It was spacious enough that they could stand apart without needing to worry about touching each other, but it was small enough to hear each other breathing, making Kendal uneasy.
Mira tied Boe’s hands together behind his back and stripped him of his kinetic, putting it on her own belt.
“Will this take us straight were we gotta go?” Mira asked.
“Not straight there,” Kendal said. “Should take us close though. Maybe a three-minute walk.”
“That’s a long time considering what we’re trying to do,” Mira said.
“We don’t have much of a choice,” Kendal said. “Either we take him with us or we don’t.”
Boe laughed.
Mira glared at him. “What the hell you find so funny?” she asked.
“For a moment there, I thought you two knew what you were doing. How fast you were on the draw and how quick you were on your feet. Boy, was I wrong.”
“Shut up,” Mira told him. “Kendal, what are we doing about all the people walkin’ around. I don’t think they’d take too kindly to seeing us marching Sasha here down the halls at gunpoint.”
“We wait until night cycle,” Kendal said. “It’s only two hours away. It should be safe to keep the gravshaft off until then. The maintenance crew usually don’t check the systems until morning.”
“Two hours?” Boe said. “We’re waiting two hours in here?”
“Gag him,” Kendal said. Mira took off her glove and stuffed it in his mouth, then took the draw-string from her other glove and tied it around his head to keep the glove in place. Crude, but effective.
“How is waiting ‘till night gonna help us?” Mira asked.
“Less people out,” he said. Kendal sat down against the corner and buried his face into his hands. “Less, but not empty. If we play it straight, people might think Boe committed a felon and we’re escorting him to the detention block. Not a perfect plan, but it’s all we have.”
He expected more questions, but Mira kept quiet the rest of the wait.
Kendal kept his head down and tried not to fall asleep. Every time his eyes would clamp shut, he’d shake the feeling out of him.
Despite his efforts, he must have dozed off because the next moment he opened his eyes, the lights between the crack in the door were dimmed and the display on the in-room monitor had turned off. Night cycle.
Kendal stood up and stretched. Boe looked fast asleep, and Mira seemed to be off in her own world.
“It’s night,” Kendal said, keeping his voice low enough not to wake Boe.
“You think Dess’s worried?” Mira said.
“I told him it might take a few days,” Kendal said. “I wasn’t sure how long it’d take to find Boe.”
Boe laughed through the glove in his mouth.
The bastard was just pretending to sleep, Kendal thought. “What’s he laughing about?”
Mira untied the drawstring and he spit the glove out.
“You two are in way over your heads,” Boe said. “Let ask you something. How much is Kelvin asking for me? I know I pissed him off something fierce when I bailed his little operation, and he said he’d send someone after me eventually, but I’m curious what he’s offering.”
“We don’t know a Kelvin,” Mira said.
“Then who the hell sent you?”
“Real ugly guy named Sava,” Mira said.
Boe turned white.
“Sava,” he whispered. “I have a better plan for you two. Take that kinetic and put a bullet right in my brain.”
“We’ll let Sava do that,” Mira said. “That way we get paid.”
“Listen, you infantile bitch,” Boe said. “Sava’s not going to put a bullet in my head. Sava’s going to make me wish I’d done it myself when I had the chance.”
Kendal felt his skin crawl, but there was no point in rethinking any of this. He’d come too far to back out now. “If we don’t finish this, we don’t get paid.”
“Fuck that,” Boe said. “I’m not going with you.”
“We’re the ones with the guns,” Mira said. “You follow or we shoot something off you.”
“I don’t care,” Boe said. “I’ll take death over Sava any fucking day. I’m staying put.”
“What did you do?” Kendal asked.
“If I told you, you wouldn’t hesitate handing me over to a man like Sava.”
“Just go out the door and kept a pace ahead of us,” Kendal said.
“Or what?” he said. “What are you going to do? Shoot me? I’ll take it.”
Kendal knew how a man like Boe worked. He worked the same as any Union officer. “We won’t kill you,” Kendal said. “But if you scream, or try to run, we start killing any Union people who just happen to be walking by. If we’re getting caught we’re gonna take out as many innocent Union officers as we can before we do.”
Boe tensed up and grit his teeth, while Mira fought back a smile.
Kendal put his kinetic to Boe’s back and pushed the button to go down a level. “If anyone asks, we’re taking him to cellblock-seven under suspicion of embezzlement. That should keep people from digging too deep into it, but if they ask just let me do the talking.”
It wasn’t unheard of for a Union officer to be led down the halls at gunpoint. Kendal had seen it every odd-month. Usually, people didn’t ask questions unless they knew the officer personally. The odds of Boe knowing anyone doing night shifts was slim, and that gave Kendal enough confidence to go through with it.
The hallway outside the gravshaft was empty. The main lights were off, with only the thin LED tubes lining the corners to light the way, giving long shadows across the floor. They could hear the rumble of the engine beneath them, and their footsteps clacking and echoing.
This place is a ghost ship, he thought.
They didn’t see another person until they were back in the main hall. The officer gave a glance at Boe, but kept on his way. Kendal thought they were in the clear until he saw more and more people gathered near the level two command room.
They walked through the crowd. Kendal kept counting the people they passed. Six, seven, eight... He calculated the odds that one of them would take initiative and confront them. His kinetic rattled in his grip, palm sticking to it from sweat.
The whispers started. Only a few at first. Two or so officers muttering to each other, wondering what Boe did and what’s going to happen to him.
“Does anyone know who the girl is?”
“Boe doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to get in trouble.”
“Should we do something?”
Once they started typing on their communicators, Kendal knew they were in trouble. They were close enough he could now see the storage room down the hall, but it was still a minute long walk away.
“We might have to run,” he whispered to Mira.
Kendal heard the magnetic rush of someone pulling an EG-pack from their belt.
“Run!” Kendal screamed, taking Boe by the arm and breaking into a sprint. He had trouble making Boe run as fast as he’d like, but dug the barrel of his kinetic into his back hard enough to motivate him.
A group of three officers had given chase, two with their kinetics out.
They shot at Kendal, the bullet hitting the wall past his head. His ears rang from the sound and he couldn’t hear the footsteps or the voices clearly anymore.
Mira made it to the door first.
Kendal held Boe up by the scruff of his neck while Mira fumbled with the door.
“Flick the latch, then pull,” Kendal said before being hit in the shoulder by an EG-blast. He bit down and almost dropped his kinetic.
The officers were gaining on them.
“Move!” Kendal pulled Mira aside and opened the door. He threw Boe in first and heard another EG-blast that went past Kendal and grazed the side of Mira’s head. She let out a shrill scream as Kendal pulled her into the storage room and broke the lock shut.
The long black tips of her hair were on fire and she let ou
t a shrill scream as she patted down her head trying to put out the flames before they reached her scalp and seared her flesh.
Mira’s hair had burnt up to the ears on one side, the coarse smell of smoke filling the room. Even after the fire was out, she kept patting at her head, trying to put out the imaginary flames.
Kendal had to stop her to look at her neck, seeing light redness but no burns.
In his rush, Kendal had forgotten about his own burn, instead focusing on getting back to the ship as soon as possible.
He could already hear the officers outside trying to open the door. It wouldn’t be long before they started to break it down.
“Good going,” Boe said. “Now you’re trapped in a storage locker. They’ll beat the door down and you’ll go to jail.”
“We’re exactly where we want to be,” Kendal said. He grabbed Boe by the arm and walked him across the room.
Mira had wandered off and discarded her Union jacket. She was over by a stack of crates unbuttoning the undercoat.
“What are you doing?” Kendal asked.
Mira threw off her coat and swapped it for the fabric jacket that he remembered her saying once belonged to her mother.
“Getting’ my things,” she said. She put her stolen Union belt overtop her old coat before running up to join Kendal.
They stopped in front of the airlock and Mira opened the inside door.
“There’s no way you have a ship compatible with that,” Boe said. “Only Union shuttles can hook onto those.”
“Our ships outside,” Kendal said tried to push Boe inside. “Only a short jump through zero. It stings on the eyes a bit, but you’ll be okay once we’re in.”
“I’m not going out there,” Boe said, locking his feet down and thrashing to keep Kendal back. “You can shoot me for all I care, I’m not—”
Mira shot him in the shoulder with her kinetic. Boe’s eyes widened and the color drained from his face. He mouthed a scream, it coming out as nothing but a pathetic wheeze as he collapsed and started heaving on the floor.
“What the hell did you do?” Kendal asked.
Boe groaned and rubbed his shoulder against the floor, trying to put pressure on it. “You crazy bitch,” he said, voice cracked and shrill.
“Move,” Mira said. “Or I’ll shoot somewhere more painful.”
Boe glared at her through narrow eyes and crawled into the airlock. Mira shut the door while Kendal worked the controls.
“Next time you do something like that, think first,” Kendal said.
“I’ll try,” Mira said, letting all the air from her lungs.
Kendal did the same, then depressurized the room. All air and sound vanished as the outside door clicked. Kendal pushed it out and saw their ship right where they’d left it, front door open and ready for them.
Mira jumped first, holding onto Boe by the sleeve. Kendal should have waited until they were clear aboard, but the burning in his lungs made him jump right after.
Boe was only a few feet away from Kendal. Boe looked down and grinning, stretching out his leg and hit Kendal’s shoulder with the base of his foot.
The kick was nothing more than a hard bunt, but when there’s no friction that’s enough to send you flying. He tried to grab hold of Boe, or Mira, or anything, but felt nothing.
Mira and Boe made it onto Dess’s ship, but Kendal was too far away and had nothing to propel off of.
At first he didn’t believe it, until he saw the tail end of Dess’s ship rush past him and the entryway far enough it was barely a dot to him.
He was drifting away from his ship, and from the Bachman, with only space for infinite miles ahead of him.
Chapter 16
All Union officers take zero gravity training. Even those who will never see combat spend a week learning the basics of propulsion and moment in a frictionless vacuum. Kendal knew that once something was moving, it wasn’t going to stop unless acted on by an external force. This meant that even after suffocating to death, he would keep floating until something stopped him.
An external force, Kendal thought. Or some kind of energy.
He took the kinetic from his belt and aimed it opposite to the direction he wanted to go. A bullet leaves the barrel of a gun faster than the speed of sound. More than enough to reject his current momentum and thrust him back towards Desmond’s ship.
He pulled the trigger and felt like he’d slammed into a wall. His momentum lurched back and he hurled towards the ship faster than he’d drifted away. His lungs were on fire and his eyes felt like they’d been scrubbed with sandpaper, but he only needed to hold on for a few more seconds.
His trajectory was off and he was drifting straight for the back end of the ship. The engine was on and radiating heat that lapped at his face as he approached. He shot the kinetic again, throwing him towards the Bachman.
He hit the metal hull shoulder first, making him scream breathlessly. He ignored the pain and kicked off the hull as soon as he’d righted himself. Desmond’s ship was only a few feet away now.
He drifted towards the entryway with his arms out, waiting until the right moment. His fingers caught one of the rungs of the ladder, and he pulled himself up onto the ledge.
He banged on the door as hard as he could. It made no sound on his end, but if they had pressurized the inside, then the vibrations would be strong enough to make a sound.
His vision tunneled until he couldn’t see his own hand in front of his face. Lungs had gone beyond stinging to pure agony.
His thoughts were slipping and he felt like the world was shrinking around him.
The door opened and Kendal felt the blast of air push him back. A hand grabbed hold of his. He clung to it tighter than anything he had before, letting them pull him into the ship. Gravity caught him as soon as he passed through the doorway. He tumbled forward and landed on Mira as she pulled him in.
“Watch ‘er!” Mira said and pushed him off.
She looked mad, but Kendal didn’t care. He’d never come that close to dying before and could do nothing but laugh. His senses came back, one at a time, as his lungs filled with breath and his headache numbed. He felt better than before, but wouldn’t feel completely fine until the next morning. Being exposed to space manages to suck away hours of sleep.
Kendal saw that Desmond was standing by the scanner, looking at Kendal with an expression he couldn’t place. Boe was next to him, arms still tied up.
“Thought you were a goner,” Desmond said. “Sorry we shut you out like that, but we had to get Mira some air and we just couldn’t afford to wait around in case you righted yourself or not.”
“I understand,” Kendal said between heavy breaths.
Desmond gave Boe a push to get him walking. Mira was still by the door rubbing her neck below where the hair had burnt off.
“Lieutenant!” Desmond said, getting Kendal’s attention. “You’re coming too.”
Kendal glanced at Mira, wanting to say something, but left the room silently. He followed Desmond to one of the empty cabins in the crew corridor. Desmond put Boe on the bed and chained him to the headrest while Kendal leaned against the corner wall. He wanted to ask why Desmond kept handcuffs in the spare bedroom, but kept the question to himself.
“I gotta get my medkit,” Desmond said. “Keep him company ‘till I get back.”
He left the room and slammed the door behind him. Kendal didn’t want to be alone with Boe, but didn’t have a choice. He kept his eyes down by the floor and listening to soft hum of the engines to block out Boe’s hoarse panting.
He could smell the burnt fabric coming from his own jacket where he’d been shot. It was nauseating. He took off his jacket and felt the melted fabric peeling away the burnt flesh as he stripped the coat and threw it into the corner. The undershirt still had a burn, and was stained with blood, but the purer fabric didn’t reek like his coat had.
“Such a waste of a nice coat,” Boe said. “That should have gone to a real lieutenant, not you
.”
Kendal couldn’t help but laugh. “I am a real lieutenant,” he said.
“Just because your captain calls you one don’t make you a real one,” Boe said. “You would have had to pick out a lieutenant uniform out of a box of hundreds of others. Why? Did you think stealing a lieutenant uniform would make you feel like you’re actually one? Play dress-up and pretend you’re not just another piece of filth hopping around the system not giving a damn about anyone else. I earned my rank. It might not be a lieutenant rank, but I earned it.”
Kendal took the communicator off his belt and turned it on for the first time since being in Benith Town. He held it up for Boe and let him read the identification.
Boe rolled his eyes, yet read the screen. “A lieutenant’s ID, so?” Boe said, eyes darting over the screen. His face sunk. “That’s you? The picture, it looks just like you. That can’t be right.”
“It’s true,” Kendal said, taking a nervous glance at the door. Desmond could be back any second. “I was a lieutenant before the Union threw me out.”
“Because of Sava?”
“No,” Kendal said. “I’ve never met Sava. It’s because I did something the Union didn’t like. I didn’t break their rules or nothing, but they weren’t happy about what I did and they wanted me out. I did everything they asked and they wanted my life over because of petty reasons. Because of a personal grudge. They tried to lock me up, but I wouldn’t let that happen. I ran from them.”
“And now you’re abducting their people and stealing from them,” Boe said. “They were right about you, Jack.”
“They weren’t right about me!” Kendal screamed. “They did this to me! I served the Union for years and did everything they asked!”
“Obviously not,” he said, lips curling to a grin, “or you’d still be there.”
Kendal knew he’d played right into his hand by getting angry, but he couldn’t help himself. “If Tearly hadn’t called for that order I’d still be there,” Kendal said. “It’s his fault.”
“No,” Boe said He tried to sit up but the chains caught him and forced him back to laying down. “No, no, no. You don’t get it. You betrayed the Union. Don’t matter if it was fair or not. The Union’s big enough that there’s going to be something that goes wrong somewhere, but that’s not what matters. You fall into the system, because it works. It brought order to a chaotic system and even if the cracks show, it’s still stable as a whole. You believe in the Union by following the Union, even if it’s not to your favor. You only did what was best for yourself, and that makes you a traitor.”
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