Free Radicals

by S E Zbasnik

  “Oh?”

  “We should be moving on, quickly.”

  “Of course.” He took the lead, pushing his hands upon the door, the glass reflecting his askew face. Trailing behind his push, he stepped out of the corps building. A fountain in the shape of an ogre goddess dribbled water from her third mouth as stone birds encircled the probably nude body. Ogres naturally grew a coat of lichen, so it was difficult to discern what counted as naked. He heard the swinging door deposit his ‘assistant,’ her fingers poking through her PALM as if she were actually attending to his schedule.

  “What’s the word?” she asked her hand, not looking at him.

  “The word is fine.”

  “They suspect,” she said, trying to follow behind him while keeping her head down.

  “Of course they do, they are the corps. They always suspect.” A small laugh answered him and he continued, “But they do not have proof.”

  “Ferra?”

  “She performed admirably. There are gaps, questions, but it is something to keep the conspiracy theorists entertained for awhile.”

  “Great, just what Orn needs, more fun,” she shook her head and Taliesin turned back to watch her chuckle. Just as she was about to take another unobservant step, he swooped an arm in to stop her from crashing shin first into a decorative rock. Variel placed a hand upon him and rolled into her boss’ arms.

  “Sorry, apparently I suck at this multi-tasking shit. And don’t ask me to get your dry cleaning. I’ll probably bring back two Troll battle skirts on accident.”

  He smiled, but it didn’t touch his eyes. “You are certain of this?”

  She let another dry cleaning jab die on her tongue as the serious parting of his lips snagged it in her throat, “Yes. You take the credit. You deserve it. I don’t want it. I certainly don’t need it.”

  Some would probably call her hatred of the spotlight a phobia if she didn’t have good reasons for it. Attention caused digging, digging caused secrets once dead and buried to be necromanced and allowed to walk the galaxy. Still… “There are talks of repercussions.”

  “There are always talks of repercussions. The NCU will bluster, a few Crests will officially apologize, then something else will explode in the galaxy and it’ll all be dust in the comet’s wake.”

  He’d seen much the same the rare times he’d risen from his own navel to officially obfuscate galactic politics. The orcs were notorious for stirring some species up and then, after light warring, backing off. But this situation did not feel the same as the random occurrences and political wheedling that burned twice as fast in the galactic attention span. Perhaps it was due to his close proximity.

  “I should have been the one to rescue Brena.”

  “You were, remember,” Variel said touching her nose. She stepped away from his arms, always aware of the other eyes around them. He should be as well. If it weren’t for her, they’d have been caught a month in, maybe less.

  Walking away from the station, Taliesin followed, “You know to what I refer.”

  He saw her head bob to the side and down as she weighed her thoughts. “Sin,” the voice was soft, “it had to be me.”

  “It does not change how I feel.”

  Her shoulders shrugged, “No, I suppose it won’t. Emotions are assholes like that. Gah!” she paused and knotted up her palm, smacking into her side.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Stitch, all that running and adrenaling, only to sit on my ass for hours. Bound to happen. Gods, I need about twenty-five hours in my bed after this.”

  “With or without company?”

  The grin spread her cheeks so wide he could see them lift even from behind her, “With.”

  “I will have to ask my assistant to check my schedule.”

  Her chuckle died as five feet of half-toasted elf barreled down upon her. Ferra had a few wires wrapped around her hair, but it still tumbled down in agitation. Variel always wanted to ask why she didn’t cut the mass down to size, but elves had this thing about hair.

  “There you are!” the engineer shouted, then she turned and called over her shoulder, “She’s over here!”

  Variel and Taliesin watched as Monde and Brena disentangled off a bench, cups in both their hands. They’d been waiting the interrogation out in a bit more style than the captain. Variel’s stomach grumbled in rage, reminding her that it’d been a long time she she last filled it. “Why aren’t you on the ship?” she asked her crew.

  “Funny story that. Absolutely hilarious,” Ferra said glancing at her fellows. Monde’s clothes were the most wrecked they’d ever seen them, the pants almost shredded at the knee, the collar of his shirt long torn off, and his left side coated in charcoal. Brena was the only one attired as if she stepped out of her dressing room, poised for a new day. Only the scarf knotted about her neck to hide the bandage betrayed any hint that she’d been through the massacre.

  “Here’s the thing,” Ferra continued, “seems your djinn has holed itself up in there and won’t unlock the damn door.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because we didn’t answer his three riddles…how the hell should I know? Get your ass up there and tell him to let us in.”

  Variel sighed, grateful to only have to deal with the quirks of the silent djinn. “Okay, come on. I’ll talk to Gene,” she paused and counted up her crew, “Where’s Orn?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Hospitals were all the same. One might have eight foot long beds with a bed pan big enough to float a family, or another the soothing streams of lava piping through the walls. But you strip it all away and you got tile — stained before it left the showroom floor — a hustle of people whispering as if they were surrounded by the dead, and eternal antiseptic top notes covering the putrid flesh base note.

  There wasn’t a person alive who liked going to the hospital. Perhaps some of the necromancied, but that was just when they needed an oil change. Orn particularly hated them as he sat in one of the stuffed arm chairs somehow more uncomfortable than the wooden bench filled with a quartet of gnomes clutching various wounds. They’d sat quietly since he arrived and didn’t seem to anticipate assistance anytime soon. He patted his pocket again, then checked his PALM. It’d been buzzing ever since the comm blackout was officially raised.

  At least half were from his ether contacts all asking if he saw the news about some NC space station going kerplowey. Apparently, the failed invasion hit all the right buttons to go bacterial and no amount of antibiotics were slowing it down. He closed his hand as a desk staff glared at him and held her five-inch-long finger to her mouth. Orn tried to not look at the extended digit as he mouthed “sorry.” She sneered but turned back to whatever people behind desks did. If it were Orn, he’d have pushed a few buttons to dip the ship’s wings just to keep things interesting. It probably didn’t have the same impact on a mostly stationary hospital ward.

  The curtain shrouding off the room across from him opened and Orn scurried to his feet. If he ever wore a hat, he’d have knotted it into his hands as a doctor emerged. The ogre glanced but didn’t see the dwarf hovering outside her patient’s room. If it wasn’t bleeding, on fire, or about to implode, she didn’t have time to care. A pair of dwarves followed the vast head of the ogre. The woman was dressed as primly as if she were attending an ancestor reunion, the man still in a suit that screamed restaurant uniform.

  “Rest is best,” the ogre said, turning her shoulders to face the dwarf couple and dragging that massive face with.

  The woman’s head bobbed, her pale lips hidden beneath the same rouge lipstick Darya wore. Putting an arm around probably his wife, the man said, “We understand, Doctor. Is there…is there any chance?”

  The ogre shifted on her feet as her soggy bottom lip consumed the top, “I do not like to deal in absolutes, but…” the head and shoulders turned to what lay across the bed, “the likelihood is negligent.”

  “I see,” the man said as the woman gasped and sobbed into her
husband’s shoulder.

  Orn muttered under his breath, “It’s not like it’s a death sentence.” He must have done it a bit louder than intended as the pair of dark heads swung to glare upon him. Shifting on his heels, he opened his mouth to introduce himself.

  “Who are you? What do you want?” the man interrupted.

  So much for politeness. “I’m, I was with, I was hoping to see Darya.”

  “Why?” the woman’s sob broke as she clung to her husband.

  “To see her?” Orn said, stumbling for words in the face of grief. He wondered if his own parents carried on so when they got the same prognosis. It was probably much worse. His father loved to overreact.

  “You should leave,” the man said, rising to a height that put him a few inches below Orn.

  “I, but…” The words weren’t coming. You were there, say you were there. You helped rescue her. She’s alive because of you! Something other than a twitching mouth!

  “Now,” the man ordered, pointing to an exit sign.

  “Wait.”

  Orn stopped walking and the others turned to the voice, still weak from surgery, filtering through the fabric curtain. “I want to see him.”

  “Darya, darling,” the woman said, “you don’t.”

  “I know what I want, Madran,” Darya sniped back. Orn couldn’t hide the smirk. A horrific accident, a war zone, and major surgery still couldn’t wipe away the teenager.

  “Very well, young lady. But we’ll be right outside. Lan needs to call your father and I, I need some air.”

  “Whatever,” Darya said, probably rolling her eyes.

  Madran huffed and walked past Orn, but she stopped and waved her finger in his bulbous nose, “If you say or do anything…”

  “I’ll be a good visitor?” Orn smirked, her spell broken. As she shook with a fury she wanted to burn on someone, he walked past her into the tiny room.

  Triage was the word of the day. People with far worse injuries than Darya were crammed into smaller holes. Her probably second or tertiary aunt had connections. The teenager was swallowed by a bed meant for human or smaller. A thin bit of smock kept her decent, but failed to cover the bandages across the stumps of her legs. He didn’t wince as he saw them, but he saw her watching him, expecting it. Everyone else would have.

  Orn pulled up one of the chairs left beside the bed. Darya lifted her head an inch or so and pushed a button placed beside her pale hand. The screen in the corner switched to one of those shows where they drop five strangers into a hole and see who makes it out alive. They always all survive, because they need fodder for spinoffs.

  A few moments ticked by as a man with feathers shoved into his foot tall hair talked about how he wasn’t in it to make friends before Darya acknowledged Orn. “I’ve seen this one already,” she flicked off the screen and her eyes rolled to his. “Why’d you bother to visit?”

  “I brought you something,” Orn said, and he pulled a paper bag out of his pocket. It was warped and shredded as if he worried the thing to death. The bottom thudded while he held it up and placed it on the tray beside her head. The glinting metal was already covered in familiar medicines.

  “What is it?” Darya asked, watching his movements out of curiosity’s sake.

  “Frizzle Drops, the only thing I’ve found to cut that awful taste of T-Juice from your tongue.”

  “T-Juice? You mean the Tetralanin?” she repeated the word as if it’d been drilled into her head by a woman who overdid it on the jewelry this morning.

  “Yeah, that shit. The good thing is, once you knit the connections for your implants you don’t have to do the shots once every four hours. The bad thing is you need to take boosts every two months, and it still tastes like the hairy ass of a goblin.”

  Darya chuckled, then it faded to a frown as his word’s weight sunk in. She’d be drinking that goblin’s ass for the rest of her life. He knew that feeling well. “Heard from your primes?” Orn asked, trying to change the subject.

  “No, they just opened communications outside the station. They’re from Nikap.”

  “Don’t know that one,” Orn admitted.

  “Colony, working to lava form it for cultivation. This was my break trip from school. I was gonna rent a star-skipper tomorrow and sneak off to the Kalp Park,” her sentences collapsed into tears.

  Orn didn’t respond. He sunk into the chair, watching his hand rotate slowly around a snapped bearing he kept forgetting to replace. It wasn’t that noticeable, and Ferra was busy these days.

  As composure came back to Darya, she wiped at her tears with her left hand and asked him, “Aren’t you going to tell me that everything will be all right? That with time I won’t even notice my loss? How this will build character?”

  A harsh snort broke from Orn’s nose as if he was both laughing and about to charge someone at the same time, “I take it your ‘Loss Councilor’ has already been through.”

  “They call them rehabilitation coaches,” Darya said, snot bubbling from her nose. She looked like a kid; barely past the gnawing on rocks age to soothe that third set of teeth, her nose running from a scary dream as she tucked her legs under her.

  “Everything they say, every word of it, it’s all a bucket of crapballs. With every movement, every stare of a curious child, every well meaning person encouraging you for existing, you’ll be reminded how you’re not like them. How you’re something else. But…”

  Orn stopped, trying to remember when it became worth it. But there never was this day when the sun shined, the birds sang for him, and his false hand was perfect. He still felt it. The physical pain was mostly subsided, only the chafing or itching remained, but the mental stuff — that was permanent. He could lie, same as her aunt, same as the coach, same as her parents all would. They’d lie to her, to themselves, even the doctors like to make up bullshit about how one day she’d rise above it all. But they didn’t know, they couldn’t know. They didn’t want to know.

  “But you’ve got something worth living for. It won’t seem like it today, it sure as shit won’t seem like it tomorrow, or the week after that, or the month. But there will be glimmers, a second of life when you think ‘Hm, maybe this isn’t so bad after all.’ That’s what you strive for. Glimmers.”

  Darya eyed him up, not saying anything as a tear dribbled down his cheek. Either he didn’t notice he was crying or didn’t care. “You know, you’re terrible at cheering people up.”

  Orn watched her stone face and his lips lifted in a half smile with hers, “If you’d like I could blow up one of those ogre sized gloves and fit it over my head. Maybe do a silly dance.”

  “Please, alloys, no!” she said and a glimmer of a laugh broke from her throat.

  He sighed as his hand beeped again. Orn knew that signal, his wife was worried. She hadn’t said exactly as such when she pried herself out of the wreckage she caused and rushed to find him; but, judging by the grip her fingers left in his back from her hug, she wasn’t happy he left her side again. “I should go,” he said as he rose. “But, if you want to talk or yell, you can contact me,” he said as he lifted his PALM.

  Darya looked at her own hand and shook her head, “The T-juice screwed up the sensors. I’ll have to get a new one.”

  “Right, right,” Orn said, and then he caught sight of something untouched on the bedside stand. Smiling, he picked it up and got to work.

  A nurse entered to check on Darya, probably sent by her uncle, and quickly stepped aside from a whistling Orn. He tipped his head to the nurse and walked away towards the exit. The nurse smiled at Darya, who was drifting off to sleep. He gathered up the trash around the girl and turned. A very un-nursely string of curses left his mouth as he looked at the wall.

  ORN @ ELATIONCRU was painted in foot-high letters up and down the partition in chocolate pudding.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “How many explosives did you take?” Variel asked as she pressed her hand into what was supposed to be an impenetrable dishwasher lock
.

  “I can’t remember; four, maybe five,” Ferra said, her face freshly scrubbed as she tried to darn up her favorite pair of overalls.

  “Six, there were six explosions you caused,” Monde said. He’d had a fun time trying to explain it all to the dwarven officials who helped him escape the maintenance shaft collapse Ferra caused. “I’m an exchange student,” came in handy, but he feared the day he’d age out of that excuse.

  “Six?” Variel unlocked her arsenal and poked through the now empty silverware tray, “That’s impossible, there weren’t six bombardment nodes. Ferra…”

  “What?”

  “You did not throw a shield harmonic at them.”

  “Maybe?” The elf asked, “What’s that do?”

  “Scrambles shields so you can take the enemy down,” Variel answered, throwing her hands up. She was down to almost nothing after her sticky fingered engineer got inside.

  “Well it makes a mighty fine explosion,” Ferra chided back as she bit off the thread and stuck the needle in the cushion hidden in her hair.

  “It isn’t supposed to!” Variel yelled, then she massaged her head. “Should I even bother asking why you were able to break into the arsenal in the first place?”

  “It was an emergency,” Ferra said.

  “Not the point.”

  “She is correct,” the measured tones of the assassin broke from behind his meager dinner of leek soup, “it was an emergency.”

  “You’re not helping, either,” Variel said, waving her finger at him and getting the slowest eyebrow raise.

  “Would you prefer she have saved us unarmed?” Brena asked, joining in the dog pile. She’d knotted a ribbon around her neck, the scarlet shimmer reminding everyone what the elf went through. Variel wondered if she didn’t do it on purpose.

  “I…” the captain threw up her hands, “okay, fine, you win. Next emergency, everyone gets a free shotgun and a grenade!”