Ten Directions

by Samuel Winburn

  She wanted to sink down again into solid ground and sleep. Then she would feel an ache as the body jostled with the vehicle it was in rolled over another rock.

  She could hear them shouting and this brought her closer, down into the vehicle. It was irritating. Couldn’t these voices shut up and leave her in peace? The more pissed off she became the closer she was drawn to the two bodies lying side by side. One was smaller and seemed to be enjoying herself while another person rocked back and forth pressing down on its chest.

  The other body was less easy to look at. It looked like battered madwoman - arms and legs contorted like a dropped doll. Aurora descended closer to the frost leathered and blood bruised skin. It was disgusting. She fell with a panic into the pinhole opening inside the tangled iris. Back within the body she felt the irregular beating of a heart. And she could hear again, but faintly. Once again there was meaning in words.

  “She’s dead Terry. Stop.”

  “No.”

  “It’s not helping.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do anymore Pip. She can’t be. Shit.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? Why are you sorry. It’s my fault.”

  “It’s not your fault Terry.”

  “Who the hell are you to tell me it’s not.”

  “The rocks were unstable. She was standing too close to the cliff. It just happened.”

  “Who told her to come out to help? I knew better.”

  “When you stop feeling sorry for yourself Terry.”

  “Don’t.”

  “You aren’t the only one who loved her.”

  “Oh Christ, Pip.”

  “Xiao Li. Xiao Li. Please don't leave us. You look so lovely. I can’t bear it.”

  It couldn’t be. Xiao Li, dead? My friend.

  Aurora felt her will to live slip. Then the voices faded into a bland buzz and all feeling dried out. Above her body again, it was like watching a play through a telescope. She couldn’t quite follow the plot but felt obliged to keep watching. The unfocused faces of the actors were still familiar. There was a faint, unpleasant smell about them. They were the last blemishes on the general softness of the universe around her. Pleasure and pain, and the distinction between the two, faded into a thick haze.

  Dancing lights that tasted of ozone captured Aurora’s attention and she followed them on their random paths through the smoke. As they travelled, random scenes lit up under the torch light. First, she was back in the vehicle with the bodies, watching the landscape unfold ahead of them. Then she was outside while it picked its way through a deserted valley like a lost ant.

  Then she was outside the wreckage of a spaceship strewn across an adjoining valley, some past disaster. Lying around were many mummified corpses, tossed among the rubble. The lights flickered over to a corpse clothed in a space suit and slumped against a rock wall an unusual distance from the impact zone with decaying footprints trailing back to the wreckage behind it. The body had scratched a word on the rock before it had collapsed.

  "Home."

  As the lights flickered away to some other place Aurora noticed a movement, a thin vapour in the shape of a man, still scratching and re-scratching the word in the stone.

  The lights slowed and began to sputter. The empty red plains of Mars sounded like wind rushing over a chimney. The embers of the lights winked out, not into darkness but into a clear absence of light. Aurora’s life before began to wind past like an old movie.

  It was the day they finally processed Dad’s corpse. She’d missed the funeral, but she had at least made it back for this. The body was lowered into the digester, where its molecules could be efficiently devoured by microbes, fungi and worms, turning a complex, enigmatic, self-destructive but endlessly generous person, into high grade compost. The sparse saline fields of wheat surrounding them awaited another meal.

  Aurora kicked a can across a salt scar. Dad was gone, together with his grand exuberance and endless stories. He had been an oasis in this dry and gutted land, pointing out the small things that had shared their wonder with him. Dragons lurking under the rocks. The tree that still stood, full of life and breath, a century after the soil beneath it had died. The sky filled with the geometries of gods. Dreamtime Beings, the ones he was allowed to tell her about, which lived in every outcrop and streambed. Despite the occasional drunken rages that mortified him, Dad had somehow made the balding country of her birth come alive. Now he was dead and his magic songs along with him. What was the point?

  A wedge-tail eagle flew high overhead as a dot swooping across the clouds. It winked in and out of the empty sky over the empty land. Her eyes followed it. Into the sky, into the stars, free from the dried and futile life beneath. With it, her spirit flowed.

  The sepia tinged memories ran out. Nothing but light was left. Then she saw, or rather felt, a familiar presence. Somehow, he had arrived when everything else was leaving. The presence steadily resolved into someone she had known and loved, and whose arrival was not expected.

  Kalsang?

  Chapter 20 - Francesca

  Francesca sized up the intruder as he slunk into the change room and rummaged through compartments and duffle bags full of the players’ gear, looking like a dog left alone in a meat locker. She had to look twice to decide if her eyes were deceiving her. This snowball in hell was a stupid place to be in the first place, and no place to be a thief. Where did he think he could escape to? What did he think he was going to find? A nico fix? A pocket-sized nuclear bomb? From the panicked look on his face that would be a good guess. An enchanted potion, misplaced by San Orisha, that was going to turn him good looking? He’d need that, or maybe just start with some self respect and a hair-cut. Balls of fluff and tissue and pens and other useless crap liberated from their fast-holds by his fumbling? If that was what he was after, then he was onto a good thing.

  It was a fun to watch somebody thinking they were being so sneaky when they weren’t, but maybe this was more serious than just some harmless klepto. His anxiety had a dangerous edge of desperation. Wings grew from his temples, spikes down his back. The Archangel pick-pocketing souls? No. The guy was too pathetic for that kind of fantasy - too soft in the face, like a an over nervous eco-scout earning his merit badge in interplanetary espionage.

  Francesca recognised him as a player from the opposing GravBall team. He was a mediocre player, good enough, but generally out of shape and not that aggressive. Even with her twisted ankle that had forced her out of the game and into the showers, she was certain she could take him.

  He turned around, eyes wide like a gecko, the one last moment before she could slip her headlock of steel around his slippery neck.

  “Can I help you find whatever it is that you misplaced in one of our pockets?”

  If the thief’s face were an armadillo it would have curled itself up into its own anus.

  The man looked around her. Was he looking for an exit or trying to preserve her modesty? Francesca appreciated the thief’s good manners while intending to take full advantage of them. I made her pause though. She hadn’t thought the thief would be a nice guy. A shy bandit. Cute.

  Her pause created an opening. The thief’s embarrassment suddenly gave way to panic, and he grabbed one of the uniforms while pushing past her to make a bolt for the docking bay hatch. Whap! Two meters from freedom he suddenly shot forward, propelled by her kick to his lower back. His face cracked into the wall. Francesca gritted her teeth. She could practically hear the sparks shooting through the guy’s skull. The thief rolled on the floor, blood spheres pooling off his forehead and spinning off across the floor. What a mess. Oh well, he might be a nice guy, but that didn’t give him a get out of jail free pass.

  Francesca floated expertly down on her feet like Queen Insecta about to devour another husband. Her toned legs folded and clicked with entomological precision as she confidently swam over to inspect her prey, which lay waiting where she had landed it. Maybe she had gone a bit overboard.

 
"Whatya’ think Capitan Klingon? Ready to give up? You don’t look like you want any more, do you?" She licked her mandibles and prodded at the dude with her toe.

  Time moved forward in single frames as the porco graso spun over and pulled Francesca’s foot out from under her. His adrenaline jump-started hands somehow managed to grab a fire extinguisher hanging within reach on the wall, and the idiot blasted her with it.

  Reaching through the cloud of white powder, her mighty claw gripped the bastard’s spacesuit collar and lifted his weightless ass off the floor. Francesca’s elbow crunched into his face, followed by a sharp uppercut jab to his throat. As the man GASPED for air, she emerged from the smoke transformed into some kind of devilish ghost.

  It pissed her off what perverts with jellyfish guts thought they could get away with dumb moves like that just because she was a girl. She grabbed him by the hair and hurled him into a set of lockers, which burst open showering them in a cloud of stuff.

  Following the thief’s momentum Francesca spun around to target him with another kick but then tripped, giving the man a second chance to collect himself. She looked him hard in the eyes to see what he was thinking. The thief was still avoiding looking at her naked majesty. Was this waste of space still actually ashamed to fight a woman even though she was kicking his ass. Surely such chivalry should not go unpunished.

  But then she noticed that the man's modest eyes were actually focused on something else. They were tracking the spinning arc of a plastic card on a neck cord that had been knocked into cartwheels from the lockers she had opened with his face. The thief sprung off after it off with a cleaner jump then she remembered from his lame gravball attempts. The guy had found what he wanted, and his excitement propelled him past her to the prize and onwards towards an open hatch.

  Francesca grasped at air as the man’s boots slipped away. As she spun into position to push off the ceiling, the man snagged a bench that had broken away in their fight and launched the improvised missile at her.

  She knew what the game was now. The man’s interest in the key card answered all her questions. This guy was looking through their pockets for keys that weren’t his. Probably he was some Outlander nut looking for a quick ride home and didn’t realise this was the hard way to go about it. Whatever the reason, the guy wasn’t really leaving her much choice except to pound him senseless. She had experience with guys going Out. Even on the short ride out to Tsuchinshan she had to grapple one guy back in through an airlock while Raoul re-bolted the inner door. After they had restrained the nutcase Raoul had held her tight. She was an even bigger nutcase for letting go.

  What was she doing in the middle of this fight going all dreamy? Snap out of it. In that lost second the man scrambled through the hatch and up the docking shaft with Francesca’s fingernails scratching his heels. As he pulled up on the first rung of the gantry ladder, Francesca's talons wrapped around his ankles and she sank her fangs into his calf tendons. His blood tasted like fear. She felt like one of those mean rattlesnake rats back in Cuba that once bit her sister. Too bad she didn’t have their venom.

  "Vaffancolu!"

  "Italian blood,” Francesca mused as she licked the red round her mouth, painting a death mask on the skeletal white of the extinguisher dust still caking her face and body. Stimulated by this thought, she surged forward straight into the heel of his boot. Her nose fountained balloons of blood as the man limped out of her clutches, fleeing this insane vampire bitch who was now definitely bent on devouring his ass.

  Higher they raced along a refuelling conduit towards where the freighter was moored. The man looked over his shoulder as Francesca closed the distance between them. At last he reached the refuelling dock and shot downward out of a panel in the ceiling towards the freighter door. As he frantically fumbled with the key card, swiping it again and again through the groove on the door panel Francesca dropped out of the ceiling, ready to suck every last bit of pulse out of him. The man turned to face her, his back against the stubbornly unyielding door. Oh Jesus, not another crying guy.

  Francesca folded up her Dark Angel wings into her back and advanced.

  "Look, put down that card and I won't beat the holy living shit out of you. Cause I should, you know. I still have your footprint in my face."

  She wiped her bloody nose across her cheek.

  "So, what you gonna do? Take our ship, huh? Why you want to do something stupid like that? You can't even get the door open, what you going to do when you get inside Buck Rogers?"

  "A spetta, a spetta, per favour, please, don't hit me anymore, please, firmedi, stop please."

  The man was beaten.

  Francesca felt a bit disappointed, like a child called home from play. She had been enjoying the fight, the taste of blood, but she didn't really like violence. It was the rush and the feel of the power in her awesomely toned body that she liked. Fighting in the buff had been amazing too, exercising her inner kick-butt Xena warrior princess. And God knew it needed the exercise, especially after being packed up in a flying tin-can for the last month. Oh well. She tilted her head to accept his surrender.

  "What's your name?” she asked to reduce the tension and stop him from doing something stupid.

  "Ah. Marco. Marco Uliassi."

  Marco slumped backward against the door, or rather slumped backwards against where the door should have been. The door had opened as he turned to face Francesca, which had been funny. The idiot had given up cornered against open air. As the absent door failed to support his weight Marco fell backward, tripped over a railing, and fell slowly down the ship towards the nose.

  Francesca dove to catch him, but then the man had managed to get tangled up in the travel bungees. His flailing foot had released the catch, which had sprung him down to the cockpit in a flash, taking all the hand straps with him. Now Francesca would have to swim down, because there was like almost zero gravity here. She propelled herself calmly downward, pushing off the walls, but then misjudged one launch angle, getting herself stalled floating in the air midshaft with nothing to grab onto.

  “Mierda!”

  Francesca went into spasms like some netted dolphin trying reach something while Marco the mad thief recovered himself and began inspecting the apparently unfamiliar controls.

  "You won't get anywhere weirdo,” she shouted down from her invisible cage of empty space. "The key just gets you in. You’ll need the pilot’s neuroprints."

  Then Marco started talking to someone who he’d obviously connected to through his neurovisor. He could have just thought it, but Francesca had noticed that people liked to look like they were talking to themselves even when they didn’t have to.

  "Raffaello? Raffaello? Raff? I'm in but I need to go fast. Testa di merda. You are supposed to be there. Pronto? Ah."

  Francesca watched him following instructions from his unseen collaborator, deftly taking the controls, typing in keys and downloading mnemes into the ship’s computer. Boy, she had gotten this one totally wrong. This was obviously more organised than just some crazy guy freaking out. Their ship was actually going to be hijacked. Why? Did this have anything to do with the all that stuff with August on the Moon? She made up her mind that it did, which made the guy into a terrorist, which made him seem less nice.

  Francesca twisted hard, working her way to the wall centimeters at a time. She saw Marco snapping himself into the pilots webbing while the airlocks hissed close and the warning strobes flashed the missing crew to their stations for the unexpected emergency launch. This was going to be bad for her.

  As her fingertips finally found a surface, the ship began to shudder violently. She finger-walked her way to a railing and then flung her way forward but it was too late. The walls ran into her too quickly as the ship retros fired and as she bounced back her feet became entangled in the webbing she had been aiming for. She swore as she clawed at the webbing but in vain. The main boosters fired. At this close range it could have been bad news for the people on Tsuchinshan. This was her l
ast thought before the g-forces swung her in a violent wide arc and banged her skull into a bulkhead.

  She came around sometime later, her head throbbing, tied up with the same webbing that had caught her. Oddly enough, she was clothed. Was she wearing Marco's shirt? Such a prude terrorist that guy. And where in hell had he gotten these pants? They were totally ridiculous. She figured out after thinking about it that they were pressure leggings from the medical kit pushed up to her thighs. And then, to top it off, he had stuck her legs through the bottom a silvery sack of some kind and cinched it to her hips with a bungee strap. She looked like some escapee from an Oompla Loompa asylum.

  Francesca easily squirmed out of the poorly improvised knots and looked for a way out of her enclosure. Marco deserved points for effort with the way knots had been piled on knots, but he had neglected to pull the rope tightly enough, perhaps out of some misguided concern for her comfort. It was a pity that she was not civilised enough to reserve the same consideration for him when she would catch him. The door was locked, of course, but the vents were large and unsecured. Rubbing her wrists to restore circulation, she angled a jump towards the nearest one and caught it with her fingertips. Unscrewing the lid with her fingernails she slithered her way upwards to freedom.

  The vents turned out not to be the free ride advertised. The screws were on the outside and they proved surprisingly resistant to being kicked out from the inside, especially given the slipperiness of her body in low gravity and surrounded by vent work that was mainly silicon nanomat, designed for minimum friction to air flows to conserve energy. Nearer the ship's Terrapod things got particularly gross, with bacterial slime mats that had broken free from the main fermenter sliding out from wherever she pressed a hand, semi-suspended fungal spore masses attaching to her skin and colonising it, the nearly unbearable heat of compost that kept the further interior of the craft liveable, and the pungent reek of shit being deconstructed into useful pieces. Through the translucent walls of neighboring conduits, unimaginable horrors sloshed and squished, the internal organs of some giant beast.