by Ramy Vance
“We must speak,” Kwin said. “Tsaun has BROken from TRAdition and COUNcil CONsensus.”
“Tsaun.” Jaeger scrubbed her eyes tiredly. “He’s the prosecutor trying to get my entire species wiped out?”
“Yes. I Apologize, CAPtain JAEger. He has NEver been EAger to open NEgotiations with you, but his AGGressive DEmands are UNanticipated and UNusual. STRANGer that he so QUICKly SWAYed MANy on the COUncil.”
“I believe you.” Jaeger let out a wavering breath.
“I am glad. You SPAREd the lives of my crew. I would not DEprive you of yours.”
“Even so,” she said tiredly. “Despite your goodwill. Despite our friendship, your people are trying to do just that.”
Kwin said nothing for a long time. His mandibles clicked, although the comms didn’t pick up the sound of them. “You are DIstressed,” he said finally.
Jaeger laughed a little. “Yeah. Yeah. It’s a little disheartening, is all. Apparently, the location of the K’tax base is worth exactly twenty lives to your people.” Well, twenty-five, once she counted Occy, Toner, Seeker, Baby, and herself. Maybe twenty-six if the Overseers considered Virgil as a person. She wasn’t clear on their policy on AI personhood.
“At this rate, we’ll only have to locate and expose…” she did some quick mental math. “About nineteen thousand more K’tax bases to save all of my crew. Easy-peasy.” She was about to say more but didn’t, thoughtful as the seed of some new idea fell into the fertile mush that was her very, very tired brain. There was something there, she thought.
She’d have to dig at it a little harder once she’d rested.
“I will CONtinue to ASSist you in your Attempts to save your crew HOWever I can,” Kwin said.
“Yeah. I appreciate it.” Still, Toner had a point. Jaeger felt more closed off to the alien, warier of his aptitude, if not his intentions, now that their first collaborative plan, based on his understanding of Overseer politics, had gone so horribly awry.
“Are you REAdy for Another MEDitation SESSion?”
Jaeger sucked in a breath. “I don’t think now is the best time. I’m very upset and very tired.”
“It is the best time. MEDitation soothes the TROUbled mind. EXhaustion Opens the CONsciousness to new POSSibilities. Or do you no LONGer wish to REmember?”
“I do,” she said quickly.
“Good.” Kwin began to hum. It was a reedy sound, sliding slowly from note to note in a long, wordless chant that was both atonal and deeply soothing.
Jaeger’s eyes fluttered shut. Without moving, she began to sink—not into sleep, but into some third state that was neither wakefulness nor sleep.
“Oh!” Her eyes snapped open. “One more thing, before we get going.”
Kwin’s humming stopped. He regarded her impassively.
“Can we get one of these communicator spheres for all official correspondence between your people and mine? My AI is going to revolt if your AI keeps dropping in unannounced and hijacking its circuits.”
“That seems REAsonable. I will take your REquest to the COUNcil.”
“Good.” Jaeger fell back onto her pillow with a sigh. “Good. I managed to do one good thing for a member of my crew today.”
“RElax,” Kwin said. “Open your mind.”
He resumed his atonal humming, and Jaeger let herself sink fast into the sound. The Living Dream, Kwin had called it once, months ago. The Overseers knew it as a state of consciousness where ego faded into obscurity, allowing for synthesizing new ideas with long-forgotten memories.
Neither of them was sure what effect, exactly, it had on a human mind, but in the last few months, Jaeger had started experiencing flashes of retrieved memory. Nothing big—the unique smell of a friend’s apartment, the taste of traditional curry, songs stuck in her head that she would swear she’d never heard before—but it meant everything to her.
It could have been a coincidence. It could have been her memory beginning to return organically, on its own, but she wasn’t going to risk stopping and slowing her progress.
Toner would kill her if he knew about this secret mental exercise stuff. He’d probably insist that Kwin was using it as some kind of alien mind control, turning her into a puppet. He would doubly kill her if he knew that after everything that happened today, she didn’t even hesitate to agree to another session.
Then again, Toner was a professional paranoid. There was a golden-eyed little girl buried somewhere in Jaeger’s memories. She needed to dig up that little girl more than she feared any monster.
Chapter Nine
The sonic shower was out of commission again. Just what Petra needed, after four hours of squad training. She and all eleven of her bunkmates came back from their turn on the grav-track to find the single shower they all shared being repaired by a re-purposed spider-droid that shed sparks every time it stepped on its left foreleg. Half the squad had gone off to the neighboring barracks, hoping they’d be allowed to bum a shower from the stuck-up boys of Gamma squad. The rest of them had opted to hang in Beta barracks and wait, fingers crossed, hoping the droid could get the shower working again before they all had to go back on duty.
“This whole place is falling apart.” Petra crawled into her bunk and wiggled her feet out of her sweaty boots. Her toes poked through holes in her socks. She frowned. That toenail polish was supposed to last for months. Her black-market supplier had promised. Instead, sticky, hot pink smears that smelled like acetone covered her toes. That would be a whole extra minute or two in the shower, scrubbing off that mess. She wondered if she could salvage any of the pigment for lipstick. Or hair dye, maybe? She thought she could rock a streak of pink hair. She tsk’d and shook her head.
“You’re telling me.” Dolly, Petra’s upstairs neighbor, heaved a heavy duffel bag onto her bunk. Petra wiggled deeper into her old mattress as the springs inches from her head dipped and groaned. “The laundry services are out of order again, too.”
Petra wrinkled her nose at the sharp stink coming from the bag. “Phew. Are those your dirty gym clothes, Doll? When was the last time you got down to laundry services? My gawd girl, what have you been eating?”
Dolly rested her head against the post of their shared bunk bed, giving Petra a narrow view of her bare, lean belly beneath her sports bra. Dolly sighed. “Dirty clothes and one of the sick patients puked on a blouse. And everything else. Kid wouldn’t stop puking. There’s some new bug going around. Anyway, I’ve been trying to get things washed for weeks. Every time I go, either service is down, or the wait times are hours. Between my duties and my time down in the infirmary, I can’t seem to get it done.”
Petra stuck her head out of the dark, comfortable cave that was her bunk and offered Dolly a sympathetic frown. “I’m sorry, Doll. Why didn’t ya say something? Leave your bag here. I’ll take it down with my load tomorrow. I’ll make sure Jerry gets it washed for you, no worries.”
A deep frown crossed Dolly’s too-serious face. “You don’t have to do that.”
“It’s no trouble! You’re doing God’s work down there in the infirmary, Dolly. It’s the least I can do. Besides, I like Jerry. That man’s got a great ass. Feels almost unfair, trading favors with him like it costs me anything.” Petra laughed, then laughed again to see the deep flush that crossed Dolly’s face. She smacked Dolly’s thigh in a friendly way. “Lighten up, gawd. Leave the laundry. Don’t you worry. I’ll make sure it gets done.”
Dolly hesitated but then nodded in surrender. With what appeared to be the very last of her strength, she hauled herself into the bunk above Petra and collapsed. The springs separating them creaked and groaned, and Petra wondered if this would be the time they finally all went on strike.
“You’re a real piece of work.” Dolly sighed, but Petra heard the smile in it, and that was what mattered. Petra couldn’t shoot straight or run a mile without wanting to puke or keep secrets even if her life depended on it, but she could keep the squad smiling.
“Tramp,” a deep voic
e grunted from below.
Petra had been about to cozy back onto her thinning mattress. Now she stuck her head out again—this time peering down into the bunk beneath her.
Travis glared up at her. He was naked but for a pair of yellowed boxer shorts, socks, and grimy dog tags. He’d drawn the high card when it came time to figure out who got to use the shower first. Now he was waiting for the darned service droid to leave, so he could use up all the hot water like he always did. A yellowed magazine lay open on his chest: Woodworkers Weekly, May 2071.
Petra stuck out her tongue at him and crossed her eyes. “You’re just jealous. Maybe if you got anything worth trading, I’d trade with you, too.”
Travis shuddered and picked up his magazine, hiding his face. After a moment, he said, “Any update from the top, Petie? Are we moving on to find another Tribe, or are we all gonna sit here and die in our filth as the whole fleet falls apart around us?”
Petra frowned. Glancing around, she saw that a few other members of the squad, lounging in their nearby bunks, had turned their heads in her direction.
Being a comms officer put Petra right at the hub of the fleet’s rumor mill, and all of them, every single one, loved her for it. After all, what other new entertainment did they have to look forward to, except for gossip?
“I got an ear down in Astro,” Randy said from the other side of the narrow barracks room. “Another wormhole is starting to open up less than a light-year from us.”
Travis sat up suddenly, smashing his forehead against Petra’s mattress. Petra bit back a laugh as Travis fell back, grimacing and rubbing his forehead.
“Really?” he asked. He glanced up at Petra. “Is Old Boots gonna ignore this one, too?”
Petra gave him a coy, mischievous smile—just to let him know she could ignore his question if she wanted.
She wasn’t that cruel. “I think Old Boots went and died standing upright on the bridge.” She used the common nickname the soldiers had for Fleet Commander LeBlanc. He used to be Captain LeBlanc, but then, well. He went and lost the ship he was captain of.
“Start of my shift, every day—he’s standing there staring at the stars. End of my shift, every day—standing there, staring. Poor guy never moves anymore. I don’t think he’s ignoring all of these new wormholes that are popping up all over the place. I think he’s depressed.”
“It amounts to the same thing.” Travis spoke gruffly while shaking out his magazine. One of the yellowed pages finally gave up and fluttered onto his bare chest like the wing of a dead moth. He scowled at it and tried, uselessly, to put it back in the magazine. “He is just going to keep us parked here waiting to starve to death.”
“Oooooh.” Petra puckered her lips at him. “Criticizing the commander?” She tsk’d and shook her head. “Sedition, Travie. Better not let anyone hear you saying that.”
A few of the other squad members laughed nervously. Jokes about sedition and mutiny had always been a touch subversive, but they’d flat-out stopped being funny about six months ago when Tribe Six puked out all of her crew and went hell-for-leather through a wormhole. She’d left her support fleet scrambling to shelter all of the displaced crewmen, and the power vacuum she’d left behind never really did get filled. Oh, sure, Old Boots was here, but Old Boots did nothing but stare into space all day, like a forlorn princess on the seashore waiting for her prince to return.
Meanwhile, the showers and laundry services were out of order more often than not. New mutated bugs and diseases multiplied in the limited supply of recirculated air, and every day brought leaner, simpler rations to fill the belly.
It was no wonder the black markets and the gambling dens had seen an explosion in business. People had nothing else to do but drink and bet their futures away.
The evening’s gossip died down, and the repair droid finally limped out of the Beta barracks. Travis, moving like a king in his stained boxers, worked his way down the narrow aisle of bunk beds to jeers from the others.
“Save some hot water for us,” Randy called as if there had been any hot water in the showers in weeks.
The barracks lights dimmed as the night shift began. Petra closed her ragged curtain, turning her coffin-sized bunk into the only sliver of private space she had in the entire universe. She let out a contented sigh. Her shoulders and legs would hurt in the morning, but for now, she felt good after her turn on the grav-track.
Eyelids growing heavy, she rooted around the cluttered mess of her storage locker and withdrew a tattered photograph.
She could barely make out the picture in the dim light, but that was fine. She knew it by heart.
The photograph was soft at the edges and faded from too much handling. It was one of those candid photos that people took once the real, serious pictures were over with.
Nine people stood on a docking bay catwalk, most of them wearing the dress uniforms of ensigns freshly graduated from the program, grinning and sloppy and slumped against the rails. There was Mile-High Huey, and Reggie Kampher, and Brick. There was Old Doris, a fresh-faced graduate at the ripe age of fifty-six. Petra knew them all well. They’d been through hell together before their graduating class had been broken up into their assignments and scattered across the fleet.
There was little Sarah, perched neatly on the rail beside Brick, dark-skinned and golden-eyed and grinning into the camera.
Petra stared into the little face, which she now saw as not playful but so terribly hungry. Hungry for something different than the narrow futures laid out before them.
I always thought you wouldn’t go through with it, Petra thought wistfully, remembering Sarah’s muttered comments about things like freedom and honor. Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t joking?
It was because none of them had ever been able to hold a candle to brilliant little Sarah Jaeger, the first ensign in a generation to graduate from the program with full Multidisciplinary and General Specialist honors. Sarah Jaeger could have had her pick of any post, in any department, on any ship in the fleet.
She chose to put herself right in the center of Tribe Six’s command structure, where she’d have fingers in everything from programming to astrography to genetic engineering. For what felt like the millionth time since the mutiny, Petra wondered what Jaeger was doing out there, on the other side of the galaxy—and what she was going to do next. While the rest of them were goofing off, making out, or flipping off the photographer, Sarah stared into the camera. Challenging it.
Beside Sarah, Petra and Larry stood in a tight side-hug. Larry wasn’t a member of the ensign class, but the awkward, ungainly space marine had followed them around like a lost puppy from the beginning. Here, in this picture, it was clear. Although he wore the fatigues of a common enlisted soldier, with those longs arms wrapped around Petra, he was one of them.
She missed him terribly. Sarah had been a friend, but Larry had been her man, and she felt his absence like a hole in the chest.
I hope he’s getting his medicine, Petra thought as she drifted off to sleep. He gets so high-strung without his medication.
Chapter Ten
The empty whiskey bottle connected with the generator casing and shattered into a thousand pieces. In the zero-G atmosphere, the bits of glass became a sparkling cloud of sharp edges, suspended in the air and never falling.
Toner picked the next bottle from the crate and gave it an experimental swing. No weight to it, of course, but it was an old, heavy-bottomed bottle with a good bit of mass behind it. Way more satisfying than the old paint thinner gin the bottle had contained. He could imagine slamming it into somebody’s skull.
He wound up and threw. For all Toner knew, it might be the very last gin bottle in the universe. The empty bottle alone could be a collector’s item worth thousands of dollars. The tinkling sound it made as it connected with the generator, however, was priceless.
Something moved in his peripheral vision, and he turned to see Occy poke his head out from one of the Jefferey’s tube entrances furt
her along the bay. Occy reached out with one tentacle and lifted a pair of heavy welding goggles off his face. He blinked long lashes at Toner. “What are you doing?”
Toner wiped some dried blood substitute from the corner of his mouth. In one smooth motion, he pulled another empty bottle out of the crate, wound up, and swung. He whooped as the third bottle exploded, adding to the growing cloud of glass fragments on the other side of the generator bay. “Score! He’s pitching a no-hitter!” He took a swig from his hip flask and gave the boy a dark look. “I’m blowing off some steam.”
Occy stared at him blank-faced for several seconds. Then a bouquet of tentacles emerged from the Jefferies tube around his head, and he pulled himself out of the guts of the ship in a bizarre live-action body-horror techno-birth.
“Christ.” Toner stared blankly. He took another swig from his flask. “You’re the freakiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Occy drifted toward him, a slender, downright frail-looking little boy at the heart of a drifting nest of sucker-lined tentacles. He cocked his head. “You don’t look so good.”
Toner snorted and drained the last of his flask. A bead of synthetic blood collected at the corner of his mouth. The stuff tasted old and stale.
Pressing against his mag soles, Toner spun and flung the empty flask into the growing cloud of glass. The cheap plastic bounced off the generator casing with a disappointing plink sound.
“Get used to it,” Toner said. “Because it’s all you’re going to see.” He gestured at his lanky body. “This is it. You and me and the bitch makes three. This is all that’s left of humanity. This is all there’s going to be. Fuck.” He picked up another bottle and threw it.
Occy watched curiously as the bottle smashed into the wall. “Did you drink all of that?” He gestured to the crate of empty liquor bottles.
