Better off Dead: A Space Opera Adventure by Val Kane

Author:Val Kane [Kane, Val]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stardust Press
Published: 2024-03-09T00:00:00+00:00

11

Cargo

Kai opened her eyes to velvet darkness, head pounding, mouth dry, legs tangled in her sleepsack. The air was musty and smelled wrongly of dust and storage chemicals. Her bladder ached.

Kai reached to the nightstand to activate the lights and smacked against a hard plastic container.

Huh?

Walking her fingers to the lip, she reached inside, fingertips brushing the familiar crinkle of ration bar wrappers.

Not her quarters. Kai felt around herself, assessing the space. She lay on a corrugated deck. To her right, the rough skin of a pressure tent.

“Lights,” Kai said, her voice rasping. No response. Not unusual for the Rhapsody. Her heart was pounding again. They’d knocked her out and dragged her here.

Was this even the Rhapsody, or had they dragged her to the Pinter and abandoned her, like poor Obundinjo? Except worse, because at least Obundinjo hadn’t spent months alone in the dark.

Would Captain Lee be so cruel? Jace? Moso? No, that thing inside Moso?

Kai sat up, frantic now. She crawled along the floor, grasping, until her hands wrapped around something, a flashlight? She tapped the side, shook it, smacked the back until it glowed to life.

Alone, but not in the dark. A navy blue, pressurized tent rose in a bubble rose around her. She placed the flashlight, butt down, on the floor, stood, and surveyed her prison. Eight paces from end to end. The center rose ten centimeters over her head at the center. As she walked towards the perimeter, the tent rounded downwards to where it sealed to the deck.

Cargo hold, most likely. Since they were towing the Pinter, the Rhapsody’s cargo hold would be empty and unpressurized, making her little bubble as secure as any maximum-security asteroid jail.

Along with the box of ration bars sat a basic medkit, five four-liter jugs of water, a scrubber-toilet with a tube to filter the treated liquids to drink again. A handheld sonic cleaner, a second skinsuit, and a short, potted plant, dark green with thick, spongy leaves. A quick glance at the reader offered a list of instructions and directions for flipping the flashlight to shine UV to regulate her day-night cycle.

Kai considered her supplies. She could make it a month.

They’d even left her a reader and an entertainment cube, a mix of games and dramas. How generous.

Kai tapped her earbud. “You’ve locked me in the cargo hold,” she said.

Captain Lee’s voice sounded soft and sad in Kai’s ear. “I’m sorry, Kai. We’re holding you there, just to be safe.”

“Someone set me up,” Kai said. Moso had done it, but Kai needed evidence, evidence she couldn’t gather while jailed in the cargo hold.

“We ran your results four times. You had arsenic poisoning. Acute. The med-unit cleared out the worst of it while you were unconscious. Kendra believes the arsenic poisoning is a side effect of the creature’s... presence inside its host.”

“I’m not possessed,” Kai insisted. She was pacing now, like the captain, her aunt did when working through a problem.

“Kai, you are the only one who has interacted directly with this creature.

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