by Elle Casey
He reaches out with his uninjured arm and claps me on the shoulder. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think someone just dropped a sledgehammer on me.
“Okay, I will remember. Now, tell me… why does the schlafhammer work its magic on you, crazy bitch?”
I give him a wry look. “You can just call me Cass. And what in the hell is a schlaf-whatever?”
“Schlafhammer. The ‘sleep hammer’, in English. It is the disk we keep inside the chicken.”
I shrug. “How am I supposed to know? I don’t even have a schlaf…”
“Hammer,” he fills in for me. “Schlafhammer. It only works on members of the OSG. All those slimy little devils who have the OSG picochip in their bodies.”
“Chip? What chip?” Chills move up and down my spine. I don’t know anything about any chips, but I don’t like where this is headed.
“You’re OSG? Seriously OSG?” Lucinda is back in my doorway, Rollo standing behind her, prepared to use her as a shield if necessary, the coward. Her accusation bites into my skin.
“No, don’t be ridiculous.” I’m tempted to spit in disgust, but this is my room, so I don’t. “Never in a million years.”
Lucinda’s not buying it; I can tell by the look on her face. “Then why does that schlephammer thing work on you and not us?”
“Schlafhammer,” Beltz says, rolling his eyes. “It’s not that difficult. Try it. You can say it.”
“Shut up,” Lucinda says, not even looking at him. All her attention is on me. “You should have told us you were OSG before we agreed to continue on with you.”
“Why would I tell you something that’s not true?” I look first at her and then Jeffers. “Believe me, I’m not OSG. Is my family OSG? Yes. Okay. Fine. But that doesn’t matter. They’re not on this ship, and they don’t know I’m here, so it doesn’t matter.”
Lucinda finally looks at Beltz. “You said she has a chip.”
He shrugs. “I assume, yes. She is sick, is she not?”
I shake my head, staring at the floor. Trying to concentrate with all these people crowding my room while still suffering the aftereffects of whatever hit me is impossible. “This is crazy.”
“You should let me take a look at that injury,” Jeffers says to Beltz, referring to his bicep. There is quite a bit of blood on his flightsuit now. “Before you go back to your ship.”
“You are a healer?” Beltz asks, suddenly interested in something other than me.
“Of a kind.”
“Oh, that is good news. Okay, I will come with you.” He looks at me. “You go to my ship. Ask my cousin Jens to scan your body for the chip. Then we will know.”
“What?” This is making no sense to me at all.
Rollo rubs his hands together. “Can Rollo go? Rollo loves visiting new ships.”
“Yeah,” I say, bitterly, “we noticed.”
“One escort. I will allow that. But not him.” Beltz flicks his gaze at Rollo before he turns and heads for the door, Jeffers leading the way. He looks back at me and winks. “You want the chip to stay or go? We can remove it for you, if you want.”
With every word that leaves his stupid lips, my crew doubts me more. My words come out staccato as I try to control my anger. “I don’t have a chip.”
“Okay. If you say so.” He chuckles as he goes out the portal and into the corridor beyond, following Jeffers' lead.
“I’m going with you to do that scan,” Lucinda says, sounding like she expects me to argue.
“Fine.” I shove past her and Rollo as I head to the airlock that will allow me to board the DS Mekanika. If Lucinda wants to come and watch, she can come, but I’m not waiting for her distrusting ass.
Chapter Twenty-One
I DON’T KNOW WHAT I was expecting exactly, but this isn’t it. The DS Mekanika is so clean, it gleams. It makes the Anarchy look like a station toilet in comparison. I make a mental note to demand a full clean-up by the entire crew when I return. If I return.
A large man even bigger than Beltz is waiting for us as we enter the cargo bay of the DS Mekanika through our connected airlocks.
Thumbs hooked into the waistband of my flight suit, I nod at him. “I’m Cass, Captain of the DS Anarchy.”
“I know who you are,” he says simply. And then he turns, expecting Lucinda and me to follow. Apparently, the introductions are over.
“I didn’t catch your name,” I say, taking long strides to try and keep up with him. His back is rapidly disappearing down the corridor. Lucinda is already getting breathless behind me.
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he stops outside the door that on my ship is the engine room. He bangs on it, ignoring the keypad that would be a much more subtle announcement of our arrival. The echoes of his fist booming on the door ring out around us. Apparently, it’s a thing with these beast-men not to use keypads; they’d rather rattle the portal doors off their tracks.
A face appears in the window. The boy inside looks like he’s about twelve. When he sees us standing there, his eyes go wide and then the door slides open.
“Wow. You’re not what I was expecting,” he says. Then he grins.
“I know what you mean,” I say wryly. A child is going to mess with my body? I don’t think so.
The smattering of bristles on his chin tells me he’s older than twelve, but no way is he my age. Too many zits for that. I wonder why he doesn’t do what everyone else his age does, namely visit a med station somewhere and have his hormones adjusted to make those angry-looking bumps disappear. Maybe he’s one of those originists who doesn’t believe in all the modern medical technology used to make us more visually appealing.
I have to admit, I’m not much of a fan of MI either. The more those people stick me with things, the less I like the idea of medical intervention. It has always struck me as cheating and inviting things in that should stay outside of everyday life. I’ve seen enough MI addicts to know I’d rather not avail myself of its temptations — the perfect face, the perfect body, skin that hardly ages. Sure, ridding the universe of cancer and earth-borne viruses and all those horrible diseases is nice; but the stuff they do these days —changing people’s faces, skin color, body shape— it’s going too far. Too much. That’s the problem with humans; they always want to go beyond the limits and then realize only when it’s too late that they can’t turn back.
“So you’re the OSG spy, huh?” He backs away from the door and gestures for us to enter. “Come on in. My name is Jens. I spell it with a J, but you say it like a Y. Yens. It’s Germanic. My cousin’s first name is Gunter. Our family traces back to Germany on Earth.”
Talk about too much information. I have no idea why some people take so much pride in tracing their roots back to a specific spot on Earth. The place is a wasteland now, every square centimeter of it — poison for all humans who approach. There is no more Germany, no more America, no more Africa; it’s all gone. Only those who were living on the twenty-three space stations during the last war survived, and now here we are nearly two hundred years later: some half a million souls trying to survive out in the Dark. At least the only alien life we’ve encountered so far is plant-based and bacterial.
“I’m not a spy,” I say, working to keep a short rein on my temper. This kid is supposed to be able to prove my innocence, so it wouldn’t be smart to piss him off. He’d better not expect me to dump all my family history on him as part of this process, though.
“Then why’d you get sick when the disk was on your ship?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. We don’t have a disk. Just do this scan or whatever and then we’ll be on our way.”
He pulls a stool out from under a workbench that’s covered in mechanical parts. “Have a seat.” Busying himself with a box and its attached wand, he whistles. I recognize the tune but can’t place it. It’s been a while since I’ve had access to music.
Glancing over at the door, I see the hulking form of our escort there, his arms crossed, his jaw set, and
his stance saying we aren’t going anywhere until he decides. His hair is blond, although a darker version of Beltz’s and Jens’s. Deep-set eyes make him seem sinister, and his emotionless attitude does nothing to dispel that vibe. I think he’d sooner slice me from stem to stern than look at me for much longer. I suddenly have the urge to get the hell out of there, but just as I’m about to stand, Lucinda glares at me.
“What?” I ask, leaning back on the stool a bit, acting like I’m perfectly comfortable being on show for these idiots.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell us.”
I throw my arms up, beyond frustrated. “There’s nothing to tell! I’m not OSG!”
Jens is at the table, his wand moving over three tiny picochips on the bench. I recognize them as the same type we used in personal comm devices around our wrists during training when I was between the ages of ten and fifteen, before I advanced to the elite corps and before I left my father’s rule for good. The device around his neck beeps each time the wand moves over one of them. I wish I could see them better from where I’m sitting, to determine if there’s some sort of identifier imprinted on their capsules, but I’m too far away.
The wand comes up in Jens’s hand as he spins around to face me, and stops right in front of my nose, ending my attempts at learning more about the picochips. Trying to bring the thing into focus makes my eyes cross.
“Just let me adjust the sensitivity,” he says absently, turning some dials on the box he has affixed around his neck with a strap. I close my eyes as he looks down and accidentally bonks me in the nose with the device.
“Oh, sheisse, sorry.” A few more turns of his dials and a squealing comes out of the front of it. “Whoa, too much.” Dialing it back, he finally looks up at me. “Ready?”
I shrug. “Ready for nothing to happen, yeah.”
He starts up at the top of my head, frowning in concentration. He looks down from time to time at his readout, managing to tap me on the head every time he isn’t focused on what he’s doing with the wand.
“Do you mind?” I ask, sighing loudly.
“Mind?” He looks up and sees his machine resting on my chin. “Oh, sorry. Still getting the hang of this thing.” He lifts it off and moves it behind first one ear and then the other. Nothing happens, of course.
“Looks like they didn’t put it in your brain at least. That’s a good sign.”
I shake my head. “You’re completely insane. You actually believe my family would put a chip in my head?” My dad’s an asshole, but he always prized my intellect. He wouldn’t have let anyone mess with my gray matter.
He shrugs. “I’ve seen it. The machine doesn’t lie.” He goes back to his readout, tapping me on the side of the face with his wand in the process.
“How long is this going to take?” Lucinda asks. “I have things to do.”
“Like pack your bags?” I ask sarcastically. One small sign that things aren’t going how she likes, and she’s all ready to throw in the towel. So much for crew loyalty. At least I know better than to trust her in the future. She’s already shown she’ll turn on me with very little provocation.
It’s positively depressing, really. So far, being a captain of a DS is nothing like I imagined it would be. Of course, I had thought all along that more of my friends would be joining me. That would have made a difference, I’m sure. But they chose to stay behind and continue to live hand to mouth, preferring an existence of knowing they had nothing to one of hoping they could have more some day and working toward making that hope a reality. Oh well. At least now I know who my real friends are. Or friend, singular. Baebong. I hope he’s not planning on taking off on me. I wasn’t exactly very open about my origins with him either. At the time, it seemed perfectly reasonable to keep my history out of the equation, but now I’m doubting my decision to stay completely anonymous from everyone in my life.
“Shouldn’t take too long if she’s clean,” Jens says, answering Lucinda’s question.
“I’m clean.” I nearly growl at him, I’m so frustrated.
“We’ll see.” The wand moves down to my chest, bumping into my left boob.
I slap his hand away. “Watch it, perv.”
He looks up shocked and then his face goes really red. “Oh, sorry. That was an accident.”
“Sure it was.” I glare at him, knowing he sees women maybe once every few months. “Just keep your paws to yourself.”
“All right, ease up, I said I was sorry.” He shakes his head and goes back to his machine, but his face is really red.
Hmm. Another virgin, perhaps? A kindred spirit? We are a very rare breed.
“How old are you, anyway?” I ask, curious now about who he is and how he got to be here on this ship making detection devices. I’ve seen a few young people on crews over the years, but he’s much younger than any I’ve known who can actually make things like this machine he’s using.
“Fifteen. How about you?”
“Nineteen.”
His wand moves to my stomach. “Your family is OSG?”
“Yes.” My own face goes red at the admission. “But I don’t have any contact with them whatsoever.” I say this for Lucinda’s benefit, although I don’t look at her to see if she’s paying attention. “Not for years.”
“We’ll see,” he says, running the wand down the front of my legs.
When he reaches my feet without his device sounding off, I smile. “See? No chip. Told you so.”
“Stand up, please,” he says, giving a wry smile in return. “I have to check your back side.”
“Backside? You must be kidding.”
His face is red all over again. “I don’t mean it like that. I just mean your back half. I just checked your front half.”
“And you think my father put a chip up my ass?” I snort. “OSG are assholes, but they’re not deviants.”
“You sure about that? Because I’ve found chips in some very strange places, trust me. My scan isn’t officially done until I scan you at one hundred percent. We’re at sixty right now.”
“Fine.” I throw my arms up and turn around. “Scan my ass. See for yourself. I’m clean.”
I roll my eyes to the ceiling as the wand is moving up my legs to the top of my butt, but just as I’m about to tell him to go screw himself and his damn wand, the fucking beeper starts sounding from inside his box.
“A-ha!” he yells, glee coloring his words. “Found ya!”
“You bitch,” Lucinda says with way more venom than I deserve.
I spin around and grab at the box hanging around his neck. “Let me see that thing. You’re lying. This is broken. That’s a false reading.”
His words come out strained as the tightened strap around his neck cuts off his airway. “No way, lady. This machine was calibrated today. It’s in perfect condition. You have a chip in your lower back.” He yanks it back from me and adjusts the strap so it’s not choking him anymore.
“Like hell I do.” I glare at him.
He reaches around behind me with the wand and it beeps again. He grins. “See? Second reading. Same as the first.”
“Give me that.” I yank the wand out of his hand and put it on him —nothing—, then on Lucinda’s neck —nothing—, then on my lower back again. The machine beeps really loudly.
My breaths come out in ragged huffs, and my ears are burning with anger and embarrassment. I feel like I’m going to vomit right here on my own boots. How can this be? How can I have a chip in me? Who put it there? Was it my father? Would he do that? Surely I would have remembered something like that happening to me. Known about it. Had some sort of clue. What in the hell is the chip even for? What’s it doing to me? Is it used to control me? To keep track of me? I’m getting sicker by the second.
“Don’t worry,” Jens says, very happy with himself. “I can get it out for you.”
“She probably doesn’t want it out,” Lucinda says, sneering. “Then her team won’t be able to find her later when they come to take over
our ship.”
I shove her out of the way so I’m not tempted to punch her in the face. “Take it out. Right now.” I’m sweating with the sense of urgency that’s overtaking my rational, thinking mind. If this thing is a tracker, I need to get it out of me and send it through a wormhole to another galaxy. My father cannot find me, no matter what. I know too much, I’ve seen too much, and I’m not going back there.
Jens hurries to take the machine from around his neck and puts it down with a clatter onto his workbench. “You’ll have to come to our medical chamber. It could be in there pretty deep.”
I’m standing in the middle of this kid’s workstation wondering what the hell I should do next, and my ship is floating out there with only one person onboard who I can trust. All the other crew members would probably love nothing more than to get rid of me, and for all I know, my father could be coming for me right now. I’ve never felt so vulnerable in my entire life as I do right now. What to do, what to do, what to do?
Chapter Twenty-Two
AFTER CONFIRMING VIA COMM THAT Baebong is in control of my ship and Beltz is behaving himself onboard, I submit myself to the surgical interventions of a fifteen year old virgin. Obviously, I’m desperate and very possibly losing my mind.
“Now, don’t move,” he says. “You refused the anesthetic, so this is going to burn like nothing you’ve ever felt before.”
“I doubt it,” I say, a memory of my father roasting the skin of my arm with a dry-laser still quite clear in my mind and heart. It might have been a full five years ago, but it seems like it was just last week that I was moving through my eighth level of training. I passed my POW versions with flying colors, and I have the scars to show for it, having refused to allow my father to remove them with MI. I used to wear them to remind him of how far he was willing to go in the name of the OSG and his career. Now I wear them to remember, and to help me not to ever become complacent. The scars never bothered him as much as they bothered me, though.