The Olive Grove - "To Chase The Future"
19 Apr 2018Jemine Caesar
Jemine Caesar sat in the co-pilot’s chair of her boyfriend’s Asp Explorer, the Tudor Rose, and took a deep breath. It instantly proved to be a mistake, as a wave of dizziness made her eyes swim and her ears buzz. A murmur of discomfort escaped her lips.In the pilot’s station on the cockpit's upper deck, Sam Hodkin quickly ran through the final stages of his pre-flight checklist, then confirmed clearance for take-off with the Citi Gateway ATC. He turned his attention to the holo-image of Jemine on the ship’s comms, and an anxious look crossed his face.
“You feeling okay, my love?”
“Don’t ask,” the woman replied, her hands balling into fists. “I’m trying not to think about it. Just get us underway... please.”
Sam guided the ship out of the starport and aligned for the first jump. Jemine closed her eyes as the countdown reached zero, afraid that even the merest glimpse of witchspace might make her nauseous. She’d taken her meds prior to boarding, of course. It would be another two hours before she’d need the next dose, by which time they should have reached their destination.
“You look tired,” said Sam. “Try to get some sleep. You could go aft and use the passenger cabin, like I suggested.”
Jemine shook her head very slightly. “No, I’d rather sit up front. But maybe I’ll have a nap. Try not to get interdicted, will you? I’m not sure my stomach would stand up to all the pitching and rolling.”
She lowered her head and forced herself to relax, her mind drifting back through the past few weeks. Her health had deteriorated rapidly, the symptoms of her various illnesses now kept at bay by a bewildering array of coloured pills. None of the ailments were life-threatening, or even serious; any one of them on their own would have been easily cured in no time at all. But together they had made Jemine’s life a daily misery of inconvenience and discomfort. Sexual intercourse was out of the question; it hurt too much to be bearable.
The signs had been there for weeks – the headaches, the coughing, the pins-and-needles – but Jemine had blithely dismissed them as manifestations of stress. Then had come the dizziness, the nausea, the vomiting, the nosebleeds, the lucidly obsessive dreams, the fatigue, the skin pallor, the hair loss...
Losing her hair had upset Jemine more than anything else. At first it had been just a few more strands than usual in the hairbrush, but then it had become increasingly noticeable with each passing day; first the subtle widening in her parting, then the receding hairline, then an increasingly visible scalp through thinning hair. She became so self-conscious about it that she’d bought herself a wig to hide her rapidly increasing baldness.
The tipping point had been the bleeding from her vagina. She'd spotted the trickle of blood running down the inside of her thigh after getting out of the bathtub, and had hoped against hope that it was menstrual discharge. But one touch told her that it wasn’t. Nevertheless, it had spurred her to do what she knew she ought to have done much sooner, and that was to see a medic.
Sam had tactfully and sensitively refrained from any attempt at saying ‘I told you so’. His girlfriend’s many symptoms were now all-too apparent, and he was deeply concerned for her. He’d cancelled a well-paying tourist job to accompany Jemine to the Citi Gateway Medicentre, waiting hours for her as she underwent a battery of tests and questions.
“Well?” he’d asked as they left the facility. “What is it?”
Jemine had looked at Sam with tired, haunted eyes. Exhausted and trembling, she had taken his hand in both of hers.
“It’s... complicated,” she’d replied. “Umm... pernicious anaemia, hypoglycaemia, biliary cirrhosis, lymphangio-something-something, beriberi... they’re just the ones I can remember. There’s about a dozen others. I’ve got a full list on my dataslate. Some of them haven’t even officially existed for hundreds of years. I’m making medical history.”
Sam’s eyes widened. “But they can fix you, right? Those things you said, they’re curable. This is the thirty fourth century, for fuck’s sake. Progenitor cells, transplants—”
“Wouldn’t help. They’re giving me a whole host of meds to relieve the symptoms, but they can’t do anything about the root cause.”
“The root cause? I don’t...”
“The implant, Sam. The device that Stryker Aune injected into my womb.”
Ashen-faced, Sam rocked on his heels. “But... it was only supposed to make you infertile, not make you sick!”
“I know,” Jemine said. “You remember me telling you that any attempt to remove it would trigger a tamper mechanism? Well, it would seem that it’s malfunctioned. The implant is the cause of all my illnesses.”
“Then it has to come out! You have to get the fucking thing removed!”
“I can’t,” said Jemine, beginning to cry. “It’s created some sort of biochemical network... the doctors used a lot of long words to describe it... but basically the implant has spread organic tendrils throughout my body, reaching into every organ, including my brain. Cutting out the implant would mean severing the network, and the doctors don't know what effect that would have on me. They said it’s a marvel of medical technology, albeit barbaric. They aren’t prepared to touch it, in case they make my prognosis worse than it already is.”
“Worse than it already is? What does that mean? Jem...?”
“It means I’m not just sick. The cumulative effect of all the illnesses is beginning to affect my internal organs, gradually shutting them down. My immune system can’t cope. I’m dying, Sam. The medics think I have about six months left.”
*****
The intrepid bounty huntress raised her head and looked out the canopy of her shimmering pale-blue Fer-de-Lance. Smiling thinly, she narrowed her eyes at the black Python which lay directly ahead, drifting and helpless, its hull battered and torn by laser fire and cannon shells. There was an unmistakeable note of triumph in her voice as she hailed the stricken ship’s commander.
“I am the Ice Princess,” she said. “I’ve been looking forward to this day for a long time...”
Closing her hand around the flightstick, Jemine pressed the trigger and sent a volley of packhound missiles streaking towards her old adversary. Moments later there was a series of explosions, and the Python was no more.
Jemine laughed...
*****
“Jem?”
Jemine woke up coughing, momentarily disoriented. She looked down at her familiar green flightsuit. The one in her dream had been a shiny pale blue, like the Fer-de-Lance.
“Umm... I must have dropped off.”
“You’ve been dozing for about half an hour,” said Sam. “Talking in your sleep, too. Something about ice...”
The ‘Ice Princess’?
“Just a stupid dream,” Jemine replied, focussing her eyes on the view of normal space outside. There was a yellow star off to port, and Jemine heard the computer generated sound of the ship’s fuel scoop.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“We’ll be moving into the Pleiades next jump. Should arrive at the starport within the hour.”
Jemine nodded. The trip to the Pleiades was merely the first stage in a much longer journey. The first and, in most respects, the easiest. The next stage would be the hard part, and there was no guarantee of its success whatsoever.
“Thank you for bringing me out here, Sam.”
The ship vectored away from the star, its fuel scooping complete. The sudden force of acceleration pushing her back into her chair made Jemine feel dizzy, and she closed her eyes against it.
“I still don’t understand,” said Sam. “The reason why you feel the need to come here and find this fella is beyond me.”
“We’ve already been through this,” said Jemine, opening her eyes again. “I need the help of someone I can trust and who knows Pegasi. I trust you, of course, but..."
"But I don't know Pegasi," finished Sam. "Fair enough. Then if not me, what about Nathalie? You can trust her, and she's pretty familiar with Pegasi space."
"You know that I can't ask Nath. Pegasi is Kumo Crew territory, and she's been in enough trouble with them in the past as it is. They’ve left her alone in the bubble, but if she shows up in their own backyard, well... no, asking her to take me there is simply too much of a risk. There’s only one other person I know who ticks both the boxes—”
“And that person just happens to be a former lover.”
Jemine sighed. “Please, Sam, don’t go all jealous on me now. I told you, it was merely a giddy fling to celebrate a good day in a shitty place. Matt and I haven’t been in touch since. I don’t even have his contact details. If it hadn’t been for Kyla bumping into him at Blackmount Orbital, I wouldn’t have had a clue where to begin looking for him. Besides, he’s probably forgotten that I even exist. But Matt Lehman is my best chance of getting this blasted thing taken out of me. He’s my best chance of ensuring I have a future. A future with you.”
“But—“
“No buts, Sam. I love you, and I’m going to spend the rest of my life with you. And I want that life to last considerably longer than six months.”
“That’s what I want, too,” Sam replied, somewhat mollified. “And I’m... I’m not jealous.”
“I know. You don’t have a jealous bone in your body.”
Jemine closed her eyes again as she heard the ship’s AI begin the countdown for the next jump to witchspace, and tried to relax.
It had indeed been a huge stroke of good fortune that her friend Kyla Emmerich had met up with Matt. Kyla had flown into Citi Gateway in the middle of March, her ship badly damaged. She had immediately called upon Jemine for help, saying she was on the run from a bunch of thugs. After gratefully spending the next three weeks laying low at Jemine and Sam’s apartment, Kyla felt confident that the danger had passed enough for her to come out of hiding.
"I've signed up for a delivery job out to the Pleiades,” she’d told Jemine. “Not my usual schtick, and I really don't like aliens, but it pays alright."
Jemine's eyebrows had shot up in an exaggerated expression of surprise.
"A delivery job?” she’d asked. “To the Pleiades? I don't know which I'm more astonished at. The idea that the galaxy's greatest smuggler is taking on a lowly cargo run, or that she's even thinking about flying into Thargoid Central. What’s the cargo?”
"Medical supplies," Kyla answered. "Apparently they're running a bit low out there. Besides, if anything is going to get me, I'd rather it be aliens than those scumbags who were chasing after me. At least I'd die a hero, right? Kyla Emmerich, bravely facing the aliens in desperate times to deliver much needed medical supplies."
During her self-imposed confinement, Kyla had watched her friend’s health deteriorate at an alarming speed. Some days were worse than others, and Jemine had been compelled to reduce her hours at The Olive Grove so that she could get proper rest at home. Suki and Cee had willingly taken on much of the administration at the pleasure house, with Sam on hand to oversee things and reassure Jemine as required.
Kyla had listened in horror as Jemine described her violation at the hands of Stryker Aune, and of how the implant had begun to malfunction, leaving her with only months to live.
“The medics won’t touch it,” Jemine had told her. “They’ve given me meds to keep me comfortable, but it’s just a matter of time. They say my only chance is to find the people who created the implant, and ask them to remove it. Trouble is, I don’t know who they are. Or where, for that matter.”
“Pegasi would be my bet,” said Kyla, “since the implant was a punishment from Marra Morgan. I guess an appeal to her good nature would be a waste of time. But what about Apollonia? She might know who made the thing.”
“She might,” agreed Jemine. “Unfortunately I have no way of contacting her to find out. I tried sending her a private message on social media, but it was blocked for some reason. Morgan probably forced her to click the ignore button on me.”
“There must be an alternative, Jem Jem,” said Kyla. “There has to be.”
“Well,” Jemine replied, shrugging, “I suppose I could try offering up a prayer to Gaia. That’s bound to work...”
When the time had arrived for Kyla to embark on her delivery mission to the Pleiades, she’d promised to return with a gift for Jemine. The two women went together to the hangar where Kyla’s newly-repaired ship, Moonshot, was berthed.
“Looks like they did a good job on her,” said Kyla.
Jemine nodded in agreement. “I’d say they did an excellent job, considering the state she was in when you limped into Citi Gateway. From what you told me, it’s a wonder she didn’t fall apart as soon as the docking clamps engaged.”
Kyla chuckled. “I’m glad my girl held together. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost her.”
“There’s always an opening for you at The Olive Grove, honey,” said Jemine, with a playful smirk. “Give it a couple of years and you’ll have enough saved up to buy yourself a second hand Sidewinder.”
“If your goal is to get rid of clients, then I’ll start tomorrow!”
It was then that a sickening wave of vertigo had washed over Jemine, forcing her to curtail the farewell to her friend. After swallowing one of her many pills, Jemine mumbled a hasty goodbye and retreated to the comfort of a padded bench in the observation lounge. There she sat and watched Moonshot rise from the pad and slide out through the mailslot, and wondered how long it would be before she saw Kyla again.
The answer, as it turned out, was twelve days. On the fifteenth of April a k-cast had come through from Kyla to say she’d arrived back on Citi Gateway, having managed to both complete her delivery and stay out of trouble. Jemine responded with an invitation for coffee and a catch-up chat. Kyla wasted no time in describing her close encounter with a Thargoid ship.
“The thing pulled me right out of hyperspace," she said. "I honestly thought I was going to be bug food, but it kinda just shot this yellow beam at me and then buggered off."
"Maybe the Thargoids thought you were too skinny to get a good meal out of," Jemine quipped. She went on to describe her own fruitless attempt to see a flower ship for herself over a year before.
“Of course,” she said, “that was when the Thargoids still hadn't become violent towards us. They were more of a curiosity, just interdicting ships, scanning them and then leaving. I didn't see a single one."
"Do you think they're attacking because they're tired of being a tourist attraction?" asked Kyla with a small chuckle. "I mean, I'd get pretty shitty if people constantly came from all over the 'verse to check me out."
"I don’t think so,” Jemine said. “According to the experts on Galnet, the bugs are preparing for some sort of civil war between themselves. We humans are just in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"And I thought the bugs at home were scary. At least those can't fly space ships." Kyla sipped at her coffee thoughtfully. “So... no one came looking for me while I was gone?"
"No one at all," replied Jemine. "With a bit of luck, those thugs have decided to leave you alone. Unless they chased you into Indian country, and got themselves killed by Thargoids."
"Indian Country...” repeated Kyla. “Someone over on Blackmount used that term, but I didn't know what it meant."
"It just means any place where there might be trouble waiting,” explained Jemine. “An ancient Earth saying, I think. Fella I used to know said it to me once. A bounty hunter. Really sexy accent, although I’m afraid I can’t do it justice...”
She cleared her throat.
“'Better get your war paint on, darlin',' he said to me. 'We're headin' into Indian country, and the natives are restless.' He was right, too."
The reddening on Jemine’s throat did not go unnoticed by Kyla.
"Looks like this guy left a bit of an impression on you, eh?" she said.
Jemine's hand flew up to cover her throat.
"I...” she began, flustered. “He was... That is... Matt and I were just friends, Kyla. Nothing more."
"Matt, huh?" Kyla said, placing her coffee cup down. "The 'Indian Country' guy at Blackmount was called Matt. He said 'darlin'' a lot, too, come to think of it."
"Really?" said Jemine. She took a sip of her coffee. "A lot of fellas say ‘darlin'’. A lot of fellas are called Matt, as well. It's highly unlikely that it's the same fella. I mean, there are trillions of people in the bubble. It'd be an amazing coincidence if it was the same fella. Did he tell you his last name?"
"Uhhh," Kyla pauses as she tries to recall. " Lemmelly... Lerman... Lehman! That was it! Lehman."
Jemine stared at Kyla with wide eyes.
"Matt Lehman? Are you sure? What... What did he look like? What did he say to you?"
"Mid-thirties looking. Tall, dark hair, stubbly face, slightly chiseled jawline, I guess? Rather down in the dumps. He said that I seemed nice, which is obviously true; that 'Indian Country' is the one place he feels he can do any good, and that if there's anyone who needs no-questions-asked help getting into it that I should hit him up, or something like that. And then he left with a 'So long, just Kyla'. I told him my name was just Kyla, see," she added, by way of explanation.
Jemine frowned, deep in thought. Then a smile appeared on her face.
"You know what I said before, about amazing coincidences? Well, they do happen. Just when you least expect them. Just when you've given up hope..."
At that moment a beep from her dataslate alerted her to an incoming message. It was from her consultant at the medicentre, asking her to call in at her earliest convenience. Jemine had attended the medicentre just the day before to submit herself to another round of tests, including a second hysteroscopy.
After chatting a little more with Kyla, Jemine make her way through the bustle of Citi Gateway to the medicentre. As she waited for her name to be called, Jemine wearily wondered what further indignities awaited her this time.
“I have something to show you,” said her consultant, a sombre man of about one hundred and twenty. He activated a holoscreen, and Jemine found herself looking at a pinkish cloudy mass, at the centre of which was a silvery sphere.
“What am I looking at?” asked Jemine, frowning.
“Your uterus,” the consultant replied. “And that...” he pointed to the sphere, “is the culprit responsible for your declining health. We took a closer look at it, and found something you may be interested to see.”
The consultant magnified the image, filling the view with an extreme close-up of the implant. There, neatly etched into its metallic surface, was a name:
‘Glaboski IBH’.
Jemine blinked, and looked up at the consultant. “What does it mean?”
The consultant shrugged. “We’re not certain, but we think Glaboski may be the name of the person who created the implant. Quite a sadistic ego, too, to have their name microscopically engraved onto such a horrendous device. There’s no one called Glaboski on the central register of approved medical practitioners, unfortunately.”
“That’s hardly surprising,” said Jemine, a cold edge to her voice. “What about the letters, ‘IBH’? What do they stand for?”
“Again, we don’t know. They could refer to Glaboski’s organisation, or a product code, or maybe even the initials of Glaboski’s own name. It’s anyone’s guess, I’m afraid. I’m sorry we can’t be of any further help, Miss Caesar.”
“You’ve provided me with a name,” Jemine replied as she stood up to leave. “It’s a start, more than I had before. Now all I have to do is find this Glaboski person and persuade them to give me back my life.”
Jemine had spent the rest of the day brooding about how she could go about finding Glaboski. There was little doubt in her mind that she would have to travel to Pegasi in order to track him – or her – down, but she was frightened by the prospect. Pegasi was a region of space to which she’d vowed never to return, yet here she was, contemplating that very thing. But she was in no condition to pilot a ship there herself, even if she had one.
She needed help. Sam, of course, had instantly offered to take her in the Tudor Rose, but fate had just brought Matt Lehman back into Jemine’s life at precisely the right moment.
Matt Lehman, a man whom Jemine could trust implicitly, who knew the territory in Pegasi. He had been Jemine’s only friend when she had been tricked into working for Black Omega towards the end of 3302. It had been Matt who’d taught her some valuable lessons in how to be a bounty hunter. It had been Matt who’d saved Jemine’s life when a combat mission for Black Omega had almost gone fatally wrong. And it had been Matt with whom she had made love afterwards, to ‘celebrate a good day in a shitty place’, as she’d described it at the time.
When Black Omega had finally seen fit to release Jemine from her servitude, she had happily returned to the arms of Sam Hodkin. She’d eventually summoned up the courage to confess all to him, and had been amazed when he had forgiven her, even though he had clearly been hurt by the revelation. And so, after deleting Matt’s details from her contact list, Jemine had tried to forget all about Matthew Victor Lehman.
Now, sitting in the Tudor Rose, she recalled the words with which she had parted from him back in Pegasi: ‘Perhaps you’ll see me in your dreams.’ She couldn’t know whether or not he ever had, of course. But, Gaia knew, Jemine had certainly seen him in hers.
*****
The intrepid bounty huntress sauntered across the observation lounge towards the man admiring her pale blue Fer-de-Lance.
"Pretty ship, huh?" she said to the back of his head.
Matthew Victor Lehman whirled round. "Jemine?” he said, astonished. “Jemine Caesar?"
"Hello again, Matthew. Nice to see that you haven't forgotten me."
"I never forget a pretty... face. I notice you've got new hair."
"I notice you're still wearing the same jacket."
"N-no... it's a different jacket."
"Really?"
Matt rolled his eyes and spread his arms in defeat. "OK, it's the same jacket. But hey, I like this jacket. It holds a lot of sentimental value for me. So, what brings you to the Pleiades, darlin'? I reckon it's got to be business, 'cuz people sure don't come out here for pleasure."
“It is business, as a matter of fact,” she replied. “I’m a bounty hunter, Matthew. And a good one, too. They call me the Ice Princess. Sentimental claptrap, of course, but it serves a useful purpose. I even had Shit Happens painted light blue to go with the image."
"'Shit Happens'?" said Matt, raising a quizzical eyebrow.
“My ship,” Jemine replied. “The Fer-de-Lance you were admiring just now.”
Matt whistled. “I’m impressed. But why ‘Ice Princess’?”
Jemine pursed her lips. “It’s all down to my reputation as a cold hearted killer. I've found that it's best to have a sense of detachment in this line of work. Particularly when the mark is someone you love...“
Suddenly her shark knife appeared in her hand, its blade sharp and vicious. Without a moment’s hesitation, she plunged it deep into Matt's stomach, and laughed...
*****
Jemine awoke with a start, her breathing ragged from shock. In the confused moments of her waking, she realised that her right hand was firmly closed around the inactive flight-stick, thrusting it back and forth like—
Like a dagger.
"That was unexpected," said Jemine, a tremble in her voice.
"What was, my love?" came Sam's voice over the internal comms.
"Umm... nothing. Just another silly dream."
Blinking away the imagined memory of killing Matt Lehman, Jemine glanced up at the blue-white star outside.
"Are we nearly there yet?" she asked, instantly reminding herself of the times when her daughter, Bekka, had asked the same question.
"Very nearly," Sam replied, with a chuckle. "We dropped down into HIP 17692 just as you were waking up. I've set course for Blackmount Orbital. Won't be long now..."
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Author's Note:
A big thank you to Sam Hodkin and Simon Datura (aka Kyla Emmerich) for their contributions to this entry. Thanks also to Stryker Aune, for the character of Doctor Herbert Glaboski.
And my biggest thank you is to the amazing Matt Lehman. "To Chase The Future" is my little prelude to his brand new epic novel, entitled "Second Chances". The novel features characters both familiar and new, and will be serialised over the next few weeks, with chapters appearing on Tuesday and Friday evenings (UK time). The first instalment will be published here, tomorrow.
Don't miss it!