by T. J. Berry
“I’m not going back to the Jaggery without you,” she replied, equally emphasizing her last two.
“Don’t worry about your stoneship,” said Wenck. “It won’t be there to go back to.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jenny.
“The Jaggery will be impounded into evidence. You are a suspect in the destruction of a Reason-owned bar in downtown Broome City this morning. We’re not sure who gave the order to fire, but a review of the ship’s communication logs will clear that up pretty quickly.” He stood up and stretched his lower back. “If I were you, Perata, I’d take this very brief moment before you are a wanted woman to find a ride out of Reasonspace and not come back.”
For once, Jenny seemed to be at a loss for words.
“Let the records show that the Reason has subsumed the stoneship Jaggery into its collective holdings. Captain Geneva Perata has thirty minutes to vacate the property with her personal belongings. It pains me to do this, because you are the hero of Copernica Citadel, but–”
“I’m not on the property, you jackass,” said Jenny. “How can I get my belongings and vacate it?”
Wenck looked lost for a moment. Jenny tapped on her arm pad while he stammered.
“I suppose we could bring you back for a supervised visit to collect your personal items,” he said.
“That’s right, you can bring me back there. But you’ll have to speak to the new owner about getting permission for a search. Law says you can’t take a man’s ship if he’s not suspected of a crime.”
She flicked a gloved finger across the pad to send a file to Wenck. He read the first few lines and flinched. Wenck had recognized Jenny in the bar, but hadn’t given a second glance to Jim after dismissing him as a useless old spacer. She was betting that he had an order to detain her, but not Jim and his property. Wenck scanned through the rest of the document quickly, his eyes flicking back and forth. Doubtless, he was trying to find some loophole that Jenny had missed. Gary knew that if Boges had prepared the transfer of title, even in haste, no loophole would be found.
“That’s right, mate,” said Jenny with a grin. “The Jaggery now belongs to one James Bryant, who is a fully human, able-bodied fella, without a speck of magic in him. You can’t have it.” She shoved Gakhar’s firearm away from her face.
“Well look at that,” said Wenck, rubbing his irritated cheek thoughtfully. “You managed to take that beautiful rockship away from me.”
“And the unicorn is coming with me too,” she said. “You can’t confiscate the fuel source for a ship on a Reason-sanctioned mission. I have a delivery commissioned by the–”
Wenck blinked slowly to shut off his ocular display, as well as the incident-logging camera built into it. In the Quag, those cameras were always turned off right before a CO was about to do something they didn’t want recorded. Eventually, inmates learned that when you saw that slow blink, you ran.
“Jenny…” warned Gary.
“Shoot her and take the unicorn,” said Wenck. “We’ll claim she shot first.”
“You can’t just kill a citizen,” said Jenny, holding up her hands in surrender. Gary scanned the room for weapons and exits. Even if he could get to the door, Jenny wouldn’t be as quick as usual in the gravity of the control room, and he didn’t think he could carry her fast enough in their bulky EVA suits.
“I’ll go with you willingly. Just leave her here,” said Gary. He had felt the wrath of men like Wenck in prison. They were humans so sure of their place in the world that they believed themselves to be above the law. Not even a perfectly executed dwarven contract would stop a man like this from getting what he believed he was entitled to. But Gary could at least save Jenny’s life. “You get back to the ship and work on getting me out,” he said to her. She shook her head.
“Don’t give these bloody wankers one inch or they’ll–”
“Shoot her,” Wenck said to the junior officer. Gakhar hesitated.
“Don’t shoot,” said Gary, keeping his voice as calm as he could in light of the pounding of his heart. “She can stay here and I’ll go with you.”
“Private Gakhar, is it?” asked Jenny. “Listen. Back off for one minute and let me talk to the Colonel. You’re not disobeying orders, we’re just going to have a chat, him and me. ’Kay?”
“Be quiet,” said Gakhar, pleading. “Don’t talk while I do this.” Gakhar closed her eyes and Gary knew she was about to fire.
“Stop,” he yelled in his best booming unicorn voice – the one he’d used when he’d commanded his own troops. Gakhar jumped and the gun went off. The plastic bullet pinged off the wall, shattering into pieces that rained down to the floor.
“You missed, you idiot,” said Wenck.
“Kind of not,” said Jenny. She reached a gloved hand up to her head. It came away red. She looked up at Gary and blood began to pour down from her hairline. The sharp edges of the bullet had sliced open her scalp. Nothing fatal, from what he could tell, but humans always bled quite a bit from head wounds. It gave him an idea.
“Unamip has granted you a moment to reconsider your actions,” he said to Gakhar. “You have a second chance to do the right thing.”
Using slow and deliberate motions, he unlocked the sleeve of his EVA suit and set it on the floor. Gakhar was solely focused on Jenny, hands shaking and eyes wide. And Wenck was looking only at Gakhar while spitting orders at her.
“To hell with that. You have a second chance to avoid Reason military court by shooting this useless spacer,” said Wenck. His neck had turned from pink to splotchy red. “I’m willing to forget that terrible first shot, Private. But you’d better get the second one right. Get closer, hold your gun with two hands, and squeeze the trigger, don’t pull.”
Gary reached up and ran his fingers through his hair as if it was a nervous tic. The skin snagged on the jagged bit of horn he’d been growing for months. He dragged his hand against the spot until he felt the sting and pop of the skin on his palm opening.
“Let me see,” he said, closing his fist and reaching over to Jenny, pretending to examine her head wound. She bent down and he smeared a palmful of his silver blood into the gash in her scalp. The bullet had sliced deep. He could feel her skull bone under his fingertips. By the time he pulled his hand away, his own cut had already closed.
“Oh my god,” she whispered, looking up at him in wonder. The blood was already having an effect. He hoped it would be enough.
Wenck separated the two of them with a kick to Jenny’s side. Gakhar lowered her weapon as Wenck stepped between them.
“No need to get rough. We’re good here,” said Jenny. Gary could hear the giddiness in her voice from the interaction between his blood and hers. He prayed to Unamip that if it didn’t heal her completely, it would at least stop her from dying alone in an abandoned space station.
“Shoot or I’ll bring you up on charges,” said Wenck, grabbing Gakhar by the shoulder and positioning her directly in front of Jenny.
“This is completely unnecessary,” Gary said. “Just leave her here.”
Jenny sat up straighter and stared back at Gakhar.
“I know you’re going to shoot,” she said. “And I understand why. Just know that I have no ill will toward you. I know what it’s like to follow orders. I just have to ask.” She unlocked the center seal of her EVA suit and pulled the thick fabric open. “Do it here.” She pointed to the center of her chest. “Not my head. For the funeral you understand… my kuia wouldn’t like to see a mess like that. You wouldn’t make your gran look at your busted open head, would you?”
Gakhar nodded and aimed her weapon at Jenny’s chest.
Just as he’d hoped, Jenny Perata knew her way around unicorn blood, probably from her time on the front lines of the war. Unicorn blood could heal a lot of wounds, but neurological pathways – especially those in the brain itself – were complex and easy to botch. The blood could spur the regrowth of heart or lung tissue far more easily than it could reconstruct the com
plicated pathways of the human mind. You could theoretically bring a person back to life after their brain was turned to pudding, but they might not be the same human. Or they might return to consciousness a blank slate; childlike and helpless, but in the body of an adult.
Gakhar closed her eyes again.
“Eyes open, Private,” yelled Wenck. “I’ll tell you, when we get back you’re going to be reassigned to a garbage transport on the freaking moon.”
Gakhar cringed and pulled the trigger.
Gary wanted to turn away, but he could not stop himself from watching. The gun fired and this time nothing pinged against the wall. The bullet hit Jenny just under her collarbone. The hole was as small as a thumbnail. She jumped as if she’d been startled. A second later the bullet fragmented internally and she bucked as if she’d been kicked in the chest. She collapsed forward, palms on the floor. Blood welled out of her mouth and splattered on the tile. Gary reached out and Wenck kicked his hand away with his shiny boot. The colonel held out Gary’s helmet to Gakhar.
“Finally. Lock him up tight. If we lose him on the way back to the ship, it’s coming out of your paycheck.”
While the private tucked Gary’s arm back into his EVA suit and clipped his helmet on, he watched Jenny to see if his blood was having any effect on the gunshot wound. If it wasn’t enough, she’d die right here in front of him. That wasn’t even the worst case scenario. If it didn’t quite heal her all the way, she might lie here in agony until someone from the Jaggery came into Beywey to fetch her. Her hands slid on the wet floor and she crashed cheek first into the tile. She lay there, coughing up mouthfuls of blood.
Her eyes tracked upward, just for a second, before she closed them. She lifted her hand in a weak thumbs up. He almost laughed. He might be the immortal one, but Jenny Perata would probably outlive all of them.
Gakhar shoved Gary toward the airlock. They were going to lock him up on board the Arthur Phillip for the rest of his life – which would be a very long time if they didn’t kill him in the process. He’d been locked up by Jenny and again in the Quag. The fear, the filth, the chains. He couldn’t do it again.
Gary had no intention of letting his kidnappers get him on the Arthur Phillip. He had been abducted a handful of times over the years. Humans had stolen his horn, his blood, and everything of value on his body. He’d learned never to let his captors get to the second location. Escape was significantly more difficult once he was locked up tight.
As the outer door opened, Gakhar pushed him through the atrium. They sailed back into the remains of the market, Wenck taking up the rear. Beywey was a frozen graveyard. Priceless Bala treasures floated freely in the air as Reason officers tore apart tents and smashed furniture, looking for stragglers.
Gary passed the tent of the grootslang who had once dined with his family. The lizard now floated stiff and unseeing among his frozen fruits. Gary stopped at the stall and touched a gloved finger to the creature’s head, asking a blessing from Unamip upon the kind stranger who had died. Unamip’s blessings were many and varied. There was one for every occasion.
He requested one more blessing before Wenck caught up to him. It was the blessing for a man about to take his own life in the service of a greater good.
Gary unlocked his helmet.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Race to the Jaggery
Jenny lay on her side in the control room, not sure whether to pray for life or death. She didn’t even know toward which gods to direct her prayer. On the upside, she was able to breathe again. On the downside, the searing pain of two dozen plastic shards embedded in her internal organs washed over her as Gary’s blood stabilized her shock symptoms.
Her rapidly healing body pushed the plastic bits out of her tissues. A few of them pinged against the inside of her suit. A couple of the higher ones emerged inside her throat. She coughed them up and spit them onto the floor. They were sharp and multi-faceted like little plastic diamonds, designed to inflict maximum damage on organic tissue while leaving steel bulkheads intact. You could shoot anyone on a ship in space without fear of explosive decompression. They were slow, painful, and quite effective. Jenny didn’t need medical training to feel her body failing in various, serious ways.
As the bullets tried to shred her insides, Gary’s blood was simultaneously trying to knit her back together. She had no idea how the magic of it functioned, only that her cells craved more as they worked to stem the cascade of failures. She put her head down on the cool floor and breathed, letting the pain pierce her. She’d learned years ago, after Copernica, that leaning into the pain worked better for her than fighting it. She couldn’t always make it stop, but she could let it burn within her like a fire.
People who weren’t in constant pain could fritter their lives away with meaningless delightful activities. But when you hurt all the time, you had to make every single motion count. Going out with friends? You might need to push yourself a quarter mile uphill to the bar. Those drinks better be top notch. Sitting up to read a book? It better be worth the ache in your lower back in the morning. Every day was a complex calculus of tradeoffs, but she was used to spending pain like currency to get what she wanted.
The room around her was quiet… except for Jim’s voice coming from her helmet nearby.
“Jen, do you hear me? Goddamn it woman, answer me.”
She tried to answer him, but she couldn’t catch her breath. The healing was slowing down. The viscous glob of blood Gary had smeared on her head like an anointing oil had stopped the worst of the bleeding, but her lungs were still full of liquid. She coughed forcefully and another mouthful of it came up.
“Jen? I hear you. Are you shot?”
“Mmmm,” said Jenny.
“Aw shit.” His voice became muted as he spoke to someone else in the cockpit. Probably Boges.
“Reason,” gasped Jenny. She gagged and coughed a clot out of her throat. It jiggled on the floor like a dessert they made her eat in school.
“I know, Jen. They have us boxed in. They can’t take the ship, but I can’t get to you until they leave. Can you hold on for a bit longer?”
Jenny pushed off with one arm and got herself to somewhere between hunching over and sitting. There was a lot of blood on the floor of the control room, but none of it was silver. They’d taken Gary unharmed.
She took a shallow breath in and it felt like her lungs were wet and full. She pulled the helmet closer and leaned down toward it.
“I’m fine,” she whispered, because that’s what she always said, even if her heart was beating slightly out of rhythm because the muscle fibers were still knitting themselves together.
“You don’t sound fine,” said Jim. “Hang tight.”
She sat and listened to Jim and Boges argue about whether to start firing on Reason ships. Jim, of course, wanted to blast his way into the station and stage some dramatic rescue, but Boges convinced him to wait and see if they could grab Gary when the Reason officers came out of Beywey.
“Why do your ships have no goddamn shuttles?” asked Jim. His voice was as high and tight as his haircut.
“Because we don’t feel the need to take over every planet that we see,” said Boges. Jenny had never heard her so agitated, not even when they’d locked up Gary for all those months.
She lifted her helmet and yelped. Her pectoral muscles spasmed, ejecting a few more bits of plastic into her EVA suit. Boges and Jim went quiet.
“Jen, are those guys messing with you again?” he asked.
She dropped the helmet over her head. His worried voice was right in her ear now.
“They’re gone,” she panted.
“Wait. Here they come,” said Jim. “Six in riot gear, two in EVA suits. No Gary.”
“They’d only leave him behind if he was dead.” Boges’ response was punctuated by the sound of tapping on Jenny’s tablet. She was scanning the station for signs of life. Which is what Jenny would have done in her place.
“Aw shit,” said Jim. �
��He was our ride.”
“The Jaggery says that there is one other person-sized being alive aboard the station besides Jenny.”
Jenny noticed Boges had already dropped “Captain” from her name. She leaned on her arm and buttoned up her EVA suit. It was a risky bet that Gakhar would shoot her in the chest and not the head. She’d seen soldiers come back from point-blank shots in the brain. Even with unicorn blood results were mixed. Her company had seen more than one zombie-like private before they’d stopped trying to resurrect people with head wounds.
“Where?” she asked. She coughed and sprayed the inside of her helmet with a fine spray of red droplets. She could still see, mostly. And it might have been her imagination, but it felt easier to breathe. More like the sharp ache of cracked ribs digging into your side than the burning sear of a stab wound. Jenny knew both from personal experience.
“Maybe,” said Boges. “I can’t tell who it is. But I assure you, Gary did not come out with them.”
There was a screeching tone as the Arthur Phillip hailed them with a message. Jim boomed out over the comm. “Gentlemen, what can I assist you with?”
“Sir, we will need the documentation for the cargo in your hold immediately. If you can provide Reason-only provenance, you will have satisfied legal conditions of ownership and we will be able to depart.” Ondre’s voice was slow and deliberately formal, trying to intimidate Jim into compliance.
Jenny knew bigotry couched in legalspeak when she heard it. The bottom line was that if Jim could prove the boxes had belonged to a human and were going to a human, he could keep them. She heard him tapping, slow and unsure, to bring up the documents on her tablet.
“I sent it over. Passage booked for two large shipping containers by the reverend mother, Lady Nashita Naveen, Sisters of the Supersymmetrical Axion.”
That gave them pause. Though not an official priest of the Reason, Lady Nashita was the closest thing they had to a prophet.
“The Lady Nashita?”
“The very one.”