Out of Bight, Out of Mind

Chapter Ten

She spent over an hour with Ford down in engineering, using a voice recorder to capture what he said. No matter how many times she tried, she couldn’t wrap her mind around the physics and mechanics that were the jump engine. That didn’t mean she didn’t want to try to understand it. The Tamora Bight was her home for the next several years, and she wanted to know as much about it as she could. She wanted to be an asset to her men for more than just her medical skills and training. She wanted to feel useful.

She wanted something complicated to focus on that might take her mind off Kayehalau’s presence on board.

“You good?” Ford asked, concern in his voice and washing from him to her as they left engineering and emerged in the cavernous cargo hold.

She nodded, despite feeling the whiff of Kayehalau’s presence somewhere nearby. He was on the move, she sensed that, but where he was she couldn’t tell. Hopefully he was heading to the bridge.

Ford pulled her close and kissed her, cradling her cheeks in his palms. “It’s going to be okay, sweetheart,” he whispered. “We’re halfway through the mission. I know this has been rough on you, but we’re so proud of you.”

She nodded, blinking away the prickle of tears threatening. “Thanks.”

“Love you.”

She forced a smile she knew didn’t fool him in the least. “Love you, too.”

“I have to get back up to the bridge. You want to walk with me?”

She started to say yes, then hesitated. “I should hit the hydro lab.” It would keep her away from the bridge, where she knew Kayehalau would be to observe the jump.

“Okay.” With one last, quick peck on the lips, he turned and walked away.

Emi slipped the voice recorder in her pocket and realized with a wistful pang that she’d left Bucky sitting on her desk.

She’d go over Ford’s jump engine explanation again later. She loved listening to him explain things, between the warm, soothing tone of his voice and how gently he spoke. Not that Aaron and Caph weren’t good at it, too, but as Aaron often said, Ford just had that special touch.

She looked up at the cargo hold ceiling as Caph’s voice sounded over the com link. “Five minutes until jump.”

Hydro lab it is. Especially since she felt Kayehalau’s presence closer than before. She began picking her way across the cargo hold, toward another corridor that would lead her a back way to the hydro lab without her running into Kayehalau.

Unfortunately, when she turned around one stack, she felt the darkness bloom, spreading and strengthening, and she nearly screamed when she walked into Kayehalau. “Jesus Christ! You scared the crap out of me!” With her heart racing, she drew away from him. When she tried to walk around him, he reached out and grabbed her left wrist.

It took Emi a second to realize he had his hand on her. That was when an even more sickening feeling washed through her, worse than the normally dark cloud she felt at his presence. She slipped her right hand into her pocket and activated the voice recorder again. She would finally have solid proof she could show to the men.

Then they’d kick this creepy guy’s ass to the curb at the closest stop.

“Let me go, Kayehalau,” she ordered. “Get your hands off me.”

“No, Doctor,” he said, his voice still sounding calm and devoid of any hint of anything other than bland serenity. “I am regretful that I cannot do that.” His long fingers tightened around her wrist. “Not until I finish what I have started.”

“What are you talking about?” She forced herself to look up into his face. His complacency scared her more than anything. He’d planned something. He wasn’t anxious or worried.

He knew her men were busy on the bridge with the jump sequence, giving him at least twenty uninterrupted minutes.

Despite her struggles, he pulled her along with him, down the cargo hold’s main corridor toward aft, to a far corner near his cabin pod. “I have prepared, Doctor. Do not worry. This will not hurt. I assure you, you will not remember anything. It will not take long.”

She futilely fought against him. Despite his willowy appearance, he was strong as fuck and solid. “Let me go! What are you doing?”

“I must reproduce. It is my time. I only have seven days left in my cycle.”

Horror replaced her fear in an instant as his plan finally became clear to her. “You need an incubator!”

“Yes, Doctor. If I do not, I will die.” As they rounded another cargo stack, she saw he’d set up a makeshift medical area just outside his pod quarters.

Emi screamed, fought, kicked. His iron grip proved unbreakable, his tough flesh seemingly impervious to her blows.

“I apologize for giving you the drugs, Doctor. It was necessary. I have been surreptitiously administering you compounds I synthesized. Some, which bring on mildly psychotic illusions, so your men would think you are experiencing space sickness. And others that impair your memory and will facilitate what must happen, as well as make temporary changes to your reproductive anatomy to suit my purposes so I can make a DNA transfer. Once I harvest the eggs, I will reverse the effects of the memory and DNA compounds so you will not experience any permanent damage. The hallucinogenic drugs will wear off on their own. You will believe everything was delusions, simply brought on by space sickness and perhaps an ill effect of the jump engine.”

“Drugs?” It made perfect sense now. Triumphant, she said, “Well, you’re shit out of luck, asshole. I’m running a full blood work panel on myself as we speak. The computer will find whatever it is you used, and I’ll have my goddamned proof, so you might as well let me go now, asshole!”

He cocked his head. “Yes. I will make sure I destroy that evidence while I have you incapacitated during the jump initialization.”

“Two minutes until jump,” Caph called out.

Horrified, Emi tried to pull away, but he was far stronger than her and continued leading her toward the table he’d set up. Complete with restraints, she noticed with ever-growing horror. “I will not be your incubator! How dare you?”

“I do not wish to die, Doctor. Would you want to die? I have carefully planned. I promise you, you will remember nothing, including the harvesting once the eggs are viable. I apologize for this and wish there were a better way, but I could not secure someone before we left on our journey. I thought I would be back at Mars before now. The other ship’s breakdown, unfortunately, ended my plans.”

Emi needed to stall for time as she fought. “Why the fuck didn’t you just ask to go straight to Mars?”

He stopped and turned. “Because my sire, had he known I was about to reproduce, would have forced my return home. I am his only surviving offspring and he wants to ensure his line continues. I am not yet ready to relinquish my career.”

“Fuck you!” she lunged at him, clawing at his eyes and taking him by surprise, startling him enough he loosened his grip. She broke free and ran, twisting and turning through the piles of cargo. She wanted to get to a com link panel, but didn’t see one. Then she found herself in a dead end, except for the port leading into the small auxiliary lifepod against the hull wall.

Seeing her only chance, she dove through the lifepod port and slammed her palm against the hatch control button, immediately sealing herself in.

He caught up with her and peered into the pod through the view port. After examining the port, which could only be operated from inside the pod or from a switch on the pod’s external hull, inaccessible from inside the Bight, he spoke through the lifepod intercom. “You have to come out of there sometime, Doctor. I will simply tell your men you had another emotional episode, worse than the one you just had. I will tell them you tried to attack me. They will restrain you in sick bay for your own safety and I will still complete my purpose.”

She shook her head at him. “Fuck you! I am not letting you incubate anything in my body, you son of a bitch!”

“I assure you, the process will not harm—”

“It’s rape, asshole. Punishable by death, if you weren’t aware.”

“We do not reproduce like that. I have prepared an insemination syringe so you will experience minimal discomfort.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Emi studied the lifepod’s control panel. Then she stared at Kayehalau through the view port. His placid expression never changed, his dark eyes peering in at her.

“Fuck you!” she screamed.

“Doctor, please do not be unreasonable. Come out of there and let me do this. I promise, you will retain no memories of the experience and you will not be harmed. Afterward, I must administer the antidote drugs to reverse the process so you do not lose your memory and to return your body to its usual state. And I will die if I do not reproduce. You know this. You are a doctor. You are supposed to save lives. Please think about your oath to heal.”

“I hope you go straight to hell, you bastard. I knew from the moment I met you there was something bad about you. And I was right!” Although her vindication proved cold comfort to her right now in her current predicament. Emi fought a losing battle against her panic. If she gave in now, he’d win.

“Thirty seconds until jump,” Caph’s voice called out.

Kayehalau stared at her. “This was never my plan, Doctor. If I had made it to Mars as originally scheduled, I have an arranged human partner there whom I paid to take care of this. I must complete the transfer process, or in five of your days, I will die. I have far too much to offer science to allow my life to end in this way. And I will not allow my career to be ended by my sire.”

“Screw. You.”

“Surely you can see my point of view, Doctor. You are trapped in there. You have no place to which you can escape.”

No, he’s wrong about that.

Dead wrong.

She shifted position so her body blocked his view of the control panel. Reaching behind her, she felt around and flipped open the pod launch switch’s protective cover. Once the Bight’s jump started, it couldn’t be reversed. If she hit the switch too soon, they would be able to stop the sequence and find her. If she tried to eject after the jump, it might rip the pod apart. At the very least, if she and the pod survived the sudden deceleration, it would send her streaking in any direction away from the Bight with little hope of someone being able to find her.

It was a nine-day jump. That meant a minimum of eighteen days before the Bight could make it back.

Kayehalau would long be dead by then.

The lifepod had been equipped to keep four people alive for at least a week. With just her on board and carefully rationing supplies, it should be a cinch to stretch that time.

“Fifteen seconds.”

“Doctor, please, come out and be reasonable. You will lose your memory if I do not administer the antidote. You cannot stay in there forever.”

If only he showed emotion, any emotion.

None whatsoever.

“Fifteen seconds.”

“Go to hell, asshole. I’m not coming out.” Still working by feel, she slowly slid her hand over the switch.

“Ten.”

Then, the slightest arch to his brow as he studied her posture. The nearest main com link panel to talk to the bridge lay several meters away, past cargo stacks. He couldn’t make it in time to warn her men.

“Five…four…”

“Have a good death, asshole.” Emi reached up with her free hand and grabbed a handrail to brace herself. She waited until Caph’s voice counted two seconds before she hit the jettison switch.

Ah, emotion. What looked like shock and perhaps horror flashed across Kayehalau’s face as the explosive mounting bolts fired and the lifepod broke free from the Tamora Bight’s hull.

She threw herself across the pod to the view port. The Bight was there, from her perspective appearing to quickly fall away from the lifepod as the blast rockets carried it clear from the hull…

And then, after a brilliant orange flash of light, it wasn’t. The space where the Bight had been now appeared filled by a sea of inky black velvet, with distant stars dimly twinkling in the background.

Emi gasped, trying to suck air into her lungs before she sobbed as the full ramification of her actions slammed home.

I have no idea what the son of a bitch dosed me with. With trembling hands, she fished the voice recorder out of her pocket and played it back, sobbing again, this time in relief when she realized the full evidence of his treachery had been recorded.

She remembered what Kayehalau said about her memory. How long until it totally disintegrated? It explained why she felt small gaps, problems reaching for information she should know without thinking. It also explained why she felt so fuzzy-headed the past several days, and especially that morning.

Episodes especially worse after eating the breakfast he’d made for them that morning. And then the lunch.

She closed her eyes and tried to think. Whatever it was, it must only work on women, not men, because Aaron, Ford, and Caph weren’t affected.

Emi moved back to the control panel. The small auxiliary pod didn’t have a steering or thrust system, only the breakaway rockets to blast clear of the ship and a magnetic shield that helped bounce it off obstacles to prevent collisions and served as a minor gravity field for passengers in the pod.

She was adrift.

She closed her eyes and tried to recall the procedure for abandoning ship. She knew this.

She used to know it.

Dare I start the emergency beacon?

Her finger hovered over the button as she hesitated. Then she activated the scanners and found no local ships.

What if a raider finds me first? Aaron had said there were reports of them in this region. They wouldn’t dare mess with a vessel as large and well-armed as the Bight, but a small lifepod?

Reluctantly, she decided against the beacon. She couldn’t take the chance. Not yet.

Afraid the voice recorder’s batteries might die and not wanting to charge it up and waste the pod’s energy reserves, Emi moved the contents, including Kayehalau’s confession, into the pod’s databanks. She started to delete everything, then decided to leave Ford’s talk on the voice recorder.

If she didn’t play it, it would hold a charge for a long time.

She returned it to her pocket. Then she clicked the pod’s recorder and started a log. “First entry. This is Dr. Emilia Hypatia of the DSMC research vessel, Tamora Bight. I have included a record of a confession by Kayehalau, a temporary crew member assigned to the Tamora Bight against my wishes.” She choked back a sob when the thought came to mind that this might be the beginning of the last words she ever said to anyone.

“I escaped in the auxiliary lifepod two seconds before the Tamora Bight activated its jump engine. I had to, or Kayehalau would have used me as an incubator. An audio copy of his confession is on file in the databanks for the official record. The jump is supposed to take nine days, so I anticipate at least eighteen days before my ship returns to this area.

“Meanwhile, I do not know what will happen to my memory. I have no idea what drugs I was given, but he said I would lose my memory if the antidotes were not administered. And for the past several days, including this morning, I have noticed memory gaps. So I feel the need to say this all now, in case I can’t remember later. Or…”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Or in case I am not found alive. My shipmates aren’t just crew, they are my husbands. Official crew roster is Captain Aaron Lucio, First Officer Caphis Bates, and Mate Ford Caliban. I want them to know…”

Emi took another deep breath to steady her voice. “I want them to know, I love you, guys. It’s not your fault. He planned it all, down to the letter. He’d set it up to pull this off during the jump sequence while you guys were busy. He apparently gave me drugs for several days and tried to play me off you guys to make it look like I was sick. I don’t blame you. Please, don’t feel guilty about this. This isn’t your fault.”

She paused the log for a moment while she composed her thoughts and tried to get her emotions under control. “Aaron, please take care of the twins. Don’t let them get into trouble. I know that’s hard to do, but if anyone can do it, you can. Caph, they need you, big guy. Ford, you won’t let them run themselves into the ground.” She hit pause again, unable to continue as her tears hit. This was a very real possibility, that they might not find her in time…or at all. No telling how far the pod would travel from the jump point.

When she felt she could continue, she did. “And please tell Mom and Dad I love them. And Donna, Sophie, and their guys.” She choked back a sob. “You are my men, and I love you so much. Please stay together. Please don’t blame yourselves or each other. None of us knew what this guy was up to when he did this. I hope I get to listen to all this again with you, but if I don’t, never forget how much I love you and how wonderful our time together has been.”

She had to stop again. Her emotions took over, and she let herself cry for over an hour before she calmed down. Then she forced herself back into official mode to continue the entry.

“The lifepod is equipped to support four crew members for a week. If I conserve my resources and turn down the temperature, I can stretch that to at least two weeks, quite possibly longer. Food isn’t a problem. Water and air should last a month with the recyclers on board. My main concern is power and life support. I’m really far from the closest solar source, so recharging the pod’s systems might be an issue.” Emi took a deep breath. “End of log entry.”

She tweaked the systems to conserve energy. A cooler temperature was doable. She was used to it on the Bight anyway. Thank the gods she’d worn a warm sweatsuit and jacket instead of a crew uniform. Emergency blankets in the pod would help keep her warm, and the cooler temperature would slow her metabolism anyway. She adjusted the oxygen levels down a little as well, yet not enough to make her cyanotic and induce hypoxia. It made the air slightly thinner, but would stretch out her supply reserves and reduce the power usage by the scrubbers. And it wasn’t like she was doing heavy labor. She also tweaked the grav settings. With just her in the pod, she didn’t need them.

After locating the blankets, she stretched out on a bunk, strapped herself in to keep her and the blankets from free-floating, and stared out the small view port.

Nothing. Black, open space punctuated by distant stars.