“I voted to leave you,” she said tonelessly, and went to work while Terson gritted his teeth.
“She’s got the bedside manner of a small engine mechanic,” Terson complained after she left.
“They call her Blizzard for obvious reasons,” Druski said.
She told him to hold his arms over his head and felt his lymph nodes, then had him lie back on the table and pushed into his abdomen with both hands. “Don’t tighten up,” she ordered. Satisfied, she let him sit up again. “I’m ready for the tray,” she called into the next room. Liz reappeared with a tray of instruments and set it on the counter next to the table. Druski looked up his nose and into his ears with a scope. “Headache or nausea?”
“No.”
“Problems with vision or hearing?”
“No.”
She peered down his throat, then pricked his finger and drew a drop of blood. “Liz, go ahead and clean up while I run this.”
Liz returned the instruments to drawers and loaded the ones that had been used into the sterilizer. Once, as she passed by, he caught the printing on her nametag—B. Lizzard.
“Is that really your name?” he asked on impulse. She didn’t reply; simply glanced at him and looked away, as if an inanimate object had made an unexpected noise.
“How long have you had that bullet in your head?” Druski asked when she returned.
“Since I was a kid, I guess,” Terson replied tentatively. He hadn’t even realized it was there until a trauma medic in Saint Anatone found it while treating him for injuries sustained during his first encounter with the Onjin. The discovery had ended his advanced flight training on Nivia, but it turned out to be the least of his concerns.
“You don’t have a medi-chip.”
“No.” Terson said.
“You should get one,” Druski said, “and I suggest you do it soon. If I’d given you an MRI instead of an X-ray we wouldn’t be talking.”
“Thanks for the advice,” Terson said. “Is that all?”
“On that subject,” Druski said. “The other issue isn’t necessarily relevant, medically, so you don’t have to answer if it’s none of my business.” She paused, trying to decide how to continue, and finally just sighed and asked: “How did you get those scars?”
The scars she referred to were old, crisscrossing his forearms, chest and legs like pale welts. Their suspicious distribution occurred because he happened to be laying on his back when he received the injuries, though he understood why nearly every medical practitioner who’d ever examined him felt compelled to comment on them.
“I’m not a cutter,” he replied, offering a sympathetic smile to let her know he wasn’t offended as he added: “and you’re right—how they got there isn’t medically relevant.”
“’Nough said then; I’m releasing you for light duty.” She held up a bottle of pills. “Antibiotics. One three times a day until they’re gone. The congestion in your lungs has subsided, but don’t overdo it.”
“Got it.”
She handed him a folded shipsuit, undergarments and a roll of gauze. “Your sphincter might be a little lazy from the catheter,” she explained. “Pack this in your shorts if you dribble. Mackey! Come get your stray.”
A boyish, freckled face topped with short, sandy hair and wearing a wide grin appeared from around the infirmary’s threshold. “Hey, Joey! You look a damn sight better than when I saw you last. How you feeling?”
“Better,” Terson replied, searching his fogged memory of the poachers’ den on Nivia. “Gerald, right?”
“Jerrell,” he corrected, offering his hand. “Jerrell Mackey; cargo handler, general labor, and all-around good fella, right Doc?”
“All-around something; depends who you ask,” Druski replied dryly. “Better get moving.”
Mackey led him out of the infirmary. Terson quickly realized that the Embustero was considerably larger than he first assumed. The corridors, cramped by the standards of a planet-dweller, were spacious compared to the cargo vessels he’d been on. Artificial gravity in and of itself indicated a sizable power plant. For all its apparent size, however, the vessel seemed strangely under-manned. They encountered no one else as they moved aft to the crew quarters, though Terson did hear the rumble of voices emanating from a junction.
“Here’s your bunk,” Mackey said. “You don’t have any neighbors right now, but I’m just forward of the next frame.”
Terson had expected the hot-bunk-style arrangement he’d experienced during training: tiers of net bunks separated by curtains and shared by two shifts, with limited room for personal items and less privacy. The Embustero used modular cabins two meters wide, two high and three long connected in cells of four, assembled within voids that doubled as ballast holds. Each cabin held four fold-down cots, a shared chair and desk, and overhead storage bins across each wall.
One of the cots was deployed, neatly-folded bedding stacked at the foot. The other three appeared to be vacant.
“The nearest latrine is two frames farther aft,” Mackey explained. “Chow is this way.”
They back-tracked to the junction with the voices and met another crewman, one Terson recognized immediately, coming from the other direction. Sheila O’Brien looked at the two of them from a pale face with painfully red eyes.
“You look…interesting,” Mackey quipped.
“Need coffee,” O’Brien muttered.
“Tough night?” Terson asked amicably. The spacer grunted something that sounded affirmative. He took the opportunity to observe her more closely than he had in the cavern. She was in her mid-thirties, about five centimeters taller than he was, slender, and filled out her shipsuit comfortably. Both earlobes held three small gold rings.
The voices came from a hatchway a dozen meters farther up the branch corridor. A crewman just inside handed each of them a space ration as they went in; O’Brien handed hers back. The soft couches in the common’s lounge area were already filled. O’Brien’s feet scuffed the carpet as she made for the narrow tables and benches in the mess area. She took a vacant spot and put her head in her arms.
Terson sat between her and Mackey and tore open the pouch. The prospect of the S-rat actually set his mouth watering after so many days of the infirmary’s bland nutritious mush. The other handful of crewmen at the table quieted in his presence, communicating in low monosyllables as they cast questioning glances to each other.
An officer—Colvard, the second mate, Mackey informed Terson in a whisper—stood and called for attention. “First order of business: the gravity is oscillating on the inner decks again, not enough to be a safety issue, but you might get a little queasy, particularly if you’ve got a hangover, right Sheila?”
O’Brien held up her middle finger.
“Is that a threat, or a promise?” someone yelled.
The officer shouted down the raucous laughter and continued: “If everybody’ll give Ingwaldson and Neuchterlien a kick in the ass on the way out, we’ll see if they can get it fixed right this time. Next: as you’ve probably noticed already, we have a new face aboard.” Colvard gestured in Terson’s direction. “Joseph Pelletier helped us out with a problem back on Nivia. He’ll be with us for a few weeks while we return the favor.”
Terson nodded in acknowledgement of the light scattered applause; Mackey slapped him on the back.
“Finally,” Colvard continued, “we have some nominations for the shit detail this week.” He pulled out a sheet of paper and pursed his lips. “Markland put Mackey on report for insubordination, so he’s a given, as is our greenhorn, Mr. Pelletier. But it seems that crewman Sheila O’Brien gets to join the party because she overdrew her alcohol ration last night and told Shad to fuck his dog.”
The room exploded with laughter; O’Brien’s head sank closer to the table. “The story of my life…”
Mackey and O’Brien led Terson to Environmental Safety where they were issued heavy protective gloves, overboots, disposable coveralls and respirators. Terson guessed what
the task they’d been set to was, a guess confirmed when they also collected stiff-bristled pole brushes, mops, and floor squeegees.
“We go through this every trip,” Mackey explained as they headed down to the holds. “The dirt-siders make us haul out garbage, and it makes a mess of things when we dump it. Shad always saves some of the cleanup for special occasions.”
The forward hold was seventy-five meters long and fifty wide. The floor and walls were dimpled with snap-ring recesses and unpainted except for frame designations. The deck was streaked with filth and bits of garbage that hadn’t been swept into space when the hold blew. Even giving the task token effort would take at least four days, Terson estimated.
Armed with a bucket of soapy water and one stiff brush apiece, they settled down to scrubbing. The respirators discouraged small talk, and the three worked in silence. Mackey, Terson decided, wielded his mop with an expertise that could only come from practice.
They traded their brushes and buckets for squeegees at each new frame designator and pushed the wastewater into scuppers that sucked it away to be jettisoned later. By the time O’Brien signaled the mid-shift break Terson’s shoulders and back ached, his arms were numb, and his knees had gotten wet despite his best efforts to avoid it. They retreated to the decontaminated end of the hold and O’Brien handed out space rations from a box she’d brought with her, then dragged a cargo net to the wall, made a hammock, and climbed in.
Terson tried to find a position on the hard deck that eased his joints, finally gave up and ate standing. Mackey looked up at him and grinned.
“See what the cheap tickets get you?”
“At least I’ve got a ticket,” Terson replied. “You work for him.”
The spacer laughed. “It grows on you,” he said. “I used to jump ship so often I couldn’t get hired. Ran into Shadrack one day and I been here six years straight.”
Terson surveyed the empty hold thoughtfully. He knew Nivian regulations required cargo vessels to transport waste from the planet as a percentage of their cash load. The soiling patterns on the deck indicated that the hold hadn’t been filled to capacity, suggesting that the Embustero wasn’t traveling fully loaded.
“Do you guys poach as a habit,” he asked, “or just when you’re deadheading?”
“We hunt a little every few trips,” Mackey offered. “Helps offset the dead space.” The tips of his ears turned red.
Terson didn’t particularly care why or how much the crew of the Embustero poached, but the temptation to take back the merest hint of control, no matter how ignobly he did it, was too strong. It was time for someone else to squirm.
“The setup I saw was pretty sophisticated for a ‘little’ hunting. It looked like you’d been down there for a while.”
“Not really,” Mackey insisted. “It’s a convenient spot, so it got improved a little bit at a time.”
“You must have been doing this for a really long time, then.”
Mackey shoveled food into his mouth and chewed vigorously, replying with a noncommittal shrug.
O’Brien’s alarm went off. She snorted in her hammock, stretched, fumbled at the timepiece until it fell silent, and began to snore again. Mackey held his finger to his lips, picked up his brush, and went back to scrubbing. Terson wondered what might happen if an officer caught O’Brien sleeping on duty, but decided it was none of his business as long as Mackey covered her share of the floor.
Fifteen minutes before the end of the watch she woke on her own and stowed the net. “You didn’t wake me up.”
“Feel better?” Mackey asked.
“Yeah. I’ll buy you guys a couple beers.”
Mackey winked at Terson. “She can’t stand to owe anybody a favor.”
“Suck vacuum,” O’Brien sniffed as she bent to her task. They made frame fifty just as shift change sounded. O’Brien went her way and Mackey took Terson back to his cabin. “I’ll get you in an hour or so for that beer.”
Terson walked down to the latrine. It wasn’t until he stripped down and got in the stall that he realized he didn’t have a mask for the shower. The stall was a sealed unit and if the gravity kicked out while the water was on or he bumped the dial to full immersion he could drown. Skipping a shower in the confines of a starship was not an option, however. Poor personal hygiene had been a successful defense for murder more than once.
Terson set the dial on medium spray and leaned his head against the wall, letting the hot water cascade down his neck and back. For a few moments his consciousness shrank to nothing but the instant. The universe was the stall and he was warm, in control, and safe. The feeling, he knew, wouldn’t last.
He got out and dried off with his undergarment. Back in his cabin he combed his hair with his fingers and rubbed his chin. Several days’ growth had left him the beginnings of a beard and he decided to leave it.
Mackey rapped on the doorframe. “Joey, you ready?”
“Yeah,” Terson called, and unzipped the door. Mackey looked him up and down.
“You going to change, or what?”
“This is all I’ve got,” Terson said.
“Tell me what you need and we’ll draw it from Stores.” Terson named a few items and Mackey added a couple more. “A map. A laundry bag, too.” The spacer led him to Stores where he got his mouthpiece, three towels, a laundry bag and another shipsuit, which he had to sign for. “Anything you want washed you put in the bag and stuff in the door pouch. Services picks it up every day and usually gets it back to you at the end of the shift.”
The lights at one end of the commons were turned down and a few people were watching a vid that had just finished a run on Nivia. Mackey headed for the small bar at the opposite end where O’Brien waited. The wall behind the counter was decorated with a mural of a human fist clutching a bejeweled crown. The caption beneath read: Maher Shalal Hash Baz.
“What does that mean?” Terson asked.
“Ship’s motto: ‘Quick to the plunder, swift to the spoil.’ Same thing as on the patches.”
“What can I get you guys?” the bartender asked.
“Beer,” O’Brien answered for them. “The cheapest you got.”
“She’s stingy, too,” Mackey said as he sat down on the other side of Terson.
“Why don’t you pick up the next round, then?” O’Brien sniped.
Mackey raised his hands helplessly. “You aren’t worth the price of a beer.”
The bartender returned with three bottles and handed them out. Mackey took a swallow and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Joey, this is Doug Lewis, first watch, engineering. Douglas, Joseph Pelletier.”
“Nice to meet you,” Lewis said. “I heard we picked up a new man.” They traded grips quickly and Lewis moved down the counter to another crewman.
An undetermined number of introductions and ten bottles later Terson’s head buzzed like a fly. Drinking tired on an empty stomach was a stupid thing to do, but he was already past the point where he gave a damn what he’d feel like in the morning and kept pouring them down. He wasn’t the only one well down the road of drunkenness, either. He, Mackey and O’Brien had moved to one of the semi-circular couches until Mackey and O’Brien started getting cuddly and Terson moved back to the bar to drink.
He propped his back and one elbow against the edge of the counter while he worked on a fresh bottle. The credits rolled up the screen opposite him; people left their seats as the lights came up. His eyes locked with a pair across the room, dark brown and female. Their owner, an olive-complexioned young woman, smiled at him and started for the bar.
Terson was familiar enough with the implications of a new face appearing within an isolated population to dread the attention he knew he’d receive over the next several days. He would have to endure it until the crew satisfied its curiosity and fit him into the social order, or his stay would become far more unpleasant than evading casual sexual propositions.
A sudden, large physical presence at Terson’s elbow saved hi
m from dealing with the immediate irritant. Her gait faltered, and after a moment’s consideration she headed for the door instead.
“Looked like JP might get himself a date for a second,” the big spacer announced to no one in particular. “Too bad! Maybe next time.”
Terson cast the man an appraising glance. “You’ve got a little nick there, Grogan. Cut yourself shaving?”
The spacer’s hand went to the scabbed-over wound beneath his chin where Terson had once pressed the point of a hunting knife. The false levity on his face transformed to a glower. “I owe you for that,” he growled, “and I’ll find a way to pay up, trust me.”
“No need,” Terson smiled back. “It was on the house.” Another, even larger physical presence appeared at his left, prompting Grogan to straighten respectfully.
“You’re on duty, aren’t you, Mr. Grogan?” Shadrack asked pleasantly.
“Yessir, Cap’n! I just stopped in to say hello to JP here, but I best be going before anybody gets the wrong idea.” He stuck out a meaty hand. “Good seeing you again, JP!”
“Likewise.”
“What can I get you, Captain?” Lewis asked.
“Club soda and macta juice.” Shadrack leaned against the bar next to Terson. “How’d the watch go, Joseph?”
“Okay,” Terson said.
“That was Michelle Lytle,” Shadrack said, nodding toward the hatch. “Nice girl, if you’re looking for some company. So I’ve heard.”
“I’m not looking for company,” Terson replied.
“I thought not, but some take comfort that way. I’ll drop a hint now that I know for certain—folks’ll know it’s not personal.”
“I’d appreciate it,” Terson said around the painful pressure in his chest.
It didn’t quite go away after another beer.
THREE
Nivia: 2710:01:07 Standard
Stan McKeon stood with his back to the mirror; neck craned over his shoulder, the fingers of his right hand tracing the dark pink scar over the spot that once contained a kidney.
Embustero- Pale Boundaries Page 4