Valhalla Station by Chris Pourteau & David Bruns

Author:Chris Pourteau & David Bruns [Pourteau, Chris & Bruns, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hip Phoenix Publishing, LLC
Published: 2019-03-20T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Kwazi Jabari • Aboard the Pax Corporatum

Kwazi gazed out at the stars. He’d turned down the lights of the private observation lounge so he could see them better. Since he was the sole occupant of the lounge, no one had protested.

The stars seemed not to move, though his back-channel told him that wasn’t really true. Human eyes, and the brain that processed what they saw, were hardwired to see things close up, not far away. Faraway tigers aren’t a threat to the camp.

Standing here, feeling small and insignificant among the thousands of stars he could see with his naked eye, made him somehow feel real again. Significant, ironically. A substantial speck of dust dwarfed by the majesty of the universe.

Feeling inconsequential was, at least, feeling.

“This is your new mission,” Helena Telemachus had told him, “holding the Company together. Help us keep another Facility Twelve from happening.”

Try as he might, Kwazi couldn’t keep her out of his head. Helena was a constant, like the starlight outside the thick plastisteel of the ship’s viewport. Whenever he thought he’d found a moment away from missing Amy, from remembering her body on that cold, metal slab, from feeling like he would fold in on himself and disappear into the hole at the center of his being, Helena would take her place. Either in person or in thought, reminding Kwazi how important he was. What a hero he was. How vital he was to the Company.

That explained, he supposed, why Tony Taulke had dispatched them on his personal starship to the Jovian system. The Pax Corporatum, the largest civilian vessel in the solar system, the soaring symbol of Taulke’s power as CEO of SynCorp. When the Corporatum sailed to a planet, whether bearing Tony Taulke or not, the message was loud and clear.

SynCorp is watching. SynCorp is here.

“When we get to Callisto, I need you engaged, Kwazi,” Telemachus had said once they’d settled aboard. “The cancer of sabotage is metastasizing in the corporate body. I don’t mean to minimize your loss, but—”

“—sometimes ripping off the bandage is best,” Kwazi explained to the stars.

Reluctantly, he closed his eyes. Orange speckles, tiny suns, twinkled on the canvas of his eyelids. The starship’s engines massaged the soles of his feet through the deck. He pretended it was the harmony of the cosmos reaching to touch him through the hull of the ship. It was a mental exercise Milani had taught him. A way of centering himself by connecting to the world around him. A speck linked to the universe through the dark ether between the stars. Connection through nothingness.

Meaning from meaninglessness.

Opening his eyes, Kwazi stared at the middle star in Orion’s Belt, the brightest point of light he could see. He squinted, trying to focus harder to make it brighter. He concentrated on the slight tremor in the deck. He imagined more than felt it traveling through his bones to his fingertips. He imagined the softness of Amy’s fingertips touching his. One of the accidental connections that happens among miners working in close quarters.

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