Trapped On Talonque: (A Sectors SF romance) (37 page)

“Will the kemat be all right out there tonight, you think?” Thom asked, raising an eyebrow at Bithia. “Any large natural predators? I can set the sonic perimeters if need be.”

“Might be a good idea anyway,” Nate said. “Let us all get a good night’s sleep, which is something hard to come by on this planet, I’ve found. I don’t want to leave a warm bunk in the middle of the night to go tangle with a mountain lion or whatever the local variation is.”

“Consider it done.” Thom rose from the bench.

“I’ll do it. You were on guard all last night. Go grab your shower, and then why don’t you hit the rack?”

“You sure?” Plainly tempted, Thom hesitated.
 

“You must be the most exhausted of us all,” Bithia said. “You stood guard all night and rode all day. I can help with sorting.”

“No more argument from this boy, then. See you in the morning.” Thom yawned and left the galley, heading aft.

Nate and Bithia took a few more moments, organizing the supplies. Then they too left the galley and strolled to the front of the ship. Bithia watched while Nate instructed the AI to activate the sonic perimeter thirty yards out.

“Does this AI remember the way home to your Sectors?”

He laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in the pilot’s chair. “It has the coordinates of the blue giant where we first veered off course. It probably has the sequence of the hyperspace nexi we passed through on our wild ride here, despite how fast it all happened. And it contains all the star maps for the Sectors, which is one reason we have to slag any permanently disabled ship. Can’t risk the Mawreg getting their multieyes on the classified data. So in summary, yes, the AI remembers how to get us home. But without a ship, what good does the navigation data do?”

She tapped the gilintrae on her arm. “The idea of allowing such irreplaceable information to be destroyed when there may be a way to save it bothers me. Let me see if my device can communicate with yours and capture the data.”
 

“Didn’t you say your fancy bracelet was out of power?” But Nate rose from the chair to let her take his place. Fine with him if she wanted to make an attempt and interesting to see if her technology could cross the gap between ancient alien and Sectors AI techniques.

Bithia sat gracefully, studying the console for a long moment, passing her hand an inch or two above the surface of the board. “This AI is a mind, is it not?”

“Not exactly. In the big ships, like the
Andromeda
battle cruiser, the AI is a fully conscious, registered sentient. But on little vessels like this, there’s only a rudimentary, partial system. A brain stem, you might say, keeping the vital functions of the ship going, but not capable of the complex processing that the big systems—or the human brain—carry out. Doesn’t have those modules.”

“A helpful explanation, thank you.” Closing her eyes, she began to hum, almost inaudibly, holding a steady note that extended on and on, as if she no longer needed to breathe. A faint vibration rippled through his own mind, an oddly off-balance sensation, as if he were about to slip sideways into a whirlpool. He shook his head to dispel it, not wanting to be drawn into whatever she was doing with the AI.
There are some disadvantages to these hidden abilities of mine.
The note she hummed affected him once more. The vertigo was more pronounced, and he regretted the big dinner he’d eaten.

Not wanting to disturb her, but curious to check the gilintrae, which she held parallel to the console, Nate leaned over her shoulder. A line of single, fat green motes of light looped from the jeweled cuff and to the console and back.

“Whatever,” Nate said to himself and retreated to the rear observer’s chair to wait for the end of this experiment. The beds on the
Murphy
were narrow, but if Bithia was in the mood to be creative, he had some ideas for whiling away the night in an interesting fashion in the privacy of the pilot’s cabin.

He fought someone, striking out as if he was drunk or waking from a deep sleep. Nate tried to land a blow, but his opponent dodged, calling his name and swearing. “In the name of the seven hells, snap out of it, Nate, wake up!”

Thom shook him roughly again as Nate stared around the cockpit, staggering under his friend’s violent treatment. Raising one hand, he said, “I’m okay, I’m awake, thanks.”

Releasing his tight grip on Nate’s shirt, Thom retreated a step. “What happened in here? I was afraid I’d never get you conscious again. Had me worried.”

Bithia slept, snoring slightly, head on the control console.

Nate frowned, concerned at the depth of her slumber despite all the noise he and Thom had made right next to her. He stepped to the pilot’s chair and laid a hand on her shoulder, giving her a gentle shake. No response.

“Bithia, time to rise and shine,” he said, shaking her harder. He flashed a quick glance at Thom, whose expression was concerned and grim. Nate carefully raised her head from the control console, bracing her neck and shoulders with his arm. She was breathing, he reassured himself, and she had a pulse, though slow and intermittent.

The gilintrae showed no signs of activity.

Closing his eyes for a moment, he searched for their link and found only glowing embers where usually the flame burned steady.

Swearing, Nate plucked her from the chair. “Get the medkit on the double and meet me in the sleeping quarters. I think we need a strong stimulant. She’s way under. I shouldn’t have let her try her crazy idea, and I shouldn’t have gone to sleep myself.”

“Try what?” Thom followed on Nate’s heels down the main corridor. “What was she doing at the controls?”

“Trying to communicate directly with the AI. I know it sounds crazy, but she was determined to save the trip data for us so we could find our way home someday. I didn’t see any harm in it, but whatever she did had a hypnotizing effect on me. Get the medkit.”

Her attempts at communication with the AI had lulled him to sleep, and he’d been on the periphery of whatever mental sweep she’d conducted. The effects on Bithia herself must have been tenfold what hit him.

Alarmed, Nate moved faster, being careful not to bump Bithia’s head as he maneuvered through the tight spaces of the courier ship. As Nate laid her gently on the pilot’s bunk, Thom hastened into the tiny cabin, juggling an armful of medical supplies.

He knelt beside the bunk and spread the contents of the medkit on the deck to decide what inject to try. “We don’t know if she can tolerate our medications,” Thom said. “This could be a real mistake. You sure you don’t want to wait awhile, see if she sleeps it off?”

Nate took Bithia’s pulse again, holding her left wrist firmly. He shook his head. “Even slower than before. We can’t wait. What you got?”

Thom narrowed his choice to two injects, laying them side by side on the bed. He tapped the first one with his right index finger. “Adrenephix. Strongest thing in the medkit.” Frowning, he touched the other. “And this is the finest quality, genetically derived neurocrysmeth that credits can buy on the black market—found this in Jurgens’ kit yesterday.”

“The idiot was mainlining starspeed? He was asking for a fucking heart attack.” Nate whistled. “All his flight pay must have been going into keeping the illegal cylinder filled.”

“And then some,” Thom agreed. “But it’s a thousand times more potent than adrenephix.”

“We don’t need her addicted to that shit.” Nate studied Bithia’s beautiful face, and his heart thumped painfully.
 

“But we do need her to wake up, and this is the stuff to do it. One dose isn’t necessarily addictive, and I have the right injects to administer a narco blocker as soon as she regains consciousness, before the high kicks in completely. No high, no addiction.”

“Some other time I’ll ask how you know all this,” Nate said, remembering Thom originally hailed from a rough Inner Sector planet. “For now I’m nothing but grateful. Do it.”

“You sure?” Thom held the chosen inject, ready to apply it to Bithia’s arm. Nate took Bithia’s hand and nodded. Muttering a prayer to the Lords of Space under his breath, Thom administered the full dose of the highly illegal upper. He rubbed the site of the inject and sat on his heels. “The reaction may be violent.”

“If it works.”

“Unless her physiology is totally different from ours, which I doubt, the drug will work. See her fingers twitching? The starspeed’s hitting her central nervous system about now.”

Drawing a huge, gasping breath, Bithia sat bolt upright, shaking uncontrollably, staring at them with wide-open eyes, apparently not recognizing either man. She tried to scramble off the bunk. Nate grabbed her and didn’t let go, no matter how she struggled and fought, not even when she clamped her teeth into his shoulder.

“Hurry with the blocker, will you? I don’t want to hurt her, and I can’t risk knocking her out again.”

“Superhuman strength in short bursts is one of the side effects.” Thom worked frantically to mix the contents of three injects into one, hardly an authorized procedure. He improvised, without spilling too much of the medications, which would have rendered his antidote too weak to do the job. Finally, he came up with the inject, dodging a flying kick from Bithia’s left foot, and slammed the inject into her shoulder. “Sorry, lady, this’ll hurt like hell and leave a bruise on your pretty arm, but I gotta do it.”

Bithia stiffened from head to toe, sighed deeply and collapsed into Nate’s arms, eyes shut. He took a deep breath. “Tell me we’re not back to where we started.”

“She’s fine,” Thom said. “Steady breathing. Take her pulse, see for yourself.”

“Faster than normal, but definitely better than before. What next?”

“She’ll regain consciousness in a moment or two, and she won’t remember anything, but she’s going to ache all over, with a hell of a headache in particular. She can’t have headclear or any other drug for twenty-four hours. Her muscles may spasm off and on for a few hours. She’ll definitely have the shakes. Fresh air would be good. We’re going to have to stay here another day because she won’t be capable of riding.”

“I don’t care as long as she’s going to be all right. It’s not as if we have any deadlines now. Not expected to be anywhere at all, in fact, much less at a certain time.” Nate leaned close to Bithia, who opened her eyes as predicted, but with great difficulty. “Are you all right, sweetheart? Head hurt?”

“Yes.” Wide-eyed, hands going to her stomach, she moaned. “What happened? Why are we in here? I’m going to be sick—”

Thom shoved a small basin under her chin, taking it away again when the episode had passed. “Be a good idea to carry her outside. The fresh air will do her good.”

“Am I sick?” she asked as Nate lifted her from the bunk and headed into the corridor. “Why do I feel so wretched?”

“You wanted to communicate with the AI, remember?” Nate said as he awkwardly hit the controls to open the ship’s door and lower the gangplank. “You put yourself into some kind of a trance in the process.” He carried her down the ramp with great care and set her on the velvet-soft grass in the shade of the ship. “Sent me to sleep too, but Thom was able to wake me. I nearly took his head off before I regained full consciousness. You were under too deep. We had to give you a drug to shock your system into reviving. Scared me to death.”

“Any better, ma’am?” Thom asked as he came out of the ship carrying a couple of blankets from their saddlebags, including her favorite white one from the beach house. He was also balancing a steaming mug.

“The air out here is settling my stomach, but my head hurts so much.”

“Drink this.” Thom handed her the mug, which she immediately tried to thrust back at him, her face screwed up in a grimace of total repulsion. “I know you think your stomach won’t handle it, but trust me, this is the best thing. Hold your breath and get the stuff into your gut somehow.”

She gave him a piteous look for a moment, but Thom was unrelenting, pushing the mug toward her lips. She did as ordered and dropped the mug into the grass before reclining with a moan. “The liquid helps, thank you.”

Working rapidly, Nate and Thom constructed a small shelter for her out of the blankets and alternated sitting with her throughout the day. Thom plied her with fluids of various types and seemed satisfied by her progress as the day wore on. She had a few attacks of violent shaking, as he’d predicted she might, but Nate wrapped her tightly in the soft blanket and held her until the episodes passed. The one thing he wouldn’t allow her was a nap. She complained less and less of the headache and declared she felt quite well as the sun set.

“No solid food until morning. I’ll give you headclear then, if the headache returns,” Thom said. “It shouldn’t, but these things can surprise you.”

“I never expected to miss the damn healing chamber.” Nate gathered blankets, preparing to move inside the ship for the night. “Sure would have helped today, though.”

Bithia drained the latest mug of recommended fluids and handed it to Thom with a flourish. She shook her head. “I wouldn’t trade my father’s impersonal machine for the devoted care Thom gave me. And you.”

“You’re right, you—and I—owe your recovery to Thom. One more in a long string of things I owe him. This one is the most important, old friend.” Nate clapped his embarrassed sergeant on the shoulder. “I’ll always be in your debt.”

“It evens out pretty fairly over the years,” Thom said. “I’m glad I had the right drugs to work with. Adrenephix wouldn’t have done it for her. She was too far under by the time I got to you guys this morning. Wouldn’t have been a pretty story without a starspeed inject. Guess we owe Jurgens.”