Memento Mori

by W. R. Gingell

  “Ah. I see what you mean.”

  “What are they using to keep Kez from popping in and out of the Other Zone?”

  “They didn’t say, and I didn’t like to ask. Do you suppose they don’t know about—?”

  Mikkel sighed and brought up the vector controls on the pad beside his chair. “I’m sure of it. Time Corp didn’t even inform me, and I’m the one who’s supposed to catch them. I still wouldn’t know if she hadn’t taken me with her once. All right, Ensign; we’d better get down there before they scar the new ensigns beyond repair…”

  ***

  “I don’t like this job, Marx.”

  “Whose fault is it that we’ve got to do it?”

  “Ain’t mine!” instantly said Kez. “And I don’t wanna be messin’ wiv stuff Marcus wants!”

  “Marcus is dead.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s got an ’abit of turning up when you don’t expect him. Wot if he’s in this time as well?”

  “I checked in the Core,” said Marx patiently. “No, shut up, kid; I checked. I killed him thousands of Relative Year Units ago, and the Core says he’s safely in the Institute this year. He won’t travel out for another year.”

  “Yeah, well—”

  “Shut up, kid,” Marx said again. “He’s not here. And if he shows up, I’ll blast his flamin’ head off again. Happy?”

  Kez sounded gruff. “Yeah. Orright. You better.”

  “Then get a wriggle on. That cruiser’ll be by in a few RMUs; we want to be done before it shows up.”

  “Oi. Shove over. This is my bit.”

  “What does it matter who does what bit?”

  “It don’t, but this is my bit.”

  “I should have left you in the Upsydaisy.”

  Kez blew a raspberry at him, showering him with a fine mist of spit. “Yeah? How you gonna get this done wivout me, then?”

  “Listen, kid: what makes you think I can’t sneak onto a few skiffs and sliders without your help? I’ve been doing this—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Kez. “I know. You bin doin’ this since afore Fourth World stuck its tongue out at WAOF and went dark, and you—”

  “And I’m capable of giving cheeky kids a slap upside the ear,” Marx said.

  Kez grinned, but she stopped talking. Instead, she wriggled a bit further into the console she was currently butchering and tore out a handful of assorted wires and organic components. She emerged, triumphantly waving them at Marx.

  “There we go! Reckon that’ll do it?”

  Marx said something sharp in First World dialect. He meant it to be ‘damn’ but he had the sneaking suspicion he’d said ‘spoon’ instead. “Warn me before you do that, kid!”

  “’Urry up, then! I did my bit. Start ’er up!”

  “Start her—you’ve scuppered the navigation gear!”

  “Well, we don’t need it to start ’er up,” argued Kez. “Just don’t hit stuff on the way out.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” Marx said. “I’ll keep it in mind. I suppose you left the Pauli driver alone?”

  “That little squiggly thing? Want me to pull that out as—”

  “No!” Marx was aware that his voice had become slightly strangulated and higher pitched than usual only because of Kez’s grin. “All right, you got me. Just don’t touch anything else: I’ll need the Pauli driver and the Chronomatrix intact, thank you very much.”

  “S’if I wouldn’t know what the Pauli driver is!” Kez scoffed. “Flamin’ cheek!”

  “I’m so sorry I hurt your feelings.”

  “Yah, well—oi. Was that a thump on the ’ull?”

  “Probably,” muttered Marx, flipping the cover on the Chronomatrix. “We’ve been here too long already. Hold that button down, will you?”

  “’D’ruther not,” said Kez, and she was looking past his shoulder at something behind him. The cockpit hatch was behind them, and Marx already knew what he would see when he turned around.

  He turned around anyway. There was a Time Corp ensign standing in the door; a tall, young thing with promisingly broad shoulders and hair just a little longer than regulation. More to the point, he was holding a light-discharge weapon, and that weapon was pointing at Marx.

  “Your uniform says Time Corp,” Marx said, digging his hands into his pockets, “but your face says School, Second Tier. Is Time Corp recruiting from Second Tier graduates these days?”

  “Remove your hands from your pockets, please,” said the ensign, his eyes very wide between his Time Corp beret and his gas mask. As per Time Corp regulations when boarding a ship with unknown occupants in an unknown condition, that thin gas mask was pulled up all the way to the bridge of his nose. Marx, grinning, saw that the boy’s index and fore-fingers were along the barrel of his weapon and not on the trigger, and that the barrel was dropping just a little too low. He was one of the raw ensigns, new to patrol. More importantly, he was new to combat and probably more than a little bit scared.

  “I’m not armed,” Marx said, very carefully removing his hands from his pockets. He let them hover a few finger-widths away from his legs, and saw the ensign’s face relax slightly. To Kez, he added, “Get behind me, kid.”

  Kez, unimpressed, said, “Why? He ain’t gonna shoot us.”

  Marx wasn’t so sure. He’d seen enough young recruits—seen enough of them die, or kill, through raw uncertainty—to know that finger could pull the trigger by accident if the ensign was too scared. They weren’t here to fight. Or to die, if it came to that.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Marx was interested to notice that despite his wide eyes, the ensign’s voice didn’t sound afraid. It sounded…surprised.

  “Just looking for scrap,” Marx said pleasantly.

  “This is a manned vessel.”

  “Only by us.”

  “The real owners are onworld,” the ensign said. “Please come with me, sir.”

  “What are the charges?”

  “Theft, sir.”

  Marx shrugged. “Offworld craft aren’t covered by planetary law.”

  “Scrapping is against offworld law,” said the ensign. “Sir. So—”

  “All right,” Marx said. “You’ve got me. If we go by onworld laws, I’m up for theft; if we go by offworld laws, you’ve got me for scrapping. But this kid’s got nothing to do with it. Let her go.”

  The ensign blinked, and his gun barrel dropped another centimetre. “Her? I’m not letting her go. She has to come, too.”

  “You’re starting to get interesting,” said Marx, and took a step toward the boy. “Have I met you before?”

  The ensign blinked again, rapidly, but didn’t take a step backward. “I’d rather not shoot you, sir.”

  “You better not,” said Kez, and there was a feral sound to her voice that Marx knew very well.

  “It’s okay, kid,” he said. “He’s not going to shoot me.”

  The ensign, who was now watching Kez with a gaze that was at the same time curious and entirely wary, touched one finger to his comm-button and said in a slightly hoarser voice than before, “Requesting backup, sir. Two illegals aboard, and charges can be laid.”

  “Want me to hit him?” asked Kez.

  “No,” Marx said, his eyes resting thoughtfully on the ensign. Since Kez first spoke, the ensign hadn’t taken his eyes off her for more than a few seconds at a time. Marx would have found that insulting if he hadn’t found it very interesting. “We’ll go quietly.”

  “Since when?” Kez demanded, outraged.

  “Put your hands up, kid.”

  Kez scowled. “I don’t wanna, Marx.”

  “More officers will arrive soon,” the ensign said. “Please comply, sir. You won’t be hurt if you comply.”

  “We’ll see ’oo it is wot gets ’urt,” muttered Kez, glaring at him.

  This time the ensign must have smiled; above the mask his eyes narrowed to bright, joyous slits. “Don’t be like that,” he said. “I won’t let them hurt you.”
<
br />   And Marx, who was beginning to be very interested, said, “I think we’ve met before.”

  “No, we ain’t,” said Kez. She was looking more than usually sulky, though Marx wasn’t sure whether that was because of the ensign’s smile or his tacit suggestion that Kez needed any kind of looking after. “I’d remember legs as flamin’ long as that. Wot did you step in growin’ up?”

  Marx gave a pained sigh. “I’ve told you about antagonising people with weapons, haven’t I?”

  Kez pulled a face at him, but closed her mouth. That was just as well, because Marx could faintly hear the sound of footsteps behind the ensign, and a moment later there was the scuffle of more Time Corp blue to the edges of the cockpit hatch.

  ***

  “What’s the news, sir?”

  “We’re the closest. We’ll rendezvous in roughly six RHUs and take custody of Marx and Kez.”

  “We’re not slipping?”

  “No,” said Mikkel briefly. “I’ve got standing orders to refrain from time slips in their vicinity. They didn’t say, but I got the impression they’re afraid Kez could set us off our intended slip if we engage too close to her.”

  “I have a bad feeling about this, sir.”

  “You too?” asked Mikkel. “Oh, good.”

  ***

  It’d been a while. Marx had almost forgotten what a regulation wrap lock felt like. Almost. That sensation of not being able to move his arms—or anything from shoulder to hip—still visited him in his sleep from time to time. It would only take an hour or so for it to go through its natural decay, but that was an hour too long as far as he was concerned.

  Fighting the urge to lash out with his feet, Marx looked casually around the narrow hall of the cruiser and said, “Any chance of a meal?”

  “Ignore him,” said the CO to his group of beret’d, masked, and blue-clad ensigns. He’d come aboard the skiff with the other ensigns, and he obviously knew what was what. Wrap locks were engaged for Kez as well as Marx; engaged well before the CO attempted to take them aboard his own cruiser. From the murderous expression in Kez’s shiny black eyes, she wasn’t new to this particular form of containment, either. Marx wasn’t sure if that poisonous expression was being directed at him, or at the CO, but he devoutly hoped it was the CO. Life was…unpredictable…when Kez was annoyed.

  “Who captured them?”

  “I did, sir,” said the ensign who had captured them, straightening.

  The CO eyed him with disfavour. “Which one are you? Never mind. What did you mean by separating from the other ensigns?”

  “I heard a suspicious noise, sir. I thought I should investigate.”

  “Do you expect congratulations, Ensign?”

  A brief pause. “No, sir.”

  “Extra meal concessions?”

  “Well, sir—”

  “Yes, Ensign?” The CO’s voice was limned with sugar.

  Shuffling along behind Kez into a cell at the behest of a very businesslike weapon prodding the small of his back, Marx grinned.

  “Nothing, sir. I don’t expect anything. I just thought I’d investigate.”

  “All right, then,” said the CO, and Marx grinned a bit wider. The ensign was young in the ways of officers. “Lock that door before the wrap locks start to decay; Control recommends highest possible caution for these two. Let’s see—Ensign! Since you’re so duty-minded, you can guard them. And next time, don’t separate from your group unless you want us to have to scrape up your remains from off some far-flung planet.”

  The ensign’s mask pulled in and out slightly as he opened his mouth and closed it again. He could have protested that the prisoners would be in a physical cell that couldn’t be shorted out by any emergency, and didn’t need a human guard; that he was an ensign, not a prison guard; that he wasn’t trained. Sensibly, he didn’t try. He said, “Yes, sir,” quietly, and took up his position beside the cell.

  The CO allowed himself a brief smile and ducked back through the door. The other ensigns marched after him, their expressions ranging from sympathy to satisfaction.

  “Dumped yourself right in it, didn’t you?” Marx said conversationally through the bars. The ensign looked at him sideways but didn’t reply. “What, you don’t want to talk now?”

  “Regulations state not to engage with dangerous prisoners, sir.”

  “What are we going to do, talk you to death?”

  “Shouldn’t ’urt him; his ears are big enough,” said Kez, and Marx saw the self-conscious hand with which the ensign tugged one ear.

  “All right,” he said, stretching out on the single bunk. “I’m going to sleep, then. Wake me up if something interesting happens, kid.”

  ***

  “Sir, I suppose you have to keep tapping on the armrests?”

  “Can’t this rust bucket move any faster?”

  “I wouldn’t know, sir,” said Arabella. “I’ve never seen her taken at top speed before. You’d know more about that than I would.”

  “The Slider has a top speed of—wait, didn’t you do any research before you inveigled yourself onto my sloop?”

  “Inveigled is a bit strong, sir,” Arabella protested. “And I did do research; a great deal of it, in fact. The TCS Slider simply wasn’t one of the things I felt I had to research.”

  Mikkel’s fingers curled in on themselves. “What did you research, then?”

  “Just you, sir,” Arabella said.

  ***

  Marx woke a few hours later to find that his wrap lock had fully disintegrated. Across the cell, he heard the murmur of one deep voice and the sharp dissonance of another. A slight crease folded itself between his eyebrows. He’d expected Kez’s sharp voice to be rising, but he’d expected it to be in the form of insults, taunts, and general unpleasantness.

  Instead, she sounded…almost friendly.

  Marx opened one eyelid a crack and found that the ensign was sitting with his back to the bars while Kez, whose wrap lock must also be no more, pulled on his hair. Marx’s brows rose, but further inspection proved that Kez was not, in fact, tugging on the ensign’s hair; she was inspecting a wound somewhere within the plenitude of all that hair.

  “That one’s still bleedin’, too,” she said. “Wot you doing, letting ’em get away with that?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said the ensign, over his shoulder. “They’re just doing it because I’m new and my family is rich. They’ll stop soon.”

  “Yeah, or you will,” Kez opined. “You go funny if you get too many smacks to the ’ead, you know.”

  One of the ensign’s shoulders twitched up and down briefly. “They’re just waiting to see if I report it. When I don’t, it’ll stop. They went a bit far this time and scared themselves.”

  “The blood’s on your collar an’ all,” said Kez, unimpressed. She pulled on the ensign’s hair one more time—for good measure, thought Marx, grinning—and slithered back to the floor until they were back to back with the bars between them. “Orright, it’s your lookout if you wanna die.”

  “I won’t die,” said the ensign, and Marx wondered if that was quiet certainty or contentment in the boy’s deep voice. He was still wondering when he fell asleep again.

  ***

  “What’s our position?” Mikkel’s foot was tapping restlessly.

  “We’re about twenty RMUs out,” said Arabella. “What’s the matter, sir?”

  Mikkel’s foot played another an irregular tattoo against the floor. “It’s about time. Something should be going wrong by now. I’m just waiting for the message to come through.”

  “Afraid it’s going to happen, or afraid it won’t?” Arabella asked, and there was the prim smile.

  “I’ll let you know when I figure it out,” said Mikkel.

  ***

  Marx’s timepiece made a small ding! in the muffled cell. He sat up, stretched, and put his feet on the floor.

  “What was that?” asked the ensign. To Marx’s amusement, he was still sitting back to back with
Kez.

  “That means it’s time,” Kez said cheerfully. “You ready, Marx?”

  “Time for what?”

  “Don’t worry,” said Kez. She was already on her knees again, but this time she stretched her skinny arm up and around the ensign’s neck through the closest space. “Won’t kill yer.”

  Marx watched in an evaluating sort of way as Kez rendered the ensign unconscious. The ensign didn’t struggle at all, although his long fingers were wrapped around Kez’s scrawny little arm; and that, Marx thought, was another pretty interesting thing. There were a lot of those, today.

  He said, “I was supposed to do that.”

  “Yah, well,” said Kez, slightly breathless, “I wanted to do it this time. You ’ave all the fun.”

  The ensign slid all the way to the ground and Kez let him go. “Ready to go?”

  “Why not?” Marx said. Kez shifted them out in a moment, and Marx crouched by the ensign to check that he was still breathing.

  Kez huddled down beside him and poked the ensign in the face with one finger. “Didn’t kill ’im! Gettin’ better at it, ain’t I?”

  “He’s alive,” agreed Marx. “I’m so proud.”

  Kez poked the ensign in the face again. “Can I keep it?”

  “Sorry, what?”

  “I wanna keep it, Marx.”

  “Keep—He’s an ensign, not a pet!”

  “He’ll be my pet.”

  Marx stared at her for quite some time. At last, he said, “I don’t know if this is a step forward or a step…well, a step in a really horrifying direction.”

  Kez hunched her shoulder. “Dunno wot you mean.”

  “Never mind,” said Marx. Kez had never shown interest in any other human being but himself. Even her interactions with Mikkel and Arabella—who, Marx was sure, she quite liked—had more of a cheerful sort of comradery to them than deliberate friendship. They were ships coming alongside for a brief moment, perhaps. Thinking about that, he was almost tempted to bring the ensign along.