by T. J. Berry
A two-person skiff came racing up to her position and stopped close enough that she could see both people inside suited up and ready to jump out. Three more ships arrived, hovering around them in all directions like the hands of a deadly clock.
“Jim?”
“Still shooting,” he said, out of breath.
“Right. I’m going to need you to stop that.”
“No, I’m hitting a few…”
“Jim,” she said in her best captain’s voice, the one she used to command people into certain death. “Cease fire.”
The blasts around them stopped, except for a few pings from the smaller ships.
“Full thrusters toward Beywey. Hold your position,” she ordered.
“We’ll crush you,” said Jim.
The suited pirates were out of their ship and closing fast. One pulled out a modified Reason gun. One that would tear through flesh and steel. But she’d had enough of being shot today.
“Do it,” she barked, stopping to cough up a piece of tissue that looked suspiciously important. She could barely see through the haze of blood in her helmet.
Jenny held onto Gary and Bào Zhú as the hull of the Jaggery came closer. She couldn’t push off with her legs, but at least she could be in the right position when it made contact.
A few of the pirates saw what the Jaggery was doing and slipped out from between the ship and station. Another handful realized what was going on, but didn’t have time to get out. Most of them were so fixated on their prize they didn’t even notice the four thousand tons of stoneship about to pin them against the remains of Beywey Station.
The largest of them were crushed first, hulls imploding under the immense pressure. Explosions billowed out into soundless vacuum.
Gary ducked away from the fireballs instinctively. Jenny held him firmly in place to keep him from drifting away. The cargo door was large enough for a small transport ship, so getting three bodies and a ball of trisicles into it should have been easy.
But nothing is ever easy.
A spinning engine turbine from one of the Cascadian ships flew at the group. Gary ducked and the piece hit Jenny’s helmet, cracking it from ear to ear. The decompression warning sounded and suddenly Jim was in her helmet, demanding to know what was going on.
“Did I get you, Jen? Are you inside yet?” he asked. Proximity warnings sounded behind him and Boges chattered on the ship’s intercom, screaming at him to keep going.
Jenny reached up to cover the crack with the back of her hand. Another blast passed over them in a wave of heat and force as a two-person cruiser split in two just a few meters away. A strut careened past, whacking against Bào Zhú’s sphere like a cricket bat and knocking him out of Jenny’s grasp. He screamed at her soundlessly as he spun away into openspace.
Jenny kept the other hand on Gary’s suit and braced for impact. The Jaggery’s airlock door was just a few meters away. She could see Boges yelling and hear her in her helmet.
“Slow down, you’re just about there,” she called. “Slower, you’ll crush them!”
The girders surrounding Jenny and Gary curled inward toward Beywey against the unforgivingly hard exterior of the stoneship.
Jenny pulled her hand away from her helmet and pushed off from the beam behind her. Pieces of debris from the remains of the surrounding ships pelted them at speeds high enough to break bones. A few hit her in the torso and the world went white around the periphery again. Her suit alarm changed from orange to red. She breathed in, but there was nothing left to breathe. It was cold in her suit. She didn’t make a sound as they floated the last few meters into the airlock.
Boges closed the door. Jenny and Gary slammed against the far wall as Jim accelerated away from Beywey Station. Jenny sank to the floor as the ship’s gravity gradually came on. The lights in the airlock turned from red to green and the inner door opened. Boges ran to Gary and flicked his helmet off. Jenny heard him thrashing and fighting her. More dwarves ran in to help.
Jenny lay on the floor of the cargo hold as the dwarves stripped off her EVA suit. Tiny hands applied pressure to the places where her insides were coming out. Boges stood among them, her red braids flying as she shouted orders in the old dwarf language. Or maybe it was English and Jenny’s head was just not processing it correctly.
She turned her head, making sure that the trisicles had come through. The world slid sideways and she closed her eyes. Boges knelt next to Jenny.
“Thank you for bringing him home,” she said, bending down to kiss Jenny’s forehead. Jenny smiled back and patted the dwarf’s leg.
“I wish someone loved me the way you love him,” she said, knowing that this was a dream and in dreams, you could say anything that came into your head.
Boges waved over more dwarves with a wooden stretcher. When they rolled Jenny onto it, she looked down and saw a lake of blood spreading across the airlock floor. It was almost as large as the one that had been under Cheryl Ann. Jenny felt no fear because she was sure this was a dream. She knew it had to be a dream because for the first time in fifteen years, she could feel her legs.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Trisicle Drive
Gary awoke in the ship’s hospital. His head throbbed in time to his heart, which was thankfully beating strong. He reached up and felt through his hair. The sharp knob of horn he’d grown was gone, shorn down by Wenck after he’d reached Gary’s frozen body floating in the remains of Beywey.
Boges sat by his side, kneading her forehead.
“You realize I am self-healing,” he said.
She raised her head. Her dark eyes were bleary with exhaustion. Gary sat up and grunted. His insides were tender and raw, as if they had been removed, wrung out, and put back in again.
“How long have I been out?” he asked.
“Not very long. Less than two hours.”
Boges held out a cup of steaming chai. It touched him that she still used his mother’s recipes after all these years.
“Unamip has blessed us with your continued life,” said Boges.
“You don’t believe in Unamip,” he said gently, taking a sip and letting the hot tea warm his freezing insides.
“In these times, I will pray to any god who will listen,” she replied. “How are you feeling?”
“My human half was considering giving up; however, my Bala half apparently wasn’t ready to die.”
Boges turned up the flame in the lantern on the bedside table. He’d missed the warmth of real fire during his time in prison. Humans loved to live their lives by harsh buzzing lights that ruined the colors of everything and made your eardrums vibrate.
He remembered Jenny and sat up so fast he spilled tea all over the comforter.
“Did you find Jenny? She’s in the control room on Beywey–”
Boges held up her hand.
“She’s the one who brought you back to the ship.” She leaned closer, as if sharing a secret. “You should have seen it. Jim crashed the Jaggery right into the space station and managed to take out a good number of the pirates in the process.”
“By accident or on purpose?” asked Gary.
Boges shrugged.
“No telling, Captain. The way he pilots the Jaggery, you would think he had never spent a day in openspace. You have tea in your beard.” Gary wiped it away and dried his hand on the covers. Boges frowned.
“You haven’t changed since you were ten years old,” she sighed.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“Resting in the next room. She told us how you saved her life.”
“As she saved mine.”
“She only retrieved your body as fuel for the journey through nullspace,” Boges scoffed.
“You see it as well as I do, my friend. Jenny is not the same woman who held me against my will. Humans can change, Boges.”
“I have never seen proof of that.” Her eyes were hard and angry.
“Perhaps you just have,” said Gary.
Boges pulled the cu
p of chai away and stood to leave. She paused in the doorway, regarding him with a coolness that chilled him like openspace.
“I will not allow these tragedies to occur again,” she whispered.
Gary watched her storm out, red braids flying. The entire time he’d been in the Quag, Boges and her kin had stayed aboard the Jaggery in evidence storage. A dwarven crew would rather die than abandon ship. They’d farmed as best as they could in the semi-darkness, sustaining themselves on mushrooms and other crops that grew in deep shade. They’d survived for ten years, but at a great personal cost. Gary could feel the bitterness that tinged the very ship itself. He could certainly see it in the instruments in the cockpit. Boges and her crew had lost their faith in the goodness of man, and even their trust in him was becoming strained.
A creak in the doorway startled him. Jenny rolled in, pushing a new wheelchair. It was a wooden marvel assembled with dwarven precision. No nails, only dovetail joints fitted together tightly by a dozen tiny hands in the couple of hours they’d been back. He could still smell the oil they’d used to polish the wood. Her hands flew past carvings etched into the side that told the story of a human who rescued a part-unicorn from the coldness of openspace. Apparently, not all of Boges’ kin believed that Jenny was the enemy.
“Hey,” she said, resting her hands in her lap. Her dark hair sat like a hippogriff’s nest on top of her head. She no longer wore that ever-present ponytail like she had ten years ago. Gary was glad. He took exception to the name. “You look well… considering,” she said.
She shifted uncomfortably in her new chair, stretching her side and wincing. This chair had less padding than the old human-made one. Dwarves didn’t generally believe in upholstery.
“And you look well… also considering,” he said.
“Your blood is a hell of a drug.” She rubbed her sternum and grimaced.
“Yes, it can heal even a pointblank shot to the heart.” She started to nod, then realized the double meaning and looked away, embarrassed. The first time he’d met Jenny, she’d shot him in the chest to assert her dominance. He’d never forgotten the look in her eye as he realized she was going to pull the trigger. Not the cold disinterest of most Reason soldiers, but a satisfied pleasure in watching terror dawn across his face. Unicorns didn’t fear death, but pain was pain, no matter what species you were. Her intended effect has been to make him understand that she was willing to do anything to get her way, and it had worked.
“I think you know I’m sorry for that,” she said. There was a definite wheezing quality to her voice and she strained to get the words out without stopping for air. A small part of him wanted to give her just a bit more of his blood to help her breathe. A very small part of him. Nearly nonexistent.
“Do I?” he asked.
“Well, I’m sorry for that.”
It was woefully inadequate for someone who had not only shot him, but had kidnapped and tortured him for the better part of two years. He didn’t even bother to acknowledge the words. They sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment.
“Thanks for helping me back there,” she said eventually. “I’d be toast without it. With all that power, it’s a wonder the Quag managed to keep you locked up.”
“How did you manage it?”
She blinked at him slowly like a guard shutting off his body cam, but she was just processing what he’d said. Her eyes slid down to the floor. She backed out of the doorway.
“I have to get my ship back before Jim realizes he doesn’t need any of us to make this delivery.”
“Your ship,” Gary said softly, chuckling to himself.
“Listen, I don’t want to be here any more than you want me here. We drop these boxes off and I’ll hand the Jaggery over to you, no strings attached. Jim and I will be out of your hair for good.”
“Jim is not going to give up the ship that easily,” said Gary, tossing the covers off his legs.
“Well perhaps when the time comes, you and the dwarves will help me convince him.”
Outside the door, a man cleared his throat. Jim walked into Gary’s room chewing on a small stick from one of the fragile trees in the garden.
“Y’all having a nice little chat?” he asked.
Jenny’s cheeks went pink and she plucked the branch out of Jim’s mouth and pointed it at him.
“Yeah, I was just telling Gary what a bloody awful pilot you are. When I said to pull the Jaggery alongside, I didn’t mean to take out half of Beywey in the process.”
Jim sucked his teeth and regarded both of them with the countenance of a man sizing up his prey.
“I’m the bloody awful pilot who saved your life,” said Jim.
“That’s one way of looking at it,” said Jenny.
Jim nodded toward Gary. “Is he ready with some horn?”
“I’ll need the trisicles and time,” said Gary.
“Time is something we do not have right now,” said Jenny. “The Arthur Phillip is hanging close, probably trying to figure out a way to legally board us. It won’t be long before they decide that they don’t have to do things by the book way out here. Not to mention three dozen pirate ships trailing us just waiting for a chance to avenge their fallen comrades. Any little scrap would come in handy right now. Even a quick jump would get us away from most of them.”
Gary shook his head.
“Look for yourself.” He leaned forward so they could see the chasm in his cranium. Jenny pursed her lips.
“How long after you eat can we go?”
“About six hours.”
Jim kicked the door frame.
“Well, that’s not going to work one bit. You two have been out of commission for a couple of hours and already five ships have tested my patience.”
“You’re not shooting them down, are you?” asked Jenny.
“Not mostly,” said Jim. He noticed her dismay and shrugged. “It’s all I’ve got, Jen.”
“Transfer the Jaggery back to me and I’ll talk to them.”
Jim leaned against the doorway.
“I think that would be a terrible idea. Those Reason boys are just waiting for an excuse to impound this ship. They’ll be monitoring, and if they see a transfer to anyone on board but me they’ll yank it right the hell away from us.”
Gary took a mental roll call. Indeed, there was no other creature on board eligible to own the ship right now.
“Besides, I like being captain.” Jim smiled, exposing teeth stained by a lifetime of smoke, and plucked the branch back out of Jenny’s hand.
Jenny spun her new chair so fast that Jim had to jump out of the way to avoid getting hit. There was a crash from the outer room as she banged into something on her way out. “Gary, eat those trisicles so we can get going.”
Jim stood in the doorway, chewing his stick.
“Jenny doesn’t want me to lock you up,” he said between bites. “But I don’t know why I have to listen to Jenny any more. Personally, I’d like to see you back behind bars until you shrivel up and die.”
He spoke slowly, disarmingly, the way you talked to a friend, which made Gary more uneasy than if he had yelled.
“You’re right, Jim. I wouldn’t blame you for incarcerating me again. But I assure you, we both have the same goal. Deliver the cargo and go our separate ways. I’ll do everything within my power to make this mission a success.”
Jim’s chest seemed to deflate.
“You’re a monster,” he muttered.
“I have done some despicable things,” agreed Gary. “But I’m attempting to be a better man.”
“She was too good for you.” Jim dropped the branch and pushed his hands deep into his pockets.
“She was too good for both of us,” said Gary.
Jim turned and wiped something away from his face.
“You eat those bugs and get us underway,” he said.
“Yes, Captain.”
Jim left the hospital and Gary wondered who was going to be that man’s next casualty. Jenny often
got the blame as the center of chaos, but she was usually just cleaning up Jim’s messes. The last time, Cheryl Ann had paid the price with her life, because there was always a price with a man like that. The only difference was who paid it.
Boges had left the trisicles warming under the lantern. He pried one of the babies off its parent. They were dormant here, pincers tucked in and inert. Back in their native habitat, a murky place that was somewhere between nullspace and openspace, they were vicious beetles that tore through anything softer than they were.
When Gary was a baby, his mother had worried that his humanlike teeth wouldn’t be strong enough to bite through their chitinous exoskeletons. She’d asked his father to grind up the shells before feeding. But he was able to crunch through trisicles and had grown horn like any other unicorn.
He bit down on the shell and gave a thought of thanks to the trisicle that was giving its life for their safety. Not that a trisicle’s life was terribly interesting. They absorbed light and used it to fuel their internal processes, building layer upon layer of shell that was dense with energy. In that way, they were very nearly a plant and not animal. Or that was what unicorns liked to tell themselves.
The trisicle’s shell shattered between Gary’s molars, crumbling to powder that tasted like toasted almonds. He was just about to take a second bite when the effects hit him in a rush, like the disorientation of stepping down onto a final stair that wasn’t really there. A short burst of laughter escaped from deep in his belly. He hadn’t felt this much energy coursing through him in years. His head buzzed with power.
He popped the remainder in his mouth and chewed while prying the second baby off its parent. It would take a couple of days for them to breed again, but what he grew over the next few hours would probably be enough to get them to Jaisalmer. Trisicle shells were concentrated energy, but any bones would do to get them back out of the Reason. If Jenny and Jim could pick up some scraps at Fort J – cows, pigs, even chickens – they would be able to jump back out of Reasonspace right after the delivery.
The trisicles were gone much too fast, but he couldn’t eat the parents and leave them stranded with no breeding pair. That was how the trouble had started last time. He tucked them back into their bubble and left it in a dark corner of the infirmary.