Decoherence Cascade

CHAPTER 08

CHAPTER EIGHT: RATION BLOCKS

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The Sable Wind drifted.

On the cockpit canopy, the stars hung motionless—unfamiliar constellations in a void that didn't care whether they lived or died. The only sound was the low, steady hum of the life support systems and the occasional creak of the hull as it cooled from the jump.

Leo sat in the fold-down jump seat, the cloth Kaelen had given him pressed to his nose. The bleeding had stopped, but the headache remained—a dull, throbbing pressure behind his eyes, like his brain was too big for his skull.

ECHO said.

Leo nodded. He didn't trust himself to speak in any language.

Miri had wedged herself into the corner of the cockpit, her small body folded into a space that couldn't have been designed for anyone. Her ears swiveled constantly, tracking sounds Leo couldn't hear. Her fur had settled into a soft grey, but her eyes were still too wide.

"He can't talk?" she asked Kaelen, her words tumbling out in their usual rapid rhythm. "Is he sick? Did the jump hurt him? Is he going to die? He smells like blood. And something else. Something hot. Like a machine that's been running too long."

"He's not dying," Kaelen said. She was running a systems check, her hands moving across the controls with practiced efficiency. "His body needs to recover. He'll be fine."

"You said he pushed too hard. What did he push?"

Kaelen didn't answer. She finished the systems check, then stood. "Stay with him. I'm getting food."

Miri's ears perked. "Food? Real food? Not paste?"

Kaelen's expression flickered—something almost like sympathy. "Paste is real food."

"No it's not. Paste is paste. I've eaten paste for three cycles. The vermin in the vents taste better."

"Then you've never had good paste."

"Is there good paste?"

Kaelen didn't dignify that with an answer. She disappeared into the corridor, leaving Leo alone with Miri.

The Tivari child studied him with those enormous dark eyes. Her nose twitched. "You smell different up close. Not bad," she added quickly. "Just different. Like dirt. And salt water. And something I don't have a word for." She tilted her head. "Can you understand me?"

Leo nodded.

"Good. I don't have a translator, so if you couldn't understand Dominion Standard, this would be very awkward. I'd be talking to myself. I do that sometimes. The vents don't mind." She paused for breath. "Why is your nose bleeding?"

Leo pointed at his head, then made a vague gesture that he hoped conveyed too much happening in there.

"You hurt your head? Or your brain is tired?"

He nodded again, more emphatically.

"Can your species do that? Think so hard your nose bleeds?"

He shook his head. Then, after a moment's thought, he shrugged.

Miri's ears flicked with fascination. "You're very strange. I like you."

Kaelen returned carrying three ration blocks and a flask of water. The blocks were dense, beige rectangles, vacuum-sealed in translucent wrap. She tossed one to Miri, handed one to Leo, and kept the third for herself.

Leo stared at the block. It had the approximate dimensions of a granola bar and the visual appeal of a brick of dried clay.

ECHO supplied.

Leo peeled back the seal. The block had no smell. That seemed like a bad sign.

He bit down.

The texture was somewhere between stale bread and compacted sawdust. The taste—if it could be called a taste—was the ghost of nothing, a void where flavor should have been, with a faint afternote of minerals. It was the most aggressively neutral thing he'd ever put in his mouth.

Miri watched his face, her ears twitching. "You've never had paste before."

Leo shook his head, still chewing.

"Where are you from?"

He pointed vaguely upward, which could have meant anything.

Kaelen ate her block without comment, standing by the cockpit hatch. She'd done this a thousand times. The routine was etched into her posture—the mechanical efficiency of someone who'd learned to fuel her body the same way she fueled her ship.

"The paste tastes better if you heat it," she said, addressing Miri. "But heating wastes power."

"I know," Miri said. "I used to steal the warm ones from the dockside vendors. The ones they threw out because the seal was cracked. They'd leave them by the recycler." She took a small bite of her block, chewing with the same desperate speed as her speech. "This is better than the ones I stole. Those were moldy sometimes. I got sick twice. There was a Vossk who gave me a fungal brick once. That was the best thing I ever ate. It tasted like earth and salt. He didn't want anything for it. He just patted my head and said something in Harmonic Rumble that I couldn't understand. I think it was nice."

Kaelen was quiet for a moment. Then she reached into a cupboard and pulled out a small, sealed packet. She tossed it to Miri.

The Tivari caught it, her ears going flat with surprise. She turned the packet over in her small hands. "What is this?"

"Insect protein. Tivari need it, or you'll get lethargic. I picked it up three ports ago. Never had a reason to use it."

Miri stared at the packet for a long moment. Then she tore it open and ate the contents with a speed that made Leo's chest ache. She'd been surviving on vermin and stolen paste for three cycles. This was the first food anyone had ever given her that was meant for her.

ECHO observed.

Leo couldn't respond, but he filed the information away. Miri was part of the crew now. That meant she got fed. End of discussion.

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After the rations, Kaelen sent Miri to explore the ship—"Learn the layout. If something breaks, I need you to know where it is"—and sat down in the pilot's chair. Leo remained in the jump seat, the empty ration wrapper crumpled in his lap, the headache slowly receding.

"The dead world," Kaelen said, not looking at him. "Seren's coordinates."

Leo waited.

"I said no because I don't trust her. But the coordinates are real. She wouldn't bluff about something that valuable. And if the orbit is decaying, we don't have time to find another way in."

ECHO said.

Leo wanted to point out the obvious—that Seren had probably just sold them out to the Dominion—but the words wouldn't come. The Dominion Standard was still a wall in his head, solid and unclimbable.

Kaelen seemed to read his expression anyway. "I know what she did. I'm not forgiving it. But my parents' research is on that world. I've been chasing it for twenty cycles. If there's a chance—any chance—I'm not letting it go."

She turned to face him. "You don't get a vote. You're here because you crashed into my wreck. But if you want off, I'll drop you at the next neutral port. You can find your own way."

Leo shook his head. He didn't have a way. He had three thousand light-years of nothing between him and Earth, a Dominion manhunt on his signature, and an AI fused to his brain. There was no off.

He looked around for something to write with. Kaelen, watching him, pulled a grease pencil from a compartment and handed it over. Leo flipped over the ration wrapper and wrote on the blank side, in English: I'm not leaving.

Kaelen stared at the script—alien to her, just meaningless marks. "What does that say?"

Leo tapped his chest, then shook his head, then pointed at the ship.

"You're staying."

He nodded.

Kaelen held his gaze for a moment longer, then turned back to the controls. "Then rest. Whatever happened to you on the station—the nosebleed, the silence—I've seen similar things in species with neural augments. It usually gets worse before it gets better. Don't push harder than you have to."

ECHO said.

Leo leaned back in the jump seat, the empty ration wrapper still in his hand. His head was clearing. The words were still out of reach, but the pressure was fading. In a few hours, he'd be able to speak again. For now, silence was enough.

Miri's voice echoed from somewhere aft, a rapid stream of questions about a conduit she'd found. Kaelen closed her eyes for just a moment, then rose to answer them.

Leo stayed where he was, watching the stars, and let the ship carry him forward.