Dying For Space

by S. J. Higbee

  One of the mercs half-shrugged at me sympathetically.

  My answering grin was an effort. Numbly, I turned to the boy. Someone had already thought to drape a blanket around his shivering little body. “C’mon, sweet. Let’s go get you fixed up, eh?” Coaxing him to his feet, I tried to banish that blank look from his face. “Maybe find a hot something you can drink or eat. Don’t ʼspect you been fed anytime recently, have you?” I took his hand. No point in hurrying as he seemed at the end of his airline. We trudged along the stony gully, while I continued to jabber nonsense at him, busy trying not to think of the Sarge’s bitter words. And heard the stealthy scuff a nanosec before—

  Watch your back, Lizzy! Jessica’s warning had me spinning round, weapon raised. So the rock intended for my head dealt a glancing blow to my firearm, knocking it out of my grasp.

  The dregger bared his teeth in a snarling grin. “Lookee what I got here. A piece of—”

  No. I’m not repeating the filth that fell out of the sewer that passed for his mouth. Suffice to say that as the pirate hefted the rock, sidling towards my weapon, he wasted a whole lot of breath telling me just what he was going to do to me.

  The child scuttled backwards till a large boulder stopped his retreat, where he rocked on his haunches, whimpering.

  “Please. Don’t hurt us. Have some mercy,” I whined, rolling onto the balls of my feet. Can I dive for my weapon before the scumsac brains me with that sodding rock? Hm. Too close to try.

  “English fuck-fod, eh?” he leered, grabbing for me. “Heard you little whores—” His vile rant juddered to a swearing halt as I twisted under his grip, yanking his hand back against the wrist joint. Dropping the rock, his other hand grappled for my breather mask, trying to pull it off.

  I jerked my head away, kicking out at his leg and hoping he’d go down. But his combats were the armoured version.

  Which is going to stop a whole hatful of my sweeter moves. I scrambled clear, my guts tightening as I realised he was still inching towards my gun. I flicked my eardrop onto Transmit mode, hoping someone might hear what was going down and get us outta this mess.

  He grinned at me through his mask. “Give it up, why don’t you? Might just let you live, after. If you don’t give me no more aggravation.” He looked across at the shaking boy, cowering by the rocks. “Otherwise, I’ll haveta deal with the brat to show you what happens to—”

  I dived for my weapon. He gets hold of it, our lives aren’t worth a Callistan cred, anyhow.

  Snarling another botload of foul words, he threw himself at me. I might’ve been half his weight and strength, but I was in peak condition. Whereas this vile creature had eaten too many stolen meals and lazed too long in bed with his rape victims.

  Grabbing the gun, I rolled clear, ready for a shot.

  The pirate dropped to his knees, his hands raised. “Hey, hey. I surrender. Understand? No gun. Don’t shoot. Please.”

  “Oh yeah? And when I was begging you for some slack, you wasn’t about to cut me any, were you?” Scrambling to my feet, images cartwheeled across my inscape. Wynn’s rain-drenched grave on Ceres… Jessica’s casket slowly marched through the streets of Space Station Hawking… “It’s not right that scum like you stale our air, when those better than you lie dead in the ground.” My voice was shaking as my finger tightened on the trigger and I aimed the gun at his leg. “I should take out your kneecaps. Then blow off your hands, one at a time before—”

  “Sorry. It can’t happen like that.” Sergeant Gently, for once, sounded like his name as he slipped out from behind a boulder, his weapon primed. “Don’t have any problem with you blasting him. But that kinda torture messes with your head.”

  “Hey – hey! Whaddya mean she can blast me? I’m a prodding prisoner. I got rights—”

  Gently stepped forward and jabbed the butt of his gun through the pirate’s breather breaking his facemask in a shower of organi-glass and blood. It wasn’t overly hard. Just split his lip and broke his nose. “Quiet! Or you’ll be chewing on your own bollocks.”

  Don’t know if the pirate even heard Sarge. Gasping for breath, his voice swooped into a panicked squeal, “It wasn’t me – I swear it! I never did the girls. Or the boys! I’ll tell you anything you want to know. You can have my share. All of it. Just… lemme go…”

  “Hope you burn in hell!” I snarled, readying to fire.

  “Please! I’m sorry. Please, don’t do this. I’ll make it up to you—” the streak of yellow water babbled.

  My finger jabbed down on the trigger. The pirate fell back, dead before he hit the ground as his brains spattered the dusty soil beneath him.

  He died too clean, Lizzy. He should’ve suffered. Jessica was disappointed.

  For a giddying min, the world spun. I’ve killed another man.

  Nah – he wasn’t fit to be called human. He was a putrid piece of scuzz. You done the world a favour, flushing him hellwards.

  Leastways Jessica has no doubts…

  But there was no more time or space for all this deep time concern. The child was rocking backwards and forwards, making enough noise to wake the dead. Hefting my weapon over my shoulder, I picked him up, talking nonsense in the singsong voice you use on colicky babies. Not that he heard me. Too busy howling. But it made me feel better.

  Sarge gave me a long, level look. I couldn’t work out if he was disgusted or contemptuous. Stimmed on far too much adrenaline, I mentally shrugged and decided to let him get on with it, while I tried to quieten the traumatised boy.

  Gently raised his voice over the howling. “Need to get him to First Aid, stat. You deal with him and I’ll watch your backs.”

  That dusty, stumbling journey took a long light year. As the adrenaline leached away, carrying the hysterically weeping child was exhausting. The light gravity had me either unexpectedly off-balance or over-compensating. Hiccupping, he finally stopped, too exhausted to go on crying. Resting his head on my shoulder, nothing I did or said reached him. Not even when Sergeant Gently, scrolling for info on the doomed crew, discovered his name was Lester Starborn.

  When we finally got to the First Aid station, Lester wasn’t having the medics anywhere near him. So I was stuck there, trying to comfort him among a steadily growing group of our injured. The three men who rescued us were the most seriously hurt.

  If I hadn’t gone running to get Lester, chances are we’d have still managed to extract him in one piece and these three blokes would be upright and painfree.

  It didn’t help that they were all cheerfully admiring of my stunt.

  “Just like your Daddy and that’s a fact.”

  “That was some gutsy move an’ no mistake.”

  “The bilge-babble – for once – was right ʼbout you…”

  And just what was the bilge-babble about me, then? Not that I asked, of course. Not with Lester clutching me like I was his space tether. While these brave men were coping with multiple laser burns after their suit shields shorted out, because they spent too much time under fire while getting us to safety.

  I was cravenly glad when they were finally tranked into silence by a sweating medic, who was still unable to get close enough to Lester to treat his wounds. It fell to me to prise his facemask off and clean and skin-weld the worst of them. He had a split lip and chipped teeth, a black eye and numerous scrapes, scratches and cuts. I thought about someone hitting that small pale face hard enough to break his baby teeth. And wished that I’d ignored Gently and blasted that scumsac’s knees out, anyway.

  The medic also tagged and loaded him onto the shuttle as a medical emergency, while muttering about never getting used to seeing children in war zones. I accompanied him.

  Thus ended my Liveaction experience. During training, it was the part of the course that everyone obsessed about. We got to watch or read previous candidates’ reports and discussed them endlessly. How this girl hadn’t been careful enough. Or how that chap should’ve shown more initiative.

  Irena had rolled her e
yes at all the criticism flying around. “You walk away from your first firefight without a scratch and without having gotten anyone else hurt, you’re doing just fine. Don’t let no flooder tell you otherwise.”

  I winced, recalling her words. I’d managed to get three fine comrades-in-arms laser-burned. No way could I claim that I was doing fine, then. Perhaps I can still impress Morrigan, given my efforts aboard the ship...

  After a motherly orderly managed to persuade Lester onto a hover gurney, I dozed during the short shuttle journey back to Peacebringer, jerking awake and feeling like a pest-rayed roach as we docked.

  One of the more overenthusiastic crew clustering around the airlock took one look at my bloodstained suit and bundled me off to the meat-suite, despite not having a ‘Wounded’ tag. By the time the medics figured I was unscathed, I’d curled up on a recovery couch and fallen asleep again. Being shot at is exhausting – a detail all those space adventure holos never get around to mentioning.

  *

  The following day found me standing to attention in front of Captain Morrigan as she spent far too long reading her tab, her face chillier than space. Sweat trickled down my back and I tried to slow down my thudding heart, cursing my feeb-brained stunt. Why did I insist on scooping Lester up? I really, really need a shiny record if I’m not going to get trapped in some flooding office.

  “So… Officer Norman, you have been busy while on Peacebringer, haven’t you just?” She didn’t bother looking at me as she continued staring at the tab like it contained the secrets of the galaxy. “I see you spent time down in Recycling, even though you weren’t allocated a shift down here.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I knew from experience that no one liked pulling the Shit Shift as it was known, so I’d volunteered for a couple of stints down there, figuring it wouldn’t hurt my record aboard Peacebringer if I showed willing.

  “And then you upped and volunteered to pull a couple of dog watches.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I reckoned with a skeleton crew manning the merchanter, you’d be short-handed.” I wasn’t expecting her to fall on my neck with gratitude, but her stone-faced disapproval was winding.

  “So. Does my ship pass muster?”

  I blinked, completely caught off balance. “Er… I’m afraid I don’t know—ˮ

  She slammed the tab onto the table, suddenly flushed with anger. “Don’t go all coy on me now, Norman! You march on board, ostensibly to complete your training, then start poking into every nook and cranny of my ship. If your daddy has concerns about how I run things, I’d appreciate the courtesy of coming to me direct – instead of sending his fresh-trained daughter along to judge me!”

  But that’s ridiculous! I wasn’t… I drew breath to refute her feeb-brained assumptions. And let it out, again as I suddenly realised the impossibility of my dream. Wherever I tried to serve within the Peace and Prosperity Corps, I wouldn’t be judged for myself – I’d always be Norman’s daughter. And if it had proved to be something of a kink in my airhose to be the Cap’s daughter aboard the Shooting Star, the nature of the General’s reach within his merc empire turned that kink into a major breach. Because I’d never be fully trusted. And that was one of the fundamentals dinned into us by Sergeant Gently during our cadet officer training. “If you can’t trust each other in battle conditions, you’re doomed, people.”

  As the words scrolled through my head, I briefly shut my eyes. Regrouped. “Perhaps it should have occurred to you, ma’am, that by entrusting me to your care, General Norman is showing you his highest regard. As he never tires of telling me, he absolutely refuses to entertain the notion of putting me at any risk.”

  It was Morrigan’s turn to blink. She opened her mouth to reply, but I wasn’t done. As my aspirations for an active career were flushed out’ve the airlock, it didn’t matter what she thought of me now. “For what it’s worth – I think you run your ship very efficiently. Which is why it’s a crushing shame you appear to be so thin-skinned and insecure. An opinion, I’ll keep to myself. Because I don’t go snitching to my father.” I saluted her with all the snap I could command. “Ma’am!”

  “Now just a minute—ˮ she spluttered.

  But while having nothing to lose is a shoddy place to be, it also gives you a certain, bleak freedom. So, I spun round and marched out of her ready-room, reckoning that she wouldn’t want to draw attention to our conversation by having me hauled back to ream me for my disrespect.

  I was right. Not that it was any kind of balm to my misery as I marched along the corridor and back to my bunk. Where I activated my privacy curt and lay, staring up at the spongy pores of the condens-cycler gently pulsing on the ceiling, while breathing in the smells and listening to the sounds of a working ship. Sounds and smells that would be denied me once I returned to Restormel to resume my life as a flooding adminite.

  Later that day, I put in a formal request to join the crew who were patching up the merchanter to get her back to Restormel, where she could be repaired and either sold on as salvage, or refitted for our own use. My request was refused and instead, Sergeant Gently and I were shipped home on the Saint Florence, the hospital ship that docked with Peacebringer, to transport our wounded and the shattered survivors of the merchanter, including little Lester. I spent a fair amount of time keeping him company, as well as visiting the three guys who’d been lazar-burned. At least while I was keeping busy, I didn’t have time to think too much about the shoddy prospect awaiting me at Restormel.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Lizbeth!” Norman’s hug crushed the breath out of me as his unique scent of soap and cigars assaulted my nose the moment I stepped off the shuttle. “Sweetheart, you’re safe! Should never have let you go out into combat. What was I thinking?” His grip tightened. “You’re back now. That’s all that matters.”

  I’m back. It was a shock just how much I yearned to be anywhere else, so even that old hospital ship seemed inviting. For a mad nanosec, I even entertained the notion of requesting medi training. Which made it a major effort to staple a smile to my face and make suitable daughter-like responses.

  When Norman finally released me, David approached, clearing his throat. “General…”

  “What is it?” Norman was still staring at me.

  I’d forgotten how unnerving his gaze could be.

  “The Director Prime of Belka is waiting to speak to you,” continued David.

  “About time. I’ll take this call in my office.” Norman finally stopped staring at me. “Oh – and David?”

  “General!” He drew himself up so stiffly, I thought his spine would snap.

  “In future? When I’m talking to Elizabeth, anything short of a Code Red gets shunted into Pending. Is that clear?” Norman fumbled for a cigar.

  “As crystal, General.” David had a light waiting for Norman, who puffed on the stinking thing, smoke leaking from his nose like the toy vivi-dragon he’d given me a lifetime ago. He swung back to me. “See you at 2000 hrs, for a celebration homecoming dinner. Don’t be late.”

  “No, Father. Look forward to seeing you, then,” I gabbled to the waft of air where he’d been, as he disappeared down the corridor.

  David gave a deep bow. “I’m delighted to see you returned safe and sound, Elizabeth.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him not to be such a clamped bot-brain.

  When he continued under his breath, “Romeo got hurt last week. Ward 16.” And in his normal voice he added, “Welcome back.”

  Ward 16 – that’s regen. An upbringing in the Wright household paid off, as I replied for the benefit of the ever-present monitors, “Thank you, David.”

  After a taut nod, he wheeled about and marched off after Norman.

  My heart was thumping as I followed the seeker sig to Ward 16. This part of the medicentre displayed a forest holo across the walls, with birdsong and rustling trees as the background soundtrack. The ad-scroll informed me this location was on Earth, where my baby brothers were now living with Mum and the Cap. Wonder
how they’re doing? Hope the boys are having a wonderful time running around beautiful trees like these.

  A meditech stopped. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for Officer Dain. I understand he’s being treated here.”

  He consulted his tab, his thin face suspicious. “And you are?”

  “One of his training companions.”

  “Your name?”

  “Elizabeth Norman.”

  He visibly thawed. “Oh. I’ll take you to him, Miss. Thing is,” he lowered his voice and sidled closer, “it was a bad one. Extensive laser burns across the whole of his upper torso. Which got infected.”

  I shivered. How did it happen?

  “He’s in a coma just now. His heart is also damaged, so we’ve got him on a pump to rest it. We’re hoping once he’s stabilised we won’t need to replace it. Hearts cost a fortune.” He sighed, clearly convinced I’d see the world through his cred-hugging lens. But I didn’t have time to react, because he’d already opened the door.

  Inside a bubble-glass tent, Romeo’s prone figure was naked to the waist, covered in bright blue powder. It looked like some garish holo-horror effect, especially as the powder was slightly moving over the flesh.

  Locked with shock, I put my hand to my mouth. This can’t be Romeo. Not the fast-talking character who nearly charmed me into his bed just a few weeks ago – he was so beautiful.

  Beside his bed, the small pump ticked. Two blood-filled tubes snaked in and out of it. This was now Romeo’s heart. The heart he’d been so busy pledging to any likely girl was lying still under that blue powder. Some wretched bird trilled loudly on the soundtrack.

  Tears trickled down my cheeks. Wynn had lain like this in a meat-suite cot, mutilated and still. Before he was murdered.

  The tech shifted. “Oh. Didn’t realise you were one of his girls. I mean – I thought you were here officially. You being Miss Norman.”