Imposition
Authors: Juniper Gray
Torquere Press
www.torquerepress.com
Copyright ©2011 by Juniper Gray
First published in www.torquerepress.com, 2011
4: CORRECT USAGE OF AFTERBURNERS
6: AN EXERCISE IN DIFFICULT TRUTHS
8: ADVERSITY STRENGTHENS THE FOUNDATIONS
Imposition
by Juniper Gray
His clothes clung to him in the sweltering heat, sticking and pulling at his weary flesh as his feet dragged through the sodden, dense undergrowth. The weight on his back was crippling him now, the burden becoming too much to bear—but still he pushed on, step after leaden step, breath ragged in his lungs and tears stinging his eyes from the desperation of it.
He was tired. So very tired. Tired, and aching, and exhausted to his bones; sick to his stomach with fear and guilt, but unable to just stop.
It should have been easy; should have been so simple just to let go, give in, to fall down and never get up again. But there was a small hope that kept pushing him on, a nagging thought at the back of his mind that it wasn't just his own life at stake here.
The weight on his back was a constant reminder of that.
Step, step, step, step.
Therse's feet kept the rhythm even as his mind wandered, carrying him along the seemingly unending corridor without him giving them a second thought.
Step, step, step, step. The sound of heavy boots on hardened acrylic, ringing out against the high, angled walls and chasing him as echoes or running on ahead. It was a long time since he'd last looked out of the windowed wall to the side of him. Even if he'd felt the inclination, there would have been nothing to see out in the cold, desolate vacuum.
The ship had an odd smell. Not quite “clean”—there was no scent of products—it was simply sterile, like an absence of life. He passed one of the ship's many cleaning drones, the dark shining oval hovering about half a meter above the ground and pointlessly making its slow, deliberate way across the floor. Its gentle hum sang to the beat of his footsteps until the little machine was too far away for the sound to reach him anymore.
It was a six-kilometer run around the ship at its widest point. Therse reckoned he was at about the six-kilometer point of his ten-kilometer run—a hundred meters farther every day—but he was already exhausted. Sweat ran from his brow and dripped off the end of his nose, tickled down his flushed cheeks and met his parted lips. Every muscle ached from the effort of vigorous movement; every sinew in his body straining to breaking point to keep up with his merciless, pounding rhythm. His lungs burned with each breath, knees and hips shuddering with each impact.
But more than anything, his feet hurt.
He stepped up his pace again, eager to prevent the memories of that time from ghosting back into his consciousness. They'd made an unwelcome reappearance in his dreams only that morning. Listening to the strain and ache of his body granted him a reprieve, and gave him opportunity not to dwell on certain other complications to his life. Here, there was nothing but the open, aseptic corridor and the vastness of space. For all intents and purposes he could have been the only being in the entire universe, enjoying an empty existence every bit as fruitless and pointless as the cleaning drone's.
Unfortunately, he was not so lucky.
"Therse, you bastard."
The sudden noise nearly knocked him on his arse, boots squeaking against the floor until he regained his rhythm. Every day for the two weeks they'd been aboard, he would get up and go for a run. Every day, he would take his communications equipment with him so that he could be contacted by his single crew-mate in case of an emergency. And every day, without fail, his crew-mate would call him on his ear-piece with nothing better in mind than to disturb his run, break his concentration, and annoy the hell out of him.
Well, not today. Therse had gone running without it, and as there was no way of interrupting him, he could finally get the peace and distance he was looking for. Or so he'd thought.
"I know you can hear me. Why did you run off without your kit? Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?"
Therse clenched his hands into fists as he ran, determined to ignore it. He never would have imagined the man would use the ship's intercom just to annoy him.
"The-er-sss...” the man's voice echoed round the corridor. “I know you're there somewhere...and you know I won't leave you in peace if you refuse to talk to me..."
Therse grit his teeth, knowing that to be true. He ran to the nearest wall-stowed comms point—a tiny screen embedded discreetly in the wall. It flickered to life as he shuddered to a stop, blue holographic menus swirling into relief over it. “
What?
” he asked it. The screen chirped pleasantly, the display chasing away when the connection was made and switching over to a blond man in a white shirt and fatigues leaning far too close to the screen. The man pulled back and came into focus, a boyish grin of victory spreading across his features.
He raised an eyebrow and peered at Therse through a mid-length mess of hair. “Oh, there you are! You look like shit; you should get a shower."
"
What
do you
want
, Gen?” Therse hissed, feeling the weariness begin to creep into his bones. Picking up from where he'd left off would be practically impossible now.
"I made you a coffee, it's getting cold,” the man said, holding a steaming cup up to the screen. The little cup was obscuring his face, but Therse knew exactly what expression he would be wearing. The kind of expression that made Therse want to ball his hand into a hard fist and thrust it square into the center of Gen's face.
"I fucking hate you,” Therse muttered and started off again, feet dragging from the effort. He was determined not to lose.
Behind him, Gen's laughter washed into the corridor. “You were the one who decided we should avoid cryosleep, remember?” came the shout. “You've only yourself to blame."
Just one of many life-decisions Therse wished he could revisit.
The door to his quarters hissed open; the pleasant sound of coming home that meant there would be no more running until tomorrow.
Therse walked across the room to the small bathroom on the other side, shedding his clothes as he went, dropping them here and there to be tidied up later when he wasn't so exhausted. His muscles ached fiercely, hot and tense beneath his cooling skin as he massaged his thighs and calves.
He longed for a shower. Or even a bath. A real bath, where you lay and soaked in it for hours and no one bothered you, not the dull, efficient sonic version where it was all over-with in five minutes.
He looked down at his feet. His poor, swollen, aching feet on the end of his tired, aching legs. He supposed it was his own fault, really. If he'd kept up the training regimen when they'd first been posted out to a pointless reconnaissance mission in the middle of nowhere, he wouldn't be in the state he was now. Six months of laziness and large ration portions out there had certainly caught up with him.
He settled for a shower in the end. A bath had seemed like altogether too much effort, especially after the ship had droned on at him about how bathing was so energy-inefficient and sapped the last of the fun out of the experience. There was also the possibility that, had he sat down, he never would have gotten up again.
His body was weary now, legs shuddering with each step towards the shower, feet groaning from heel to tip-toe. He felt even heavier knowing he'd have to do it all over again tomorrow, and then some, if he wanted to keep improving. He looked down at his naked body, poking his thighs and patting his stomach. The easy, laid-back existence at the un-inspiringly-named “Epsilon Outpost” had made him lazy, and the tone in his musculature was only just starting to return after two weeks’ solid training. He remembered how Genham had looked only the other day, lying shirtless on the sofa in one of the many communal areas, reading the news screen. Bastard barely had to do any work at all to keep his physique.
Which reminded Therse he hadn't read the news himself recently, and if the situation was changing in the region they were headed to, he needed to know. “Screen,” he said to the room, pushing his hair back from his face and rubbing his eyes clear of sweat. The bathroom mirror switched from a reflecting projection to a screen filled with floating menu options. “News. Multi-sector.” The screen presented him with selections of news summaries, live-streams, and various articles from across Inhabited Space. He scanned through the channels, searching for anything relevant.
"...UPA Congress ministers met with Conglomerate representatives today as new plans were unveiled for...quarantined after over a hundred thousand new confirmed cases of viral haemocytosis...agreed on repealing a law preventing corporate involvement in Navy activities...massacre of civilians in the rebel-held regions of the Carbera system...” Therse stopped channel-hopping. He'd found what he was looking for. Carbera was where he and Genham were headed.
The screen showed him footage of the aftermath, apparently sent in by the rebels themselves, judging by the obvious pride in the macabre camerawork. The camera dragged from one body to the next, lingering on the haunting, twisted faces of the dead. Particular attention was paid to a young girl, no older than ten. “...with estimates of civilian deaths now up into the millions. Navy forces are already arriving into the region amid hopes they can finally restabilize the system...” Therse had heard that a lot of Navy personnel were being transferred to Carbera from across the sector. Now he understood why.
There was time to think about that later. He'd seen enough. “Off.” The screen gave the appearance of dissolving, and he was left staring at his reflection again.
Steam filled the little shower cubicle behind him now, its containment inside fields and flexiglass giving it the appearance of a strange misty pillar standing on one side of the room. The en-suite bathroom was every bit as minimalist as the bedroom it was attached to—no attempt made to make the place seem homely in the slightest—and just like the rest of the ship, it had that odd feel of being un-lived in, almost like a doll's house, as though everything was only for display and was never meant to be used.
Therse approached the shower, and the transparent flexiglass door slid open without so much as a wisp of steam escaping. The ship was very particular about damp (to the point of obsession), so all the steam got vented through a small aperture it had installed in the ceiling after he had ‘insisted on his preference for water-based methods of hygiene'. He'd decided it could be as pissy as it wanted, he was having this one luxury.
Whether the glass opening was automatic or the ship's doing, he couldn't tell. The AI was definitely more sluggish than he was used to. Its functions and running capacity seemed rudimentary. Most ship AIs were at least a bit talkative, but the
Terminal Regret
had wanted nothing to do with either him or Genham from the minute they'd boarded.
From what he'd seen of its schematics (once he had persuaded it to share them) it had once been an Expedition-class Navy gunship, decommissioned and stripped of most of its weaponry save for a couple of useless turrets to fend off raiders if they ever got too close, then re-fitted to act as a sort of cruise-liner through the stars. It certainly adopted the leisurely speed of a cruise vessel, though with none of the scenery, luxury, or sparkling company to go with it. More like a low-specification military transport with all the fun removed, and in its place an unnerving disposition to keep things just-so.
The whole set-up felt a bit odd. It didn't make much sense to have such a massive cruiser serving a route that was rarely used. The ship had room enough to comfortably carry a thousand or more personnel, and yet it carried two. He and Genham were like dried peas rattling around inside a tin barrel.
They'd had the option of doing the voyage in cryosleep, but that would have meant a month's preparation for storage and a month's restoration after it on the other side. Back when they had learned of their reassignment, the ship had only been two weeks away, so they would have missed it the first time and had to wait another three months to catch it on the next cycle. He'd made the executive decision that they jump on it and do the whole thing out of stasis—something Genham was apparently keen not to let him forget, even though he'd agreed to it.