Way out here in Space, you know you're in trouble when the ship's crew look as bad as they do right now.
Jezuz Chrizt, I've seen Deathball teams near the end of the ninth period, five men down and broken, look in better shape than these wasted specimens gathering in the ship's galley. Every crew member sags against something for rest, while their eyes stare either crazy-wide or sleepy-thin, depending on inner temperament and which drugs they've been using to keep themselves awake for all this time.
Over the sound of our misty breathing the ship creaks and groans as she tumbles through Space, crippled in a battle we just barely survived. The charge attractors on the hull have been damaged so we're running on emergency power, everything hushed and gloomy. Even now, the ship is still bleeding air and heat into the vacuum. That's why the atmosphere is so cold and stale and why I'm wearing all of my clothing, three pairs of socks on my feet and a hoody pulled over my head, my numb hands pushed deep in my pockets.
For fourteen hours straight, the surviving crew-members of the Stares At Strangers have been working non-stop to save the ship from dying around us. But by their grim expressions now, here under the wane, flickering emergency lighting, I can tell that we're still on the knife edge. We might really all die here.
No wonder their stares are so mutinous.
They've gathered here at the comm-requests of the captain, who they blame for this fine mess that we're in, and who has chosen to make her stand in the centre of the room right under the skydome of stars. Captain Mayday has one hand tucked into an armpit while the other holds what's left of my smoking joint, her lean body propped against the long dining table as she stares at the crew without a hint of concession; like she's the one who has the right to be pissed in all of this. Above her head the stars drift with the turning of the ship, obscured by coils of blue smoke.
'Well then,' Mayday begins, but falters as she takes in the faces of the surviving crew one by one. When the dark-haired woman meets my eyes, I see her inner tensions running just below the surface. It's obvious what she's about to say is going to throw a bomb into everyone's laps.
'We've got good news, and we've got bad news. Let's get the bad out of the way first. We still can't stop all the leaks. Pretty soon we'll be out of air.'
'Fantastimo,' says the ship's apprentice pilot with a toss of her hands. The only pilot we have now.
'You mean you didn't call us here for some grub?' complains Mansun, the big ex-merc responsible for ship security.
Captain Mayday draws a long inhalation of smoke without taking her eyes from the crew. Exhales with all the impatience she can muster.
'We don't have time to fuck around here. Let's talk about what we need to do.'
'What's to talk about?' rumbles Mansun. 'We got options?'
If we do, the captain obviously doesn't like them. Mayday tightens her mouth and stares down at the dining table before her, where a collection of green cubes is arrayed side by side like a row of square melons.
I peer closer, seeing a hose and mask sprouting from each cube. They're breathing apparatus of some kind.
I count seven cubes in all.
The captain's stare is shiny-hard now. From under my hoody I watch the scene in silent fascination, curling my toes against the living carpetgrass that covers the decking, knowing a defining moment when I see one.
'Our only option is to use the emergency air-gel pacs. If we put ourselves into hibernation and sustain a full burn, we should make it to Aldephi before the pacs run dry.'
'So why all the drama?' asks the apprentice pilot, Hourly.
I don't like the way the captain hesitates. I wish she'd stop hogging that joint and pass it back to me.
'Because we lost half the emergency airpacs in the decompressions.'
She means back when we got our ass kicked during the running battle with the law. But I'll get to that, eventually. 'We have seven pacs remaining, though one of those turns out to be a dud. It's nearly dry. So we only have six working pacs, for a compliment of seven.'
Now there's movement. Now there's some life in the crew again. Suddenly faces are turning to look at me; the uninvited passenger, the seventh guy on the manifest.
'The supercargo isn't crew,' Mansun declares as he glares at me from across the room, and I get a sudden bad feeling in my guts, like I've just gone from being a spider on the wall to someone's dinner. 'If you're telling me we don't have enough air for our passenger here, well, that's just too bad.'
'That isn't what I'm telling you,' snaps the captain. 'I'm telling you there are six working airpacs, and seven of us. Now we need to decide what to do about it.'
Near the back of the room, a stooped and shaggy-haired figure clears his throat. It's Bodhi, the ape manimal. Master gardener, deckhand, ship's philosopher. 'You said there was good news?' asks the modified ape in his gruff voice, and beside him I spot the young stowaway, Alt, standing as mute as always.
'Yeah,' answers the captain. 'We still have a good fifteen minutes left before we have to start using the airpacs.'
'Well that decides it,' growls Mansun, and the big merc shocks everyone by pulling his stun pistol from its holster.
Before anyone can react he marches right up to me with his gun aimed at my face, moving fast for all his bulk.
Oh no.
'Hey hey hey!' shouts Mayday and others as he presses the barrel hard against my forehead. But my hands are already in the air, and I'm backing out through a doorway at the cold metallic insistence of his prods.
I'm thinking that Mansun really means to shoot me here, that he's backing me along a passage so he can do it out of sight of the others. Adrenaline races through me, sharpening everything. The rest of the crew are rallying after us shouting their protests. Before I know it, Mansun shoves me backwards through another doorway and slaps the lock so the door slides shut in my face, leaving me standing there staring at him through a triangle of grimy plass.
Chrizt. I've just let him back me into an airlock.
'You don't want to be doing this!' I yell at him like it will make a gram of difference, yanking the hoody from my head.
He waves his gun at the crew and glances at me through the window.
'Yeah? Give me one reason why not?'
'My mission, you bastard! The Shal!'
Mansun pulls a face. Through the thick plass his scowling, tattooed features are superimposed by a reflection of my own, so that it looks like he's wearing my stubby mohawk and startled eyes. The ex-merc slaps something else and I hear a sudden hiss of escaping air.
He's cycling out the atmosphere. I only have a minute or so to live.
'Hey!' I scream, pounding at the tiny window and barely feeling the pain. Panic surges through me like a herd of fleeing horses. I can see the others jostling out there in the passageway, but Mansun shoves them away and keeps pointing his pistol to hold them back. The big man is panting hard, just as hard as I am in the thinning air.
He won't look at me now. That's how I know he's really going to it.
'Do the maths!' he bellows at his captain and crew-mates. 'It's him or one of us. Anyone feel like volunteering in his place?'
Mansun shoves someone back with a snarl, their shouts drowning each other's words.
Somehow I always figured it would end like this. Thrown to the wind by people frightened enough to turn on the loner outsider. Though I never supposed it would happen like this, way out here in the depths of the High Wild, gasping for my next breath of precious air.
I'm too young to die. I'm only nineteen years of age. But if I don't think of a way out of this right now, it's all over.
Behind me lights start flashing around the outer hatch, the very same hatch that's keeping out the vacuum of space. I stare horrified over my shoulder, realising its about to crack open. Frantic, I glance around the cramped space of the airlock for inspiration, but I can't see anything that might help, not in the few seconds remaining. There's not even time to hack the inner door's keypad.
Somehow, I need to hack the situation itself.
In a rush I slap my hands against the window again and glare out at Mansun until he meets my eye. With my final breaths I yell the first things that come to me. God help me maybe the last words I'll ever say.
'Wait a second! I'll give you a million creds, right now, right here, in instantly transferable crypto-currency, if you let me out!'
'Bullshit you will.'
He's right, it is bullshit. But it's the only lifeline I've got, so I slap the door even harder. 'You know the mission I'm on. You know the Shal are backing me. I've got plenty of funds if you'll just let me transfer them to you. Besides, I can offer a different way to do this. A fair way!'
'This is fair. Damned fair.'
'A million creds says otherwise - just give me a chance!'
I know I've hooked him when he hesitates just long enough to think it over.
'Just open the door!' I try to yell, but it comes out as a squeaky wheeze.
Suddenly the lights stop flashing. Air whooshes back into the chamber and into my lungs. My ears pop.
I nearly start crying with relief.
When the door cracks open I can't stop myself, I'm so angry I get ready to take a swing at him - a good old-fashioned Shal nerve strike to his temple. But Mansun's a pro, and he keeps his stun pistol aimed right at me.
'Knock it off kid. This better be for real.'
---
We assemble in the galley again, where the air is even more stale than before. I stand there shaking and gathering my wits while one of the ship's cats, the young blond one who seems to have taken a liking to me, chews and claws at my trouser leg in play.
'The money,' demands Mansun. 'And then you get to talk for a minute. Tell us this great idea of yours.'
I'm too peeved now to be intimated by this jerk and his gun. So I break the news to Mansun with all the gentleness that I can muster.
'I don't have any money for you. That was all bullshit.'
'You sonofa-'
'Stand down!' warns the captain, and I see that Mayday has her own stun pistol aimed at the big man's head. It's about damned time she took control of the situation. 'You stop this nonsense now or I'll drop you myself. Start acting like a fucking professional for Chrizt sake.'
Her scorn is enough to make Mansun comply, though he doesn't like it.
'Season,' she says to me, because that's my name. Season X. 'What have you got for us.'
'Just an idea I had,' I tell her, and the small crew watches as I step over to the big dining table, dragging the over-excited cat with me. 'When you said we had a dud airpac.'
I slap one of the cubes that sits on the table's surface, making the thing quiver like a block of jelly. I pick up the airpac by a fraction to sample its weight, then do the same with the others. One of the pacs feels lighter than the rest, though not by as much as I was expecting. 'We have seven air-gel pacs and seven people on board, but one of these pacs is nearly dry.'
'Yeah yeah kid,' says Mansun. 'You wanna get to the point before we all asphyxiate here?'
The air really is growing stale here. I notice it when I take a deep breath to settle myself as best I can.
I've never much liked standing in the spotlight addressing people like this. It goes against my natural tendency to seek out the shadows. Feeling their eyes upon me, I force myself to look up from beneath my hoody to meet their expectant gazes.
Young Alt stares at me with saucer eyes. Bodhi looks concerned. The others sway with exhaustion.
'I'm suggesting something more equitable than throwing someone out the airlock like a bunch of space pirates. Something more like choosing straws. Considering the circumstances, that's the least I deserve here, don't you think?'
'Go on,' prompts the apprentice pilot before Mansun can protest.
'Take a gamble with me. We each choose one of the emergency airpacs at random, we lie down and strap on a mask, and then we go into hibernation together for the burn to Aldelphi.'
They're staring at me with open mouths.
'You mean, one of us gets to choose the dud airpac?' asks Hourly, appalled. 'And we won't even know it?'
'Yeah. I mean one of us doesn't get to wake up.'
---
The ship is vibrating as its ion drives slowly increase towards a hard burn. Syn the engineer, the only crew-member not to have turned up for the crisis meeting, has finally fixed some of the damaged attractors on the hull, so the ship is drawing an electromagnetic charge from Space again. Syn is taking it easy with the drives, nursing them, and so the acceleration is negligible. But soon, with luck, we'll be shooting through Space trailing a white tail like a streaking comet.
I'm lying on one of the thin cabin mattresses that Bodhi has tossed onto the grassy floor of the galley. A mask is fixed to my face, like the rest of the crew lying around me in gloomy silence, each person wearing a breathing mask from one of the pacs they chose at random from the table.
I can still feel the sting of the hibernation shot I've just been given on my arm. I'm already starting to feel sleepy from its effects.
Above us, starry Space shines through the high dome of plass that occupies much of the galley's ceiling. The stars are no longer moving now that the ship has stopped tumbling and is headed, on autopilot, for the nearest port of Aldephi some four days away. Only the odd speck of space dust streaking past shows that we're moving at all.
The engineer Syn is the only one who will stay awake for the duration of the trip, making sure the ship holds together while we slumber in deep hibernation. He's been given a full airpac to use during his work. The rest of the time he'll stay in the ship's greenhouses with the cats and other animals, where the abundance of plants should hopefully keep them going with just enough fresh oxygen to make it.
Syn is the only one for certain who knows he has a working breather. Well, not quite the only one.
I know I'm not going to die here either. And I don't mean because of all the momentum that I'm carrying; all the mojo; all the flukes and synchronicities that make it feel like this is just the beginning of something bigger.
I know, because I've rigged the outcome.
When I first weighed the airpacs on the table and finally picked up the lightest one, obviously the dud, I slyly nicked one corner with my thumbnail. So when the cubes were all mixed together by the captain, before we started to pick them out, I knew not to select the wrong one, the dead man's pac.
I'm not sure who did pick it out in the end. I didn't want to know. But the apprentice pilot thinks it's her.
'I swear that airpac felt light,' mutters Hourly through her own breathing mask, stretched out on a mattress right next to me. Under radically different circumstances I'd be getting excited about lying here so close together like this, but not now. 'I bet it's me. I bet I'm the one who doesn't get to wake up.'
'Best to only make bets you want to win,' gruffs Bodhi the manimal, and from the corner of my eye I'm surprised to see the ape reassuring Hourly by placing his long furry hand in hers.
Beyond him the captain lies with her eyes closed, pretending to be calm as she fades fast. Beyond her, a snore rises from the still form of Mansun. Beyond Mansun, the stowaway Alt is playing with a minified snake on his chest; one of those red-and-black stripy ones that's always escaping from the ship's greenhouses. The boy is panting behind his breather in barely controlled fright, all too aware that he might never wake up.
I feel terrible, knowing that one of these people will die in their sleep. Maybe even this goddamned kid. I'm starting to realise that this is the worst thing I've ever done in my life.
I do this for my sister, my twin, I tell myself again. Not for the Shal nation. Not for the world of Plenty.
I do this for her.
'Whoever it is,' mumbles the captain in a drowsy slur. 'At least they won't know it.'
'Hmff,' agrees Bodhi. 'Sleep in peace, all of you. One way or the other, we will meet again on the other side.'
Hourly's voice fades away as she finally drifts to sleep. 'I really bet it's me...'
I can barely keep my eyes open. Everything is rattling around the galley now as the drives burn even harder. Slowly, inevitably, lulled by the vibrations and the lengthening rhythm of my own breathing, my eyelids droop shut and I drop fast into a kind of delirium.
I'm falling backwards in time, before I ever made it to this ship called the Stares At Strangers. Back to the day when my twin sister, Leaf, first contacted me for help on behalf of the Shal nation. Back when she was still alive and well.
In my dreams I smile for the first time in weeks.
To be continued ...
The High Wild is a passion project that I'm releasing on Steemit as I write it. The artwork is my own. With the support of readers, I'd like to release a High Wild novella as a free ebook when it's finished, under the Creative Commons license. Please consider supporting the project by Upvoting and Following, or give a TIP for the author's efforts! Cheers.
