Tethers Read online

  “Go on, what are you waiting for?” someone said behind her, and when she turned around, she saw it wasn’t Frank and Jerica behind her at all.

  It was Chris.

  He stood there, sparks spilling around him but not seeming to touch him. His arms were crossed at his chest in that old familiar way. He was wearing the red-and-blue plaid shirt he’d had on the day she had finally left him for good.

  His face was different, though. It was much younger and thinner than the day she’d left him. He looked like the young man she had fallen in love with; a man who had once treated her kindly, and whose hugs were so fierce and warm she remembered hoping he would never let her go.

  My God, she thought. Were you ever really this beautiful, Chris?

  “Take his hand.” Chris nodded toward Eric. He unfolded his arms and began to squeeze his hands into fists. She listened to the terrible, familiar sound of his knuckles as they went snap! crackle! and pop!

  And she knew what that sound meant. Oh, yeah. Real damn well.

  “Go on.” Chris’ face seemed to change right before her eyes. His skin moved like warm taffy, pulling down toward his chin, draping in plump tucks of fat at each corner of his mouth, and in a roll just under the edge of his jaw line.

  Kat shied away, bringing her hands up to her face instinctively. There was the face she remembered. The man who never seemed to smile. The man whose face could twist and contort and become evil.

  “Take his fucking hand. Maybe he’ll suck on your tits, huh? Would you like that?”

  Kat cringed. “Chris, don’t…please, no…”

  “I know. Maybe he’ll fuck you, Kat, and you’d like that, wouldn’t you? A nice, pretty young fella like him, huh?”

  She saw his fist come up, and she remembered the Easter Sunday when she had first started showing with Jerica. She’d lost two teeth to those hard, uncaring, cruel hands that day.

  And his face. She’d thought he looked like the devil.

  “No,” she pleaded, shrinking back, hunching her shoulders in toward her chest, feeling small and young again, wanting to disappear. “Oh, no, Chris…no, please…”

  In the dream, his fist swung around in a sharp, precise arc, hooking expertly for the side of her face. She supposed it had connected, but she didn’t remember feeling it.

  ***

  When she came to, she was in a small, dimly lit room, in a soft, comfortable bed, with cool, crisp, clean-smelling sheets draped about her shoulders.

  She looked around, momentarily bewildered and disoriented. She half-expected to find herself back in Illinois, in her old house, with Chris there, his terrible hands poised.

  The dream was still fresh enough in her mind to bother her, because she’d been immobilized with terror, frightened and helpless. It had been a long time since she’d felt that way. She’d worked very hard not to be that woman anymore, the victim, the one who had endured Chris’s beatings and abuse for so long. And yet, in that moment, in the dream, it had all been stripped from her. She’d been that woman again, the one she still hated. The one she’d vowed she’d never again be.

  Eric dozed next to her in a chair, with his head tilted back, resting against the wall behind him. His eyes were closed.

  You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Kat? A nice, pretty young fella like him?

  She studied the angle of Eric’s jaw line, the slope of his nose, and the arch of his cheek outlined in the dim light. She thought—and not for the first time in the five years or so that they’d been working together—what an extraordinarily handsome man he was. At twenty-seven, he was nearly eight full years her junior.

  I was learning to drive a car when you were in grade school, she thought fondly and somewhat forlornly, smiling as she watched Eric sleep. Jerica snoozed in his lap, her hand draped daintily against his chest, her lovely little features serene. She looked like she’d been made out of porcelain.

  Kat peeked beneath the covers and realized she was in her bra and panties. They weren’t nearly as soiled as her flight suit had been, but they still looked pretty bad. The idea that Eric must have undressed her, that his hands had caressed her body, drawing back the damp, dirty jumpsuit left her feeling warm inside, and somewhat embarrassed.

  God, what he must think, she thought, with an unhappy glance at her soft belly, breasts and hips, all rounded and full, presenting more folds at the moment than she would have preferred.

  Kat leaned over and gently poked Eric’s thigh. “Hey, sleepy heads.”

  He gave a start and woke up, blinking sleepily at her. “Kat, hey.”

  “Mommy!” Jerica cried. She hopped off of Eric’s lap and bounced onto the bed.

  “Hey, pup,” Kat said, as Jerica straddled her hips.

  “Are you going to be okay now?” Jerica bounced on Kat’s belly.

  “I think so.” Kat caught her daughter’s shoulders with a grimace, holding her still. “At least, if you stop jumping on my stomach, I will.”

  “How are you feeling?” Eric asked.

  “Kind of loopy.” She smiled goofily. “Must be from that stuff Frank gave me. Where’s he at?”

  “Checking out the commissary.” Eric reached out and gave her nose a playful pinch. “While you were sleeping, some of us were hard at work. We’ve activated the emergency beacon in the command center. Not much else there seems online yet, except the basic primary functions, like maintaining the perimeter field.”

  “Yeah, Doc was supposed to do all…” Kat began. Her voice trailed off; her smile faltered. Xian Tren, or “Doc” as he was affectionately dubbed, had been their engineering specialist. While the basic electronic and computer functions of the colony compound had been set up earlier, by her friend Trina’s crew, it had been Doc’s responsibility to see everything else up and running. But now Doc is gone, she remembered, and the horrible, leaden weight of her culpability came settling down on her once more.

  “Hey, there’s a shower in there,” Eric said brightly. She could tell from his expression that he worried about her, that he’d sensed her distress. He indicated a small, narrow door she’d mistaken at first glance for a closet. “And plenty of hot water, too.”

  “That sounds too good to be true.” Kat stretched her legs out and wiggled her feet.

  Eric stood. She noticed that he seemed to favor his right leg over his cyborg left one. She also noticed the nearly imperceptible way his brows furrowed, as if it hurt him.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. Come on, Jerica. Let’s go give Frank a hand.”

  Jerica leaned down, gave Kat a loud, smacking kiss and then climbed off the bed.

  “That little console by the door is a com system, so give a shout if you need something,” Eric said to Kat. “When you’re done in the shower, come down. Just to the left and around the corner. We’ll all have canned meat and rehydrated milk.”

  Jerica wrinkled her nose at Kat and poked her tongue out.

  “Can’t wait.” Kat reached out, took his hand and squeezed his fingers. “Thanks, Eric.”

  “No problem, Kat.” Eric looked down at Jerica. “You want a piggyback ride?”

  “I’m too big for piggyback rides,” Jerica said, rolling her eyes.

  “I didn’t want to give you one anyway.” Eric dropped a wink at Kat.

  “Yes, you did, too.”

  Kat watched Eric walk out of the room, the dark metal door sliding closed behind him with a hydraulic hiss. She hadn’t been able to detect a limp. I must be imagining things, she thought, crawling out of bed. That’s all.

  ***

  The shower felt good, impossibly good.

  Kat pressed her forehead against the smooth wall of the shower stall and let the steaming water pound against the back of her neck and shoulders.

  It had never felt so good, so important to be clean. Kat had scrubbed every inch of her body as hard as she could, scouring until her skin was violently red. She cupped her breasts in her hands, feeling their warm softness, their reassuring weigh
t. She closed her eyes and remembered.

  It’s always you on my mind, Kat, and one day we can be like this, together, I mean, for good, for always.

  Alex’s voice, echoing in her mind. Alex’s hands caressing her breasts, his fingers gentle and kneading, squeezing her nipples, exciting her.

  It’s not always going to be like this, Kat. I’m going to leave Cassie. But I can’t right now, not any time soon. These things take time, and there’s a lot to figure out in the meantime. But you know this is what I want. You’re what I want.

  “Oh, Alex,” she whispered. “Alex, I’m sorry.”

  She stayed in the shower for what seemed like hours, until she was certain her body had shriveled up into a raisin. Eric had left some towels out for her and she wrapped one around her body. She walked back into the bedroom, leaving small puddles in her wake.

  She leaned over the sink and looked at her face in the mirror. She’d been careful to keep the gauze pad over the wound dry, but it had gotten rather soggy none the less. She carefully pulled it off. Her eyes smarted as the tape peeled back from her skin.

  She studied the rough, jagged line that furrowed down from her hair line to just above her cheekbone. Frank had used fifteen stitches to close it. It still stung, and the skin around it was irritated and sore. She squinted experimentally, and it felt tight and stiff.

  Her entire body ached. Her neck and shoulders hurt the most, but Frank had said there was no back injury or whiplash. The safety harness of the shuttle had protected her from any serious injuries.

  In the light from above the sink, she could make out the lines in her face that betrayed her age, although she still felt she was a fair cry from being “old”. However, she didn’t like the creases around her eyes. “Laugh lines,” her mother had always called them. Kat didn’t think they were too funny, especially since she’d watched the same sort of lines cut deeper and deeper trenches across her mother’s face throughout the years.

  Sometimes she would look at Jerica, admiring the pretty, cornflower-blue eyes, the beautiful, glossy golden ringlets, and the delicate, refined features and wonder if her mother had ever looked at her that way, cherishing the small, innocent features that were so similar to her own, so untouched by time.

  “Jerica’s going to be a little heartbreaker,” Alex had told her once upon a time.

  Alex.

  She pushed all of her wet hair back from her face and twisted it into a rudimentary knot on top of her head.

  There were two grey jumpsuits folded neatly on her bed. Kat picked one up and smiled. “Thanks, Eric.”

  As she wriggled into the jumpsuit, she pretended not to notice the way her hips were not as slim as they once had been. Jerica had found Kat’s wedding picture once, maybe a year ago. She had studied it for a long time, her face pinched and serious.

  “Is this you?” she’d asked, pointing to the slim, pretty twenty-four-year-old girl in the photo.

  Jerica had glanced at the picture, and at Kat, and at the picture again.

  “What happened, Mommy? You were a lot skinnier here.”

  Thanks, pup. Again, she tried not to consider Eric undressing her, seeing her little more than naked. She’d seen him in a nearly identical state in the compound’s infirmary, and had admired the view. I doubt he could say the same. God, what he must think.

  Kat pressed her hands against her hips, smoothing the fabric back, watching the way it pulled across her belly and her upper thighs.

  The girl in the wedding picture seemed like someone from another time in more ways than just the physical; a person she’d once known, long-lost and nearly forgotten. That had been the girl Chris had beaten, the one too stupid and naïve to escape him.

  I don’t know her anymore. Kat shook her head, ridding herself of any residual dread left over from her dream, and trying to forget she’d never be able to wriggle into a pair of size seven slacks again. She’s gone forever, out of my life. Good fucking riddance.

  ***

  She could hear Jerica’s high voice coming from up ahead as she tried to find the kitchen. She poked her head into a doorway, and saw Eric and her daughter nosing through some sort of supply room.

  “…is this what it was like before?” Jerica asked him. They both had their backs to the door and didn’t see Kat. “The first time you crashed?”

  “No,” he replied.

  She sat on the floor and tried to pry open the lid of a metal box. “What was it like, then?”

  “I don’t really remember. I’d lost power in my ship, and all I know is it was very dark and very cold.”

  “Did it hurt?” Jerica looked up at him. “What happened to your leg.”

  “I don’t remember it hurting then,” he said. “I was in shock. You know what that means?”

  Jerica sighed, rolling her eyes, awarding him one of her patent-pending “I’m-not-stupid-you-know” looks. Eric laughed. “Right. What was I thinking?”

  Kat smiled softly, shying back in the doorway so they wouldn’t notice her. Eric seldom talked about the accident that had cost him his leg. She found herself touched that he would confide so freely and earnestly with her daughter.

  “It hurt later, though,” Jerica said. It was a statement, not a question and Eric nodded.

  “Yeah.”

  “Bad?” Her voice grew small, uncharacteristically timid.

  “Pretty bad, yeah.” He knelt next to Jerica and took the box gently out of her hands. “I got this.” He glanced toward the doorway and saw Kat. He blinked in momentary start and then smiled. “Well, hi.”

  Jerica looked over her shoulder and grinned. “Hey, Mommy!”

  “What’s going on?” Kat asked.

  “We’re looking for tools,” Jerica replied. “Eric needs small-point cybermechanical tools to work on his leg.”

  “I thought you said it was okay.” Kat frowned at him, thinking of how he’d looked pained as he’d risen to his feet in her room.

  “It is okay,” Eric told her and as he stood now, he did so with a straight face, not even a hint of a limp or wince. “I mean, I think one of the lift hinges in the knee might be a little crunched, but that’s no big thing.”

  She could have pressed him on it, but didn’t. He wouldn’t lie to me, she told herself. If there was something wrong, he’d say so. Maybe not to Frank or Jerica, but he would to me. And even if he was lying, Kat didn’t think she wanted to know. I’ve had to deal with too much already today. I can’t take anything else. Not now. Not after Alex.

  She forced a smile, dismissing any lingering concerns. “You guys help Frank in the commissary?”

  “I wanted to help Eric instead.” Jerica bristled.

  Kat smiled knowingly. Jerica was polite to Frank, but he was still new to her, a stranger, and she always seemed to regard him with a child’s dark mistrust of unfamiliar adults. Plus, she had always been particularly fond of Eric. Kat secretly suspected that Jerica had developed a crush on him.

  She would watch how Jerica carried herself around Eric, her spine straight, her gestures graceful and purposeful, like she was a small woman instead of a little nine-year-old girl. She was often amazed to hear this playful, coquettish woman’s laugh coming from the kid when she would talk to Eric.

  “Are you hungry, pup?” Kat asked her.

  “I’m not a pup,” Jerica said in that odd, womanly voice, snooping through the tool box. “Please don’t call me that.”

  “I’m kind of hungry.” Eric tousled her hair to draw her attention. “What do you say we see what Frank has found for supper? This can all wait.”

  “All right.” Jerica got to her feet and took Kat’s hand. “Come on, Mommy. The commissary is this way. I’ll show you.”

  She was just a little girl again. But Kat had a feeling she would see more and more of the busy little woman inside of Jerica in the next few years.

  ***

  “We need to check the compound’s electric HUM-V.” Kat sat on the floor, resting her spine against the side
of a couch, her arms crossed over her knees.

  “Already done,” Frank said. “It’s been charging since the Icarus crew left, apparently. I tried starting it up and it turned right over. All the fluid levels looked good.”

  Kat was surprised that he would have thought to do this, much less know how. He’s a doctor, for God’s sake, she thought, scolding herself. He’s not a moron. Of course he figured it out.

  “I think we should take it tomorrow and try to find the Daedalus’ black box,” she said. “Maybe then we can try to figure out what happened.”

  There was a long moment of silence.

  “Look, I know this is hard to talk about, but I think we need to.” Kat looked between Eric and Frank, her expression solemn. They had all been avoiding the topic of conversation since they’d reached the compound, but she knew they had to address it. Since no one else seemed inclined to broach the subject, and she was the senior officer in charge, she figured it was her responsibility. “Do you remember anything about what happened? Did you hear something like an explosion?”

  Frank shook his head. “Not that I can recall. But I had a CD in. I was working in the med lab and I like to listen to Vivaldi when I’m doing sample analysis.”

  “I didn’t hear anything either,” Eric said. “Just all at once, STELA went nuts, the alarm claxons screeching, the monitors saying there were fires all over the ship, and hull breaches on the cargo hold and three subdecks below it.”

  Hull breaches. That sure as hell sounded like the result of an explosion to Kat. But from the cargo hold? What did we have back there that was explosive?

  Leia had been the crew’s payload specialist, charged with keeping track of the Daedalus’ cargo. Kat had only perfunctorily surveyed the ship’s inventory sheets. She didn’t remember seeing anything volatile or explosive listed. And Leia would have told us if there had been. She would have made everyone aware of the danger.

  Eric ran his fingers through his hair. “I tried to reestablish orbit, initiate a posigrade burn and pull us out further, but the navigational systems wouldn’t respond. The electrical systems were all shorting out, sparking. I keep replaying it over and over again in my head, but I don’t remember anything being wrong before that—none of the readings, nothing.”