Chapter 2 #2
“Yeah, isn’t it weird that there’s so many fish here?
” Drey asked, answering a question posed by nobody.
“I mean, cryo is their tech, but it’s wild to see so many of them working in high-sec.
All probably got prime bennies, those good — and I mean real good — Fed bennies.
Fancy fuckin’ fish.” The merc made a small noise of disapproval before turning to face Davik, his hands wringing the elevator handle as he spoke.
“Pfft. You’re just jealous. You and I could only dream of landing a cushy job like that,” Davik said, gesturing at the next pair of workers they passed.
“See those two? Probably started just as low on the heap as we did. You’re freaked out over everything that happened.
We both are. Don’t let that go to your head and twist you up, make you all bitter. ”
“What are you, my shrink?” Drey’s tone was defensive, but he relented his grip to cross his arms in front of his chest. Apparently, the man had been expecting a little camaraderie and reciprocal prejudice.
“Maybe I’m worried this is going to go tits up, just like the mess that got your brother clapped in here to begin with,” he said with a healthy dose of vitriol.
A stark departure from the affectionate bullying he had been slinging all night.
The rest of the ride up was so quiet that the gentle chime when they reached their floor made Davik flinch.
Drey continued the silent treatment all the while as he wheeled the crate out of the elevator and took a decisive right turn.
The temptation to ask if they were going the right way flared up, but he pressed it down.
The man was on the warpath, and he knew it was best not to get in his way.
“Alright. We’re here. Pod 4081. Do your magic.”
Davik shook his hands free of the worry pent up in his joints and set to work.
This was it. It was just a simple matter of disabling the locks, removing the pod, and replacing it with an empty one.
The next steps after that were finicky, but he’d sweat those details once they had his brother out of here.
“We’re getting you home, Marius,” Davik said as he pressed his forehead to the featureless pod.
A flurry of warnings blared as he disabled the locks holding the pod in place. Even more wailed after he disconnected the coolant line. The countdown began in Davik’s mind: forty-seven minutes until catastrophic decompression.
Prying the pod free, seating the new one in its place, and re-sealing the coolant line to silence the alarms took three precious minutes.
Loading the rapidly thawing and decompressing pod onto the cart, wheeling it to the elevator, and bringing it to the disposal bay took another eight.
Slapping a tracking beacon on the pod, lining it up with the disposal bay airlock doors, and shunting the pod into the inky black of open space took another five.
The gut-wrenching feeling of watching the cylinder carrying his brother cartwheeling into the void did not settle until they got back to their shuttle another eleven minutes later.
Twenty minutes left.
“Carissa!” Drey barked over the comms as soon as they were out of the station. “The tracker’s hot. Go scoop your husband out of the sky. We’re en route to dock with you.”
Davik’s eyes locked on the scanner readout in front of him as they peeled out of the port. The tiny symbols of The Argent and the tracker on the pod were slowly inching closer to each other. He calculated their speed and did a quick run of the numbers.
Marius was going to make it.
They docked with The Argent, their outdated-but-functional cargo ship, just a few minutes after Carissa had towed the free-floating pod into their cargo bay.
Three minutes left. That’s close, but it’s enough.
Davik didn’t wait for the shuttle doors to finish opening all the way before he bolted through the airlock, past the bulkhead, and into the cargo bay. His heart was thundering, and he could feel the happy tears building as he ran across the gantry.
They had done it. Everything he had worked for came together in the end, even with the hiccups along the way.
He rounded the corner toward the bay and took the stairs down two at a time. The groan of the external seals re-seating was deafening. He couldn’t make out what Carissa was saying. All he could see was her mouth moving. Her shoulders drooping.
No … please, God, no.
Every inch of his body froze. He couldn’t bring himself to look into the pod. The readout on the med scanner in her hand read clear: No life signs detected.
The seals finished re-pressurizing, and the room went quiet.
“Is he? Is Marius … dead?” he asked, despite knowing the answer.
“No idea. She is, though,” Carissa said, her voice cold and clipped. She drew a long breath, gripped the med scanner, and whipped it at the airlock doors with a resounding crack. No yelling, no screaming, no explanations. She just turned on her heel and left the cold cargo bay.
Time slowed as he came around to face what precious cargo they had just risked everything for. The frost-speckled body was about as tall as his brother, but the proportions were all wrong.
In the pod lay an Icthian, her face framed by a mane of thick tendrils and a scaled brow. Still, lifeless, any trace of her color lost in a deathly gray pall.
“I’m sorry, kiddo,” Drey murmured as he gave Davik a soft squeeze on the shoulders. The merc didn’t linger, didn’t gloat. He left Davik to spiral by himself with a parting nod.
Carissa didn’t yell at him. Drey didn’t chide him. He had failed, and they had just accepted it. The world went light-streaked and blurry as his eyes welled with angry, helpless tears. He sank down against the nearby wall and listened to the sounds of the engines whirring to life.
His brother was lost. Again.
His family was torn apart. Again.
And it was his fault. Again.
An hour went by as he recounted every step in his plan, every step he took, searching for what he must have done wrong. He walked the corridors of deck forty in his mind. Despite the docking bay hiccup, everything went right. So where did he go wrong?
Did they pull the wrong pod? That thought was enough to draw him up from his morose musing. He rose from his slumped spot to check the identification tag to test the theory, and found a pair of blinking, otherworldly green eyes staring back at him.
Dead woman in the cargo bay. Formerly dead woman. Icthian woman.
There’s a formerly dead Icthian woman in the cargo bay.