Time Salvager (8 page)
James patted both arms where the dozen bands should have been. He was completely naked! How could this have happened? For the first time in years, James felt panic rise up his throat. Without them, he was just a regular human, one who could be shot or burned or … James stared at the latch on the container panel. He didn’t have his atmos. If he was in a zero-atmospheric environment, opening the hatch would kill him in seconds. A dozen scenarios ran through his head. He sat back down in the container. What was he doing here anyway?
He couldn’t remember.
As if on cue, the lever turned and the hatch opened with a loud hollow echo. He watched warily as someone bent down and looked at him with an amused expression on her face.
“Are you staying in there forever, pet?” Grace Priestly asked.
James tilted his head at her. Somehow, the fact that she was standing there giving him that patronizing smile didn’t bother him in the slightest. She looked good for a ninety-three-year-old woman. Especially for one who was dead. She offered him a hand and pulled him up with much more strength than her thin frame should have possessed. He looked around the familiar cavernous room. He was standing in Bay 6 of the
High Marker
, the cargo hold in which he had originally stowed.
What was he doing here?
“Are you coming, pet?” Grace stood at the door, looking impatient. Women like her did not expect to be kept waiting.
Dutifully, James followed, letting Grace drape herself on his arm, though her demeanor allowed no mistaking who belonged to whom. The hallways of the
High Marker
were the same brightly lit cold corridors that he remembered, but now the ship was peaceful. Quiet, eerily so. James looked behind him. The hallways were deserted. Even the humming sound of the Tech Isolationists’ famed Titan engine was missing.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“We’re where you want to be,” she said.
“I don’t want to be here.”
Grace looked amused. “You only think that.”
She led him to the control room of the ship, where the nothingness of space outside the heliosphere of the solar system awaited them on the display. Only a few specks of light pierced the black emptiness.
She turned to him. “We’re past the point of no return. What are you going to do about it?”
There was a pause as James glanced up at the screen and then back to her. “There’s nothing I can do.”
Grace smiled and repeated herself: “You only think that.”
She took his hand and led him to the exit. He stepped off the command deck and into the Amber Room. Inside, the young Nazi soldier was staring up at the intricate gold and amber carvings on the wall. The room itself looked different. Gone were the cakes of dust that had smothered the luster, as if someone had polished the entire room to a bright sheen. The walls practically glowed like the sun, giving the room a dream-like flare.
The soldier turned and smiled. Then he pointed toward the shiny wall, which was almost too bright to look at. “Beautiful, no? Now I see why you killed me to get it.”
“That’s not how it happened,” said James.
“Yes, yes.” The soldier laughed. “You had no choice. Your Time Laws and everything. More important than my life, ja?”
Upon closer inspection, James realized that the soldier wasn’t wearing his uniform, just a shirt and a pair of trousers from his era. He looked every bit a boy and not at all like a mass-murdering fascist. The boy pointed up at a small, intricate gold chandelier suspended from the ceiling.
“You missed that, did you know?” he said. “Forgot to take it with you. Is your rich patron, the one who probably put the Amber Room in his private display, going to mind?”
James shrugged. “Abyss if I care.”
The soldier fell in next to them as they left the room and continued down the hallway. “You save the pretty trinkets that you don’t care about, yet kill what weighs heavily on your mind. Mixed priorities, ja?”
“It’s just my job,” said James as they turned the corner toward where he had first entered the castle.
The soldier smirked. “I bet your rich patron is sleeping well tonight.”
They passed the three guards whom he had encountered at the castle. They were standing at the window looking out at the courtyard in the center of the castle, where a massive bonfire burned, blanketing their faces with an angry red glow. They turned to him in unison and waved.
“It’s all right,” one of them said. “We’re dead anyway. I hope that lets you sleep better at night.”
“Hey,” one of them remarked angrily. “I was supposed to live and have a son!”
“Yeah, but you all drowned,” the first said. “Dying here is much less painful than drowning. He did you a favor.”
“You only think that,” the one who was supposed to live said.
James and his two escorts stepped out of the castle and entered a dark hallway littered with refuse. A familiar foul stench wafted into James’s nostrils. It was the smell of human misery and death.
James’s mind froze in recognition; they were on Mnemosyne Station. Panic seized him and he tried to retreat into the castle, but the way back had disappeared, replaced by rusted gray and slimy walls sprouting large iron tubes running across the length of a hallway.
Grace laughed, ignoring that they were standing ankle-deep in liquid shit. “Oh pet, you can never go back to where we came from. You have to move forward, isn’t that right?”
“Another Time Law, ja? The present is all that’s important. Fuck the past!” said the soldier.
They continued on down the hallway and James relived those terrible days all over again. In the distance, he could hear the cruel chatter of the gangs, the screams of victims, and the constant banging and hissing of steam pipes. That loud hollow ring, like a cracked bell, echoed nonstop across the station, just as he remembered. James squeezed his eyes shut and tried to push those painful memories out of his head.
“You’re no longer the child you once were, pet,” Grace said, caressing his face. “Besides, don’t you want to see her?”
That “her” snapped James back to reality. It could mean only one person. He opened his eyes and saw a little girl with matted auburn hair and large round eyes. She was barefoot and in rags, with a dirty satchel in her hand. She stood at the end of the hallway and waved. Then she turned and ran.
“Sasha!” James screamed, taking off after her, past the cubbyhole they called home, through the makeshift air-hatch market, and down past the guard offices. No matter how hard he ran, Sasha stayed a step beyond his reach. He continued chasing her, his heart thundering in his chest as his body threatened to fail him.
Every time she turned the corner, he willed himself to go faster. His legs began to feel heavy, but he kept urging them on. Faster! Harder! His desperation increased. Somehow, he had lost her. Finally, exhausted, he collapsed onto the floor, sucking in large gulps of air and retching at the same time. The layers of grime mixed with stagnant pools of feces forced his stomach to tighten and twist harder than any time jump could.
James picked himself up and staggered forward, barely able to stay on his feet. He leaned against the slimy walls for support. Turning the corner he entered a crowded room filled with dozens, no, hundreds of people. They were all relaxed and chatting with each other. As he entered, all of them turned to him in unison and waved.
James’s blood froze. He had seen these people before. On his left were a group of pilgrims from 2235 that had suffocated when their life support system failed. In the center was the crew of the battleship
Judas
, destroyed during the Core Conflicts. Behind them were the Luna Base Delta scientists who had caught the asteroid virus 2C-F. The faces and times went on and on. Each of them was a past assignment, people he had left to die.
Then he saw Grace, bouncing Sasha on her knees, running her old wrinkled hands through his little sister’s tangled auburn hair. “Such pretty curls you have, dear,” Grace cooed into Sasha’s ear. She turned to James and smiled that patronizing Grace Priestly smile. “Nice of you to finally join us, pet. Why don’t you have a seat and catch your breath.”
James took a labored step forward, and then another. He was almost within reach of Sasha when the station cracked, tearing a line across the floor. He stared helplessly as the room drifted away. There was a massive explosion of air escaping into space, and the moisture in his mouth evaporated. He stretched out his arm in a futile attempt to reach his sister.
“Sasha!” he screamed silently in the vacuum of space. Yet he was the only one who couldn’t speak.
“Why are you leaving me?” Sasha cried, tears falling down her face.
“Oh dear,” Grace said. “Pet, are you killing us a second time? Oh yes, we’re already dead.”
“You only think that.” The Nazi soldier smiled.
* * *
“Sasha!” James screamed, bolting up from his bed. His head slammed the top of his sleep pod and he bounced back down on the mattress. Groaning, he flailed out of the opening and dropped two meters down onto the concrete floor. On instinct, he powered the exo and expanded his kinetic field, calling forth four coils ready to lash out. The dark room was bathed in yellow as the energy surrounding his body crackled. Crouched on the floor, James’s eyes darted left and right, his still-sleeping mind searching for signs of his long-dead sister.
“James, can you hear me?” Smitt’s voice echoed in his head.
James’s tightened face slowly relaxed as he realized where he was. He stood up and surveyed the room. “Smitt?”
“I’m outside your door. Your comm band’s been on all night. Must have been an abyss of a nightmare. When I felt your exo power up, I ran over. Listen, the first thing you have to do is power down and open the door.”
James glanced at his glowing wrists and the mist-like shield covering his body, then stood up hesitantly. The yellow light in the room faded, leaving him in total darkness. He unlocked the door, and without waiting for it to open, walked away and sat down at the table in the corner, where an almost empty bottle of whiskey begged to be polished off. He threw back the contents of the bottle as the door opened with a creak.
Smitt stuck his head in. “Hello?” He turned on the light, saw James with the bottle in his hand, and shook his head. “It’s five in the morning.” He came in and sat down opposite James. “For once, can you not drink when you’re not on assignment?”
James grunted, pulled a glass off the shelf, and offered it to him. Smitt shook his head but accepted it anyway. Then he put the glass to the side. James leaned against his chair and wiped his forehead. His shirt was soaked, and his skin burned and itched as if he had wandered onto the surface of Mercury without a rad band. He touched the bump growing on his scalp.
“That hurt.” He felt the burgeoning knot growing on his head. He wasn’t sure if he was dizzy from smashing his brain on the sleep pod or from his earlier binge.
Smitt looked concerned. “Maybe we should cut back your bar visits. Third time this month you’ve had an episode.”
James put the empty bottle on the floor and reached up to the shelf above him for a fresh bottle of whiskey. He popped the cap off and brought the bottle to his lips.
“No, I don’t think you should,” Smitt said, trying to take it away from him. A look from James stopped him. James took a swig and held the whiskey out toward Smitt, who shook his head again.
“Look, James, this is getting a little out of control. I’m saying this as your friend, not your handler.”
“You’re probably right.” James took another swig. “I don’t really care. I feel like I’m about to crack any minute, and this bottle here is the only thing keeping me together.” He smacked his lips. “What are they going to do? Fire me? Ground me from salvages?”
“You want to get out of ChronoCom eventually, don’t you?” Smitt said. “You’re doing well. At this rate, we buy our way out in four, five years tops. You really want to jeopardize that?”
James dropped his head. Four or five more years meant a hundred more salvages. How many more dead faces was he going to see? How many more would haunt his dreams? He grunted. Not like it mattered. The dead already numbered higher than he could count. What were a few more?
“You know I have an abyss’s chance of earning out, don’t you, Smitt?” he said in a low voice. “I won’t survive four or five more years.”
Smitt leaned forward. “Listen, I didn’t want to say anything while you were hitting the bottle, but we just got a choice job. It’s a big one, big enough to buy up several years of our contract. It also has an added bonus: a ticket to heaven.”
James raised an eyebrow.
Smitt nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, a golden ticket.”
“What is it?” James asked.
Smitt looked James up and down. “Briefing’s in a few hours, so stop fucking drinking and sober up.”
“I don’t have much more left in me,” said James. He stared at the liquid swishing in the bottle. “Any day now, I’m just going to fly…” He laid his palm down horizontally and slid it forward. “… straight into Jupiter’s fucking eye.”
Smitt shrugged. “I always had you pegged as one of those who just flew off into the heliopause to see what’s on the other side.” He shook his head. “Anyway, it won’t happen. It’s a golden ticket,” he repeated, “as long as you don’t screw it up.” He grabbed a towel from the rack and threw it onto James’s head. “Get your ass cleaned up.”
A painful hour later, James was trying to ignore his raging headache as Smitt and a well-dressed corp in a Europa-style suit went over the next salvage, code-named Sunken City. This job, a high priority Tier-1, had to be very important, because there was a surprising amount of detail to the briefing. James glanced at the half dozen other pale-faced corps sitting at the side, studying him. Few of his briefings included guests and subject experts, much less code names.
James found out just how large and important this jump was a few minutes into the briefing. Sunken City was the salvage for the infamous Nutris Platform disaster of 2097. The year itself, often referred to as the Cliffside of Humanity, was equally famous for being the final year of prosperity before the Great Decay began.
