Chapter 16
“What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.” Albert Pine
Thirty minutes later, the energy creatures were still trying to breach the shuttle, and rather than lessening, the terrifying sound of their gnawing and scratching had grown louder. Aqila, who was slumped with exhaustion in one of the passenger seats, asked Lindstrom, “Do you think they can get in?”
“This shuttle is made of vanadinlum; if anything can withstand them, it can.” He had answered Lateef with a lot more faith than he possessed and then he turned his attention to Decker who was jumping down from her perch on one of the seats. She’d been taking another look out of the top hatch.
“Any change?” he asked.
“Nothing good,” was her only answer.
Lindstrom didn’t even bother asking what she meant but watched her move to the rear to check on the patients. All were out cold except for Kennedy, who had been sleeping fitfully. Her whispered conversation with the groggy man alarmed Nils.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Been better.”
She crouched down so they were face-to-face. “I want you to know something.” Con just looked at her and she continued, “You’re the best man and best friend I’ve ever known. I’m grateful for every day we had together.”
Kennedy took a moment then asked weakly, “Am I dying?”
“No way. I would never let that happen to you. You know that.” She clasped him on the arm and held his hand briefly, watching him fall back to sleep before moving to the front of shuttle.
Lindstrom observed her activity in puzzlement. She took one of the extra-long, heavy wrenches and stuck it in the straps that crisscrossed her back, used for holding a daypack. He wondered if the stress had gotten to her when she started stretching her legs as if preparing to go for a run. He went to talk to her. In an undertone, so as not to alarm Aqila, he asked, “What are you doing?”
When she looked at him, he noticed her jaw was firmly set. “I’m going out there.”
“Out there? Are you crazy?”
“No. There’s three of them now. They’re gonna make it through that hull before dawn – it looks to me like they’re gonna get through it within the hour. You know how badly it was damaged by the crash and their jaws are…formidable. We won’t stand a chance in this confined space. Especially the wounded.”
“If the storm stops, Lovelace can—”
“Commander, we both know that’s a very long shot.”
“So, what’s your plan? Fight three of them single-handedly with a wrench?”
“No, the wrench is insurance. I’m gonna run.”
“Run? That’s your plan?”
“If they act like most hunting animals, their instinct will be to give chase. From what Aqila told us, they’re not that fast. I just have to stay ahead of them.”
“For how long? All night? You can’t do that.”
“Our species, ours and his….” She nodded towards Kay. “…invented persistence hunting. One thing we’re both good at is running long distances for long times. We’ll run towards where dawn will be breaking. It’s our best chance for survival.”
“You don’t even know how many more might join the chase.”
“You’re right, I don’t, but we’re all out of options.” Decker shook her head at him. “Commander, you know it; this is the only way.”
“Then I’m going with you. We’ll stand a better chance togeth—”
“I appreciate that, sir, but I think you need to stay here in case more of them come. It seems to me that they’re following the blood trails here, so they might. Then—”
“I’ll get my chance,” he finished.
“Yes, sir.” He watched her gather herself for a second, and then she quickly unzipped her jacket. Decker removed the ever-present necklace and handed it to Lindstrom. “Do me a favor, give this to the captain. He’ll understand.” She smiled sadly and said, “Tell him I’m glad that we….” She paused and blinked, as her eyes were growing wet. “Tell him I’m glad we made up.” Lindstrom was too choked up to say anything. She turned to Kay and said, “Come on, Kayatennae, we’re going for a run.”
Suddenly Decker’s path was blocked by Aqila; she’d obviously been listening. “I’m not going to let you do this.”
“Aqila, please—”
Lateef nodded towards Kennedy. “He’ll never get over it if you—”
“Yes, he will. He’ll remember that he’s the one who trained me to be a soldier.” Aqila started crying. Decker put both hands on her shoulders, saying, “It’s all right. It really is….” With a shaky breath, she finished, “I always knew I was gonna die young. All the women in my family do.” She gave Aqila a quick hug and whispered, “Good-bye.”
Without further comment, she quietly opened the emergency hatch and hoisted Kay through it. The agile dog silently climbed out onto the shuttle roof. Decker followed him, pausing only to salute Lindstrom, saying, “Commander, it’s been a genuine honor.”
He could offer nothing more in return than, “The honor was mine.”
Decker disappeared through the hatch. They heard two muffled thumps that must have been the woman and dog jumping down on the opposite side of the shuttle. The last sound they heard from Decker was a whooping call off in the distance. The gnawing outside stopped. The creatures had given chase.
***
One hour and forty-nine minutes later, Lindstrom knew exactly because he’d done nothing but watch the chrono and listen intently for the sound of more creatures, the radio crackled to life. It was Leticia Evans, calling from Lovelace. “Shuttle L3, come in, this is the Lovelace. Shuttle L3, do you copy?”
Lindstrom leapt to answer. “Lovelace, this is shuttle L3. We copy. Is the ion storm over?”
It was Ricci who replied. “Negative. According to Scientific, it’s only a break in it, but we wanted to take the opportunity check in on you. How are you holding up?”
“Very badly. We’ve been attacked by an indigenous species. Grieveson and Modi are dead. Kennedy, Perham, and Abello are badly injured. We’ve sustained heavy damage to the shuttle - it’s inoperable. I need you to get medical personnel down here immediately if it’s at all feasible.”
“Hang on,” was all Matt said.
The next thing he heard was Rita asking, “What are the injuries? Let me talk to Decker.”
“She’s not here.”
“Where the hell is she?” Ricci barked.
“She’s out—” Lindstrom paused. “Captain, I’d really rather explain that part in person. Can we risk getting a shuttle down here?”
“Consider it done.”
“Ensure that the tactical personnel have non-energy weapons. We might need them.”
In a puzzled voice, Ricci said, “Copy that. Lovelace out.”
When the shuttle landed, even though it was strictly against protocol for the captain to join a mission where the first officer was already present, Lindstrom felt he shouldn’t have been surprised to see Ricci emerge. He was more relieved to see Rita, one of her nurses, and the three tactical specialists armed with some of the rare projectile weapons available onboard.
They all crowded into the crippled shuttle as the ion storm resumed outside, worse than ever. Rita and the nurse saw to the patients while Lindstrom filled the others in on the grim story; he could barely look at Ricci as he relayed the last part, about Decker. Nils handed him the necklace; as Matt’s hand closed around it, he thought he’d never before seen a more heartbroken man.
“You should have stopped her!”
“I tried.”
Aqila stepped in. “We both did. She just wouldn’t listen. She said—” Lateef couldn’t finish through her tears.
“What? She said what?”
“She said that she knew she would die young....” In a near whisper, she finished, “All the women in her family do.”
“Like hell they do.” Matt turned towards the closed hatch. “I’m going after her.”
Lindstrom blocked his path. “Captain, have you lost your mind? We have no idea where she is, which direction—”
“I’ve got to try!”
“I am not going to allow this.” He grabbed Ricci by the arm. “Stop and think about what you’re doing. I know what she means to you—”
“No, you don’t.”
“Of course, I do.” He looked him in the eye and said very deliberately, “I really do, Matt.”
Ricci’s head whipped around. He glared at Clemente. “I thought better of you, Doctor.” She was too busy to pay him any mind.
“What does Rita have to do with it? I figured it out myself.”
The two men were shouting by now and all aboard the shuttle clearly heard the next exchange.
“You figured it out?”
“Yes!”
“You figured out all on your own that Naiche is my daughter?”
“Yes! I figured out….” Suddenly Lindstrom comprehended what Ricci had just said. Aghast, he demanded, “What? She’s your…daughter!?”
Lateef was staring open-mouthed at the captain while Clemente left the nurse in charge of the patients and made her way over to them. She shook her head and said quietly, “Right now, I really don’t know which of you is the bigger idiot.”
***
Dawn was close by the time captain and first officer were able to sit calmly in the rear passenger seats of the L2 shuttle and talk quietly.
Lindstrom was still pondering the recent revelation. “She’s really your daughter?”
“Yes.”
“She doesn’t look anything like you.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“But the necklace…she wanted you to have her mother’s…oh, you knew her mother….”
With mounting irritation, Matt demanded, “Do you need a refresher course in human reproduction, Lindstrom?” When Nils just slumped back against his seat in response, Ricci asked, “If you didn’t know Naiche was my daughter, what did you mean when you said—”
“I’d really rather not discuss that, Captain.” His eyes were on the necklace Matt was still clutching. “You know, I do think she might have made it.”
“She didn’t think so.”
“Well, in the months I’ve known her, I’ve learned two things about that young woman.”
“What’s that?”
“The first is, they don’t come any tougher and the second is….” He paused and then finished with the trace of an encouraging smile, “She’s been wrong about a lot of things.”
Just then Ensign Bayer, who had been monitoring the scanner, abruptly announced, “The storm’s over!”
Ricci sprang into action. “Bayer, get this thing in the air. Scan for life signs – human.”
Lindstrom stayed behind with the L3 shuttle, awaiting rescue from the L1 shuttle, while Ricci, Bayer, and Clemente went out in search of Decker. For an hour, Matt’s eyes hadn’t strayed from the scanner, desperately willing it to chirp. Finally, as if in answer to his whispered, “Come on, come on, come on, Naiche,” it did.
“We’ve got it, Captain!” Bayer said. “It’s weak but it’s somewhere over there.”
They scanned the black rocky area, but Decker was nowhere to be seen. Upon exiting the shuttle, they heard it - from up above, the thin wail of a howling dog.
After climbing the rocky hill, they found Decker, passed out, and wedged into a narrow opening in the rock. Clemente went to work with her medical scanner. “She’s received some major lacerations and lost some blood but she’s not in critical condition.” She looked up at Ricci. “It looks like she’s suffering more from exhaustion and dehydration than anything else.”
Decker’s hand was still curled around the wrench; it was covered in sticky yellow fluid, obviously from one of the creatures she’d fought off. Kay had gashes on his face and torso and was limping badly.
“Okay, Bayer,” the captain said. “Let’s get these two back to Lovelace ASAP.”
***
Decker slowly edged into consciousness; she immediately recognized the pinging sounds of the monitors in Med-Bay. It wasn’t the first time she’d awoken in this condition, but it was as disorienting as ever. She heard Clemente say, “She’s coming around!”
By the time Deck felt up to opening her eyes, she found Clemente, Ricci, and Lindstrom all looking down at her. “What the hell happened?”
Clemente asked, “You don’t remember?”
“No.”
Lindstrom said, “Well, you’re a hero. Does that help?”
“Umm….” she searched her memory and the previous twelve hours came flooding back. She sprang up saying, “Oh God, Con, is he okay?”
“Yes, he’s in the next room. Now lay your ass back down,” Ricci growled.
She didn’t immediately obey, instead asking, “Kay! Is he—”
“Yes!” Clemente said. “Con’s going to be fine, Kay is fine—”
Ricci pushed her back down while interjecting, “And by some absolute fucking miracle you’re alive, too.”
Lindstrom looked over at the doctor. “You know, Rita, I think we should give Decker some private time with her father.”
Decker faced him, forcing out a weak laugh. “With my what?”
“Your father.”
“Where did you get a crazy idea like that?”
“From me,” Matt answered.
“Oh.”
“And by the way, your grandmother is still alive.”
“What?”
“And both of my sisters, too. Not that they’re that old….”
She thought for a second before asking, “I missed something didn’t I?”
“Yes,” Rita laughed. “Your dad will fill you in. Come on, Nils, let’s go.”
When they left, Decker looked up at Ricci and asked, “Am I in trouble?”
He nodded, answering, “Yes.” Matt leaned his forearms on the bed rail and smiled wearily at her. “Situation normal, in other words.”
***
Aqila beamed at Con, while scraping the bottom of the bowl of soup she’d been feeding him. “Looks like you ate it all, champ.”
“Yes, I can eat a bowl of soup. Yay, me.”
“Don’t make fun of your progress; you’re doing great, Doctor Clemente said.”
“Yes, maybe tomorrow I can eat it all by myself.” She offered him some water from the cup on the bedside table. As he sipped it he said, “You know, there are nurses, if there’s something else you have to be doing—”
“There’s nothing I’d rather be doing. Why? Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“Well…no man likes to appear weak in front of the woman he loves.”
“Weak! I watched you fight off those—” She stopped mid-sentence and said, “Wait a minute, did you just say…that you love me?”
He shot her a cocky grin. “Yes, I think I did.”
“Conroy Kennedy! What a way to tell me.”
He laid back down as he answered, “Thank you, I thought it was rather inspired.”
“You know if you weren’t already hurt….”
“Yes?”
“Never mind.” She leaned down and kissed him on the forehead, whispering, “I love you, too.” With one hand, Aqila gently stroked the side of his face. “I hope it didn’t take a near-death experience for you to figure this out.”
“No. Deck told me a while ago; I was just trying to figure out how to tell—”
“Wait - how does that work?! Deck told you, that you were in love with me?”
“Yeah, she knows me just that well.”
Lateef felt her exasperation slip easily away when she couldn’t help but laugh at Con’s response. She sat back down but slipped her hand through the bed rails so she could hold onto his arm. After musing for a few seconds, she asked, “You know Deck equally well, right?”
“Of course.”
“Meaning you know about her father?”
“The sperm donor?”
A few minutes later Decker, who was in Con’s room at least ten times a day, appeared in the doorway holding up a small cup. “Hey, you want my tapioca? I hate this glop.”
Aqila really wished she’d been able to take a holo of Deck’s face when, rather than answering the question, Con bellowed, “Ricci is YOUR FATHER?!”
Lateef got up and pointed at her chair. “Have a seat, Lieutenant. You’ve got some explaining to do.”
***
Naiche slid into the proffered seat and smiled guiltily at Con. “So…” she drawled. “How’re you feeling? You look a lot better.”
Kennedy pulled himself into a more upright position and shook his head at her. “I probably look about the same as I did when you were in here this morning – telling me everything but the one thing that mattered.”
“I’ve never told anyone the truth about me and him. And for the record, Ricci and I did have a run in my first year at The Rock so that wasn’t exactly a lie.”
“It wasn’t exactly the truth, either.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Deck admitted softly.
“Were you ever planning to tell me? I mean, now that everyone on this ship knows.”
“Of course, I was!”
“Then why the hell did I have to hear it from Aqila?”
Seeing that she’d hurt Con with her reticence was an arrow to the heart for Naiche, and she struggled to explain herself. “I wanted to tell you this morning, that was my plan, but….” She reached over and briefly grasped his hand. “But I didn’t know how to start. I didn’t know how to explain why I’d never told you before.” Deck shrugged. “How can I explain something I don’t really understand myself?”
“With anyone else, I might take that for bullshit but with you....” Con’s sigh was laced with mild exasperation.
“Yeah, I guess I’ve never been big on self-reflection.”
“Well, how ‘bout giving it a try? It’s gotta be less painful than fighting off three energy alligators by yourself.”
“I wasn’t alone; I had Kay. And it was only one of them. The other two dropped off about—”
“Stop trying to change the subject.”
“All right….” Decker nodded in recognition of Con’s perceptivity. She quieted her mind and made space for some long-buried truths to surface. “I guess I never told you – or anyone else – because…because I didn’t want to claim him.”
“You didn’t want to claim Ricci as your father?”
“Yeah. If he didn't wanta’ be my father, well then, I didn’t wanta’ be his daughter. When I was little, he didn’t want anything to do with me but when I got to the UDC he started acting as if he had some goddamn right to—” Deck paused to check the primal anger that still automatically arose in her regarding this subject. “Anyway…I never wanted to talk about…how fucked up things were between me and the man who…between me and him. Especially since everyone else in the UDC thought he was such a great guy. Even you.”
“Oh, Deck,” Con breathed. “That must’ve felt awful, knowing that. I’m sorry—”
“No,” she said, waving her hand in a gesture of negation. “Save your sympathy. Turns out, I was wrong about him. And I was wrong about…my grandfather. Ricci’s not some demon, shitsúyé wasn’t some saint—” She stopped abruptly, closing her eyes briefly and taking a deep breath. “I mean…he made a mistake. A well-intentioned one but…still, a mistake.” Deck exhaled in bitter amusement as she declared, “So, I was wrong. Once again, Naiche Decker is wrong about everything!”
“You’re not wrong about everything. You just have to stop trying to put people into little boxes marked: ‘demon, saint, good, bad’. No one is all bad or all good—”
“Like hell! You are. All good.”
“No, I’m not.” Con shook his head and said forcefully, “How can you even say that? After Cat. What I did to you – or didn’t do.…”
“That wasn’t your fault.” Deck wiped the side of her hand across her forehead and swallowed thickly. “I should never have asked you to help her out. That was my job—”
“Goddamn it! No, it wasn’t,” he insisted angrily.
“Look, I’m not going to fight with you about this.” She stopped and tilted her head back and to the side in an effort to keep the tears from falling. “You need to understand – the main thing that helped me get through…it, was knowing that I spared you from….” Naiche just shook her head, unable to do more than repeat, “Knowing that I spared you.”
Con’s eyes were wet now, too, and he seemed too choked up to speak. Finally, he said, “I really don’t know what I did to deserve a friend like you.”
Decker smiled through her tears and said, “I don’t know either - but it must’ve been pretty awful. Maybe you aren’t all good.” Glad to see Con manage a shaky laugh, Deck asked, “How the hell did we get on this subject anyway? We were supposed to be talking about me and Ricci.”
Kennedy offered up a fond smile and said, “Okay then, why don’t we do that? Tell me all about…you and him.”
“It’s kind of a long, convoluted story.”
“That’s fine. I got nothing to do but sit here and eat your tapioca pudding - and listen.”
Deck said, “Okay. I guess I should start at the beginning.” She let Con pick up the cup of pudding and start eating before she launched into her tale. “I was five years old when shimáá first told me about my father....”