by J. S. Morin
But it wasn’t Carl, or even Tanny come to look for him. “The hell you doing down here, Lloyd? Carl’d have your head in a box if he caught you nosing around this place.”
Lloyd offered a sheepish grin and hunched down slightly. “Sorry. I just… I needed to talk to someone.”
A sudden premonition of a headache prompted Roddy to squeeze his eyes shut and rub them. “Listen, pal. Whatever issues you’ve got with that girl of yours, I ain’t the one to solve ‘em. Go talk to Esper or something.”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” Lloyd said, taking a step closer. “You see—”
“You’re missing the point.” Roddy picked up a stray wrench with one foot and handed it up to a higher hand. He waggled it in Lloyd’s direction. “Get the fuck out of my engine room. I don’t care whose sister you’re fucking; you don’t belong down here.”
“Give me just one minute,” Lloyd said with a disturbing, manic urgency in his voice. He held up his hands between himself and the wrench. “I can expl—”
“Out!” Roddy shouted, the sound dissipating amongst the various hums and thrums of the core systems. Briefly he wondered if he ought to get to a comm panel and alert Mriy. But Lloyd was just a suit-sporting lawyer wannabe. A wrench was more than enough if he wouldn’t leave on his own.
“Thirty seconds,” Lloyd wheedled, backing away. “I won’t bother you again the rest of the time I’m on board.”
Roddy checked the chrono on his datapad and slipped it back in his pocket. “Fine, asshole. What’s so goddamn important?”
“I… I… got some sort of liquid in my eye. It sprayed out of that excuse of a sink in our quarters, and I’m having trouble seeing,” Lloyd said. “I didn’t want to tell Rhiannon, in case it was bad. I figured you’d know what it could have been. Please, am I going to go blind?”
Roddy heaved a sigh and rolled his eyes. Setting down the wrench, he picked up a flashlight and motioned for Lloyd to bend down. “Come here, ya big crybaby. Lemme have a look. Worst case, you probably got a waste backup. None of the coolant lines run anywhere near the plumbing.”
Lloyd released a tense breath and slumped to one knee, putting him close to Roddy’s height. “Thank you. I’ve never felt so relieved to think I might only have someone else’s shit in my eye.”
Roddy chuckled at that. Maybe Lloyd wasn’t a lost cause after all. The lighting in the engine room was lousy, constantly thrown into shadow by various pipes and sub-systems that packed the space. He shined the flashlight into Lloyd’s eye to get a better look. Surprisingly, Lloyd didn’t so much as blink.
How long he spent checking the lawyer’s eye for signs of infection or chemical burns, Roddy couldn’t say. But his mind must have wandered off. Odd, since he was barely drunk at all. He was staring down the length of the engine room when he just noticed that Lloyd wasn’t there anymore. It seemed like the older he got, the less reliable his mind became. He made a mental note to do something nice for Carl, since the odds of Roddy ever finding steady work anywhere else was practically nil.
With a pop and a hiss, one of the coolant lines sprang a leak. “Shit,” he muttered to himself and scurried to shut the cutoff valve so he could fix it. But the cutoff valve wasn’t there. In fact, the engine room had grown a whole new access shaft that he’d never noticed before. “What the fuck?”
The leaking coolant line faded from importance in Roddy’s head as he explored the weird enginescape that sprawled out from that one unfamiliar corridor. An unrecognizable device developed an ominous knocking cadence as he passed by. Roddy opened a panel on it and twisted a lever—the only thing behind the panel—and the knocking stopped.
After that, an alarm klaxon sounded. A console filled with indicator needles all pointed to red. Minutes of frantic searching, as the needles inched their way closer and closer to a line labeled ‘critical engine failure,’ revealed a series of buttons. Roddy pushed them all, not knowing what any of them did, and the needles gradually sank into the yellow and kept drifting until they pointed to green.
But then there was another catastrophe that required his attention. And another. And another after that one. Worse, Roddy couldn’t find his way back to his supply of beer, and he was sobering up. If only he could stop to clear his head, but the Mobius was falling to pieces around him, and if he took the time to recover his wits, the ship would have exploded ten times over.
# # #
“Despicable monkey,” Lloyd muttered as he stood up and brushed grime from the knees of his pants. “A discredit to a worthy species.” There were good reasons laaku banned the imbibing of most intoxicants. They just didn’t have the physiology to handle them in moderation. As much as Rhiannon dabbled in psychedelics, she was by no means addicted. Allow a laaku the same vice, and he’d wallow in it until he received professional help. The smart ones accepted that and lived within the strictures of their own biology.
Roddy lay in a stupor, limbs sprawled awkwardly in the classic pose of a drunkard after last call. Fitting.
There was no time to dwell on one crewman, though. Lloyd’s list was far from complete. With less care for making noise than during his trip down, he climbed the metal grating stairs up to the common room once more. Kubu, still slumbering, failed to react to his passing.
He suppressed a gasp of shock when Esper met him just inside the door. The refrigerator door was open, and she was staring at the contents as if prolonged attention might change the ship’s paltry stores into something more appealing.
“Oh, hi Lloyd,” Esper said. “Didn’t realize you were still up.” She settled on an EnerJuice—some rotten health drink concocted from God-knows-what—and popped the top. She had changed from one set of pajamas into another; this new outfit was white fleece with four giant, pale blue buttons down the front.
For a moment, Lloyd forgot himself. Esper’s sculpted, science-crafted appearance drew his eyes to the contours hidden beneath that fleece. But the distraction lasted briefly. He raised his glance, thinking to catch her eye, but Esper averted her gaze reflexively.
“Oh… Rhiannon had just asked me to go check the Camero for a pair of slippers she insists she packed,” Lloyd said. The old petrol-burner had turned into a makeshift steamer trunk for the couple when Rhiannon had driven it aboard the Mobius during their harrowed escape from ARGO law on Peractorum. Now it was parked in the cargo hold beside Carl’s stolen raceship, still overburdened with their personal effects.
“Weren’t there?” Esper asked, glancing down at Lloyd’s hands.
“Of course not,” Lloyd replied. “She knew before she sent me, but this way she doesn’t have to admit she forgot to pack them.”
“At least someone around here knows how to treat a woman,” Esper muttered. She turned to depart, raising her EnerJuice in a mock toast to Lloyd. Rather than returning to her own quarters, she was headed for Mort’s!
Lloyd shot a hand out and caught the sleeve of her pajamas. It was time to alter the plan. “Um, on that note, could I have a word with you?” He let go as she glared down at the hand on her sleeve.
Esper sipped her drink. “Sure, I guess. What’s on your mind?”
“It’s… personal,” Lloyd said. He leaned close and shielded his mouth in the direction of his and Rhiannon’s quarters. “I need some advice. Can we talk in private?” He let his eyes dart around the room.
Esper frowned. “I don’t think Carl and Roddy have this room bugged, but okay.” She changed course and headed for her own quarters, and Lloyd let out a tense breath.
She didn’t walk like Rhiannon, he noticed as he followed Esper from two paces back. Her hips hardly swayed; she just shuffled ahead on her fuzzy pink slippers, while Rhiannon’s footprints could have walked a tightrope. But he was distracting himself again. When this was all done and over, he’d still have Rhiannon, who at that very moment believed she was en route to her first major singing gig in months.
Esper shut the door behind them. “Sorry for the mess. I don’t get many visitors besides Tanny, and
she’s messier than I am.” Discarded clothing and various items that could be generously described as ‘keepsakes’ lay strewn around the room. But unlike the rest of the room, the bed was tidy, neatly tucked, and barely rumpled where Esper obviously made a habit of sitting. She plunked herself down in that rumpled spot. “What’s on your mind?”
“It’s about Rhiannon.”
“Duh,” Esper replied, taking a sip of EnerJuice. She held up a hand in apology. “Sorry. That was uncalled for. What about her?”
“This has been really stressful for her,” Lloyd said, taking a seat beside Esper. If the girl was shy, she showed no sign, nor did she edge away from him. It stung a little that she didn’t at least worry about his intentions toward her. How the crew must have looked at him... “She hasn’t been herself. She’s lost her home, most of her belongings. I… I want to be there for her, but she’s eating her way through her stash of cannabis instead.”
“Have you tried anything besides sex?” Esper asked.
Lloyd flushed without meaning to. The question hit closer to home than he might have liked.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’” Esper said. She shook her head. “Don’t worry. It’s a common male response. That little burst of brain chemicals isn’t going to cut it though. As a cure-all, it’s just snake oil. Just give her time and keep being available for her emotionally. Don’t just go running off to the cargo hold for alone time.”
“Can you just tell me how?” Lloyd asked, staring intently at Esper. She faced him, but averted her eyes.
“Careful there, cowboy,” Esper warned. “Earnest is nice, but you almost looked into a wizard’s eyes right there. You can get yourself in trouble that way.”
Lloyd smiled at a joke that Esper didn’t realize she’d made. “I’m not worried. I put myself completely at your mercy. Can’t you just think of something I can do for Rhiannon?”
Esper met his gaze with a sad smile and a furrowed brow filled with pity. “Oh, Lloyd. Let me think. Maybe we… can…” The muscles around Esper’s eyes strained, but she couldn’t close them or look away. But she wasn’t ready to give in, either. “Lloyd?”
“It’s all right if you’re getting tired,” Lloyd said. “If you need to sleep, I’ll just come back later. Just lie down and go to bed. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Goodnight.”
He hadn’t heard a sound from the quarters next door, but Lloyd wouldn’t have put it past the azrin’s keen ears to hear their conversation through the common wall between Esper’s quarters and her own. It never hurt to be extra cautious, especially after one unexpected turn in the plan.
# # #
A knock on the door startled Mriy awake. What carrion-eating fool thought it was wise to disturb her sleep? “What?” she snapped, reaching over and hitting the control for the lights.
The door squeaked as it cracked open a claw’s width. “I hope I’m not bothering you,” Lloyd said. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were—”
“Just enter,” Mriy said, rising from the bed and stretching, fingers spread and claws extending. Lloyd was a newcomer and could be afforded leniency. The human consort of Carl’s sister Rhiannon was a shabby specimen—much like Carl in build, but a few years older. A smile flickered on her lips as she wondered if Rhiannon had noticed the similarity. Probably not.
The door thudded gently behind Lloyd as he stepped inside. He was nervous. Mriy could smell it in his sweat. There were also whiffs of the stuffy, greasy odor of the engine room and the dispersed aerial perfumes that Esper used to color the scent of her quarters. Lloyd had been around the ship a bit recently.
“I need advice,” Lloyd said, clutching his hands in front of him.
“I’m sure there are better advisers than me aboard this ship,” Mriy replied. It was good practice for her English having Lloyd and Rhiannon aboard. With magical translator charms in abundance among the crew, she spoke Jiara most of the time out of laziness.
“Maybe advice isn’t the right word,” he said. “I… that is… after recent events, I’ve been questioning certain things?”
“Like the character of your new associates?” Mriy asked with a grin. “It happens to many here. Even Esper is not quite—”
“Not that,” Lloyd said. “Though that wizard of yours isn’t the sort you should be toying with keeping around, if you ask me. No, it’s that maybe I’m not fit to protect Rhiannon. I mean, all the fighting, the flying, the running from the law. I’m not sure I’m up to it.”
“You want what? For me to teach you to fight? Tanny’s a better instructor.”
“No, I want to know if I have it in me at all?” Lloyd asked. “Am I a coward, or do I have a warrior inside me that I can unlock? I heard that azrin warriors can look an adversary in the eye and know his worth.”
“There’s some truth to that,” Mriy admitted. It was more than just looking him in the eye. Sizing up an opponent was about posture, musculature, bearing, mannerisms. Mriy could tell without any special azrin insight that Lloyd was no warrior. But perhaps if he believed otherwise, he might surprise himself.
Mriy waved him closer. “Let’s have a look at you.”
Lloyd straightened up as he approached, lifting his chin to give Mriy his best stare-down. As she met his glare, she was surprised to find iron mettle there, not the veneer of plastered-over fear she had expected. Those eyes were pale blue. Hard. Cold. They had the strange round pupils of primates.
Without warning, the floor shifted beneath Mriy’s feet. Lloyd stumbled against the wall. Outside the window of her quarters, the black of realspace had returned and along with it a planet, growing larger by the second. Fighting to her feet, Mriy stumbled to the comm panel. But it spoke before she could reach it.
“Something pulled us into realspace,” Tanny’s voice on the shipwide comm had a frayed edge to it. “We’re caught in the gravity of a planet that appeared out of nowhere. We don’t have the engine power to pull out of this. I’m raising the shields. Prepare for a bumpy landing.”
“What do we do?” Lloyd asked in a panic, clinging to the wall for support as the buffeting atmosphere shook the ship.
“See to Rhiannon,” Mriy ordered him. For all the good it would do. Best that they face death together. Mriy had dodged death enough times to know she owed it interest on a debt. Maybe Tanny would find a way to crash safely. Maybe Carl would take over and make the ship do things it wouldn’t do for Tanny. Perhaps Mort would think of a way to get them planetside in one piece.
Or maybe, just maybe, Mriy’s time had come.
# # #
How she had lost consciousness was a blank in her memory. Sticky blood matted the fur of her scalp, but Mriy awoke otherwise uninjured, so far as she could gather. Her quarters were a blast site; her belongings scattered to the eight points. The glassteel window had been ripped from the hull, leaving her exposed to the atmosphere of the planet on which the Mobius had crashed. The whole room was tilted at an impossible angle to walk, so she climbed the wall and tried to reach the door.
But the door opened outward, which in this instance meant upward. Whether weight or obstruction was to blame, she couldn’t get it to budge. Instead, Mriy climbed out through the rent hole where once a window had been. The scene outside froze the blood in her heart.
How she had survived was a miracle. The Mobius had crashed in a mountainside forest and been torn to pieces by rocks and trees. A series of furrows through soil and vegetation marked the paths of various portions of the vessel had struck the planet surface.
In her heart, Mriy knew that none of the others had survived. How she knew, she couldn’t say. But she looked for them anyway. One by one, as she trekked the forested mountainside, she found their bodies. She was a hunter and a hardened warrior. The sight of death held no horror of its own for her. But these had been her friends, her comrades, the closest thing she had left to a family.
By the time Mriy had gathered all the bodies and set them ablaze, she was famished to the point of weakness. T
he ship’s food stores were a total loss, but as she had gathered her friends’ remains, she had listened for the telltale sounds of creatures in the forest. Certainly they would have been scared away from the immediate area by the horrific noise and smells of the ship that had crashed in their habitat.
But they were out there somewhere, and Mriy was a born hunter. On her own, friendless and hungry, it was time to return to those roots.
# # #
Lloyd was breathing easier, now that the real threats had been handled. There was something primal and unsettling about the thought of teeth and claws sinking into his own flesh, much worse than a blaster shot or getting flushed out an airlock. Those, at least, were deaths caused by a thinking mind intent on death, not animal hunger.
Where earlier the Mobius was a quiet ship with a pall of expectant activity cast over it, ready to spring back to life at any moment, more and more it was growing truly serene. The faint hum of the refrigerator’s motive force caught Lloyd’s pique as he exited Mriy’s quarters. As a tiny gift to himself, he laid a hand atop it and suggested that it ought to respect the silence of the night. The machine spluttered and fell inert. Temporary though the effect might have been—Lloyd was going to have to eat, after all—it brought a measure of comfort amid a stressful endeavor.
At ease and with growing confidence in his step, Lloyd approached the door to Carl’s quarters and knocked. “What now?” Carl groaned from inside. “Can’t you guys just pick a world and fly there? You know we’re going to fuck up anyplace we go. Why fight it?”
Lloyd knocked a second time and pressed the side of his head to the door. “It’s just me. No hideout talk; I promise.”
“Oh,” Carl replied through the door. “Whatever. Come on in.”
Lloyd had heard the stories from Rhiannon, some firsthand accounts, others relayed through relatives or by Carl and his crew. Carl was a gregarious hothead, a loser who chose his friends well enough to get him out of troubles of his own making. Of all the creatures on the ship, he was perhaps the least threatening. Without his crew to help him, he was worse than helpless—he was self-destructive.