Breathing Space

by S. J. Higbee

  The Commander licked his lips and took a step backwards. “We cannot allow passengers to—ˮ

  “We’ve already danced down this alley, Sergeant—ˮ

  “Commander!”

  “Commander.” As if I didn’t already know. I was good at the classic tactic of annoying and undermining authority figures – I’d been practising that ploy since I could crawl off in the opposite direction.

  After more of the same, the Commander grudgingly conceded that – maybe – having sneak-cams carrying out standard shipboard surveillance might not be the best move and that perhaps he should adopt another method of ensuring passenger safety. While I agreed not to go to the Captain with my serious concerns as to the intrusive nature of the ship’s security protocols.

  However, as the Commander punctiliously escorted me and my party back to our suite, I was aware that I wasn’t his favourite person by a long lightyear. Given my talent for attracting trouble, I’d need to take the greatest care to ensure I didn’t put another foot wrong for the rest of the voyage – seventeen long days.

  The only bright spot in the whole sorry business, was that Miss Megamouth, aka Kallestrina Serafin Moondancer, tilt-brained minder to Cerk Withers, chose the moment we were being escorted to the Security Suite to throw an almighty tantrum, in which she attempted to punch one of the security guards. And then turned into a wildcat when they restrained her. They ended up stunning her into oblivion and we left her still out cold and in custody as we trooped back to our quarters.

  Not that I was dancing for joy. Not with the prospect of Sarge’s take on the evening’s events lying ahead of me.

  It was every bit as bad as I’d feared.

  He prowled around the suite, face like a black hole, growling under his breath as Chris – who took it upon himself to snitch the whole sorry tale in damning detail – recounted what had happened.

  I sat still and held my breath, as Wynn, quite rightly, bore the brunt of Sarge’s biting contempt. “We’d carefully gone over the cover story, double-checking all the traceable facts to ensure it would stand up to any snooping. All you had to do is learn it. Didn’t even have to alter your dirt-stained accent! No – that wasn’t good enough for you… You decide to deviate from the script and make it up as you go along! YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE A PRODDING AUG!”

  Wynn physically jumped at Sarge’s sudden roar. I stayed still, having seen the signs – his mounting colour and the vein throbbing in his forehead – so had braced myself. Besides it wasn’t my ear Sarge was bellowing into.

  Which was when he turned on me – and I hadn’t even been smirking! “You’re a solid disappointment! All your years of experience with the best outfit in the Sector – and you let some leaf-green newbie talk the whole operation into danger!”

  A rankly unfair accusation, in my opinion. Thanks to everyone around me, all those years’ experience had been spent as far away from the lively end of any action as it was possible to get. Now if Wynn had messed up a stock requisition, or needed a mergency order, I’d have been all over it in a heartbeat. It was on the tip of my tongue to point this out to Sarge, but the expression on his congested face convinced me to give the matter a mention another time.

  Besides, he’d just started on Chris, who thoroughly deserved everything he got. No one likes a flapping tongue. “As for YOU! You’re a DISGRACE to your training! Don’t know why I ever bothered with your sorry carcass! WHY didn’t you invent some emergency? Get them away from the prodding table? It would’ve been the work of a moment!” Sarge pushed his puce face so close to Chris’s clenched, suffering one, they were almost touching. “There’s no room for that kind’ve shoddy lapse on this mission, soldier – LIVES are at stake! Next time, I’ll see you bounced off the detail and we’ll pick up someone worth their credstack!”

  I stood up and put my hand on Sarge’s shoulder. “Enough. It’s done. None of us performed well, but we’re all adrift in enemy territory. And the rules are different. Trouble is, they’re not written down anywhere. It’s a learning curve. We made mistakes, so we’ll learn and get better. It’s what we do. And we’re in this for the long haul, so we need to pull together and watch out for each other’s back.”

  “If you prodding well survive long enough,” snarled Sarge. However the wildness had left his eyes and I got the sense his anger now was more for show. Thankfully.

  I yawned, not having to pretend all that much that I was dropping-down tired. “Maybe we should turn in.”

  Eileen slipped into the suite. “There’s some twitched-looking bod outside. Says his name is Cerk Withers. Says you’ve stranded his guard somewhere – and he needs protection cos someone on this ship wants him dead.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Let him in,” I said.

  “You sure about this?” asked Wynn. “This is Cerk Withers.”

  “And? Is he likely to pose any kind’ve threat to our safety if we let him in?”

  “Depends how you define threat,” Wynn’s voice could’ve frozen a sunspot.

  “Shoot us? Strangle us? Stampede us into the carpet with that speed aug thing he’s got?”

  Wynn flung his arms in the air. “Go ahead. Invite him in. When it all hits the filters, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  And still you don’t say what’s tugging your airline! I nodded to Eileen, who disappeared.

  The door hissed open and Cerk slid into the room, with the strained, shaky look of a whipped dog. “Thank you. I didn’t think you’d open the door. And my guard…”

  I tutted as Chris shook his head.

  “Before you jump to judgement, know that she’s been ill used.”

  “Which was why she kicked off when they handled her, instead of keeping it calm.” Chris shook his head, again. “She’ll need to work on that one.”

  Have you fallen for your bodyguard? A common problem for those of us needing constant protection – both ways, as it happens. Which was why I preferred couples, or guards in a steady relationship.

  “Kal wanted to train as a guard to protect other girls from the same fate. She’s raw, I’ll grant you that. But her heart is in the right place and her firing accuracy is phenomenal.”

  “And it didn’t occur to you that a half-trained newbie who breaks orbit every time anyone lays hands on her mightn’t be the best pair’ve eyes to watch your back?” Sarge’s sneer nearly split his lip. “S’pect it’s a stunning coincidence that she’s eye candy, is it?”

  “No! I’d never— I haven’t…” Despite his spluttering denials, Cerk’s sudden flush betrayed his feelings on the subject.

  “Clearly,” jeered Sarge. “Next time try choosing your staff with your brain instead’ve your family jewels.”

  Chris’s smirk had me clenching my fists. Smug drossers! Don’t s’pose they ever fell hard for someone they shouldn’t.

  “We’ll get her released in the morning. There’ll be another watch commander on duty, for starters,” I said. “Meantime she’s out cold and safe. They won’t mess with her, as you’re a Prime Class passenger.”

  He frowned and opened his mouth, before catching Sarge’s glare and shutting it, again. Nodding jerkily, he muttered, “Thank you.” The smooth-mannered operator I’d locked looks with across the top table a few short hours ago had been blown to the edges of the galaxy, leaving this shaken version in his place.

  What’s happened to tip him into this black hole? “You mentioned someone threatened you. Any ideas who?”

  Shaking his head, he fished out his com with a trembling hand. Flipping it open took him a couple of tries, before he activated the mu-screen behind us so the clip played on the wall, allowing us all to watch. It didn’t make pretty viewing.

  Some poor bloke is stuffed into an airlock by two masked men. As the inner door is shut, he can be seen pounding on the mergency override, which has been disabled. His fear-stretched face appears at the scratched viewing pane begging to be let back in.

  I recognised the face, though I couldn’t rec
all where I’d seen it last. Not looking like that – I knew that much. He’d been smiling… in control… proud… If only I could use my aug! Meantime I watched, a bad feeling roiling in my gut. This wasn’t going to end well.

  He isn’t young. Or used to any kind of action, judging from his look of horrified disbelief.

  The vid focuses on a hand hovering over the outer door’s Open button. The movement sensor, designed to stop this very scenario, is smashed. The gloved hand pushes the button and we can hear a moan from the drosser behind the vid – it sounds like pleasure – as the outer doors open and the living, breathing figure behind the viewing panel turns into a rag doll.

  Sucked out of the airlock backwards, his outstretched arm snaps as it hits the still-opening door. Once outside, the vid zooms, catching every scuzzy detail of his agonised thrashing and vapour puffs leaking from his body…

  I glanced around the room. Everyone else was still staring, wide-eyed, at the footage. Except Cerk, who’d seen it before of course, and clearly didn’t want to watch it again. Reluctantly, I looked back.

  The body, still and drifting – his arm crooked at an unnatural angle – is floodlit by the harsh lighting with the ink-black endlessness of space as a backdrop…

  An all-too familiar shot.

  “Sladen Waller!” the words fell out of my mouth as I finally recognised the victim.

  The body continues floating. This time as footage from one of the journo-nets who’d reported Sladen Waller’s apparent suicide. The fact-bar running along the bottom of the screen, normally providing further details for those who can read, has been altered. The scrolling sentence now reads FIRST IT WAS DR WALLER… CERK WITHERS YOU’RE NEXT…

  Cerk froze the footage.

  I checked my com, wishing I could take my veil off and access my augs. Being so cut off at such a time was beyond irritating. I sighed with relief and pride at the professionalism of my people. Sometime during that macabre vidshow, one of the team had ensured we were in full privacy mode.

  Everyone was checking their augs or coms, except Wynn and Cerk, who was staring across the room and seeing something else. I couldn’t begin to guess at Wynn’s thoughts, though judging by his bar-taut posture and thrashing robe, it was nothing good.

  “So what links you to Dr Sladen Waller?” I’d already seen the connection on my com, but I wanted Cerk’s own version. It was surprising how often the two didn’t line up.

  “I was there. When he died. My father, Golby Withers, ran the station at the time,” Cerk’s voice was flat. He looked fit to drop.

  “Did you know Dr Waller?” Chris asked.

  “Oh yes. I was— It was a hard time. Sladen was really kind to me. And he didn’t have to be. He was a great man with nothing to prove…” his voice cracked. “You’ve no idea… When he died – it was horrible. Everyone thought it was suicide. The Dars… everyone… loved him.”

  “Clearly not,” Sarge’s voice was like a bucket of cold water. “Now you know it wasn’t his idea to go spacewalking minus a suit, does anyone spring to mind who’d do this?”

  Cerk shook his head. “I was fifteen when it happened. Obviously, I… my memories are fairly sharp of that whole time. But no one was about to take a teen into their confidence, even if they had their suspicions.”

  “Your da didn’t share his thoughts about the matter with you, then?” asked Chris.

  Cerk’s bark of laughter held no humour. “Golby Withers didn’t share anything with anyone, if he could avoid it. He didn’t like Sladen. In fact he outright hated him, as far as I could see.”

  Never met anyone else who calls his father by his name.

  Chris leaned forward, all set to ask the obvious question.

  Cerk forestalled him. “Golby hated most people on Tahari, as he reckoned he’d been set up to fail by being posted there as Station Commander. And, no, I don’t think he spaced Sladen because the murderer had help. Can’t think of anyone on Tahari who’d pass the time of day with him, never mind help him kill the most popular person on the station.”

  “What about the space chimps?” Wynn’s voice was cold.

  Cerk flushed. “Their name is Homo Darwinii, or Dars, if you must. But you – of all people – shouldn’t be buying into the bilge talked about them.”

  “Why not?” asked Chris.

  Cerk stared at him, evidently trying to gauge if it was some kind’ve trick question. “Because the Gaiasts wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the Dars.”

  What in holed heavens do the space chimps, or Dars – whatever those genetically engineered freaks like to be called – have to do with the Gaiasts?

  Sarge lowered his voice, switching into English Trader as he leaned towards Cerk, “This is turning into a prodding mess and no mistake. Me and the youngsters – we took on this contract in good faith. We’re trying to get to Earth and start over after serving a stint at the sharp end during a bad time. Are we on the wrong side, here?”

  “How in flooding hells should I know?” Cerk replied in the same language. Then jumped up, clearly at the end of his airline, as he switched back into Shinese, “I’m making my way back to Earth after a–a difficult trip. Someone I trust warns me to hire protection – and I avoid a kidnap attempt on Hawking, thanks to Kal. Then tonight, after dodging the trouble in the Observation Lounge, I get back to my suite. This is playing on my mu-screen and my protection has been arrested.” He sank back into the chair. “I figured you being Gaiasts – leastways you wouldn’t murder me. Given your links with the Eaoughts…”

  What! Those sodding priests and priestesses are in league with the godless aliens? And this man is part of it? I wasn’t the only one winded at Cerk’s revelation.

  Wynn’s robes flared as he flinched.

  “Tell you what,” I gabbled, desperate to keep him in our orbit while we unravelled what was going on, “why don’t you spend the rest of the night here with us? You and Brother Brian, here, can take the bed and I’ll sleep on the couch. You’ll be safe. My word.”

  His eyes darted between Wynn and me, putting me in mind of a trapped rabbit. “D’you take those headthings off, at all?”

  “Not in front of non-believers,” I stuck to the agreed script, hoping it still rang true to this person, who clearly knew a great deal more about what was going on behind the scenes than we did.

  He stared up at me, as if trying to see through the veil. “And if I decide to walk outta here? Would you let me go?”

  “Of course. You came to us, remember. If we’d wanted to zilch you, we had plenty of time in the Observation Lounge.”

  “You’d have had to get past Kal.”

  I shrugged. “Which would’ve been the work of a moment. She may have her uses against civvies, but she’s no match for anyone here.” Cepting Wynn, though let’s not flaunt our weaknesses to this… I still couldn’t decide whether he was friend or foe. And Jessica was keeping quiet on the subject.

  His gaze was peculiarly intense. For all his apparent weakness, this skinny, frightened man still had sufficient presence that meant I couldn’t dismiss his revelations as the mumblings of a chem-coshed drosser. Even though I would’ve liked to. Our lives were complicated enough.

  He heaved a sigh. “Reckon if I go back to my own quarters, it’s an airtight fact I won’t live to see the morning. So – thank you – I’ll take my chances with you.” As he stood up, he added, “Know this – if something does happen to me, the Eaoughts will come looking for whoever is responsible. Cheetshzay, the Wise and Powerful Seer of All Human Scheming, has undertaken to join me to his Brood Clan.”

  It should have sounded stupidly pompous enough to make us all laugh – this terrified weakling throwing around such an overblown threat. There was, however, something in his manner that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. And as I flicked a glance across to Sarge, who’d faced down more lippy newbies than I’d had hot dinners, his eyes were narrowed and his mouth a thin line. Not a glimmer of his famous contempt for anyone he could bo
unce around the room.

  My tiredness vanished. I was abruptly wide awake and buzzing with a host of unanswered questions and prickling fear. “I’ll take first watch tonight.”

  Sarge scowled, all set to intervene.

  I got in first, “We need to be sharp. It’s a solid waste my lying here staring at the ceiling, while you sit in the corner. I’ll wake you in four hours. Get some sleep.”

  Cerk’s haunted stare once more locked onto me. “You really, really aren’t like any Gaiast priestess I ever met. And I’ve met one or three in my time.”

  I shivered, wishing he’d look elsewhere. “Mother Earth contains many fields wherein are raised a wondrous variety of crops,” I parroted one of the sentiments regularly repeated in those longwinded Gaiast sermons I’d spent precious hours of my life listening to.

  Which seemed to satisfy him.

  Chris and Sarge left for the adjoining cabin as Cerk and Wynn settled down on the opposite outer edges of the double bed, while I paced around the sitting area trying to make sense of the evening’s events, due to hand over to Sarge at zero two hundred hours.

  Three hours and five minutes into my watch, I quietly contacted Chris, who’d taken over from Eileen outside our door.

  “All quiet, here,” I muttered. “You solid?”

  “Mm. Not sure,” Chris sounded tight-wound. “Gimme ten, will you, Boss? Eileen was running on coffee fumes when she noticed this and wanted to pass it by me before rousing the team.”

  “Sure. Let me know when you’re through checking whatever it is.” I was proud the sudden tightening in my gut didn’t show in my voice. I picked up my staff and was in the middle of the first pre-drill movements, when Chris sigged me.

  “I’ve checked it. Twice. And she’s right. We’re off course.”

  “What d’you mean off course? We’re on a prodding liner the size of a dreadnought. Bridgedeck’ll have access to every single nav buoy in the Sector, civvy and military! As well as a topline navigator running things. They do this route continually. How can they be off course?” And yes, I’ll freely admit, that outburst was a disgraceful lapse on my part. In my defence it had been a long, difficult night. By the time I’d finished, both Wynn and Cerk were awake.