Scott Cleveland - Pale Boundaries

He had a point, there. “We’ll pay somebody to get him to a hospital,” she ventured.

“We’ll pay?”

“God damn it, I’ll pay, alright?”

“Suits me,” Grogan shrugged.

“We’ll split the cost,” Mackey said, turning to the other spacers. “Would you like to get left behind for the sake of a few hundred euros?” It wasn’t a fair question; involuntary grounding was a fate worse than death to a spacer.

“She already said she’d pay!” Grogan objected.

“Put a sock in it, you pitiless bastard.”

“And who the hell are we going to get to do it?” he pressed.

“That guy you paid to fix the sled the first time was willing to make a buck without asking too many questions,” Mackey replied with a tight smile. “Maybe you can have him rebuild the FLIR, while he’s at it.”

Grogan glared at him. “Go to hell!”

“But how do we get there?” Berriochoa asked, bringing the conversation back to the subject that concerned them the most.

“Leave that to me,” Grogan told him. “I can fly out of here with my eyes closed.”

“They must have been,” Mackey sniped. “Try to spare the trees, this time.”

“He’ll hit more than trees, if he doesn’t learn how to read a map,” said a gravely voice. The blanket-clad dirtsider emerged from the shadows in the anteroom leading to the bunks and leaned heavily against the threshold, pale and unsteady. He turned his head and hacked a wad of crimson phlegm into the corner.

“If it wasn’t for you we wouldn’t be in this fix,” Grogan growled, advancing on the man menacingly. “I should pitch your ass back outside!”

The dirtsider was in no condition to defend himself. O’Brien jumped to her feet, too far away to intercept her crewmate. “Leave him alone, Grogan!”

The dirtsider shifted his weight from the wall and extended a stiff arm to ward off the spacer. Grogan stopped abruptly and looked up at the ceiling with eyes wide, arms limp at his sides. “Easy with that, now,” he said in an unusually restrained tone.

It took the rest of them a moment to recognize what the dirtsider had pressed against the underside of Grogan’s chin. “He’s got a knife!” Mackey exclaimed. The spacers scrambled to their feet, snatching up whatever weapon or blunt object came to hand.

Perspiration beaded Grogan’s forehead. He held still, not daring to so much as swallow while the others circled uncertainly. “You threatened to cut my throat, I recall,” the dirtsider said. “Not much fun on the receiving end, is it?”

Mackey pulled out a pistol and pointed it at the pair. “Let him go!”

The dirtsider’s hard eyes turned to him. “You’re just as likely to hit him, the way your barrel’s wobbling. And if you do happen to hit me the last thing I’ll do is rip him open.” He pressed the blade a bit harder to make his point. Grogan rose up on his toes, whimpering.

“We’re not part of whatever you’re mixed up in,” O’Brien said. “We’re getting ready to pull out and there’s people looking for you. We’ll leave you for them if that’s what you want.”

“Who are they?”

“We don’t know,” O’Brien said.

“You’re poachers,” the dirtsider observed.

“We saved your life,” Mackey reminded him.

“Yeah, I guess this isn’t very grateful of me.” The knife left Grogan’s throat, but he did not offer to surrender it. “You did me a favor; I’ll return it.”

“How do you think you’ll do that?” Grogan glowered. He rubbed his neck instinctively to reassure himself he was well and whole.

“I can get you out of the mountains,” he said.

“We can do that ourselves!”

“I can get you out of the mountains alive,” he amended.

“Sure,” Grogan scoffed, “like we trust you to know what you’re doing!”

“The papers in his belt say he’s atmosphere rated,” Mackey confirmed.

“I want my property returned,” the dirtsider said.

“We’ll hang on to it for now,” O’Brien replied. “Are you sure you can get us out of here?”

“Not absolutely, no,” he shrugged. “But I’m so sure you won’t make it if he flies that I’ll go ahead and take my chances here.”

“That’s a plan I can live with,” Grogan sneered.

“Shut up,” O’Brien sighed. “Liz, go get the map.”

As anxious as the spacers were to find a way out of their predicament, watching the dirtsider hunched over a map of indecipherable squiggly lines could only hold their attention for so long. They drifted back to the heaters by ones and twos, leaving the responsibility of monitoring him to O’Brien. Monitoring in this case simply meant observing where he went and what he did, both of which were essentially irrelevant.

Her observations did, however, raise more and more questions about him—where he came from, for starters. They’d found him in a shredded emergency survival suit without even street clothes underneath. There were no roads or civilian flight paths for hundreds of kilometers in any direction, yet he clearly wasn’t part of the local militia or law enforcement. He appeared competent and familiar with the wilderness, yet ended up perched in a tree surrounded by vicious predators, slowly freezing to death.

Grogan maintained that he’d made no errors in deciphering the topographical map the dirtsider now studied. The explanation the dirtsider offered as proof that he had required an understanding of the concepts involved that none of the spacers possessed. Had it been luck that got him this far, or ability? The distinction was important, given that they were about to place their lives and freedom in his hands based more on Grogan’s known inadequacies than trust in him.

It was hard to trust anyone as guarded as he was.

He avoided small talk; he wouldn’t confirm his origin, though O’Brien told him flat out that she knew he wasn’t a local because his accent was wrong his physique could only come from a high-grav environment.

There was no doubt in her mind that he didn’t ordinarily need a knife to defend himself from someone like Grogan. The old scars on his arms and torso offered plenty of evidence that he’d successfully defended himself against someone or something far worse, though; again, he wouldn’t discuss it.

“How about a damned name, then?” she demanded in frustration. “You’ve got two to choose from!”

He looked back at her with an expression that gave nothing away. “I’ll answer to either.”

Was he a Joseph Pelletier, or a Terson Reilly? No way to tell by looking at him. “I had a boyfriend named Joe once,” she informed him. “He was an uncommunicative asshole, too.”

Oddly enough, the fact that he didn’t try to ingratiate himself with the spacers put O’Brien more at ease than if he’d been a gregarious extrovert. He had something to hide and wasn’t about to apologize for it; he knew the spacers had something to hide and didn’t care. The arrangement they’d entered into was all business; nothing personal, no hard feelings, hope we never see each other again.

He looked up from the map and motioned for her attention, then held a rag to his mouth as his body shook with another fit of coughing, staining it with more blood-flecked sputum. “How you feeling, ah, Joe?”

“Been better,” he replied. “Been worse.” The spacers had given him a shipsuit meant for a man several centimeters taller; one of Grogan’s as he was the only one with a girth to match. It bagged at the seat and ankles, but at least it protected him from the chill. “Does your sled have a GPS?”

“It does,” she told him, “but it fried when we took out the FLIR pod.”