My first duty aground was to put my corvette’s lug nut locking key back where it belonged. That shiny, little silver key would never look the same. Each time I picked it up I had to look up at the sky and marvel at the thought of where it had been.
The atmosphere at Genesis was made litigious by the comings and goings of new, important people trying to understand what had happened aboard the Akuma. An accident in space would have been bad enough. An accident followed by a ship-wide virus was almost too much for them to conceptualize. An accident, followed by a ship-wide virus, followed by evidence of sabotage was just too much.
They just did not know what to do with us. They weren’t even sure what to do with themselves. Had we not found her the Akuma would have ended up a brief star in the sky, followed by a debris cloud searching for the nearest gravity field. Remote radio telescopes would have picked up the pulse. Sleepless astronomers would have thought they’d discovered something new. Eventually, the dots would have connected. Two or three of the legal-types wanted to skin us alive, but the rescue of the Akuma’s crew held them at bay. It reminded me of one of those invisible dog fences. They had to complete their depositions. Statements had to be taken. By what authority did we board a sovereign star-class space cruiser? –By the authority provided from the Japanese Space Agency. How did we know it was safe to board her? –We did not. Why did we disembark without notifying the proper authorities? –At the time, we were the proper authorities. They went on and on until they had become their own source of frustration. It was a big deal. They should have been able to draw some blood. It was a terrible opportunity to waste. But in the end, we wasted them.
The WHO medical attorney’s group had such a dilemma with the whole thing I wondered if some of them might eventually need physiological help of their own. They were dying to declare us potential carriers of the Akuma virus, but it was too late for that. Plus, as Doc had directed, we had dotted every ‘I’ and crossed every ‘T’ so there wasn’t even anything left for them to test. They spent the most time with Doc, but his seasoned experience with the medical profession made him quite a dull and boring fellow. Some of them kept visiting Julia Zeller’s office, spending long hours in discussion and then leaving in the same near-catatonic state they had arrived in. Julia had absolutely nothing to do with any of it, but the empty-handed investigators had nowhere else to go so Julia had become something of a comfort to them.
Layered within the chaos, were visits and communications from those whose loved ones from the Akuma would be coming home, along with representatives of the organization that owned the Akuma. They wanted information and to express their deepest gratitude. In one short test flight we had managed to become the greatest of heroes and the worst of villains, and those stark contrasts were not the only irony. I watched grateful, high-level visitors shake Paris Denard’s hand and thank him as he nodded his bony little head in acceptance.
They interrogated us and re-interrogated us, but since we had nothing to hide, our stories kept coming out the same. That seemed to annoy some of them to no end. It made others simply give up. We were questioned apart and together, but it made no difference. Paris seemed to be enjoying the notoriety enough that he became a passive play-along. The only updates we could get from the authorities were that there were rising hopes the remaining Akuma crew would make a full recovery. Captain Mako Hayashi had been found in a cold storage hanger unconscious but alive. She had kept the temperature as low as humanly possible in an attempt to slow the virus. The children were fine. Over a few days the onslaught began to diminish and eventually became occasional phone calls. Final determinations would be made later on. They would let us know.
We had better things to do. Two weeks to do everything that needed to be done. Two weeks to get our heads around the idea of being away for up to a year in something resembling a large toothpaste tube with a pointy nose and windows.
I found myself calling Nira daily. Sometimes it was her, sometimes the service. We seemed to be in agreement in our lament. But the train was rolling along and there would be no stopping it. There was no way to get off.
The crew went into separation anxiety, the need to be away from each other. We would occasionally bump into one another at Genesis, but the salutations and interpersonal relations were kept to a minimum. It was part of the instinctive preparation for being bottled up together for too long. Everyone understood. No one complained. Flight training was done only at the request of the pilot. Habitat training was all but inactive. We were ready, at least professionally.
Nira managed another escape from her lab and stayed for two days. It was a very good two days. We did not go anywhere. We just hung together. Spent some time at the beach, and some time shopping. At the airport, she was better than I at holding it in. “Keep the cards and letters coming” was all she said. I choked it back and nodded. Two guys waiting nearby smirked at me.
Two days before departure we decided on a small celebration at Heidi’s. RJ and Wilson had become regulars there, and despite RJ’s overtures our favorite server, Jeannie had become enamored with Wilson. They set up a big table in the corner for us. The crew came rolling in one by one. Each appearance was a boisterous celebration of standing, toasting, and roasting. It seemed they had all tuned their minds to the light years ahead. There was an undercurrent of resolve behind the jokes and jabs.
When the rumble of motorcycles suddenly bled through the front door, we thought nothing of it. Nowadays there are so many charity rides and club events to raise money for those in need, bikers have become a new kind of standard in community responsibility and caring.
But when the group banged in through the door, none of them was that type. There were seven. I knew it was too many. The nerve of the big shots always increases exponentially based on how many cohorts are along to impress. They had already been drinking. The place quieted a bit. They wore standard black leather, not having been gifted with a talent for creative originality. The one I guessed to be second in command had on a black hat with a short black visor, exactly like Brando had worn in that ancient black and white classic, The Wild One. I came close to guffawing but wisely held back. Our table was already trading too many of the wrong kind of silent stares. We stood out like a sore thumb. The patron who worried me the most was our own Danica. She kept looking past Shelly as though she was wondering how many she could take.
The real problem was Wilson. Jeannie had been pampering him since we’d arrived. She kept bending over in his face so much that the lust had become thick enough to cut with a knife. I was glad there were none around. Normally all of it would have been just fine, except for one thing. Apparently, the leader of the men in black considered himself to have some sort of arrangement with Jeannie. What that was I could not be sure, since she was not the least bit interested in his grand entrance, a slight that seemed to be holding his attention in our direction for too long.
RJ and I exchanged knowing stares. The gang leader yelled out, “Jeannie, get your ass over here!”
Jeannie pretended not to hear. The gang leader left the bar and headed our way. “What you lookin’ at?” he said, and this time it was directed at Wilson.
Wilson pretended not to hear.
He came up to the table, leaned against a nearby chair, and persisted. “Hey! You. What you lookin’ at?”
Jeannie did not turn around. Wilson leaned slightly sideways, and gave him a you’re-not-serious-are-you stare.
“I said what you lookin’ at little man?”
Wrong description.
Then he went too far. He clutched Jeannie by one arm, pulled her away, and shoved her toward the bar. “I said get your ass over there.”
And that was it. You can insult Wilson all day long and he’s okay with it. You could steal his pie off his plate and he’d give it to you. But the moment you pick on one of his friends, all bets are off. You’d better have a pretty good reason, because you are going to justify it one way or another, usually another.
Wilson sat back
in his chair and locked his hands behind his head. “Hey, you know why doctors prefer biker-gang brains for transplants? Cause they've hardly been used.”
The gang leader snarled, stiffened, and took his first step. Normally I would have grabbed Wilson and prevented him from using his standard catch phrase. This time it didn’t matter. It was already too late.
As the leader approached, Wilson’s instincts kicked in. The transformation began. His big arms suddenly became rippled as he stood and held up one hand. “Now I don’t want no trouble.”
RJ cast a glance my way and waved one hand in resignation.
I stood. One by one the others at our table stood, like a chorus line in a Fred Astaire movie. The only real difference was that there would be no dancing.
I was surprised the idiot was not more adept. It seemed only logical someone of his base line intelligence would have been involved in enough skirmishes to have developed some instinct for self-defense. He came in too close and too fast, was jolted back red-faced by Wilson’s outstretched hand on his throat, tried to throw a kick with one motorcycle boot, but his body remained behind his feet, sending him crashing to the floor on his back.
With that, the rest of the gang came.
In keeping with his eternal optimism, RJ held up one hand in desperation. “Gentlemen please! We’re all civilized men here!” At which point someone who had gotten behind us smashed a framed poster over his head. Fortunately it was only paper so he was not injured, but it left him with a framed, torn paper collar and a wide-eyed expression showing disappointment that diplomacy was no longer a viable option.
The same guy tried to follow up with me but was not big enough. He made a two-step charge but aborted three feet away, realizing he had not planned ahead what he would do upon arrival. He finally settled on an all out charge, followed by a leap that was supposed to end in a straddled bear hug. I caught him in the crotch as he went airborne, sidestepped, and provided enough extra thrust that he cleared the next table and landed on the one beyond it. There was a lot of pushing back of chairs and crashing and rolling.
My next concern was for the somewhat fragile Erin. I looked away long enough to find Shelly holding her back in the corner. To my surprise, it looked like the debutante wanted to get into it, but thank God Shelly wouldn’t let her.
On my left, Danica had suddenly changed from hotshot pilot to Bruce Lee. A gang member raised a pool cue to whap Wilson over the head but Danica stepped around and delivered a beautifully placed sidekick to the back of his knee. The guy went down over backwards, looked around for who had kicked him, saw Danica and decided it must have been someone else. When realization quickly took hold, he growled and climbed to his hands and knees intending to go after her, only to meet the loud smack of her round kick on the side of his chin as he stood. He stared in a fractured moment of indignation, teetered a bit, and was asleep before he hit the floor. To my dismay, Danica did not celebrate the moment. Instead, she began looking for more.
You never see Wilson with less than two. In most cases, they charge in and are captured by one big hand, almost like a fly to flypaper. Once there, they discover they are not strong enough to overcome his grasp, so they begin flailing and kicking, like a skydiver on his first jump. I have seen assailants sprain their wrist hitting Wilson in the arm.
Wilson struggled to keep two of the would-be assassins at bay by banging them together at irregular intervals. The disheveled gang leader regained his feet, brushed himself off to look good for the fight, and again charged with a silent-movie kind of exaggerated stare. RJ, holding his newly acquired poster, smacked it over the idiot’s head and shoved him head first into a table, where he whacked his head and disappeared beneath it. RJ wiped his hands and gave a flat smile as though he were Stan Laurel. “How chagrin,” he declared, and took cover behind me.
I looked for Doc and in the process took a solid whack on the upper left arm. The table crasher had returned with a piece of a chair leg and was in the process of taking his second swing, this time for my head. RJ and I ducked in unison and let it pass. As I came back up, I slapped my hand over the thug’s face and dragged him down to the floor. He raised his head up and as carefully as possible with my palm heel, I tapped it back down just enough to make his eyelids flutter and close.
In yet another of life’s strange ironies, Doc was a few tables away kneeling on the floor by a gang member who had apparently smashed a bottle on the bar for use as a weapon, and then somehow in the mayhem fallen upon the pointed end of it. It was another testament that this gang was not up to the standards prescribed by Brando’s hat. A nasty laceration ran from his chin down across the side of his neck. Doc had applied pressure and was setting up some kind of pressure bandage to keep him from bleeding to death before the ambulance could arrive. One of the man’s comrades seemed to be especially concerned and was standing over them trying to help.
The two Wilson had been treating like Marionette puppets were so battered and exhausted he finally set them in chairs where they remained hunched over, holding their bruised heads, and gasping for breath. The others around the room were in various states of disarray, and not yet organized enough to launch a counterstrike.
Handing the pressure bandage off to the man’s partner, Doc rose and returned. Before I could find something appropriate to say, Jeannie came up and motioned us to follow. She led us to a back door and held onto Wilson so that he could not leave.
I went to her and held out all the credit slips I had left in my wallet. “Please give this to the owner. Tell him if it’s not enough I’ll be back in twelve months to settle up.”
She got a distressed look. “Twelve months?” She looked at Wilson. She climbed up him and planted one hell of a kiss. “Midnight. I’ll meet you at the convenience store on the corner.”
We ducked out and made our way through the unlit parking lot, driving past the police and ambulance vehicles as they arrived.
Chapter 26