The safety line whipped as it reeled in. His path crossed with a cluster of zipping micro meteorites, and one by one they went through him like armor piercing slugs. Air hissed from the many openings. The line nearly snapped in half. He twisted, jets of gas buffeting the rig to and fro, until tension triumphed. César’s body was drawn up against the hull and pulled inside, limp and lifeless. His vitals flat lined.
I pounded against the glass again and again with balled fists, a hollow, deafening reply echoing back. “César! No! Damn it! No! Let me out! Let me the fuck out!” The medical staff vanished, rushing off to the Cargo Bay. I’d been careless when I went to fix the leak. I’d allowed my mask to get damaged. It should have been me out there, not him. The kid deserved more than this, more than being snuffed out like a spent cigarette beneath a dust caked heel. He deserved to live a long life, to go home with his lady and start a family, to exist in bliss without madness and uncertainty.
We all deserved that.
“He didn’t deserve this,” I growled.
“No, he didn’t,” Kelly hissed from the other hyperbaric chamber, his voice muffled by glass. He twisted his expression and pressed his face up against the window, drilling into me with fierce brown eyes like twin augers.
“What do you mean?”
“Sir, did you notice something off with César?” His long fingernail tapped against the glass. “I’ve never seen him so easy going. Just crawling into the air returns made him sweat like a pusher on trial.”
“What are you saying, private? Are you saying he was high?”
Kelly nodded. “I am.”
My blood began to boil. I already had my suspicions, and Enela had not denied it. “Who got him the junk? You know, don’t you?”
He nodded again.
“Who? Kelly. Tell me. Who!”
He let out a long sigh as if uttering the words pained him physically. “I think it was Jane Griffin.”
It was probably for the best that I was stuck inside a tube for the next few hours. If I’d been free, I might just have taken half the ship apart with my bare hands. That conniving little bitch. That was why César had taken up with her so easily. She was his hook up, his juice man, his dealer.
“How do I know you’re not lying?” I asked, trying to stay objective before my emotions became unbridled anger. I had no proof but his word, and he, for all I knew, could actually be the target.
“When you get out of here, go look under his bunk.” Kelly laid down, disappearing from view. “Get some rest, sir.”
But I was too angry to lay down. The next few hours were going to be hell.
Refusing to let the fires in me die, I seethed.
As soon as Doc set me free, after a few basic cognitive and balance tests, I went pounding off down the hall, straight for César’s bunk. I dug under his mattress and found a tiny bag of pills. Drawn on the outside of the clear plastic bag was a red heart beside the name, Janie, in bubbly female script. These were not his anxiety meds, those were green with a one on the side. If I were guessing, I’d say these were OxyContin or Vicodin. Where the hell did she get them?
I’d known girls like Griffin back on Mars. They were manipulative wenches from the lower levels that worked as candy stripers for the big dealers, using their feminine wiles to push product and get the boys hooked. Next thing you knew, they’d flip ’cause they were just as bad off as you were. Then you’d be left with a broken heart, no credits, boots or pants, running down the main drag of town naked from the waist up chasing after them—a dozen six headed elephants at their heels. She’d just been in it for the fix.
I punched the edge of his bunk so hard it should’ve hurt, but my rage suppressed those nerve endings into a numb existence. I knew I needed to calm down but couldn’t. I stuffed the pills in my pocket and stormed off to the cargo bay. That was where she’d be right now, laying out solar panels and scanning them for repair.
“Where are you going?” Liberty asked, having appeared in the hall just behind me. She’d seen me like this before after a bar fight in Arsia Mons two weeks before the skimmer wreck.
“None of your business, ma’am.”
She raised a hand. “The hell it isn’t!”
Security #2, Lank Hair, spotted me and took off, stun stick at the ready. I hurried my pace.
Jane was working alongside two other crewmembers in the cargo bay. They were studiously using handheld scanners to model the damaged bits of solar panel, feeding that data back into the PVA printer and making exact replacements that matched the original down to the nanoscopic scale. The damage was extensive, but luckily, since we were so far off course the enemy would have a hard time finding our heading for a while. We were cloaked in the darkness of incomplete sensor information. No firing solutions, little danger of attack.
I went straight for her. “Griffin!”
Her bloodshot eyes snapped to attention, handheld scanner trembling in her fingers. “What? What is it, sir?” She sniffled and wiped off her nose.
The other crewmembers halted their work to exchange shocked expressions.
“You’re a candy striper. You’re the one that fed him.”
“I what?”
I produced the baggie with a flourish, shaking it in the air. “Gave him the goods, put the pills in his hand, sprinkled the dust on his damn toast! You know exactly what the fuck I’m talking about! You gave him the drugs.”
Her eyes went wide, fresh menace shading the edge of her black streaked face. “I knew something was off.” Her hands drew up over her mouth and shook. “Why didn’t I see it? Why didn’t I bring it up? I know all the signs, I mean, we’ve all been there. Oh, God. Oh, God.”
“Quit the shit ass act!” I hurled the baggie at her face. It bounced off her nose and came to rest on the broken panels.
“Master Engineer, David Goddard!” Liberty shouted in a voice very much like her father’s. My hear skipped a beat. “Back off, now!”
I flung an open hand back as if to say, as nicely as fucking possible, that Liberty should shut the hell up. “Why, Griffin? Why? You knew it was a problem of his. If you really cared you would have protected him, not enabled him.”
Jane’s expression went from sullen to hard in an instant. “You think? Oh… How dare you tell me how I feel?” Her hands balled into fists. She stalked around the panels and took several calculated steps forward, closing the distance between us. “How dare you!” She was now only a stride away, so close I could feel the heat of her voice roasting my cheeks like sunlight.
She had to be the target. Clever, clever, clever.
“It all makes sense,” I said through gritted teeth. “You wanted him to fuck up. You wanted him to die.”
Her right shoulder twitched as if drawing back a fist, and out of reflex, my right palm shot forward, catching her square in the chest. She went sprawling back onto the floor, screeching in shock. A panicked gasp rippled through the room.
Less than a breath later I was on the floor, nose to metal. Lank Hair and Liberty had me by the arms, a knee was in my back. They rolled me over to reveal Dour Face leering down at me with Higgins at his side. Everyone had joined the party.
“Let me go!” I growled, struggling to get free. “That bitch did it.”
“That’s it, Goddard,” Dour Face said. “Hitting a fellow crewmember, especially one weaker than you… It’s a right time for a few quality weeks in the brig.”
“Fuck you. I didn’t mean to hit her. I thought she was going to hit me.”