Space Unicorn Blues

by T. J. Berry

  “And she put you in charge of her time-sensitive cargo?”

  “I’m the best pilot in the galaxy.”

  There was a sound like a cough mixed with a chuckle. They must have read Jim’s service record. He was barely the best pilot in a room full of dryads and their years-long reaction times.

  “She and I have been friends for a long time,” he protested, sensing the slight to his reputation. Jenny willed them to move along. If they teased him about his driving enough, he was sure to start an argument. That man would lose an entire stoneship over a bruised ego.

  “Sure, old man,” Ondre said. “I get it. She’s helping out an old friend who’s down on his luck. Moving relics from one planet to another.”

  “No,” said Jim. “She entrusted us to get these boxes to Fort J in time for the Summit.”

  Ondre paused for a long moment. Any cargo headed to the Summit under orders from the Sisters was likely to be important. If Jim let him stew for just a moment longer, Ondre was bound to let the Jaggery move along. But, of course, Jim would never do that.

  “We’re getting paid a pretty penny to–” he began.

  “Dammit Jim, shut up,” Jenny muttered, forgetting that the comm was open. All sounds from the cockpit stopped.

  “Who was that?” asked Ondre.

  “Just one of my buddies fixing some hull damage from the orbital pirates. How’s it going Chexy?” asked Jim. Jenny took the biggest breath she could without coughing. It wasn’t much, but it seared her lungs.

  “Almost done out here, boss,” Jenny said, trying her best to sound both exasperated and nonchalant, like a real maintenance grunt. Thankfully, her voice rasped and crackled and sounded nothing like her own. “Pirates tore us a new one.”

  The comm went quiet again, but they seemed to come to the conclusion that she was legit.

  “We’ll be leaving now, sir, but take care that you don’t let this ship fall into the wrong hands again, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I gotcha. You won’t find no Bala filth on my ship. Except the dwarves, of course, but they don’t count. They’re part of the ship.”

  Jenny knew he was blowing smoke for cover, but it still stung to hear him say the slur. That was her wife he was talking about. She pulled herself to sitting with a groan once she was sure the Reason officers had closed the open channel.

  “They’re departing, Captain,” said Boges.

  “Thanks,” said Jenny and Jim in unison. Jenny was starting to fully grasp the magnitude of turning over the ship to Jim. She’d done it in haste to save their ride, but now there was nothing stopping him from simply turning around and flying away. She hoped he didn’t realize that before she got it back.

  “Jenny, can you move?” asked Jim.

  “Just about. Gravity’s on. One minute.”

  “Go fast because they backed off, but they’re still within visual range. None of us over here can EVA over to you without attracting attention. You have to make your way to us.”

  Which wasn’t entirely true. Jim could spacewalk over to her, but he would never agree to that. Jim would sooner die than float around in openspace.

  “’Kay,” Jenny replied. She pushed herself all the way up to sitting, arms shaking with adrenaline. Her bones ached, especially her lower back and hips. Her bone marrow was going into overdrive making red blood cells to replace what she’d lost. She was suddenly incredibly thirsty, but there was no unaccounted-for water hanging around in an isolated station like this. Every drop was in use.

  Jenny got hold of the edge of the door frame and dragged herself toward the airlock. The button to open the door was placed at shoulder height for standing people. Even before getting shot in the chest, it would have been a feat to get up there. Now, it looked like scaling a mountain. She pulled herself halfway up onto a rolling chair next to the control console. The bottom of her diaphragm rested on the edge of the chair and pressed painfully into her lungs. She couldn’t get more than a sip of air. She dropped back down to the floor with a yelp.

  “Dammit.”

  “What’s wrong?” asked Jim.

  “Can’t open the airlock.”

  “Oh no, Jen. You have to,” said Jim. “I can’t come out there.”

  Jenny wondered if there was a Boges-sized suit on the Jaggery. She went to wipe the blood off her face and her arm thwacked into the plexi of her helmet. Her brain wasn’t working. She made sure she hadn’t cracked her arm tablet and it dawned on her that she could use it to open the airlock.

  She pulled herself back up onto the chair, digging the edge into her guts again. She nudged it over to the console and thanked her lucky stars that the keypad was low enough for her to reach. She turned the power key and let the console boot up.

  Beywey’s computer system was so old that even her tiny EVA suit tablet was exponentially more powerful. The problem wouldn’t be getting into the system, it would be convincing her lightning-fast tablet to talk with such an ancient behemoth. The console practically creaked as it started up. The screens were old two-dimensional readouts, not even touchscreens. She loaded up a little program she’d come up with while laid up in bed after Copernica. A little bit of code that let her log into any Reason system using her old credentials. She couldn’t get through keycard door locks, especially on planets within Reasonspace, but these deep databases out in the middle of nowhere didn’t always have updated personnel deactivation records.

  The computer pinged a welcome to her.

  “Jen, you out yet?”

  “One minute.”

  “Because there are a few orbital pirates who seem to be mighty interested in us,” Jim said.

  Jenny made sure her helmet was secure and hit the command to open the inner door. The outer door shut and a thirty-second countdown started until the airlock was pressurized again. She looked behind her and realized she’d nearly forgotten the globe of trisicles. She inched the chair closer and grabbed the handle.

  As much as she wanted him to be, Jenny couldn’t quite believe that Gary was the single lifeform that Boges had detected. Wenck would never have left Beywey without his unicorn. They’d tear the station apart rather than leave such a valuable resource. The only way they’d leave him was if he was dead. Which brought her to an important question. How could anyone kill a unicorn? As far as she knew, it would take something akin to a complete dismembering. Even multiple shots to the head would only net you a slightly less coherent and decidedly more pissed-off unicorn.

  If Gary was dead, she hoped he was at least somewhere inside of Beywey and not floating around outside the station. Once a projectile got going in a particular direction in openspace, it would just keep going forever. It could take days to find his body among the debris. Dead or alive, she wasn’t leaving the system without him. Even dead, Gary still had at least a small sliver of horn left on his head. Enough to get them at least part of the way to Jaisalmer. Maybe Soliloquy Station, where she could trade something for a sliver of some other unlucky unicorn’s horn. The Reason had locked down most sources, but Ricky probably knew where to get some.

  The inner door pinged and Jenny pulled herself and the bugs into the airlock. The pull of gravity was less strong in here. About half of Earth. Whatever generator or spell they were using only had a radius of the room. Depressurization was fast – less than ten seconds. The outer door of the airlock opened silently and Jenny floated across the atrium to the market door. Though zero G had the unfortunate effect of shifting her lacerated organs around and making it harder to catch her breath.

  The market door was open. Pieces of canvas floated around like ghosts in the darkness. The soldiers had broken anything of value that couldn’t be thrown out of the airlock, lights included. Jenny flicked on her headlamp and pushed through floating objects, ignoring everything smaller than a body. She kept seeing little flickers of motion out of the corner of her eye, but on turning, there was only debris.

  She came upon their Bala translator, skirt flared in the vacuum
to reveal a worn-down blue-green tail fin instead of legs. It had to have been hard up in space for a part-mermaid, in a place where water was rationed so strictly. She passed the grootslang that had spoken to Gary, splayed out in a climbing position. Probably trying to crawl back into his airtight tent when the door was blasted open. These creatures were prepared for slow leaks, but no one could outrun an explosive decompression.

  She floated on toward the medical tent. Her friend Mymo floated inside, a frozen infant clutched to her chest. The doctor and his other patient were dead as well.

  “Fucking Reason,” she said. Not all the pangs in her chest were from the shrapnel.

  “Jen?” asked Jim.

  “Coming,” she replied.

  “Hurry up there kiddo, before you bleed out.” Jim said, with an anxious laugh. They’d been working together for so long that she could hear the worry he was trying to keep out of his voice.

  She turned out of the medical tent. A huge object caught her eye up near the ceiling. She grabbed a shelf and pushed off. It was Gary’s body. He was frozen solid like the others, holding his helmet out in front of him like a beggar’s cup. She pulled him closer. The last little bit of pearlescent horn had been dug out of his head. At least he was probably already dead when they’d hacked away at his skull. Even she hadn’t been that considerate.

  “Found him,” she said into the comm, breathless.

  “Thank god,” said Jim. “Tell him he’s an ass for not answering me.”

  “He’s dead,” said Jenny. She heard a tiny gasp from Boges.

  “But the single lifesign–” began Jim.

  “Not him.” Jenny hung onto Gary’s suit and looked around. Someone else was alive in here.

  “Well, tether him in then. Go fast, the Reason ship is waiting, but the pirates are getting antsy. A few of them have done flybys already.”

  Jenny let the trisicles float nearby and reached up to slide Gary’s helmet back onto his head. Her sternum crunched like a packet of crisps and she groaned. It took all her willpower to keep her arms up long enough to latch the lock. His suit pressurization headed toward normal.

  “Are you all right? I can send Boges to come get you,” said Jim. Boges protested in the background.

  “Dwarves don’t go out there. Hills and mountains only,” she whispered furtively.

  “This is an asteroid,” said Jim, as if that explained anything.

  “It’s practically a mountain,” she replied.

  “We can’t leave yet,” said Jenny, gasping from the exertion of suiting up Gary.

  “Why the hell not?” demanded Jim.

  “There’s someone else alive in here.”

  “Sounds like their problem.”

  Jim waited for her to reply, but Jenny didn’t answer. She shoved Gary and the trisicles into the hospital tent and floated past the other booths. Jim seemed to understand that she wasn’t coming.

  “Whoever it is, find them fast,” said Jim. “I’ll get as close to Beywey as I can, but you’re not going to have a lot of cover as you come across.”

  She saw a frenetic motion out of the corner of her eye, faster and more urgent than the languid floating of the discarded objects around her. It was Bào Zhú in one of his own spherical animal tanks, waving to her frantically, his mouth open in a soundless cry. She pulled herself toward him. Her torso spasmed and she curled inward, veering off into one of the ransacked stalls. A metal tent pole snagged on her EVA suit and left a couple of pinprick holes across her upper arm.

  “Fuck me,” said Jenny.

  “I do not like to hear that,” said Jim. “What’s going on?”

  “Got a little rip. It’s fine.”

  Fine was her favorite word for when things were going to complete and utter shit, and Jim knew it.

  “Just come back now,” Jim said. “Forget whoever is still in there. They’ll figure it out.”

  “Found him,” said Jenny, watching her O2 sink. It was a tiny trickle of a leak. Nothing she’d even need to patch for at least an hour. And she was planning to be back on the Jaggery in a few minutes. She reached out and took the handle of Bào Zhú’s container. He pressed his hand against the plexi in gratitude.

  A boom sounded through the comm.

  “Damn, which one did that?” asked Jim.

  “The Cascadian cruiser,” replied Boges.

  “Huh. They’re usually so mellow,” said Jim. “Jenny, get back here now. We’re taking fire from pirates.”

  Jenny floated toward the exit, dragging Bào Zhú behind her. He was heavier than he looked.

  “On my way,” she said.

  A second explosion sounded in her helmet and this one rocked through Beywey too.

  “Just come back,” Jim’s voice cracked. He wasn’t up to this shit any more.

  “That’s the plan,” she replied.

  Air trickled out of the break in Jenny’s suit and the backup O2 tank ran continuously, but the readout gave her plenty of time to get back to the Jaggery. She reached the hospital tent where she’d left Gary and the trisicles floating. She grabbed the handle on the back of Gary’s suit, which was perfectly designed for dragging unconscious companions. There was no way for her to drag Bào Zhú, the trisicles, and Gary at the same time. She braced herself against a strut and launched Bào Zhú toward the gaping doorway. She grabbed the trisicle ball and pushed it and Gary toward the exit, allowing their momentum to carry her. “Coming out, I have everyone,” she said.

  A constellation of tiny red spheres floated in front of her. They were little frozen balls of blood emerging from the three tiny holes in her EVA suit. She was bleeding inside it. On the upside, the frozen blood was stopping up the air leak. A group of folded papers floated by like a flock of birds. It was the notes that the Bala had passed to Gary with their prayers and tributes.

  “Um…” said Jim. “We have a problem.”

  A pained whine sounded over the open channel. Almost like… a whinny. She yanked on Gary’s suit to turn him so she could see into his helmet. Something wet in her chest tore open and her vision went white around the edges. She took a couple of slow breaths. As long as you stayed awake, you could just keep going.

  Gary’s cheeks had thawed from bluish gray back to his usual russet brown. His eyes were closed, but he shook his head as if to clear it.

  “Pirates are on all sides of us, Jen. They know we don’t have all of our crew on board yet. They’re waiting for you,” said Jim.

  “Wake up, Gary. Help a girl out,” she whispered.

  “Unnnghhh,” he replied, in agony as his core began to thaw and burn with the pain of full-body frostbite.

  “Hey,” she put her face as close to his as she could in their helmets. “Gary, wake up. I know you feel like shit, but we have to cross to the Jaggery, and I need your help. At least don’t fight me. Yeah?”

  He looked at her with confused and fearful eyes, not understanding who she was, let alone what she was saying. She smiled at him and his instinct brain pegged her as a friendly. He smiled back, but without recognition. Unicorn blood worked miracles, but miracles took time. Something she had very little of right now.

  “Why do I have to do everything?” she said, taking a wheezing breath in before pushing Bào Zhú closer to the exit. Another explosion sent a cascade of debris back into Beywey. Jenny hung onto a support beam so the blast wouldn’t knock her further in. She took the tether from Gary’s suit and clipped it to the trisicle sphere. One of them was useless without the other anyway. She reached for her own tether and realized it was outside attached to her chair, that she still had to pick up. This was going to be like dragging a bloody flea market across openspace.

  She grabbed Bào Zhú’s tank and pulled herself to the edge of the blown out airlock. The Jaggery took up all of her field of vision outside of the station. She’d never been more grateful to see a huge pink flower in all of her life. Below the flower, Boges had the large cargo door open and ready for them to come across. The dwarf pressed h
er face against the interior window, waiting to tell Jim when to pull away. There were at least a hundred meters between Beywey and the stoneship – far too long for Jenny’s comfort. She leaned out of the station. Lights of all shapes and colors lit the dark stone of the Jaggery from the pirates waiting to ambush her and Gary on their way out. Whoever they captured would be good for a substantial ransom from a fancy stoneship captain.

  “Jim, tell them there’s a market full of human and Bala goods, plus water and food in the station. They can have it all if they let us get to our ship.”

  Jim made the announcement over an open channel. None of the lights disappeared, but a few backed away. Orbital pirates weren’t famous for embracing logic or compromise.

  Jenny pulled herself out onto the shredded beams surrounding the blown airlock, taking care not to tear her suit again. She reached for the tether holding her wheelchair and reeled it in. The nylon strap came back attached to one bent armrest.

  “Shit.”

  “I see them coming in, I’ll give you covering fire,” said Jim, sounding delighted to finally have an excuse to shoot at something.

  “What?” Jen looked right to see a pair of green lights heading between the ship and the station, coming right for her. The other ships, seeing one of them get a head start, also revved their engines and sped toward Beywey’s entrance.

  Jim fired in all directions, missing most of the ships, but sending debris from a couple of direct hits flying at Jenny.

  “Watch it,” Jenny yelled as a clipper engine on full throttle hurtled into the station below her. The beam in her hands jerked sideways and bits of engine pinged against the bottom of her suit. Bào Zhú pointed up and Jenny followed his finger to see Gary’s limp body floating up and away in the arms of a pirate who had suited up and climbed across to Beywey.

  She pushed off and caught the pirate around the neck, unclipping his helmet with one deft motion and flicking it up and away. It was one of the first openspace combat techniques they taught at boot camp – a frozen enemy can’t fight. The pirate clawed at the vacuum, trying to swim to his helmet. She grabbed Gary’s handle and tried to push him toward Boges, but without bracing she only managed to move herself back toward Beywey.