Finity's End - a Union-Alliance Novel (32 page)

The laundry was still quiet, so quiet it was down to cards, Jeremy teaching him the trick shuffle and Fletcher about to concede that small fingers had their advantage. Linda was watching—"Never got it myself," Linda said—when Vince drifted in, and one of the seniors came with him.

"Thought you were going to clean my cabin,"
Chad
said.

"Yeah, well," Fletcher said, and decided he wasn't going to learn the shuffle in another round and he might as well do what he'd gotten himself into. He got up, gave Jeremy his cards back and
Chad
gave him the cabin number, A39, a fair distance around the rim.

"You do a good job,"
Chad
admonished him.

"Yeah," he said, and left, telling himself he wasn't playing cards with
Chad
again until there was revenge involved. He stopped by his own cabin and picked up cleaning cloths, in the case
Chad
's place wasn't supplied, and told himself
Chad
had probably trashed the place just to make his life difficult

A39. He opened the unlatched door. Stared in shock at
Chad
, among a gathering of cousins packed into the room. "Sorry," he said, thinking at first blink he might have interrupted some private gathering.

"No, come on in," one said. He didn't recall the name. The family resemblance was close and common among all of them. He thought, well, maybe they were being friendly, walked the rest of the way in, had just the least second's inkling of something wrong in their expectant expressions, and was standing there with the cleaning supplies in his hands when the cousin at the end of the bed bounced up between him and the door and pushed the shut button. The door closed. Still, joke, he thought.

The lights went out.

He ducked. He'd been in ambushes before. He knew one when it came down around him, and he dropped the cleaning packets and tried to get at the door button by blind accuracy in the dark. They were just as canny, and grabbed him as he was trying to reach it, piled on him, shouting at the others that they had him as they carried him painfully down to the floor between the end of the bunk and the wall.

He got an arm free. He hit somebody. They pinned him down and then came a loud ripping sound like cloth torn.They tried to hold his head as somebody tried to tape his face and got his hair. He bucked as they continued sitting on him, he tried to get knees or a foot into action, scored once someone else sat on his legs, but they still managed to get tape wrapped around his face.

"Watch his nose, watch his nose,"somebody said, "don't cut his air off."

It was a stupid kid game and he was It. He'd been It before, and he didn't want any part of it or them. He kept fighting, but it was a cramped space and somebody was winding cord around his feet, struggle as he would.

At the same time they pasted tape across his eyes and one cheek, hard, got it across his mouth in spite of his spitting and cursing. He was running out of wind and there were enough of them finally to twist his arms together and get cord around his hands, and sloppily around his body. He couldn't get enough air past the tape and a nose gone stuffy from being hit, and meanwhile they picked him up like a half-limp package and slung him onto the bed. He hit his head on somebody's leg and stars shot through his vision.

"Fights damn good," somebody said, and there was a lot of panting and spitting and sniffing, while the cousin he'd collided with swore and while he tried to find a target to kick with both feet. "Hey, enough of that!"

They flung bedclothes around him, wrapped him, as he guessed, in blankets, and then hauled him up and over somebody's shoulder, for another toss—he had no idea. Being head down with someone's shoulder in his gut made it hard to breathe. Blood rushing to his head made his nose stuff up worse. He tried to kick, tried to advise the damn fools holding him he was having trouble breathing, but they carried him—out the door, because there was nowhere in the room to go with him. Out the door, down the corridor with him blindfolded to the light and choking and struggling all the way.

"Stay still," somebody said, slapping him on the back, and they went onto a different-sounding floor, like metal. Sounds reached him then of elevator doors closing, then of a lift working, as the floor dropped.

He kicked wildly, tried to score in the cramped space, running out of air as they reached the bottom. They carried him out of the lift into the ice-cold he'd felt only in the freezer, and he heard the ring of their steps on metal grid as they walked.

It was the freezer, it
was
the damn galley freezer they'd brought him to. He began to think he'd pass out, maybe die in their stupidity. Or of purpose. He didn't know now. He might never know. He'd be dead and they'd catch hell.

The guy carrying him dumped him down and let his feet hit the floor. The pressure in his head shifted as they pushed him back against cold pipe, and somebody tore the tape off his mouth.

He sucked in a fast deep gasp of ice-cold air and found something like pipe and steps against his back, metal so cold it burned the bare skin of his hands. He was still blind, he was still tied hand and foot, his head was still pounding and his brain was hazed from want of oxygen.

Something touched his face, burning hot or burning cold, he couldn't tell.

Then they left him. He thought they did.

"Hey!" he yelled, and tried to hold himself up, unbalanced as he was, lost his balance and fell—into someone's arms. They shoved him and he fell toward somebody else, and around, and around. He knew the game. At any moment somebody
wouldn't
catch him and he'd hit the metal floor, but he couldn't save himself, couldn't do a damned thing unless he could get his balance.

They laughed. There were at least ten, twelve of them. High voices, girls, among the others.

One caught him, held him upright. He hung there shivering and heard the quiet shuffling of steps, the panting breaths around him.

"We have here Fletcher," that one said. "Who am I, Fletcher? Do you know?"

"
Chad
" He knew the voice. He'd never in his life forget it

"You're right."
Chad
tossed him off balance. Another caught him.

"Do you know me?" another voice asked.

"Go to hell," he said. He'd like to bring a knee up. With his feet tied, he couldn't. They spun him around and tossed him from one to the next, until they stopped and somebody sawed free the cords holding his feet.

He kicked. And missed, being blind.

"Temper, temper," the voice said.

"Find us, Fletcher," a female voice called to him, echoing in distance and metal dark. "Find us and name us and you're free."

"He doesn't know our names." Male voice, on his left. Footsteps echoing on metal grid.

"Fletcher." A voice he did know. Vince.

"Damn you, brat." It was still another direction. He was blind. He had no concept what the place was shaped like, whether he could blunder off an edge, down steps…

"Fletcher." Another voice. Older.

"Fletcher!" Jeremy. "Fletcher, come to me!"

Jeremy was in on it. He stopped turning, stopped playing their game at all, no matter how they called.

"Fletcher, come here, come this way."

"Fletcher!"

"I said go to hell!" he yelled.

An icy bath of liquid hit him, full in the chest. He jerked, and convulsed, and spat, and fell, hard, helplessly, on the grating.

"Dammit!" a male voice yelled. "Sue!"

He heard movement around him. He was drenched, in bitter, burning cold. He couldn't get his legs to bear under him, he began to shiver so, muscles knotting so it drove his knees together and his elbows against their ordinary flex. He'd hurt his arm on the grating. It burned with a different fire.

"Who am I?" a female voice said. "Try again."

He couldn't talk coherently. He was shivering so violently he couldn't get his jaws to work.

"Hey, guys," somebody said in a warning tone. Someone was close to him. He tried to defend himself with a kick, but that one touched his face, got the edge of the tape on his cheek, and then pulled away the tape across his eyes, ripping brows and strands of hair along with it.

He was lying soaked, still with his hands tied, in the dark, and their faces were lit with a lantern on the echoing metal grid, so they assumed a horror-show aspect, gathered all around him against tall cannisters and girders and machinery. It wasn't the freezer. It was somewhere else.
Chad
was there. He knew that broad face. Vince and Linda were there.
Jeremy
was there, not saying a thing.

He just stared at Jeremy. Even when they introduced themselves, one by one, and said he had to learn the names to get loose, he just stared at Jeremy.

"My name's Jeremy," Jeremy said when it was his turn to talk, "and I was the last they did this to. It's a Welcome-in, Fletcher, you got to go along with it, you got to say what they say and learn the stuff and then you're one of us, that's all, for good and ever. Welcome in."

He didn't know whether he ever wanted to talk to Jeremy again. What Jeremy said he didn't doubt in the least: it was some form of Get the New Guy and he was supposed to bend to the group and kiss ass until they'd gotten their bluff in.

But it wasn't just roughhousing. They'd put bruises on him and half-frozen him, soaking him with water, they'd dumped him on the burning cold deck, and he didn't give a damn what else they were doing, or threatened to do, he wasn't playing their silly games to get In with them, not if he froze to death.

He started memorizing names and faces, all right. They wanted him to, and he would, to remember where he owed what and for how long. He knew
Chad
, who'd started this and set him up, and he learned Wayne who was the second voice, who'd shoved him, and Connor, and a thin-faced girl named Lyra. Ashley was another thin one, the quietest voice, Sue was a broad-faced girl with a cleft in her chin, and that voice and her name had accompanied the water;
Wayne
had protested it.
There
were two different scores. They sat there in the dark, lit up like a horror show and going on with their stupid game, while he shivered and his hair stopped dripping, probably frozen. They told him how he was welcome to the ship, and how it was a great ship, and how he was lucky to be a Neihart and how he'd put up a good fight.

Fine, he thought. They hadn't seen
fight
yet.

He didn't talk, not even when Jeremy tried to get him to say it was all right.

At least he was getting numb, and the fingers had stopped hurting.

Wayne
got up and so did Ashley; the two of them took hold of him, pulling him to his feet. "We'd better get him warm,"
Wayne
said.

"He never said the names," Sue protested.

"He's freezing his ass off!"
Wayne
said. "Get the knife, get the damn cords off."

The lift thumped into operation. It was coming down. Connor was saying it wasn't good enough. He was trying just to stand, telling himself if they'd just listen to
Wayne
he might get out of this.

"Ease off," someone said. "Someone's coming."

Rescue? He asked himself. An officer?

His knees were shaking so they almost tore the ligaments. He staggered off to the side, and hit a pole and leaned on it, that being all he could do to stand up.

"What in hell are you doing?" Male. Young as the rest. He was losing his ability to stay on his feet. He wanted to fall down, and all that saved him was the fact his chilled knees wouldn't unlock. "God, he's
frozen
! He's all over ice. Get him topside, into the warm!"

"We can't take him topside!" Connor said. "Clean him up, first, get him some clothes or there'll be hell."

There was argument about it. He stopped following it, The consensus was take him to the cargo office where they could bring down heat; but he couldn't walk on his own—they dragged him across to the wall, and opened a door, and flung a light on that blinded him after the scant light of the lantern.
Wayne
had him stand with his forehead against the wall, his eyes sheltered from the punishing light, and cut the cords on his upper body, and his hands—that was all right. Then somebody yanked his coveralls off his shoulders. They cracked with ice. Warmer cloth landed on his back, somebody's coat tucked around him, a coat warm from someone's wearing it.

They fussed about getting heat started, and a fan began blowing warm air in. They stripped the coveralls the rest of the way off and wrapped coats around him, made him sit in an ice-cold chair, at which he protested, and they contributed another coat. He was starting to shiver so his teeth rattled.

"He could lose his ears," somebody said, the new one, the junior officer, after that there was a lot of protest back and forth around him, about who'd thrown the water and how he'd fallen and cut his arm and whether his fingers and ears were all right.
Chad
maintained that they were and they hadn't had time to freeze, but Lyra, more to the point, held her warm hands close to his head and tried to warm them up, and it hurt.