I jerked my head toward Ottoman, trying to ask Ariadne how long he’d been like that. I have no idea if that was how she interpreted it or not, because her answer was a whole lot of odd winks and nods I couldn’t decipher.
Instead of trying to establish communication with the princess again, I decided to try and work my way out of these bonds. Of course, I’d learned the epidermis trick at a skiptrace seminar and the people who developed said trick were extremely good at keeping wanted criminals under control. This was a tried-and-true method of villain incarceration and wasn’t about to be subdued by an underprepared sprite.
Ariadne eventually cocked her head to one side, staring intently at the spot where Ottoman’s arms had been secured over my head. She jutted out her chin as if to suggest I look at it. I craned my head as much as I could with my arms bound to the wall above my head. After a minute, I found what she was looking at.
The wall tissue where Ottoman’s arms had been bound up looked almost necrotic, like it had been hit with some kind of acid or venom. This would definitely explain how he had escaped the second time. The epidermis was so bad, I had no doubt that the slats holding his wrists in place decayed to the point that they fell completely off. All he had to do was wait for the right moment to jump Ariadne and me. Since the ship’s alarms didn’t go off while the acid/venom ate through the epidermis in what would have been a painful process, I had to assume that the compound had some sort of anesthetic property. That would also explain why the ship bounced off an asteroid without so much as an ouch.
Venom and acids were tricky because the ReHy station orbiting Earth wouldn’t care. Unlike viral, bacterial, or even fungal infections, venom-like compounds were not threatening to other organic ships or Earth’s ecosystem. In fact, many old warships still had their weapons either because no one had bothered to rewrite their genetic facsimiles, or because they made for a useful defense against pirate attacks. The managers of the ReHy station might give the Lilstar a small dose of antivenom if they happened to detect the problem, but by the time the ship reached the ReHy station, the venom would have probably been processed by the Lilstar’s natural defenses. Even if anyone detected and complained about the venom, it would be more than easy to spin up some story about some kind of huge pet snake getting loose.
I hate reptiles.
I moaned again, more loudly this time, as if the noise could stir up some kind of result or advantage I could use.
The evil twins/clones remained content to nap peacefully until my stomach started to growl loudly. I tried to scrunch up my legs as close as possible to keep it from doing that again. Though I was trying to get a reaction out of them earlier, I decided I needed more time to think my way out of this mess. Unfortunately, I was too late and Ottoman began to wake.
“Oh, is it feeding time?” Ottoman yawned grandly, taking time to stretch his arms and ease out of the bunk, the entire process taking about ten agonizing minutes. He face actually seemed a little swollen and red, like he’d had some kind of bad allergic reaction.
“Not to worry,” he said, patting the princess’s and my heads as he walked by, bringing a pair of low growls from each of us. “I’ll feed you in a moment.”
The sociopath stretched a little more before plopping down into the pilot’s seat and humming a contemporary tune. At least someone was enjoying themselves.
“Oh, by the way, your ship is fine now. Aside from the broken ribs, of course, but those shouldn’t affect our reentry,” Ottoman said.
“What did you do to my ship?” Ariadne demanded, surprising me with how fast she’d licked the tape off. Of course, I wasn’t certain how long she’d been awake before me.
“Oh, now that is a treat,” Ottoman looked over his shoulder to grin at her. He pointed at the wound on the Lilstar’s wall. “I suppose you saw that.”
“What did you do to my ship?” Ariadne spit out the words one-by-one.
“I think Marcie will like this better,” he got up from his seat and knelt down beside me. Watching me intently, he opened up his mouth widely, using his finger pull back his cheek.
I looked at him in horror. Sitting in the middle of his massively swollen cheek was an organic component. It didn’t take me too long to realize that it was probably the source of the venom that had damaged the ship. The freaking sociopath had a venom sac. Venom that, given the condition of his cheeks and the almost acidic decay of his back molars, wasn’t harmlessly absorbed by the more human-like parts of his body. I couldn’t imagine that was in any way painless, and if his skin was reacting this badly, his bloodstream and nervous system were probably no better off. No wonder he was insane. I wondered briefly if Set had the same implants.
“Like it?” Ottoman showed the venom sac to Ariadne, who winced painfully. “That’s what I get for being a son of Mill Hew.”
“What is that stuff, exactly?” the princess asked. Ottoman stood up and walked into the ship’s living area.
“Oh nothing, just your typical cytotoxic compound. Lots of pretty little proteins and polypeptides,” Ottoman said, pulling a box of oat-and-wheat space rations from the pantry and pouring half of it into two bowls. He snapped his fingers for emphasis. “All non-resistant cell walls, poof, just like that. It’s pretty brutal against ships and, in high doses, people. Of course, like real venom, it has its other advantages.”
Anesthetic, totally called it, I muttered with my mouth still taped. I didn’t bother actually licking the tape off my mouth, because I didn’t have anything useful to say for the moment. Ottoman walked between us with a bowl of the space rations.
“You could have killed us all! If the compound reached the ship’s heart, or eaten through its outer epidermis, we’d all be dead!” Ariadne yelled. Ottoman shoveled a spoonful of the rations into her gaping mouth, which she proceeded to spit out on the floor in defiance. The sociopath growled and slapped her across the face. I felt the slap as if it had been my own face.
“Fine. I don’t have to feed you,” he cursed at Ariadne, getting up almost calmly.
“You—” Ariadne began an expletive, only to have Ottoman roughly cover her mouth with his palm. The other hand held a knife to her temple. Ariadne looked at him in genuine surprise, as neither she nor I had actually seen him take the knife out, despite the fact that it involved spilling the space rations all over the floor. I was considering his proximity for a chance to strike, but that knife looked very sharp.
“Shhh…I’d really hate to kill you and be forced to bribe my way through the ReHy station,” Ottoman whispered to her. The princess seemed to get the message, although she looked much more angry than obedient.
The princess made a silent spitting motion to the sociopath’s back as he moved to sit in her rightful seat, leaving the oat-and-wheat mess on the floor.
I’ll get your ship back, I promised Ariadne.
• • •
Ariadne and I spent the better part of the morning scowling at one another. While it had started as a scowl of blame, anger, and accusation, it eventually morphed into a we’re-so-screwed-and-out-of-ideas-what-should-we-do-next kind of expression. It was amazing what we could communicate through just the upper half of our faces. But even that didn’t last long, and the princess eventually zoned out, flexing her arms and wrists a little.
I figured the exercise was hopeless, but if it made her feel better.
I must have been behaving to the sociopath’s standards, because come supper time I was spoon-fed warmed rations. Ottoman made a point of feeding the princess last, although her stomach was growling loudly, which I didn’t appreciate.
We sat there for what felt like an eternity before anything interesting happened. Well, more interesting than Ottoman busting out into a full-on jam session to music only he could hear. Not even Set joined him in his third rendition of a song by the band Bubblegum Goose. I’ll admit, I was expecting his tastes to run more toward heavy metal, not sickeningly sweet pop. It’s best not to try and understand insanity.
&nbs
p; Things were going as okay as they could until the Lilstar started crying.
It was more of a whistle-like whimper, but it grew steadily louder as the painkilling compound in Ottoman’s venom wore off and the ship began to feel the broken rib and what was probably massive bruising. While the crying didn’t reach its maximum capacity, which was reserved for internal damage or serious infections, the whimpering was almost impossible to ignore.
Ottoman responded to it by trying to fix the issue. I watched him walk in and out of the ship’s innards, where the rib had been broken, getting more and more frustrated by the minute. As far as I could tell, he was attempting to fix a sub-dermal problem with a pluripotent patch. Sure, that could fix some of the damage on this side of the epidermis, but it wouldn’t do anything for the broken rib.
The best way to fix broken falsebone on a ship was by making an incision in the epidermis, cutting through the tough outer layers, and then snapping the bone back into place, wrapping a mesh sleeve around the break. It wasn’t a super-complicated procedure, but for someone who didn’t specialize in organic nursing, like I did, it was both gross and undoable without causing further injury.
Fixing the Lilstar’s broken rib would be child’s play, but at a cost.
I could leave things as they were and the Lilstar’s broken rib would definitely catch some attention from the ReHy station. They probably wouldn’t let the ship land without fixing the issue and performing a final inspection to make sure the ship was worthy of a safe landing, which would mean a boarding party that could easily solve our predicament. The problem with this plan was that it left the Lilstar in pain for the duration of the trip to the ReHy station. That was beyond unfair. In fact, it bordered on cruel.
I didn’t look at Ariadne as I tried to figure out my next step. While I knew the injury to the ship wasn’t fatal, at least, that wasn’t how the Lilstar was acting. Her cry hadn’t reached that certain holy-crap-I’m-dying-somebody-help pitch just yet. If I fixed the injury, that could allow Ottoman and Set the chance to land on Earth and escape, and if I had judged them correctly, they were not harmless debtors. Having them loose on the streets was not a great thought.
So I could let the ship suffer, giving Ariadne and me a chance to escape, or I could fix the problem and essentially give the twins/clones a free pass through the ReHy station.
I finally glanced at Ariadne. She seemed to be on the edge of crying, flicking her eyes between Ottoman and her ship in concern. The princess caught me looking at her intently. I was glad she couldn’t see me chewing my lip nervously.
“Aaahhhh!” Ottoman yelled from the ship’s innards. It was followed by a corresponding thump and the Lilstar’s crying jumped a few frequencies to more high-pitched than before.
That pig just smacked the Lilstar.
Ariadne screamed in anger, lunging at Ottoman’s form as he entered the living area.
“Stop it!” I yelled, letting the tape I’d spent hours licking off fall from my mouth. “I can fix this!”
Ottoman stalked toward the cockpit with murder in his eyes.
“What?” he yelled, ripping what was left of the tape from my face. I didn’t wince.
“I can fix the ship,” I said, and stared the sociopath down. He looked my face up and down for a moment.
“How?” he asked.
“There is a bone repair kit in the back. It has an anesthetic, a sharp knife, and a mesh sleeve. I have to make an incision, put the bone back in place, and stabilize it,” I outlined the procedure. Ottoman backed off slightly, thinking.
“I’m not giving you a knife,” he said plainly.
“Then when we reach the ReHy station, the Lilstar will not be cleared for atmospheric entry, meaning that they’ll send an inspection team and maybe even do the surgery themselves,” I said in a measured tone. He seemed unconvinced. “You have my word I will not try to escape.”
“I won’t need your word, pet,” Ottoman said with a sneer that meant he knew something I didn’t. He took the shock device out of his pocket and stuck one of the pads on to Ariadne’s forehead. “Setesh!”
The sleeping drug-addict stirred slightly and mumbled many incoherent words before turning around in his chair. At least he was looking better than he had a few days ago.
“I need you to hold on to this for me and, if Marcie here attempts to escape, you press this button and Ariadne here is dead,” Ottoman said, looking at me for effect, as he gave his twin/clone the instructions. Set nodded sleepily and Ottoman repeated the instructions a second time, but more slowly.
Ottoman took a knife from his pocket and cut the slats holding me to the ship. Part of the epidermis slats were still in place, keeping my hands still bound together.
“I’ll cut your hands free once we get to the innards,” Ottoman said, hefting me roughly to my feet and shoving me down the hallway. I cast one last look at the cockpit, hoping maybe I’d have the opportunity to escape without forcing Set to fry Ariadne, but the drug addict seemed to be much more clear-headed. He even looked dangerous.
I decided against escaping. For the moment.
I moved to the ship’s innards, which was comprised of an empty, hall-like structure running the width of the ship. Right in front was a relatively thin membrane that separated the actual, greenish-brown guts of the ship from the habitable region. Everything looked relatively healthy, by my evaluation. Ottoman’s venom didn’t seem to have had any real, long-lasting effects aside from the localized necrosis.
The broken rib was located along the ship’s port side, or along the right when you first step into the innards, facing aft. The good news was that the falsebone had broken inward, not outward, meaning that it probably had not punctured the ship’s outer epidermis layer. The bad news was that it had almost broken through the ship’s inner epidermis layer and was in at least three or four separate pieces. It was going to require a lot more surgery than I had originally hoped.
“Can you fix it?” Ottoman asked, lurking in the doorway, keeping his distance from me.
“Yes,” I said plainly, sticking my hands out so he could cut the remaining slats. The sociopath grabbed the slats and pulled me forward, closer to him. So close I could feel his breath on my face. He kissed the top of my forehead lightly, a gesture I took with a defiant, angry gaze. He merely laughed, bringing the slats that held my wrists up to his mouth, spitting a giant glob of his venom on them.
It only took seconds for the venom to kill all the cells in the epidermis, causing the slat to melt off my wrists. I winced through the pain as some of the venom that hadn’t been busy eating the epidermis burned my own skin. Thankfully, it was much less effective on humans than ships.
It still hurt like the dickens, however.
“Get to work,” Ottoman said, shoving me back into the innards. I shot him a glare, which he ignored, and walked left to the small alcove that held all of the ship’s emergency medical supplies.
The broken bone kit was right up front, and I quickly had all of its contents organized on a tarp on the floor. It wasn’t as sanitary as I would have liked, but beggars can’t be choosers and the ReHy station would blast the Lilstar with a whole cocktail of antibiotics before it would be allowed to enter the atmosphere. The risk of a widespread infection before we actually made landfall was minimal.
The kit contained a lot of redundancy, which would come in handy if something else went wrong. There were at least three knives of varying sizes since normal scalpels were entirely too small to be useful when cutting into a large organic structure, two full sets of clamps for keeping damaged arteries closed until they could be stitched, biodegradable thread, an over-sized needle, for the stitches themselves, a metallic-like mesh with a hard metal splint that could be wrapped directly around the bone to provide stability, a local anesthetic to numb the area for surgery, a massive bottle of iodine, a few rolls of tape to keep the incision from either healing back on itself or bleeding, multiple pairs of gloves, masks, and two chemical-based headlamp.
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The kit was also one roll of tape short - which was being used for keeping whoever happened to be captive at the time quiet. Despite this shortage, there was still plenty left over.
The first step was to don the rubber gloves, face mask, and chemical headlamp. The gloves and mask were fairly straightforward, basic rubber and mesh that created a barrier between myself and the ship. Even though the Lilstar had successfully incorporated me and my germs into its own microecosystem, I still had a few nasty bugs that could wreak havoc on a ship’s open wound, making the gloves and mask a definite fashion choice for on-the-spot organic ship surgery.
The headlight was a bit more complicated, being comprised of three parts: a small vial of one chemical component, a larger vial of a second component, and a lens-like apparatus. The larger vial was basically a sphere on top of a throat that was about two inches or so in length. Inside the larger vial, sitting right on top of the throat, was the small, much more delicate vial that had an opening closed off by a small ball-bearing. This kept both of the liquids separate before the headlight was needed.
The ball-bearing was attached to a small string that ran down the throat, through a rubber seal, and out with a long enough tail to grasp. Using the light was as easy as pulling on the string, releasing the ball-bearing from the smaller vial and allowing the two chemicals to mix. It produced an almost-white glow that wasn’t fantastic, but would be enough to see for surgery.
Once I had activated the headlight and put it on, I picked up the bottle of iodine and painted the entire area around the broken falsebone. The smell was incredibly strong, causing Ottoman to double over in a coughing fit. I thought about taking advantage of it - until I saw him wave back down into the ship, probably to Set who was poised and ready to zap the crap out of Ariadne over an unexpected coughing fit. I decided just to stick with the task at hand.
Set'em Up Page 18