Conflation

Part 14 —Reassessment

Monday, 05 October 2009 19:21

"So am I blind, or is it just really dark in here?"

There was no answer. At least he was still breathing. That meant the atmosphere hadn't vented. He could feel himself floating, could sense a wall, or maybe the ceiling or the floor, close at his back. No artificial gravity anymore, that much was certain. People didn't float about on the Starburst on purpose. He felt remarkably queasy, and was glad he'd had only a light breakfast. He had no idea where he was, apart from the fact that he was somewhere just beyond the engine room. There was no way of locating a com button, at least not before he was able to orient himself better.

Jaswan twisted himself around, reached out with both hands. The tips of his fingers brushed against a slick metal surface, and he smiled in the dark: definitely the ceiling. He wriggled a bit, to get a better purchase on the polished surface, with poor results. Damn. He had no momentum, nothing with which to give himself a push. He curled into a ball, hugging his knees tightly, and felt himself rotate slightly. Gingerly he extended his legs, felt his feet come into contact with what he hoped was still the ceiling and not a wall, and pushed off gently, extending his arms to cushion the impact with whatever lay directly over his head.

He hit the floor with a thump, scrabbled for purchase, and bounced in a slowly undignified way back into the air. He cursed and flailed, managed to get himself sort-of upright: he'd always sucked at this low-G stuff. Vanya, on the other hand, was always right at home when there was no gravity, which was even more annoying than the low-G itself. There was nothing quite as irritating as inching your way painstakingly across a floor or wall, clinging like a limpet to the hull of some sea-ship because if you let go you'd go spiralling out of control, only to have your captain go sailing by looking as unconcerned as if he was taking a stroll down some perfectly-controlled boulevard on a space station.

This was all Vanya's fault. Jaswan consoled himself with that thought. Vanya and his stupid random plans that he refused to share with anyone and which invariably seemed to get them shot at. If Vanya had survived the rendezvous, Jaswan vowed, he'd kill him himself. Encrypted information in the computer at the heart of an Imperium space station. He snorted to himself. Typical of Vanya to get them involved in something that was probably so big it was guaranteed to get them all killed. He was disgusted with himself, too, for letting Vanya play on his professional vanity: it had been flattering to be told that he was the only one good enough to get at the data, and like an idiot he'd fallen for the ploy. Vanya was just so damned charming, was the problem.

It hadn't helped, of course, that things hadn't gone quite according to plan. They hadn't been able to disable the station completely, the way they'd hoped. The client had turned on them. And then there was that stranger they'd picked up along the way. Picked up was maybe the wrong word. He'd fallen on them like a slightly panicked avenging angel, and Jaswan was certain he'd seen his life flash before his eyes when the guy flew at Jarod faster than the eye could properly register. The fact that the guy couldn't speak a word of Standard, for all he seemed to understand the language, wasn't reassuring either. Typical of Vanya to take him along, too, as though he was some sort of stray puppy they could train to become a guard dog. For all they knew, the guy might have slit Vanya's throat, been in league with the client all along, been an Imperium spy… who knew?

The ship-wide com system crackled to life. "This is the captain. Status report, ASAP."

Jaswan directed his curses at Marianna instead. He was lost, in the dark, with no way of communicating, and floating upside-down now, to add insult to injury. He wasn't actually injured, he didn't think. That much was a mercy. He wriggled around some more, and whacked his head against the floor with a yelp and another string of curses. Finally he managed to right himself again, and pulled himself carefully along the wall to where he'd heard Marianna's voice come through the intercom. He felt up and down the wall, found the com button.

"Jaswan here. Status uncertain until I can get some light."

"Try the light switch. Are you injured?"

"Ha ha. Funny. No, I'm not injured. Can I get an ETA on emergency lights?"

"Isn't that your job? Whatever. I'll see what I can do from here.  Xiao Mei? Jarod? Do you copy?"

"Thank you, Marianna."

He infused his tone with as much irony as he could muster, then fumbled around some more until his fingers found the control panel for the lights. Predictably, nothing happened. At least he knew where he was now. The engine room was eight steps away, the engine itself eleven steps beyond that. Well, one of the engines. He could probably access the emergency lighting remotely if he could get to a panel. He placed one foot in front of the other, pulling himself along the wall.

The com hissed again. "Xiao Mei here. No injuries on my end either. Life support looks stable, but I don't have any other systems operational. Can't even get the damned doors to open. Injuries on your end, Marianna? Jarod? Do you copy?"

Marianna's voice answered. "No injuries here. Working on re-routing what power I can to auxiliaries. I'll give you an ETA as soon as I have one. Hang tight."

"Don't have much choice, do I? I assume no word from Vanya or the shuttle?"

"None."

"Is it too much to hope for that one day one of our jobs won't involve us getting shot out of the sky?"

"Don't exaggerate. This is the first time something bad has happened since… well, in a year. Keep your pants on."

Jaswan heard the hesitation in Marianna's voice, and winced. The last time "something bad" had happened was when Soraya had… he shook himself. No use thinking about that now. There were more pressing issues, like light and gravity and making sure life support stayed online. Oh, and getting the ship upright and moving again.

His hands found what he was pretty sure was the panel that would allow him remote access to auxiliary power, and more importantly, the lights. He thanked every god he could think of that he'd trained for hours so that he could do this stuff blindfolded, or in the dark as the case might be, and began pulling on wires. He wished briefly that he had more than his hands as tools, but in a pinch all he really needed was his fingernails: he could do nothing fancy, but nothing fancy was required just to get the lights working.

The engine room flickered yellow for a moment, and then a soft orange glow suffused the room and, he presumed, the rest of the ship.

"Good work, Jaswan."

"Thank you," he muttered under his breath, not bothering to reach for com.

There was a ton of work to be done, but at least now he could see what he was doing, no thanks to Marianna or Vanya or any of them. Thanks to Marianna's stupid manoeuvres, who knew what kind of damage the engines had suffered? He'd heard a very unnatural clanking sound before the ship had –what? Crashed? Landed? Drifted off? He wasn't sure, come to think of it. There hadn't been that big an impact, which explained why they weren't all dead, but he'd lost consciousness for a little while, probably from the drastic change in gravitation. Whatever it was, the engines were not meant to clank, and now they weren't running at all. He didn't get paid nearly enough for this sort of shit to happen to him on a regular basis.

"Attention all hands: artificial gravity is being partially restored. Brace yourselves!"

Feeling suddenly as thought he weighed three tons, Jaswan fell backward as his knees buckled. Definitely a bruised tailbone, he thought resentfully. Just great. He supposed he ought to feel grateful that nothing worse had happened to him, and that they were all alive. Somehow, he didn't feel grateful in the slightest. Then a sudden doubt assailed him. He'd assumed they were all alive and uninjured, but not everyone was accounted for yet. Only Xiao Mei and Marianna had reported in so far, which meant… He picked himself up, feeling his heart begin to race in his chest. Marianna appeared to be thinking along the same lines, because she came on the ship-wide com system again a moment later.

"Jarod, I'm still waiting for your status report. Do you copy? Jarod, do you copy? Please respond. If com is damaged in your area please move to an adjacent section and report.

"Jarod?"

*****