Love and Other Metals

by K. P. Redmond

  Now. I bolt across the open space between the two ships as fast as my boots will allow, the hammer heavy in my fists. I come up close to the Kestrel’s hull. I slink along the side of the ship hoping that I’m out of view of their cameras, and make my way swiftly to the point near the stern where the laser blister protrudes down from the stern.

  I stand by the blister. The laser’s big lens is obscured by the retractable dust cover of the blister. I try to pry back the cover with my hands but my gloves are too clumsy to grip the smooth metal. I pull a screwdriver from my belt and go to work on the joints and have better luck; I get a flap of metal to fold out from the cover and take the rest with a big pair of pliers. The lens is exposed, looking like a big malevolent glass eye. I stand back from the laser and position my hammer. I stomp and shuffle my feet past the dust onto the rocky ground underneath, signaling the boots to establish maximum grip. I feel the claws digging in tight. I rear back, take a breath and swing.

  The iron head of the hammer hits the lens and bounces. My body reels back at the knees from the reaction but my boots stay firmly planted, so I recover. I stoop down to examine the damage. The lens is scarred but not broke—probably good enough to ruin the laser but I ain’t in the mood for half measures. I stand, pull my arms back, preparing to swing again, when I feel movement on the left arm. The blob of materia has jumped off my wristy again and has fallen into the dust.

  Oh great. Did the shock of the hammer strike damage or piss off the little guy? But no, the goo immediately stands up in a tall thumb, then while I watch it reforms into a shape like an oversized, double-headed golf tee. “What are you doing?” I ask. The golf tee turns and looks at me with its shiny eyes and blinks once. It turns towards the Kestrel, bends head over tail, and in a blur, swiftly summersaults its way to the hull of the ship, kicking up a swirl of dust as it goes. It finds an access panel and in it goes; within seconds, the blob has disappeared.

  I got no clue what it’s doing. Maybe that’s the last time I’ll see it. I refocus on the center of the laser’s lens and swing again, this time with my teeth gritted and a loud grunt of anger. The hammer slams squarely into the center of the lens. The lens shatters. Big shards shoot out explosively from the impact. One fragment hits me but bounces off without cutting my suit. Good thing.

  Mission accomplished, I drop the hammer in the dust, turn, and hoof it back to the CM. I’m not bothering to sneak around this time. Now it’s all about speed. I push the hiking boots as fast as they will go. My right boot is getting worse; it’s slipping a lot now, making my walking gait slower and asymmetrical. My visor is back to operating in ordinary infrared, since my fair-weather Gumby left me. But the sun ain’t been down long, so the dust and rocks are freshly hot and I can see good. I cut across the area between the ships at an angle since the CM’s airlock is on the far side of the hull.

  The sooner I can get in the hatch, the sooner we can be getting off of this rock. I can’t wait to see those big engines flare and see the Kestrel, from above, disappear in the haze. But once I get to where I can see the airlock, I spy the two thugs I had seen earlier. They are both about my size and indistinguishable from each other except for the color of their armbands: red on one man, orange on the other.

  They are kneeling down next to their comrade, who’s laying prostrate in the haze. He’s the horny creep who’d put the moves on Katya. She dumped him out of the ship like she said she would. Parting in such sweet sorrow.

  O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou, forsooth, alas!

  I’m down in the dust Juliette, got knocked on my ass.

  They see me. Orange Armbands is pointing in my direction. I pivot on my right foot. It slides out from under me; I catch my balance and plant it down again and head for the side of the CM. Maybe I can get around the other way, pop in the airlock, and lock them out. I glance back towards the Kestrel. There are a half dozen men headed my way, plodding along but determined, each one with a gun on his hip. They were on their drone-directed snipe hunt but apparently had not found me. But now they have.

  If I can beat them all to the airlock, it will be game over. I limp along the side of the ship, exposed fully by the floodlights. To make matters worse, with my broken boot I’m not much faster than they are, and with the ground jerking back and forth, I’m slowed down even more. Once again I’m pushing the ventilation system of my suit beyond its capacity. I’m short of breath. I can smell my own stink from being way too long in the suit. The suit’s water is depleted and my throat is dry, and I’m exhausted in spite of my panic.

  I round the hull and see the airlock, but the two men are already there! Crap crap crap, I say to myself. I’m toast. The posse of Kestrel men gaining on me at my back, and those two goons are ahead of me, guns in hand, hoofing it towards me. I got seconds. They’re gonna kill me. What do I do now?

  I drop to my knees. The haze that covers the ground now covers me. I can’t see nothing; even the infrared is useless in the thick dust. I ain’t never been underwater—ain’t been around much water all in one place since I was little—but from the videos I seen, this is what it must be like. The dust is thick as syrup; I almost have to swim through it to make progress. I know the hull is to my left, so I crawl on my hands and knees in that direction. I feel the trembling of the ground through my kneepads.

  My glove bumps against one of the metal feet that holds the CM above the ground. I bump my helmet up against the steel hull. I can’t see jack, but I know the skin of the CM curves down and forms the bottom of the hull. The feet and trusses hold the whole thing a bit less than a meter off the ground. Somewhere down here too are the moorings that fasten the feet to the rocky surface, the moorings that will blow up when Katya ignites them. Hoping she doesn’t do that right now.

  I get down from my knees to my belly. I slither down into the gap between the skids and the bottom of the hull, feeling my way with my gloves, trying not to tear my suit on any sharp rocks. I don’t know if they’ll follow me down here, but at least if I can’t see them, they can’t see me neither. I aim to where I think the airlock is. I’m going from memory. The space is tight; my helmet and backpack keep hitting the bottom of the CM as I creep along, pushing a wave of dust before me, with my chest plate scraping the rocky, uneven ground.

  I don’t even try to see where I’m going. There’s nothing to see anyways. I keep my head down and inch along. I could get stuck down here. I could die down here. Would anybody ever find me? Probably not. I can’t see nothing except the mustard-colored powder trying to push its way into my helmet. I think of Sophia’s remarkable face, her olive skin and feminine voice, her perfect modeling of the beautiful actress from long ago. To me, the fact that her body was artificial doesn’t detract from the wonder I feel for her. After all, it was the face and body she had chosen. If I could look like anybody in the universe, past or present, who would I choose? I sure hope she is OK.

  My left glove touches steel: it’s another foot. I have come out the other side. The hull above me is curving up now. I breathe a sigh of relief and say a silent prayer of thanks; I’ve made it through. But I don’t know what’s waiting for me above the dust. I roll over on my back because I need my visor and my eyes to be the first things rising out of the dust. Maybe I can see them before they see me.

  I sit up, slowly, letting the billowing haze curl lazily off of the clear plastic in front of my eyes as I push my face out of the cloud and into the clear. I see the CM’s spotlights blooming through the fog, then I see the black sky. I turn my head slowly. Nobody around! I can’t believe my luck. They must all be on the other side of the hull. But they won’t be for long. The decon tent and airlock are close by, to my left. I bring my feet under me and stand, with rivers of dust falling from my body. I stomp towards the tent, planting each foot carefully to compensate for my broken right boot. I round the corner to the entrance of the tent and look inside.

  There, by the ladder leading to the airlock, is a very, very big spacesuit. It’s looking directly a
t me through its dark visor. The person is leaning casually against the ladder, one hand on the railing. With his free hand, he waves. It’s Gristle.

  “Can you hear me kid?” asks Gristle. His voice is loud and deep over the suit radio.

  “Yea,” I reply.

  “Good. You gave us good run. But it’s game over. I’ll take that key now.”

  Ok, I think to myself. He thinks I still have the key. I can use that. Maybe I can lure him into the ship, then Louis or Katya can clobber him from behind. “Sure, you win, I’ll give you the key,” I say. “But it’s in a pocket in my pants, inside my suit. We’ll have to go through the airlock so I can take off the suit and get it for you.

  Gristle’s massive helmet cocks to one side. “Na, I don’t think so. Can’t be sure what’s waiting for me in there. Ya know, I’m real disappointed in you kid.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I thought you was on board. Thought you was going to come over and join the winning team.” He shakes his head. “But here you are, making it hard for us. Not smart, kid.”

  So there it is. I did make a deal. What a dumbass I was. I won’t make that mistake again. “I had an agreement with the government, not you,” I say. “And I didn’t sign up for no murder. You beat up the captain. You killed First Officer Nastez. In cold blood, right in front of me. So I changed my mind.”

  “Yea, I figured that. You gonna learn a hard lesson, kid. Out here you’re either predator or you’re prey.”

  “I didn’t buy in to none of this,” I say. “I just wanted to get out of Shacktown.”

  “See, now you’re talking,” he says. “What do ya think is going to happen to Shacktown?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean whole damn town is gonna get owned. Nifty Jim calls in the debt, then we own the scope. Everybody in Shacktown is going to be working for Malapert and they’ll have to do whatever we say if they wanna live. Not one of them can afford a trip back to the Marble. What else they gonna do? Now, ‘cause you been a bad boy, you won’t be no different.”

  “So. I can work if I have to. Where will they put me?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know, ain’t my problem. Everybody contributes somehow at Malapert. The strong ones work, the weak get killed—I mean euthanized, that’s a more nicer word. The nice-looking ones will be tourist escorts. Like those pretty orphans you been helping, twins ain’t they? They won’t have to work.”

  “Wha…what are you talking about? Escorts? They’re just little kids!”

  “Oh,” smiles Gristle, “they’ll grow up real quick, don’t you worry about that. Once they go through Implants & Training, they’ll get juiced with the best pharma that coin can buy. Little girls become women after a quick surgery and some shots. Sometimes little boys do to. They’re much cheaper than robots.” I must have made some kind of noise because now Gristle is laughing. Laughing loud. “Oh, don’t worry,” he says. “They won’t mind. Once they get juiced, they’ll be up for anything!”

  I gasp and step back; that’s when it all sinks in. I thought things couldn’t get worse in Shacktown, but I was wrong. This ain’t about jobs. This ain’t about money. This is about power—it’s about slavery. This is about Macy and Mason and all the other kids at the Children’s Home, and everybody else in Shacktown, scraping by and working themselves to death, losing everything—even their own bodies, even their own minds. This is about a living hell.

  Gristle stands up from the ladder and comes to his full height. Between his huge body and his EVA gear, his figure nearly fills the decon tent. The beams from the lights behind him, wobbling back and forth from the ground quakes, make him look even more ominous, like the figure of Death himself, with his helmet illuminated just enough that I can see his tiny, insane eyes staring at me from behind his visor, unblinking. How can I possibly beat him? But I have to, somehow.

  “So I figure I can kill you first,” he says, “then slice open your suit and take the key. Or I could just slit open your suit first and take the key and let you die that way. I just can’t decide what kind of mood I’m in. Ain’t that funny?” He drums his thick fingers on the side of his helmet in indecision.

  My mind is racing. He’s huge. I would have no chance fighting him. I look around for something to hit him with, turning my eyes without turning my helmet in hopes he won’t notice me looking. But there ain’t nothing. Gotta change the circumstances somehow.

  I run. I duck behind the fabric of the decon tent and head in the direction of the tool bin. Maybe I can maneuver him below a thruster and Katya can burn him to ashes. Maybe I can lose him in the dust like I lost the others. But after only a few seconds of running, there’s a violent quake and my right boot misses its grip. My momentum tears my left boot from the ground too and I lose traction completely. I find myself flying through the air, hands flailing uselessly, yelling to myself inside my helmet. I tap the rescue jet control—nothing. My last emergency charge is a dud. I collide with the side of the ship, near the tool bin door. I frantically claw at the curved door trying to find something, anything to hold on to, but the smooth steel of the door gives me nothing.

  Something grabs my ankle. I look down to see Gristle’s huge paw pulling me. I hear him laughing through the radio. He throws me down, my back to the rocky ground, and stomps on my chest. His boot’s claw-like grippers quiver inches from my face as Gristle’s suit tries to decide whether I am a rock of sufficient density to drive its spikes into. Looking up, I can only see Gristle as a huge silhouette against the dark sky and the lights of the Kestrel shaking and glowing in the background through the puke-colored dust. “Now you’ve gone and done it, Yuuta,” he says. “Now you done pissed me off.”

  He pulls his long stiletto from a pocket on the thigh of his suit. The side of the knurled handle catches the light from the floods. He puts weight on his boot. Even in low gravity I can feel my ribcage folding under the pressure of the boot and his massive body. I push back on the boot, my gloved hands using every desperate bit of strength I have. The boot don’t even budge. The rib that got bruised back in Shacktown is throbbing with pain and feels like it’s gonna snap any second. I struggle to breathe. “Does this boot make my butt look big?” he asks.

  Exhausted, I drop my hands to my side and surrender to the pain washing over me. Just as my left arm lays down on the rock surface, I feel a tugging, a familiar stirring. Structure has rejoined my wristy. Why did he come back? I wonder. My headset immediately comes alive with conversations between Kestrel crewmen.

  “What’s Gristle doing over there, over?”

  “He’s playing with his knife, looks like. He’s got somebody down in the dust.”

  “Can’t see who it is, can you, over?”

  “Hey! The ship’s lights went out!”

  Gristle lightens the weight on the boot as he turns and looks at the Kestrel. Sure enough, all the lights on the other ship have gone dark. Did the ground quakes damage the ship? “All crew, this is Kestrel actual,” comes an official-sounding voice. “We’ve had a proton strike or something, our systems are down but they are coming back up. We expect full recovery, nothing to be alarmed at. Lights will be back on in a moment. That is all. Out.”

  I know I’m in the area where I had dumped out all the tools from the tools bin. With Gristle looking the other way, I sweep my arms around under the dust, hoping to find a knife or a screwdriver or anything that might help me. I feel a handle of something with my left glove, but my fingers can’t quite grasp it and the effort is excruciatingly painful. Whatever it is, the ground vibrations bounce it from my fingertips. I curse under my breath. I am desperate.

  My right glove comes across something; I grab it and pull it to me. Gristle is still looking the other way, in no hurry to finish me off. I’m no threat to him. I look over to my right and squint through the haze to see what’s in my glove: it’s the foam repair gun. Great. What can I possibly do with that? But the tip of the applicator is hard metal; maybe I can stab him with it. Any
ways it’s all I got. I keep it out of sight under the dust.

  The lights ringing the Kestrel’s hull blink and come to full brightness. Gristle turns to back to me. He leans in again, putting his weight back on my chest. I scream in agony. “Well now that was real interesting, weren’t it boy?” he says. He takes his boot off my chest and sits down on me, his face towards mine, his wide butt across my thighs. He pushes my helmet back into the dust with his massive hand. I feel the ground vibrations in the back of my head. For the moment I can breathe at least.

  “Ya know kid,” says Gristle, taking an avuncular tone, “seeing as you’re gonna die in about 30 seconds, I just want you to know something. You may think I’m a real bad man. I ain’t, though. I don’t enjoy killing. It’s all about the cash with me. I have expensive tastes. Besides, killing makes a mess. And sometimes, it smells bad.” I maneuver the foam gun under the dust, sliding my fingers over the handle to get a firm grip. “Because, Straker—may I call you Straker? I am actually a disabled person. I am a disabled person because I am what physicians call a drug addict. Nifty Jim’s boys make the best stuff in the system and I got a powerful need for it.”

  “I don’t know much about that,” I say, stalling for time. Maybe when the other Kestrel men get here, they’ll stop him from killing me. Not likely I know, but it’s what I got. That and a worthless foam gun.

  “Well that’s too bad Straker, really too bad, because here’s what you don’t understand: this stuff makes you feel so…damn…good, so good! And I’ve got a big hit all stored up in my dispenser. All I have to do is hit this button on my wrist and it’ll inject a big hit of Paradise right into the pleasure centers of my brain and I’m gonna feel SO DAMN GOOD! Just like before!” He laughs crazy behind his dusty visor, exhilarated by the thought of it—it’s a twisted, demonic laugh. His hand hovers over his wristy, his tiny eyes wide with anticipation.