Saturday Scenes: ITHAKA RISING
A half-remembered melody drifted through Jem’s mind. It was something Barre had written years ago. Years before the drugs and the arguments with their parents that had spilled over and poisoned the brothers’ relationship. It was a song Barre had written just for him — a lullaby that had filled the emptiness and chased away the fear Jem had felt strapped in the small jump chamber on their parents’ ship.
The sound faded as Jem woke to darkness.
“Barre?” His own voice sounded small and thin. He took a deep breath and the stale smell of the jump chamber brought him back to the present. This was Charon’s ship. Jem tugged on the restraints, but they didn’t retract. “Hey! Get me out of here!”
Jem squirmed. The old compression foam bottomed out and his spine pressed against the hard frame of the acceleration couch. He rotated his arm and groped for any kind of release mechanism. The cuff Charon had given him clanked against the metal straps.
Charon had drugged him. Jem didn’t know whether to be furious or grateful. His head didn’t ache and he didn’t desperately need to vomit, so maybe the gratitude just edged out the anger. At least for now.
“Hello?” Whatever Charon had given him had knocked him out hard, but now that he was conscious, his body was making its needs known. He had to pee. And he was hungry. “Look. I’m awake. If this ship is going to make any more jumps, you’re going to have to sterilize the bay.”
The ship had to have an AI to calculate the jumps. And most AIs were programmed with emergency overrides. Medical overrides. Jem smiled in the darkness. His parents made sure he knew the codes as well as the consequences of using them inappropriately. Releasing jump restraints mid-jump had messy and often lethal outcomes.
Ignoring the pressure in his bladder, Jem focused on the ship. There was no sound other than the humming of the air handlers. Since he didn’t feel as if his body was being pulled inside out in the human equivalent of a mobius strip, Jem knew they weren’t mid-jump. But they weren’t under normal propulsion either. Even the quietest of interstitial drives made a ship vibrate. And a ship this old would definitely have a shimmy.
So they were either landed, docked, or adrift.
In any case, Jem wanted out. He channeled his best Dr. Leta Durbin. It was a brook-no-nonsense attitude coupled with an absolute certainty of being obeyed that made her brutally efficient in a crisis. “Emergency medical override alpha alpha alpha. Disengage jump restraints.” This might not count in his mother’s world as a crisis, but Jem wasn’t above using any advantage he could.
The restraints clicked opened. Jem blinked his tearing eyes as light flooded the compartment. Wriggling out a little at a time, he was able to reach the grab bar, slide free the rest of the way, and land on his feet in the corridor.
“You’re more resourceful than you look.”
Jem jumped at the sound of Charon’s voice right behind him. The man leaned against the only intact bulkhead panel, spinning the metal cuff on his wrist.
Whatever Charon had injected him with was nearly out of Jem’s system and the nausea had returned. It wasn’t so bad yet that he had to hold onto the wall, but it would get there. He needed to find the head before that. “I get that a lot.” Jem shrugged. “You should block all the primary overrides. Everyone forgets the medical ones.”
“And where would that have left you?” The woman whose voice filled the narrow corridor wasn’t much taller than Jem. She limped closer, favoring her left leg. As far as he knew, she hadn’t been aboard on Gal 3. So unless they stopped to take on a passenger while Jem was in dreamland, they had landed. Or docked. And she came from whatever they had parked.
“Not too far from where I am now. Only still horizontal. Is there a head on this boat?”
Charon snapped to rigid attention as she stopped beside him. “Major Doc, sir!” he shouted, saluting.
“At ease, ferryman. I’ll take it from here.”
“You sure, Doc?” Charon asked, ignoring Jem.
“Aren’t I always?”
Jem studied her short white hair and the deep creases that created short parallel lines that carved a path from between thin eyebrows up across her forehead. She wore a stained engineer’s coverall. Its pockets were filled with delicate tools, but her hands were clean. Her blue-eyed gaze took him in and seemed to judge him by standards Jem couldn’t hope to match. She reminded him of a future version of Ro.
As Charon squeezed past, the old soldier grabbed Jem’s wrist just above the cuff. Jem winced, but gritted his teeth to avoid crying out. “Welcome to The Underworld,” Charon said. “Don’t do anything stupid or I’ll ferry you out into interstitial space myself.” He nodded to the old woman. “I’ll be monitoring.”
“Of course you will,” she answered, smiling, before turning to Jem. “You need to use the head, then I think some food is in order, and after that, answers.”
“Yes.” The pressure in his bladder was becoming painful.
“Well, follow me.” She would have stumbled if not for the intact grab rail along the one remaining sealed bulkhead.
Jem glanced down at her feet. The heel and sole of her left shoe was a good two centimeters thicker than the right and still it wasn’t enough to erase the limp.
“Souvenir. A gift from the Commonwealth.” She glanced at where Charon had disappeared. “One of many.”
So many questions filled his mind. The most pressing one was if he had made the right choice. No one knew where he was. Hell, he didn’t know where he was. He swallowed down bitter saliva and lurched after her.
—
Welcome to another edition of #SaturdayScenes
Today’s offering is another first draft snippet from #IthakaRising , the sequel in progress to DERELICT.
You can follow all my scenes at the tag: #ljsatscenes
DERELICT (book 1) and the rest of my published novels can be found in all the usual places (Amazon, iTunes, BN, Kobo, Smashwords, google play) where eBooks are sold, or you can find specific links in my profile and website, http://www.ljcohen.net
If you enjoy SF&F short stories, you can get STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, my first collection, free for subscribing to my newsletter. http://www.ljcohen.net/contact.html
Originally published at plus.google.com.
