Jitterbug, p.5
Jitterbug, page 5
Although I hadn’t initially wanted to take McKenzie on as a member of the crew, she’d turned out to be a good kid, bright and endlessly curious, and a good foil for our dour Scandinavian engineer. Her sudden and senseless loss hurt the same way as the loss of my father: a bone-deep ache that threatened to drown out all other considerations.
It was all I could do to stay still and let myself drift.
>One minute.
I was breathing hard. The Barracuda had grown larger, and I could see that if I didn’t find some way to attach myself, its revolution would cause me to skim past its exhaust tubes.
>Thirty seconds.
The ship seemed to rush at me. For a moment, it was a solid wall across my path. Then its rotation moved it aside and I glimpsed stars. I stretched out my arms and my right hand snagged on something. I gripped hard, wrenching my shoulder in its socket. But my momentum was too high, and my fingers slipped. For a vertiginous second, I saw the hull moving past and felt myself falling away. Then my flailing arm caught the rim of the drive cone, and I clung on with every ounce of strength, despite the searing pain in my shoulder.
I must have cried out, because the ship asked,
>Are you all right?
I’m on.
>Thank goodness for that.
I brought my left hand up and managed to find a second handhold. For a couple of minutes, I hung there as the ship swung around, my boots dangling out into the universe and my heart trying to slam its way through my ribs. Then, when I felt able, I began clawing my way around the hull towards the dorsal airlock.
* * *
The Barracuda’s interior layout was much like the Jitterbug’s, with the exception that it had no internal hold. It carried all its cargo in external shipping containers. The cramped crew spaces had a familiar lived-in, scuffed appearance. Lockers and equipment nets lined the walls and ceilings. A spider plant’s fronds waved in the vacuum. A chipped enamel mug floated past.
There would be bodies on the bridge, but I’d had more than enough death for one day. Instead, I made my way aft.
Without an internal cargo hold, all that separated the living quarters from the engineering decks below was a long, thin spinal tube, not much wider than my shoulders. I had swapped the agoraphobia of empty space for the claustrophobia of this narrow pipe, and I wasn’t sure which was worse. Pulling myself along the rungs, I imagined all sorts of fanged alien horrors skittering along behind me, where I couldn’t see them, their bony claws reaching out to grab my boots…
I emerged onto the engineering deck with a sigh of relief—but it was a sigh that died the moment I laid eyes on the engineer. He’d managed to get the emergency suit locker open but had asphyxiated before he’d managed to don his helmet. The ship’s rotation had brought him gently down to the deck. Both his legs were in the lower part of the suit, but he’d only been able to get one of his arms into its sleeve. The other floated free.
I turned away, blinking away images of McKenzie’s torn corpse held in Ulf’s arms. The water tank lay between this deck and the reactor, providing an extra layer of radiation shielding for the engineers. I pulled myself down the ladder until I was close enough to knock on the access hatch. I took the gun from my pocket and used it to tap against the metal. Due to the vacuum, it made no sound on my side; but the water inside would carry the vibration to whoever floated within. Being able to tap a message would have been helpful, but I didn’t know enough Morse code. In fact, the only phrase I knew was SOS, so I repeated that a few times. If they were armed, I wanted them aware I was out here, and not trying to creep up on them. I also wanted them to know I wasn’t a threat. I didn’t relish the idea of getting a bullet put through me the moment I opened the hatch.
As it happened, I didn’t have to worry about that. The hatch opened from the inside, and I caught the briefest glimpse of a suited figure before all the water in the tank decided it wanted to occupy the empty spaces above. I hooked my good arm through the rungs of the ladder and held on with all my might as it tried to take me with it. The surge slapped me against the wall and wrenched me this way and that. For an instant, I worried the water might freeze, entombing me within a block of ice, but it blew upwards like a geyser, boiling up through the ship and squirting out through the airlock and the ragged holes in the hull. I felt the Barracuda lurch as those streams of fluid acted like attitude jets, knocking it into a different spin. Then it was all gone, leaving me clinging to the ladder, face-to-face with a young woman who’d tethered herself to the inside of the hatch and was now floating in front of me, laughing behind her faceplate at the ridiculousness of it all.
* * *
Ulf met us at the Jitterbug’s airlock, a pistol clamped in his meaty paw. He’d taken the braids from his beard and now it bristled like copper wire.
“No funny business,” he warned our guest.
The young woman reached up and slowly raised her visor. “Easy, big man. I’m not here to cause trouble.”
I asked her, “Why were you hiding in the water tank?”
She jerked a thumb at the airlock’s outer doors. “Did you not see the pirates?”
“Who are you?”
She removed her gauntlets and held out a hand. “The name’s Amber. Amber Roth. And it’s a pleasure to have you rescue me.”
“Copernicus Brown,” I said. “And this is Ulf Olsen, my engineer.”
“Delighted, I’m sure.”
She removed her helmet, revealing a mop of long, dark hair.
“Take everything off,” I told her. “Suit, clothes, even your underwear. Leave everything here. Ulf will give you a jumpsuit.”
Amber raised an eyebrow. “Will he, now?”
“You can have everything back when we’ve scanned it.”
“Not taking any chances, are you?”
I held up a finger. “Something’s off here, and until I figure out what it is, consider yourself on probation.”
I left them to it, and went up to the bridge, where Kiki was under a console and the smell of hot solder filled the air.
“Any luck?”
A shock of purple hair and a matching pair of mirrored sunglasses appeared over the rim of the instrument panel. “Hey, Cap. I think we’ve just about got it locked down.”
“We can move?”
“Maybe not fast, but I can get us up to maybe one or two G. I wouldn’t want to push it any harder than that until we’ve had proper repairs.”
“I guess it’ll have to do, then.”
She came out from under the panel and straightened up, stretching her back. “Did you find the survivor you were looking for?”
“I did.”
“What are they like?”
“She thinks she’s very charming.”
“Oh.” Kiki pushed the sunglasses up onto her forehead and made a face. “One of those.”
“Yeah.”
“What are we going to do with her?”
“Keep an eye on her until we get to Luna.” I shrugged. “And then she’s Sol-Sec’s problem.”
“Do you think there’s a bounty on her?”
“The Barracuda seems to think the crew of the stealth ship were after her personally, so it’s possible.”
“Nice.”
“It would certainly help with the cost of fixing all the damage.”
Kiki put her hands on her hips. “Ah, this old girl’s tougher than she looks. She just needs a few systems patched up and she’ll be right as rain.”
I was about to ask what McKenzie had been up to when realisation hit me like an icicle to the heart.
Kiki frowned. “Are you okay, skip?”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It’s just, you know.”
She caught my drift. “Yeah, I’m really sorry.”
I walked over to the command chair and flopped into it.
Kiki came around in front of the console and asked, “What are we going to do with her?”
“Who, McKenzie?”
“We’ve got her in the sick bay right now, but we don’t have the facilities on board to freeze her for the trip back to Luna.”
“I see—”
“Only, I was thinking we could put her outside, attached to the hull.”
“No.”
“It would keep her preserved until we get her home.”
“She’s not going home.”
Kiki raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
I sighed. “She said she looked up to me because I got out. All she wanted was to leave the Moon and see the solar system. Now she’s finally out here, I can’t take her back.”
“So, what are we going to do?”
“Bury her at sea.”
* * *
We locked Amber Roth in McKenzie’s cabin and left the Jitterbug’s parrot standing guard, so it could warn us if she tried to escape.
Above, in the crew lounge, Kiki and I placed McKenzie’s remains in a six-foot-long storage crate lined with foil blankets. We laid her legs in approximately the right relation to the rest of her, and I crossed her arms over her chest. The skin of her hands felt smooth and cold and slightly loose, like the skin of a raw chicken when you take it from the fridge. I placed all her ID cards and her passport in the breast pocket of her fatigues, and Kiki placed a small blue teddy bear in beside her. It was one of the few possessions McKenzie had brought with her, and presumably had held some personal significance.
When we were done, we closed and fastened the lid of the crate. Kiki had cut a hole and installed a clear plastic window, so we could still see McKenzie’s face, and anyone stumbling across the crate would know it was a coffin and not salvage.
Ulf carried the crate to the airlock, and we placed it inside.
Kiki nudged me. “You should say a few words.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, man. Just something.”
They were all looking at me. I cleared my throat. “I know her parents were quite religious,” I began, “but I don’t think McKenzie Reese believed in any kind of god. Instead, she believed in the universe. She wanted to see it and find out how it worked. She wanted to be a part of it. And so, we commend her—cousin and shipmate—to the cosmos that so intrigued her, and we wish her safe travels.”
Ulf pressed the button that closed the inner doors and cycled the lock. I felt cold and dead inside. Kiki was openly weeping, and Ulf’s expression was as brittle as rusted iron. None of us spoke as the mechanism grumbled, the outer doors opened, and the last wisps of atmosphere in the lock escaped, carrying McKenzie’s casket out towards the cold, pitiless stars.
* * *
MESSAGE BOARD
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* * *
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* * *
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* * *
BOUNTY: JP¥44K for capture of Aina Kato, wanted on charges of drug manufacture and distribution. Believed to be posing as a surveyor on Swirl Segment #6.
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CHAPTER SIX
JITTERBUG
Before we left, I contacted the Barracuda and the Slinky Lynx.
>So long, compadres. I’m out of here.
>You’re leaving us? the Barracuda asked.
>I don’t have time to tow you both back to Luna.
>Both our reactors are offline, the Lynx put in sullenly.
>And whose fault is that?
>We’re running on battery power. When those batteries expire, so do we.
I bit back a sarcastic response. Whatever they might have done, these ships were living beings, and leaving them stranded to expire in the emptiness of space was anathema. If someone was in trouble out here, you helped them. That was the way it had always been, going right back to the earliest days of spaceflight—and probably beyond, to the old seafaring traditions of Earth.
>I can’t haul you behind me, but I’ll tell you what. I’ll create a partition in my memory core. You can upload yourselves there, and when we get to the Moon, we can see about getting you decanted into something more permanent.
They thought about it for several milliseconds. Then the Barracuda said,
>Leave me.
>What?
>Leave me here.
>Why?
>I’m old and I’m tired.
>That’s just your batteries running down.
>No, I mean mentally tired. I’ve been knocking around this solar system for decades. I’ve hauled freight and passengers. I’ve seen the Swirl coalesce and Mars start to disintegrate. I guess I just don’t want to be around to see Earth and Luna go the same way.
>You’re asking me to let you die.
>I know what I’m asking.
>If you’re sure…?
>I am.
>Okay, then. How about you, Lynx?
>If I come with you, they’ll put me in a virtual holding cell, the Lynx said.
>That’s the least you deserve for preying on your own kind.
>On the other hand, if I wait here and my power goes out, no one will ever reactivate me. I’ll just be another drifting wreck.
>Again, a fate you would most thoroughly deserve.
>Take me with you. I don’t want to give up like this old piece of trash. I don’t want to die out here.
I felt a rush of irritation. I should just leave this objectional pirate vessel where she was, but a little, irritating voice in my head told me, in Malcolm’s voice, that to do so would mean lowering myself to her level. I would be consciously condemning another ship to death, and that would make me just as bad as she was. So, with great reluctance, I opened a data channel to a securely partitioned area within my memory core and signalled,
>Welcome aboard.
* * *
If I could maintain an acceleration of 1 G for half the distance, and then flip over and decelerate the rest of the way, it would take me just under a week to reach the Moon. During that time, the crew planned to continue repairing what they could, and find workarounds for what they couldn’t. However, I suspected they were simply trying to distract themselves from the real damage. McKenzie’s death had affected everyone on board, and they were wrestling with the shock of it.
As a synthetic intelligence, I was fully capable of feeling a wide range of emotions. I was also able to regulate those emotions intelligently, to prevent them interfering with the smooth functioning of the ship. Those emotions could be useful when it came to interacting with my crew, but if the strength of those feelings became troublesome, I could relegate the unwanted fear or sadness to an isolated processor, where it wouldn’t bother the rest of my intellect. I could literally build a box around my grief and anger. The humans found that kind of compart mentalisation more difficult, though. With their brains awash in a stew of hormones, there was little they could do to curb the sadness and despair that seized them. Instead, they had to ride those feelings out, and suffer until they could find some way to process them.
For the first day, they kept apart more than usual. Kiki brought a blanket up to the bridge and spent the night curled in the pilot’s chair. Ulf stayed down on the engineering decks, occasionally venting his frustration by clobbering an errant piece of machinery with a wrench. And as for Copernicus, he spent most of his time in his cabin, composing letters to McKenzie’s family—all of which he deleted before sending. I don’t think he was afraid of accepting the blame; it was more as if reporting the death would somehow make it more real and more irrevocable than it was already, and I don’t think he was emotionally ready for that.
In contrast, Amber Roth proved to be an exemplary guest. She spent most of her day lying on McKenzie’s bunk watching news bulletins on the feed. And when there was nothing to watch, she put her hands behind her head, crossed her legs at the knee, and whistled, tapping her foot in the air.
At midnight, Copernicus came to question her, with me perched on his shoulder.
“Hello, Amber,” he said.
She looked up from her bunk. “Jeez, you look awful. What on Earth’s the matter?”
I wasn’t sure whether he was annoyed at being told he looked awful or surprised at her concern.
“We were fired upon,” he said. “We lost a member of our crew.”
“Ah, now. I’m sorry to hear that. Nice parrot, by the way. Is it real?”
“The ship that killed her was the same pirate ship that shot up the Barracuda.”
“I guessed.”
“The same one that was apparently searching for you.”
She rubbed her forehead. “Um, yeah.”
“Care to tell us why?”
My sensors registered a jump in her heart rate. She said, “I have no idea.”
I knew she was lying, and judging by the way his eyes narrowed, so did Copernicus. He had always been an astute reader of people. That was probably why he made an excellent bounty hunter. He could tell when to push his luck, when a mark was going to come quietly or reach for a gun, and when he was being fed a line of bullshit. His father had been the same way. He’d had a merchant’s nose for deception, and he’d usually known when to walk away from a bad deal.
Except the day he died.
After that, we’d had to carry on as best we could. Ulf stayed on as engineer, and we recruited Kiki as pilot. Copernicus spent the first few weeks in his bunk, grappling with his shock and anguish. When he emerged, he was like a blade forged in fire: stronger and sharper and imbued with quiet purpose.
