but she stepped back and activated the security field without a word.
Javier leaned close enough to the force field that it started to spark at him. “Remember, Sykora,” he called, “clean air and smiling faces.” He looked around, found a bed to sit on, and stretched out to contemplate his day.
Kinda sucky, but it could have been much, much worse.
Ξ
The voice jarred him out of his daydreams. Probably just was well. They weren’t fit for polite company anyway.
“On your feet.”
Javier smiled. His princess Sykora had come back to rescue him. Or shoot him. Never a dull moment in space.
He stood up and stayed well back from the security field as she disarmed it and stepped to the doorway. She had to duck to clear the lintel. Javier maybe came up to her chin.
“Hands together in front,” she said as she held out a set of manacles. Which was better than a pistol. He put his hands out politely and watched her cuff them expertly.
She pulled the connecting chain until he was a
lmost touching her chest, staring up into her face, which was probably a smarter response than sticking his nose between her boobs. Probably. “Come with me,” she said, so quietly as to be almost a whisper.
Like I had a choice? Javier thought to himself. Even four years of Academy training in close–combat drill would make him look like a fool if he tried something. This woman was a killer. She pulled him into the hallway.
Sykora stood him up in front of a tall, skinny, Asian guy. Almost the same skin tone as his, but a different hue. He looked almost as confused as Javier. “Yu, this is…” She paused and stared hard at Javier. “What is your name, anyway?”
Javier stuck both manacled hands out at the man to shake. “Javier Aritza,” he said with a smile. Silver linings. Yu shook absently.
“Aritza,” she said, tense, “you are going to show Machinist’s Mate Yu here how to fix the life–support system and tune the bio–scrubbers.”
Javier looked up at her and blinked. “Or?”
She smiled cruelly. “Or I bounce you off the wall for a bit.”
He smiled back, warm and sarcastic. “Didn’t think I was your type, madam.”
Light.
Pain.
Stars.
The wall was cold on his back. And his butt. And he was on the floor. And his face hurt where she had punched him. And his head had a goose egg growing where his skull had bounced off the bulkhead. And bells.
Wonderful. Another concussion. He hated getting concussions.
You felt like you were standing three feet behind yourself and a little to one side, watching everything like it was happening to someone else.
Remote. Hard to process things in real time. Another really bad drunk. Punch drunk. The worst kind.
Javier kinda fish–eyed her as she grabbed him by the front of his tunic and hefted him upright. She looked closely at his face. He might have even talked, although nothing really coherent was going on behind his eyes, either.
Hallway.
Corridor lights.
Pretty music, but that might have been in his head.
Med–bay.
They were the same on every ship in space. Maybe one factory built them all and just slapped on different name plates.
Small room. Three meters by five. Two beds. One big console between them with robotic spider/waldo examination arms that did stuff to whoever you dropped into the bed.
Javier found himself on his side on the port–side bed. Hands were still manacled.
Cold, proby thingee stretched out.
Bright light in each eye.
Cold something on the back of his head to make the bad go away.
Sting in the shoulder when the spider/waldo thingee bit him.
That was rude.
Oh.
Warm.
Happy thoughts.
Binary chemicals achieved medical significance.
Conscious thought.
Javier sat up with the fading remains of a bad hangover. Or something. Four minutes had passed. She was still there, glowering. With the other guy. You–something?
Javier blinked.
Blinked again.
They were both still there.
“Ow. Was that necessary?”
She leaned in extra close. Even leered. Someone had been chewing wintermint gumdrops. “Necessary, Aritza? No. Fun? Absolutely. Feel free to keep mouthing off to me. Medbay’s not far away, as long as I don’t do anything the med–bot can’t fix before you bleed to death.”
Javier tried to concentrate on the freckle on the left side of her nose. Kissing her suddenly at this moment, as much fun as the look on her face would be, would probably get him killed. “I will try,” he finally said, with some modicum of normalcy, “to keep that in mind. Where were we?”
He was almost back to competent when she pulled him off the bed and propelled him back into the hallway. Silver linings.
Ξ
Engineering on the old Osiris–class heavy corvettes was mainly on C deck, with a secondary–level catwalk down on B deck following the curve of the lower hull and allowing an awkward access to engineering spaces. The whole thing appeared to have been designed by circus contortionists who wanted to stay in practice while on duty.
Javier followed the skinny Asian guy through internal airlocks, with Sykora’s hand heavy on his shoulder. She was holding him upright while he wobbled forward, as much as keeping him from running away.
Honestly, where did she think he was he going to go?
The equipment one C–deck made his heart sink. The Osiris boats were a bad tradeoff to begin with, adding guns and armor to a design that would have been better off with bigger engines to run away from capital ships. Someone had decided to fix that here. But they did it by adding a couple of auxiliary power reactors, one of which seemed to be bolted down exactly where you wanted to be sitting to work on the environmental systems.
Javier considered teaching the engineering crew new swear words, but he decided they probably already knew most of them, if they had to keep this mess running.
Javier watched Yu flag down a petite woman wearing the uniform of the Balustrade Imperial Navy, deepest green with yellow piping. “Chief, we’re back.”
The short woman kept her red hair medium length. Javier looked closer and realized she must have come from a high–gravity world originally. She wasn’t squat, but had a perfectly proportioned body that had been stretched sideways and hung over heavy bones. Not bad, she but only came up to his nose, and even then she might have out–weighed him.
She never glanced up at them from her portable computer and appeared to process the situation by reading their shadows on the deck plates. “That’s good, Yu,” she said diffidently. She glanced up for the briefest moment, studied Sykora. “Will it be safe to have him in here, Dragoon Sykora?”
Javier heard her voice right in his ear. “I’ll keep close watch on him, Chief.” He felt her pinch his shoulder to drive the point home. As if he was likely to forget.
They moved down a ladder/stairwell to B–deck. Yup. Just as bad as it looked from above.
Javier took a deep breath and turned to the guy. “We’re gonna need a triage camera, a number four toolkit, and as many towels as you can scrounge up.”
The man looked at him with concern and confusion. “What’s a triage camera?”
Javier counted to five in his head. He’d already had one concussion today. “How long,” he asked, wincing already in his mind, “have you been a Machinist’s Mate, Yu?”
The man lit up. “Oh, I haven’t passed the exam yet, sir,” he smiled. “I’ve been an apprentice for four months now.”
Javier nodded sagely. This was the way he got another punch in the face. He turned to the giantess. “And you’re sure you won’t let me in there to do this?”
Her smile was way too pleased with herself. “Absolutely,” she purred. “Shall I tell Captain Sokolov you refused to help?”
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. “Will you hold the portable computer with the schematics loaded while I yell across the room?” Javier knew what refusal would buy him at this point. “And if we’re gonna do brain surgery by remote control, can I have a comfy chair?”
In response, Sykora pushed him to the deck and leaned him against the bulkhead. “This looks comfy.” She did at least pull out a portable computer and flip on the three–dee projector.
Javier reached into the beam and flipped the schematic projection around to face him. He sighed.
“Okay, Yu,” he started. “After you remove the six bolts holding the primary panel in place, we’ll need to disable the through–put and drain the primary system. You’ll be looking for a blue pipe and a manual cutoff valve…”
Ξ
Javier wiped the sweat from his forehead with both wrists still manacled together. At least he wasn’t completely covered in muck and grime like Yu was. And how a black Norwegian rat ended up dead and wedged in the transverse coolant well might end up being one of those myste
ries he wanted to ask God about when he died. But the machine was finally working.
He tried to stand, found that his feet, legs, and butt were asleep. He made it about halfway up the wall when he started to tumble over. Sykora nearly dislocated his shoulder when she jerked on the chain.
“Give it a rest, lady,” he snarled, forgetting where he was in his tired state.
Sykora was quick to remind him. She grabbed him by the throat with her other hand and spiked him to the bulkhead hard enough to make his skull ring. Again. Yu sidestepped and just kind of stood there with a shocked look on his face as Sykora leaned close.
For a moment, just a moment, Javier considered biting her. It had already been enough of a day. Maybe things should go out with a bang.
“What did you say, punk?” she whispered. She was close enough to kiss, but Javier was dog–tired and cranky. She was close enough for a swift kick, too.
He took a deep breath. “I said I’m tired. I need a shower, a meal, and a nap. Your damned machine is fixed. Can we go now?” Dark and terrible thoughts swirled in the back of his mind right now, not the happy, relaxed place he normally inhabited. This was closer to the bad old days before the Academy. Javier thought he had put all that behind him.
Sykora watched him for a second longer, alpha dog making a point, before she stepped back and moved to one side. “Let’s go, Yu.”
Javier followed the man out of engineering and up a deck to D. They both staggered like drunks, holding onto the handrail lest they slide all the way back down the sharp staircase.
Sykora led him back to his cell and shoved Javier in. She disconnected the manacles, and flipped an energy bar, the kind that tasted like sawdust and raw sewage, onto the bed before activating the force field.
Javier was just happy that the field was in place. It would keep him from doing anything terminally stupid at this moment. Not that he didn’t consider it. “How about a shower?” he asked, just loud enough to be heard.
She smiled, a content little giant princess in her castle. “There’s a sink,” she said. “The bed has a blanket.” And she was gone.
Javier sat on the center of the bed. That wench was seriously messing with his wa. He folded up his legs and began to meditate.
