by C. Gockel
Noa squeezed the bridge of her nose and said aloud only to James, “I’ve had this feeling I’ve been running in place all day … this doesn’t help it.” The scowl was back between her brows.
They were stuck in an elevator. There was nothing they could do but wait. She needed a metaphorical lift as much as a literal one.
Over the ether James projected an image of a small rodent running on a stationary wheel. It was a very old memory from when he was a child, one of his first, and noted as such in his time capsule.
He waited for Noa to laugh. Instead her lip curled up. “That’s disgusting!”
“What?” James said, head jerking back at the venom in her voice.
Noa's jaw went slack. “The rat!” And then she shivered. “Flesh-eating, disease-carrying monsters.”
“That’s a cute adorable hamster,” James said, remembering other women's thoughts of that particular memory.
Carl Sagan smacked his lips so loudly that Noa and James both looked at him.
Scratching the werfle beneath the chin, she said, “Back home we’d call it werfle food.”
“That was Mr. Chips, my pet … when I was eight,” said James, having an odd sense of disconnect. Her statement didn't disturb him as much as it should have. He remembered being very disturbed when someone had suggested feeding Mr. Chips to their pet snake.
Noa's lips pursed. “Earthers,” she said.
James searched his data banks on Luddecceans and rodents and drew up some disturbing pictures of the Third Plague, and Luddeccean children too sick to struggle as rats swarmed their bodies. Ah. “Luddecceans,” he quipped back, determined to not let the moment become too serious.
Rolling her eyes, Noa said, “Manuel, how is that diagnostic coming?”
“Almost ready to run it, Commander,” Manuel said.
Eliza called over the ether, “If you’re stuck in the elevator, hit the control panel with a hammer!”
James and Noa both looked over at the steel plate that covered the lift buttons.
Noa winced. “Yeah, thanks, Eliza, but I think I'll just wait.”
James quirked an eyebrow. “For once you're not going to be rash?”
Her eyes met his and she smiled. Looking away, she tsked and shook her head. “I thought maybe I could like you, but if you like rodents …”
She said it in the same tone other women had said they'd loved him, and it was if James's mind was splintering in two. The correct response was something lighthearted and flirtatious, but he had the same vision-darkening dread he'd experienced when he'd heard her lungs crackling. He'd been spying on everyone in the ether, lying to her about Monica, and hiding his abilities from her. Instead of wanting to joke, he felt an instinctive need to protect her ... from himself.
“I think I should warn you … I don’t …” His head ticked to the side. I don't fall in love, he wanted to say. But that would be a lie, too. It was the other James who didn't fall in love. His lips parted. He wanted to say, Don't trust me, or even just, I'm not the other James. But no words came out.
Noa’s eyes widened expectantly, and James could say nothing at all.
He was saved from having to speak by Chavez's thoughts in the ether. “Commander, I think we have another problem.”
“Spit it out, Ensign,” Noa replied, pointedly not looking at James, her lips turned down.
“Bo and Kuin are back, but Gunny’s gone,” Chavez replied.
“What do you mean, gone?” Noa asked.
“Gone. I can’t reach him over the ether, and they didn’t see him. He checked in with me at the inspections station and then …”
Noa's thoughts were tight and clipped across the ether as she responded. “We’ll be right down. Bo and Kuin, you stay with Chavez, do you understand me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Kuin and Bo, sounding chastened.
Their signals dropped from the general channel. “How are we going to get right down?” James asked.
Noa didn't respond. Putting a protective hand on Carl Sagan, she pivoted and aimed the heel of her boot at the control panel. The lights flickered, and the lift began to ascend.
A moment later it stopped at the storage level. Striding out into the hallway, Noa said to James, “Grab us some S-rations. I’m going to the weapons locker.” She didn't meet his eyes.
Unexpectedly, Carl Sagan leaped from her shoulder to James's. Noa's eyes followed the werfle. Her lips parted; her eyes went soft—she looked as though she felt betrayed.
Trying to regain the mood, James said, “Maybe he thinks I have a hamster?”
Opening the access ladder hatch and slipping inside, Noa said nothing.
“Do you suspect foul play?” Just to say something.
“Of course I suspect foul play!” Noa snapped back. “It's probably Adam trying to lure us off the ship, divide and conquer.”
James suddenly had a very bad feeling. “Then should we be going in guns blazing?”
“Yes!” Noa said, confirming James's bad feeling.
“Wonderful,” he replied.
“No,” said Noa, pausing on the ladder, her eyes widening. “We shouldn’t.”
“So should I not be picking up S-rations?” James asked across the ether, hope sparking in his mind as Noa slammed the hatch door.
“Yes, get the S-rations,” Noa shot back.
“Can I ask?” James said.
“No!” Noa snapped through the ether. “Ghost! I need you!” she said next, and then her frequency went dark.
Chapter Eight
James stood beside Noa outside the plastitube lift. There were two duffels on his back, one on hers. Chavez was surveying the dock. Noa was facing Kuin and Bo. She hadn't met his eyes since the lift.
“Where did you go?” Noa demanded of the boys. Her voice was soft, but the young men drew back.
Kuin stammered, “We … we … went to the customs office, but they said it would take hours.”
“So you came back immediately?” Noa said, chin dipping.
Kuin’s eyes shifted to Bo. “No, ma’am.”
Noa narrowed her eyes.
Bo took a deep breath. “We went for a walk …”
Kuin began to babble. “Down some stairs, to get a drink, ‘cause they said we could get one and we had an S-ration, but it was weird down there and …”
In his mind, James drew up a map of the station he’d pulled from the public boards, flooded the general ether channel with it, and indicated the cavernous area at the bottom of the nearest stairwell with a blinking red dot. “There?” he demanded, taking a step forward.
Kuin nodded. “Yeah, yeah …”
“The red light district?” Noa hissed.
“But it was creepy and we came back quick,” said Kuin, his words so fast they were almost unintelligible.
“We didn’t mean anything by it!” Bo said quickly. “We just thought it would be fun and since the rest of the trip will be long and boring and—”
James felt his skin heat. There was an ancient saying on Earth: “Stress is the result of the brain resisting the body’s natural inclination to strangle someone who desperately deserves it.” James found his hands reaching for Bo’s neck. Just in time he caught himself. He closed his outstretched hands into fists. Bo gulped audibly. James’s jaw shifted. Harnessing all of his control, he ground out, “I have been traveling with this woman since she escaped a concentration camp. Your lives will never be boring with her as your commander.”
Noa pinged him quietly over the ether. “I can’t decide if that’s a compliment or an insult.”
His stomach twisted at the renewed connection. “I really don’t know,” James responded.
To Kuin and Bo, Noa snapped, “Get on the ship, and up to engineering, now!”
As they scurried away, Noa scanned the dock. She stood straight, and her eyes were bright, but he could smell stim gum on her breath, though she wasn't chewing it now. She'd need to fly the ship as soon as they got off this rock, she needed sleep,
but James knew what she was thinking without reading her thoughts in the ether.
“As commander, shouldn't you stay with the ship?” James suggested gently.
Noa nodded, and for a moment he felt relief. But then across the ether she said, “If Chavez's legs weren't acting up, she'd be the best choice. But they are acting up and the engineering boys are idiots. It has to be me.”
“Well, let's get going, then,” James said, barely containing a sigh.
“You're coming with me?” Noa asked, meeting his eyes for the first time.
The question took him off guard. “Of course,” he said.
Eyes going to a point in the distance, Noa said softly in Japanese, “We walk casually toward the door by the fuel pods.”
James looked in the direction Noa had indicated. There were two heavy iron doors at the edge of the dock that could drop at any time. Between them were a few lines of gleaming chrome fuel pods, perhaps intended for C Corp vessels that were never going to come. The pods were cylindrical and stored upright. They ranged in height from about hip level to far over his head, and some were over three meters in diameter.
Readjusting her duffel, Noa said to Chavez, “Don’t let anyone in, and get Manuel if the toilet goop gets delivered.”
Noa nodded to James, meeting his eyes again, and they set off. James scanned the dock as they walked. He didn’t “hear” any talks of bounties, or plans to apprehend them, but they did draw stares and a few whispered, “throwbacks.” Just before they reached the doorway, Noa said, “This way, quick,” and slid down a very narrow aisle between the wall and the fuel pods. James followed a step behind in the narrow space. A moment later she led him between two pods so they were walking perpendicular to the wall. It was like being in a gleaming metal forest at first. As they slid deeper between the “trees,” it became more like a fun house, with the shining surfaces warping their reflections. Sounds echoed and were muted. It was disorienting. Noa turned once more and then, throwing down her duffle, she said, “I’ve got clothing from the tick to hide our Ark issued togs. And some gloves.” Opening up the bag, she threw a coat into his hands and pulled one out for herself. As he slipped it on, she said, “Gloves are in the pockets.”
She reached into the duffle again. “Also, I got these from Ghost.” She held up two necklaces made seemingly of a semi-hard plastic material with lights on one side.
James eyebrows rose in surprise, remembering them from their first encounter with Ghost. “The hologram generators.” That explained the gloves—the holographic projectors would hide their faces, but couldn’t cover their distinctive skin tones.
Giving him a smirk and handing him one, she said, “I figured Ghost would have a few hidden away in reserve in case our exit from Prime was unexpectedly 'diverted.'”
“He volunteered these?” James asked in disbelief. They’d asked to borrow some before and Ghost had declined. But maybe circumstances were changing Ghost? He peered down at the necklace. It was slender and light, but the computational power required to generate holograms was immense. Holograms like the necklace, without a substrate such as smoke or holo beads, required technology he knew nothing about and had to require even more computational power.
“Lizzar balls, no,” whispered Noa. “He didn't offer. I wheedled them out of him.”
She snapped the necklace on, and her delicate feminine features, dark skin, and wide eyes were replaced by a Eurasian man with a rather prominent jaw. “How do I look?”
James tilted his head. “Very handsome. The shoulders don’t match the jawline though.” That was understatement; the head was comically large on her narrow frame.
He snapped on his own necklace. “And me?”
“You look like Ghost’s type,” she said. James sighed, remembering the Eurasian-featured women that Ghost preferred. One of Noa’s eyebrows rose. “Switch.”
“Right,” James said. He snapped his necklace on her neck, and where there had been rich, dark skin, tan skin appeared. Her lightning scars vanished. Her eyes became not quite as wide and changed to hazel, her lips thinned and became tinted with burgundy lip gloss, and her hair became a sleek bob. It was very attractive, and he hated it.
From his feet came a muffled squeak. Noa ducked out of his arms and whispered, “Did you bring Carl Sagan?”
“No.” The werfle had vanished in the S-rations storage area.
There was another muffled squeak and a sound like sheets being snapped while making a bed. James looked at his duffle and saw the fabric ripple and pulse as though being punched from within.
“Not on purpose,” James amended as Noa unzipped the duffle bag. The werfle hopped out of the bag of S-rations and crawled up her arm, unfazed by her change in appearance.
Somewhere in the glittering forest, someone whispered, “I swore those two throwbacks went in here.”
James cocked his head toward the sound and put a finger to his own lips for silence. Noa’s now hazel eyes met his. For a moment, disoriented, James stepped back, hit a pod, and rocked it on its base.
“Did you hear that?” someone said, loud enough to be heard without augments.
Slipping on her gloves, Noa gestured for him to follow her. Stepping behind her, they passed between the pods. Just before they reached the edge of the glittering forest, shouts began rising up from the dock. Somewhere he heard a loud grinding noise.
“What is that?” he whispered.
“Airlock opening,” Noa whispered by his side, her voice thankfully unchanged.
Shouts arose from the dock. “The ether of the incoming vessel is broken!”
“What do we do?” several people shouted at once.
And someone else cursed. “Have to guide them to landing using flags-and-sticks. Welcome to the goddamn stone age!”
The whine of antigrav split through the dock. There were cries of pain and someone else shouting, “They’re using a lizzar-blasted lightbeam in the dock. We’ll go blind!”
“Signal them to turn it off!”
James felt static flare along his spine. “The ship’s ether may be broken …”
Noa’s eyes, now Eurasian and hazel, slid to his. “Or they don’t want to use the ether,” she said, expressing his thoughts exactly.
“Commander!” Ghost’s voice ripped across the ethernet. “Incoming ship does not have ether access. It could be Luddeccean in origin. We need to leave.”
“We know,” Noa said. “Manuel, how are you doing?” Beyond them the dock was filled with the deafening whine of antigrav.
“I’m still going through the charge dispersers,” he said. “I might be ready in another hour.”
Noa’s jaw hardened. “An hour it is.” To James she said, “Let’s hurry.” She took a few steps out into the dock and then stopped so fast James nearly walked past her. The ship that was coming in was of a standard passenger class. It looked like a dark gray hawk with semi-folded wings. Time bands glittered down its curved silhouette like the outline of feathers. James looked further down the dock and saw Adam and Clara standing not fifty meters away. They’d evidently decided this ship needed a welcoming committee. Was that normal? Guards and dock hands, furiously waving lights and flags like air traffic controllers of old, stood between them and the slowly lowering ship.
“That model is the MW 27,” Noa said. Her lips were parted, her eyes narrowed. “It’s not new—maybe five years old—doesn’t look like it’s sustained any damage.”
From the edge of the fuel pod forest behind them, a man said, “Hey, you two!”
James and Noa both spun. Carl Sagan hissed on Noa’s shoulder.
Approaching them were two dock hands. “Have you seen two throwbacks?” one of them asked.
“Nope,” said Noa.
James reached for the men's ethernet channels. He heard nothing ... They weren’t using the ether.
“Huh,” said one. The other waved, and they both headed back into the glittering line of fuel pods.
“We have to get out of here,�
�� James said.
Noa said nothing, but when she stepped toward the inspection station, she was moving almost at a jog.
* * *
The stairwell down to the red light district stunk of piss, vomit, and other human body fluids. James shifted his duffel bag on his back as they exited the narrow wet chasm. The red light district didn't smell much better, and it was louder. He heard Noa pause. It was a good thing. Stepping into the open space beyond the stairwell, James was blinded by the change in brightness. He wanted to leave instantly, cut their losses, leave Gunny behind, and be ready to blast off as soon as the ship’s repairs were finished. But he knew how well that suggestion would go over with Noa.
“Hey, sailor!” a feminine voice called.
“Mmmm … hey sailoress,” called a man.
As his vision returned, he saw the space they were in was only dim, but brighter than the stairwell from the dock. The ceiling was a quarter meter above his head. The floor was wet and slippery, and the place was packed, and much warmer than it had been above. Steps away, some men were stumbling out of what might be a bar. Shattering glass, the sound of retching, conversation, and music blended together in an incomprehensible blur. A man staggered so close he nearly clipped James with an elbow. Without acknowledging James, the man opened his pants and took a piss on the wall.
Noa began to thread her way through the patrons, and James kept pace, just a half-step behind. Steps later, the same feminine voice that had called out for the sailor, called out, “Yoo-hoo.” He traced the call to a man and two women who were standing just outside a door next to a red flashing barber pole. He ignored her, and glanced at Noa. He had a moment of disorientation as he found a tall Eurasian woman next to him. He drew to a halt and a hand landed on his arm. “Hey, there,” said a breathy feminine voice. James looked down and saw tan, delicate fingers, and then looked up to find a woman smiling at him. She winked one false-eyelashed, glittery, blue-shadowed eye at him, again and again. The other eye never shut and was filmy with dust. He looked down the woman’s body. Her clothing was askew and one of her breasts was revealed, grimy with handprints, as were her thighs showing beneath the rag wrapped around her waist passing as a skirt.
