by Rob Boffard
OK, now he really needs to breathe. He taps his mom on the leg. When nothing happens, he grabs hold and shakes her. Still nothing. Is she unconscious? How can she not –
“What’s that you’re eating?” someone says.
Anita Livingstone jerks awake, and Corey wrenches himself free, sucking in a huge gulp of air. His dad and brother are coming awake, too, blinking in the low light.
The question came from Seema O’Hara. She’s up on one elbow, looking at Lorinda, who is slowly turning around to face her.
The Red Panda’s main deck is a mess. There was a half-hearted attempt to keep the floor clear of chip packets, but over the past few hours they’ve drifted all over the place. The packaging from Lorinda’s Reptar figure lies dead centre, the plastic ripped open. The deck still stinks, with a thin curl of body odour sneaking into the mix, and the viewing dome is dirtier than it was before, the glass smudged.
“I didn’t know anyone else was awake,” Lorinda says to Seema.
Seema points. “You can’t just take when you’re hungry, yeah?”
Corey looks down at Lorinda’s hands, where there’s a chocolate bar still half in its wrapper. His own stomach wakes up, growling in protest.
“This?” Lorinda waggles the bar. “It’s for my teeth.”
“Doesn’t matter. Should’ve gone with the rest of the food. You can’t just keep stuff for yourself.”
Lorinda’s eyes narrow. “Like I said, it’s for my teeth. It’s a dental health bar.” She looks down at it, frowning. “Tastes pretty crappy, to be honest. I only eat it because my dentist says—”
“So?” says Brendan. He’s awake, too, sitting up, his eyes slightly bleary with sleep. Jack snaps awake, blinking hard and looking around him.
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Lorinda holds out the bar. “You want it? Take it.”
“That’s not what I—”
“No, go on. I insist. I only had about two bites. Still plenty for you.”
The body heat from Corey’s mom kept him warm, holding off the chill air in the main deck. Now that he’s away from her, he’s freezing. Should it be this cold? What if the primary heat exchangers –
“Hey, team.” His dad appears in front of them, squatting on his haunches. He nearly squashes Anita’s tote bag as he does so, has to manoeuvre it out of the way. “How’re we all doing?”
“I’m OK,” Corey says. It’s a lie. He’d do anything right now for a shower, and his mouth feels like a cat took a shit in it. But he’s learned that whenever his dad asks how we are doing, it’s best just to say that he’s totally fine.
He’s also really hungry. He’ll have to grab another pack of soychips, even though he doesn’t really feel like soychips. What he feels like is a big, juicy hamburger, with lots of gooey cheese and a slice of pickle. And real meat. Definitely real meat this time.
“You sure?” says his dad.
“I don’t want your chocolate,” Seema is saying. “I just mean you should have told us about it.”
“He’s right,” says Jack.
Corey licks his lips. “I’m gonna get some water, actually.”
“Good idea,” says his dad. “I’ll come with you.”
“Hold on,” Anita says. “We need to talk about what just happened.”
“Aw, come on, Mom.”
“No,” she says, spreading her fingers across her knees. “We’re going to talk about it, and we’re going to do it as a family.”
“’Nita, can’t this wait?” Everett puts a hand on his wife’s, but she pulls away, index finger raised.
“Corey, honey, you could have got hurt. Or stuck in there.”
“If I hadn’t been there, the engines woulda burned up!”
Behind him, Jack is on his feet, staring down at Lorinda with his hands on his hips. She returns the look, holding the chocolate bar like a weapon.
Anita continues as if Corey hadn’t spoken. “I told you to stay up here. I’m just … I’m disappointed you didn’t listen to me.”
“What about Malik?” Corey says. “He went down there before I did. Why don’t you wake him up and shout at him?”
“Hey,” says his dad. “You don’t talk to your mother like that, you hear?”
Anita gives him a surprised look, followed by a terse nod. “Exactly. Thank you. I’ll be speaking to your brother when he wakes up, and he’s in just as much trouble as you are. You need to think about others, not just yourself. We’ve talked about this before.”
Corey stares at his mom and dad. They’ve both gone crazy. They’re acting like he flunked a test at school, or stayed out at Jamie’s place for too long, or finished the last bag of pretzels in the snack cupboard. Don’t they get it? Don’t they understand the situation they’re all in?
His mom’s job is all about talking to people – Corey remembers listening once, fascinated, as she told him what she did at work during a long shuttle ride up to Washington (Mal, of course, hadn’t been listening – he’d been filming the cabin, occasionally pointing his camera out of the window to capture the curve of the Earth).
She’d told him about the Senate, and about meetings with the President-elect, and about getting people “on-side”. She kept using a word: compromise. He had to ask her what it meant, and was secretly proud when he realised his mom made people agree with her for a living. It felt like a superpower.
But, of course, every superpower had its downside. Whenever Corey does something wrong, his mom always wants to talk it out, sit down and very calmly explain why he messed up and what he should do about it. His dad doesn’t even try to stop her. How could he? Fusion reactors don’t talk back, so he usually lets Corey’s mom take the lead, fading into the background. Which she’s probably OK with.
In a way, it would be better if they yelled and screamed at him. It wouldn’t last as long, and at least they’d be doing it together. And don’t they get it? He’s fine. Yeah, the fire thing was scary, but he got out. Just like they’ll get out of this, when the Frontier’s Scorpion fighters arrive.
Anita pushes a stray hair out of her face. “Corey, you have to understand … that was scary for both of us.” A quick look at her husband. “We didn’t want you anywhere near that fire.”
“What your mom is saying—” his dad begins, and then the chocolate bar smacks him in the back of the head.
Lorinda has her hands to her mouth, staring at him in horror. “Dios mio, I’m so sorry.”
Everett rubs his head, more surprised than angry. Anita reaches out for the chocolate bar, but Corey gets there first, scooping it off the floor, desperate to get away from this conversation. He walks over to Lorinda, handing her the bar. Behind him, he hears Malik awake with a start.
“Thank you, dear,” Lorinda says. “At least someone on this ship has some manners.”
Jack steps forward, hand out. “Give me the damn bar.”
This time Lorinda’s aim is true, and the chocolate smacks off Jack’s chest. “Take it,” she says. “Hope you break a tooth.”
Seema’s eyes flash. “You need to just—”
“OK, everyone?” says Hannah. Corey jumps, as do most of the others – they didn’t see her come up. She looks tired, but focused, her arms folded over her red T-shirt, hands cupping her elbows.
No one says anything. They don’t even look at each other. To Corey, it feels like they’ve all been caught by a teacher doing something bad. Which is weird, because the last thing he can see Hannah doing is standing in front of a class of kids. She’d get eaten alive.
His throat is screaming for water. He tries to slip around the back of the plastic seats, thinking he can head down to the bathroom, but his dad stops him with an outstretched arm. “How’re we looking up there?” he asks Hannah.
She doesn’t respond immediately. Instead, she perches on the edge of one of the chairs, pushing aside an empty soychip packet, then rubbing her exposed arms.
“We think …” She stops, tries again. “At least, the captain thinks we ne
ed to head to the gate.”
Brendan frowns. “I’m sorry?”
“I thought the whole point was that we were waiting for help,” says Seema.
“We’re not so sure help is coming any more,” Hannah says. Talking quickly, she lays out the conversation she had with the captain.
“That’s ridiculous,” says Jack. “Just because we haven’t heard from them doesn’t mean they aren’t there. Maybe we just need to boost our receiver range.”
“Won’t work,” Corey says. They all turn to look at him, and he shrugs. “Maverick ships have a pretty basic comms system. You can’t really make it stronger.”
“How do you even know that?” Jack says.
“What about plugging it directly into a power source?” Seema asks. “The comms system, I mean. Would it boost the range if we gave it more juice?”
Corey scrunches up his face. “It’ll fry it.”
“Maybe they just don’t know we’re here,” Anita says. “Shouldn’t we be sending a distress call of our own? Even if it’s a weak one?”
“Good idea,” Brendan says. “Let’s just let that nice Colony ship know we survived the hotel blowing up.”
“I’m just saying we should keep our options open.”
“We’re going to vote,” Hannah says. “Same deal. All those in favour of heading to the gate, raise your hand.”
“Again?” Jack says. “Great. Why not just redecide everything after a few hours? Why stop here?”
Hannah glares at him. “The situation’s changed.”
“No, it hasn’t,” Seema says. “We’re still in exactly the same place we were in ten hours ago.”
“There’s new information. So we—”
“Wait a minute,” Everett says. “We head on out, make our way to the gate, assuming it’s still there. Then what? We try to jump through? Will this ship even make it?”
“And what if the other guys find us?” Malik says.
Hannah takes a breath, tries to speak slowly and calmly. “We’ve got enough for a couple days, but probably no more than that, even if we ration it. We could stay here, for sure, but if nobody comes we might be in trouble. We take a risk now, maybe we never have to run out of food. And at least this way we’d know for sure about the gate.”
“Well,” says Brendan, clapping his hands together. “Sounds like you and the captain have decided. Why even bother voting?”
Hannah meets his eyes. “Because this affects everyone. We’re going to do it right.” She lifts her hand. “I vote we make a move, and so does the captain. Anyone else?”
Nobody moves. Then, slowly, Lorinda puts her hand up. Corey follows.
The rest of the Livingstones look at each other. Everett raises his hand. Anita and Malik don’t.
Come on. Please. Corey tries to catch their eyes, willing them to actually do the smart thing for once. At least when they were mad at him, they were agreeing on something. Now it’s like that never happened.
Hannah looks around, dismayed. She clears her throat. “And … and all in favour of staying?”
“’Nita?” Everett looks at his wife expectantly, his hand hovering.
Slowly, Anita Livingstone raises her hand. Malik, too, after a sideways glance at Jack. Corey closes his eyes, his hands balled into fists.
“Well, that’s that,” says Jack, raising his hand and immediately letting it drop. Then he notices that Brendan and Seema haven’t raised their hands. In fact, they’re not even looking at him. They’re arguing, heads bent together, whispering to each other. Corey can’t hear what they’re saying.
“Hello?” Jack says.
Seema holds up a finger – not now – and hisses something at Brendan.
He stares for a second, mouth open as if to respond, then his mouth snaps shut. He gives her a terse nod.
“I vote we leave,” says Seema, giving her hand a little flick upwards.
“Really?” says Jack.
Brendan lifts a metal finger. “Sorry, chap. We’re a package deal.”
“They’re not coming,” says Seema. “We need to go to them.”
“So it’s settled,” Hannah says, getting to her feet. “I’ll tell the captain we can head out.”
“How long before we get to the gate?” Everett asks.
Hannah flashes her smile. “Your travel time today will be approximately four hours,” she says, putting on a ditzy Southern accent. “Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.”
Dead silence greets her words. Lorinda manages a weak smile. Hannah turns, red flush spreading across her cheeks, and vanishes into the cockpit passage.
“So what now?” Seema says.
“What do you mean, what now?” Jack says. “You just voted. That’s what now.”
Seema tilts her head, an amused smile flashing across her face. Jack meets her gaze for a moment, then shakes his head. “Whatever. I’m gonna see if there’s any coffee we missed in the bar.”
Seema’s eyes brighten. “God, yes. I could murder a coffee.”
“Don’t get your hopes up. Worth looking, though.”
She, Jack and Brendan head back downstairs, talking in low voices.
Corey’s family are doing what they usually do. His brother is back on his holocam, head down, and his parents are having another argument. Can’t they just be nice to each other? Just for a little bit?
The dental health bar is still lying on the floor. He picks it up and hands it to Lorinda.
“Thank you, dear,” the old woman says. “Think I’ve lost my appetite, though. Do you want it? Or your mom maybe?” She grins. “Keeps your gnashers nice and healthy.”
“I’m good,” Corey says. “Hey, ma’am, about earlier, I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t mean …”
He trails off. Lorinda looks away for a moment then back at him. “It’s all right. Just promise me you won’t do something like that again. Not sure you’ll be that lucky twice in a row. And don’t call me ma’am, please, dear. Makes me feel ancient.”
“You got it. Sure thing.”
“And listen …” she beckons him closer, then points to his mom and dad. “You watch out for them, OK? Even if they don’t get along. They’re going to need you and your brother both before this is all over.”
Corey nods. Below them, the Red Panda’s remaining thrusters fire up, and outside the viewing dome the remains of the Sigma Station begin to move further away.
Chapter 17
There’s no coffee in the bar. Of course there isn’t. Jack doesn’t bother to spend more than a few seconds looking. He pours himself another JamFizz instead, takes a sip, grimaces. The bottom level of the Panda has got cold, cold enough that he can just see his breath, but, unbelievably, the sugary soda is still warm.
Oh, who gives a shit? Jack drains it as fast as possible, then makes his way over to the table where Brendan and Seema are sitting. He feels stoned – as if the events of the past day were a weird hallucination, but at least he feels better than he did when he woke up. Jerking out of sleep to find he was still on this goddamn ship, the dull, leaden feeling in his stomach as he realised where he was, felt like God herself was shitting on him.
He’s hungry again, the damn soychips long since digested. Water isn’t going to be a problem, even if they run out of JamFizz, but the Frontier better hurry the hell up all the same. What he wouldn’t give for a steak sandwich – real Europan steak, not the stringy excuse for one he was served on the station – and a cold beer, so cold that the glass almost hurt to wrap your fingers around.
As he steps out from behind the bar, he sees Malik Livingstone coming down the stairs, gripping that old hand-held camera. Why does the kid even have one? The parents didn’t seem like the type of people who ban their children from using lenses.
Malik starts when he notices them, as if he genuinely wasn’t expecting them to be there. “Hey, I, um … can I get something to drink?”
“Sure,” says Jack, at the same time as Brendan says, “Yeah, of course.”
>
Malik steps past Jack. He carefully puts the holocam down on the bar, face up, then vanishes behind the counter. A moment later, they hear the click of a JamFizz can being opened.
“Would you guys mind if I shot some footage of the bar?” he says, still out of sight. “Just like a five-second sweep?”
“Uh … OK,” Jack says.
Malik pops up, smiles. “Awesome. Thanks. Just stay where you are and act natural. Do what you were doing before.”
They sit and stand in awkward silence as he raises his camera, sweeping it horizontally across the room. Jack shifts, realising that he needs to piss. It seems strange, having such a basic urge at a time like this.
The sweep takes about fifteen seconds, not five, and Malik seems to realise it. When he reaches the end, he quickly lowers the camera. “Done,” he says, a little too loudly.
“You get anything good?” Brendan says. It’s a throwaway question, asked automatically, so Jack is a little surprised when Malik gives a very serious nod.
“Yeah, absolutely,” he says. “I’ve pretty much been filming since we got here. I think I got most of the … what happened to the station, too.”
Above them, the Panda speaks. “Passenger! Thank you for documenting your adventure. Did you know you can upload your own images and video to the Frontier Public History Archives? Share your trip with other travellers, and become part of history as you—”
“Jesus,” Jack mutters.
“—navigate the galaxy. Please enjoy the rest of your journey on this Sigma Destination Tours vessel.”
None of them say anything, and the ship’s voice falls silent.
Seema makes a small, guttural sound, like she’s swallowed a tiny bone. “I am so sick of that thing.”
Malik doesn’t appear to hear her, and doesn’t seem bothered by the AI’s interruption. He flashes them another quick smile, then heads for the stairs. Halfway there, he stops, turns back. “Can I ask you guys something?”
Brendan shrugs.
“Well, it’s just that …” He lifts the camera, as if about to start shooting again, then lets it drop. “How do we know the ship that attacked us isn’t still out there?”