“Two minutes until jump,” Caph called out.
Horrified, Emi tried to pull away, but he was far stronger than her and continued leading her toward the table he’d set up. Complete with restraints, she noticed with ever-growing horror. “I will not be your incubator! How dare you?”
“I do not wish to die, Doctor. Would you want to die? I have carefully planned. I promise you, you will remember nothing, including the harvesting once the eggs are viable. I apologize for this and wish there were a better way, but I could not secure someone before we left on our journey. I thought I would be back at Mars before now. The other ship’s breakdown, unfortunately, ended my plans.”
Emi needed to stall for time as she fought. “Why the fuck didn’t you just ask to go straight to Mars?”
He stopped and turned. “Because my sire, had he known I was about to reproduce, would have forced my return home. I am his only surviving offspring and he wants to ensure his line continues. I am not yet ready to relinquish my career.”
“Fuck you!” she lunged at him, clawing at his eyes and taking him by surprise, startling him enough he loosened his grip. She broke free and ran, twisting and turning through the piles of cargo. She wanted to get to a com link panel, but didn’t see one. Then she found herself in a dead end, except for the port leading into the small auxiliary lifepod against the hull wall.
Seeing her only chance, she dove through the lifepod port and slammed her palm against the hatch control button, immediately sealing herself in.
He caught up with her and peered into the pod through the view port. After examining the port, which could only be operated from inside the pod or from a switch on the pod’s external hull, inaccessible from inside the Bight, he spoke through the lifepod intercom. “You have to come out of there sometime, Doctor. I will simply tell your men you had another emotional episode, worse than the one you just had. I will tell them you tried to attack me. They will restrain you in sick bay for your own safety and I will still complete my purpose.”
She shook her head at him. “Fuck you! I am not letting you incubate anything in my body, you son of a bitch!”
“I assure you, the process will not harm—”
“It’s rape, asshole. Punishable by death, if you weren’t aware.”
“We do not reproduce like that. I have prepared an insemination syringe so you will experience minimal discomfort.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Emi studied the lifepod’s control panel. Then she stared at Kayehalau through the view port. His placid expression never changed, his dark eyes peering in at her.
“Fuck you!” she screamed.
“Doctor, please do not be unreasonable. Come out of there and let me do this. I promise, you will retain no memories of the experience and you will not be harmed. Afterward, I must administer the antidote drugs to reverse the process so you do not lose your memory and to return your body to its usual state. And I will die if I do not reproduce. You know this. You are a doctor. You are supposed to save lives. Please think about your oath to heal.”
“I hope you go straight to hell, you bastard. I knew from the moment I met you there was something bad about you. And I was right!” Although her vindication proved cold comfort to her right now in her current predicament. Emi fought a losing battle against her panic. If she gave in now, he’d win.
“Thirty seconds until jump,” Caph’s voice called out.
Kayehalau stared at her. “This was never my plan, Doctor. If I had made it to Mars as originally scheduled, I have an arranged human partner there whom I paid to take care of this. I must complete the transfer process, or in five of your days, I will die. I have far too much to offer science to allow my life to end in this way. And I will not allow my career to be ended by my sire.”
“Screw. You.”
“Surely you can see my point of view, Doctor. You are trapped in there. You have no place to which you can escape.”
No, he’s wrong about that.
Dead wrong.
She shifted position so her body blocked his view of the control panel. Reaching behind her, she felt around and flipped open the pod launch switch’s protective cover. Once the Bight’s jump started, it couldn’t be reversed. If she hit the switch too soon, they would be able to stop the sequence and find her. If she tried to eject after the jump, it might rip the pod apart. At the very least, if she and the pod survived the sudden deceleration, it would send her streaking in any direction away from the Bight with little hope of someone being able to find her.
It was a nine-day jump. That meant a minimum of eighteen days before the Bight could make it back.
Kayehalau would long be dead by then.
The lifepod had been equipped to keep four people alive for at least a week. With just her on board and carefully rationing supplies, it should be a cinch to stretch that time.
“Fifteen seconds.”
“Doctor, please, come out and be reasonable. You will lose your memory if I do not administer the antidote. You cannot stay in there forever.”
If only he showed emotion, any emotion.
None whatsoever.
“Fifteen seconds.”
“Go to hell, asshole. I’m not coming out.” Still working by feel, she slowly slid her hand over the switch.
“Ten.”
Then, the slightest arch to his brow as he studied her posture. The nearest main com link panel to talk to the bridge lay several meters away, past cargo stacks. He couldn’t make it in time to warn her men.
“Five…four…”
“Have a good death, asshole.” Emi reached up with her free hand and grabbed a handrail to brace herself. She waited until Caph’s voice counted two seconds before she hit the jettison switch.
Ah, emotion. What looked like shock and perhaps horror flashed across Kayehalau’s face as the explosive mounting bolts fired and the lifepod broke free from the Tamora Bight’s hull.
She threw herself across the pod to the view port. The Bight was there, from her perspective appearing to quickly fall away from the lifepod as the blast rockets carried it clear from the hull…
And then, after a brilliant orange flash of light, it wasn’t. The space where the Bight had been now appeared filled by a sea of inky black velvet, with distant stars dimly twinkling in the background.
Emi gasped, trying to suck air into her lungs before she sobbed as the full ramification of her actions slammed home.
I have no idea what the son of a bitch dosed me with. With trembling hands, she fished the voice recorder out of her pocket and played it back, sobbing again, this time in relief when she realized the full evidence of his treachery had been recorded.
She remembered what Kayehalau said about her memory. How long until it totally disintegrated? It explained why she felt small gaps, problems reaching for information she should know without thinking. It also explained why she felt so fuzzy-headed the past several days, and especially that morning.
Episodes especially worse after eating the breakfast he’d made for them that morning. And then the lunch.
She closed her eyes and tried to think. Whatever it was, it must only work on women, not men, because Aaron, Ford, and Caph weren’t affected.
Emi moved back to the control panel. The small auxiliary pod didn’t have a steering or thrust system, only the breakaway rockets to blast clear of the ship and a magnetic shield that helped bounce it off obstacles to prevent collisions and served as a minor gravity field for passengers in the pod.
She was adrift.
She closed her eyes and tried to recall the procedure for abandoning ship. She knew this.