Page 11
Author: Rachel Bach
On your feet, in the cargo bay, in midmop, Hyrek typed with a snort. You want to try a new one?
“No, because that’s what happened,” I said, keeping my voice calm and reasonable. “The stress of living with a xith’cal has given me narcolepsy. ”
Narcolepsy is genetic, Hyrek wrote. And I don’t think you get stressed. Stress implies an instinct against danger. You have no such thing.
I sighed and flopped back on the medical bunk that was starting to feel like home. “Well, poke away, then,” I said. “But you can’t keep me here forever. ”
Hyrek responded by jabbing the needle back into my arm with a vindictiveness that was not medically necessary.
It would probably have been easier to convince him to let me go if the floating bug things weren’t still hanging around. I was no longer seeing huge hordes of them like back in the cargo bay, but ever since Hyrek had dragged me away, they seemed to be staying close. Sometimes it was just one dancing along the ceiling. Other times there were dozens floating lazily in the air like tiny glowing jellyfish. No matter how many there were, though, none of them ever got closer to me than arm’s length. For my part, I was trying my best to ignore them, but it’s really hard not to look at things that glow and move.
Every time my eyes darted to something that wasn’t there, Hyrek would glare at me like I’d just proved him right, but he was overruled in the end. The captain had wrapped up his business in Io5, which meant we were back in flight, and since our only other security guard had been on the job for less than a day, there was no choice but to put me back to work, though not before Caldswell himself came down to look me over.
He talked with Hyrek while I got back into my armor. The little glowing bugs must have liked the captain, because he’d gathered a fine swarm of them by the time he sent the lizard away. Once Hyrek was out of the room, the captain took a seat on the examining table and leaned back, resting his weight on his palms. “You’re not cracking on us, are you, Morris?”
I’d been so busy watching what looked like a little glowing puffball float back and forth through the captain’s chest that I almost missed the question. “No sir,” I said, putting my helmet on with less grace than usual. When my cameras kicked on, the glowing bugs vanished, and I breathed a silent sigh of relief.
“No sir,” I said again. “I am perfectly capable of doing my job. ”
The captain leaned forward again, rubbing his hands over his face. Now that the bugs were gone, or at least hidden by my cameras, I could look at the captain without distraction. What I saw was disconcerting. I was the one who’d fallen asleep randomly, but Caldswell seemed like he needed to be in the medbay more than I did. The man looked ready to fall over from exhaustion.
“There’s no shame in admitting you have a problem,” Caldswell said quietly when he finally dropped his hands. “If you want to tell me anything off the record, now would be the time. ”
I went ramrod straight. “I do not have a problem,” I lied.
Caldswell looked at me for a long time after that. I was used to being under officer scrutiny, but the strange dream was still with me, and I found myself cringing under his gaze. Fortunately, the captain couldn’t see enough of my face through my visor to tell. Or, if he could, he didn’t comment. All he did was shake his head and slide off the table. “Have it your way,” he said. “But I want you to take better care of yourself. Get your full cycle of sleep and be sure to eat. I hear you’ve been off your food. ”
That wasn’t strictly true. I’d been eating, just not in the lounge, because I couldn’t look at the cook without feeling ill. But that was one of the problems I was not discussing with the captain, so all I said was, “Yes sir. ”
Caldswell nodded and started for the door. “We hit the gate at IoThree in four hours. After that, we have a twelve-hour jump to the Sevalis. I want you to spend it resting. Understood?”
“Yes sir,” I said again, falling into step beside him as we walked back to the bridge.
Rashid was there when we arrived, talking scanners with Nova. They were both so happy to see me out of the medbay that I felt a little guilty. Rashid offered to take over until we jumped so I could get some rest, but I told him if I didn’t get back to work I really would go crazy. It was supposed to be a joke, but Rashid didn’t seem to think it was funny, and I made a mental note to act as normally as I could around him from now on.
Despite its lonely appearance, Io5 was actually the last planet in what was otherwise a reasonably developed solar system. Its neighbor, the far more temperate Io3, was a major farming center for the Terran core worlds, and the four-hour flight to reach it was every bit as safe and uneventful as you would imagine. I spent the time going over patrol patterns with Rashid, but it was hardly necessary. The old man was a better ship guard than I was.
We made the jump without incident. Caldswell must have wanted everyone to get some sleep, because as soon as the stars outside were replaced by the dull purple-gray blankness of hyperspace, the Fool’s lights switched to night cycle, plunging the ship into darkness.
Even though I’d fallen asleep in my armor earlier, I didn’t actually feel that tired. I wasn’t about to disobey the captain, though, so I dutifully went to my bunk. I was half hoping I could convince Nova to play cards with me for a bit, but when I stepped into our room, I found a note from her on my pillow informing me that she would be spending the jump with Mabel so as to “ensure no disturbance to the solemnity of my needed rest time. ”
My shoulders slumped. It was a sweet sentiment, but I almost went downstairs to ask her to come back. I didn’t want to be alone tonight, especially since now that my helmet was off, the glowing creatures were back.
There were three of them in the room currently, all smaller than my thumb. Two were just sitting on the ceiling, the third was crawling across the closed door. Since they didn’t show up on cameras, I wasn’t sure if they’d been here the whole time or if they’d followed me in, though considering the little critters were afraid of me, or at least unwilling to come close, following seemed out.
I finished putting my suit away and changed into my nightshirt, cutting out the light as I crawled into bed. In the dark, the glowing bugs were much brighter, shining like little ghostly lanterns. If it wasn’t for the part where seeing them probably meant I was insane, they would have been beautiful.
I closed my eyes and rolled over, burying my face in my pillow. This was why I hadn’t wanted to be alone. Losing my memories was bad enough, but at least that was explainable as the result of a head wound. Now, between my weird reactions to the cook, the dream, and the bugs, it was getting harder to convince myself that I wasn’t going batty. I didn’t feel insane, though. Confused, sure, and sick of things I couldn’t explain, but not crazy. But then, didn’t all crazy people think they were sane?
I groaned and burrowed deeper under the covers. This was going nowhere. The responsible thing would be to go back to Caldswell and take him up on his offer. He played the hardass act to a T, but I was reasonably certain the captain would work with me. He couldn’t trade to save his life, but otherwise Caldswell was a practical man. He didn’t want to replace another security officer. I knew I should just get up and go talk to him, but when I thought about walking downstairs and knocking on his door, all I could picture was him standing in that dark bunker, handing his gun to the cook while I bled to death on the floor at their feet.
It was really insane to be afraid of someone for a thing they’d done in a dream, but I just couldn’t seem to get over it. It didn’t help that the stupid nightmare wasn’t fading. A normal dream would have been long gone by now, but I could still remember every second of what I’d seen in the bunker like it had really happened. Just thinking about it was enough to make my fingers ache where Ren had squeezed them.
I balled my throbbing hand into a fist. This was getting ridiculous. I had enough to be afraid
of in the real world, like hell was I going to lie here and be scared of a dream. That stupid thing had already messed up my life enough, making me look like an idiot in front of Rashid and Hyrek. I was not going to let it keep me awake when my captain had ordered me to sleep.
Forcing the whole mess out of my brain, I put my pillow over my head to block out the bugs’ light and shut my eyes tight, focusing on my breaths. It was an old merc trick, and it worked like a charm. One lungful at a time, I breathed slower and slower until my body was still and my mind was empty. And finally, in the emptiness, I fell asleep.
Not surprisingly, I had bad dreams.
In most of them, I saw Cotter. He was back in his stupid yellow armor, firing his gun at something that looked like a human but was armored like a xith’cal. Sometimes I was firing too, but whoever was doing the shooting, it did no good. No matter how many bullets we put in it, the black thing wouldn’t go down.
Cotter always died in those dreams. Sometimes I did, too. Once the black monster bit me through the shoulder, an impressive feat considering it had no mouth. Another time it ripped my head off while I was pinned on my back. My least favorite was when it stuck its hand in my stomach and I could feel its black claws closing inside my gut. But it wasn’t the pain that made the dreams so awful, it was the confusion, because the black monster wasn’t always my enemy. Sometimes he was dear to me. Sometimes, the worst times, he was both at once, stabbing me in the stomach even as he whispered my name in a soft, accented voice that made me want to cry.
I woke up in a blind panic, scrambling out of bed and into a crouch before I knew what I was doing. My body was soaked in sweat and charged to attack, but there was nothing to fight. I was alone in my dark bunk with only my fear and a single glowing bug for company.
I slumped to the floor, panting as I tried to calm my thundering heart back down to a reasonable pace. According to the clock on the dresser, I’d only been asleep for five hours, but there was no way I was going back to bed. Not with my whole body stuck in fight or flight.
When my pulse still hadn’t calmed down after a minute of sitting still, I decided it was time to take a walk. Something repetitive and nonstrenuous would drive off the panic, and if I was quick, I could get another couple hours of rest in before the jump ended. That sounded good enough to me, so I heaved myself off the floor and slipped into the hall.
The Fool was dark and silent. Since there was nothing to do in hyperspace, it was one of the only times everyone on the ship could be asleep at once. I crept past the other bunks, my bare feet silent on the rubber mats. My idea was to go down to the cargo bay and run some laps where I wouldn’t bother anyone, but when I reached the lounge, I was surprised to see a light shining under the closed door. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep.
I opened the door and stuck my head in, but I didn’t see anyone. The lounge was dark except for the runner lights and the lamp over the kitchen counter, the light I’d seen. Hopes for company dashed, I walked into the kitchen to cut the light off. But as my fingers landed on the switch, I caught something out of the corner of my eye.
Normally, it takes a bit more than a glimpse to send me into battle mode, but I was already jacked up, and I whirled around, hand going for the pistol that wasn’t there. Good thing, too, because it wasn’t the black-scaled creature from my nightmares waiting for me in the dark. It was the cook.
He was sitting on the couch in the corner, which was why I hadn’t seen him from the door. He was hunched over with a glass cupped between his hands like an offering, and there was a freshly opened bottle of whiskey on the low table in front of him that, even in the dark, I could see was mostly empty. It was that more than anything that made me pause, because for some reason, I had the very distinct impression that the cook did not drink.
The memory of the weird immunity I’d had in my dream must have stuck with me, because I looked straight at him without thinking. But I was back in the real world now, and the revulsion hit me with a vengeance. I spun away at once, pushing my hands into my stomach. I was still fighting the nausea when I heard the soft whisper of movement behind me as the cook started to get up.