Elizabeth Bear - Hammered

I’m ashamed I wasn’t brave enough to take Nell with me. I wasn’t brave enough to take my sister through Hell. If I had been, she might have made it, too.

Then Gabe’s hands are in my hair again and I’m not ready for the kisses. Like making out on the porch swing, long and slow as if we just started, as if I’m a young, young girl who needs to be seduced very gently and thoroughly. Lingering and wet and dreamy, like crickets chirping and nowhere to be for hours. But he’s naked and hard, almost where I so badly need him, and I swear a million years pass before I awaken, hammock cords cutting my skin and Gabe stirring against my back as the car begins decelerating and the feeling of gravity slowly, slowly returns.

Clarke Station spins, giving the illusion of gravity. We step out of the elevator’s expansive “car” onto the Woods Memorial Platform, a space that looks exactly as an airport terminal would if it had porthole-sized slivers of reinforced crystal instead of broad glass windows. Gabe angles me a sidelong smile; I can almost see canary feathers at the corner of his mouth. The patterns of his touch still tingle on my body. I find my own lips curving in a smile, still unfamiliar with the ease with which it spreads across my face. My right shirtsleeve is buttoned down over soreness I expect will bruise purple by morning, and I’ve never been happier with a minor ache in my life. Besides, I more or less did it to myself, and probably left a few bruises on him as well. And who would have thought blue-eyed Boy Scout Gabe Castaign would turn out to be such an inventively dirty old man?

Valens intercepts the look between us, but I’m not sure he picks up its significance. And with a sudden flare of rebellion I don’t give a damn if he does know. If he was listening at the door, for that matter. I offer him a broad wink with my prosthetic eye and turn back to surveying the landing platform.

“Are you all right, Casey?” Soft voice that even sounds concerned.

I think about all the things I could say. Gabe’s attention is on me, too, subtly, and I settle on a phrase they both will understand, in their very different ways. “Sir.” A long breath. “I got my shit squared away.”

A fair man of medium height strolls toward us, pushing a desk-worker’s paunch in front of him. Beside him is a petite and tidy woman in Canadian Air Force blues. Richard, who is that?

I hear his voice as if he whispers in my ear. “The man’s Charles Patrick Forster, Ph.D. He’s a xenobiologist associated with the Avatar project. He’s the guy who figured out the wetware that runs the ships.”

Xenobiologist? The VR linkages? A moment before that sinks in, and I’m sure it will bother me later. A lot. They’re alien in origin, too?

“Yes.” Fleeting impression of a smile. “The woman with him is Captain Jaime Wainwright, commanding the Montreal .”

My CO, then.

“Yes. Jenny.”

Richard.

“Once we’re on the Montreal, once you’re jacked in, I’m going to get the hell out of your head and give you back some privacy. Promise.”

Thanks.

“And thanks for the lift.”

Any time.

Captain Wainwright comes to a halt in front of me and extends her hand. I return the clasp as warmly as I can, managing not to wince when she closes her left hand on my bruised wrist, strong and warm. “Pleasure, Captain.”

“Likewise, Master Warrant Officer. I guess that makes this a joint army — air force venture?” Her hair’s black as jet, but I imagine she’s a few years older than I am. Beside me, Gabe holds out his hand with a cheerful smile, showing no sign of discomfort when I step on his toe.

“I’m only just back in the service, Captain.”

She grins and offers what would be the nicest compliment of any normal day. “By the shine on your shoes, Casey, I never would have guessed.”

When she turns away from him to greet Valens, and I’m done shaking the biologist’s hand, Gabe offers me a conspiratorial wink and touches the center of his upper lip with the tip of his tongue. Dirty, dirty old man. It’s a little difficult to walk normally as he takes my steel arm and steers me after the others, and I’m feeling like a very lucky girl indeed.

The biologist, Forster, falls into step on my other side. “I understand you’re one of the recipients of the nanite-maintained wetware our team developed. How do you like it?”

I look at him, and he’s earnest and shining, scrubbed cheeks freckled under close-cropped thinning hair. What do you say to a question like that? “It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, Doctor,” I tell him quietly. “My pain’s down 63 percent, my reflexes have actually improved, and I can sleep through the night without drugs for the first time in twenty years. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

His grin turns into a thoughtful pursing of the lips, and he actually seems to consider my question with care. “Yes,” he says at last. “It is.” He glances up at Gabe, who is seemingly oblivious to the conversation. Ahead, Valens chats with the captain. I’m not quite sure where we’re going.

“Care to hear a little confession, Master Warrant?” He’s been hanging around with army too long.

“Sure,” I say.

“I got into this line of work because I wanted to — well, I wanted to be in the front lines of whatever we found, out here. I figured the greatest thing I could manage in this lifetime would be what I’ve been doing for the past ten years — studying an alien life form”—my eyes widen, and it’s only Gabe’s grip on my arm that holds me upright—“the shiptree, as I’ve taken to calling it. Have you seen my papers on it?”

In my ear: “Get them!”

I’m on it, Richard.

“I’d love it if you mailed me copies.”

“Consider it done.”

It’s all I can do not to glance at Valens to see if he’s overheard, but I can still hear him talking. “I heard a but in that sentence, Charles. If I may call you that?”

“Charlie.”

“Jenny, then.” A moment of eye contact, and we’re on the same team, just like that. Don’t trust too quickly, Jenny. You can’t afford to trust at all. But I’m stuck with it, aren’t I? “Anyway. Where were you going?”

“But,” and he pauses, as if watching my reaction to see if what he is about to say will offend, or as if uncomfortable with the confidence he’s about to offer a total stranger. “Meeting you. Having you tell me that, about your pain. Seeing you striding down the corridor like you own it. Forgive me if this sounds mushy. But it makes my work feel worthwhile.”

And damned if he doesn’t mean it, too. I blink and glance down at the floor. “It’s appreciated, Charlie.”

He grins. “Remind me to tell you my scientific wild-ass guess about the salvage ships sometime.”

“What’s wrong with now?” I can about feel Richard bouncing on his toes in the back of my wetware. His fingers would be drumming the furniture if he had either to work with.

Charlie clears his throat. “Well, the way I see it, there’s no way they could have been left there accidentally — discarded, and not stripped or salvaged. So it stands to reason that they were a gift.”

“A… what?”

“Sure. Two damaged ships, set down carefully and preserved. They’re not built for atmosphere. Or gravity. You know what happens to a starship if you try to land it on a planet?”

“I can imagine.” Vividly.

“I theorize that they were left for us to find. The casualties removed, the bodies shown proper reverence — if the aliens, whatever they are, do that. They may be two races: we saw two totally different ship designs. Anyway, it stands to reason — as I said — that the salvage was left for us as a gift.”