18

Stunt Flying

“Princess?”

“Miranda?”

“Hey. Wake the fuck up. Please?”

Nothing. Static. Silence. In the corner of my display, her oxygen sats, pulse rate, respiration are all blinking red. Miranda is dying.

I can't do this. I can't do this.

It's not that like I don't think I'm good. Don't need a motivational speech about self-confidence. I was one of the best, even back then. But I know, now, that no one is good enough to pull this off. I thought I was invincible, and I got people killed. And I've been pretending like it's Starlight's fault, SpaceX's fault, even somehow Miranda's fault.

But the blood, all that blood, it was on my hands. Mine.

It was my idea to invest in the fucking drive, overextend our budget, thinking it would all work out. To take that SpaceX contract, pull double and triple shifts, try to hold it all together with willpower and hope.

When Schaffer and Hamilton and Wu triple-set those charges by mistake, exhausted, maybe misreading the schedule, it was a mistake I set them up to make. When I let go of the ore barge, to run, to try and save my dad, that was all me. And it was me who screwed up the bay door catch, set myself an impossible task and failed it.

It was me who killed all those people on the refinery. Killed all the work crews. Killed my friends. Killed my dad.

And now I'm going to kill Miranda.

I'm going to fuck it up, and I'm going to kill her. I know I'm not going to succeed. And I'm going to spend the rest of my life remembering her voice, and that vanilla scent of her perfume, and those huge iridescent violet eyes.

Remembering her high thin voice on the radio, struggling to work with me. Remember swearing I wouldn't leave her. Remembering the strangled noises, and then the silence.

Like Findley, and Sanchez, and Hamiliton, Schaffer, Wu, Wilcox, Goldstein. Like Antonio Silva. Like Bjorn Warnoc.

But I have to try. There's no one else here but me.

I know the motions. Match her velocity and trajectory. Burn hard in short bursts, overtake her, rotate ninety degrees, open my cargo bay doors, and be in the right position. Do it wrong, and she'll crushed like an eggshell against the outside of my hull. Do it right, and she'll sail through the hatch—and be crushed like an eggshell against the back of the hold, because keeping the relative velocity low enough to survive is near impossible.

Doing it right isn't good enough. I have to do it perfect.

And I know I won't, no one's perfect, fuck knows I'm not perfect. I'm a shitty human being just like her, but here we are, and this is what we have, all we have. So my hands are moving, brushing the throttle in tiny bits of chemical thrust. Less than one hundred meters now, and computer systems are screaming at me. Personnel proximity alert. Multiple unknown craft on close intercept trajectory. Crew biomonitor status critical.

And I can only come to her in slow, agonizing inches.

Don't you die on me, you beautiful brave spoiled little brat. Don't you fucking dare. Don't do this to me. Not you, too.

Just hold on. Hold fast. Please.

Touch the thrusters. Gently.

“Hey, Captain. I hate to interrupt, but we're cutting it very tight. Nearest drive signature's only about twenty minutes out, and if they start shooting…” Leela trails off, but the implication's clear.

Check the weapons console. Medium engagement range. High probability of damage. Moderate probability of a kill. Those numbers aren't gonna look much different from their side.

“Are sure you don't want to reconsider this?”

I add another whisper of thrust. “Leela, you secure that shit right now. Just because you don't—”

“It's not about her! I mean, I don't like her, but, I don't want her to… There's nothing we can do! There's no time! We have to run!”

Her voice is small, high, urgent. I don't answer, not right away.

“Please? I'm scared.”

“Me, too, Leela. But I can't let it happen again. I can't. Just give me a few minutes.”

“The moment they pass the horizon, they'll be clear to fire.”

“I know!”

I cut in the attitude thrusters, burning hydrogen and oxygen. Gotta get past her and in position, wheel the White Cat around without catching her in the exhaust plumes of superheated steam.

Metallic hydrogen plus liquid oxygen plus ignition equals water. That cloud is spreading from me now, boiling and freezing at once, screaming to every telescope mounted on the hulls of our onrushing pursuers…. here I am.

Shoot here.

Nothing I can do about that. Can't dodge. Can't hide. Can't run. Can't shoot first. I'm picking up a seventy-five pound egg with a two thousand ton spoon. Every newton of thrust, every moment of attention, focused on not cracking the shell.

Hold doors opening now. My head is full of force vector maps, gyroscope indicators, the view from six different cameras, all zoomed in on that limp form.

CARDIAC ARRHYTHMIA - EXTREME BRACHYCARDIA - OXYGEN LEVELS CRITICAL

Suit biometric readouts flashing. Pulse red. Oxygen saturation red. Blood pressure red. EEG waveforms red.

Work fast. Don't think beyond the moment. Throttle and stick sensitivity dialed all the way down. Position yourself. Right… there. Cargo bay doors fully open now.

I'm holding the eye of a needle up to a windblown thread. One shot at this.

Line up that fragile little body in the camera. Center it. Don't fuck this up.

Three… two…

Now.

And I'm switching cameras, flipping though, checking—starfield, starfield, external hull, the open bay doors in the void, the rusty curve of Sedna, behind an antenna mast—damn it, which one is it?

There. Cargo hold internal one. Nothing. Just racks and containers.

I can't see her. Did I miss?

Internal two, three…

And she's there. Crumpled against the side of a shipping container. Motionless. But in one piece. And I'm out of the chair, screaming for Leela to take the helm, find us an exit vector, close the bay doors, get the hold pressurized, do everything, Leela, and do it now, as I fly up the ladder, towards the hold.

But I'm not sure I want to see this.

Behind the airlock, the cargo hold roars, a wall of noise from the atmosphere pump fans. Leela must be venting pressurized air as fast as it will go, maybe spiking the mix with some liquid oxygen and nitrogen just to speed things along. The cold is unreal, burning against every millimeter of exposed skin, sucking the heat from my body, cutting down to the bone.

I don't care. I fly through the freezing blast. Where is she?

There. Drifting, sprawled in the air near a cargo container. She must have hit and rebounded. I tried to bring her in slow…

I grab the cargo rack to dump speed, drift towards her, gently pick her up so I don't drift past her. She's so tiny, like a child. Her chest isn't moving…

Faceplate. I can't see into it, it's all fogged, just solid white, but… not red. Not…

I undo the catches, break the seal. No blood pours out this time, just that scent again, vanilla, tropical flowers, spice, something like damp earth after rain. I don't want to look, but I do.

And there she is. Miranda. Not a shattered, bloody mess, just her. Eyes closed. Peaceful. Like she's asleep.

Except she's not breathing.

I tear off her hood, her hairnet, fumble through her hair… no blood, no soft spots… why isn't she breathing? What do I do? CPR? No, the suit is telling me her heart is still beating, low and erratic, but there. You don't do CPR if their heart's beating, right?

I can't remember.

“Miranda?”

No response. Her eyelids don't even flutter. The telemetry has nothing good to say about her blood oxygen levels.

“Leela?”

“Marcus, those ships are going to clear the horizon in less than ten minutes. Is she okay up there? We have to go now!”

“She's not breathing! Do you know what—”

“Just looked it up in milliseconds. Airway first. Lift her chin and tilt her head back. You're in zero gravity, so you'll need to hold it there.”

I wrap one arm around her waist, palm the back of her head in my hand, just above the smooth plastic bulge of her neural lace access, twining my fingers into her hair, and ease her head backwards.

“Okay, and then?”

“You're going to put your ear next to her mouth and listen and feel for signs of breathing. If she isn't breathing, you're going to hold her nose, then clamp your mouth over hers and blow air into her—”

I hiss for silence, and Leela stops, but the hold is still full of the throb of the idling drive, and the drone of heater fans, and I still can't hear a thing. But…

Wait. Was that a faint trickle of warm air on my skin? Then there's a sleepy noise, and Miranda's voice mumbles in my ear… “I'm cold.”

She's alive. Alive.

She's alive, and she's cold, and I don't have a thing to wrap her in. I'm floating here in a t-shirt and sweats, that's it, and—

T-shirt. I yank it over my head, fumbling blind for a moment, spread the neck with both hands, thread it over her head and unroll it down. It floats around her tiny body like an outsized sack. She's still trembling. It must be far below freezing in here, from all that compressed gas expanding. I have no idea if her suit heater is even working, but if it is, it clearly isn't up to the task—it's made for the insulating vacuum of space, not sub-freezing air. I'm shivering, too, and the air stings my skin. I hadn't even noticed.

I hug her to me, bundling the thin cloth around her, drape her head over my shoulder, and push off for the lock… I've broken her strange hairstyle loose, at least partially, and there's streaming strands and locks of it in my face, but I don't have a free hand to brush it away with.

Nevermind. She's alive. It's possible after all. It can be done. I did it. One less face haunting me in the small hours of the morning. She's alive.

“Marcus?” she mutters in my ear, sleepy. “Where are we? Why is it so cold?”

“Relax. We're in the hold. I'm going to get you to medbay. It'll be warm in there.”

“Oh. What's the hold?”

Uh-oh. That's not a normal question.

“The cargo hold. Of the Cat.” I wish I could get a look at her face, try to see if she's… all there. But I'm trying to hold onto her and operate the lock, and I don't have enough hands.

“What cat? Is there a cat in here?”

“Uhhh… Miranda. The White Cat. My ship. Remember? Hey, c'mon, snap out of it.”

A blast of warm air hits me in the face from the other side of the lock, but she's still shaking, teeth chattering, clinging against me like a panicked ice cube. I glide down the ladder towards medbay, though I don't know what the hell I'm going to do when I get there. She's the doctor. Maybe I can get Leela to help me.

“Oh, good, you're inside. Got you on camera.” Leela's voice says, in my head. “We need to move, now. One of those ships just cleared the horizon.”

“Yeah. I just need to take her to medbay. She's awake, but she's kinda incoherent.”

“Yes, I heard, but we have to hurry…”

“Uh… Marcus? I… think I'm okay,” Miranda says, in my ear, no longer quite so sleepy. “Just take me right to the bridge and we can get strapped in and out of here.”

“Are you sure? I mean, you passed out…”

She stirs against me, twisting around in my arms. After a few long moments of fumbling, she manages to get arms through the sleeves, but doesn't move to pull free or fly on her own. She just wraps them around me, pressing herself against the warmth of my skin, content to let me carry her.

Makes sense. It's a tight fit in the shaft even as it is. Were she a normal sized human, we'd be banging against the ladder, getting stuck. She's trembling a little less now.

“Yes, it's called 'hypercapnia,'” she says, in my ear. “Too much carbon dioxide in the bloodstream. Can be bad if it's symptomatic of a chronic respiratory compromise, but a mechanically induced acute condition—”

“Focus, there, Prin—ah, Miranda. You weren't making much sense when you woke up. Are you sure you shouldn't—”

“Yes, I'll be fine. Some disorientation is normal. All I need is some rest, and good air to breathe.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I think I'm just a little banged up, too. Feels like I hit something pretty hard.”

“Cargo container. You came in pretty quick. I had to scoop you up with the ship.”

“Oh.”

We glide on in silence, past the hydroponics and life support level, engineering, stowage.

“Was that… difficult?”

“Yeah, kinda.”

Difficult. Yeah. Not impossible. Not… like I thought. Because she's alive. She's alive, and he's…

Suddenly, I'm not glad anymore.

“I know…” she begins, slow and reflective, “that you didn't have to—”

I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to hear what I think she's about to say. The most beautiful woman I have ever seen has wrapped herself around me, and I'm all too conscious of the compact curves of her body… but somehow I want is for her to stop talking and go away, so I can be alone.

“Yes,” I snap, hoping she'll just shut up and leave it be, “I did. I told you that. You're my crew. We don't leave our people behind.”

My crew. Yeah. That's it.

But as we pass instrumentation and the server room, she turns her head and speaks again, her lips almost brushing my ear.

“Marcus,” she says, “I know we got off on the wrong foot, but—”

“Ya think?” I snap back, not looking at her, just watching my hands, one over the other across the ladder.

She stiffens against me. But she can't push away. But we're still locked in an embrace, shoved together by the narrow confines. There's nowhere she can go. Nowhere I can go.

I take a deep breath, try to calm myself. I don't want to fight again. Not now. Not after what we've been through.

“Sorry. That came out wrong. But we're not talking about this. Just let it drop. We have to get out of here anyway.”

“But I was just trying to—”

“Well, don't.”

Leela's avatar is waiting on the bridge, projecting a three-dimensional display of our position, of Sedna, of the tracks of multiple drive flames closing in on us. From her wary expression, I'm guessing she's heard the whole exchange. Could probably play it back pitch-perfect. But unlike some people, at least she knows how to shut her damn mouth.

As I glide towards the open embrace of my acceleration chair, already examining the starmap, planning calculating, I have to spare one brief moment to squash an errant thought…

The treasure we came all this way for, the historical find of the century, if not longer, the prize of vast and unknown worth—I never even looked at it.

Not a glance.