Bypass Gemini (11 page)

“
Uh, hello. Are you the guy in-”

“
Gimme that auto-spanner.”

“
O...K?”

Lex sidled painfully into the room and found the appropriate tool, handing it over.

The mechanic silently accepted it and went back to work.

“
I recognize your voice. You were the one who was yelling at me when I was in the junk cloud. And you sent the bus. My name’s-”

“
In a minute. Gotta bleed this valve. Very important.”

“
What is that, a plasma manifold? You can’t bleed a valve on one when it’s running.”

“
Sure you can, you just need to time it right. See, watch.”

Lex took a cautious step back as his mystery host started loosening fittings. The hunk of machinery started to stutter and vibrate, prompting the downed pilot to strap his helmet back on.

“
See, you just twist here, three quarters of a turn. Wait for that to actuate, then loosen and-”

There was a short, sharp hiss. The room filled with a powerful scent of heat, ozone, and char, and the wall and ceiling received a spritzing of blood. Something pinged off of Lex’s helmet and bounced across the room.

“
Son of a- !” the mechanic barked in pain, clutching his left hand to his chest as he gingerly re-tightened a fitting with his right. “Forgot I changed the sequence.”

“
Oh God! Are you okay?”

“
Nope, nope. No, I lost some fingers,” he said quickly, holding up the afflicted hand.

It looked like he had tried to palm a grenade. There was blood seeping down his arm, and if there were any fingers left at all, Lex couldn’t tell them from the rest of the mangled mess that remained of his hand.

“
Give me a hand, would you?”

“
Yeah! Yeah sure, of course! Oh, God. What do I do!?” Lex replied, panicked.

“
I just told you. Give me a hand. They’re in that box over there.”

“
Wh-what?”

“
Never mind. Frickin’ useless. Just look around for the fingers then. I used to have five. See if you can find two or three. I saw one go that way,” he added, gesturing with the ruined nub, “And another over there.”

Lex threw down his packages and tore off his helmet. Amid protests from his ailing leg, he dropped to his hands and knees and started searching for the missing digits. He found a thumb under the edge of a cabinet, and two more fingers near the door. He took a few more frantic glances, found nothing, and decided speed was better than thoroughness. The mangled mechanic was on the opposite side of the room now, flipping open the top of a large plastic crate. Lex hurried over.

“
I couldn’t find the rest! What do I do with these, put them in ice or something?!”

“
Hmm? Oh, no. Just put them on that table there.”

There wasn’t any pain in the man’s voice or features anymore. In fact, he almost seemed bored, rolling up the tattered sleeve to grasp his forearm and, with a few clicks and twists... remove the whole arm at the shoulder. He pulled a bin on the floor out with his foot and dropped the ruined arm inside. There were at least two other similarly chewed up appendages already in there. Then, from the freshly opened crate, he pulled a new arm.

“
Hold that,” he said, thrusting it at Lex, “And follow me.”

Lex took the limb without thinking. Anger, disgust, confusion, and panic were all actively campaigning for time on his face. Confusion won. He stuttered and sputtered, trying to find the right words to adequately object to the situation, but his mind was not yet ready to be coherent. Meanwhile the mechanic rummaged through a drawer with his remaining arm until he found a pair of shears. He then cut the bloody sleeve off, revealing a complicated looking metal socket where his shoulder should be. Wordlessly, he took the arm from Lex, lined it up with the socket, and connected it.

“
There, that’s that done,” he said, life quickly returning to the limb, and the appropriate color beginning to fade into its pale flesh. He brushed himself off, swept the fingers from the table into his pocket, and proclaimed, “Who’s hungry?”

The pair had made it to the mess hall, just a few doors down, before Lex managed to kick his brain into gear.

“
What just happened?” he asked.

“
Well, I was trying to hot-bleed a custom plasma manifold valve on a Class A power module and I forgot I went with the 3-6-3 sequence instead of the 2-4-3,” he said, matter-of-factly, while grabbing a tray and pushing it along the counter.

“
And you blew your hand off.”

“
Well, I blew my fingers off, anyway. It happens all the time. Hence all of the spares.”

“
Spares. So it’s prosthetic.”

“
I prefer cybernetic.”

Lex nodded. After the crash, the strange bus, and the adventure in lost body parts, this cafeteria was the first halfway normal thing he’d had to deal with. Admittedly, the place was utterly deserted, but there was a counter with covered warming trays, and there were tables and chairs. That made sense. He took a tray, threw a plate and some silverware on it, and started pushing it along after his host. Now that he wasn’t coping with a life threatening situation or an acid trip, his brain was willing to spend some time processing things. It started with the mechanic. He was one of those men who was hard to pin to a certain age. From the looks of him, he could have been anywhere from a worn out thirty to a baby-faced sixty. His voice had a generic urban quality, sloppy and a little hollow. Build-wise he was a little pudgy, but irregularly so. He had a slight paunch that didn’t so much seem to be the result of overeating or laziness, but the kind of belly that accumulates like sediment over the years. He was maybe two inches shorter than Lex. His hair was salt and pepper black... but that’s where things started getting unusual. A swath of his hair along the right side of his head looked wrong. It wasn’t as fine as the rest, and was much shinier, like a doll’s hair. Most of his skin was blotchy and pitted with neglect, but there were patches here and there that were baby smooth. Strangest, though, were his eyes. The left one was hazel, but the other was silver. That’s not to say a fancy shade of gray. The whites were white, but the iris was actual, mirror finish chrome.

“
Are you a human being or... what?” Lex asked.

“
Karteroketraskin.”

“
Is that your...”

“
Name. It’s my name. It’s been a while since I’ve had to deal with the whole social interaction garbage, but I’m pretty sure you were supposed to ask me my name.”

“
Oh, right. I’m-”

“
Trevor Alexander. I know. You did the entry interview at the door. Good job pissing off the computer, by the way. I’m going to have to deal with that, now.”

“
Okay. Well that’s introductions out of the way. So... Are you a human or what?”

His host began to answer. As he did, he pulled the tops from steam trays and shoveled food directly onto his tray. He hadn’t bothered to get a plate.

“
Accurately answering that question is a non-trivial exercise in statistics, anatomy, physiology, and philosophy. As of my last medical scan, the standings are as follows: Thirty-nine percent original equipment, thirty-five percent aftermarket parts, and twenty-four percent synthetic organics.”

“…
That’s only ninety-eight percent.”

“
I’ve got some bits on back order. So, the majority of my body is not human, but the plurality of it is, and that’s good enough to win an election, so I’m going with human.”

The mechanic finished piling up his tray, which now had a few pounds of red beans and rice and three burritos on it. After grabbing an extra burrito and tossing it into the pocket of his coveralls for some reason, he reached into a tray of ice and pulled out a can of some sort of soft drink. After checking a series of the steam trays and discovering that burritos, beans, and rice were the only things available, Lex helped himself.

“
Where do we pay for this stuff?”

“
Just eat. This is the smallest amount I can get the automated system to pump out.”

“
Oh, okay. Thanks. So what do you do here, Ketraskin?”

He answered with his mouth full, spraying rice irregularly, “Build stuff. Fix stuff. Blow stuff up. Various permutations of those concepts. Why the hell did you call me Ketraskin?”

“
You don’t like people calling you by your last name?”

“
Last name’s fine. You’re calling me by the last half my first name.”

“
Your FIRST name is Karteroketraskin?”

“
Yup. My full name is Karteroketraskin Onaserioriendi Dee.”

“
That’s... a mouthful.”

“
People who can’t deal with it call me Karter.”

“
I’m gonna go with that.”

Karter grunted in reply.

“
You can call me Lex.”

“
Lex? Your name is Trevor Alexander, and you want to be called Lex?”

“
What’s wrong with that?”

“
Nicknames are the first half of your first name. Those are the rules. You can’t just use a random part of your last name.”

“
What? No, nicknames are whatever someone calls you. I had a roommate nicknamed Tex because he always wore a cowboy hat.”

“
Tex was in violation of established nickname protocol.”

“
Everyone’s entitled to their opinion,” Lex said with a shrug, digging into the surprisingly tasty food.

“
Pff,” Karter scoffed, sending a volley of beans and rice Lex’s way, “There’s people who are right, and people who are wrong. Guess which one you are.”

Lex looked at him flatly. “Anyone ever tell you you’re an asshole?”

“
It is a fairly common observation, yes,” he said without a trace of apology.

“
Look, it is pretty clear you don’t want me around. So if you can just point me to someplace that can patch up my leg and someone that can lend me a ship, I’ll be out of your hair.”

“
No.”

“
What request were you denying?”

“
All of them. You are standing in the only someplace on the whole damn planet, talking to the only someone on the whole damn planet, and you aren’t getting out of my hair any time soon.”

“
What are you talking about?”

“
This is my planet. I’m the only one here. You want or need something, you get it from me. And you and whoever that was shooting at you stirred up the moat. There’s no way anyone is getting in or out until the computer remaps the whole thing and plots when and where navigable gaps will occur.”

“
How long will that take?”

“
Meh, forty hours or so.”

“
Whoa... No. No, no. I’m on a deadline. I’ve got a delivery to make.”

“
You probably should have thought of that before you blew up your ship.”

“
Karter, I’m serious. I’ve never missed a delivery date. Ever. In my business, it is all about reputation. And this is a high paying gig.”

“
I cannot put into words how much I don’t care,” he said flatly, “Listen, I sent the bus to pick you up because if you died here, someone would come looking for you, and I’d have to deal with that. I’m as eager for you to get the hell off of my planet as you are, but if you’re going to be doing it, you’ll be doing it in a loaner ship from me, and there is no way I’m letting you take one of my ships through the moat until I know there’s a safe window. You want to get yourself killed, fine. But do it where I won’t be inconvenienced, and don’t do it in one of my ships.”

“…
Wow. Most people would be ashamed to show that degree of self interest.”

“
I don’t have a whole lot in common with most people.”

Lex fumed for a moment. He’d dealt with people like Karter before. They don’t want anything to do with other people’s problems. Usually, if you wanted something out of a person like that, you had to pay them, which he would probably afford to do... But screw that. This guy was a jerk. There was no way he was handing cash over to him now. Fortunately, self absorbed misanthropes were easy to manipulate. You just needed to make your problems into their problems, and they would spring into action.

“
Well let me ask you this. As a man who is familiar with serious injury,” Lex said, limping over to Karter’s side of the table, “What do you think about this one?”

He peeled off the tape and opened up the torn leg of his flight suit, revealing gash in his thigh. Karter eyed it critically.

“
Hmm. Yeah. That looks pretty bad.”

“
It does,” Lex agreed, slightly nauseated by the growing bruise and the depth of the cut.

“
Yeah. You’re gonna need new panty hose.”

“
Huh?”

“
I’ll bet your ovaries hurt, too.”

Lex narrowed his eyes and sneered.

“
Fine, I’m a woman. But if I get an infection and die, you’re going to have to deal with that, aren’t you?”

“
You aren’t going to die,” Karter said dismissively, “but if you’re going to get your panties all in a bunch, we’ll fix it up.”

“
Good. So there’s a doctor or some-”

“
Ma!” Karter yelled suddenly toward the ceiling.

Lex flinched at the sudden sound. “Your mother is here?”

“
What? No.”

“
Please state request,” echoed the computer’s voices over the cafeteria’s speakers.