Tethers

by Sara Reinke

  “Yeah, but they’ll all have to be tested,” Frank said. “I mean, we don’t know anything about the toxicology of the resources on this moon. If the water here is drinkable, why would the company’ve gone to all the trouble of that fancy storage and purification system?”

  Kat sighed. “Thanks for the optimism.”

  “Kat, optimism is nice, but I think we need to be realistic here. Besides, there’s more. I found these.” He handed her three empty glass vials.

  “Morphine. Where were they?” But she didn’t need to ask. She knew where he’d found them; she knew with a terrible, despondent, twisting feeling in her gut.

  “In Eric’s room, just under the bed,” Frank said, wrenching that knot all the more. “And there are more bottles missing out of the infirmary. He’s got to be shooting up again.”

  Kat closed her eyes, dismayed. “God, Eric…”

  “He’s bad off, Kat. I cornered him about it this morning, and he told me there’s some kind of lubricant leaking in his leg. It’s poisoning him, Kat, affecting his judgment. He didn’t want me to tell you about it. Kat, we’ve got to do something. If we were on board the Daedalus I’d say put him in stasis until someone comes to—”

  “If we were still on the Daedalus, none of this’d be happening.” If we were still aboard the Daedalus, Alex would be in charge. Alex would take care of it.

  Frank was coming to her because they weren’t on the Daedalus anymore, and Alex wasn’t in charge. Kat was. Alex was dead, and Kat was second-in-command. And all at once, she would have given that up in a heartbeat.

  Frank met her gaze evenly. “I know this is hard for you. But you know I’m right. We have to do something.”

  Kat sighed heavily, blinking past his shoulder to stave off the sudden sting of tears. “What do you have in mind?”

  “There’s medication here that can put him into a stasis of sorts,” Frank told her. “It will keep him sedated. And there’s plenty of narcotics to help his pain…”

  “No.” Kat shook her head

  “Kat—”

  “No, goddammit!” she snapped. “No.” Her voice faded, choked with tears, and she looked down at her lap as she felt them spill down her cheeks. I can’t do this, she thought, the damn, whining voice of the girl Chris used to beat rising to the surface in her mind. Kat had thought it behind her forever. Please just leave me alone. I don’t want to be in charge anymore.

  “We can put him under and I can try to open up his leg surgically. If I can find whatever’s leaking in him, maybe I can stop it somehow, or at least keep it from getting into his system anymore. He’s not going to let me do that on his own—I’ve already tried. I told you, he’s irrational. The pain, the drugs, the leaking chemicals—they’re affecting his mind.

  “This is his only chance. If we don’t do it, he’ll probably die. Do you understand? If the infection in his leg doesn’t kill him, then he’ll kill himself on morphine.”

  Kat thought of the ominous, hissing sound Eric’s leg kept making; the pain that would visibly cross his face. She wiped her eyes with the side of her hand and drew in a deep breath, struggling to compose herself, to force the weak and frightened woman within her away. “All right. Tell me what you have in mind.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  She’d agreed to Frank’s plan, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. Or not feel like shit about it. Kat stood outside the door to Eric’s room, hesitant and uncertain, her hand raised to knock, but unmoving. Frank didn’t know she was there. She’d offered him some pretense of taking a shower first, before they put his plan into action. I can’t do this to Eric, she thought. Not until I’m certain. Not until I look at him again—see with my own eyes that what Frank wants to do is for the best.

  She rapped her knuckles lightly against Eric’s door, but there was no reply. She knocked again, more loudly this time, but still no response. “Eric?” she called quietly through the door, sparing a quick, cautious glance over her shoulder to make sure the corridor was clear. She didn’t want Frank to hear her, or come upon her in the hallway.

  Because he’ll want to know what I’m doing, and he’ll try to talk me out of it. His mind is made up, and he thinks mine should be, too, but it’s not. I don’t want to do this—any of it. I don’t want to be in charge, but goddamn it, I am, and I need to be sure. I have to know this is the right thing.

  She opened Eric’s door and slipped inside. The room was dark, the lights all off, except for the dim glow of fluorescents from the bathroom, spilled in a narrow path along the tiled floor. She could see him lying on his back in bed, bathed in this faint illumination. He was naked from the waist up, the sheets swathed about his hips, hiding his legs from her view. She could hear him breathing; even from across the room, she could tell her was hurting. She could hear it clearly in each ragged gasp.

  Oh, God, Eric, she thought, moving toward him. She knelt beside the bed. His skin was glossed with a light sheen of feverish sweat. He was trembling. She touched his face, stroking his hair back from his brow and his forehead felt flushed and ablaze. Her heart ached. Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you tell me? Maybe we could have done something, Eric, figured out some other way…

  He jerked in start at her caress, his dark eyes flying wide. “It’s me,” she said softly, and he visibly relaxed, blinking at her in sleepy bewilderment.

  “Hey,” he murmured.

  Kat smiled at him. “Hey, yourself.”

  He reached for her, uncurling his fingers and cradling her cheek against his palm. He propped himself up on his elbow and leaned toward her. She let his hand guide her near, and closed her eyes as he kissed her. His lips settled softly, and then parted, his tongue slipping against her own with deepening passion.

  She moved from the floor, climbing into bed with him, and he rolled onto his back as she straddled his hips. She kissed him desperately, urgently, helping him fight with her clothes, jerking against the fasteners of her jumpsuit, shrugging and tugging her way free. She wanted him; she needed him—all at once, more than anything, she needed Eric because she’d made up her mind to go along with Frank’s plan. She’d decided from the moment she’d heard his pained gasps for breath when she’d stepped into his room, when she’d understood at last just how bad things had become for him.

  Eric’s hand fell against her breast, pulling her bra down. He kissed her throat, his lips settling against the angle of her jaw, the tip of his tongue circling the pulse point of her flesh. Kat whimpered as his fingers toyed with her nipple, stroking until the sensitive nub hardened fully, and when his mouth moved from her neck, trailing toward her breast, she closed her fingers in his hair, moaning aloud. He slipped his fingers beneath the hem of her panties and between her legs, stroking against her, exploring the wet warmth of her apex. She shifted her weight and tightened her grasp against his hair as he slid first one finger and then two deep inside of her, reaching up into her sheath.

  She could feel his arousal, hard and hot against her, and she reached between them, shoving the sheets aside. He was naked beneath, and with a few quick movements, a wriggle and kick to send her flightsuit and panties tumbling to the floor, so was she. They said nothing; they didn’t need to. His urgent, nearly frantic need was apparent, mirroring her own.

  He caught her hips between his hands and lowered her against him, pushing himself fully into her. Kat folded herself over him, kissing him fiercely, falling into an immediate, pounding rhythm, driving him in and out of her. She closed her eyes and tried to cement this in her mind—the scent of him, the taste of him, the feel of his body, strong and warm against her. She knew what she meant to do when this was over, and that it would be a long time before she could be with Eric like this again—if he’d even want her when it was over. When she climaxed, she felt tears that had been stinging behind her eyelids spill down her cheeks. Oh, God, Eric, please forgive me.

  He clutched at her, gasping against her mouth, his fingers tightening as her release drew his o
wn. His entire body went rigid with the force of it, and when at last, he relaxed beneath her, she tucked her cheek against his shoulder, turning her face away so he wouldn’t realize her grief.

  “Please don’t go,” he breathed. He sounded exhausted and in pain, and when she rolled onto the bed beside him, frightened that her weight was hurting his leg, he reached for her. “Please don’t leave me, Kat. Not yet. Please.”

  She managed to wipe her eyes without his notice and looked at him, tucked against his side. “I won’t,” she promised. She caressed his face with her hand. He nodded once, his eyelids drooping closed.

  She thought he fell asleep, and she lay in the darkness watching, him, her eyes still swimming. It’s not fair, she thought, pressing her lips together in a thin line to stave their trembling. It’s not fair, goddamn it, Eric. It shouldn’t be like this.

  “I…I remember before,” he murmured suddenly. “When my Sovereign crashed, I remember that was the worst part, thinking I would die all alone.” He opened his eyes and looked at her. “I don’t remember how it happened, the crash. They told me later something had malfunctioned on my navigation system. Flying in space…it’s like swimming underwater sometimes. You can get turned all around, flipped upside down, going ass-backwards and you don’t even realize it. There’s no horizon, like with a plane—nothing to orient you.”

  He never talked about his crash, not like this; not more than in passing. Kat watched as his gaze grew distant, his eyes somewhat forlorn, and realized she was likely the only person to whom he’d ever confided.

  “It didn’t hurt at first,” he said. “I crashed on this piss-ant, half-forgotten little chunk of rock orbiting Saturn, but it had enough gravity that I was stuck there.” He moved his hand demonstratively between them, hovering it in the air. “Like being in a swimming pool almost. Everything was floating. Broken pieces of metal and glass, engine fluids, coolants…blood from my leg…everything in big, round globules, everywhere, all around me. Everything in my ship was cut off, only the auxiliary generator was operational, so I had this one pale blue light from somewhere over my shoulder to see by. It glittered off of everything.”

  He looked at her. “Christ, I was scared. I’d never been frightened of anything in my whole life, I don’t think, but I was all alone there on that rock, and I…I could see how bad off my leg was. There was so much blood. The nose of my Sovereign had struck first, and had pretty much sheared off sideways on the surface. The entire front console had collapsed, and I could look down and see the inside of my leg. My flight suit, my skin…it had all ripped away, and I…I could see meat and bone, and everything was mangled…”

  His voice faded, growing momentarily choked.

  “You don’t have to tell me this,” she whispered, her brows lifting in gentle sympathy.

  “Yes, I do.” He nodded, his brows narrowing slightly as if he summoned some inner resolve. “I’ve never told anybody. I’ve spent the last few years trying to forget…pretend it never happened.” He looked at her, pleading. “I want you to know.”

  Kat kissed him lightly, sweetly. “All right, Eric.”

  “The life-support system to my helmet was leaking. I knew that. I could hear it in my headset, this hissing sound, and I could see it—my oxygen leaking out in this thin, silvery little vapor trail in the cabin. It beaded on the windshield, freezing there in a spiderweb pattern. It was so fucking cold. My auxiliary power wasn’t enough to run any of the heaters. I…I couldn’t stop shaking.”

  He was trembling again beside her, although whether from the recollection, or the fever his leg was causing, she didn’t know. Kat snuggled closer to him, wanting to comfort him now, wishing she could somehow go back in time and hold the frightened young man who had nearly died on that desolate moon so many years earlier.

  “All I kept thinking was that I didn’t want to die,” Eric said. “Not like that. Not in some piece of shit corner of space where no one would ever find me. Not all alone. That’s a scary fucking thing…to be all alone.”

  “You’re not alone, Eric. Not here, not anymore.” And you’re not going to die, Kat added in her mind. I promise, Eric. I’m going to help you.

  He smiled at her. “I know.” He leaned forward and kissed her, letting his lips linger against hers.

  “How long were you out there?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. Long enough to succumb to hypothermia. It was so cold, and I remember this strange feeling coming over me all of a sudden, like I just didn’t give a shit anymore. I wasn’t scared or hurting. I just…I remember looking at the windshield, and it was frosted thick now with ice from my airpack, and I knew I had to be about out of oxygen, but it didn’t matter. I just felt tired. I fell asleep. I had this weird dream where my dad came to get me, that he was standing outside of my ship somehow in the middle of space, and he kept knocking on the glass, trying to get me to wake up. I was going to be late, he kept saying, late for my classes at West Point.”

  He waggled his hand in front of her, and she caught the wink of light from the bathroom against a gold band on his finger; his class ring from the military academy. “Never mind I’d already been through classes and graduated by that point,” he remarked with a smile. He raised his brow slightly. “Jerica ever mention to you that she wants to go there some day? West Point, I mean.”

  Kat smiled. “Because you went there, yes.” Jerica wants to do everything like you do, Eric, she thought and she blinked against the sting of new tears. You’ve been a better father to her than her real one ever could be…or Alex, too…anyone, for that matter. And she’s smarter than me, because she’s seen it all along. She’s always known.

  Eric noticed her tears, and his brows lifted. “What is it?” he asked, brushing the pad of his thumb against her cheek, catching one as it spilled. “Kat, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” She ducked away from his hand.

  He studied her for a long moment, his dark eyes somewhat sorrowful, and she knew he didn’t believe her. Not for a moment. “Kat, I…” he whispered. “There’s something else I want you to know. It’s important and I…I should have told you before now, but I…I just…”

  His voice faded, helpless and pained. It’s all right, Eric, she wanted to tell him. I know. Instead, she rolled toward him, straddling him again, positioning herself astride his hips once more. “Make love to me, Eric,” she breathed, leaning over and kissing him. “Please just make love to me again.”

  He cradled her face between his hands. “All right,” he said, smiling and nodding against her mouth, and anything else he might have told her went unsaid as he tenderly obliged her.

  Chapter Eighteen

  When Kat awoke later, she found herself alone in the bed. She dimly recalled having heard the shower running earlier, but there was nothing but silence now. She sat up, feeling groggy, tucking her hair behind her ears. Eric’s flight suit from the Daedalus lay in a pile on the floor by his closet. His wallet, watch and West Point ring all lay, neatly arranged, on his bedside table.

  “Eric?” she called. There was no reply. For a moment, she nearly forgot about Frank and his plan, but when she glanced at Eric’s watch and realized the time, her heart seized with sudden, dismayed recollection.

  “Shit!” She crawled out of bed, retrieving her own clothes from the floor and hurriedly redressing. She had wanted to draw Jerica aside before they put Frank’s idea into action, to explain what they were going to do to Eric and why, so that the little girl wouldn’t be frightened. Now, she realized, there probably wouldn’t be time. “Shit!”

  She left the room and rushed down the corridor, almost running headlong into Frank as he ducked out of a neighboring storeroom.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he asked, his voice low and sharp, his brows narrowed. He grabbed hold of her elbow and she frowned, flapping him loose.

  “I fell asleep.”

  “Asleep?” His eyes flew wide and incredulous.

  “Yes, Frank, asleep,”
Kat hissed, balling her fists. “That’s what people do when they’re exhausted—when it feels like their whole goddamn world is crashing in on them. They fall asleep. And then when they wake up, they’re better.”

  His expression softened, growing sheepish and somewhat ashamed. “I’m sorry. I know this is hard for you. Do you think it’s easy for me?”

  He looked pained, genuinely distraught, and Kat sighed. “No, Frank. I know it’s not.”

  “I’m trying to help Eric,” Frank said.

  “I know.”

  “He’s in the kitchen.” Frank nodded down the hall. “If we’re going to do this, then we need to now.” He pulled something out of his pant pocket and offered it to her—a capped syringe. When she didn’t immediately reach for it, his brows raised. “Kat, we’ve talked about this. I thought we agreed—”

  “We did.” Kat snatched the syringe out of his hand.

  “It’s what’s best, Kat. He’s hurting. He’s in bad shape and he—”

  “I know, Frank,” she snapped, shoving past him and tromping down the corridor.

  “Remember our plan,” Frank said.

  It’s your goddamn plan, Frank, not ours, she thought, frowning. I’m just going along with it because it’s what’s best for Eric. God, please, it has to be.

  She found Eric in the kitchen. He was leaning heavily—too heavily—against the metal cabinets, watching coffee drip down into a small glass pot.

  “Hey,” she said, and he turned, smiling at her.

  “Hey, yourself.” He was pale, nearly ashen, and his normally handsome features were gaunt and haggard. There were deep, cruel shadows around his eyes. He rested most of his weight on his right leg and hip.

  “How are you?” she asked, but it was an unnecessary question.

  “I’m okay. How about you?”

  She walked over to him, ran her fingers through his tousled hair. “Much better.”

  His smile was weary, fragile. She leaned forward. “Oh, Eric,” she whispered.