Dying For Space

by S. J. Higbee

  After wiping my sodden cheeks, I patted his face. “We’re a pair, you and I.”

  “Ah, Lizbeth – how has it come to this? That you’ve treated me as if I were your enemy, sweetheart? When all I ever wanted was your happiness?”

  Cold certainty solidified in the pit of my stomach. I’m not s’posed to walk out’ve here upright and breathing. He’s talking about us – about me – in the past tense.

  I pulled back and raised my eyebrows. “Happiness, Father? There wasn’t much happiness with those vile dogs.”

  He fumbled in his tunic pocket, without breaking eye contact.

  Let him be looking for a nosewipe...

  “If you recall, I’ve already mentioned it was a solid accident. That insubordinate waste of space and oxygen you call a brother absolutely disobeyed my orders.” The General shoved an unlit cigar in his mouth.

  “I don’t call him anything. I told you not to trust him. I warned you that he’d find a way of twisting events to suit his sleazy ends.” I took a breath, trying to smother my sudden blast of anger. “If I had my way, he’d still be rotting in a jail in New London for what he did to Luke!”

  “The broken one.” Norman sucked on the unlit cigar.

  See? He’s trying to jab you into reacting.

  Because the last time he’d called Luke ‘the broken one’, I’d imploded.

  I stepped back, waiting for his finger-click to signal one of his aides to produce a light for him. Don’t let it be David.

  “Why did you come here, Elizabeth? All dressed up as you are – after swearing that you’d never wear such clothes, again.”

  A cold trickle snailed up my spine. He suspects something. He hasn’t worked it out, but he knows something is off. I swear the man can sniff danger like a miner probe can tag a seam.

  “We can’t be quarrelling, you and I, Father. People die when we fight. It’s not right.” My voice got louder, “The kill dogs weren’t right. It’s not right that this fighting force you spent a lifetime putting together is on the edge of tearing itself apart. All I want is to find some way to sort this out.”

  His belly laugh sounded convincing, but his stare flashed threat messages. “Be careful what you wish for, sweetheart. Once upon a time, I had a daughter who couldn’t have cared less about the P’s. So, I wished for a child to take an interest in my life’s work.” His voice dropped into a growl, “And I got you. Sooo caring. Sooo hard working and worthily concerned about these mercs of mine, that they’ve all but forgotten about their neglected old leader.”

  “Till you doggedly reminded them.”

  What are you playing at, Lizzy? This isn’t the time to tug Daddy Bear’s chain.

  Why not? I won’t get any other opportunity, will I? And if I sounded a little star-crazed – I’ll put my hand up to that one. It felt like a whacked out nightmare. The way Norman skewered my soul with that blazing gaze of his. The way he kept fiddling and sucking on that unlit cigar.

  He knows. Somehow, he’s found out about George’s evil chemical mix. And he’s just playing with me. Waiting for me to say or do something that’ll implicate me. I swallowed as the bitter realisation locked my limbs, holding me rigid for maybe a nanosec, maybe a full five minutes. I couldn’t tell then, and I don’t know now.

  He knows and is waiting for the chemical mixture to harmlessly break down. And then he’ll light his cigar as if nothing has happened. But he’ll know – and I’ll know. And I won’t survive to see the dawn.

  “Tell me something.” I was too wound and angry to feel afraid or guilty, anymore.

  “If I possibly can, sweetheart, I will.” For the first time, he grinned. His sharp, predatory smirk.

  “That day when you allowed me to believe Wynn had died…”

  He scowled, clearly not expecting this topic to arise.

  Too bad, Daddy Bear. “You promised Mum that you’d pay for the family to relocate to Earth. Did you? Or are they rotting in a fugee hell on some space station?”

  “No. As it happens, I did pay their relocation costs to Earth. And I was generous, too.” His grin widened. “I figured I owed Abi that much, for taking her only daughter – her favourite child.”

  I’m not Mum’s favourite! My confusion must’ve shown on my face, because Norman was now wearing a big fat grin as he clicked his fingers. And Chris rushed up with a light.

  I drew my shawl around my shoulders, trying to control my trembling as I stepped right away from the General, as far away as possible. Waiting for one of those blank-faced oh-so-watchful Shadows to call out that I was acting suspiciously.

  The familiar cloud of blue smoke wreathed around Norman’s head as he puffed on his cigar. Almost immediately he cursed, irritably.

  I held my breath. It’s not working. He waited long enough that the solution has broken down. And I felt a huge sense of relief. A blossoming thankfulness that I’d been spared this awful crime—

  He choked. A hoarse, guttural noise that split the tense atmosphere in the room.

  Which erupted into seven shades of chaos. Several of his aides rushed to his side. David knocked the cigar to the ground. Norman sank to his knees and then down onto the carpet, his hand across his chest, panting for air. Sweat beaded his face.

  Locked with guilty shock, I watched my father gasp as his heart stuttered. The clear chemical solution I’d smeared on his face with my tears was supposed to react with his cigar smoke and produce a massive heart attack. So I’d imagined that he would immediately fall to the ground, dead.

  He didn’t. His face twisted with pain, Norman turned towards me and stared into my eyes. A hot scouring look.

  He knows… Knows it’s me killing him.

  A quick-thinking Shadow flicked the cigar, still smouldering on the carpet, towards one of the ever-present housebots, which retrieved and extinguished it, trundling back to its station.

  David was kneeling at his side, loosening his clothing and rolling him over in the recovery position.

  All this time, I couldn’t look away as he pinned me to the spot with his agonised gaze, while he fought against dying with the same determination he’d shown all his life.

  While I wailed, “Oh Daddy! Oh, nooo!”

  How did we get to this? Please… make it stop! He will survive – he’s aug’d to the eyeballs. And George knew it. This is all a double-cross. Number Two did this to flush me out. In a moment Norman is going to bounce to his feet and I am the one who’ll die.

  In that instant, I didn’t care. I wanted Time to wind back and for him to be my big General Bear again. For this to be just one more quarrel. Just one more reconciliation. I fell to my knees. “I love you. Please – don’t leave me!”

  His face twisted into an agonised grin. “Elizabeth, my very own girl...” he rasped. Still holding me with that burning gaze. Scorching holes in my soul that are there to this day.

  The extra effort was too much for his overloaded heart and those deep brown eyes – that only seconds before had stared at me with such intelligence, love and loathing – were now gazing fixedly into nothing at all.

  Which was when the medic appeared and took over, demanding we all stand back as he started a battery of treatments, clearly designed to bring Father back.

  While I continued to howl like a laser-grazed dog.

  At some stage in amongst all the mayhem, the Red-Sash troops all primed for the supposed takeover, inserted themselves into the room, along with George. It was turning into a big mess. The Shadows and Red-Sashes were beginning to square off against each other. But the prospect of a battle over his dead body pulled me out of my hysterics as nothing else could, while I blew my nose and hauled it together.

  “He’s gone… He’s really gone…” one of the Shadows kept repeating. Several others were weeping.

  You never met him, so it’s hard to convey just what an aura Father had. He walked into the room, and everyone else faded into the furniture. There was a crackling energy surrounding him. He drew everyone’s gaze and
knew it. Accepted it as his due.

  In those terrible moments after his death, everyone in that room seemed adrift as the charismatic centre of their universe suddenly was no more.

  Except for George, who chose this moment to take over. “Right. Martin.” He pointed at the nearest Shadows. “And Arthur. Seal the room, please. We need to see if the doctor can do anything to help the General.”

  Everyone recalled that they were capable professionals and in no time flat, the next stage of the investigation rolled forward.

  Blotting my eyes on my shawl, I staggered to my feet and collapsed into the nearest chair, while Jessica snapped instructions.

  If you don’t find something approaching a spine, you could find yourself flushed out’ve the airlock, here. Cos Mr Calm-and-in-control will have to be seen to be checking that this sudden death isn’t murder. After all the dross you’ve waded through these last three years, you’ve earned the right to walk away from this.

  Right on cue, George sent one of Father’s aides to summon a team of boff-heads. They arrived wearing orange throwaways and carrying mobile scanners. I recognised this equipment from my days on Shooting Star. The Cap, obsessed with the notion of his spotless ship being polluted, regularly had all the cargo and crew scanned for lurking microbes or stray nanotech picked up during shore leave.

  Everyone who’d been present in the room during Father’s death had to line up for a sweep searching for any kind of chemical residue that could have caused the damage to him. George sent the Red-Sashes out to guard the banqueting room, with strict instructions not to say anything to anyone till we’d decided exactly how we were going to break the news of General Norman’s death.

  I tottered to join the back of the queue on shaking legs. I only have George’s word that this stuff completely breaks down. What if they find the coating over my face and hands? It came to me that I’d been witlessly trusting of him. After all, I already knew the man was a killer. Even if his conscience bothered him, it hadn’t stopped him from cutting down a swathe of people – he’d all but admitted that he’d disposed of poor Kyreen.

  It would be a very neat outcome to have me executed for Father’s murder, leaving him free to step into the General’s shoes. Particularly if he bought into his ravings about my ambition to take his place. What did he say earlier? You certainly have been posing a threat to his leadership for a while, now…

  I tugged my shawl tightly around my shoulders, chilled and frightened, as Chris in front of me submitted to the posse of cube-sized scantrobes crawling across his body. It would be my turn, next.

  And then it was. I stepped into the scan-zone circle that had been set up on the banqueting room floor, feeling numb. The trick with the scantrobes is to take small, shallow breaths through your nose and try not to tense. You open your mouth, they’re liable to crawl in and when you spit them out, it messes with the readings and the scanners usually have to start again. Which doesn’t put you at the top of the techie’s popularity list.

  I recalled my first scan on Star, when I’d nearly swallowed one of the wretched things. My friends, Jessica and Sonja, had given themselves hiccups trying to smother their giggles, while Alisha had banged me on the back, muttering at their wet-headedness. I felt a blast of nostalgic regret from Jessica and realised how much she minded being dead.

  Need to focus, unless you want to join me, Lizzy.

  “If you’d be so kind as to remove your shawl, Miss.” The woman running the mobile scan-station was watching me with pity.

  Closing my eyes, I submitted to the skin-pimpling sensation of these sticky-footed things swarming over me. My skirt rustled and swung as they crawled through every fold of the material. They pattered up my arms, across the bodice of my dress, reaching my bare neck, where they insinuated themselves in my wig and trickled across my face, seeming to take a long light year over it.

  I kept my breaths light and shallow. I didn’t want to dislodge a single one – it would mean starting all over again. And right now, I couldn’t face that – I couldn’t… It was unbearable…

  Don’t you start running up that alley, Lizzy. This woman decides she needs to make another sweep – you nod and do as you’re told. Understand?

  “There’s a lot of the General’s DNA across her face and neck.” She sounded concerned.

  I held my breath. Is this when I get accused? When I get whisked down to the lower levels to meet up with Eddy and his dogs? I trembled with the effort of keeping still.

  “Of course there is. They spent most’ve the time hugging each other. Before the General lit his cigar,” said David.

  “Hm. She can’t have been standing very close to him at that point. There’s only background readings of the cigar on her.”

  I didn’t even care that they were talking about me as if I was part of the furnishings.

  “There wouldn’t be,” David replied. “Miss Elizabeth hated the General’s cigar smoke and was always at him to give them up. Ask anyone.”

  “Thank you.” She sounded relieved. And it came to me that she was almost as keen to find me innocent as I was.

  It took every atom of my self-control to continue keeping still and quiet as one by one, the scantrobes retracted their feet and rolled back down my body till they landed in a neat circle, ready to begin the whole process all over again.

  “You can go now, Miss Norman.” The technician was all smiles now.

  I nodded my thanks, not trusting my voice.

  And just when I thought I’d faced the worst, a bunch of Enforcers shouldered their way into the banqueting room – and everyone froze. These people were Father’s version of an internal police force. Their job was to investigate any wrongdoing by a P’s member or their family and dish out the necessary punishment if it was a minor infringement. Or drag them down to the Crypt if it was anything more than that. Being Father’s hand-picked crew, they weren’t heavily into the investigative side of things, being far more expert in methods of brutal punishment.

  Everyone in the room was plainly terrified of them. Me included.

  George cleared his throat. We swung round to look at him. “I know that you are all panting to discover whether this is just a terrible accident that befell our General, or a dreadful crime. And if it is a crime, who exactly is responsible.”

  No. As it happens, I’m panting for the one responsible to walk away unscathed.

  “Therefore, your further patience would be appreciated as these gentlemen wish to interview each of you to ascertain exactly what happened.” He smiled at me. “Elizabeth, you look like you’re nearing the end of your airline. Come on. You be first.”

  I felt giddy with fright. This is it – this is where George somehow manages to sic these blokes onto me. There’ll be no open trial. I’ll be disposed of with some bilgescum about being shot while trying to escape. And this time, the pox-mouthed twister won’t even have to get his hands dirty. Retrieving my shawl, I stumbled across the room on grav-weighted legs and slumped onto the offered chair, fully expecting a loud-voiced accusation.

  The man opposite formally introduced himself, but his name slid past me while I struggled not to puddle down into a fear-stoked daze.

  “I’d like you to recount in your own words exactly what went down here. If you wouldn’t mind.” His smile didn’t reach his ice-cold eyes.

  I stared at him, my mind blanker than null-space.

  “In your own time.” The note of command in his tone finally hauled me together.

  I told my own version of events. Of course, I would’ve been discovered in a heartbeat if Mr Enforcer had had the correct equipment. Ironically, it was Father’s reliance on punishment rather than the process of justice, which kept me upright and breathing. During his reign over the P’s, there were no truth-seers, or lie-scanners in Restormel because the truth was too inconvenient when he was busy stapling some poor innocent’s hide to the floor. And if he really wanted to get at the truth – there was always the Crypt where methods were… i
nvasive.

  As it was, Mr Enforcer complimented me on my excellent recall under very trying circumstances and indicated that I could go. Not out of the room, of course. Those of us who had been present when Father died seemed destined to grow old in the wretched banqueting room.

  At around three in the morning George ordered some food and coffee. I bit into a sandwich before realising that if I ate any more I’d be sick, so instead sipped something they called coffee. It tasted like mud.

  By now there was a large crowd outside the room, waiting for news. There was a scattering of shouts. Some chanting. But I didn’t care. Too busy trying to stop my teeth chattering as the wretched dress wasn’t anything like warm enough. The dress I’d worn to try and knock Father off-balance – and instead had merely succeeded in sharpening his suspicion.

  A medic appeared, waving a medi-scanner around me and muttering about shock. He went into a huddle with George.

  David slid into the seat next to me. “You solid, Elizabeth?”

  Oh yeah, I’m just shiny. My sarcasm melted away as I looked at him. His eyes were pools of suffering in his blanched face. The only thing holding David together was his evident desire to protect the most vulnerable person in the room. Me. “N-no. As it h-happens.” I tried for a grin, but wasn’t up to anything approaching a smile. Probably not ever again.

  David unbuttoned his tunic, draped it over my shoulders and put his arm around me. I leaned back into him, welcoming the warmth of the soft lining and the comfort of being held.

  George cleared his throat again. “Thank you for your co-operation, people. This heart-breaking business could’ve been so much worse if discipline had broken down. I want you to know that your behaviour – every single one of you – has honoured the Peace and Prosperity Corps. The General...” He paused. “…would’ve been proud.”

  Spoken like a leader. No prizes for guessing who we’ll all be calling General, next.

  “I just have one more request to make of you all, before people can start leaving the room. Obviously, everyone out there will be panting for solid info regarding his death…”