Planetary: Mercury, page 29
The sudden wrenching in Eli’s gut would have hurt less if someone had stabbed him with a knife. Gravity seemed to be both pushing him away, and dragging him down. He fought against it, but his lungs refused to work, his legs threatened to give out. It was as if even his body knew what a hopeless fight this was and was trying to escape his sad fate.
“What…? How can this be….” Anger and betrayal burned in Eli’s stomach and his words became a growl deep in his throat as he started towards Saren, “You lying, stealing, manipulating little—”
“No! It’s not like that! I promise!” Saren protested, trying to hide behind the man.
“Then what is it like? Is this why you haven’t been properly updating me?” Eli demanded.
Saren tried to sound respectable, even though she was shaking, “Well, if it’s signed with Gagarin & Galactic, there’s a better chance of it selling well. Then you could still be in charge, just partnered, then you could have even more money for getting your daughter to Earth! Brozel said—”
“Wait, did you say Brozel? Brozel Gagarin??” The name snapped Eli to attention, and he focused again on the tall man. His breath escaped him, carrying with it a disbelieving, “No…”
The other man’s build and height almost perfectly matched Eli’s, giving away his heritage as a space man; yet in his black, expensive suit he seemed to loom over Eli as he stepped up close to him. By some switch on an unseen control, the black of the man’s helmet visor lightened, and his face became clear. He had a pointed chin, a long, lean face, and eyes as dark as his hair—which sparkled with a vicious and cold light that unnerved Eli. It was a face that Eli recognized, a face that he loathed.
His mouth curled into a wicked smile, “We meet again, Shepard boy.”
“Brozel Gagarin… I should have known it would be you.” Eli glared at the man, then stepped back to try and get a good look at Saren, who was standing back and protectively clutching the tablet again. He shouted to her, “I can’t believe you were duped by his guy! He’s a liar and a thief!”
“What? Why?” Saren frowned, but her eyes were wide with concern, “He… he seemed honest to me. Really good at business deals too.”
Inwardly, Eli sighed. All throughout his academic and professional career, Brozel had always been particularly competitive against him, often trying to upstage everything he did as soon as he did it. The idea that Brozel had actually worked out the details himself—and not just let his team of workers handle the deal once he’d beguiled someone into giving up their rights and work—was not likely.
“Really good at sweet talking, you mean? Though I’m not sure I can blame you— I’ve seen him at work. Dozens of strong women have fallen prey to his charms. It’s a shame he wasn’t as good at inventing as he was at schmoozing. Otherwise, he might actually get something down.”
Saren blushed furiously while Brozel glared daggers at him.
“Come now,” Eli folded his arms and looked at Saren like a disappointed father, “I thought you were better than making business deals based on your own personal feelings. Especially for someone like him. Really, you could do better.”
“Well, you don’t have to be insulting!” Now Saren was indifferent, and moved closer to Brozel, who was bristling, “What do you know about him anyway?”
“Don’t fret babe.” Brozel patted her hand, resting on his shoulder, “We don’t have to give him anything. After all, the patent is signed in my name. He’s just still sour over our time in the academy. He never got over his jealousy.”
“I’m the jealous one?” Eli had to hold back a laugh, “I’m not the mimic who’s been stalking me ever since. What? Do you still have glue stuck in your perfect hair? Or has it migrated up your ass?”
Brozel’s smile was ripped away like a mask, revealing such a look of hatred it distorted his handsome face into a hideous grimace. Unnerved, Saren asked carefully, “What… what is he talking about?”
“Nothing,” Brozel snapped, “this scum is just someone who can’t take it when he’s lost.”
Eli snorted and replied, “Let’s get one thing straight, you and I both know that I won that contest. I should have gotten the award and business deal right out of Academy.” Eli turned to Saren, “But noooo! We couldn’t have the precious son of a billion-dollar company owner lose to little old me, even though my designs were far superior to his. All I did was leave a little well-deserved gift in place of his hair gel, so that he’d look extra good when he went out on national television. I must say, he certainly did put on a show. I especially love the part where his hand got stuck to his hair in the glue, what a hoot!”
A snarl moved his attention back to Brozel, and Eli was genuinely shocked by the hot hatred radiating from the other man’s face.
“You… are a childish… know-it-all. The bane of my existence and a thorn in my eye,” he hissed, leaning in closer with every word.
The fact that Brozel apparently had spent so much time and energy trying to get back at him, for something he had done only because Brozel had wronged him first, was so absurd. The strange irony of it all was almost too much for Eli. And despite the fact that years’ worth of his work had just been stolen from him, despite the fact that he had almost no money left, that his daughter would probably die a slow and painful death, and there was nothing he could do about it, despite it all, Eli threw back his head and laughed a deep, and pitying laugh.
The laughter made Brozel’s face twitch, and confusion entered his hard eyes. Saren shifted uneasily.
“Says the man who has tried to thwart me at every turn, and just stole years’ worth of work from me. Are you still mad about that one incident?” Eli, laughed again, then composed himself, asking seriously, “But come now, you can’t really still be mad about that? It was decades ago… And it was just a bit of harmless payback for what you took from me. It was just a prank.”
Eli looked at the absolute malice in Brozel’s eyes, and the hands reaching for his neck, and jumped back in surprise, “Well hell! I guess you are!”
With a roar, Brozel lunged at him. Eli danced away, surprisingly agile in his old suit.
“Are you really that insulted by me existing and being better than you?” Eli jumped again, avoiding a swipe at his leg, “Can’t you just…. oh I don’t know, do something on your own without my help?”
Now he’d really started a fire under his opponent, and he had to make a run for it.
Brozel came charging after him, “You celestial swine! Arrogant! Despicable! Useless!” The senseless insults came flying at Eli as he ducked and wove through the piles of equipment and material. He only kept laughing as he called back, “Man, you really have problems!”
Filled with rage, Brozel grabbed a short pipe from one of the piles and hid. Eli paused in the sudden silence, uncertain of where his foe was and in which direction to go. The moment he hesitated was the moment Brozel pounced, punching him in the gut with enough force to knock him into a corner. Eli stumbled, and before he could get his feet back under himself, Brozel was on him.
“I’ve always hated you,” Brozel spat, landing a few more blows. “You’re an arrogant smartass!”
“You’re mistaking arrogance for competence,” Eli corrected him. “I actually have skills I’ve worked for, and I know how to use them. That is not arrogance, that’s called knowing how to do your trade well.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Brozel snapped.
“It doesn’t matter?” Eli said, laughing again, “I think it matters a great deal! I’m the only one that wouldn’t bow to your rich boy butt, and you just couldn’t take that! Surely even a child has more maturity than you.”
“Shut up!” Brozel screeched, exceedingly like a child. “In six months’ time, I shall have this engine built. It shall be I, not you, presenting this incredible progress to the galaxy as my first act as head of Gagarin & Galactic! And that will show those scoundrels that say I’d not be able to escape my father’s shadow….”
“Well, not without stealing another man’s work,” Eli said bitterly.
“Well then…” a cold and soulless grin spread across Brozel’s face, “It’s a good thing you won’t be around to say otherwise.” He raised the pipe above his head. Eli tried to wrench himself free, but found no way out of the man’s strong grip.
Just as the pipe was about to come crashing down, Saren came running around the corner and grabbed his arm, “Stop it! Stop it now!”
“Get off me, woman!” Brozel commanded, pushing her away, but she stubbornly hung on.
“No! You need to calm down, this isn’t like you! Just stop! You promised me you would help!” She threw her weight against Brozel’s legs, managing to buckle them and make him topple to the side.
Brozel ground his teeth and turned to the girl, “You know nothing! Do not interfere, or you will feel the back swing of my rage as I beat this dog into the ground.”
Saren stumbled backwards, eyes wide and a hand upon her heaving chest, “You’re… You’re mad!”
Brozel just growled and turned back… to find Eli was no longer there. He looked around in confusion and anger, “What the… where…”
“Yoo-hoo!!”
Brozel and Saren turned and ran back to the center of the crater, where the prototype stood. Eli was in his rover, leaning out the window to shout, “I may not be able to get back what you have stolen from me, or reverse the damage and pain you have caused, but I’ll tell you what I will do. I swear with everything in me, that I will create something so much better, so extraordinary, that not even you will be able to copy me. Whatever glimpse of glory you gain from my invention will by far outshined by what I come up with next!”
Saren ran after him, “I’m so sorry Captain! I had no idea this would happen—I was just trying to help!”
Eli paused and cast a pitying glance at Saren, “You should have thought of telling me about signing away my work like that. I wish it could be different, but there’s no chance I’m ever trusting you again. You always struck me as such a sweet girl. Get back to Earth, find a better man, do something with yourself. Good luck.”
With that he put pedal to metal and sped away, leaving Brozel cursing in the dust and Saren shaking at his side. As Eli hit the top of the crater and continued on rapidly across the great abyss of rock, the first touches of the sunrise colored the air. A new day was dawning, and a new race had begun.
“Nothing! I have nothing!” Eli shoved himself away from the table and began pacing around his work room. He had tried anything and everything that came to mind, tinkering inside and outside the box, trying to find some spark of an idea to kindle into a fire that would burn Brozel to the ground. But nothing had even smoldered, and the blueprints he’d been drawing on his smart cloth—of all the possibilities he could think of—were only a jumbled mess of nonsense not even he could read.
“I’m not going to be able to do it,” he muttered to himself, running a hand through his hair. “I’m going to lose, and drag my whole crew and family down with me.”
It had been three days since his encounter with Brozel, and since then he had been working nonstop in his workshop, determined to invent something that would far outdo Brozel and his project. But how could Eli outshine his own work? Eli had thought of that engine as his best invention. Was it possible that it really was? That he had nothing left in him that would ever measure up? It was cruel irony, that his very best creation, what he thought would be able to save his family and start something great, had been turned into a weapon against him and all he loved.
Over the next few days, he’d tried to not let those thoughts pass through his mind. But as each hour passed fruitless and empty, he began to believe them.
Tired from trying so hard, and exhausted from lack of sleep, Eli slid to the ground among the boxes pushed to one side of the room. He leaned against them, his head lolling to one side, and before he was aware or could stop himself, his eyes closed, and he passed out.
When he woke, it was with the stiffness and confusion of one waking suddenly from a dream. He looked around in a panic, trying to remember what time or day it was. How long had he slept? How much time had he lost? A quick glance at the clock on the table told that only a handful of hours were missed, and it put him a little at ease.
As he stretched himself, Eli found that one arm had landed at an awkward angle in a box, and fallen asleep. When its feeling came back in a wave of pins and needles, his fingertips brushed something hard and smooth. Unfamiliar with the touch, he grabbed hold of one of the objects as he brought his arm back to himself. Eli was pleasantly surprised to find it was one of the journals of his ancient grandfather, Jimmithy Shepard. In all his stress and anxiety, he’d all but forgotten about them.
Shaking his head at himself, Eli opened the book and began reading. After all, he’d already tried everything he could think of, and he was far too tired to stand up. And so he lay, in a heap of boxes, flipping through a book from a time far before his own.
Suddenly the pages began flipping faster, his eyes grew wider, his heart pumped in his chest, and a spark formed a blaze in his mind.
Here, before him, in the writings of a grandfather long since gone, were theories and rough blue prints for devices created from diamonds, which could bend and reach through space in an instant. It was an insane idea, something no respectable scientist would dare dream of. But Eli knew his family’s history, he knew Jimmithy had only been a boy—but a genius boy with insane ideas and a reckless spirit that drove him to take risks and discover and invent things that would change the galaxy.
The plans for the theoretical space jumper were rough, there was no doubt in that. But there was something to it, and as Eli read through the time-worn pages, he realized that the problems stopping one of the Shepard men from creating it 465 years ago were not problems that could stop this Shepard man now. Tools to cut the diamonds, maps of the geography on different and distant planets, and the means to combine certain chemicals were all things once unavailable to Jimmithy, but commonplace for Eli.
The more he read, and the more he pondered, the more this impossible idea actually became possible.
Images of diamonds and lasers flashed through his mind, exciting his imagination. As he scrambled to find something to write down his own notes, he found that one of the journals was only partly filled. Many blank pages lay untouched, and a pencil was strapped to the spine. It was ancient, yet very well made and still in good condition. He felt an odd and intense connection to his past and his family as he began to write. It gave him a feeling of awe and inspiration. And so, with writings new and old, Eli began the plans for the Star Jumper.
“Good morning, Sirius,” Mary came sweeping into the big room, a tray of food in her hands, and closed the door with a bump from her hip. She was already halfway through setting up the breakfast table when she noticed she hadn’t got an answer.
“Sirius?” she called, walking towards the little hammock. Her pace quickened when still no response came. When she reached it she found Sirius curled on her side, head back, eyes closed, and mouth hanging open. Mary felt her heart being squeezed into a vice, and her mind was frozen in shock from seeing her little girl so still, and in such a contorted way.
“Sirius…” the words caught in her throat as she touched her daughter’s face, and felt it burning up. She placed a hand on the girl’s chest and leaned closer… she was reassured by the beating of Sirius’ heart beneath her hand and the labored breath upon her cheek. However, that relief was fleeting, and the dread of not knowing what was wrong, or what to do, grew.
“My baby, oh… wake up now,” Mary brushed Sirius’s skin and hair. Her arms wrapped and unwrapped from the little one’s form, wanting to cradle her to her chest, and being afraid to move her. “Baby love,” she said, noticing the wrinkles appearing on her daughter’s brow. She leaned down and kissed them, “Please, I know you’re there, it’s time to wake up.”
“Mama?” she tried to reach out to her mother, but almost immediately coiled and cried in pain. “Mama, I can’t move my back! It hurts!”
Tears streamed down the child’s face, and Mary quickly brushed them away, “There, there, it will be alright, Mama is here. Just breathe, try to relax.”
“Mama,” Sirius sniffed, “Mama I’m scared. Where’s Daddy? Is he going to take me to Earth yet to make me better?”
Mary had to turn her head away, and she felt hot tears behind her eyes. How could she explain the dire situation they were in? How could she bring herself to tell her daughter that trip might never come? She couldn’t, she couldn’t hurt her like that while she was already in so much pain.
“Daddy will take care of us, he’s doing his best,” cupping Sirius’ cheek with one hand, she wrapped her arm around the hammock and laid her face close to her daughter’s, leaving a few tears on her thin, soft hair.
“Now,” she straighten up and blinked the water from her eyes, “tell me what’s wrong, show me where it hurts, let me help. Please don’t cry darling….”
Mary was trying to comfort Sirius enough to get her to talk, when suddenly the door was thrown open and Eli came bursting in.
“I have it! I have a way to—” he stopped dead in his tracks when he witnessed the state of his wife and daughter. “What… what is going on? What is wrong?” The light shining in his face was cast into shadows as his brows were drawn down in worry and concern. He walked to their side.
Seeing her father for the first time in several days, Sirius was so excited she sat up suddenly and held her arms out to him. “Daddy!” she shouted, then her eyes rolled back, and she passed out.
Mary caught her in her arms and looked with wide and panicked eyes to her husband, “Call the doctor!”
All other thoughts were banished from Eli’s mind as he jumped into action. Following his wife’s order, he ran from their tent, through the doors connecting to the lab, then into the communication room. But calling Earth was no quick task. He first had to find the number to their doctor and then connect the caller to the satellites. He hadn’t even stopped to check what time it would be for the doctor, he only prayed he would be around to hear it. In the meantime, he called Mary over the com.
