Family Matters

by S E Zbasnik

  "Gods, take me now," Variel muttered. "I'm going to go tell Orn to pinch, set up a few appointments and prepare the crew for two days of passage travel."

  She swept towards the bridge door, physically cracking the seal herself as WEST continued to pout about his dead vegetable or whatever else at the moment it believed to be its spawn. Variel got three steps down the walkway when she spun about and shouted, "Are you coming or not?"

  Marek jumped up, the key scattering out of his pocket and into his hands. He kept forgetting he held all the power.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Two days, such a small number in the scheme of things -- only 50 hours by the universal clock the dwarves set. Day one began fairly well; Variel managed to talk her undercooked noodle of a husband into the pinch as well as a small stop off at a bank. Orn grumbled more than usual into his sport of face fur as the ship linked up with the Passageway's automated systems.

  Pinching the wyrm and all the calculations to make certain one didn't open up in the middle of a planet's core were handled by computers, sure, but the pilot kept the ship on track and away from tears forming along the hull as wyrm space fought against the parasite burrowing under its skin to get to the other side. It was intergalactic highway driving down a gravel road to the Passageway's endless interstate in the desert.

  Blackness skirted past the hull, the stars blotted out to nothing at such high speeds until only all that empty part of space existed. It was said that the longest anyone survived in a Passageway was three weeks before she lost her narrow grip on sanity, declared the moon men of Cheeselandia free from their oppressors, and attacked a dairy. Mechanical bulls orbited the amusement moon for months. But, for a few days, endless night of dull sace wasn't so bad. You could catch up on some sleep, or...sleep. Sleep was really the best option.

  On day one, as Marek hovered around the dwarf who resumed his reign in the dining room Ferra approached Variel, her hair half braided and the other end sticking almost straight up.

  "Problems?" the captain said, indicating the vertical lift her engineer got.

  "To phrase it with a mild sauce," Ferra said, her grasp of human idioms slipping from either concern or the shock she got earlier.

  "Is it," Variel inched in closer, "the dialysis machine?" She trusted her crew to keep the secret from Marek, gods they'd probably revel in making sure the bastard had no idea what was coming, but it seemed wiser to keep it between the two of them for now.

  "Kind of, but no. It's working, could work, might work," Ferra said, tipping her head back and forth. "I poked around in the accroconnector, just to check up on the systems we do have working..."

  "I have a bad feeling where this is going."

  "The stint's breaking down. We have three, maybe four days before it shatters and we're without all power. No heat, no air, no gravity."

  Variel watched her restless but genial crew gathered around Orn's hand as a masked ogre attempted to eat a shuttle. The ogre had gotten as far as running his gums along the diamond encrusted hull. Leaning down towards Ferra's ear, she hissed, "Three or four days, you can't narrow that down better?"

  "I tried to run some tests but every time I got close, WEST screamed 'it had a headache' and dashed off about the ship. I finally cornered it back in the gym before the whole circuit collapsed."

  "Well, I don't think we're in any danger of this lot missing the gym for a few days," Variel said. Only she and Taliesin were any regulars. Occasionally, Brena would pop in and do some strange elven dance fighting that mostly involved her waving her feet at the wall and pirouetting. Monde seemed overtly concerned about 'beefing up.' Male orcs were supposed to be toned but not threatening. Well, not threatening to female orcs.

  "My point is if we don't get everything as in the entire system unlocked in three or four days we're dead, deader than dead. No restarting that system."

  Variel pinched her forehead, drawing forth deeper wrinkles than the ones she'd been hoeing for the past five years, "Continue working on the dialysis machine. If...if this drug-lord hacker plan falls through I can talk my husband into doing the right thing. Cowards give up when faced with their own certain death."

  "Then why do you want me to start pulling up the systems?" Ferra asked.

  "In case this stupid plan actually does work. And don't tell the others, not yet. I don't see a reason to worry them further."

  "Right," Ferra winked and touched her nose before lifting her head and shouting, "Fat and Stupid!"

  "What?" Orn's consternated voice carried through the dining room and out into the hall.

  Ferra shook her head as she mouthed at Variel, 'He answers every damn time.' "Get your ass out here, I need your assistance."

  "What, me?" Orn toddled out of the room, massaging his hand back to life after holding it parallel for nearly two hours. Variel watched as the rest of her crew, having lost their entertainment for the moment, began to emerge.

  Ferra hooked her arm around her husband and said, "Yes, I need you and only you to help. I'm just lucky that way." Orn smiled through her venomous sarcasm and trailed with her into the elf's domain.

  "Monde," Variel said to her orc surgeon, "if you have a minute, I think it's time we put phase two of the plan into action."

  "Phase two? What was phase one?" the orc asked while dropping his hands into the sanitizer.

  "I..." Variel paused. She hadn't exactly laid out collated and colored diagrams of her plans. "Just meet me in the med-bay. Marek, you may as well come to."

  Her husband tipped back out of the chair, his game of belligerent dragons forgotten as a green one crashed into the castle walls and rebounded into the courtyard, "What now?"

  She hadn't looked forward to this part of her plan, but she needed it done sooner rather than later. There might be too much oozing. "Get your ass up and bring your dwarven bit."

  Marek grumbled, his fingers fumbling around in his gaping pockets. Unbeknownst to him, his wife had to order her pilot away from the promised treasure thrice, including once when she dropped in on Orn in the middle of the night and told him to put it back.

  Without a care, Marek tossed the red rectangle with that wobbly bit on the side up in the air, catching it with each flick. On any other ship, in any other section of the galaxy, he'd have been dead before the bit reached its apex. Waving a dwarven bit around was like strapping a sign around ones neck in every universal language "Free Money!" Old ladies had bashed in the heads of ogre brutes with their laden handbags to get their claws upon bits before. Marek didn't stand a chance.

  As he walked into the med-bay, the ancient doors creaking from the inward swing, he spotted his wife climbing up onto a surgical table. It still smelled of shipping plastic and had a few of the yellow ties clinging to the side by industrial tape. The orc cranked on a lever, lifting the table to a comfortable 45 degrees. He tapped Terrwyn once on the shoulder, and she returned the touch.

  Marek lolled his tongue out in disgust. Orcs were repellent creatures, with skin the shade of the grave, a double set of lizard like eyelids, and thick horns running around their necks. Their brutish form made small work impossible, at best they could only knock over whatever they wanted and pummel it until it gave in. And they were against traditional family values, the recruitment vids had been explicit and repetitious in that fact.

  But this doctor orc was little larger that a human, a few inches taller than Marek, less if he'd remembered his shoes. His fingers, with well sanded claws, nimbly lifted a lab coat as he strung his arms through it to coverup the tastefully dull vest and shirt combo he wore. Marek's wife had to have personally killed at least a hundred of the Soulday hating bastards before the war was over, perhaps more. She never talked about it to people she liked, much less her husband. But the way the male orc buzzed about her with a soft touch churned Marek's stomach.

  Monde stepped closer to him, his hand extended. Marek stared down at it, then back into the orc's rapidly blinking stare. "What?"

  Variel dropped down the sh
irt she'd been taking off and raised herself from the table on her elbows, "Give him your bit, Marek."

  "Why?"

  "Because if you don't do it willingly, I'll make you do it forcefully," she said, and weaseled out of her drab earthy shirt. His wife had a closet full of uniforms, tees coated with the Bear's Crest, camos for all manner of terrain, and a set of dress armor she only needed once. He assumed it was all part of the solider's life, fierce loyalty though wardrobe, but having watched her switch from one brown shirt with a bit of bunching to another brown shirt with flared sleeves he realized that, no, he was married to the sartorial challenged and never knew.

  Monde took the garment from her and hung it upon a small coat rack, away from the splash zone of whatever was about to happen. He should probably be commenting upon all the middle aged weight his wife put on in their five year absence, but Marek could hardly tell. There was probably some, dropping out of that constant endurance test of Knighthood would do that, but this was the third time he'd ever seen her shirtless. The first two she was running to or from something, armed to the teeth. Now he had time to spot the mass of freckles converging around her olive stomach, remnants from a time sunning on a beach planet, the creeping hand of age across a skin with more melanin than his own, or some childhood disease. He could ask, but frankly he didn't give enough of a shit. It was the fresh scars, still a vivid pink across the aging brown ones that intrigued him more.

  The orc coughed politely, trying to jar the man out of his reverie and away from the captain's chest. Marek shook his head and, sighing loudly to lodge his protest, dropped the bit into the scaly hand. Stepping away quickly, the doctor lifted out a bagged set of metal instruments from one of his drawers. He tossed them onto a small tray with a heavy clank as he accepted the bit from Variel.

  Monde dropped the pair into a thin bag that bulged from the tight fit. Threading a needle, he carefully stitched it closed. "Are you still fully certain of your plan?"

  "Yes," she said, laying back on the cold table and missing the old pool table. At least the felt provided a bit of heat.

  "You are aware that the pain will be...I shall not be able to fully mask it," Monde's concerned voice carried even to her husband hunched in the back of the tiny med bay skulking as he usually did.

  "Yes," she sighed, preparing herself for what was to come. The doc had not been very happy when she approached him with her idea, but he could offer no other alternative.

  He finished his sewing, testing the bag with a shake of his hands, then he set the entire thing underneath the sanitizer. It wasn't the preferred method of sterilization, but an hour in the MGC autoclave would sunder the dwarven bits into melted plastic goo. "All that beautiful work for nothing," he complained to himself.

  "When I get back you can stitch it up with a star pattern," Variel said.

  Monde smiled, that heavy underbite eclipsing the top lip. "I was thinking of attempting something a bit more challenging, perhaps a roaring targel."

  Variel settled her head down as the sanitizer beeped. It was time. "Do I look like I'm 19, brown out drunk, and on shore leave?"

  "Which one of those should I answer first?" Monde asked as he extracted a thick needle and jabbed her in the side, making numerous pokes and prods to spread the anesthetic. The orc pushed on his handiwork, a series of pokes all around her old scar from the tussle a few months back. "Can you feel that?"

  "I know you're poking me," Variel said, her hand flopping over her eyes. Ten years service, a knighthood and she still despised needles, "But it doesn't hurt."

  "Human," Monde said to Marek, "if you refuse to sterilize up, raise the UV curtain." Marek glanced around looking for a set of curtains to pull around the operating theater so he didn't have to watch whatever was to come next.

  "No, the button near your left arm. You dolt," Monde muttered the last part under his breath as he poked his captain once more. She didn't say anything. It was now or never. Variel'd never let him anesthetize her again. She'd rather he free hand most of it, or put her fully under rather than deal with a local.

  "So," Marek started as a heavy sheen of light lifted from the floor surrounding the pair in an awkward blue halo, "when do I find out what it is exactly you're doing with all the money I have?"

  "Virginand," Variel said, steeling herself as the flash of sharp metal shone from behind her arm, "heavy security. They're also on an antidrug kick at the moment. Probably nothing permanent but they hope it'll make them look more respectable for the next Galactic Games committee."

  "Fascinating," Marek deadpanned.

  "Point being, they'd target and trail anyone who had so much as a scrap of dwarven currency on them. This much would put us in their brig for a month."

  He smiled at her use of brig instead of prison, five years in and she still slipped up, "So your big plan to get around that is..."

  "To implant the coin below my skin."

  She said it so matter of factly Marek had to ask for qualification, "Come again."

  "The scanners won't pick up much below the flesh, maybe a small anomaly, but nothing to hold us. And I already have enough old scars, a fresh one won't alert too much suspicion."

  "And no one would be fucking mad enough to sew money under their skin!" Mark shouted above the uncomfortable noise of what looked a lot like a soldering iron starting up.

  Monde paid no heed to the pair bickering, his fingers slicing through the old wound he'd been helping back to health for over a month. Her flesh puckered, the blood welling onto the gauze placed around the wound. Thank the Maker dwarven currency was so small, he thought as he slipped the bag under the pliant skin until it sat upon the muscles. Drawing a line of gnome gut, he began the stitches to keep her from bleeding out.

  "Not too tight," Variel said, "I'll still have to cut it out of me."

  Monde's inner eyelids flickered twice, the orc equivalent of an eye roll, as he sutured her up, "Let me at least add enough so you do not die before we exit the passage."

  "Cut it out of you?" Marek squeaked. He hadn't been able to see much over the orc's enormous head horns, but a plume of blood burst open across the white gauze and a drop of blood made it for the floor.

  "How else are we going to trade it over for the drugs?"

  "I...I don't know. Maybe you space men had some magical under the skin teleporter," he gulped slowly. "Wait, who will be doing the cutting?"

  "Gods, not you," Variel said. "I'd lose three fingers and an arm if I gave you a knife. I'll do it myself. I've done worse."

  "Okay, right...good," Marek's sallow complexion took on a green turn as he tried to banish the image of anyone whipping out a Crest multi-knife and digging into their own flesh. He wasn't going to be sleeping for days, even after the stims wore off.

  "There, all done," Monde said. "Let me just dabble on a few T-bots to help speed up the healing process and..."

  "No," Variel struggled to rise. Sweat beaded off her brow even if she had yet to feel the pain of the incredibly stupid thing she did to herself. "Healing will make it worse later."

  "Fine!" Monde threw his hands up causing Marek to skitter back from the raging orc. "Will you let me bandage it up to keep you from blooding up my floors, at least?"

  Her head nodded. Sleep was probably the best antidote after this was all over. If she was lucky she could bypass the entire passageway, the computer about to slip into a coma, and her husband in the blissful arms of her bed. But Variel knew she'd never be that lucky, just as she'd be about to nod off Orn would get his head stuck inside the potato dispenser again. Why did they even have a potato dispenser on board? They'd never had a potato.

  Wads of cotton and some orc fabrics wound about her midsection, as she leaned upon the doctor's shoulder for support. Her husband continued to shuffle on his feet, feeling as out of place as possible as the two friends cleaned up the mess they just created from her insides.

  "Pass me my shirt," Variel said. She wasn't about to leave the med-bay partially clothed. She'd n
ever hear the end of it from the pilot with the fat mouth.

  Marek wadded up the brown fabric into a ball and hurled it at her, not wanting to step closer into the surgery ward. It snagged onto her hand, causing her arm to bounce back and the first threads of pain seeped into her flesh. "Thanks," she huffed, burying it. There'd be time to feel it later, when her ship was safe.

  Slipping on the shirt she glanced down where the bandages oozed out onto her brown fabric, staining it crimson. "Damn it, and they just got all the cherry stains out too."

  "Cherry stains?" Marek asked as she inched her body off the table with the offered hand of the Orc.

  "Launderers get a bit twitchy when you say it's blood."

  "Especially the amount of blood you leave behind," Monde chuckled as he released her and busied himself with getting his domain back in order.

  "Do you need any help?" she asked, watching as things previously inside her dropped into a wash bucket.

  "Yes," the Orc said, "for you to get out of here and leave me be. Sleep it off. The pain will be excruciating but I doubt you'd have it any other way." He paused mid-wipe and sighed, "I am surrounded by masochists."

  Variel limped out of the blue light, her fingers circling around her new scar but not touching it. She couldn't feel the bulging currency below her skin and she was grateful for it. Then a hand landed upon her shoulder, steadying her, and Marek lifted her arm over his. She thought she should fight him, insist to do it herself, but fatigue and the creep of pain overruled her insanity and she gave in.

  As his mouth wandered near her ear he asked in a half whisper, half hiss, "Why did you need me here? You could have taken the bit at any time."

  She limped towards the door, gesturing for her waiting bed, "Because you needed to see the cost."

  The lights flickered struggling to find enough power to raise properly as the first body slipped into the room. A knee met with a desk and hopped around as the second body, exhausted but still moving, shifted into the dark space.