The camerawoman raises her grotesque, skinless arm and signals a thumbs-up. From Delilah’s perspective, the signal was to her, but, of course, it’s really to the infiltrators. Delilah nods, barely containing her shuddering, and turns away from the porthole. The outer airlock hatches seal shut and the infiltrators are on board. Several of the women in the room with me gasp in horror. Even I can’t help glancing back at the bulkhead hatch sealing us in. How secure is it, really? How secure will it be when the skin-wrappers take over the command center, or the core? Our lives are only a button press away from the skinless pirates.
The pre-recording disappears and Nia’s odious face replaces the image on the screen.
A thump sounds on the outside of the bulkhead. We all jump. It could have been anything, really, some unimportant piston somewhere popping or the ship settling, but it’s incredibly timed. There’s no shaking the fear that it’s a skin-wrapper, just outside the hatch, and not only that, that they’re hungry to eat our flesh like the inhuman monsters they resemble.
“Now do you have an inkling, madam director, of what’s really going on? Oh, or did you know and were just hoping no one else would figure it out? Not wanting to cause a panic, are we? Don’t worry, girls. I’m sure your security personnel are perfectly safe, and are taking care of the problem as we speak.”
From above the camera’s view, Delilah’s pale, rigid corpse suddenly appears. The crown of her head bumps into the camera and, except for Diane, everyone in the room gasps seemingly as one. If one of Nia’s disciples didn’t push the body at the camera to get that exact effect, then it was a fortuitous coincidence for her. We are well and truly shitting our pants. All eyes, rather than looking at our captor, are locked on our director, our rock.
A thump sounds at the hatch again. Like prairie dogs we turned to look at it in unison. A second knock was no accident. Only Diane is still staring forward when we look back. Zanib is pale and visibly shaken.
“Suppose I take it as a given that you’ve infiltrated my ship. Suppose I take it as a further given that, granted sufficient time, you’ll be able to gain access to this meeting room. Aside from terrorizing my employees, I have to assume there’s some purpose to this communication.”
Nia nods and wags a finger at the camera.
“You’re right there, madam director. There’s always an easy way and a hard way to get through any situation. Even a situation as in the bag as this one. You can still be an irritant to me.”
“How can I avoid being an irritant? And what does it grant me to do so?”
Nia locks eyes on Diane.
“We can dig you out, like digging a tick out of skin. But this meeting room of yours also functions as a sort of a panic room, doesn’t it? That’s where you’d send your people to keep them safe. But it’s going to take us time, lots of precious time and effort that I’d rather not expend to get at you. And you can make it even easier on us by telling your security personnel to stand down, and then giving us all your codes.”
“And if I do this, what are you going to do for me?”
“We’re taking your supplies. We’re taking your fuel. But we can leave you oxygen and send a beacon to your corporation to retrieve you. That’s the best you can hope for.”
Another thump at the hatch shatters the last of my frayed nerves. I look into Zanib’s eyes. I’m no doctor – medical or otherwise – but I can tell she’s going into shock. Her pupils are hugely dilated and she looks like all she wants to do is bolt like a hare. I feel a gnawing at the pit of my stomach as I realize that if my experienced ink surfer roommate is this scared, we are in true danger.
“You’d rip us apart just for the spite of letting us die in space?”
Nia turns back to one of her floating protégés.
“Tell Hannah to turn on the can opener.”
A tendril of blondish-brown hair drifts into Nia’s earhole, tickling her just enough to be annoying. She slaps Delilah’s floating body away.
“And someone get this thing out of here and cut up for parts.” She turns back to Diane. “We do so need fresh organs. Every medical ship does. You wouldn’t have had to find that out firsthand if you had been reasonable and considered your crew. But I’m getting the feeling you’re trying to delay me, madam director. So, the offer, what little it was, is off the table.”
A loud metallic buzz sounds just outside the hatch, followed almost immediately by the shriek of metal on metal. Nia’s promised can opener is unmistakably cutting through to us. One of the analysts from Accounts Receivable leaps to her feet. We all turn to look at her. She seems ready to shout or do something, something memorable. Her eyes are darting around the room and finally settle on a stapler on the conference table. It’s probably the heaviest thing in here, and the closest thing we have to a weapon.
The analyst snatches it up and turned to face the bulkhead.
“We have to fight, don’t we? We have to do something, don’t we?”
The room fills with unnatural, high-pitched snickering. The skin-wrappers have not cut the feed, looking forward to watching whatever was about to happen to us next.
Another analyst, in a severe brown suit rises and holds her hand out, palm upward, to the first. They had been sitting near each other. Perhaps she is the other one’s supervisor.
“Izzy,” the supervisor whispers, but in such close quarters and with such frayed senses we can all hear every word, “We’re not going to be able to fight back against plasma torches. Not with a stapler. All that’s left for us is…our dignity.”
The supervisor looks up at Diane. Diane doesn’t say a word, but with her silence tacitly agrees. Izzy looks like she has something else to say, but sheepishly places the makeshift weapon in her supervisor’s hand. They share a look that suggested they have either worked together a very long time, or are close friends. The look becomes an embrace.
“Oh, no, no, please fight,” Nia says with a snigger, “Please fight back. We have so little entertainment out here.”
“Gash,” Izzy’s supervisor hisses as she leads her friend back to her seat.
The shriek of the can opener continues, unabated. I look in Zanib’s eyes. She puts her arm around my shoulders with a sigh. We haven’t known each other long, but are reduced to cold comforts. I never thought before I would just wait, resigned to my end.
The can opener fizzles and stops. On the vidscreen, Nia looked around her command center hastily.
“What? What happened?”
The screen mutes for a moment and I dare to let my heart soar. Has someone come to our aid? Have the diseased pirates simply decided we aren’t worth the effort after all? Nia’s grotesque, dripping visage belies that hope before she even turns the volume back on.
“Oh, sorry about all the theatrics. I guess we hacked your system sooner than expected. We’ll be in directly.”
The hatch shudders and shakes. I gasp, along with everyone else, though we knew the end was coming eventually. Whatever damage the can opener has done to the outside of the hatch is clearly clogging it up now, so they are just trying to open it the standard hydraulic way. The hatch moans in agony, and then, finally, at about a quarter normal speed, it opens.
A skin-wrapper stands in the hatchway, wrapped from head to toe in gauze and then that surrounded by a second layer of plastic boom suit, like a bubble. She holds in her hands a dangerous, toothy plasma torch, a weapon more like a flamethrower than a soldering iron. Plasma torches have long been the favored weapons of space combatants. Plasma was necessary to cut through bulkheads, because unlike projectile weapons or lasers a plasma torch can’t accidentally punch a hole in the bulkhead and lead to explosive decompression.
Judging by the size of the nozzle and the amount of admixture in the tank strapped to her back, the skin-wrapper could instantly vaporize the entire complement of the meeting room. The question is how many of us will voluntarily go with her for dissection – or, even the thought makes me shudder, vivisection – for the value our o
rgans would go towards prolonging the lives of the disease-riddled corsairs.
“Madam director,” the skin-wrapper says, her voice muffled behind layers of gauze, though sounding distinctly un-croaky, like the other skin-wrappers.
“Helena,” Diane replies.
I realize with a start that we have all turned away from the vidscreen and the leering voyeurs that the skin-wrappers have made of themselves. Clearly the distraction was not solely for our sake. The skin-wrappers on the other boat had been so fixated on our hatch, they hadn’t noticed the arrival of Helena’s people outside their own bridge.
Two goons in boom suits, affixed to the skin-wrapper ship with what I assume are mag boots, level beam rifles at the transparent dome that serves as the skin-wrapper command center. I gasp as they begin firing in what I at first assume to be a willy-nilly manner, but as the skin-wrappers’ heads snap back and chests explode I realize the goons are actually aiming with deadly and deliberate precision.
“No, you fucks!” Nia shrieks, her voice rising to an octave I hadn’t believed her capable of.
As the far side of the dome turns to Swiss cheese, explosive decompression is almost instantaneous. The goal of Helena’s goons is not to board the enemy vessel and plunder their goods, as the plasma-torch-armed skin-wrappers had intended for us. No, their goal is murder, judicious and expert. I’m surprised but weirdly relieved that we have two such hardcore professionals on board.
The bodies of her crew tumbling backward around her, Nia scrabbles at the camera feed and manages to grab it. We see her, hanging on to us for dear life, as her morphia bag is sucked back towards the increasing rows of holes. In that instant, I feel for her as a fellow human being, forgetting that she is a grotesque minister of death who would have happily watched me burn me alive moments ago. All I see is a sick woman, scrabbling to keep her medbag from coming loose, and clinging with another hand for dear life.
In the end, the camera gives out, pulling loose and tumbling off to bounce against the various surfaces of the dome.
“…And I think that’s about enough of that,” the director says, as though cutting off a particularly chatty subordinate.
She reaches out and switches off the feed. We all groan like a class full of kindergartners. It strikes me that we all just cried out in protest of having our view of a bloodsport cut off. That worries something deep inside of me.
Diane raises herself from her seat, halfway pushing and halfway pulling on the heavy conference table. She reaches for her crutches, which two people grab and practically shove under her armpits unbidden.
“Ladies,” she states flatly, “I apologize for the ruse. As some of you have probably guessed, it was necessary.”
The director then explains what we have just witnessed.
Helena and the director had been in control of the situation the entire time. Helena and her people had no trouble sniffing out our infiltrators. Then, disguising herself as one, Helena began communicating with the skin-wrapper vessel. Then the problem was the plasteel dome atop the skin-wrapper ship. Pointing in every direction, the skin-wrappers would have been able to spot anyone approaching, and presumably raise a blast shield.
The entire business of pretending to cut into the meeting room and then capturing the codes was all solely to keep the attention of every skin-wrapper in the command center locked on the vidscreen, watching us squirm. Diane had played along, trying to draw Nia into conversation, but when that hadn’t worked they had switched over to plan B: the play acting. And with all of the skin-wrappers focused like lasers on us, the two goons had been able to crawl around the far side of the enemy vessel and get the drop on them without raising suspicion.
The conventional telephone rings and Helena picks it up.
“This is security. I see. Well done. Yeah…I don’t think that’s up to me. I’ll ask.” She proffers the phone towards Diane, without actually seeming to want her to take it. “Madame director, Prosser and Tampa have the corsair leader alive. Shall we… rectify that situation?”
Diane turns with some difficulty to look at Helena standing behind her.
“I’m hardly a subject matter expert on security, but if I recall my supervision class correctly, corporate regulation state we’re to take and hold any corsair captains for intelligence-gathering purposes.”
Helena’s costume is beginning to unravel. Her face, damaged mouth and all, is a mask of bafflement, as though Diane had just told her to go take a flying fuck. Her lips work as though trying to gum up some words.
“Has the regulation changed?” the director asks acidly.
“Well, no.”
“Then why the sudden confusion?”
I suddenly feel awkward. This is a dressing-down, and it shouldn’t take place in front of us. But Helena has brought it on herself.
“You’re… you’re going to waste food on her? And oxygen? After she came into our workplace? Threatened our lives?”
The way Helena says it, she’s clearly far more aggrieved by the violation of her sacred office than by the threat to her wellbeing. Life’s an afterthought for a deep ink security specialist. The sanctity of the workplace is everything.
“It’s not your decision, Helena. Nor, frankly, is it mine. The food and oxygen on this boat is not mine to distribute as I see fit. It belongs to the corporation and we are merely its stewards.”
She glances around the room, as if remembering for the first time that she has an audience.
“That’s a lesson each of you can take to heart. It’s been a tough day. We’ll reconvene in six hours to complete our briefing. That’ll put us one hour out from the objective.”
Eight
I hold in the yawn as long as humanly possible, but can’t wait for the entire corridor to clear before letting it out. The important thing is the director didn’t see me.
“You getting tired, virgin? Better go rack out for a while.”
I’m exhausted. Beyond exhausted. All the adrenaline has fled from my body like rats from a demolition site. But something else tingles further forward on the front burner of my anatomical messages.
As if on cue, my tummy rumbles. I haven’t had a speck since we last ate together. I’m not sure if she hears it (in a way, I hope she can’t, because nothing can spike a friendship quite as quickly as an unwanted exchange of bodily noises) but I pat my belly anyway.
“I will, but I need to grab something to nosh first. Up for your eighth ribeye of the day?”
“Nah, I’ve got to bow out this time, or else catch up with you later. But make sure you grab some human fuel this time, though, and not just the flash-fried noodle garbage.”
I may not know Zanib intimately yet, but turning down food does not sound like her at all.
“What have you got to do that’s so important?”
She smiles.
“I’ve got to visit my babies.”
She pronounces “babies” like “beh-bies.” She must be headed for the superluminal phone bank. Frankly, I’m a little stunned. Ink surfers aren’t famous for being family types, and Zanib in particular seems too young. Not to mention her figure doesn’t suggest a single pregnancy, let alone multiple. Then again, she must have the metabolism of a camel to eat the way she does and look like that.
“I didn’t realize you had kids.”
She turns her head back and barks out laughter so long and hard she has to grab herself to stop.
“Kids? Like actual kids? Hell, no, virgin, I ain’t dead yet. I’ve got years of surfing the ink left in me. What, did you think I was calling home?”
Well, this is cryptic. My mouth quirks, halfway of its own accord.
“Well, yeah.”
“Jeez, virgin, don’t you know anything? We don’t have free comms out here. The only thing that goes in or out superluminally is certified, notarized business with HQ. You weren’t planning on checking in with home, were you?”
“Well, not now, I guess. So, what are these, ah, babies of yours then?”
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“Walk this way,” she says, affecting a spooky accent and a villainous laugh.
She leads me down into the working area of the Borgwardt. Being stuck in research mode, I haven’t really had a chance to explore the ship this far. It’s about what I expected from a corporate vessel. Each department has an assigned bay, packed with desks separated from each other by felt-lined cubicles. Across from each open bay are two or three individual offices for first line supervisors, and most of those bear actual name and position placards.
The attack by the skin-wrappers has sent staplers, personal photos, and phones tumbling to the deck, but many of the workers are already back at their desks, fastidiously re-arranging things. In Accounts Payable, one woman is having a very animated conversation on her jotter with someone who, based on what Zanib just told me, must be elsewhere on the ship. Hoping not to miss it, I stop to peer into the Accounts Receivable bay, and, as expected, the angry woman’s conversation partner is there, seemingly just as upset.
Zanib grabs me.
“All the places you could be interested in, and it’s accounting that’s caught your eye. Come on, we’re almost there.”
Once we’re past the departmental bays we get to some bays that are designated for technical work, packed with lab equipment and researchers in white coats. I don’t recognize what any of them are working on, but I can notice certain differences between their disciplines, based on the names listed on the bays. The xenoclimatologists all wear flip-flops and short sleeves, like they’re used to hanging out on alien beaches. The pure mathematicians are all wearing the fat, fist-sized, short-hanging neck cravats that are all the rage on Broatoa. They also seem to favor old-fashioned slate chalkboards, whereas the engineers have a bulkhead-sized computer screen they are scribbling on and constantly crossing out and writing over one another’s ideas.
This time I pass Zanib by, missing the fact that she’s stopped to begin jimmying open a hatch to a smaller, almost closet-sized bay.
“What’s this?” I ask, perplexed. The hatch is not marked, except by biohazard signs and cautions not to enter ranging in urgency from frantic to quite frantic.
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