Placing the frightfully still form next to the fire Kassad didn't wait for Greene's return. She wouldn't need him to point out the obvious priority needs of this person. As Kassad sprinted back to the forest he braced himself for the reality that they might be too late for at least one of the survivors.
Back up into his spotting tree Kassad took another bead on a likely spot for the final crewman. Quickly down on the ground he bounded through the plants which splattered him with their sap as if in protest. Arriving at the site he found nothing.
Kassad was scanning the trees around him for another likely candidate to support his weight when his eye caught sight of something glinting brightly on the forest floor. Moving closer to the object was all that Kassad needed to identify it as the discarded foil from a ration pack. A bit of looking about soon identified more of the wrappers scattered about without a clear pattern.
It was only when Kassad looked up again in search of a tree for scouting that he saw the strange twisted mass of branches some four meters above. Barely visible within this cradle was a mass of ruined clothing that moved as if something within was breathing. Given that this world didn't have any native life with anything as advanced as lungs Kassad breathed a sigh of relief that he'd found who he was after.
The puzzle of how to get the figure down immediately replaced the puzzle of finding the individual. With as weak as the vegetation had proven to be Kassad wasn't willing to test its limits by adding his own weight to the structure. Prodding the figure free of the mass of limbs was a possibility, but again there were no branches with sufficient strength to do the job.
Calculating the fall in this gravity to be less than lethal Kassad gave the tree a stern shaking in an effort to dislodge the figure. At first a few branches popped free of the tangle. More violent shaking freed even more of the branches causing the remaining supporting foliage to bend dramatically under the mass they supported.
At last the figure in the branches came awake with a start. Its head thrust about blindly as its limbs grasped at the remaining branches. Kassad added a firm shaking of the tree to finally and completely extricate the individual.
The body fell so slowly that Kassad had no problem catching it before it could reach the forest floor. Once in his arms Kassad realized his mistake. Unlike most of the others this body was not weakened by malnutrition.
Strong legs kicked at Kassad hurling the two apart. Kassad landed on his back amid fluid spewing plants. Kassad's attacker landed in the undergrowth as well just two meters away. Kassad sat up to see the person he'd been attempting to rescue on all fours scrambling blindly against the earth looking, in all its tattered and soiled clothing, like some kind of wild animal.
Quickly regaining his footing Kassad considered his options. He didn't want to hurt the person, who was clearly confused and frightened as to what was happening to them. More importantly Kassad didn't want to get injured himself attempting to rescue them.
Self consciously looking around to make sure no one was around to see what was about to happen Kassad unholstered his pistol. Habitually checking the charge level on the weapon Kassad apologized to the stranger embarrassedly. Taking calm aim on the thrashing figure Kassad took a deep breath and squeezed the weapon in his hand evenly, letting the discharge surprise him. The bright electrical bolt leapt from weapon to target with such speed it registered only as an afterimage in Kassad's mind.
Arriving back at the survivor's camp at the same time as Greene, Kassad announced, "I'll take this one." He patted the individual's flank in a friendly manner. "He is going to need extra sedative." and declined to elaborate an explanation to Greene's inquiring confused expression.
Chapter 10: "Rescued"
"Exposure to Lawless Space has negative effects on terrestrial nervous tissue particularly with respect to neurotransmitter production and function. Degradation of neural activity occurs unevenly, with some areas being affected sooner and more severely than others. The reasons for this are not fully understood, and may be related to an as yet unobserved immune system response or failure specific to the Law's End phenomena."
-Excerpt from "Conclusions, Biochemical Analysis of Law's End Exposure"
Greene realized that she should be more annoyed then she was. She knew that overwhelming relief at having gotten everyone onboard the Sabha and loaded into the medical pods was clouding her judgment. That relief overshadowed the fact that she had done most of the work. After Kassad had loaded his mysterious problem passenger he'd disappeared into Sabha's equipment spaces leaving Greene to finish the actual rescue work alone.
In fact the last two survivors had to be transported in the dark, a darkness which had fallen rapidly on Alone. Greene was grateful that she'd mentally established a path to move the survivors from their camp to the Sabha. By the time darkness had completely fallen she'd been just familiar enough with it to avoid getting lost in the maze-like boulder field that surrounded them.
Greene's own forward thinking was not an excuse for Kassad's disappearance. He was the one who had been contracted to retrieve the crew of the expedition. While Greene was willing and eager to help she was principally there as an expert advisor, and couldn't help but feel as though she'd been taken advantage of. In addition to the annoyance of this lack of work, which had made the entire process take so much longer than it should have, Greene now couldn't find Kassad anywhere on the Sabha.
After returning her pressure helmet to its case in her stateroom, and getting a whiff of its exterior, Greene decided the entire pressure suit was in desperate need of a cleaning cycle. Even modern automated hygiene regulating and self cleaning suits benefited from taking a breather. After more than a week inside the pressure suit the relief she felt at removing it was more psychological than physical as her skin complained that the surrounding air was uncomfortably cold.
Fishing out her old traveling pressure suit Greene was struck by its immediate familiarity even after all these years. She'd hand decorated it in what more than one crew person on the ships she and her father had traveled on had called 'true spacer art' without any sarcasm that Greene could detect. Cartoon flowers and butterflies cascaded down from the helmet in a swirl of bright pastels that in knee-jerk-reaction seemed overly girly.
In more recent years Greene had attributed any girliness in her personality to her father's influences. Her father had a place for everything and everything in its place and this had included his daughter. He'd always wanted her to be the picture perfect little girl in homage to ancient and quaint notions of gender roles that fit so well with the corporate image.
Now the overly feminine and decidedly childish run of rendered flowers and butterflies she held in her hand were stripped of their color. Rendered in flat shades of grey the design seemed sadly devoid of the expression of personality she'd painstakingly poured into it. It felt very much as a personal loss. This was something she'd done as an expression of self, and not because she'd been compelled to by her father or as a product of her own misguided efforts to please him.
The admission that not everything childish or feminine about her was the result of her father imposing on her was a modest revelation that she pondered as she donned the suit. Back in its day it had been one of the finest models available, able to adjust to fit any form, it had been designed to be worn for a lifetime. She'd taken it along simply for emergency backup, swapping out the batteries and self regenerating cartridges as a matter of course even though she'd never expected to wear it again.
Everything still fit as advertised. Unlike the new cutting edge suit this required no stretching to force a fit. It was a home coming that suggested that perhaps she'd been too eager to distance herself from everything that connected her to her past. In her desire to fit the image she had so desired to project it may have been that she had denied the expression of some aspect of herself.
Lovingly replacing the helmet in its case Greene longed to see it again in glorious color and paused at the entrance to her stateroom lookin
g back. So many decisions had piled up over the years between that creative outburst and where she was now. Could it really be so easy to recapture that lost part of her simply by acknowledging that she was more than the words and forms she defined herself by?
Outside Greene's stateroom she found Canis doffing his own pressure suit in his dedicated cubby in the lounge area. With a kicking of feet and wiggling of withers and flank Canis extracted himself from the single piece garment. In a move that suggested much repetition of the procedure Canis activated a lever with one paw that caused the now empty suit to automatically perform the same sort of post use maintenance that all pressure suits required.
For a moment Greene stood in admiration of Canis. She couldn't help but be impressed by the ease at which the animal adapted to all the strangeness. The police dog turned pirate didn't even recognize the shift in allegiance. Then again the animal had to deal with the being a non-technological species living in a world built out of technology every day of its life. More than anything else it was the casual ease at which Canis fit into his world with his people that she found more than worthy of respect, and perhaps worthy of emulation.
Noticing her approving gaze Canis gave Greene an open mouthed dog smile and a friendly bark. Greene reflexively smiled back and Canis responded by stretching out his front feet and head down with his back arching high behind. The stretching ended with Canis rolling on his side with one paw batting playfully for her to join him on the floor.
Thought of tussling with the animal elicited a genuine smile to brake across Greene's face and she replied, "Maybe later. Right now do you know where Kassad is?" And immediate Greene felt embarrassment at having asked the deceptively human animal any question at all.
Canis barked affirmatively and springing to his feet bounded towards the cockpit.
"I already checked the cockpit." Greene protested, but Canis barked insistently and Greene relented to follow the animal with a sigh.
Walking inside the ship with its original configuration, as Greene was introduced to it rather than how she had become accustomed, was a bit disorienting. Of course that she was also exhausted from hauling survivors from their camp to the Sabha for hours might have something to do with her disorientation. Then there was the unavoidable but unpleasant to dwell on fact that her mind was breaking down.
As Greene followed Canis up the ladder to the cockpit she could hear definite sounds that were not something a dog would make. Sounds of tools and the thud of something heavy came from the cockpit. Interlaced through the working noises was a deep harsh breathing punctuated by mutterings uttered with the vehemence of darkest profanity.
Peaking cautiously into the cockpit Greene saw it every bit as empty as before and called out, "Kassad?" There was no immediate response except that Canis came over to paw nervously at her foot.
It was only when Greene stepped fully into the cockpit that she saw what her casual glance had missed before. A large deck mounted access plate had been removed to reveal an equipment space for the Sabha's control systems below. Inside the small space there were tools scattered about and several components had been dismantled. As Greene looked on in horror Kassad popped up, face red and puffed out in rage, slicing through a thick cable with a viciously curved knife.
Lunging towards the knife wielding Kassad Greene slapped him with enough force to knock him sideways. Taking advantage of the effectiveness of the stunning blow she tore the knife from his hand and sent it flying with a clatter down the ladder well. Grabbing the still stunned Kassad by his flight jacket she gave him a hard shaking.
Greene shouted demanding, "What are you doing? We have to get out of here. Have you gone mad?" Still recovering from the slap that had left a clear hand print shaped discoloration on his face Kassad simply blinked and stared in shock until Greene on the verge of tears demanded once again, "What are you doing?"
After a minute a sheepish Kassad replied, "Rewiring the autopilot to take inputs from those monitoring devices you installed."
Dubious and angry Greene rejected the explanation. "With a knife?"
With more self assurance and a growing annoyance Kassad explained, "Well yes. It would be a simple tweak ordinarily except that the wires are all color coded, and with color vision being gone, I'm having to reroute them through manually configured automatically fusing connectors, and…" Kassad trailed off then abruptly came to an angry revelation that made him shout, "Hey, you hit me!"
Realizing that she may have overreacted Greene replied, "It was just a slap."
"Why would you hit me?" Pointing indignantly to the cockpits ladder well Kassad added, "And throwing knives around like that. You could really hurt someone."
"I'm sorry. I thought you went crazy and were tearing apart the ship." Greene tried to explain then gave up and changed the topic. "What's wrong with the autopilot anyway?"
"You mean aside from being an antiquated military specification set up not friendly to modest tinkering?" Kassad asked rhetorically grimacing severely at the mess he'd had to make in order to implement the fairly minor change. "It's not designed to operate the jump drive, and we need to get the jump drive online and transit the moment we're clear of Law's End."
It made more sense than the sabotage Greene had originally suspected, but not much more. "Why? The Armhamon is going to be there to board us anyway. You can't run from a Lawship."
With more than a little skepticism Kassad noted, "If they're really a Lawship."
Rolling her eyes in disgust Greene replied, "Now you're being stupidly paranoid."
With a bitter chuckle Kassad explained his perspective, "Oh really? They certainly aren't just hanging out at the edge of Law's End for the scenery. If they wanted to rescue these people then why didn't they? It wouldn't be too hard to rig a shuttle with reaction drives to fly in and bring the crew out. I'd almost believe they were there to stop others from making the attempt except you saw for yourself how impossible making an interception in deep space is." Kassad looked into Greene's look of disbelief and looked away sighing. "So you tell me, if they're not there to perform a rescue or stop others from trying, then why are they out there? The only thing they can do is stop anyone from coming back out."
"That's insane." Greene protested, although the cold logic of it stabbed deeply from the cynical mistrusting part of her mind.
Resigned to Greene's disbelief Kassad grumbled, "Ordinarily I wouldn't have too much problem slipping past a ship like that by swapping drive systems, or backing out the other side of the system. In this case they had to have gotten a solid scan of the reaction drives on the way in and we'll show up like a signal flare coming out, and spending more time than absolutely necessary in Lawless space is not an option we want to entertain."
Wanting to debunk Kassad's suspicions Greene pressed for details asking, "And you think they're waiting to take a shot at us once we clear Law's End?"
Another bitter laugh escaped Kassad. "Oh no, I think they'll take a shot at us the second we're in range and then take the debris into custody once we drift to the other side."
It was clear even to Greene's disbelieving mind that Kassad had given serious thought to this but she couldn't reconcile his opinion with the universe as she understood it. "But why?"
With matter-of-fact seriousness Kassad answered, "Because this was an illegal research program."
"No." Greene said flatly no willing to believe she'd been involved in something illegal and not wanting to believe that their pilot had gone delusional. "No, it wasn't. I worked on this program. It was University funded and approved."
Working to force the self fusing connectors onto the cable ends Kassad nodded, "Oh, it may have been conducted with University resources, but it wasn't approved, at least not the true research goal. When the University found out, either someone with a pang of conscience on the team tipping them off or maybe someone did an inventory check that came up short, either way they killed the program. Probably sent the Lawship to make sure it stayed dead."
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"Oh really?" Greene responded condescendingly. "So what was the true research goal?"
Pairing up the cable ends he'd created which joined with a satisfying clicking noise Kassad admitted, "I don't know, couldn't get Savorne to come clean, but I think whatever it was resulted in Law's End shifting a few dozen light seconds. Whatever that was there are people willing to let a research crew die for it, and it's no stretch from there to believe that they're willing to kill over it. Although I couldn’t say if it's because they want the research for themselves or they're trying to keep it out of someone else's hands."
Now faced directly with all this circumstantial evidence Greene had to admit to herself that it didn't add up, but she wasn't willing to buy into Kassad's story completely and so she asked, "Okay then, even if all of that is true, why can't you trigger the jump drive?"
Trying and failing to keep the anguish out of his voice Kassad revealed, "I don't think my eyes are going to make it. Everything has already moved to looking flat and two dimensional in addition to being colorless. On top of that my hearing is mostly gone. Everything sounds like its coming to me through a long tunnel."
Even if Greene gave Kassad the benefit of the doubt it didn't lean his actions any more merit. "Then we're doomed. You said it yourself. They'll have your engines tracked the second we lift off all the way out."
Law's End Page 10