by T. J. Berry
“I know, sir. Just haven’t had time to learn.” Her voice was muffled through her helmet.
“On my mark,” said Jenny. She glanced down again at the water. The tops of the waves were starting to light up with the dawn. It would be hard to see them for another half hour or so. She yelled to Ricky in front. “Hey, Ricky. Jump.”
Ricky turned and shook her head angrily. She wasn’t moving. Her choice. Jenny gripped the armor plating on Rassick’s suit and jerked them both to the side as hard as she could. Her first attempt didn’t send them over, but Rassick put a little lean into it and they tumbled over the metal railing.
For a split second, freefall felt like zero G and Jenny was at home. She pushed away from Rassick and aimed at the water so her legs would hit first.
Jenny made impact. Her knees hit her chin and knocked her teeth together. She felt some of them crack. She resisted the urge to gasp or scream as she plunged under the surface, waiting until she bobbed back up before taking a breath. Blood and saltwater ran down her throat.
Ricky entered the water with a huge splash on her left. She’d hit spread-eagled. That was going to sting. Jenny heard her thrashing and gargling sea water. In her haste to get down here, she’d neglected to determine if Ricky could swim.
Rassick bobbed up at Jenny’s side, her suit spraying water from its thrusters. Those things worked in water or in vacuum.
“I’m fine, but the detainees are resisting,” said Rassick into her comm. “I may need to subdue them.”
She pulled out her service weapon and fired. Close enough that Jenny felt the bullets zing through water next to her, but none of them made contact. Rassick motioned for Jenny to drop below the surface. It was still dark enough that the soldiers above would lose her in the whitecaps.
The cold water helped numb the throbbing in Jenny’s jaw. More bullets sped past her, this time aimed in Ricky’s direction. She hoped Ricky had the sense not to flail around so Rassick could miss her intentionally. She let her face come up for long enough to take a breath.
“They’re both dead. I’m gonna leave their bodies,” said Rassick. “My thrusters can’t haul that much weight. Mark them as lost at sea.” She shut off her comm.
“Get up that pylon to the shuttle and I’ll meet you there. I can get you off the planet,” said Rassick.
Jenny tried to answer that they didn’t want to get off the planet, just over to Fort J, but when she opened her mouth, her jawbone crunched and a wave of nausea hit her. She breathed through her nose. It was not fun to vomit with a broken jaw.
Rassick activated her suit thrusters and lifted out of the water. A few of the soldiers looked down to watch Jenny and Ricky bobbing limply in the waves, but most of them had continued down the bridge. No intake forms meant some off-the-books R&R time before the next mission. Her and Ricky’s lives were not even worth the paperwork.
Jenny lay back on the water and watched Rassick ascend. She tested her limbs. Both arms worked. Legs were the same as usual, except maybe with a bit more of that tingling feeling that she remembered from when her foot had been asleep for a while. It had increased steadily since Beywey and now the occasional electric jolts were strong enough to take her breath away. She’d gone from no pain and no mobility, to lots of pain and no mobility. It was decidedly not an improvement. She’d have to thank Gary if she ever got to Fort J.
Waves crashed over her periodically, and she could only breathe through her nose, but she was alive and not trapped in detention, which was a start. Ricky swam over.
“Wǒ cào, Jenny. I think I’m dead.”
Jenny pointed to her bloody mouth.
“Brilliant. Your jaw is broken and my everything is broken. This was another amazing Jenny Perata idea.” Ricky flicked her wet hair out of her eyes. “You’re ridiculous, throwing yourself off a bridge,” she said. “I had them convinced we were Reason agents undercover with the Bala. You ruined it all by jumping. You realize that during my time at the Blossom, I had infiltrated almost every existing Bala cabal and Reason gang. I have protected informant status with three separate intelligence agencies. I have so much valuable information, I could not only have gotten us out of there, we would have had a cushy military escort to Fort J.”
“Mmm,” said Jenny.
“But, you know, if you prefer the Jenny Perata method of crisis management, we can all just instigate massive bar brawls and toss ourselves off bridges until death finally catches up.”
Ricky was on a roll and Jenny couldn’t open her mouth to stop her.
“You know why I banned you from my bar, Jenny? Not because you tried to rig my games in your favor, because that I can understand. I banned you because you’re a hurricane, creating a whirlwind of destruction everywhere you go. I am a surgeon using a scalpel of chaos and you are a Tasmanian devil, annihilating all of my best prospects.”
Jenny pointed to the landing platform.
“I know, I’m going. All this because I decided to be nice and let a blemmye into the bar.”
Jenny saw a barely perceptible brightening in the sky. Jim had probably landed at Fort J and dropped off the cargo by now. Knowing him, he’d taken off for openspace without stopping to count his cash.
She spit out a mixture of blood and saliva and swam for the pylon, pulling herself through the water with a crude backstroke. She’d been a good swimmer as a child, but there hadn’t been many opportunities to practice after Copernica. She remembered the basics. Float. Use the resistance of the water. Don’t breathe it in.
Ricky followed at a slower pace. If she didn’t know any better, Jenny would say Ricky was keeping an eye on her. It warmed her hypothermic heart. Ricky swam up and grabbed the ladder bolted to the pylon. They both hung on for a while, catching their breath.
No one had bothered to light the exterior of the buildings on this outpost, where people stayed locked inside most of the time due to the water and the wind. A few of the windows were lit with harsh white LED lights. Soldiers were eating their morning meal gathered in groups behind the glass; troops waiting to be dispatched to their next arrest.
At one of the windows, a lone person looked out at the water. In the light behind them, Jenny saw a shock of red hair. She raised a hand in thanks and Rassick turned away from the glass.
“I can’t carry you up thirty feet,” said Ricky. “If you wait here, I can–”
Jenny grabbed a ladder rung and hoisted herself out of the water. After years of hauling herself around ships that weren’t made for wheelchairs she had developed biceps like a prizefighter.
“Oh, you’ve got it,” said Ricky, following behind. “I always underestimate Jenny fucking Perata.”
Jenny pulled herself out of the water. Her legs were bruised, but she couldn’t see any bones sticking out. The zinging nerve pain had let up for the moment, but probably only because she was so cold. She’d be quite the sight at Fort J. A space hobo crawling around in a shredded jumpsuit.
Jenny pulled herself up until it became a rhythm. Left hand, pull. Right hand, pull. She shut everything else out. Even Ricky’s occasional comments. There were thirty rungs to the top. Her arms shook and her palms burned. If she stopped for too long, she feared that her resolve would evaporate. The skin on her hands slipped and blistered, tearing raw ovals in her palms. She kept going, leaving smears of wetness on each rung. If Ricky noticed, she didn’t say so.
Ten rungs from the top, her right hand slipped. She caught herself with her left and yanked her shoulder painfully. Her legs dangled in Ricky’s face.
“Don’t fall on me,” yelled Ricky. Jenny knew that if they hit the water again she might not have the strength to get back out. “If you fall, I’ll have to go down after you. You don’t even want to know what you’ll owe me if I save your life again.”
Jenny dragged herself through the trap door at the top and lay on the landing platform. Ricky flopped down next to her. “I hate you so much. Are you all right?”
Jenny lifted one hand and let it fall
back down.
“Dear God, I made some promises down there that I don’t intend to keep,” said Ricky. “Please don’t hold it against me.”
A pair of boots clomped across the flight deck and stopped in front of them.
“Never mind. Deal back on,” said Ricky, raising herself on one arm.
Jenny looked up to see Rassick standing over them in the pink light of dawn. She pulled Jenny up and ducked under her arm to pull her toward the shuttle.
“I’ll just walk myself, thanks,” called Ricky.
Rassick set Jenny down in the co-pilot’s seat and closed the shuttle door behind Ricky.
“How was the climb, sir?” she asked.
Jenny pointed to her mangled jaw.
“Oh man. You’ll be all right, Cap,” said Rassick, buckling her in. Ricky took the seat behind them.
Rassick settled herself into the pilot’s chair and flicked on the comm.
“Rassick to Barlee Base.”
“Barlee Base. Go ahead, Rassick.”
“I’m making a coffee run to Chhatrapati. Any takers?”
There was a pause. Jenny thought they were caught. The comm crackled back to life.
“Six with cream and sugar. Two black. And that asshole Marquez wants a milkshake.”
Rassick laughed with the mic on so they could hear just how relaxed she was.
“I’ll stick my dick in your milkshake, Marquez. Back in an hour.”
“Roger, Rassick. Dick in the milkshake. Good flight.”
She flicked off the comm and started going down the takeoff checklist. Jenny missed the camaraderie of razzing your people and knowing that someone always had your back. She noticed Ricky checking out the side of her face with a concerned concentration. Their eyes met and Ricky looked away sheepishly.
“Just making sure you’re alive enough to pay me back for all this lifesaving, Perata,” she said. The smile that formed on Jenny’s face hurt like the devil.
Rassick cut in. “Just so you know, I can’t bring you to Fort J. That’s a twelve-hour round trip over land and I don’t have clearance to set down there during the Summit. But I can get you to Chhatrapati Shivaji. You can pay off a ship owner to smuggle you into Fort J with the dignitaries.”
It was a quintessentially Reason feat to arrange it so that the easiest way to get five thousand kilometers on this planet was to go thirty-five thousand kilometers up and back.
“But we’re spies,” said Ricky.
Rassick gave her a withering look and even Ricky knew when to fold her hand.
Jenny closed her eyes and felt the gravity burst of takeoff. Rassick kept talking.
“I can’t imagine being at the Siege of Copernica Citadel. You guys must have gotten pummeled by those necromancers. They say some of them made it all the way onto your ships. Holy hell, I would’ve shit myself coming face to face with a necromancer. Could they really stop your heart with a single word?”
The legends of Copernica were exaggerated, but Jenny couldn’t say that now. Even if her jaw wasn’t broken, she would have just nodded along anyway. People needed to believe the stories to justify their choices. If she had known the necromancer who had twisted her ship in half was some tiny guy who had a kid at home, she might have thought twice about throwing a shell full of screws at his face. Those were the lies you told yourself to get through war.
Rassick put the shuttle on auto and reached under her seat. She tossed a first aid kit on Jenny’s lap.
“Not a lot in there, but there’s some analgesic. We don’t see a lot of action out here,” she said apologetically.
Jenny opened the box and pulled out two injectors. She handed one to Ricky. They pressed the spray to their necks and pulled the trigger.
“Gah, that stings,” complained Ricky.
Warm bliss spread from Jenny’s neck to the rest of her jaw. This was the good stuff, meant for soldiers in the field who needed to numb up, but still keep fighting. It wouldn’t make her drowsy, but it would take away the pain.
Rassick was still watching Jenny.
“You are so fucking tough, Cap. Back at Copernica… and now. I don’t know how to get like that. To stop caring.”
Jenny wanted to explain that the trick wasn’t to stop caring, it was to care so much that nothing else mattered. She’d thought of Kaila in the harvesting center every night, when the lights went out and her dearest love was alone in a cell with hostile creatures. She would never forgive Jim for what he’d done. Just as he’d never forgiven her for the part she’d played in Cheryl Ann’s death. She guessed they were even now.
Getting off Jaisalmer took no more than seven minutes and the ride to Chhatrapati was even faster. As they slid around the corner of the station, Jenny spotted an asteroid-shaped ship with a huge pink flower on the side. She waved to Ricky and pointed to it.
“Look who’s here,” said Ricky. “That tricky bastard.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Chhatrapati Shivaji Station
Rassick matched the shuttle’s velocity to the spin of Chhatrapati Shivaji Station and eased them toward an open docking bay. Jenny noticed she was flying on her own without computer assistance. The kid was trying to impress her. Usually, she’d ignore it, but today she gave Rassick a little approving nod. The grin that spread across the private’s face could have lit up a dark moon.
Jenny hadn’t been here in ages. The station had grown to a massive size. It had been constructed out of the wreckage of the generation ship Cristobal, one of the first human ships to reach this part of space. The Reason had added rings around the original habitation cylinder for shops, restaurants, and refueling stations. You could barely see the original ship at the heart of it underneath all the new bits.
Jim’s parking job was terrible, as usual. He’d gotten so close to one support strut that several maintenance people in EVA suits were out scratching their heads about how he was going to fly back out without destroying it.
“Chhatrapati Shivaji, this is Barlee Base Shuttle Four, docking at gate nine-three-one.”
“Roger, Barlee Base Shuttle Four. Gate nine-three-one.”
“Hey Raz. Back so soon?” asked a different voice.
“Coffee run. You know we only get the shit stuff out there in the water.”
The shuttle jolted as the dock latched home and the shuttle spun in time to the station. Rotation meant gravity. Jenny wouldn’t be able to float herself around and her chair was still on the Jaggery. Rassick leaned over and extended a hand.
“I’m going to have to carry you again. Second verse, same as the first.”
Jenny reached out and caught Rassick around the neck and pulled up onto her back. They stepped out into the bright lights of Chhatrapati Shivaji. It had been a long time since Jenny had been on a properly functioning station. Nothing dripped rusty water and it didn’t smell like feces in the least. It was downright majestic.
They stepped into the gate area where travelers of all kinds departed their shuttles. Most were being wheeled off their transport ships in glowing stasis chambers, still asleep from years-long journeys from faraway planets. A dock worker pushed a family of four off a transport ship in a stack. These weren’t the wealthy, who could afford FTL drives and unicorns to power them, but middle class people who had forked over a lifetime of savings to move from one planet to another for a chance at a better life closer to the center of the Reason.
Rassick bounced when she walked, which rattled Jenny’s broken teeth. The smell of coffee dominated the atrium – the real thing, not the thick goopy stuff the dwarves tried to pass off.
“Do we have time for a stop?” asked Ricky, peering into the shops on the concourse. She stopped in front of a bookseller’s window, bending down to read the titles in the display.
“Drop-off first,” said Rassick, walking past. Ricky sighed and tore herself away from the books. Rassick headed down the hallway marked Jaisalmer Shuttle. Jenny tugged her in the opposite direction and pointed toward the hallway where the
Jaggery was docked. She could tell exactly where it was because people lined up at the windows to get a look at the stoneship. There weren’t many left roaming around these days.
“You want back on that ship? After your captain turned you in?” asked Rassick, stopping in her tracks.
“I’m not going that way,” said Ricky. “I’ll take my chances on the surface.” Jenny mimed taking a drink and Ricky’s face fell. Everything she owned was on the Jaggery. She needed her suitcases full of tricks and bottles.
“Can I borrow your service weapon, Rassick?” asked Ricky.
“No, you may not,” said the private, heading down the hall toward the crowd. “But I’ll be your wingman for a few minutes.”
People stared at the Reason soldier carrying a torn-up woman in a flight suit, trailed by another woman in sopping wet coveralls. Because of her fresh cuts and bruises, Jenny realized her lack of mobility didn’t appear to be permanent. To everyone here, it looked like she’d recently been in a skirmish. Throw on a uniform and she’d pretty much be a war hero again.
They reached the Jaggery and found the cargo hold open. Jim was supervising loading a crate of dehydrated cheddar cheese pellets. That man never changed one iota.
“Hello?” called Rassick. “Delivery.”
Jim looked up and dropped his tablet. The glass shattered on the metal deck. A dwarf hurried over with a dustpan.
Jenny tried to smile at him. A few bits of teeth and saliva fell out of her mouth, but it was worth it for the horrified look on Jim’s face. A hundred retorts went through her head, but she could only manage to raise her eyebrows and grin like a jack o’lantern.
“Can’t get rid of us that easily, you old fart,” said Ricky.
“What the hell did they do to you? I told you to cooperate,” he said, his face going white. Jim was never useful in a medical emergency.
“This is what cooperation looks like in Reasonspace,” said Ricky, stony-faced.
“I didn’t mean for–”
Jenny raised her hand to stop him. Didn’t even give him the finger, though by Unamip she wanted to. She’d put her ass on the line for him over and over, only to have him ditch her like trash.