“Then let her next time,” he whispered in my ear as he hauled me to my feet.
Jane was balled up where she fell, crying in the arms of a fellow crewmember. I hadn’t noticed certain glaring details until now. I was too angry to see what was obvious. Her hair was greasy. Dark eyeshadow clung to her face like black, melting wax. Her chapped lips were bright from being chewed on, a small line of dried blood running over the edge onto her chin. Her uniform was stained down the front, rumpled and ripped. Either she was the most convincing liar I’d ever seen, or I was the biggest damned idiot God had ever been foolish enough to give breath.
“Come on, Goddard,” Lank Hair said. “To the brig.”
“David…” Liberty hissed, that word carrying a crushing weight of disappointment. No one noticed her informality.
Dour Face’s watch crackled. “Take him to his quarters.”
“Captain?”
“I said, take him to his quarters. Let him sleep it off. It’s been a hard day for all of us. Is Griffin okay? Is she hurt?”
“Yes, sir. Looks like he, well, he just pushed her down. Might have a sore bum is all.”
“Get some sleep, Goddard. Don’t let me catch you doing this again.”
The blood rushed back into my arms as their death grip eased. I sagged and nearly fell over. I nodded at his watch as if the Captain could see me. One of the cubes was well within view.
“He won’t do this again,” Dour Face said, eyes narrowing to razors. “We’ll be sure he won’t.”
“Liberty,” the Captain said. “To the bridge. Being they don’t know where we are, I want to attempt a firing solution.”
“On my way,” she replied and turned to leave, peering at me over her shoulder with those glassy eyes once more.
I retired to Crew 1 and collapsed face first on my bunk. Every time I was just about unconscious, something trivial would wake me. A disturbing mental image. The thought of César’s empty bed. A random noise. My fucking bladder. It’d been almost an hour when the alarms went off and woke me fully. The ship turned yellow, then red, then yellow, our weapons powering up. I knew we were in good hands. Griffin and Kelly could handle the reset if it came to that, but it was impossible to sleep through. What was the damn point? Might as well wait till it’s over, exhausted or not.
“Firing,” XO’s voice boomed over the intercom.
The ship’s power fizzled for a moment, looking as if it might remain on, then the lights winked out, plunging us into darkness. Despite being nestled under the sheets of my bunk I felt as if I was falling. Darkness in space made orienting impossible as sight did most of your sensory correction in low gravity. I was compelled to sit up and feel it out, keeping track of the world before it made me sick.
I tossed my legs over the side of the bunk, phantom vertigo dissolving any tangible sense of direction. My toes probed the darkness in search of the floor, but found nothing.
Pain, sudden and hot, flashed through my skull, radiating in mammoth waves as I was flung back and pitched face first on the floor. I reached for anything to haul myself back up. Before I could manage a handhold—a shelf, a drawer, anything—I was hammered in the back of the head. My forehead cracked the corner of the bunk, splitting the skin wide open. I lashed out blindly, questing for purchase, and caught the middle of someone’s uniform, the fabric balling up in my fist. I drew them close and punched as hard as I could, over and over and over, fist landing in what I hoped was their gut.
My attacker grunted, pulled me up and kneed me in the stomach. Breath hissed out like a cycling airlock. I fell back but somehow recovered my footing. There was no way to know where he or she was, no way to know how big they were, or if they’d brought something more dangerous than a pair of fists.
My heart thundered as I caught a metallic whiff of blood, reminding me of the hours following Harrison’s skimmer crash. I’d paid dearly for that incident, just like this. A revenge beating.
I sucked in a breath and kicked blindly into the inky black, rewarded with the crunch of something firm and meaty. It was my only victory. My attacker rushed forward and hit me in the face with something metal, maybe a dinner tray. I tumbled back onto the floor, my weight and the momentum of a crushing blow focusing to a single point on my shoulder.
In spite of the desperate torrent of adrenaline coursing freely through every inch of me, I wanted to howl in agony and frustration. It’s impossible to fight an enemy you can’t even see.
The ship began to whine and whinny, growling and burping and whirring as the systems rebooted, coming back to life. Two swift kicks cracked me in the ribs, forcing a spray of blood between my lips.
“That’ll teach you to mess around,” the attacker whispered, their voice electronically distorted. Footsteps receded off down the hall, vanishing before the lights had returned.
Blood was splattered across the base of the bunks and down my chest. My nose spewed red like a decorative fountain in a macabre garden. I crawled into the hallway and peered both ways to catch a glimpse of my assailant, swearing I saw the blurry image of Dour Face through the haze.
Wishful thinking.
Liberty rounded the corner a moment later and gasped. She rushed over to help me stand. “Your earpiece turned on. I heard the whole thing. David, who did this? Who?”
I asked myself the same question, and every part of my body throbbed in concert, playing for me the terrible, wordless symphony that follows a brutal ass beating.
“I don’t know,” I managed. “I don’t know.”
[Log]
Text LOG #45 with Captain (Goddard’s watch).
09:00
Goddard: I wish the Doc had something stronger for me. Can you help, sir?
Captain: Get over it, pussy. What’s our status?
Goddard: The target, or the ship?
Captain: You know what I mean.
Goddard: The target has to be involved. Enela is dead.
Captain: The target does not control meteorites.
Goddard: But the drugs, sir.
Captain: Enela was smart. He could have stolen them. Enough talk of that. The target was not involved.
Goddard: How do you know?
Captain: Who is the captain of this ship?
Goddard: Yes, sir.
Captain: Now, report.
[13]
The Captain assured me a thorough investigation was underway. In the meantime, he recommended that I take things easy, getting as much R&R as possible between critical duties to let myself heal. But the truth was, there wasn’t much to investigate, and my injuries, those hurt no matter what I was doing.
The ship’s power reset meant no cameras were in operation, and I’d done no more than caught a handful of the attacker’s jumpsuit, heard their synthesized voice. Not much evidence to go on, just supposition. I knew what the Captain was thinking. I was thinking the same thing. The target had done this, not some pissed off crewmember. I’d been caught meddling and paid at a convenient time.
Then again… Could it be as simple as revenge? Had someone merely taken issue to the way I’d treated Griffin? A little extreme, don’t you think? All I did was push her down. Though, a taste of vigilante justice was not outside the realm of possible.
Whenever I came across Dour Face I felt sick. There was no way a proper investigation could be conducted when the prime suspect, in my opinion, was part of those investigating. That left me on my own. The only person I could trust was Liberty, but she couldn’t be told of our threat, not yet, and I hated that. Thankfully, she’d forgiven me my outburst in the cargo bay. Those were extreme circumstances and Griffin wasn’t hurt—well, not physically. My only other friend aboard this dented space can had been killed before my eyes, and I hadn’t taken it well. But if Griffin hadn’t given César the junk, then who had? I’d bet a hundred credits it was that same asshole who tenderized my face, revenge or not, spy or not. Either way, I needed to apologize to her.