by Aaron Bunce
Can you hear me right now? I need help remembering, he thought, pulling himself over behind the two women. But he misjudged the distance and ran into Lex’s back. She cursed loudly, tensed, and turned with fists raised.
“God, Jacoby, I almost bashed your face in,” she breathed out sharply. “Shit! I mean, it looks like someone already has. Your eyes, your nose…are you okay?”
“I’m alive,” he croaked, his voice catching in his throat. Jacoby coughed, cleared his throat, and pressed his hands over his eyes from the resulting pain. “That’s really all I can say right now. But, yeah, my head is throbbing, and my brain feels like mush.”
He kept his eyes closed and patted his face, gently exploring his eyes, down his cheeks and nose, and finally tenderly to his chin. It wasn’t just the back of his head, or his brain. The pain came from everywhere at once, seemingly every inch of skin bruised or sore. He silently wondered how close he’d come to just splattering the whole melon all over the bridge.
Damn, that would be messy.
“What happened to the power? Did the computer…? Did someone shut…?” he started to ask as bits and pieces of their circumstances came back. Anna interrupted, mumbling as she dug around inside the wall panel.
“We don’t know, Coby,” Lex said, interpreting for Anna. Then she glanced over to his left shoulder and he followed the gaze. A dark form slouched in one of the rear pilot’s seats. Lex answered before he could even form the question.
“Emiko. Thrust threw her against the console pretty hard, knocked her out cold. We strapped her in to be safe. She’s alive, I know that much, but still…anyone still breathing after that rollercoaster from hell should feel grateful,” she said, worrying over a weeping cut on her left cheek. “I don’t know about Soraya, Lana, or the guys. I saw her past the galley. She was screaming for help, hanging half in the ladder well to the hold, but I couldn’t get to her. Shit, with the engine…it kept firing, by the time I peeled myself off the console, the bridge door slid shut. It’s like the damned thing was trying to cut us off.”
“Are you okay?” Jacoby asked, pointing at her cheek. Lex rubbed her neck and nodded sheepishly.
“Good. Anna, what do you know? Any idea of the damage?”
She continued to work inside the wall, something metallic and hard thumping. He watched her yank a hose free, toss the free end out behind her, where dark fluid spattered her pants and the ground, and tipped forward again, almost completely disappearing inside.
She was talking, but her voice was too muffled to understand. He caught splotches of her emotions–upward spikes of anger and frustration anchored by dips of sadness and worry.
“Poole said this was an artificial intelligence. So, we have to assume it’s spread to the Betty’s computers now, right?” Lex reasoned, leaning in closer to Anna.
“That’s right,” Jacoby whispered, mention of the A.I. centering his thoughts and lifting a bit of his confusion. “I’m not going to pretend to understand the implications of what happened. But I’ll guess that since we have no power, things are pretty bad.”
“…got it!” Anna cried suddenly, as something popped and whined pitifully in the door. She pulled herself back, grabbed what looked like a long pry bar off the ground by her knees, and inserted it into a silver cylinder just inside the maintenance space.
“Coby, I’ve disconnected the door’s hydraulic pump. I can crack it open with what fluid is still in the system, but I’ll never form enough pressure to open it manually. You are going to need you to do the rest.”
Anna was already working the hydraulic mechanism. She turned, gesturing with her small work light to the door. Jacoby propelled himself into position and braced against the thick barrier and waited. Anna grunted, each cycle of the heavy rod lifting the pressure door a fraction of an inch.
“I’m losing pressure, can you…get your fingers…under it yet?” she asked.
Jacoby smashed his fingers into the gap. It was tight, but he managed to get his fingertips in and braced his feet against the ground.
“Can you give me another quarter of an inch?”
Anna labored, the door knocking and groaning mockingly. But it moved, just enough. His fingers slid in, scraping against the sharp edges.
“Count it down,” Lex said, next to him. She squatted down, sticking out her butt and locking her elbows, bracing to lift.
Jacoby nodded and self-consciously corrected his form, moving to utilize his legs and not his back. He wasn’t a lifter, never had been. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t learn.
“On three. Ready? One-Two-Three.”
On three, Jacoby grunted and pulled on the door, pushing with every available ounce of strength with his legs. The door slid a little, something clicking loudly in the wall.
“That’s just the safety stops. You’re doing good. Keep going!” Anna called.
Lex grunted and cursed, her face contorting in strain and immediately turning red. Jacoby matched her intensity, straining until the muscles in his back started to spasm. The door rose, slipping and catching, until an inch of space formed between the ground, then two.
He slumped towards the ground a moment later, his arms and legs shaking from the effort. But it was his head that caused the real problems. The harder his heart pumped, the worse it throbbed. Jacoby visualized the still-open wound spurting blood out into the dark space with every frantic beat in his chest.
Lex grumbled and gasped for air next to him. He leaned forward for a moment, savoring the kiss of cold metal against his throbbing head. The pain was more than intense, it was…saturated.
“Again,” Lex said and immediately threw herself into the task.
Jacoby growled and pulled. The door groaned, another catch tapping loudly somewhere above. He tried to tap into his strength, unlock the heat, but Poole and the power didn’t respond. Maybe he’d broken that part of himself. Maybe Poole was dead.
“That’s it. Perfect. It’ll get easier, just don’t let up,” Anna urged. He heard her working inside the maintenance space, banging on something, and in response, the door lurched upward in his hands.
“How is this…perfect? This thing weighs…a shit-ton,” Lex grunted.
Fatigue leached the strength from Jacoby’s hands first, then his forearms, and shoulders, until his legs burned, and he had to rest. They slumped together. His eyes dropped to the gap at their feet and he knew Lex saw it, too, as she cursed under her breath.
“At this rate, we’ll have a gap big enough to squeeze through in about three days,” she griped.
“Don’t be so optimistic,” he joked. “Come on, let’s get this open before my brain falls out the back of my head.”
Jacoby hooked his fingers under the door once again. He didn’t count, didn’t think about the weight and the lack of progress, he just sucked in a lung full of air, set his jaw, and lifted.
“That’s another safety, you’re almost free,” Anna called.
Lex grunted, cursing with every breath in and out, her arms shaking. Then another set of fingers appeared under the bottom of the door from the other side.
Soraya.
Jacoby heard her straining, her voice, distant and small beyond the thick portal, but he couldn’t tell what she was saying. A spark blossomed inside with her proximity–desperation bleeding into the air, a palpable need. He knew Lex felt it, too. It formed a bubble in his chest, the pressure changing his heart’s rhythm and narrowing his throat. It was stress, or anxiety. He almost wondered why and felt stupid for it.
The door shifted, groaned in its track, and rose. Anna called out from the maintenance space as the door jumped, click after satisfying click reverberating from within the wall. Jacoby tapped into that anxious strength building between them and pulled harder yet, despite the pain, pushing, struggling, and grunting through it.
The door was at their knees, then their waist, and with one final surge, the three shoved it above their heads and into the top of its frame. Jacoby would have slumped
to the ground if there were gravity. But as it was, he just kind of floated free.
“I don’t have weight, why can’t…” Lex gasped for breath, “this stupid door?”
“Because it isn’t gravity holding it shut.” Anna answered the question distractedly, as she finished securing the wall panel back into place.
“Is everyone…?” he started to ask, but Soraya spoke first.
“Emiko? I need her. Where is she?” she said, her voice breaking. “Lana needs her. Quick.” She looked from Jacoby to Lex, then over to Anna, and followed her eyes to the far pilot’s seat. Emiko hung like a shadow, her arms drifting out to her sides. In the quiet moment that followed, she moaned quietly.
“She’s coming to, but I don’t think she’s going to be good to anyone for a while. What happened?” he asked, and despite how stupid the question sounded in his own ears, neither Anna, Lex, nor Soraya laughed or scorned him for it. That was his thing, after all, saying the stupid, obvious things most people didn’t have to.
“Yeah, what he said. Give the girl a breather, she just got her bell rung from one side of this room to the other. Jacoby, too, judging from the pieces of his head left up there on the seat frame,” Lex said.
“Shit!” Soraya cursed and immediately pushed off towards the nurse. Jacoby moved to follow but Lex was faster. She seemed relatively unfazed by the hard acceleration. Then again, maybe he was the only one lucky enough to smash his head into the hardest thing within reach.
Anna was quicker, too, the three women converging on Emiko while Jacoby floated in last. Her small work light glowed on Emiko, hard lines and shadows resolving as Jacoby approached. But it wasn’t just the bridge’s darkness playing tricks on his eyes. A large goose egg marred Emiko’s forehead and the skin around her eyes was puffy and dark. Soraya was talking, hushed, quiet, and urgent, but the nurse couldn’t seem to focus in on her face. Forget focusing, she’d have to keep both eyes open at the same time to manage that. Her mouth moved as she tried to speak, but he couldn’t hear her—if she was actually forming words at all.
“Soraya, she’s probably got a whopper of a concussion right now. I had one after the crash and couldn’t remember shit straight for like two, maybe three weeks. Hell, after that rollercoaster ride of murder and near death, anyone outside of Poole’s inner circle should probably be happy just to be alive,” Lex said, squeezing Emiko’s hand gently.
“Damn. Damn. No! Lana needs her now. Not in two to three weeks, not next week, and not tomorrow. Now.”
“Well, shit, I mean, I wasn’t quoting actual timeframes, I just meant she needs time to recover.”
“Lana’s hurt real bad and needs a doctor, at least a nurse. Ugh, she fell. I mean, I tried to pull her up, but I couldn’t. When the engine was firing, the gravity…I think it was pulling even harder,” Soraya shouted, interrupting. She reached out and grabbed Lex’s arm, who cursed and flinched, and launched off the console, propelling them towards the galley.
Jacoby watched as Soraya and Lex floated to the wall, bounced off, and redirected through the large door. Anna moved up beside him and he followed, unsure of what he would do if anyone actually needed help.
Poole, can you hear me? Poole, are you okay? The resulting pressure in his head was a little strong than before, but not by much, nor did he speak. The ball of worry and doubt in his gut wound a little tighter, as a host of seemingly unanswerable questions sprang into place.
Was Poole injured?
Could he survive without him?
Would something happen to him if the alien creature somehow died and started to rot inside his head?
He considered the last question as he floated into the galley, his head passing through a patch of sour air. No, not just sour, but tinged by the undeniable smell of vomit.
“That can’t be good.” They floated up to the galley table, the air a minefield of shattered pieces of the ship’s interior, vacuum seal food containers, drink bulbs, and more.
He pushed a bottle aside, dark globs of something cold and acidic hitting him in the face and hair. A quick swipe only succeeded in smearing it across his forehead and cheek. Jacoby sniffed his hand reflexively, and confirmed it was ketchup and not something worse.
Soraya and Lex disappeared down the ladder well to the hold, the absence of her small light immediate and severe. The darkness closed in like a smothering blanket. He felt Anna fumble for his arm, her grip sliding down to his hand.
“Coby, what if we can’t fix this?” she asked, but her question had substantially more weight than that. What, they were floating dead in space, with no power, no propulsion, heat, or air filtration? That it happened at all? And beyond that, what did it mean that it was a seemingly hostile program embedded in an anti-seizure chip in her spine that started it all? Could she be trusted? Would any of them live long enough for that to matter?
Jacoby tried to push all of that aside, to draw from some substantial well of strength and optimism and say something that would make her feel better. But nothing would come. He pushed past his discomfort just as a fuzzy, indistinct form appeared in the darkness between them.
“Wargh ‘im bless adee rougha sick lemonjello!” Poole groaned, just as a sickening, slimy wave of pressure formed in Jacoby’s dome. It wasn’t the normal sensation, but deeper, slower, and far more revolting.
A shiver shook though his body and right into Anna, her gasp and subsequent gag his only indicator.
“Poole?”
His form shivered and shook in the dark room, blurring as if he were a picture sliding in and out of focus. He disappeared and reappeared again several times, but it was always at the edge of his vision or out of contrast. Something was definitely wrong.
“Hal…Hang…Hepati…hell…” he said, obviously struggling to pronounce…whatever it was he was trying to say. He pressed his lips together, in a comical fish-lipped look, stomped his feet, and tried again.
“Bring…Bread. Ugh. Pro-t-e-c-t. Spain.” They were words now, but still didn’t flow in anything resembling a coherent sentence.
“Jesus, spit it out. What are you trying to say?”
Voices cut in then as Lex appeared from the ladder well, Anna’s small work light clutched in Soraya’s teeth, and a long, dark form floating between them. Jacoby’s stomach lurched.
“Quick, clear off the table,” Soraya called.
“We can’t lay her down. There is no gravity,” Anna retorted.
“Shut up!” Soraya yelled, as a water bulb, trailing a perfectly splayed tail of clear globules, hit her in the face. “Damnit. Then what do we do? What in the hell do we do? You’ve got comments for everything. You’re so smart. Tell us what to do!”
Is there a doctor onboard?
Bottles and debris floated and bumped into them as they hung there awkwardly, suspended in the dark, increasingly stuffy air. Soraya’s desperation and anger echoed off the walls, reverberating uncomfortably throughout the group. Her question hung unanswered for a tense moment, Anna somehow shrinking in size.
“Maybe the lack of gravity is a good thing,” Jacoby said, trying to locate and pull on some positive thread. “No gravity means no weight, so that’s less stress on potentially life-threatening injuries. Right?”
Soraya snorted and balled her hands up into fists.
Jacoby’s face flushed hot, but didn’t return her glare. He looked at Lana instead and swallowed hard. As bad as Emiko looked, Anna’s friend appeared considerably worse. In fact, if he hadn’t physically watched her chest rise and fall, he’d swear that she was already dead.
“No, you’re right. Yeah,” Lex said, braving the silence.
“Protect…your…head!” Poole said, suddenly, his eyes closed and face screwed up in intense concentration. His appearance was solid now but changing, bits and pieces of his face, even his ears morphing in the dark. One moment Poole looked like Jacoby. In the next, he looked more like Lex, and a heartbeat after that, Anna.
Are you injured?
“I to
ok combat live savers, but I don’t remember that much of it. Let me think for a second…yes. Okay,” Lex continued, snatching the work light right out of Soraya’s hand. “We give her a quick exam, looking for serious, life-threatening injuries first–bleeders, bone breaks, bullet wounds, stuff like that. But shit! How are we supposed to work like this? There’s no gravity and no light. No heat, and no air scrubbers. I don’t…”
Of course, I am. If not for me, you’d be a vegetable right now with a brainpan full of stew. I can’t see myself, but the impact on your skull broke me loose. Some of the connective tissues linking me to the lobes of your brain were severed. I’m absorbing much of your pain, which is just slowing me down as I try to identify how badly I was damaged.
“Why would she have a bullet wound?” Anna asked. Soraya’s gaze snapped her way, her rigid, almost sickly expression twisting with rage. Jacoby felt it–hot, volatile, anger.
“Did you seriously just ask that?” Soraya snarled.
Stop absorbing my pain, then. Concentrate on healing yourself first. I need you…
Not to interrupt you there, Jacky-Boy, but if I stop intercepting your pain right now, you will not be…able…to…function. I can grow new tendrils to re-anchor to your brain, but you should focus on Soraya and the others before a fight breaks out and we jump from shit creek right into the open, flaming barbeque. I know you’re uncomfortable with conflict, but our little group really, and I mean really-really, needs you right now.
“What about medical supplies? We’ve got some onboard. They’re in the infirmary, right? I mean, it’s not much of an infirmary, but the aft passage has a room labeled emergency. I’ve walked by a bunch of times but never gone in. Maybe they have something there, right? Like a first aid kit or those…I don’t know what you call them, but the medical machines that check your vitals,” Jacoby interjected before anyone else could speak. He knew for a fact that the room was a small first-aid station, but didn’t want the others thinking he was prowling around when they were sleeping.