by S. Walker
Paul walked her through finding the medical injector ("no, that is for burn debridement, are you trying to skin me alive?"), then loading a series of analgesics, muscle relaxers and painkillers into it one at a time ("add saline to that or I will be talking to the walls for an hour"). He was thankfully quiet while she injected him twice above the break and once below, but that might have been a result of painkillers finally taking the edge off.
Then it was time for the temporary cast. "You will need to align the break with your hands, first."
"What?" That sounded awful.
"Hands on, lieutenant. Not something you are used to, I suppose."
Oh great, they were back to sarcasm. "Fine. Just... push them together?" She touched his arm gingerly. It was hot and sweat-sticky, muscles sliding like thick cables under the skin. "How will I know when it's in the right place?"
He snagged the air cast box, flicking it open one handed and unrolling the pliable material. "There should be a definite pop, lieutenant. Try not to be shy; quite a lot of pressure will be needed."
"I don't want to hurt you. Can we just not do this?"
"Have we recently docked at a medical facility in the last five minutes?"
"Uh, no."
"Then no." He glanced at her concerned face, eyebrows screwed upwards and mouth puckered. "If it matters I am not feeling much of anything below the shoulder at the moment."
She took a deep breath, hands circling his arm around the swollen lump. "Alright, okay. Here goes."
Eyes half closed, Jamet dug both thumbs and forefingers into the squishy tissue around the break. It felt hot and twitchy, lumpy muscle and half-clotted blood vessels layering over the bone. She pressed hard until she felt the bone beneath, then slid both thumbs around until the break was right under the pad. "Okay, I got it. I can feel it."
Paul grunted. "Are you... charging... by the minute... lieutenant?"
"Oh fuck you." She shoved hard on the end of each broken bone, feeling them grate badly against each other under pressure. "They're not going together!"
"I suggest... pushing harder."
She yelled in combined disgust and panic, thumbs pushing opposite directions against stubborn bone. Without warning there was a horrible popping sound and both ends jumped beneath her hands, traumatized muscles twitching as the snapped bone realigned.
He screamed, mouth closed and lips skinned back over bared teeth.
"I'm sorry!" Jamet yelled back, then remembered. "I thought you couldn't feel it!"
"The cast!" He yelled, eyes screwed shut. "All the way down my arm, keep the rods straight!"
She grabbed it, stuffing one of the prominent rods underneath his armpit and wrapping the sleeve-like remainder all the way around his bicep and elbow. "I got it! What now! Help!"
Paul reached up, grabbed a bright red tab and ripped it off. Immediately the entire cast stiffened, bladders inflating with pink foam that slowly pulled his arm straight until it was immobilized from shoulder to elbow. He motioned tiredly at the result. "That. That is next." Then he collapsed against the bulkhead, eyes fluttering half closed.
"Well... fuck." Jamet fell down right next to him, feeling like a doll next to the lanky technician.
They spent several minutes staring across the corridor over the remains of the medical kit and watching the lights flicker. Janson must be on repairs-- the power relays were starting to cut in and out as circuits rerouted. Every time the overheads cut off the console nearby would bleep a complaint as it went through a reboot cycle. It sounded strangely annoyed, each dying tone and power-on blip combining into an exasperated "Again? Fine, I'm on!"
It was weirdly peaceful having nothing to do for a moment, no emergency or terror popping into her face that needed to be handled right away. She didn't even have any duties on the ship-- no repair role, no medical or communications position demanding attention. Her entire purpose was navigation and that was thoroughly offline. For the first time since that angry, fraught mockery of a trial six months ago she could just... sit. Sit and do nothing. Her checklist was complete for the moment, everything filled in.
Paul coughed, pushing himself into a better position with his one good arm. "Janson working on power?" Shock and exhaustion made his atonal voice even flatter somehow, every word sounding the same.
She nodded, too tired to move. "You okay?"
"Still alive. Still costing Corporate money."
Jamet glared at the lights, her good mood broken. "I have had just about enough of your-" she started.
"She looked like you." He said it with a bitter twist of the lip, refusing to look her way.
Everything derailed. "What? Who did?"
"Sirai. Sirai Nickols. She was Middle Management, just like you were."
"Are."
Paul chuffed a laugh, chest hitching. "Are. My fault." Both feet drew up, long legs rising until his boots were flat on the floor. "There was a whole group of them, all walking together and coming off the arrivals platform in a waterfall of colors. Half a dozen at once, like exotic birds that demanded everyone look. Made us pay attention. Although visitors were rare anyways so we might have stared no matter who it happened to be. I suppose that might be memory playing tricks."
"An inspection visit?"
"No, we never had those. No inspections, no compliance checks, no fiscal enforcement on Hensel-1."
Jamet shuddered; the fiscal enforcement section was a boogeyman everyone kept an eye out for. Then she blinked. "Hensel one? But numerical ones are-"
"Colonists." He nodded. "A rare investment. Janson probably already mentioned it, if you happened to talk with him for longer than it takes to give him another order."
Belatedly she remembered the amiable giant sitting across from her in the break room, talking about colonies. And something else... "Oh, right. He said that. Also about your, um, relationship." She snuck a glance sideways at his face.
He looked exhausted, eyes half closed. "Our Engineer has a big heart and a soft spot for love tales."
"What happened?"
"Same thing that always does, I suppose. Sirai was Corporate, came on vacation to see the new colony world. Meet the strange colonists, laugh at us a little. We were barely a century into terraforming when something went sideways at atmospheric processing. Perhaps a bad VAT mixture, or high altitude seeding went wrong. No one ever found out the reason, but for at least three decades or so our atmospheric helium content shot up. Not high enough to be dangerous but... noticeable. I am told we even have a nickname related to it."
Jamet winced: She actually remembered that one. "Squeakers."
"Yes." He abruptly sang a scale, going from midrange to high. It sounded awful, sharp on the lower notes and nearly supersonic at the highest. He finished with a tired laugh, still looking at the flickering overheads. "It is an adaptation to the atmosphere mix. On Hensel we sound fine, normal even. But off-world." He touched his throat with a hand, fingers flicking outward like an imaginary voice. "Squeakers. Combined with our low gravity world and the associated tendency to grow tall... well. A sideshow, to be sure."
Jamet wasn't sure how to handle that. She circled the topic, instead: "And Sirai?"
Paul smiled, wanly. "Yes, Sirai. I was young, she was... hmm. Well, I am sure you would know. Assertive, brash, impossible to please but somehow making everyone want to curry favor. I was already a technical lead for the colony, all but running several large scale projects. She took note, we talked. Then it was dinner and before I knew it..."
This wasn't going to good places. Jamet had been on the other side of this equation more than once and could read the brutal calculus. Middle Management didn't do vacations-- leaving the cutthroat promotion ladder for even a week was almost a guarantee for losing your budget, if not your entire section.
There was only one reason an executive from Middle ever left for any length of time. "She was headhunting you."
Paul's one good hand fisted, then relaxed. "Common practice, is it?"
&nb
sp; "Yes." Then, belatedly: "But I didn't. I mean I did, but not like that and-"
"Easy, lieutenant. I am not blaming you." He seemed to think. "Well, perhaps I was. The things she promised, the places she described us going together if I would just contract to her division. She could not force it; colonies have autonomy. I had to walk into it myself."
"I'm sorry," Jamet said. Then with a start she realized she actually was sorry. It was a close echo to her own experience, although in her case the promise had been for an upward move with an executive assignment in Upper Management. I want you to lead a division, a soft voice whispered, heavy with satisfaction and post-coital feelings. Come with me, J. We'll be amazing. Together.
She thrust the memory aside. "That's fucked. So you signed, left the colony and...?"
"Slotted into technical serfdom." He said it with a ghost of bitterness. "And of course my first appraisal was a disaster. Which, looking back on it, must have been manufactured. Then the fines, the penalties for 'non performance' and in a few short years I am sure you know what happened."
"Indebted worker." The overheads browned out and came back on. Jamet shivered in place.
"Indeed."
They sat together, companionable in exhaustion. Eventually she frowned as a question slowly forced itself to the front of her tongue. "But, the Kipper. How did you get to be here, if you're indebted?"
"Always the money first, lieutenant." But at least he sounded slightly amused. "You have already met the answer."
"Oh come on," she complained. "Emilia already did this to me, don't you start."
And wonderfully, he laughed. "But what other answer is there? Captain Siers, of course."
The overheads snapped off, leaving her in the dark with Paul's tired, atonal chuckle.
"I hate you all," she groused before slowly patting across the deck, fingers reaching.
He took her hand, squeezing once. "The feeling was mutual."
And damn it all, that 'was' mattered more to Jamet than she wanted to let on.
Chapter 10
Planning Stations
Captain Siers was frowning thoughtfully at system reports when the hatch opened and Jamet fell face-first onto the deck. He looked back, eyebrows raised. "Lieutenant?"
"Sorry, captain. I'm not used to wearing this."
'This' turned out to be a generic, one size fits all skinsuit. It resembled an Engineer's pocketed overalls, but extended down both arms and included an oversized neck seal. Wrist- and boot-locks kept the detachable gloves and feet on, although she currently had the helmet collapsed backwards. Everything but the boots was white, blindingly so, with silver interface panels on both wrists for tool control and communications.
It felt weird to actually be using the emergency suits. Jamet was used to shoddy versions of these kits (when she saw them at all), thrifty models where the closed suit recyclers barely operated for a few hours at a time before dropping to dangerous levels. This was the exact opposite: High end wearable tech, the kind of ruinously expensive gear normally only packed aboard luxury ships and reserved for the highest of VIPs.
So of course Kipper had two jammed inside every emergency compartment. With enough power they could all practically live in these.
Jamet was slightly proud of how numb she was getting to the sheer expense of everything. She hadn't added another zero to the ship cost in hours, at least.
The problem was for how expensive the skinsuit was it truly did have to be 'one size fits all'. Which meant large swaths of material on front and back, gargantuan gloves and-- annoyingly-- boots eight times larger than she needed. There was only so much contraction even the smartest of fabrics could handle.
Her only consolation was Emilia didn't seem to be on the bridge at the moment. Although Paul's snort and Janson's tired smile let her know the fall hadn't gone unnoticed.
She scrambled up, ears burning. "Mid-deck is compromised, sir. Open to vacuum and sealed."
"Ah know," Janson managed to sound apologetic and exhausted at the same time. "Drones are prioritizin' the Krepsfield and power relays right now. Lost everythin' below bridge and forward crew areas."
Siers tossed a ship schematic onto the forward screen. "Here, lieutenant. Yellow areas have confirmed atmosphere loss, red is for portions that simply aren't responding any more. We've lost a lot of system reporting."
Jamet stumbled to her console, silently cursing the oversized boots. "I thought the Kipper had redundancies?" Paul gingerly eased himself into his workstation as well, carefully keeping his immobilized arm away from bumping anything.
"We do," Siers agreed. "And thankfully they kept us going all the way through that engagement. You might not have had time to notice how badly the ship was taking hits."
Jamet had a sudden vision of Captain Siers frantically working his console while everyone argued around him. It was an abrupt realization that a lot had been going on between her flinging singularities around. "How bad is it?"
He deferred. "Janson?"
"Well, to put it lightly." He scratched his beard. "Yah know how Kipper was triple deep on most subsystems?"
"Yes?"
"She isn't any more." He emphasized by highlighting the schematic. "We got a hole straight through our stern, missed the reactor an' singularity generator by less than an arm's length. Hull stress is past redline on the starboard side from our little trick. Not to mention it looks like someone spent a while cutting interestin' designs all over it. Worst of all," he flipped the image over, one thick finger trailing down the outline from bow to stern. "Somethin' tumbled down our whole length. Took out relays like they were nothing."
Looking at the catastrophic damage was enough to give Jamet ice water for blood. "Is it repairable? Can I help?"
The big man looked at her in surprise. "First time ah heard you ever offer help, ma'am."
Paul huffed his atonal laugh again. She pointed at him without looking, feeling both ears burning up. "Not a word."
"I would never. However, Engineer?"
"Mm?" Janson was staring at the ceiling, eyes unfocused and deep in the drone systems via his chip.
"I need to look at those ribs. I recall you had at least one fracture." Paul started to lever himself painfully upright. "Lieutenant helpfully brought the emergency medical kit with us."
"Nah, I'm good." He used one hand to open his overalls, revealing a wraparound brace. "Used th' bridge medical kit. Damn glad ah paid attention durin' training."
Paul met Jamet's eyes and burst into laughter for real, falling back on his console. She slowly brought one hand up to cover her eyes, determined to stare downward at her half-functional console and nowhere else.
Siers glanced between Paul's painful chuckles and Jamet's scarlet embarrassment. "Am I missing something?"
"Nothing... of note." He was wheezing now, face alarmingly blotched.
"Mm." He let it go. "Regardless, we have some hard choices to make soon. I've been looking over options and checking the system status. There are some rather disturbing things. Here, let me bring you up to speed."
The front screen switched from a schematic to an overview of the system, Kipper's position highlighted with a green dot. Jamet was relieved to see the red dot of their unknown pursuer was farther out, hovering motionless near the outermost asteroid belt. A closer marker indicated the mining rig they were slowly drifting towards, the indicator prominently situated above the local gas giant.