Cold Sleep, page 6
The Captain doesn’t give me a chance—storming past me, deckgun raised. M’Benga opens the airlock and charges through. While their deckguns sing a steady rhythm, I lean against the bulkhead. Thinking about ways to blame this all on Zed, thinking about the data-sliver hidden among my personal effects. Thinking about stepping into the VIP module and triggering the lifepod. Taking my chances in deep space instead of waiting on the Captain’s mercy.
Behind all those thoughts, I keep asking myself “what is it that comes back?” Some degree of the certainty in the Captain’s voice breaking through the wall I’d long ago built against childish fantasy and fear of the dark. Would the next time I lie in cold-sleep be the time something replaces me inside my own skin? Was that what the visions were—an insight into some flipside of reality?
Sinking to the deck and weeping, my tears carve through the congealed blood marking my cheeks.
The rhythmic blare of the guns continues. Each time accompanied by a screech. The cries of the damned… how long before I join them?
I stand ramrod straight, the way my academy instructors had always commended. “There’s a cadet who knows how to present. The rest of you maggots pay attention. You’ve got to be in the top three percent of the class or the only way you’ll taste vacuum is humping it with the rest of the other ranks. ‘What are you saying, Sergeant?’ I hear your slow brains grinding. That’s the top one percent right there. You best shape up faster than ten-thousand-greased-gazelles ’cause she’s leaving you lightyears behind.”
The memory threatens to twist a sneer onto my face. Not a happy memory. I’d had to fight—with my fists, feet, and head—to survive the academy after being touted as the poster-girl. Eighteen months of hell had inured me to intimidation and threats from spacer officers and grounder comp-jocks.
Rank is something to work around like how it pays to finesse relationships with the crew instead of stomping them into line. Thinking of relations with the crew makes me think of Zed, and any hint of a sneer falls away.
Dominguez looks up from my report—her face blank, cigarette hanging from her lips as if ready to fall. Then she quirks an eyebrow, the one with the scar slashing a silver line from her temple to her cheek, catching the corner of her eye and making the bottom lid droop.
“If we were shipping organic fertilizer, I don’t think it would stink of bullshit as much as your report, Commander. But right now, I haven’t got enough evidence to satisfy a board of inquiry.” She spreads her hands. “Another time, it wouldn’t matter. You’d wear your tongue out long before convincing me to keep your conniving cunt on board. As it is, I’m tempted to have your personal effects confiscated and every one of your orifices deep probed until I find whatever you’ve used to hack my ship.”
“Captain, if I could just…”
“Shut. Your. Mouth.” I go silent. Dominguez smiles. “Good. From now on in, you’ll keep your cunning tongue still in my presence unless I tell you otherwise. Understood?”
I nod.
“Excellent. Now, whatever shit you’ve been up to might—and I do mean might—have saved my ship and the worthless excuse for a crew I’ve been lumbered with. I don’t care if you revived crewman Hong so you could guzzle dick or if you vermin had larceny on your minds. Whatever it was, I’ve got revenants loose on my ship.” There’s something in her eye when she says it, a hint behind the mask. But what’s she’s hiding back there—fear, or something else?
Every inch of my skin tightens. I want to ask her how any could have escaped but her threats aren’t exaggeration. Sometimes it seems like conditioning has made it harder for me to read people, and harder for me to know my own feelings. But there’s no doubt about her seriousness.
The Captain’s hard eyes still bore into me then she grunts.
“Why’d you have to ruin it? You were the best XO I’ve had. I’d even thought of cutting you in…” she trails off. “No. No point thinking about it. You’ll never make Captain now. For a grasper like you, maybe that’s punishment enough.”
Still I stay silent. My jaw aches with how tight it’s clenched. She’d planned to cut me into something. Knowing Dominguez, it would’ve been a major venture. The kind of thing which never hit the books and never risked censure. A quasi-legal job. Now I’m outside a circle of trust without even realizing I’d entered it.
But maybe there’s a way back in.
“Permission to speak, ma’am?”
The Captain scowls but nods sharply.
“I formally request permission to lead the clean-up crew.”
Dominguez sucks her teeth. “You think you can do a better job than M’Benga?”
“No, ma’am. But I’m expendable. She’s not.”
Captain Dominguez throws back her head and laughs. A throaty guffawing that sounds genuine.
“Madre de Dios! Kara, you really would do anything to get ahead in this life, wouldn’t you? It’s never been my way, though I admire it. But let you lead? Never again. You’re a navigator but all that makes you is a backup to the computer. It’s so simple we don’t even warrant a full AI. Unless the computer breaks down, you’re right—you’re dead weight. Expendable. Report to Lieutenant M’Benga. If she says clean the crews’ deckguns, you do it. If she trusts you to carry one and crawl through the ship’s innards hunting revenants, you’ll snap to it. Understood?”
“Aye, ma’am.” I snap my sharpest parade ground salute but my brain’s leaping teraflops with possibilities. The link-key I’d stowed in Zed’s personal effects hasn’t been found yet. The computer is indispensable for navigation… replaceable only by me. M’Benga’s an obstacle. Or is she?
“Get out,” Dominguez says, looking away from me and blowing a long stream of smoke out the side of her mouth.
I spin on my heel and march out of her quarters.
CHAPTER 5
* * *
From deep within the ship, clanging comes again. Caskets falling.
“Fuck.” I lean against a bulkhead, pressing my forearm into it and letting my head rest in the crook of my arm to stifle my welling tears. I do it to feel the solidity of the Charon, trying to take some reassurance from it even as my world spins under foot. Another clang. The vibration runs through me. Raising my head from the cradle of my arm, the plan forming in my mind drives out the burning in my chest and stinging in my eyes.
“Kara.” M’Benga’s voice.
“Siyanda.” I turn to face her, looking down to meet her gaze.
“This thing you were doing with Zed…” she pauses, gaze never wavering.
I sigh, letting it sound as weary as I feel. “Warrant Officer Hong was up to something on his own—it had nothing to do with me. As I told the Captain, I don’t know why I woke. It was a mistake to investigate without immediately waking the both of you, but I didn’t believe it was necessary. You’d have done the same thing in my place.”
“Gówno prawda! Isn’t that how your people say it?”
“Nenda kamjitombe. Isn’t that how your people would answer?”
M’Benga laughs. “Oh, Kara. I may prefer to fuck myself than mess with the crew but that’s up to me, isn’t it? And your story is bullshit.”
“Think whatever you like. I couldn’t care less. The Captain will come to her senses.”
“You have always had the tongue of a serpent, Kara. One worthy of an expensive malaya. The rest of us might joke it is why our Captain favored you, but now? Now, you are nothing but shit.” She clicks her fingers in my face.
“You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you? You think I got to be the XO by doing Dominguez favors, then more fool you. You think she’d be interested in a stunted cunt like you? Even you can’t be so stupid.”
Any other time it’d be unwise to antagonize M’Benga. She might be a foot and a half shorter than me, but she’s security chief for a reason. Bunched muscles and scarred fists are proof enough of that. And she has more traction with the Captain than I do… now. The barb about her achondroplasia was low, but it stings more than anything else I can say to her. After the germline DNA edits in most of the Superstates to eliminate genetic “disorders”—which included dwarfism—she has every right to be sensitive about it. The glint in her eyes says my goading worked. She’ll send me out on my own to investigate hoping to get me scragged. Which suits my plans perfectly.
M’Benga’s face splits in a broad grin, revealing teeth green from cold-sleep chems. She’s not even taken the time to clean up. Duty first, always.
“You have been assigned to me to assist with clearing the ship of revenants. We’re going out in teams of two but with the loss of Hong we’re one man short. So you’ll have to make do on your own. I’ve ordered the armory to provide you with a deckgun and sufficient ammunition. Collect your weapon and proceed to cargo bay seven where you will sweep every last casket for signs of tampering.”
“Really? You expect me to check ten thousand caskets all by myself?”
“Those are your orders. How do the Anglos say it? Break a leg.”
I storm away, but when I’m sure she can’t see me, the smile I’d been holding back curls my lips. M’Benga is an effective security chief—tough, dependable, and highly intelligent. But her intellect works in straight lines. Manipulating her into sending me out alone had been all too easy.
The smile freezes on my face as the sound of Zed’s scream comes back to me. The teeth. The empty caskets. I dismissed what the Captain had said about dying in cold-sleep and something else coming back. She must be as susceptible to old spacer’s tales as meatheads like Zed, though even he’d entertained more rational theories than plain batshit crazy ghost stories. And I know better. It isn’t possible. But playing with the idea, a shiver dances up and down my spine regardless. Why had the “revenant” been waking other sleepers? Was it a way to turn them? I can’t accept some bullshit explanation like possession but maybe… maybe tampering with the caskets is a way to bring on the psychosis. Change the casket revival settings to make the sleeper OD on stims and flip right out to full on space-happy? Possible. Maybe.
Getting to the armory means walking through the crew lounge. It’s humming with activity as Ensign Joud wrangles the enlisted men and women into combat readiness. Seventeen pairs of eyes lock on me the moment I enter and all conversation stops.
“We’ve got a crisis situation here, people. No time to gawk at me; get moving.” The snap of command enters my voice and sends the crew back to their business—checking their deckguns and listening to Joud’s briefing. His gaze flicks over to me, so I scowl and he jerks before getting his focus back.
“Nicely done,” Hiroki says.
“Doc.” I nod at him and start towards the armory again.
“That’s it?” He spreads his hands, all mock-offended… I think. You know, me and reading people… “After all our time serving together. All those years? Haven’t the decades we’ve lost in objective time left us needing each other—the only family who can understand. And all I get is, “Doc”?”
Could he get any more clingy? Time was, I thought Hiroki’s puppy dog act was all about trying to get into my bunk. But the years—and he’s right, it has been a long time to spend together—don’t mean as much to me as they do to him. The futureshock anytime you go on shore-leave doesn’t equate to seeing the crew as family. Sitting round drinking sake with him and engaging in the only intellectual conversation I got save for the rare occasions sharing a whisky with the Captain, means maybe he’s managed to inveigle himself into the position of “friend” but it’s not enough to become a weakness. Not for me. I don’t need anyone. Not Zed. Not Hiroki.
“Don’t get philosophical on me, Doc. I’ve no time to indulge your maudlin musings.”
“Very poetic of you, Kara. But when did you get so cruel?”
Fuck’s sake. “About the same time I got accused of treachery by our Captain.”
“You need to talk about it.” Here we go with his prying into my private shit. “You’re assigned to sweep Cargo bay seven, yes? I will be in the main medical bay, performing autopsies on the revenants and their victims.”
This is the reason to value Hiroki. “For what?”
“I cannot accept the Captain’s belief that this is a mystical event and spirits are returning to the bodies of sleepers instead of their own consciousness.”
I seize him by the arm, dragging him to one side before the crew heard him.
“Have you been at your homebrew saké again? Have you?” I thumb towards the crew. “They don’t need to hear you questioning me about unfounded allegations and they damn well don’t need to hear you doubting the Captain. Now, you don’t buy the spacers’ tale and neither do I, but we need proof before there’s the slightest challenge to the Captain’s authority like contradicting her about the nature of the threat. You understand? And if that challenge comes, it will happen by the book and behind closed doors. Do I make myself clear?”
This is crossing the line with him. Trampling over a friendship forged through years of compressed time, no matter how much his attention-seeking can irritate me. The look he gives me almost makes me pause but attachment is an unaffordable luxury right now. My life and my career are in real danger. Hiroki is an asset but only if I can keep him from his self-indulgence and get him dancing to my tune.
Memories of covering up his indiscretions rise—literally picking him off the ceiling when he’d got drunk during the ship’s pre-launch zero-g phase and passed out still stikpadded to the deck which’d become up the second the thrusters fired. Another time when I found him crouched in the corner of the medibay, eyes and nose streaming while singing in Japanese—a song for his dead mother, he’d told me when he’d sobered up. Pathetic. But he has had his uses.
He swallows. “You’re right. Of course. Gomen’nasai. I won’t slip again.”
“Good. I know you, old friend.” I move a hand to his shoulder, squeezing it in the gesture men like him take as a sign of brotherhood. Far easier to lie with a gesture than a word. “You shouldn’t be alone, Hiroki-chan. While I was finding out what Crewman Hong was up to, I found these so-called “revenants” manipulating ship’s systems. Hacking doors and such. Maybe M’Benga’s got the cargo bays secured but I wouldn’t trust your life to it.”
He gives me a sharp look, eyes wide. “That is… disturbing. Is there anything else unusual you can tell me?”
“Unusual? It’s all fucking unusual.”
“Forgive me. I mean to say someone suffering a psychotic break brought on by problems with cryogenic suspension, usually due to an imbalance in cryoprotectant fluid or casket mal…”
“Get to the point,” I say.
“Yes. Well, they shouldn’t function at a cognitive level sufficient to perform complex actions like bypassing door controls.”
“So pulling out their teeth and replacing them with shards of optical circuitry wouldn’t be normal behavior?”
Both of Hiroki’s eyebrows shoot up and he wipes a hand over his mouth. “Self-harm might be, but what you describe sounds a little too involved… Was it only one of them?”
“From what I saw it was the whole group.”
Hiroki mumbles something to himself in Japanese. I have a grasp of the language, as I have of Swahili and a couple of the other Superstate tongues, but whatever he’s saying makes no sense. Something about childhood. Maybe leaving something in childhood but the thing, whatever it is, is a word I haven’t heard before. Sounds like yūrei. Someone’s name, perhaps.
“You know one of the passengers?” I guess.
“Ai?”
“You said ‘Yūrei’.”
“Hmm. Yes. Superstitious nonsense. My people have as many ghost stories as yours, I imagine.”
“What stories?”
“Oh, my Soba, my grandmother, was an expert in Fusui, like the Chinese Feng Shui. Highly sought after, even by soulless corporates to arrange their dwellings. This place…” Hiroki waves a hand. “This vessel would have frustrated her greatly. Most of her work was about the directing of elemental energy—wind and water. But sometimes she was asked to direct spirits away from a place or encourage them to go to another. She told me stories of what she saw. I had nearly forgotten them. Ghosts attacking the living or possessing them. Others fed on corpses. I cannot remember the names she gave them. But she swore they were real.”
“What are you saying to me, Hiroki? You’re starting to believe this bullshit after all?”
It’s hard to resist the urge to slap some sense into him.
“No…” He looks as if wants to say more but instead glances away and sighs.
“Good. Now, You’re going to do the autopsies and I’ll delay my sweep to keep an eye on you.”
“Yes, thank you. But shouldn’t M’Benga…”
“No. She’s slipped up and it’s my job to cover her error.”
Hiroki nods at me—a slight bow. I hide my smile. He might be high-strung and prone to unpredictability, particularly after a drink, but there are things about him as reliable, no, as boringly predictable as M’Benga.
Voices rise in anger behind us, accompanied by a murmur of excitement. I spin back to the crew lounge proper. Two of the crew are struggling with each other, while Ensign Joud stands to one side waving his hands.
“Stand down! Now!” I shout.
I’ve lost none of the parade ground thunder I’d shown at the academy. I’ve inherited my grandmother’s opera singer lungs. Projecting my voice and cracking it like a whip comes easy.
