Miami Pete 9

Miami Pete 9:

I don't know how long I sat there with, well, not really Pete anymore, just his body. My rescuer was dead, and it was my fault because I couldn't save him.

"Quit being stupid, when in doubt MOVE!" I heard Pete's voice say, yelling at me from my memories. He was right of course, it was time to go.

I hated leaving Pete's body there, but it was supposedly a 'rus shrine.  What better place to lay to rest than in a shrine. Better than ending up at the recyclers on Deltos.  I would have taken him with me and buried him... where? "In Space"? Maybe Pete would have liked that, maybe not. In the short term, it didn't matter. I wasn't any more able to drag a dead Pete's body out to the transport than I was a live Pete, and despite bringing extra air bottles, air was getting short enough that it couldn't be helped.

I decided to leave the tent. I don't know why. The idea of leaving Pete's body there without any protection felt wrong. I dragged the rest back to the transport and just dropped it in the back. In the back of my mind, I noticed that not securing equipment was so unlike me, but I didn't have the energy to care. What would I do without Pete?  How would I go on? Speaking of "go", just where did I think I would go anyway?

"One step in front of the other" I told myself. "One bite of the elephant" I heard Pete from my memories. He never could explain that one to me. Elepahnt? The heavy freighter built by Trans Planetary shipyard? Why? How would anyone eat one of those? They are huge and made out of metal, and not even remotely digestible. I remembered him trying to explain that an elepahnt was a large ancient earth animal with a long nose, and laughing at my confusion when I asked what they tasted like only to be told that people didn't really eat them. I found myself smiling at the memory, with tears streaking my face. I don't think I'll ever really understand the elephant thing, but it was so nice to see Pete's smiling and laughing face.

The drive back to Hauley took almost seven hours. I drove mechanically, taking risks without even noticing. I couldn't bring myself to care. It's a wonder that I survived the trip. By the time I reached Hauley, the radiation sensor on my suit was angry, red, almost black, and the alarm sound was a solid buzz rather than just the tic tic tic that would normally be the warning that things were becomming unsafe. I was weak, sick, and close to just laying there and dying. I crawled into the airlock, cycled, then dragged myself to Hauley's little sick bay and into the autodoc. The last sound I heard was the fizz of a hypo.

I awoke, feeling groggy and out of sorts. I couldn't seem to open my eyes. My nose was attacked by the scent of the worst dead thing smell ever. It took me a while to fully come awake. In that in-between groggy state I wondered where that smell was coming from with growing unease. At one point, I was convinced that zombie Pete was standing over me, breathing on me, just waiting for me to open my eyes.

When I was finally able to move, I reached up and found my eyes crusted shut with gunk. It took me a few minutes to get them open and to my horror, I found out the smell was ME!

"How long have I been out?" I asked, realizing I was alone, so no answer was coming. Then I just knew the answer by accessing my built in chronometer. Had I been accessing it all this time without realizing it? My cronometer told me that I had been out a littl over a month. The very idea opened the floodgates on another bout of crying. I thought about trying to control it, but why bother, I was alone. I was a cyborg, and would never be human again.

Hey, at least it was washing some of the crud out of my eyes.

Eventually, in spite of myself I stopped crying.  I guess it is impossible to cry forever after all. I had to start moving. I was never one to sit still for long. Realizing that a little over a month had passed with me in the autodoc was a shock. A check of the autodoc's logs showed that it had kept me in a medical coma the whole time while it purged the radiation from my system and replaced various organs that had shut down. I will admit to a few seconds of horror at the idea of having engineered artificial replacement parts, but yea... apparently I'm a cyborg. The very idea still feels wrong and alien to me, but whats the point of crying about it?  An entire month had passed, Pete had been gone for over a month.  At least that explained the smell. An autodoc is a wonderful thing. If you manage to get a sick or injured person into one, they usually have a pretty good chance of surviving, but apparently it didn't bother cleaning up after itself.

First things first, I headed for the shower. I'm usually a "but first, coffee" kind of person, yet another habit I picked up from Pete, but even at my worst on Deltos I had never gone a whole month without bathing. The water felt incredible and I was surprised that it didn't sluff of of my body in the redish brown of the 'rus world.

Then came cleanup duty in Hauley's little sick bay.  It took scrubbing everything for what seemed like hours to get the smell out.

Hauley was still in good condition.  The radiation didn't get past the outer hull, or more to the point, the gravitonic shielding built into her hull, and the diagnostic board was once again all green lights. After a few days of cleaning and maintenance, I realized what I was doing.  I was waiting for Pete to come back...  but he never would. It was time to face it.

The hatch to Pete's office never seemed like a scary thing before. I had been in and out of that doorway for years, with never a second thought, but it seemed so stark and final without the man. Don't get me wrong, Pete was a morose, hard man most of the time, but there were times, like cashing in on a particularly lucrative haul or pulling off something that someone said was impossible, that Pete would laugh heartily.  Those times usually involved mass quantities of alcohol, but hey, with a man like Pete, you take the good times when you could get them. Most importantly, he was never a cruel man. The doorway to Pete's office... that felt cruel.

"Move!" Pete's voice demanded from my memories.  He never had much patience for frailty.

The hatch was closed, which I thought was odd because Pete always liked to leave it open.  However, the hatches all close automatically in preparation for an atmospheric landing, so perhaps not too odd.  My hand print on the sensor only produced a sharp beep.  Locked then.

"Well, Pete told me to go in there, and it's not like he's going to show up and unlock it for me."  I told myself.

Out came my multi-tool, and within a few minutes the locking mechanism was in pieces. Trusting locks is for the gullable, especially when you have someone like me around. Yet, it felt like a betrayal, like I was messing with Pete's stuff as soon as his back was turned, but I pushed that aside and cranked the hatch open with the manual crank.  I would have to put it all back together later.

Pete's office was exactly as I remembered, complete with whiskey bottle with only the dregs of perhaps one last shot in the bottom.  The safe where he told me to look for paperwork was built into the floor behind his desk.  I pulled the cover away and found the safe to be locked as usual.  I sighed, what was one more thing I would have to break into? It's not like I had anywhere else to be.

My eyes landed on the whiskey bottle. Pete was big on the whole "take a shot, make a toast" thing, and since I couldn't give him a proper send off, perhaps he  would approve of a toast.  I found a shot glass, and up-ended the bottle and poured. "To Pete" I said quietly.  The shot went down rough.  As I was coughing, I imagined Pete standing there patting my back like he did the last time we took a shot together... or more like the last time Pete browbeat-ed me into taking a shot.  I've never been good at drinking hard liquor, although I found myself wishing there was more than one shot left in the bottle. Then I noticed a label on the bottom of the whiskey bottle. "639826"  the tag insisted.  How like Pete.

The safe opened with a hiss of air.  It was one of the models that depressurize a little to help keep the contents sealed in.  Inside was a large envelope, and a rack of chips. The chip in front was a holo chip that was marked "kid", which is what Pete had always called me.

It struck me then that I didn't have a name. What an odd thing to realize about oneself. I sat there for long minutes trying to remember what my name was, and came up with a blank. Pete called me "kid", but that wasn't my name. Other people had names. Pete for one, and Old Joe, Pete's friend from Alsetti had a name. I'm sure the boss monk and the other monk had names. I chided myself for not finding out what they were, tracking the monks down and killing them for betraying us was going to be awful hard if I didn't know their names.

Killing them? Where did that idea come from?