Set'em Up

by A N G Reynolds

  “I think I can handle a druggy,” she said and smiled, turning to pick up the addict’s front half. I grabbed his legs and helped Ariadne weave the unconscious and miserable man to the airlock.

  “Fresh air, hallelujah,” I gasped as I stepped over the threshold into Edonite, realizing just how ripe the inside of the Lilstar had become. The nurse with the stretcher gave me one odd look before strapping Set down to the wheeled bed and giving him a brief inspection.

  Without any real word toward me or the princess, the nurse whisked the withdrawal-riddled addict toward the clinic with Ariadne in tow.

  I stood in the airlock for a moment breathing in the fresh-ish station air.

  We were so close to Earth. In just a few days we’d be free of these troublesome twins/clones and their hideous tattoo choices and, hopefully, be gainfully employed by a company known as Aristotle & Sons. Of course, this could all go to the dogs if Set managed to die while technically in our custody.

  Why couldn’t I have just become a nurse like my brother? Revenge was having a longer-lasting impact on my life than I figured it would.

  Plus, I had to deal with this guy.

  The Lilstar let out a shrill, bright tone which was her way of warning me that the prisoner had escaped. I spun around and landed a good punch across Ottoman’s nose before elbowing him in the throat. He stumbled backwards and tripped over the Lilstar’s hatchway, landing soundly on his keister, gasping for breath.

  “I thought I made it clear to you to sit in the ship like a good boy. How’d you even get loose?” I huffed loudly before dragging him by his still-bound hands back into the ship. His wrists were a little bloodied and the epidermis slats that bound his hands were covered in jagged cuts. Somehow he’d managed to get hold of a sharp edge. The sociopath moaned quietly. “Oh, suck it up.”

  • • •

  It was a few hours before I heard anything from Ariadne. Although Set had gone into cardiac arrest more than once, the addict was now in stable condition. In a few days, the doctor had assured her, he might even be stable enough to travel. The important thing was, however, that Ariadne and I would not be brought up on involuntary manslaughter charges.

  Negligence charges could prove worrisome, but skiptraces were given a lot more leeway in such matters than regular citizens. This was not precisely a fair deal toward ordinary citizens, due to the fact that there was no real reason for it. Skiptracing was a booming business and a lot of governments actively encouraged it as a way to take pressure off of their underpaid and overworked police forces. It essentially saved them from having to hire so many detectives.

  The downside to this was the fact that, with encouragement from powerful people, came the abuse of said praise. The governments couldn’t very well risk angering the skiptrace community, nor could they risk looking like idiots who hired indiscriminate thugs to track down simple debtors. So skiptraces were allowed the luxury of bent laws. It saved the governments from admitting that their hires were actually acting very illegally.

  This policy was more than repulsive, but it would allow Ariadne and me some breathing room in this situation with Set.

  I twisted around in the copilot’s seat and rested my chin on its headrest to keep an eye on Ottoman, who was trying futilely to escape for the second time in only a few hours. I had discovered the small scalpel the sociopath had used to cut himself free of the ship. It must have fallen out of the medical kit when I was scrambling to find sedatives and anti-nausea medicine for Set and rolled into some sort of crevice that I missed when I was cleaning everything back up. I treated and bandaged the small cuts he had on his wrists. It wouldn’t do for him to suddenly catch an infection, especially not when we were this close to dragging his sorry behind back to Earth.

  I was thankful the Lilstar had warned me when Ottoman was free. It might have been a little more helpful had the warning come when Ottoman was cutting his bonds, an act I’m more than positive the ship should have felt, but like human beings, each ship had a different level of sensitivity toward pain. Even if the ship’s genetic facsimile had been engineered down to the last nucleotide, there were always variables, usually caused by environmental stimuli.

  Even more basic than that, genetic facsimiles were simply not as precise an art as real genetics. They paled in comparison to the genes found in every other, non-man-made living organism. Organic ships and structures were a complete anomaly in the natural world. Real genetics, with all of their information and nuances, were almost impossible to replicate without major issues cropping up later. This was part of the reason why genetic manipulation on all non-plant creatures was outlawed and even manipulating plant genes was a highly regulated process.

  Cloning was still legal and even cloning humans was not as controversial as it probably should be, but that’s a whole other bag of worms.

  To put a long story short, the Lilstar could have an extremely high pain tolerance to withstand Ottoman slicing through the epidermis, and that could have caused the warning’s delay. In any event, it was good information to have for later situations.

  Ottoman continued to strain at his bonds. Freedom was just beyond the Lilstar’s airlock. His situation could be considered cruel, but, aside from releasing him to terrorize Edonite, there was little I could do about it.

  “You’re going to break something,” I finally said. He glared at me from over his taped mouth. He seemed to process something, however, and then thrashed even harder. The nice bandages I’d put on his wrists began to rub off but, thankfully, he wasn’t bleeding noticeably.

  “No, don’t do that. I’m not taking you to the clinic,” I said and frowned, an expression the sociopath returned. He sat glumly for a few minutes before deciding to work the tape off of his mouth.

  I suppose with the blood from his nose, it was a lot easier for the captive to lick the tape’s glue off and dislodge it from his lips. Getting up and replacing it seemed like an awful lot of effort and I was very bored, so I let him alone with tape hanging uselessly off the side of his face for the time being.

  “What are you after?” Ottoman asked. I blinked at his words apathetically. “I mean it. What are you after at this moment?”

  “Atonement for my sins,” I finally said.

  The sociopath actually laughed in my face. It was a raucous, grating sound and I felt a bit of his spit all the way from the copilot’s seat. Even after I rubbed it off with contempt and disgust, I could still almost feel all of his germs crawling around on my skin.

  “Cute. Very cute. Like your sins are more important than mine,” he said.

  “Are you trying to imply that you are on some mission to atone for your own?” I asked, and he nodded.

  “That’s what I was doing when you went after me,” Ottoman said. He was actually doing a fair job of trying to manipulate me. Unfortunately, I’d spent most of my early life being manipulated, so that just wasn’t something I would fall for. Especially not from him. “I just want to make right what I’ve done wrong. Can’t you empathize with that?”

  “What do you want me to do about that?” I asked, more curious than anything else.

  “Nothing,” the sociopath said dramatically, not looking me in the eye. It was a nice game he played. “I just wanted you to understand my situation a little better.”

  Smooth, I complimented him internally, but it was ultimately futile. Even as he tried to pretend to be a victim, there was a tangible evil around him.

  “No,” I said, standing up and getting two fresh pieces of tape. I placed them carefully across his mouth in an ‘x’ pattern. “I’m just trying to get a job done. Sins aren’t something you can simply atone for, anyway, they’re something you have to be forgiven for.”

  Within a split second, the sociopath went from empathy-greedy to insane as he screamed and lunged at me, still captive by his bonds and tape.

  Catching his chin in my hand, I forced him to look up at me. His eyes were cold and empty. Devoid of everything that could have made him
human.

  “I saw the way you looked at your brother,” I whispered. “But don’t think you will ever know what empathy is.”

  I tried to enforce my point as I held his face immobile. It was unlikely anything could really break through, but for the moment I was in complete control; and it was he who blinked first.

  Releasing him with a slight shove, I went back to my seat, waiting impatiently for Ariadne to make contact again.

  Twelve

  At about the station’s supper time, Ariadne arrived back at the Lilstar with a few fresh boxed meals and some extra supplies; the latter included new dermal sleep aids. I promptly placed one on Ottoman’s forehead and went back to eat the first warm-ish meal I’d had since that grilled cheese at Jones’. The pasta wasn’t exactly world-class, but I was secure in the knowledge that I’d eaten far worse in my lifetime.

  “Now what?” Ariadne asked in the middle of a mouthful.

  “Now we wait around until Set is good enough to travel, and head back to Earth,” I shrugged. The plan didn’t need to be complicated, just efficient if we wanted to make sure Aristotle would be happy, or at least impressed.

  “We should be at one of the orbital ReHy stations within three days, which should take about six hours to process the Lilstar through,” the princess said.

  “Agh, that’ll seem like forever,” I said, mentally counting all of the unread books I had left. I sighed inwardly; I’d probably have to reread one or two of them. “I wish the ship could bypass that whole process.”

  “They are trying to make ships with epidermis that can handle atmospheric entry without rehydration, but that’s still a few years off,” Ariadne sighed greatly, as if she were mourning the out-of-reach technology.

  “Could the Lilstar be refitted with that epidermis when it comes out?” I asked.

  “Maybe; I’m sure it’d take a complete genetic overhaul to do it, though. To be honest, it would probably just be easier to buy a new ship,” the princess said.

  “I suppose it would.” I chewed my lip thoughtfully, wondering just how expensive an overhaul like that would be. Of course, who was I kidding, I could barely afford surgery to correct my own broken nose, much less a genetic facsimile rewrite for an entire runabout. In a few years, however, it could make a good present for a certain, up-to-her-eyeballs-in-debt-with-me pilot I know.

  “What happened to his nose?” Ariadne suddenly asked, looking back at our sleeping captive.

  “Vengeance,” I said. I told Ariadne about Ottoman’s whole and futile escape and the scalpel I had found.

  “Didn’t the warning bells go off?” she asked, looking curiously at Ottoman.

  “Yeah, but not until he was literally right behind me,” I said, scooping up the last bite of pasta in a perfect pasta-to-cheese sauce ratio. I paused for a second to mentally prepare myself for the best part of the meal, even if the noodles were mediocre.

  “Hm,” the princess seemed uncertain.

  “What?” I countered, swallowing the last of the pasta.

  “Did you search him?” she asked pointedly.

  “Yes,” I said, giving her a strange look.

  “Like, really search him?” Ariadne said.

  “Down to his underwear. Why?” I said.

  “You didn’t find any… I dunno, vials of any kind?”

  “No, I definitely would have noticed something like that. He was clean.” I watched the princess’s face, hoping to see something that would tell me where she was going with this. All I could figure out was that she was worrying about something.

  Something I should probably be worrying about too.

  “Never mind,” she decided to frustrate me. I let it go for the time being. She reached up and touched her newly-bandaged cheek. “Now we look like a matching bar fight set.”

  “Nah,” I grinned a little as I stood up. “You’d need a split lip for that.”

  “Owie.” The princess crinkled her nose. “I think I’ll pass.”

  “Wise choice,” I said, yawning greatly.

  It was a day or two, as promised, before Set was determined ‘fit for travel.’ The doctors gave Ariadne not only the medicine required to keep the addict calm for the next few days, but also taught her how to administer it properly using a syringe. She explained the whole procedure to me but, of course, I already knew how to use a syringe on everything from mice to a superliner, although the latter was not something I had any practical experience in.

  No more need to force-feed Set pills, thank goodness.

  • • •

  Within three days of our arrival, we were back on course for Earth. I inwardly groaned at the delay, but knowing that Set wouldn’t just up and die on us was a relief.

  Ottoman remained uncharacteristically quiet, which I didn’t take as a good sign. He was probably plotting something or biding his time for some kind of opening, which I was not obliged to give him. He had already tried talking his way out of this, which had failed, as had his escape attempt, so his next effort was bound to be impressive.

  Of course, I figured Ariadne had an idea of what was going on, she just declined to tell me.

  I wondered if her brother could be just as irritating, or if the princess was the exception to the King family trait pool. She didn’t seem to be doing it intentionally, so I didn’t let it bother me too much. Or at least, not as much as it should have bothered me.

  We didn’t notice anything unusual until we bounced off an asteroid. That in itself was nothing too unusual; ships often collided with rogue rocks and space debris, because, although equipped with optical sensors that mimicked eyes, it was extremely difficult to see inside a nebula. That’s why they had pilots with Orbit-Time books and kept up with any news flashes about rogue asteroids. Of course, things always slip through the cracks.

  It wasn’t as though Ariadne and I actually knew what we were doing, anyway.

  Usually these run-ins were barely dangerous even to a small ship like the Lilstar, resulting in only a few bruises and some broken falsebone, with a tear in the epidermis only on occasion and often with sick or old ships. The good news was that a tear didn’t happen; the bad news was that the Lilstar was not as healthy as usual.

  “What happened?” Ariadne said, rubbing her head where she’d hit it on the control console during the ship-to-asteroid collision.

  “I think we hit a big rock,” I said unhelpfully, closing my book quickly and attempting to look over the Lilstar’s controls. Even after almost a collective month aboard, I still had no idea what any of it meant.

  “No, we didn’t,” the princess’s impeccably smooth brow furrowed. “The ship’s not in pain.”

  “I heard something crack, so she’s got to be aching at least a little,” I countered. Breaking falsebone sounded slightly lower in pitch than a breaking human bone, but it was still highly distinctive. I shivered imperceptibly, involuntarily imagining my own little bones breaking. I shook the thoughts out of my head.

  Ariadne growled a little as she searched for some tangible evidence that I wasn’t lying. She got up out of her chair, stepping carefully around the tied-up Lees, and in two quick strides was in the ship’s innards. She came back quickly with a scowl on her face.

  “You’re right,” she had finally found the evidence. “The Lilstar’s cracked a few ribs. It’s not bad, it’s just… um…”

  “Um…?” I looked at Ariadne strangely. She blinked at me slowly and carefully.

  “I dunno, Marcie…” the princess’s eyes seemed to get really heavy. Her voice was thick and uncertain. For a brief second, her eyes opened wide and she looked down at her ankle. Sitting neatly on it was a dermal sleep patch. By the time she’d registered it, Ottoman reached out a grimy hand and clamped it tightly around Ariadne’s ankle, keeping the patch in place until the princess toppled over, asleep.

  The whole tableau had taken as long as it took me to yell “Crap!”

  I reached down to grab the shock device, which I had stowed underneath my seat
, hoping to get up out and ready before Ottoman could stop me.

  I failed, miserably. Ottoman reached over the seat, grabbing a handful of my hair and pulling my head back against the headrest. He reached around the seat and pulled his forearm across my neck with immense pressure, effectively choking me. I coughed and sputtered as I tried to fight him off, reaching for any part of his person I could scratch, slap, or injure in some way. Unfortunately, I was getting weaker and more panicky by the minute, meaning my efforts were less than par.

  He definitely won this particular battle.

  “I suppose this makes us even for injury, Marcie,” the sociopath whispered into my ear as he forced my entire head backward against the seat. His breath was hot as it raked across my jawline. I craned my eyes to look toward him, wildly trying to figure out how he had escaped.

  “Don’t worry,” the insane man almost cooed. “I won’t harm you or King until we’ve landed. I might need you to trick the communications.”

  In one of the most disgusting moments I’d ever faced in just over twenty years of existence, Ottoman kissed the side of my cheek slowly.

  Fortunately, I didn’t remain conscious long enough to vomit.

  Thirteen

  I woke up sputtering and coughing horribly. My throat felt like it was seriously bruised, I had a headache, and to top it all off, the bandage that had been protecting my still-healing nose was crooked and pinching one of my nostrils.

  “Ngghh,” I moaned underneath a swatch of tape that held my mouth shut. Fair is fair, I surmised unhappily.

  “Mmph.” Ariadne kicked my toe. She was situated in the same place Set had been, behind the pilot’s seat, arms stretched up to connect her epidermis bonds with the ship’s wall. I realized I was in the same position Ottoman had been, behind the copilot’s seat.

  “Humph,” I huffed wordlessly. The princess rolled her eyes dramatically. I looked around for our should-be captives.

  One of the twins/clones seemed to be sleeping in the copilot’s seat just in front of me. Judging from what I knew of the two, it was probably the drugged-out Set. That left Ottoman hiding somewhere around the rest of the ship. It wasn’t until he started snoring that I could pinpoint his location as sleeping on the ship’s only open bunk. I growled a little.