Debtor

Alex had been pretty sure that that ‘life flashing before your eyes’ thing when you died was bunk. But, there it went. A stuttering slideshow of his life, snippets from childhood to just a few days ago flickered through his mind, the things that had made him who he was. It was interspersed with the weirdest feelings, something like comfort and gratification but decidedly foreign. At least, it felt positive.

Then all of it gave way to darkness.

There were many things about darkness that Alex didn't like. The big one was that the inability to tell where he was in relation to things set off intense claustrophobia and that lead to the inescapable feeling that he was about to be crushed by something. He had worked on this as he had grown, reducing an irrational fear to a mere dislike.

He now awoke to find himself in absolute darkness and a quick test of his body revealed that he was trapped, entirely immobile. The panic Alex had banished so long ago began to creep back in around the edges.

He steeled himself against it and started to work out how he had gotten here. The second Eohm fleet had jumped out and he couldn’t get to cover in time. The ship had shrugged off a few projectiles but the volume of fire had been overwhelming and... Alex recalled the crash cage coming up around him in the bridge, an array of injectors dumping chemicals and triage nanites into his body. That’s about where it stopped.

So, presumably, he was still ensconced safely in crash foam. He tried to wriggle his fingers and toes again, to no avail. There should have been just a little bit of movement, given him the barest of indication that his limbs were still there. There wasn’t. He was becoming aware of the fact he couldn’t feel his body at all.

Still, he kept his fear in check. His Amp was off, so he’d just restart it and it’d link to the ship’s communication system. Alex focused and gave it a mental nudge as he had done so many times before, then waited for the startup sound. The familiar guitar strum never came.

Now, panicking seemed like the thing to do. Alex gritted his teeth and tried to keep his breathing steady and found that it already was. His heart beat slowly in his ears. The only thing he could hear was the even pace of his own body.

It was so disconcerting it overtook the panic he felt about being trapped. This wasn’t right at all. Alex tried to stop breathing to listen better, but his lungs kept on going. He strained and could hear... a quiet hum that didn’t sound like anything he knew and maybe someone else breathing.

“Hello?” He timed it with an exhale, the word unexpectedly timid and a little bit slurred. The hum continued for a few seconds then stopped. A click-thunk followed and it started up again. Alex knew that sound, a medigel dispenser cartridge being changed.

No one answered. He waited for the exhale and tried again, in Tsla this time. “Kava? Lan Tshalen?”

Nothing happened for a moment. Then the Shipmaster heaved a sigh Alex had heard dozens of times before, as though she was being put upon by a moron. “Yes.”

“Where-” He caught himself and asked a much more pressing question. “You speak English?”

“I do.”

“Oh.” The effect was deeply disturbing. It definitely sounded like the Shipmaster, and she was definitely speaking English. No one had told him she could do that. For a moment, he wanted to continue to grill her on this topic, but refocused himself to more important issues. “What happened?”

“You suffered severe burns and other physical trauma, Pilot Sorenson, most of your motor functions are obscured by the sta-” She paused, apparently to correct herself. “mediboard.”

“That sounds bad.” The bits of information helped resolve the situation. If he was on the mediboard, it would try to keep him conscious so he could still be of use. “Am I blind?

“No.” She was silent for a moment and Alex could hear her breathing. “Your eyes, optic nerve and visual cortex are mostly unharmed.”

“But I can’t see.” He was sure he could feel himself blinking, though.

“I have shut off the light in this room.”

“Lights, ten percent.” Naturally, she had shut off the voice control as well. He hadn’t read anything indicating Tslao could see in total darkness. Their visual range shouldn’t be too different than a Human. How in the hell was she doing anything? “Could you turn them on?”

“No.” Her tone indicated that was the last thing she was going to say about it.

Consciously, Alex was starting to panic again. His body still did not care, even though he felt the old fears start to claw at the edge of his psyche. “Really, it won’t hurt anything.”

“I am indecent.”

He actually laughed out loud. Indecent? His mind shifted from fear to anger. She hadn’t even turned her encounter suit’s shielding off around him for the first month out in the black. Probably forgot her gloves. She was practically torturing him over a pair of gloves.

“Come on, just a little bit.” Alex may have sounded more desperate than he wanted to.

“No.” A bit of venom this time. The Shipmaster punctuated that with another fresh medigel canister.

The fear rushed back in, stronger than before. She was just going to let him lay here and go insane. He felt his heart rate rise for a moment before the mediboard brought it back into line. He had reached his last option: honesty. “Fear. I’m afraid of the dark.”

She didn’t say anything for an eternity, then sighed again. “Very well.”

The lights came up just a little.

He found that one of his eyes wasn’t working right - its unwavering gaze was fixed on the ceiling. The other one worked just fine, though, and after a moment of nausea he located the Shipmaster at the foot of the mediboard, gel gun in hand, a dozen empties floating in the air behind her. The locked eyes for a moment and he understood what she had meant by indecent.

Aside from the black metal lump of her personal AI clinging to her shoulders, she appeared to be naked. There was the blood, too. Even in the dim light it carried the bright red gleam of Human blood, as well as chunks of something stuck to her dark fur. She had said he had severe burns. That was his blood, bits of his body that had flaked off.

Alex’s good eye swiveled away and he immediately began to stammer out an apology.

“Stop. That is an embarrassment to us both.”

“Oh-kay.” His eye stayed focused on the far wall, vision doubled weirdly and threatening to make him sick again. This certainly was more awkward than he had expected it to be. Maybe a little small talk would help ease the situation. “What happened to your encounter suit?”

“It caught fire.”

Given how pissed she sounded, that had not been the right thing to ask about. “How is the damage to the ship?”

“Severe. The third projectile past the armor damaged the waverider drives, but it the damage is asymmetrical. One may be rebuilt from the two.” That was better. She sounded far less aggravated now.

“Shipmaster Tshalan, I must apologize for my behavior. It was uncalled for.”

She did not respond for a few long seconds. “Call me Carbon, Alex.”

That stunned him. More than anything else that had transpired for just about as long as he could remember, this was a surprise. “That... That’s an unusual name.”

“My parents enjoyed the way it sounded. My father traded mineral commodities, my mother was a teacher. I do not speak your language by accident.” She set the dispenser down into its holder, clicking it into place. “If we are to survive, formalities will not help us.”

With that, she turned and pushed off from the medi-board, gliding silently out of the sickbay. He couldn’t do anything but lay there and reflect on what had just transpired. Tslao did not address one another by first name in a formal situation. As far as he knew, it was usually reserved for family or trusted friends. Someone they would share a neural link with.

It wasn’t his life flashing before his eyes, it had been flashing before hers.