by Geoff North
Chapter 5
Vin Vir had left her station without permission. Her best friend was returning to Ambition, and word had it he wasn’t doing all that well. They don’t need me, Vin told herself as she rushed through the corridors of the sciences section towards the closest lift station. There were a dozen other computer specialists working the morning shift. I won’t be missed.
She ran into the open elevator bay and instructed it to carry her to the Medical levels. She might not be needed or missed, but someone would report her absence to Chort Leo. It’s how crew members assigned in Sciences got ahead in life. If you cozied up to the repulsive section leader, things went well. If you got on his bad side, you stayed there. Vin realized she may have very well just skipped out of her last shift in Sciences. She could be starting out again the following day in Water Treatment and Recycling, or perhaps as a grunt at the lowest of positions in Propulsion. She didn’t give a damn. She was twenty-five years old—young enough to tackle any new challenge. People twice her age were still swapping professions aboard Ambition.
To hell with Chort, that greasy-bearded, fat bastard. Rastaban needed her, and Vin would be there for him.
The elevator came to a halt and the door whisked open. Vin burst out and ran full on into somebody exiting the lift next to hers. “Damn it! Watch where you’re going,” she snapped first without looking. An older man dressed in command black stumbled back from the impact, lost his balance, and ended up ass-end on the corridor floor.
“I thought I was,” Ly Sulafat grumbled.
Rastaban was all but forgotten. Vin no longer cared about Chort, or where she might be reassigned the next morning. She would more than likely be in a jail cell before night for knocking the Captain over. “My God… sir… Oh my God, sir, I am so sorry.”
“Sir will do just fine, I’m not your God.” He waved her away and stood up again on his own. She crumpled back against the wall, her face white. “That was a joke, Vin.”
“You know my name?”
“Vin Vir, from computer sciences. I remember seeing you at work a week ago.”
“It was nine days ago, sir. I didn’t even think you noticed me.”
“I see everything and everyone.” Sulafat scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Perhaps I am God.”
The color finally returned to Vin’s face. She laughed out loud. “Again, sir, allow me to apologize. I should’ve been paying better attention… I shouldn’t even be here.”
The Captain nodded. “Skipping duty to check up on your friend, Rastaban?”
“I can report back to work right away, Captain. I don’t want to get in anyone’s way.”
He took a hold of her arm and pulled her along. “You’ve already gotten in my way. Join me, and we’ll see how he’s doing together.”
The Medical Center was one of the biggest areas, after Propulsion, on Ambition. It had originally been a cavernous bay where millions of tons of asteroid rock was brought in and further refined. During the refit, the Sciences section swelled—which Medical was a part of—to accommodate a generation’s worth of future patients and potential casualties of war. An expected generation became dozens of generations, and Ambition’s hospital grew. It became a nursery and a palliative care center, treating tens of thousands of people over the next seven hundred years.
Dr. Hal Gulum was the Chief Medical Officer presently in charge. Sulafat and Vin found the normally cheerful man hunched over the form of Rastaban Drac. Nail’s pilot was lying in a bed, his face covered in dressings.
Vin went to him and took her friend’s hand in hers. “How is he?”
Hal looked to the Captain questioningly.
“It’s okay. She’s with me.”
The fat little doctor shrugged. “Their ship took an indirect hit. According to Tor, Bite was fired upon first, and a piece of its wing smacked into Nail’s canopy. They never saw it coming, no warning on their sensors. Rastaban didn’t even have his helmet on. By the time he managed to get it in place, the damage had already been done.” He was about to go into more detail for the Captain, but decided not to for Vin’s sake.
“Explosive decompression,” the young computer specialist finished for him. “He lost his oxygen atmosphere in seconds. It doesn’t explain the bandages.”
“When the canopy blew, he took a significant amount of shrapnel to the right side of his face.” Hal patted Vin’s shoulder. “Scarring will be minimal with reconstructive surgery.”
Rastaban squeezed her hand. She leaned in, placed an ear close to the squadron boss’s covered mouth. “He’s trying to say something. Can you remove the dressing?”
The doctor looked to his Captain again for approval with an expression that said it wouldn’t be pretty. Sulafat nodded, and Hal did as Vin asked.
The left side of Rastaban Drac’s face was as she remembered, handsome and strong. The right side was an unrecognizable mess of healing gouges and broken flesh bubbles. Vin gasped and to fought the urge to pull back.
Rastaban squeezed her hand harder and rasped. “Not so… pretty anymore?”
Dr. Gulum was right; the cuts would heal. The grotesque discoloration however would likely remain the rest of Rastaban’s life. The entire right half of his skull, face, and neck had been transformed into a mottled mask of purple and blue.
Hal tried to make it sound better than it looked. “Another second or two and we would’ve lost him. Luckily he was able to get his helmet back into place just in time.”
“Luckily,” Rastaban repeated. A single tear leaked down his undamaged cheek. His left eye, a shriveled black orb, remained dry.
They will remove it, Vin thought to herself. Bionics division will give him a new eye. She glanced quickly to the doctor. “Is he in any pain?”
“We’ve given him medication to dull the worst of it. There’s been extensive nerve damage to the outer layers of epidermis… much like a severe case of frostbite.”
Vin touched the discolored skin of his right cheek. Rastaban tried turning his face away. “Don’t touch… don’t look at me.”
Hal guided the Captain away from the bed and spoke quietly. “Let’s give them a few minutes. I’m sure Drac could use a few friendly words right now instead of giving a report to you.”
“Give me some credit, I came here to see how he was. I can get a full report from Emin.” Sulafat looked around impatiently. “Where is the Colonel?”
Hal held both hands up. “Easy now. I was busy with Rastaban. One of my nurses gave Tor a thorough going over and said he was good to go.”
“Good to go? Goddamn it, Hal, they were nearly killed out there. Two other ships and four more crew members are still missing. Couldn’t you’ve held onto him long enough to file a report?”
“He gave his report to the medics that brought them in. I’m sure that information has already been routed to your quarters and appropriate bridge crew. If you want to hear what happened directly, I suggest you go find the Colonel yourself.”
Sulafat had a fair idea where the scouting mission’s leader may have disappeared to. He strode over to a communication console and smacked a button. “Nash, are you still on the bridge?”
“Of course, Captain.”
“I need you to find Tor Emin. Have him in my quarters in twenty-five minutes. Drag him by the scruff of the neck if you have to.”
“Yes, Captain. See you there.”
Sulafat turned back to the doctor. “You too, Hal. I want every section head there.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” he called out as Ambition’s highest-ranking officer left the Medical Center. “The last thing I need is that metal garbage can dragging me anywhere.”
Vin was still trying to get Rastaban to look at her. The fighter pilot was doing his best to shut her out altogether. “I’m not leaving,” she stated. “I blew off the last half of my shift to be with you.”
He finally faced her. “Dumb girl. Chort will make you pay for that.”
“I’m not scared of Chort
Leo. Maybe I’ll get reassigned, be free of him once and for all.”
Rastaban tried to smile. Some of the dead skin on his face cracked open. “I don’t know about Chort, but I think you’ll be free of me for a while. Can’t imagine I’ll be flying any fighters or ordering miluns around for some time.”
She had never seen him like this—not the physical disfigurement, but the complete absence of the Rastaban Drac she knew. He had always been an over-bearing, arrogant jackass that people either detested or put up with, most often both. But there was a side to the man very few crew members and co-workers got to see. This handful of people were his friends, and Vin was his closest. She had seen past his incredible good looks—not an easy thing to do—and discovered a caring and loyal soul. Vin had grown to love him, and she was sure he loved her too. The more arrogant he acted, the mouthier he got, only proved it more. She wanted that Rastaban back more than ever now.
“You’ll be back ordering your grunts around soon enough… I know you will.”
The smile on his face weakened some. Rastaban’s remaining eye started to droop shut.
Hal Gulum spoke softly behind her. “He needs rest more than anything. Don’t worry, I’ll get a hold of you when he’s feeling a bit stronger.”
Vin left the Medical Center and headed back towards the elevator. She leaned against the wall before the door and tried to compose herself. The last place she wanted to go was back to Sciences. Chort would have undoubtedly written up her absence already. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream and smash her fists into the wall. She wanted to stay with Rastaban.
Vin closed her yes and recalled the first time they’d met. She had just completed fifteenth grade youth education and was headed for adult career placement. Twenty years old, highly intelligent, with an even greater imagination. She wanted to join the military and rise high in the ranks during the final five years of their voyage, perhaps even reach command level when they arrived in the Pegan system.
Rastaban Drac wasn’t a squadron boss back then. He was a thirty-year old junior grade platoon chief, combing through the fresh youth grads for potential enlistments. It was his job to recruit the smartest and most eager, and none came smarter and more eager than Vin Vir. But Rastaban had steered the impressionable girl away that day, convinced Vin to pursue a career in sciences. Her brains, he’d told her, were far more valuable in front of a computer screen somewhere on Ambition instead of fighting aliens out in space.
Vin followed his advice—any girl her age that had even caught a glimpse of the handsome officer would’ve hung on every word he said. She went into sciences, and had remained there. A part of her always wondered if Rastaban regretted his part in it. Had guilt forced him to keep in touch with her over the years? Had the friendship grown from seeds of regret? Vin no longer cared. He had become an unlikely, but close friend. Seeing him so terribly scarred and withdrawn was tearing her up inside.
Doctor Gulum found her standing next to the elevator two minutes later. “You’re still here? Good. It saves me the effort of tracking you down. The Captain just called. He wants you in his quarters with Colonel Emin and all the rest of us section heads.”
“Me?”
“That’s what he said. I think you made an impression on the old fart.”
I left work and knocked the Captain to the floor. He’s going to make an example of me in front of the others, and throw me in the brig.
The elevator door opened and Hal waddled inside. “You coming or not?”
Vin felt numb. She forced her legs to move anyway and joined the doctor.
Chapter 6
Tor Emin lifted the glass to his lips and swallowed the dark liquid down his throat in one gulp. It felt like a lit torch being forced through his throat and chest. The alcohol made his eyes water, the taste was something he would never become accustomed to. And Tor knew how to drink. It wasn’t his first visit to the Black Hole—one of Ambition’s four after-hours bars, and by far the darkest—and it wasn’t the first drink he’d pounded back in the last few minutes.
He pushed the glass across the counter. “Another one.”
The bartender reached below her station and produced a half-filled bottle. She placed it in front of Tor without pouring more into his glass. “The first three were free of charge,” she said in a deep, sultry tone. “I’ll give you the rest if you tell us what happened out there.”
The Colonel shook his head and took the bottle anyway. “Not until I’m good and wasted, Ma.”
Ma Ades didn’t fight him on it. The attractive forty-year-old brushed a strand of long auburn hair back over her shoulder. “At the rate you’re drinking my wine, that shouldn’t be long.”
“You call this stuff wine? I thought it was recycled urine.”
There were a dozen off-duty mechanics and security officers sitting along the bar and at a few of the tables scattered throughout the dingy lounge area. They had all been watching the Colonel since he’d arrived, listening to his brief exchanges with Ma. Everyone wanted to know what had happened to Rastaban Drac and the two other ships, but Tor wasn’t the type of person you could approach easily to chat with when he had drinking on his mind. Now Tor had gone too far. Sulking was one thing, insulting Black Hole’s proprietor was another. He’d overstayed his welcome.
A burly mechanic pushed away from his table and went to stand behind him. “Tell Ma what she wants to know, or walk your sorry ass out of here.” Rank had little meaning in a place like the Black Hole. It didn’t matter if you were the lowliest of grunts, or Commander Second of the Military. If you shot your mouth off and disrespected the bar’s owner, you became fair game.
Tor took a long swig from the bottle and glanced over his shoulder. Two of the mechanic’s friends had joined him. They were all big, but Tor was bigger. “Sit back down, Neb, before I make you pick your teeth up from the floor.”
Neb Kaitos grinned nervously and looked to make certain his backup was still with him. They were. “Apologize to Ma, then tell us what happened out there. Do that, and maybe we’ll let you stumble out of here on your own.”
Ma forced the bottle away from Tor. She placed it back under the counter along with some others sitting nearby. She knew the Colonel all too well. Why allow merchandise to get bust up if you know a fight’s about to break out?
He winked at her and whispered. “I’ll be quick about it.”
Neb poked one of Tor’s meaty shoulders. “What did you say, drunk? Was that an apology?”
“Kind of.” He waited until Ma disappeared into a back room behind the bar.
Neb poked him harder and Tor broke his finger. The mechanic howled and dropped to his knees. Tor broke his nose and knocked out a couple of teeth with one hit. The other two tried crawling over their fallen comrade but Tor was ready for them. He slammed one’s face into the counter surface where Ma’s wine bottle had been resting moments earlier. The last man standing tried coming in from the other side and ended up with an elbow in his throat. He staggered back, gagging. Tor punched him in the face, once, twice, three times.
“Fall down, asshole,” the Colonel yelled. The man’s hands were clutching at his throat. He was still gasping for air, staring uncomprehendingly through already blackening eyes. Tor kicked him between the legs. The man finally fell down.
The remaining Black Hole patrons had vacated their chairs and stools to take up positions around Tor. He held up his fists as they closed in. “Bring it on, I’m just getting warmed up.” Hardened looking men and women began backing away. Metal fingers clamped around one of Tor’s biceps.
“Hello, Colonel Emin. The Captain would like to speak with you.”
Tor’s blood was up. The wine wasn’t helping. He took a swing at the robot, and ended up face first down on the floor with Neb’s bloody teeth only a few inches away. Nash’s powerful hands wrapped around his wrists and pulled him back up. “That was a silly thing to attempt, Colonel. You really should consider cutting down on the alcohol.”
“Yeah, I probably should.”
Ma was back behind the bar, surveying the mess. She waved at Tor as Nash began hauling him out of the Black Hole. “I’ll expect you back in this dump at closing to help me clean up.”
Tor had a feeling he wouldn’t be returning all that soon. Nash let go of him as they entered the nearest elevator. He instructed the lift to take them to level three.
“Are you going to report me to the Captain for trying to hit you?”
“Is that what you were trying to do?”
“Of course not… I was attempting to salute.”
“There’s no need to salute a robot, Colonel. I assist in ship functions and hold no rank whatsoever.”
There was no more conversation between the two as the lift carried them up from the ship’s lower decks. They ascended sixty-five levels before transferring to a horizontal travel tube to complete the kilometer-long trip. Nash stood while Tor sat on one of the cabin benches. A man and woman sitting on the bench opposite were staring at the blood spattered across the front of his tunic.
Tor recognized them as a couple of nuts from Religion. He’d seen them at Zosma Lion’s last Sol sermon, waving their hands in the air, chanting along with all the other nuts gathered there, absorbing every sentence that flowed from the crazy preacher’s mouth. Tor was probably the least spiritual person living on Ambition; the connection he shared with Lion wasn’t by choice. He only met with the section head of Religion when he had to. Running into his followers on other parts of the ship infuriated him. If the Colonel had any say in it, they wouldn’t be allowed off level ninety at all. Let them rot in their section.
They continued to stare. Tor shook a bloody fist at them. “You want some of this?”
The tube came to a stop. Nash and Tor stepped into a short corridor with a single door at its end. “Behave yourself here,” the robot warned. “The Captain has enough stress to deal with.”
The door slid open, and Tor saw Ambition’s section heads seated at a long table. He had never in all of his thirty-eight years set foot in the Captain’s quarters, but he had heard stories. This was a gathering of the Baker’s Dozen. He looked at all of them, starting with Ly Sulafat at one end. Sheratan Ries was seated at the Captain’s left. Next there was Hal Gulum from Medical, Communication’s Argus Cor, Security head Homa Sis, Garnet Ceph of Food & Water, and Environment’s Mintaka Onis. The chair at the opposite end from Captain Ly—usually reserved for the head of Military Operations—was empty. Next to the vacant seat was Zosma Lion. Tor sneered and looked away from him quickly to Education’s Sakan Coro, mechanical genius Gacrux Crucis from Propulsion, and Nair Cran, the head of Data Storage.