by S. Walker
Jamet nodded. On screen flashes stood out in crimson colors, blasting a heartbeat that counted five, four- "Lifeboats are what the Academy calls 'all go, no brakes'. Because while they can't turn for shit, they're very good at straight lines."
He looked from her, to the countdown, then down at his harness straps. "Maybe ah better-"
The lifeboat roared like supernovas, sound and pressure joining forces to crush every inch of the big engineer completely into the couch cushions. It felt like an entire moon rolled up and parked itself on his chest, blasting even the memory of oxygen straight out of Janson's lungs in a long, undignified squawk of surprise. Even his beard got in on the act, pulling both cheeks backwards like it had a bet with his eyelids on which one could reach the back of his head first. "NnnnghhhhARRRRGHHH!"
Jamet didn't fare much better. From where he sat Janson could see her hair bun instantly come unraveled and snap straight backward like a flag, perfectly horizontal and defying the deck. Both forearm sleeves rode up her arms, pulling away from white-knuckled fingers nailed to the pilot armrests. Something in her pocket came loose and flipped over one shoulder, zipping by Janson's frozen grimace with a demonic hiss that drove fear straight into his heart. It smashed somewhere behind him in a miniature explosion, a bare fraction of the all-encompassing tsunami of noise that was the emergency acceleration retros.
With no choice but to stare straight ahead Janson got an eyeful of numbers on the forward workstation screen. Some of them counted up. Some of them counted down. And some of them were slowly turning black as the edges of his vision tunneled inward due to oxygen depletion in his brain. The last thing he saw before passing out was the scrolling whirl of the lifeboat's speed indicator passing nine thousand miles per hour.
∆∆∆
Someone was talking. At least he thought so-- sounds definitely bounced back and forth, some of them teasing his ears with nearly understandable content. But the meaning was unclear. Topics lost or scrubbed over with soothing noise, more tone and style than separate syllables. Like being underwater and trying to make out a conversation on dry land. "Mwuh...?"
Mutter, question? Mumble hmm dengo fshh, bah wub denlurr haa. Exclamation!
He struggled out of the water, one thought at a time. "Ah'm... wha?" It almost made sense. Just a little closer to the shore and he'd have it.
Cahnyuh errl meh question? Teeraih notto muhv fourah moment, just take deep breaths.
Janson finally breached the imaginary surface, lungs heaving a breath that felt like hours in the making. Then he started coughing convulsively, ragged and harsh as compressed tissue decided it really didn't like being forced together that hard. But his ears worked fine, picking up the lieutenant's worried tone.
"Engineer? Janson? Easy, easy! Slow breaths, don't gulp! You'll hyperventilate and pass out again! Can you hear me?"
"Mmmm'am. Ah hearrr you." Damn his chest hurt. The coughs weren't helping: It felt like something with claws was loose in there having a good time. He couldn't stop shaking, snapping forward and back with each exhalation. Why couldn't he see? Were the lights out?
"Okay, we're past the worst of it. Local gravity has acceleration under control, we should be fine. Just breathe, slow and controlled." Something beeped loudly from the direction of her console. He heard Jamet slap an indicator and confirm prompts with a blip-blip-blip of approving noises.
"Ahhh can't seeee?" Something was wrong. Everything felt fuzzy, like when he slept on his arm too long and woke up with a phantom appendage for a while. None of his limbs were responding well, even his tongue felt a half second behind.
Something beeped. "Paul? Can you hear me?" Jamet sounded worried. He should tell her it would be okay, everything would be fine. It was important to reassure people in case they panicked. He'd get on that just as soon as these coughs stopped.
"I hear you, lieutenant. We lost you for nearly two minutes, is everything okay?"
"To hell with that!" Emilia sounded ecstatically excited. "Why didn't you tell me that thing could do that! I would have volunteered to come!"
"Maybe next time, but shut up a moment! Paul, Janson says he can't see and I think- I think he's having convulsions. Help!"
Oh. Yeah, that made sense. His chest wouldn't stop moving, lungs spasming open and shut again while he jerked back and forth. Pretty much the definition of a mild convulsion. It hurt a hell of a lot, too, but in a familiar way. Like this happened before. But not recently, sometime in the past.
"Can you check his pupils? Are they dilated?"
Banging sounds like a clumsy woman falling out of an acceleration couch. Then he dimly felt something grabbing his face, forcing eyelids up against the angry pull of seizing facial muscles. "Yes! No, wait! They're... they're doing this wide-small-wide-small thing, it's freaky as hell!"
Janson tried to shake his head. No, that wasn't the right term. Close, though. Points to the lieutenant for getting onto the right playing field, although he wished she wasn't so overly concerned. But it wasn't quite there, not the right words. He knew there was a different phrase, like a musical advertisement that played so often he forgot the actual product and just picked up the syllables.
Only it hadn't been an advertisement at the time, that would be a ridiculous thing to recall. Not some group of actors emoting through overly-hyped lines, either. In his memory it was just... people. In slick plastic clothes. Moving with slow, careful precision as they tugged and prodded his head just out of sight behind one ear. And they didn't call it wide and small, they called it...
Janson struggled, fighting backwards in time. They called it...
Activate. Deactivate.
He was having a chip malfunction.
"-possibly related to his biochips. I am looking at his records now, can you give me a picture of-"
Janson tuned out Paul's hurried, practical tone and Jamet's increasingly concerned demands. It was a chip malfunction, that's all. He remembered these. It was impossible to forget weeks spent on life support staring at walls as small, slow thoughts crossed through damaged brain tissue. Shades of ceiling paint keeping him fascinated while workers and technicians traded words around the bed, talking of accidents and liability and contract agreements. An eternity spent wordlessly dreaming, until a concerned face leaned over the bed, one hand stroking a groomed mustache as he asked questions with a low, worried tone.
Then a series of rooms, cold and clinical. Astringent scents that bypassed the nose to savagely assault sinuses on a primitive level. Then a rack to hold his big body in place, turning slowly as technicians poked and moved equipment in endless circles overhead. Finally a frowning man's face, masked both above and below the cheekbones, shining a console-controlled light directly into Janson's eyes while he tapped small adjustments to settings.
After every colored flash he would glance at the console display, either frowning at the result or nodding encouragingly. Slowly the encouraging nods got more frequent, coming quicker and more often as he found some sequence that seemed to be working. Then colors started blending, running a prism of possibilities until they merged into a solid, bright-
Flash. Activate. Suddenly Janson was there inside his own head. He could think, but everything was wrong. Broken. Every limb both on fire and boiling all at once, thousands of crawling itches as nerves screamed signals his damaged brain couldn't receive. The accident! The ore hauler swinging, safeties broken for the fourth time and pitiless metal blotting out the world. Screaming, yelling, trauma. Dead stars, he couldn't even move! He was trapped! Janson screamed in pain and hurt, yelling for someone, anyone-
Flash. Deactivate. Peaceful, serene. Colors on the walls the most fascinating thing that ever existed. Nerves silenced, panic boxed and put away. The technician smiling one last time, then turning the rack over so Janson could see the ceiling again. Lovely. Cold.
Then later, waking up again like falling into his own skin. Pain and suffering, but now with someone to sit by the bed and hand him medications. A vaguel
y familiar figure in a fitted uniform, mustache trimmed and neat on a face full of concern.
He remembered, now. So long ago. But so recent, too. Both ancient history and right here all at once, like an event pulled straight from memory into a lifeboat already full of panicked lieutenant and a clinically directive comm link. And him, of course. Janson felt his body spasm, receiving conflicting signals from a lifesaving biochip kicked wildly out of sync with the needs of his nervous system. But that was okay. Really.
Because he could fix this. He knew how. He remembered. It was as easy as-
Deactivate.
He passed out for the second time, slumping against the harness straps like a boneless puppet. The last thing he heard was the poor lieutenant's terrified yelp and Paul's barking commands over the speakers.
Chapter 35
Problematic Course Adjustments
"I thought you died!"
Jamet slugged him on the shoulder from the seat nearby, then immediately regretted it when the engineer flinched in place. "Sorry! Wait, no I'm not sorry. Don't you ever scare me like that again!"
Janson rubbed his shoulder and head at the same time, looking sheepishly up from where he lay across the acceleration couch. "Ah didn't mean to. But hey-- go a little easy, ma'am? My head isn't doing so good right now. Eyes are all blurry like, too." He tried to squeeze farther up on the couch, big legs edging up onto the seat across the tiny aisle. "Can I get a little more room, if that's alright?"
"Adding on top of that," Siers sounded concerned over the comms link. "Is this likely to happen again, Engineer? I've been talking with our Medical expert and he is completely at a loss."
"Correction, sir-- I said there is no precedent in medical records. Which is a very far cry from being 'completely at a loss'. In fact, I would characterize-"
Jamet ignored the byplay and stood up, going over Janson's legs to the forward pilot couch and reaching underneath. She fumbled around for a long moment until something clicked and the entire seat swiveled to face backward. She locked it in place when her knees were close enough to touch the front of his couch. "Better? Do you need anything, some water or another blanket? You were out for a very, very long time." Then, in a worried undertone: "I thought you might not wake up."
He winked slowly in her general direction. "Takes me a bit to get goin' in the morning," Janson whispered back, then stretched both long legs to the side a bit more. "But everythin' turned out alright. No harm done, ma'am." Then he looked up, addressing the air towards the forward console area. "An' thanks for looking up those records, Paul. Ah'm not sure what happened there, or even why. Been under gravity stress more 'n a few times and nothing bad came to visit. Wonder what the difference was this time?"
"How much gravity? Because I was clocking your speed from here and whoooo! That lifeboat was MOVING." Emilia sounded impressed and jealous at the same time. "You two topped out at almost eleven on the big G for nearly half a minute! What did it feel like?"
They exchanged a look full of exasperation, Janson's reclined form to Jamet's exasperated eye roll. "Heavy, Emilia." Jamet pinched the bridge of her nose. "Like having the entire Kipper sitting on my chest all at once."
"Yeah, that's about right." Janson carefully brushed thick fingers over his neck, then rubbed the back of his head in small circles. "And no, ah never shot out on a lifeboat before. That's a new one for me. But ah been on plenty of shuttle trips in and out of gravity before without a problem." He frowned, trying to remember if anything seemed odd. "None of 'em that heavy on the launch, though. Not even close. Paul? You think that might be what happened?"
"The Medical system dislikes giving a diagnosis at a distance." Paul sounded like he was working on something. Background clicks and metallic rattles echoed over the connection. "But personally I think assuming acceleration stress causes issues is a good guess. You are, politely put, extremely heavily chipped."
"Don't ah know it." The big man huffed laugh. "But if heavy G gives me trouble ah I think we might a problem on our hands."
Siers added on to that, sounding concerned and thoughtful. "Definitely so. Lieutenant?"
Jamet stopped trying to check Janson's pupils and twisted around to look at the forward console. "Sir?"
"How long until you need to start deceleration? It has been several hours since your rather... explosive departure. You're passing the halfway mark soon."
"Hold on, let me look. I have a pre-plot for that and a timer." She turned in place, knees on the seat and leaning over the back of the couch. The lifeboat console made agreeable noises, then updated their forward display. "Sending you an update now, but we'll need to start spinning in place to aim our retros inside the next ten minutes or so."
"I see your course update." A warning tone buzzed over their shared link. "Although the ship navigation on this end is extremely unhappy about it. Did your original course plot include extreme deceleration?"
Even without seeing her unhappy expression Janson could tell the lieutenant was worried. It was in the set of her shoulders, the way she kept her head just slightly tilted while making short stabs at the console. "Yes, that was the plan. Lifeboats aren't meant for just cruising around! They're more for fast getaways and maybe an emergency re-entry. That's all the fuel they come with." She angrily swiped at icons, loading courses on-screen. "I tried plotting a couple normal routes, looping around into a stern chase so we could catch up and dock gently. Here's how they ended up."
A short period of silence as both ends of the connection reviewed courses. "I'm not an expert or anything," Emilia said. "But that little boat icon looks like it's drifting into deep space."
"Considering we couldn't use the Kipper to rescue, I'm glad you decided not to use those." Siers did something on his end, cycling through half a dozen course windows before settling on a plotted line that took the lifeboat in the opposite direction. "What was wrong with this option?"
Jamet glanced at it, shaking her head like the captain could see her. "From a fuel standpoint? Nothing, actually. That's the one where I thought about getting ahead of the smelter's orbital path and braking to a standstill. Let the facility come to the lifeboat instead of the other way around."
"That sounds like a good idea, ma'am." Janson slowly sat upright, one hand glued to his forehead and eyes closed. "Oof, that headache's murder in a jar an' I'm barely keeping the lid on."
Paul broke in. "Wait. Are you sitting up already? Lieutenant, could you please check his vitals?"
She turned around to look at him, still kneeling on the couch cushion. "Um. He looks... good. Just unhappy."
A sound like palms hitting face cracked over the link. "Nevermind. There should be two emergency medical kits on either side of the lifeboat." He described them. Jamet nodded, eyes unfocused and picturing the setup.
"Wait, that sounds like the kit I used on you before. Is it the same kind? Big, blocky, slightly longer than my arms?" She made exaggerated boxlike shapes with both hands.
"Close enough."
She started grinning. "Should I use the-"
"Do NOT use the air cast." Even Janson caught the edge of a smile in his voice; that story was rapidly becoming a tall tale. "Ahem. I asked Emilia to unlock the ID requirements before you left, just in case. Find the injector and the cartridges-- the same ones we used before. You'll need to double the doses, our engineer is over twice my size."
"Got it." She came off the bench with a long step, crossing over Janson's couch with a mumbled apology. He could hear racks unclipping and slamming around while she looked for the right one, unidentified tools rustling out of place. He tried very hard not to look; that was not how a carefully organized rack was supposed to be treated.
The console blinked once. "Lieutenant? What about the course?"
More banging noises, followed by a rattling crash and a short curse. "Oh! Right, right. Are you looking at it now?"
Janson sure was: A long, looping curve that started from a callout marking the Kipper's location and en
ded in the middle of nowhere, sitting right on top of the dotted line for the smelter's projected orbital path. Siers answered for both of them. "Yes, I can see it. Everything looks perfect, even a little fuel to spare. Why not use this?"