A voice comes over Jeffers’ comm, and mine picks it up.
“Jeffers, this is Baebong! He’s inside the airlock, but he’s getting up again. The guy’s a fucking monster. Gotta have some AI in him or something. I’m floating him with your permission. I can’t reach Captain Cass.”
“She’s here, Baebong. Transmitting from the Mahalo.” He shifts his focus to me. “What’s the order, Captain? Are we floating the pirate or taking him prisoner?”
Both panic and happiness well up in me. They’re not going to abandon me! They still recognize me as captain! Then tears come to join the party. I thought I’d killed that goddamned pirate before, and I was okay with that because it was in self-defense, but now that he’s safely locked away, it’s not so simple. He’s alive, and I have to choose whether to kill him again or let him live.
“Tam?” I whisper. “Gus?”
Jeffers shakes his head slowly. “Tam was stabbed in the abdomen with your knife. He’s not dead, but I don’t know what I can do for him. Gus is okay.”
My blood turns cold. I literally break out in goosebumps all over my body as the last bit of warmth leaves me.
I have to speak very slowly and carefully to be understood. “Floaaaat hiiim.” Tears begin to pour down my face in earnest as Jeffers nods.
He transmits to Baebong without breaking eye contact with me. “Captain Cass orders you to float Captain Bob for crimes committed against her crew.”
My entire face is trembling with sadness, regret, and I don’t even know what else. This is all too much. Too crazy. Tam is dying? I nod my assent to Jeffers’ transmission because it’s all I’m capable of doing right now.
My body jerks a little to the left and then the right as the airlock tethering the PC to the Anarchy is broken off by Baebong on the other side. I’m cast adrift, and about a minute after being released, I see the body of Captain Bob floating by the clearpanels, already puffing up and turning blue. I crumple in my seat, laying my head in my arms. Sobs wrack my body as I shut off all communications with the DS Anarchy.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“CASS.” THE VOICE IS FAINT. A woman is calling me.
Mom?
I lift my head and squint at the clearpanel before me. It’s black. I’m looking out into the Dark. Where in the hell am I? I scan the space around me, and it starts to come back — the memory of how I got where I am. I feel sick.
“Cass. You need to respond. We’re starting to get worried over here.” This voice is anything but worried. I’m not that out of it that I can’t recognize the tone as annoyed.
I open my mouth, but when I try to send a word out, it won’t work. My throat is killing me. I realize then that I’m wheezing just trying to breathe, but my lungs feel fine.
“Listen, I’m too busy to be worrying about you. Could you please respond?”
Now I recognize the voice more fully. It’s Lucinda.
I press the blinking reach button on the console and wipe away the sleep-drool I left on the metal surface as the comm screen comes to life. Lucinda’s face is taking up the whole thing.
“There you are,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I told you she was there.”
Baebong shares the screen with her. “Where’ve you been? We’ve been trying to reach you for an hour.” He leans in closer. “I thought that fucking pirate had somehow gotten to you.”
I shake my head and flutter my fingers from right to left, indicating I saw him dying as he went by my clearpanels.
“Yeah, we floated his sorry ass. You ready to come home yet?”
Home. The word makes me want to cry. But instead, I nod.
“Good.” He grins way too hard. “Gus! We’re a go!”
“Go?” I whisper.
Lucinda shakes her head. “You don’t want to know. Just strap in.” She gets up and leaves the area. Now all I see is the empty captain’s chair where I should be sitting.
Baebong returns a few seconds later. “Okay, so we’re going to lasso that PC you’re in and bring you back.”
I frown.
“Remember when you told Gus and Tam to disable the PC? Yeah, well, they did a really good job of it. You can’t fly the thing back over, so we need to grab you.”
I slap myself on the forehead and lean back in the chair.
“Hey, don’t worry! We’ve got it covered. Coming up in ten seconds. Nine … eight…”
I grab the buckles and straps that’ll hold me in my seat. It’ll really suck if I die from this ridiculousness after evading death at the hands of a deranged franken-pirate. I sit back and close my eyes, waiting for fate to deal me my next hand.
My entire body jerks with the ship when they finally make contact. It feels like we’ve been slammed into the side of a warship.
“Booyah!” Baebong yells. “Bring it in now, bring it in!” He leans in toward me. “Did you feel anything?”
I nod, then roll my eyes.
“Not too much, I hope.” His attention lifts to a screen above him. “No, no, no! Not like that! Careful!”
He leans in and lowers his voice. “Fucking ginger. Don’t ever let him fly any of your rigs, okay? He’s seriously dangerous.”
He looks up again. “Easy! Jesus, man, I told you that shit is hard to procure. If you break it, you have to find me another one. I’m not kidding. And you’re gonna have to pay with your left nut, too, trust me.”
My body jerks again, and I hear a loud scraping on the hull of the PC. My hands go up and grab the console to steady my chair that keeps bucking with the movement of the ship. I hiss with the pain it causes my finger.
“Guess we’re going to need a little hull work when we pull into the next station, eh?” Baebong tries to laugh his joke off, but it’s not working. He grimaces as another squeal of metalloid on metalloid rings out on both ships.
Finally, the movement stops, and I hear the banging that can only mean an airlock is being set up just beyond the door to my right.
“We good?” he shouts to someone.
“Yes, airlock in place,” says Lucinda.
Baebong grins at me. “We’re docked. Come to papa.”
I shut off the comm and turn my seat to face the door. I have to take a few deep breaths before I can work up the courage to actually stand and hobble over to the portal.
Everyone on the other side of this thing knows I gave the order to float a man. They also include a guy who took a knife to the gut —my knife— who might not live to see the end of this day. Just the idea of Tam lying there bleeding out has me moving faster. I need to talk to him. I need to tell him I’m sorry.
I open the door and see Baebong through the small window at the other end of the airlock on his side. Once the systems between us indicate all is safe, we open each end of the dock and Baebong comes striding through.
“Come on,” he says, jamming his shoulder up into my armpit and turning around to face the Anarchy. “We need to go see Tam.”
I nod, hopping on my good foot along next to him. I hold my broken finger out in front of me to keep from bumping it on anything. It’s swollen to twice its normal size, and I’m guessing so are my bad toes. My boot is tighter than it should be, and my entire foot is killing me.
“Got your ass kicked, didn’t ya?” Baebong asks. There’s a slight note of humor to his question, but I get it. He’s never seen anyone get the better of me before, and he’s cleaned up plenty of my messes, made apologies for me, warned people not to try and get revenge for being shown up by a girl. He probably thinks it’s about time I got something broken.
“You could say that. How’s Tam?” My voice is scratchy but better, my throat burning with the effort of trying to talk above a whisper.
“Not good. His brother’s freaking out.”
“You think he’s … going to make it?”
“Not without better MI than we have on this boat, that’s for sure.”
I hop faster.
“Here.” Baebong stops and picks me up like a baby.
> “Put me down, asshole.”
“No, you’re too damn slow.” He starts to jog, making my hand and foot ache with the percussions. But I don’t say a word. I’m still alive and kicking, unlike my engineer.
We get to the infirmary, and I can instantly see why everyone is so worried, even though we aren’t even through the doorway yet. Tam’s face is white. He’s in shock, and probably sitting on Death’s doorstep.
Baebong drops my legs, and I limp forward to claim a position on the other side of the bed, opposite Gus. Taking Tam’s hand, I squeeze it. “Hey, man,” I whisper as loud as I can.
“He’s not talking anymore,” Gus says. He’s been crying, his voice hoarse from it.
I look over my shoulder at Jeffers. My whispers are getting clearer, but not any louder. “What did you do?”
Jeffers joins me at my side. “Did my best to stop the bleeding.” He looks over at the silver tray nearby. On it rests my knife. “It’s a wicked blade, though. It did some damage internally that I can’t do anything about with what I have here.”
I nod and look down at the patient’s complexion. His spots stand out on his face like someone drew them or tattooed them on. His eyes are closed, but he’s breathing. Unfortunately his respirations are shallow and not very inspiring. I keep thinking the next one will be his last.
“Tam, we’re going to fix this. I promise, we’re going to fix this.”
Baebong nudges me, probably telling me to shut up, but I ignore him. I will fix this.
“What are you going to do?” Gus asks, looking up at me. His voice is so full of hope, I nearly gag with it. I’ve not just made a promise to a dying man, I’ve made it to his twin brother.
“Come on,” I whisper to Baebong. “Pick me up. Bring me to the flightdeck.”
Baebong doesn’t argue, he just grabs me, throws me over his shoulder, and starts running.
“Not like this!” I try to yell, but he doesn’t listen. He probably can’t even hear me over the sound of his boots banging on the grates below us.
“Corridors are too narrow. This is faster.” The pounding of every step sends his big shoulder into my guts. I almost make it all the way to our destination before vomiting.
“Ah, man! Did you have to?” he asks, dropping me back on my feet.
“Soh ah ah bish!” I try to yell, but it comes out like a horror show screech.
“What?” he’s looking behind him, seeing if I got any vomit on his back. “I can’t understand a damn thing you’re saying.”
I shove him out of the way and hop, skip, and jump up to the captain’s chair. Once there, I call up a frequency that I know by heart. Every OSG recruit learns it and commits it to memory, just in case we’re ever caught out in the Dark and in need of a rescue.
I lean down very close to the comm box and speak as slowly and as carefully as I can, hoping my words will come out clearly enough to be understood.
“Warship Baltimore, this is the DS Anarchy, extending a reach. Over.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“WHAT IN THE HELL ARE you doing?!” Baebong yells at me. My eardrum is ringing from the vibrations of his anger. “You can’t call them over here! We’re waiting for the Alliance to show up!”
I hold my hands out to shut him up. I can’t yell back so he needs to calm down to listen. When he’s chill enough to just fume and glare at me, I respond. “I realize that. But do you see them out there anywhere?” We both turn to the clearpanel that shows nothing but distant stars, planets, and moons. “This is the only way to save Tam that I know of, unless you have other ideas.”
“I don’t know,” he growls, the anger down a notch or two. “Maybe we could fetch that bloated pirate and take his AI out. Maybe whatever he has could work for Tam.”
I try to laugh but it hurts too much. “Are you kidding? Are you that kind of surgeon? Are you that kind of crazy?”
Baebong says nothing because we both already know the answer to my question. He’s no surgeon, that’s for damn sure. He’s better at blowing things up than carefully slicing things and putting them back together.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so.”
“At least move us to a new location first,” he begs.
I’m about to argue, but he’s making too much sense for that. I should have come up with that idea myself, but I’m obviously too panicked to be sly.
“Fine. Give us a few klicks to work with.” I sit down in the captain’s chair while he fires up the comm and the thrusters.
“Attention all crewmembers,” Baebong says, “we are about to take a little voyage, nothing to worry your pretty little heads over, but if you’re carrying any scissors, please secure them at this time. And do not, whatever you do, run with them.”
I stroke my neck, trying to calm the burning soreness in the front of it that feels like it’s slowly wrapping around to my spine. Baebong gives us twenty-five percent aft thrust and a destination fifty klicks from where we are currently. With our gravity algos working to negate the inertial displacement, the crew will probably think we’ve only gone two klicks, and we’ll get there in less than a minute if my quick math is any good. I don’t even sense the ship moving, but I can see through the clearpanel and my instrumentation that it is. Fifty seconds remaining…come on, Overshine, don’t answer me yet. Just give me … forty-five more seconds…
A voice comes out over the comm as we’re slowing down at our new location. I breathe out a sigh of relief and hold up a hand at Baebong so he knows to maintain our current position. His hands work the array to set up our anchor point.
“DS Anarchy, this is Warship Baltimore, reach accepted. State your position.”
“I’d like to speak to your captain, Baltimore, if possible. Terrick Overshine, I believe his name is.” Hopefully he hasn’t been replaced or relieved of duty in the day and a half we’ve been apart.
There’s a long pause and Baebong takes the opportunity to give me two more cents’ worth of advice. “We just got rid of those guys, and now you’re going to call them over. You’re going to regret this, I know you are.”
“Just shut up and try for once in your life to support me.”
“Support you? Support you? That’s all I’ve ever done since I met you. Maybe you haven’t noticed it, but I’m the guy always walking around behind you cleaning up your messes.”
I snort. “Yeah, right. And you aren’t ever making any messes that others have to clean up, is that it?”
He just glares at me because we’re hearing a voice again on the comm.
“DS Anarchy, this is Captain Overshine.”
His voice gives me both chills and thrills. He is my salvation and could be my demise too. Baebong is probably right about me eventually regretting this conversation, but what else could I do? I have a crew member dying. I can’t just let that go because I’m afraid of what will happen to me.
I hold my hand on my throat, hoping for the pain to subside. “Captain, thank you for accepting our reach. I had a little problem with a rogue pirate, and now I’ve got an injured crew member on board who needs more MI than we can handle.”
Baebong leans in to the comm at his station, links up, and speaks. “Make that two crewmembers.”
I flip him off as Overshine comes back to us.
“Is it one or two? State the nature of the injuries.”
I glare at Baebong, warning him silently not to cut in again. “Knife wound to the abdomen. Couple of broken bones. Crushed windpipe.” I try to clear my throat, but it hurts too much so I give up. It may have sounded like I burped over the comm.
“Cass?” Overshine says. “Is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me.” I sound completely defeated, which is perfect since that’s how I feel.
“I take it you’re the one with the crushed windpipe.”
I don’t bother answering.
His voice comes over again, only this time it’s quieter, like he’s trying to keep his own crew from listening in. “I wondered when someone
was going to finally give you a run for your money.”
Baebong strides over and pushes me away from the comm, keeping me from saying what I really, really want to say to that arrogant jerk. He leans over so he can speak into my array. “Captain Overshine, our coordinates are x-ray 369, yankee 640, zulu 120, trajectory kilo. We are anchored.”
“Coordinates accepted. We are en route to your position, E.T.A. nineteen minutes. Remain anchored until further notice.”
“Yes, Captain. We’ll do that.” Baebong shuts off the comm and glares at me.
I glare back.
We stay that way for a really long time, neither wanting to be the first to back down. His face could be carved from stone it’s so smooth, so perfect, so without any expression at all.
“You blinked,” he finally says, backing away toward his console.
“Fuck that, you blinked.” I look away and close my lids a few times to lubricate my eyeballs. I hate playing that game with him. He always wins.
“Didn’t.” He turns around and sits down with his back to me.
If I had anything on me that could detach, I’d throw it at his head, but all I have as weapons right now are insults. “Just because you’re a slant-eye doesn’t mean I can’t tell when you’re blinking.”
He snorts. “Don’t be jealous.”
We sit in silence for a long time. He messes around with his array trying to pick up the approaching warship, and I chew on my lip as I consider our situation.
Tam’s in the infirmary already on the way to dying. If his heart and brain stop before the Baltimore gets here, I know we can keep him alive until they’re in a position to intervene. That’s the good news. The bad news is that they might have to put some AI in him to get him back on his feet, and I never trust those part-human bastards who aren’t 100% flesh and blood.
I’ve always been a purist at heart, and that damn Captain Boob certainly isn’t inspiring me to change my thinking on that, but maybe I’ll have to make an exception for the twins. This hunk of junk ship is not going to fly without those two in the engine room putting out fires.