Osprey chronicles comple.., p.36
Osprey Chronicles Complete Series Boxed Set, page 36
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 further 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.
“Sure. Over the last six months.” Toner gave him a nasty grin. “I’ve been saving the bottles for a special occasion.”
Occy nodded and pulled himself into a crouch—nearby, but outside arms’ reach of Toner. He watched in silence as Toner destroyed a few more bottles. “I take it the meeting didn’t go so well,” he said softly.
Toner let out a shrill laugh. It was all he could do.
Sim!
Jaeger surged awake with a gasp, heart thudding in her ears. A word, a sound, a name spun in her head.
Sim. The girl’s name was Sim, and she was young, still round with the last clinging bits of baby fat, bright-eyed and caked with old makeup.
It was one memory, singular and real and crystal clear, like light seen and fractured through a crystal.
Sim—the girl, the child, the daughter, bored with painting on paper and ready for a living canvas, sat on the edge of a bathtub. The two of them leaned toward the mirror, cheek-to-cheek, their reflected faces highlighted with bright yellow and gold eyeshadow, cheeks splayed with white dots, lips streaked black and white. Jaeger smelled the baby-soft skin, the dull powdery scent of old costume makeup discovered in some attic trunk, the faint sting of a bathroom scoured with harsh cleaning chemicals.
“It’s bedtime,” said the woman in the mirror—said Jaeger—but that wasn’t true. It had been bedtime two hours ago.
Sim shook her head ferociously, sending her braids bouncing over her cheeks.
“Come on.” Jaeger pulled her close and planted a wet kiss on her forehead. “Time to wash up and go to bed. You don’t want to be cranky in the morning.”
“I don’t want to go,” the girl grumbled into Jaeger’s shoulder. “I hate the program.”
“It’s not forever, honey. It’s just something you have to do for a little while.”
“How long?” The girl whined and wriggled, already overtired from a long evening.
Jaeger hesitated. How long? She remembered thinking. Too long.
Too long and too long and too long.
She held the little girl close and rocked gently, there on the edge of the tub. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “Until we find a new home.”
“What’s wrong with this one?” Sim trembled faintly in her mother’s arms. “I like it here. This is a good place.”
It was a good place, honey. Once upon a time. Then we fucked up the magnetosphere. Now every single day you spend on this planet, your chances of getting terminal cancer before you’re twenty years old go up ten percent. But you won’t live to see twenty because the famines will kill you first—and that’s assuming you survive the riots and earthquakes.
“I’ll find you another good place,” Jaeger whispered into her daughter’s hair. I’ll find a place where I can take care of you, and we can take care of our new home.
Back in her cold and very lonely future, Jaeger finally caught her breath. The memory faded, but not into the opaque pool that was her longstanding amnesia. It joined the background music of her mind, ready to be called up again and replayed on a whim—ready and clear and true.
“Kwin,” she whispered into the shadows. “It’s working. God. It’s working.”
She scrambled to her feet and into her flight suit. Four hours of sleep and she was as awake as she’d ever been. Awake and inspired and ready to fistfight the universe, if she had to.
She had a job to do.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jaeger pressed a hand to the security panel mounted to the door of the old captain’s quarters. Nothing happened. She frowned and pressed the pad again. The access light blinked green, but the door didn’t slide open.
“Virgil?” She waved her hand across the panel, then in front of one of the security cameras mounted overhead. “What’s going on?”
It took half a heartbeat longer than normal for the AI to answer. Then the nearest speaker crackled to life.
“Ah, I’m sorry, Captain. That’s strange. There must be a bug in the security protocol for that door.”
“Open it,” Jaeger said tersely. She only marginally trusted her prisoner not to make trouble if she left him to his own devices for too long.
“Of course—here we go.”
Jaeger let out a breath as the door unsealed and slid open. “Diagnose and fix the problem ASAP,” she said gruffly.
“Aye, Captain.”
Jaeger stepped through the door.
She’d converted the old captain’s quarters into a long-term holding facility for intractable prisoners. The original Osprey designs had a few designated brig areas, but most were out in the wing structures and intended for brief stints only. Jaeger had decided that it was cruel to make someone live in zero-G when there was plenty of unoccupied space in the central column.
Toner had, predictably, thrown a fit when Jaeger had decided to give the old captain’s quarters to a prisoner, but she’d stood firm. Toner had the entire Osprey to stretch out and explore. Seeker could have the single-room apartment that was Percival LeBlanc’s old haunt.
After they’d stripped it of all access privileges and fitted it with a few security precautions, of course. And after Toner had raided it of all the fancy old booze. Seeker wasn’t much of a drinker, anyway.
A shimmering blue force field separated the foyer from the rest of the quarters, creating a lobby area big enough for a ratty recliner and card table. From here, she could see all four corners of the captain’s quarters, and if she consulted the security monitor mounted to the wall, she could check in on the private bathroom hidden behind the far wall. There was no need for that, however. Seeker was lying stretched across the massive four-poster bed with a tattered and dog-eared book splayed open across his chest.
He stared at her as she slid into the recliner. Seeker—he had stubbornly refused to claim a first name—was a big man, square-jawed and buzz-cut and bulging with muscle in the skin-tight sleeveless undershirt he wore over loose camo pants. He looked wildly out of place, splayed across the delicately embroidered roses of the duvet beneath him. Layers of gossamer chiffon, straight out of a sultry Regency romance, draped from the canopy.
The captain’s quarters had originally been full of ornate furniture. Over the past few months, Seeker had, with her permission, replaced the overworked wooden desk and wet bar with sleek, efficient metal-framed folding pieces. All of it, that was, except for the four-poster.
“I’m surprised you haven’t gotten rid of that thing.” Jaeger thrust out her chin, indicating the entire monstrosity of the previous captain’s bed.
Seeker grunted and picked up his book again. It was some old pulp spy-thriller. “This is an original German Himmelbett.” He thumbed the pages. “It’s a priceless work of art.”
“It doesn’t seem like your style.” She noted the single folding chair stacked against the far wall. Despite her best efforts, Seeker seemed to embrace the prison aesthetic spitefully.
“It’s ugly as fuck,” Seeker agreed. “But I don’t trust your vampire not to chop it into firewood just for shits and giggles. Somebody has to preserve our heritage.”
“Who’s been in recently?” she asked. “There was a glitch in the door. An outdated code might have triggered some security protocol.”
Seeker shrugged. He licked his thumb and with surprising delicacy for such a big man, turned one tissue-thin page of the book. “The kid stopped by this morning.”
“Occy? For what?”
“No idea. I think he wanted someone to talk to while you and Toner were gone. He’s a nervous little twerp.”
“He’s sensitive.” Jaeger instantly felt defensive of the youngest member of her crew. Somebody had to stand up for Occy. He rarely did it himself. When he did—well. Seeker still had a discolored ribbon of skin around his neck.
Seeker grunted noncommittally.
“His security codes should be up to date, though. Anybody else?”
“Not since you came in for our Wednesday night game,” he said. “It’s only me and the computer in here, as always.”
On that note, Jaeger reached into a side cabinet and pulled out a cardboard box. She set it on the card table and started setting up the chessboard. Over the last few months, they’d replaced half of the plastic pieces with coarse figurines Seeker had hand-carved from ore scraps. The man was no artisan. They were dark, ugly, mismatched, hulking things that barely balanced upright, but Jaeger liked them. They looked damned intimidating as she arrayed them on the board across from her.
She fiddled with a control panel on the wall, adjusting the configuration of the force field generators. The faintly shimmering wall of light flickered for a split second, then reappeared with a single small window over the center of the card table, just big enough for Seeker to move a hand across the board.
Jaeger pushed the chessboard forward, centering it in that window. The half on her side of the prison wall was old, plastic pieces, discolored and boring. The half on his side held the rough hulking shadows of hand-carved stone.
“Come play me,” she said eagerly. She did some of her best brainstorming in this room.
Seeker set his book to the side and approached the forcefield wall. He picked up his folding chair and slung it beside the card table, facing the wrong way. He sat, straddling the seat.
“Are you going to carve a white set?” Jaeger placed the final pawn in position.
“No. Carve your own damn set. Are you going to move sometime today or should I go take a shit while I wait?”
“Why are you always in such a rush?” Jaeger studied the board—not that there was much to consider before they’d played any moves. She’d already decided what her first move would be. Sometimes she relished an excuse to linger here and talk to someone who wasn’t either a psychopath, an obnoxious inhuman mutation, or Occy. She loved the boy—she loved all of her crew in one form or another—but his idea of high-minded conversation was a starry-eyed analysis of all the exciting plot twists of The Phantom Menace.
“The computer likes to make smartass remarks about how slow a player I am,” Seeker said. “It’s nice to feel like I’m not the stupidest person in the room.”
Jaeger played her opening move. “That’s odd.” Seeker’s jab didn’t fluster her. Living with Toner had given her a hide six miles thick. “I thought Virgil’s been acting very professionally lately.”
“Kicked dog syndrome.” Seeker moved one pawn.
“I’m not familiar.”
“Old-school Americanism. Man goes to work, where his boss rides his ass all day about TPS reports or some bullshit. It’s humiliating. When he gets home, he has to unwind with a beer or six. He bitches at his wife that the roast is a little undercooked, the kid is wearing dirty clothes, and what the fuck does she do all day while he’s getting raped over a barrel to keep bread on the table?
“The wife can’t explain to him that dinner is late because she had to make an extra trip to the grocery store after the kid used all the TP making a mummy costume for the dog, because he wouldn’t understand. So, now feeling like she’s unappreciated, she snaps and shouts at the kid when he spills his juice for the third time.
“The kid doesn’t know what the fuck is going on, except that he’s getting yelled at all the damned time, and he can’t do dick about it. So when Mommy and Daddy go off for their third nightcap, the kid turns around and kicks the dog in the ribs. Fuck, Jaeger, are you going to move, or are you going to stare at the board all day?”
Jaeger snapped out of her contemplation and flicked her bishop two squares. “And in that metaphor, Virgil is…”
“He’s the powerless kid trying to keep Mommy and Daddy happy because he knows which way his bread is buttered.” Seeker scowled at the board, rubbed his jaw, and in one decisive motion, lifted his misshapen knight and moved it. “I’m the dog. Your move.”
