Trent slammed his hand on the intercom. "Damn it, Damien, where are you?
We've gotta land this hulk soon!" He waited the obligatory thirty seconds
for Damien to reply, then stormed out into the hallway.
He searched the main living areas and Damien's bedroom, but found no trace of him. He muttered a string of curses under his breath and moved on to the less comfortable areas, eventually making his way to the cargo hold. His eyes narrowed. The secret compartment hung open, its contents scattered across the floor. A trail of contraband, some of it half-used, led toward the far side of the hold, where a shoe protruded lazily out from behind a large crate.
Trent picked up a handful of mescaline packets and shoved them into the compartment, then followed them up with a group of diacetylmorphine and helionin hypos. He glanced over at the shoe. "I know you're in here."
The shoe twitched at that statement and eventually pulled out of sight, at which time Damien staggered to his feet. Trent stopped in mid-motion and straightened up as well. He crossed his arms, as it was the easiest way to resist punching his co-pilot. "You've been dipping into our selling supply."
Damien shrugged. "It's good stuff, man."
"We need every ounce to help pay off Beckett. If he doesn't get his money soon, he'll eat our livers."
Damien blinked. "Would he really do that?"
Trent rolled his eyes. "I'd rather not find out. We need to land this tub."
Damien stuck his tongue between his teeth and let out a long sigh. "I'm pretty high, man."
Trent ran a hand through his hair, let out a long hissing breath and slammed his foot against the bulkhead. He immediately realized the futility of such an action. Thirty seconds of excessive swearing and foot- clutching later, he managed to recover enough to focus a hateful glare at Damien. "Couldn't you have waited another hour to pull this on me?"
Damien took a few steps backward and held his hands up in a placating manner. "Jeeze, man, I didn't think you'd get this worked up about it. I needed my fix, that's all." He tilted his head to the side and approached Trent cautiously. When Trent made no attempt to do him immediate physical harm, Damien's posture relaxed and he flung an arm around Trent's shoulder. "You know what you need, man? You need to lighten up. A couple of floaters would...."
Trent shook his head vehemently. "What is the matter with you? You've got responsibilities on this ship and I'm not going to pull your weight for you just because you're...." He trailed off. Damien was staring listlessly into space. "Are you listening to me?"
Damien nodded noncommittally. "Yeah, I hear ya."
Trent squared his jaw, grabbed Damien's shirt and hauled him into the cockpit. Damien wriggled in Trent's grasp, but was too soporific to put up any real struggle.
"Hey, let go of me, man! Stop laying all this on me. You're gonna give me a bad trip!"
"There are a lot more important things at stake here than your trip, shit- head."
Trent plopped Damien down in the copilot's seat and took his own spot in the captain's chair. He began to guide the ship down into a descent pattern, jaw tight with anticipation of what was to come.
They broke through the atmosphere and headed toward the ground. Trent sent a standard pre-recorded query to flight control requesting space at one of the docking platforms, then maneuvered toward the spaceport, hovered above it and waited for confirmation to land.
The ship began to shake.
"Are you keeping an eye on the stabilizers?" Trent asked, glancing over at Damien.
"Yeah. They're... they're good." Sweat had begun to condense on Damien's forehead and his knuckles were white from clinging to the computer console in front of him.
"Just keep the ship steady, okay?"
Damien's only reply was a terse grunt.
"I'll take that as a 'yes'," Trent muttered.
After a short period of silence, Damien began to squirm in his seat. "Are there bugs in here?"
Trent raised an eyebrow. "No."
"They've gotta be. I can hear them."
"What are you...?"
"I can see them! They're on me! They're on me!" Damien ripped off his safety belt and fell out of the chair, flailing around on the floor and brushing at invisible insects.
"There aren't any bugs on you!" Trent yelled. He unbuckled his seatbelt and started to stand up so that he could help Damien, but alarms began to claxon through the cockpit as the ship began to list with no one at the controls. "Shit!"
He lunged for his console and keyed in a rapid sequence that transferred both the pilot's and copilot's duties to his console. He did his best to pay attention to the monitors and account for all the details as he manipulated the controls, but the ship shook and wobbled through the air as if it were fighting its way through a hurricane.
Damien was in agony. "Make 'em stop... make 'em stop, man! They're eating me alive!"
Trent gritted his teeth and resubmitted his query as soon as he had regained stability. He needed to land immediately and it wasn't safe to do it anywhere but on a landing platform.
Damien began to mutter incoherently. His writhing became more intense and he slammed against the pilot's chair, which caused it to swivel halfway around and jerked Trent's hands away from the controls. The ship veered toward the ground.
Trent shoved Damien away with his foot and used the momentum to shift his chair back into its proper position. He wrestled with the controls and finally managed stop the ship's descent. "Jesus, Damien! Are you trying to get us both killed?"
If Damien was not beyond the point of being able to understand Trent's accusation, he was certainly beyond the point of being able to reply.
The com unit began to flash and a crackly voice registered over the airwaves. "This is flight control. You look like you're having some trouble, so we've cleared an emergency docking space for you. Proceed to Landing Bay 77. We're transmitting a 3-D map of the airfields now."
A surge of relief rushed through Trent's body. "It's about freakin' time."
The holographic display lit up with a miniature rendition of the spaceport; Bay 77 showed up as a bright, flashing green. Trent went through the landing procedures in a blur. He let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding when the ship touched down to the ground.
"We noticed you were having difficulties holding a steady flight path."
Trent laughed bitterly. The flight control technician certainly had a gift for understatement.
"Yeah, we've been having engine troubles... I think the stabilizers are shorting out. It's not a problem, though. I'll buy the parts to fix it."
"Before you can purchase any parts, you have to have your problem evaluated by a government-certified mechanic."
Trent's brow furrowed. "Since when?" He had visited this planet before, but he had never heard of this procedure.
"Since one of the outgoing ships had an engine malfunction and crashed into the main terminal three months ago.
"Look, I don't need a mechanic. I can take care of the problem myself...."
"That's what the other guy said. So now, it's government regulations. We'll have someone sent your way within the next 12 hours."
"But I'm a certified..."
"Look buddy, we don't care if you're a certified brain surgeon. Either you submit to an inspection or we impound your ship and its cargo."
"Fine." Trent slammed his hand down on the comm button, which severed the connection. "That's just fine." He slumped back in his chair and moaned, "We are so screwed."
Trent's attention was drawn to Damien, who was curled up under the copilot's chair, whimpering.
"I've had enough of this." Trent grabbed Damien by the scruff of his neck, dragged him to the main recreational area, shoved him onto the couch and pulled out a first aid kit marked 'Emergencies Only'.
As soon as Damien saw the kit he started to squirm. "Aww, c'mon, man. You're not gonna give me a flusher, are you?"
Trent didn't reply. He pulled out a large, wicked-looking hypo and began to prep it.
"Shit!" Damien scrambled to his feet and bolted for the door, but Trent was too fast for him. The two of them went down in a tangled heap. Damien's elbow connected with Trent's jaw, but Trent pinned him to the ground in a wrestling hold and jammed the hypo against his neck. Damien whimpered as the flusher was injected into his system.
The flushers treated unwelcome chemicals in the brain and bloodstream very similarly to the way antibodies and white blood-cells treated a disease or virus, but on a much faster scale. The benefit of this was that the subject to whom they were administered was totally cleansed and showed no signs of having taken anything after half an hour. The downside was that during that half-hour they experienced total withdrawal.
Trent held Damien on the ground for about two minutes to make sure that the flusher had time to take effect, then released his grip and sat up. Damien did the same. He still looked dazed, but his eyes were more focused and he seemed more attentive of his surroundings. Still, it never hurt to check. He made sure that Damien was looking him straight in the eye and said, "I need you to focus, here."
"Okay."
"Feeling clearer yet?"
Damien nodded, then rubbed a hand against the welt on his neck. "You zapped me hard."
"You tried to run."
"Can you blame me?" Through supreme effort, Damien managed to get up on his hands and knees. "I need to take a piss. And a dump." His eyes widened. "And a puke." He lurched to his feet and headed toward the bathroom, but only made it halfway there before he threw up all over the floor. "I hate those damn flushers...." He crawled the rest of the way to the bathroom and locked the door.
Without a word, Trent cleaned up the vomit scattered across the cabin floor. Then he went back into the cargo bay and did his best to salvage the contraband that was scattered across the floor. Some of the mescaline packets had burst, scattering their contents across the floor. A few of the hypos had broken and their contents had mixed with the powdery mess, which caused a nauseating odor that permeated the cargo bay. He managed to remove the filth, but he couldn't remove the smell.
While he worked, his thoughts focused on the grim undertones inherent in the mechanic's visit. The last thing he needed was a government employee of any kind rummaging through their ship's innards. As an escaped convict, it was a bad idea simply on general principle. If he or his cargo were to be discovered, he would be sent back to prison.
That was one of the reasons he'd given Damien the flusher. When Damien was clean, he was a force to be reckoned with. The two of them would be able to get through this, but not with Damien tripping. And at some deeper level, he'd administered the flusher out of spite, because he knew exactly how much hell it was going to put Damien through and he thought it was due payment for the trouble that 'bad trip' had caused.
Once Trent finished cleaning, he shoved the variety of illegal substances into his pack and headed toward the main living areas. He checked the time; it had been almost half an hour. That meant Damien would be over the worst of it. Trent walked over to the bathroom door and rapped his knuckles against it firmly.
Damien's voice carried an edge of warning as it wafted through the door. "I'm gonna be in here for a while."
"Listen. I'm gonna go out and sell some stuff. The mechanic might get here before I come back. If that happens, take care of him."
"But I've never done that before... I'm really not into that sort of thing, man. You know that. Besides, we don't have anywhere to dump the body...."
"No bodies, you idiot! Just get him off the ship. I don't care how. Just keep him away from the cargo bay and the engine room. If you screw this up, I swear I'm gonna eject you into vacuum."
* * *
Damien stepped out of the shower and pulled his clothes on even though he was still dripping wet. He was totally preoccupied with thoughts of what would happen if the mechanic arrived before Trent returned. In order to keep an eye on the mechanic, Damien knew he would have to think, to focus on reality for an undetermined amount of time. Focusing on reality had never been his strong point. He could deal with individual facts wonderfully; he could manipulate data and computer code with the grace of a magician. He could not, however, deal with people. They were not logical beings and as such, he could not understand them. When it came down to it, he couldn't even understand himself.
He wasn't fond of his helionin habit. He hated it, in fact. But it had become a vicious cycle that he could not bring back under control, despite what he considered to be significant efforts to do so. He was trapped in his body, trapped by longings that made no logical sense whatsoever but were impossible to chase away. Even now he could feel the impulse to get his fix, just one little dose, building up inside his brain. It would jump on him soon, catch him unawares like a spider-web catches a fly, and that would be that.
It might, in fact, have caught him already. Somewhere in his musings, he had begun to walk toward the cargo bay. It had been far from intentional -- purely unconscious, in fact. But the moment he realized what he was doing he froze and mentally berated himself for his weakness.
Unbidden, a question ran through his brain. What could it hurt if he just took one little dose? The answer: A hell of a lot. He'd caused enough trouble already; he couldn't afford to draw any more attention. So he wouldn't take anything. He couldn't.
He'd just look at it. No harm in looking, right?
This was how it started. He knew it. But still, he walked into the cargo bay and opened the secret compartment, just to look at it....
It wasn't there. His eyes widened as a simple fact dawned upon him: Trent had taken the cargo. Therefore, there was none left. He began to grope through the compartment bins, willing there to be something, anything, left behind. He could smell it, he could smell it everywhere... but it was gone.
Or maybe not. Trent must have missed it, but there it was, tucked away in the far corner: one last hypo, just barely within reach. After a moment's hesitation, Damien picked it up. Just to hold it, of course, not to take it. But then it was too late, because his body was on autopilot and the hypo was headed straight for one of his veins and he was going to get in so much trouble for this because the mechanic would find out and Trent would kill him....
A loud buzzing sound echoed through the ship and startled Damien so much that he nearly dropped the hypo. He sighed with relief as he realized that it was the doorbell, which meant someone wanted to be let through the main hatch. He slammed the compartment shut and jammed the unused hypo into his pocket. He wouldn't take it now. He'd save it for later. Later was good.
He headed for the hatch at a brisk jog, all smiles at his partial triumph. That smile quickly disappeared, however, when he arrived at the hatchway. An obese woman was staring at the thick one-way glass of the round window in the center of the hatch, as if she thought she would be able to see through it to the occupants inside if she stared long enough.
Damien opened the hatch and gaped at her in bemusement. "Who are you?"
The woman gestured to the large tool-belt around her waist as if it were self-evident. "I'm the mechanic. Now where'd you say your problem was, again?"
"The, uhh, the stabilizers.... Are you sure you're the mechanic?"
In response, the woman waved what Damien assumed was a government-issued ID in his face. "Fran Lebowitz. Government Certified Mechanic. Any more questions?"
Damien shook his head.
"Are you going to let me inside or what?"
Damien stepped out of the way and motioned for her to enter the ship. As she stepped onboard, her heavy tread seemed to echo through the whole ship. She walked into the center of the room and perused the decor with a critical eye. "Not much of a ship, is it?"
Damien shrugged. "It always suited me fine."
Fran sniffed loudly and resumed her critique of the ship. "Looks pretty junked up to me. Old model, too. Looks kind of like the ship Captain Plasma had in 'Pirates of the Universal Meridian'."
"Yeah?" Damien didn't think it looked anything like the ship she'd mentioned at all, but he wasn't about to disagree with her.
Fran raised an eyebrow. "Don't you think?"
"Maybe."
"It has the same furniture and everything." She cocked her head to the side. "You look kind of nervous. Well, calm down, flyboy. It's not like you're paying me by the hour or anything."
Damien's eyes widened. "Pay?"
Fran rolled her eyes. "Ahh, relax. It's just a standard government fee. Pretty low, really, considering the parts that'll probably be involved."
Damien's mind whirled at the double-blow of the words 'government' and 'fee' being thrown into the same sentence. Money was something he and Trent could ill afford to lose at the moment. He managed to conceal his distress, however, and nodded vapidly in response to Fran's comment.
"The engine room is this way, right?"
Fran gestured down an ominously dark corridor. It led to the engine room, alright, and Trent had expressly forbidden Damien to enter it. Damien could no longer remember the particulars, but he knew it had something to do with the time he had decided it would be a good idea to set up a makeshift helionin distillery right beside the cooling rods.
Damien pointed toward the corridor that led to the life support technology. "Nope. The engine room is down that way."
"You sure?" Fran asked, squinting down the corridor in suspicion.
"I've been living on this ship for two years now. I should know where the engine room is." Damien grinned disarmingly; he knew it would add a high level of potency to his comment. It was a skill he had perfected many years ago. Under the right circumstances, a disarming smile could be a powerful weapon.
Fran shrugged. "Okay... it's your ship."
Damien led the way down the corridor, walking as slowly as possible. The longer he could delay Fran's discovery of his deception, the better. He had a plan, now... or at least, he planned to have one when the opportunity to enact it arose. He preferred spur-of-the-moment plans to premeditated ones. In his experience, they were more effective.
"Right this way," Damien said, motioning to the room that that contained various air conditioning apparatuses. He hurried her inside and leaned against the doorway in a falsely casual pose. "So... what seems to be the problem?"
Fran gave a sweeping glance at the room and turned back to Damien, frustration etched on her features. "Well, for starters, this isn't the engine room."
"What?"
"It's the life support chamber."
Damien widened his eyes in a portrayal of innocence. "Really? I could have sworn it was the engine room."
Fran crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow at him calculatingly. "What are you up to?"
Damien was cornered; he had to think of something fast. And Trent had said that he should do anything to keep Fran from looking at the engine room.... He took a deep breath, stepped forward and swept Fran up into a rough, passionate kiss. At the same time, he surreptitiously pulled the hypo out of his pocket. He was probably going to regret this for the rest of his sober life. But it was a spur-of-the-moment plan, and a good one at that, so everything would work out in the end.
Maybe.
The problem was, he had only planned the kiss as a distraction so he could inject her with the helionin. He had never expected her to like it.
* * *
As Trent stepped onto the ship, he was struck by the sheer quiet that seemed to emanate from the walls. It was unnatural. It was dangerous. His eyes shifted warily from side to side, searching for any signs of trouble. "Damien?"
No response.
"You got rid of the mechanic, right?"
Still nothing.
Trent checked the engine room. No one was there. There was no one in the cargo bay, the kitchen, the main cabins or the cockpit... even Damien's room was empty. Finally, there was only one room left for him to check: his own bedroom. He walked toward it, trepidation slowing his every step. There was no one in there... there couldn't, shouldn't be anyone in there.
When he could stand it no longer, he flung open the door. His eyes were greeted with the sight of a naked pile of flesh.
Damien looked up in shock. His face was red, presumably due to a mixture of exertion and embarrassment. His lean form was dwarfed by the gargantuan folds of the woman beneath him. She stared up at Trent with all the lucidity of a sedated cow and mumbled something to illustrate her confusion.
Trent clapped a hand over his eyes, then dragged it down over his face unable to keep himself from staring at the nude figures. He was stunned beyond all clarity. This was too much for words. This was too much, period.
"Uhm... Damien...." Trent started to make a comment, but lost his train of thought almost immediately. It took five more seconds for his brain to jumpstart him into coherence. "I'll just wait outside, then. Talk to me when you're... finished." He spun around and walked out the door, feeling as if he'd just witnessed a multiple spaceship collision.
A few minutes later Damien came out of the bedroom, zipping up his pants. "I can explain."
Those three simple words unleashed a torrent of pent-up emotions in Trent. He could feel the blood pounding in his face as he snarled, "You'd sure as hell better be able to explain. You were boffing some woman..."
"She's the mechanic."
"What?"
"You heard me."
Trent was stared at Damien, completely aghast. "You were boffing the mechanic? In my room? On my bed?"
"Mine's too small, she would've fallen off. She was about to figure out that we'd lied, man. I had to do something."
Trent sat down on a chair and buried his head in his hands. "How are we going to fix this?"
He could hear the scoot of a chair as Damien moved it to a space across from him and sat down. "What do you mean, fix it?"
Trent removed his hands and stared at Damien with disgust. "What do you think I mean? This is a huge pile of shit you've gotten us into!"
Damien sat in the chair the wrong way, arms poised on the top of the backrest, legs splayed to either side. He had an impish smile on his face.
Trent's eyes narrowed. "You didn't tell me something."
Damien touched his nose. His grin widened. "I shot her up with helionin."
"You what?"
"I gave her a pretty strong dose... kinda overcompensated for her weight, I think. She's not really as heavy as she looks, you know...."
"Get to the point!"
"She's sleeping it off now. When she wakes up, she won't remember anything."
"Is she still naked in there?"
"Yeah."
"She'll figure out what happened pretty quickly if she wakes up like that."
"So we get her dressed and stash her on the couch. We can manage it, no big deal. She should be out cold for at least another hour."
Much as Trent hated to admit it, Damien hadn't done as badly as he'd initially thought. The situation was salvageable... awkward as hell, but salvageable. "Alright. I'll help you get her dressed and haul her out here, but you're going to get rid of her when she wakes up."
"Believe me, I have no problem with that." Damien shuddered. "I can't believe I made it through that without taking something. She never gave me a chance, though, she was all over me. She ripped my clothes off, and then...."
Trent clapped his hands over his ears. "Too much information!"
Damien smirked. "I never knew you were such a prude. I hadn't even gotten to the part where she ripped her clothes off yet."
* * *
Damien slumped in his seat and stared at Fran's sleeping body listlessly. It had taken him and Trent the better part of thirty minutes just to force her clothes back on. That wasn't what had put him in a foul mood, though. It was the waiting. Damien wasn't very good at it and Trent had left him with little else to do. He had tinkered around with his computer for a bit, but that had fast proven uninteresting.
After a while, Fran's eyelids began to flutter. Damien straightened up in his seat and stared at her expectantly. She moaned and tried to roll over, but that proved to be difficult due to the position Damien and Trent had put her in when they dumped on the couch. Her eyes opened and she looked at Damien blearily. "What happened?"
"I'm not sure... you passed out just after you finished working on the stabilizers."
Fran's eyes widened. "I did?"
Damien nodded. "It must have been stress. Stress can do strange things to a person." He leaned forward in his chair. "You should probably rest for awhile."
"I can't, I have another appointment at three...."
Damien looked over at the clock; it was almost five. "Sorry, but it looks like you missed it.... You were out for a long time."
Fran's eyes widened in alarm. "Oh, shit, my boss is gonna kill me."
"Just explain to him what happened and see if he won't let you off easy this time. Maybe you should see a doctor about this stress thing."
"I don't have a stress thing."
"Are you sure? It never hurts to check."
"Just leave me alone, OK?" Fran stood up and looked around to get her bearings. "I need to go, now."
"I'll show you to the door."
"I want to look my work over first, though. If I screwed this up somehow...."
"Believe me, you did a very good job."
After a few more minutes of arguing, Damien convinced her it would be safe to go. He muttered a quick prayer of thanks when she walked onto the landing platform, then headed toward the laundry room. Trent had sequestered himself there and was doing his laundry with a vigor Damien had never seen before.
Damien slumped against the wall next to the washing machine and let out a long sigh.
Trent glanced toward him. "So she's gone, then?"
"She's gone."
"Thank God."
Damien frowned in confusion. "I thought you were agnostic."
"I am."
Damien couldn't conceal a snort of laughter, but Trent's stern glare kept him from continuing on in the same pattern. He cleared his throat in an attempt to regain his composure and asked, "So, when are we getting out of here?"
"As soon as they send us confirmation that we can leave."
"And that'll be...?"
"Sometime in the next 24 hours."
Damien clambered into a seated position on top of the washing machine and tilted his head to the side curiously. "So, how'd it go?"
"What?"
"The deal. How'd it go?"
"Oh. That." Trent shrugged. "It went fine."
Damien put on his pouty puppy-dog expression. "Aw, c'mon. 'Fine' could mean anything."
Trent gestured toward the far corner of the room. "Check the pack."
Damien leapt off the washer and picked up the backpack, then opened it with a flourish. He reached inside and pulled out a wad of credit chips. He added up the total in his mind, then let out a long, low whistle. "Not bad."
"Some of it's been pretty scarce on the market lately. I was able to drive up the prices."
Damien's elation turned to panic as he realized that there was nothing but credit chips left in the pack. "Oh, no, you didn't... you didn't sell all of it, did you?"
Trent's expression darkened. "I needed to sell all of it. You know that." He cast a suspicious glance in Damien's direction. "Don't you?"
"Yeah, but... couldn't you have kept a little anyway?" Damien whined.
"I figured you had some stashed on the ship. Especially after you drugged out the mechanic."
"Are you kidding me? I never keep stuff stashed when we have it in the cargo bay."
"Then how'd you drug the mechanic?"
"You left one."
"No I didn't."
"Yes. You did. It was stuck in the back of the compartment. You wouldn't have noticed it unless you were looking for it."
Trent glowered at Damien sternly. "If you're lying to me, so help me I'll...."
"Do you think I'd lie to you about something like this? We need to get some of that helionin back now." He knew he was being unreasonable, but he couldn't help it. "Do you realize what's going to happen if I don't get my fix soon?"
Trent just gave him a stern look. "When I first met you, you were one of the smartest guys I'd ever known. You had a real head for numbers, you were great with computers... hell, I couldn't believe they'd managed to catch you long enough to indict you. But now...." He shook his head. "Now you're just like one of those junkies I sell to on the street. All you care about now is your damned fix. Do you realize that?"
Try as he might, Damien could think of nothing to say that would refute Trent's accusation.
"Well, I'm sick of it. If you want to keep using, go right ahead. But you're not doing it on my ship. If you want your precious drugs, you're gonna have to go out and get them yourself. And I won't be here when you come back."
Damien leaned back and stared up at the ceiling, face twisted up into a grimace. "You're asking for an awful lot here, Trent. I'm not sure I can."
"Look. You're clean. I gave you the flushers. You're clean. There's nothing in your system, withdrawal's over, we don't have anything on the ship... and we're heading out as soon as we can. If you can make it through the next 24 hours, you'll be okay."
Damien closed his eyes and ran his tongue across his teeth. After a moment of hard consideration, he looked Trent straight in the eye. "Alright... I'll try. But I'm not promising anything."
The right-hand corner of Trent's mouth twisted up into a half-smile. "That's all I needed to hear, D. That's all I needed to hear." And, with that said, he punched Damien in the jaw.
By the time Damien was lucid again, he was lying on Trent's bedroom floor. He sat up and rubbed his chin, staring at Trent indignantly. "What'd you do that for?"
Trent shrugged. "Sorry, D. I trust you... but not this much." He stepped out of the room and closed the door. Damien leapt to his feet and tried to open it, but it was locked.
"Trent! Let me out of here right now!"
Trent's voice echoed through the door; it seemed almost jovial. "No can do. This is your first step on the road to recovery, and I'll be damned before I let you screw it up. That's the one room on the ship that I know you haven't planted anything in."
"I told you, I never--"
"Keep drugs around when we've got 'em in the cargo bay? Sorry. Not gonna risk it."
"But you're gonna need clothes...."
"Why do you think I've been doing my laundry?"
"And I'll need food...."
"Don't worry, you won't starve."
"If you leave me here, I'll... I'll pee on your pillows!"
"Tough luck. You're the one who'll have to sleep on 'em." Trent laughed. "Don't forget: you agreed to try. I'm just making sure you don't fail."
Damien let out an incoherent growl and flopped down on the bed like a petulant child. If he'd known this was the first step on the road to recovery, he would have punched Trent right back.
He searched the main living areas and Damien's bedroom, but found no trace of him. He muttered a string of curses under his breath and moved on to the less comfortable areas, eventually making his way to the cargo hold. His eyes narrowed. The secret compartment hung open, its contents scattered across the floor. A trail of contraband, some of it half-used, led toward the far side of the hold, where a shoe protruded lazily out from behind a large crate.
Trent picked up a handful of mescaline packets and shoved them into the compartment, then followed them up with a group of diacetylmorphine and helionin hypos. He glanced over at the shoe. "I know you're in here."
The shoe twitched at that statement and eventually pulled out of sight, at which time Damien staggered to his feet. Trent stopped in mid-motion and straightened up as well. He crossed his arms, as it was the easiest way to resist punching his co-pilot. "You've been dipping into our selling supply."
Damien shrugged. "It's good stuff, man."
"We need every ounce to help pay off Beckett. If he doesn't get his money soon, he'll eat our livers."
Damien blinked. "Would he really do that?"
Trent rolled his eyes. "I'd rather not find out. We need to land this tub."
Damien stuck his tongue between his teeth and let out a long sigh. "I'm pretty high, man."
Trent ran a hand through his hair, let out a long hissing breath and slammed his foot against the bulkhead. He immediately realized the futility of such an action. Thirty seconds of excessive swearing and foot- clutching later, he managed to recover enough to focus a hateful glare at Damien. "Couldn't you have waited another hour to pull this on me?"
Damien took a few steps backward and held his hands up in a placating manner. "Jeeze, man, I didn't think you'd get this worked up about it. I needed my fix, that's all." He tilted his head to the side and approached Trent cautiously. When Trent made no attempt to do him immediate physical harm, Damien's posture relaxed and he flung an arm around Trent's shoulder. "You know what you need, man? You need to lighten up. A couple of floaters would...."
Trent shook his head vehemently. "What is the matter with you? You've got responsibilities on this ship and I'm not going to pull your weight for you just because you're...." He trailed off. Damien was staring listlessly into space. "Are you listening to me?"
Damien nodded noncommittally. "Yeah, I hear ya."
Trent squared his jaw, grabbed Damien's shirt and hauled him into the cockpit. Damien wriggled in Trent's grasp, but was too soporific to put up any real struggle.
"Hey, let go of me, man! Stop laying all this on me. You're gonna give me a bad trip!"
"There are a lot more important things at stake here than your trip, shit- head."
Trent plopped Damien down in the copilot's seat and took his own spot in the captain's chair. He began to guide the ship down into a descent pattern, jaw tight with anticipation of what was to come.
They broke through the atmosphere and headed toward the ground. Trent sent a standard pre-recorded query to flight control requesting space at one of the docking platforms, then maneuvered toward the spaceport, hovered above it and waited for confirmation to land.
The ship began to shake.
"Are you keeping an eye on the stabilizers?" Trent asked, glancing over at Damien.
"Yeah. They're... they're good." Sweat had begun to condense on Damien's forehead and his knuckles were white from clinging to the computer console in front of him.
"Just keep the ship steady, okay?"
Damien's only reply was a terse grunt.
"I'll take that as a 'yes'," Trent muttered.
After a short period of silence, Damien began to squirm in his seat. "Are there bugs in here?"
Trent raised an eyebrow. "No."
"They've gotta be. I can hear them."
"What are you...?"
"I can see them! They're on me! They're on me!" Damien ripped off his safety belt and fell out of the chair, flailing around on the floor and brushing at invisible insects.
"There aren't any bugs on you!" Trent yelled. He unbuckled his seatbelt and started to stand up so that he could help Damien, but alarms began to claxon through the cockpit as the ship began to list with no one at the controls. "Shit!"
He lunged for his console and keyed in a rapid sequence that transferred both the pilot's and copilot's duties to his console. He did his best to pay attention to the monitors and account for all the details as he manipulated the controls, but the ship shook and wobbled through the air as if it were fighting its way through a hurricane.
Damien was in agony. "Make 'em stop... make 'em stop, man! They're eating me alive!"
Trent gritted his teeth and resubmitted his query as soon as he had regained stability. He needed to land immediately and it wasn't safe to do it anywhere but on a landing platform.
Damien began to mutter incoherently. His writhing became more intense and he slammed against the pilot's chair, which caused it to swivel halfway around and jerked Trent's hands away from the controls. The ship veered toward the ground.
Trent shoved Damien away with his foot and used the momentum to shift his chair back into its proper position. He wrestled with the controls and finally managed stop the ship's descent. "Jesus, Damien! Are you trying to get us both killed?"
If Damien was not beyond the point of being able to understand Trent's accusation, he was certainly beyond the point of being able to reply.
The com unit began to flash and a crackly voice registered over the airwaves. "This is flight control. You look like you're having some trouble, so we've cleared an emergency docking space for you. Proceed to Landing Bay 77. We're transmitting a 3-D map of the airfields now."
A surge of relief rushed through Trent's body. "It's about freakin' time."
The holographic display lit up with a miniature rendition of the spaceport; Bay 77 showed up as a bright, flashing green. Trent went through the landing procedures in a blur. He let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding when the ship touched down to the ground.
"We noticed you were having difficulties holding a steady flight path."
Trent laughed bitterly. The flight control technician certainly had a gift for understatement.
"Yeah, we've been having engine troubles... I think the stabilizers are shorting out. It's not a problem, though. I'll buy the parts to fix it."
"Before you can purchase any parts, you have to have your problem evaluated by a government-certified mechanic."
Trent's brow furrowed. "Since when?" He had visited this planet before, but he had never heard of this procedure.
"Since one of the outgoing ships had an engine malfunction and crashed into the main terminal three months ago.
"Look, I don't need a mechanic. I can take care of the problem myself...."
"That's what the other guy said. So now, it's government regulations. We'll have someone sent your way within the next 12 hours."
"But I'm a certified..."
"Look buddy, we don't care if you're a certified brain surgeon. Either you submit to an inspection or we impound your ship and its cargo."
"Fine." Trent slammed his hand down on the comm button, which severed the connection. "That's just fine." He slumped back in his chair and moaned, "We are so screwed."
Trent's attention was drawn to Damien, who was curled up under the copilot's chair, whimpering.
"I've had enough of this." Trent grabbed Damien by the scruff of his neck, dragged him to the main recreational area, shoved him onto the couch and pulled out a first aid kit marked 'Emergencies Only'.
As soon as Damien saw the kit he started to squirm. "Aww, c'mon, man. You're not gonna give me a flusher, are you?"
Trent didn't reply. He pulled out a large, wicked-looking hypo and began to prep it.
"Shit!" Damien scrambled to his feet and bolted for the door, but Trent was too fast for him. The two of them went down in a tangled heap. Damien's elbow connected with Trent's jaw, but Trent pinned him to the ground in a wrestling hold and jammed the hypo against his neck. Damien whimpered as the flusher was injected into his system.
The flushers treated unwelcome chemicals in the brain and bloodstream very similarly to the way antibodies and white blood-cells treated a disease or virus, but on a much faster scale. The benefit of this was that the subject to whom they were administered was totally cleansed and showed no signs of having taken anything after half an hour. The downside was that during that half-hour they experienced total withdrawal.
Trent held Damien on the ground for about two minutes to make sure that the flusher had time to take effect, then released his grip and sat up. Damien did the same. He still looked dazed, but his eyes were more focused and he seemed more attentive of his surroundings. Still, it never hurt to check. He made sure that Damien was looking him straight in the eye and said, "I need you to focus, here."
"Okay."
"Feeling clearer yet?"
Damien nodded, then rubbed a hand against the welt on his neck. "You zapped me hard."
"You tried to run."
"Can you blame me?" Through supreme effort, Damien managed to get up on his hands and knees. "I need to take a piss. And a dump." His eyes widened. "And a puke." He lurched to his feet and headed toward the bathroom, but only made it halfway there before he threw up all over the floor. "I hate those damn flushers...." He crawled the rest of the way to the bathroom and locked the door.
Without a word, Trent cleaned up the vomit scattered across the cabin floor. Then he went back into the cargo bay and did his best to salvage the contraband that was scattered across the floor. Some of the mescaline packets had burst, scattering their contents across the floor. A few of the hypos had broken and their contents had mixed with the powdery mess, which caused a nauseating odor that permeated the cargo bay. He managed to remove the filth, but he couldn't remove the smell.
While he worked, his thoughts focused on the grim undertones inherent in the mechanic's visit. The last thing he needed was a government employee of any kind rummaging through their ship's innards. As an escaped convict, it was a bad idea simply on general principle. If he or his cargo were to be discovered, he would be sent back to prison.
That was one of the reasons he'd given Damien the flusher. When Damien was clean, he was a force to be reckoned with. The two of them would be able to get through this, but not with Damien tripping. And at some deeper level, he'd administered the flusher out of spite, because he knew exactly how much hell it was going to put Damien through and he thought it was due payment for the trouble that 'bad trip' had caused.
Once Trent finished cleaning, he shoved the variety of illegal substances into his pack and headed toward the main living areas. He checked the time; it had been almost half an hour. That meant Damien would be over the worst of it. Trent walked over to the bathroom door and rapped his knuckles against it firmly.
Damien's voice carried an edge of warning as it wafted through the door. "I'm gonna be in here for a while."
"Listen. I'm gonna go out and sell some stuff. The mechanic might get here before I come back. If that happens, take care of him."
"But I've never done that before... I'm really not into that sort of thing, man. You know that. Besides, we don't have anywhere to dump the body...."
"No bodies, you idiot! Just get him off the ship. I don't care how. Just keep him away from the cargo bay and the engine room. If you screw this up, I swear I'm gonna eject you into vacuum."
* * *
Damien stepped out of the shower and pulled his clothes on even though he was still dripping wet. He was totally preoccupied with thoughts of what would happen if the mechanic arrived before Trent returned. In order to keep an eye on the mechanic, Damien knew he would have to think, to focus on reality for an undetermined amount of time. Focusing on reality had never been his strong point. He could deal with individual facts wonderfully; he could manipulate data and computer code with the grace of a magician. He could not, however, deal with people. They were not logical beings and as such, he could not understand them. When it came down to it, he couldn't even understand himself.
He wasn't fond of his helionin habit. He hated it, in fact. But it had become a vicious cycle that he could not bring back under control, despite what he considered to be significant efforts to do so. He was trapped in his body, trapped by longings that made no logical sense whatsoever but were impossible to chase away. Even now he could feel the impulse to get his fix, just one little dose, building up inside his brain. It would jump on him soon, catch him unawares like a spider-web catches a fly, and that would be that.
It might, in fact, have caught him already. Somewhere in his musings, he had begun to walk toward the cargo bay. It had been far from intentional -- purely unconscious, in fact. But the moment he realized what he was doing he froze and mentally berated himself for his weakness.
Unbidden, a question ran through his brain. What could it hurt if he just took one little dose? The answer: A hell of a lot. He'd caused enough trouble already; he couldn't afford to draw any more attention. So he wouldn't take anything. He couldn't.
He'd just look at it. No harm in looking, right?
This was how it started. He knew it. But still, he walked into the cargo bay and opened the secret compartment, just to look at it....
It wasn't there. His eyes widened as a simple fact dawned upon him: Trent had taken the cargo. Therefore, there was none left. He began to grope through the compartment bins, willing there to be something, anything, left behind. He could smell it, he could smell it everywhere... but it was gone.
Or maybe not. Trent must have missed it, but there it was, tucked away in the far corner: one last hypo, just barely within reach. After a moment's hesitation, Damien picked it up. Just to hold it, of course, not to take it. But then it was too late, because his body was on autopilot and the hypo was headed straight for one of his veins and he was going to get in so much trouble for this because the mechanic would find out and Trent would kill him....
A loud buzzing sound echoed through the ship and startled Damien so much that he nearly dropped the hypo. He sighed with relief as he realized that it was the doorbell, which meant someone wanted to be let through the main hatch. He slammed the compartment shut and jammed the unused hypo into his pocket. He wouldn't take it now. He'd save it for later. Later was good.
He headed for the hatch at a brisk jog, all smiles at his partial triumph. That smile quickly disappeared, however, when he arrived at the hatchway. An obese woman was staring at the thick one-way glass of the round window in the center of the hatch, as if she thought she would be able to see through it to the occupants inside if she stared long enough.
Damien opened the hatch and gaped at her in bemusement. "Who are you?"
The woman gestured to the large tool-belt around her waist as if it were self-evident. "I'm the mechanic. Now where'd you say your problem was, again?"
"The, uhh, the stabilizers.... Are you sure you're the mechanic?"
In response, the woman waved what Damien assumed was a government-issued ID in his face. "Fran Lebowitz. Government Certified Mechanic. Any more questions?"
Damien shook his head.
"Are you going to let me inside or what?"
Damien stepped out of the way and motioned for her to enter the ship. As she stepped onboard, her heavy tread seemed to echo through the whole ship. She walked into the center of the room and perused the decor with a critical eye. "Not much of a ship, is it?"
Damien shrugged. "It always suited me fine."
Fran sniffed loudly and resumed her critique of the ship. "Looks pretty junked up to me. Old model, too. Looks kind of like the ship Captain Plasma had in 'Pirates of the Universal Meridian'."
"Yeah?" Damien didn't think it looked anything like the ship she'd mentioned at all, but he wasn't about to disagree with her.
Fran raised an eyebrow. "Don't you think?"
"Maybe."
"It has the same furniture and everything." She cocked her head to the side. "You look kind of nervous. Well, calm down, flyboy. It's not like you're paying me by the hour or anything."
Damien's eyes widened. "Pay?"
Fran rolled her eyes. "Ahh, relax. It's just a standard government fee. Pretty low, really, considering the parts that'll probably be involved."
Damien's mind whirled at the double-blow of the words 'government' and 'fee' being thrown into the same sentence. Money was something he and Trent could ill afford to lose at the moment. He managed to conceal his distress, however, and nodded vapidly in response to Fran's comment.
"The engine room is this way, right?"
Fran gestured down an ominously dark corridor. It led to the engine room, alright, and Trent had expressly forbidden Damien to enter it. Damien could no longer remember the particulars, but he knew it had something to do with the time he had decided it would be a good idea to set up a makeshift helionin distillery right beside the cooling rods.
Damien pointed toward the corridor that led to the life support technology. "Nope. The engine room is down that way."
"You sure?" Fran asked, squinting down the corridor in suspicion.
"I've been living on this ship for two years now. I should know where the engine room is." Damien grinned disarmingly; he knew it would add a high level of potency to his comment. It was a skill he had perfected many years ago. Under the right circumstances, a disarming smile could be a powerful weapon.
Fran shrugged. "Okay... it's your ship."
Damien led the way down the corridor, walking as slowly as possible. The longer he could delay Fran's discovery of his deception, the better. He had a plan, now... or at least, he planned to have one when the opportunity to enact it arose. He preferred spur-of-the-moment plans to premeditated ones. In his experience, they were more effective.
"Right this way," Damien said, motioning to the room that that contained various air conditioning apparatuses. He hurried her inside and leaned against the doorway in a falsely casual pose. "So... what seems to be the problem?"
Fran gave a sweeping glance at the room and turned back to Damien, frustration etched on her features. "Well, for starters, this isn't the engine room."
"What?"
"It's the life support chamber."
Damien widened his eyes in a portrayal of innocence. "Really? I could have sworn it was the engine room."
Fran crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow at him calculatingly. "What are you up to?"
Damien was cornered; he had to think of something fast. And Trent had said that he should do anything to keep Fran from looking at the engine room.... He took a deep breath, stepped forward and swept Fran up into a rough, passionate kiss. At the same time, he surreptitiously pulled the hypo out of his pocket. He was probably going to regret this for the rest of his sober life. But it was a spur-of-the-moment plan, and a good one at that, so everything would work out in the end.
Maybe.
The problem was, he had only planned the kiss as a distraction so he could inject her with the helionin. He had never expected her to like it.
* * *
As Trent stepped onto the ship, he was struck by the sheer quiet that seemed to emanate from the walls. It was unnatural. It was dangerous. His eyes shifted warily from side to side, searching for any signs of trouble. "Damien?"
No response.
"You got rid of the mechanic, right?"
Still nothing.
Trent checked the engine room. No one was there. There was no one in the cargo bay, the kitchen, the main cabins or the cockpit... even Damien's room was empty. Finally, there was only one room left for him to check: his own bedroom. He walked toward it, trepidation slowing his every step. There was no one in there... there couldn't, shouldn't be anyone in there.
When he could stand it no longer, he flung open the door. His eyes were greeted with the sight of a naked pile of flesh.
Damien looked up in shock. His face was red, presumably due to a mixture of exertion and embarrassment. His lean form was dwarfed by the gargantuan folds of the woman beneath him. She stared up at Trent with all the lucidity of a sedated cow and mumbled something to illustrate her confusion.
Trent clapped a hand over his eyes, then dragged it down over his face unable to keep himself from staring at the nude figures. He was stunned beyond all clarity. This was too much for words. This was too much, period.
"Uhm... Damien...." Trent started to make a comment, but lost his train of thought almost immediately. It took five more seconds for his brain to jumpstart him into coherence. "I'll just wait outside, then. Talk to me when you're... finished." He spun around and walked out the door, feeling as if he'd just witnessed a multiple spaceship collision.
A few minutes later Damien came out of the bedroom, zipping up his pants. "I can explain."
Those three simple words unleashed a torrent of pent-up emotions in Trent. He could feel the blood pounding in his face as he snarled, "You'd sure as hell better be able to explain. You were boffing some woman..."
"She's the mechanic."
"What?"
"You heard me."
Trent was stared at Damien, completely aghast. "You were boffing the mechanic? In my room? On my bed?"
"Mine's too small, she would've fallen off. She was about to figure out that we'd lied, man. I had to do something."
Trent sat down on a chair and buried his head in his hands. "How are we going to fix this?"
He could hear the scoot of a chair as Damien moved it to a space across from him and sat down. "What do you mean, fix it?"
Trent removed his hands and stared at Damien with disgust. "What do you think I mean? This is a huge pile of shit you've gotten us into!"
Damien sat in the chair the wrong way, arms poised on the top of the backrest, legs splayed to either side. He had an impish smile on his face.
Trent's eyes narrowed. "You didn't tell me something."
Damien touched his nose. His grin widened. "I shot her up with helionin."
"You what?"
"I gave her a pretty strong dose... kinda overcompensated for her weight, I think. She's not really as heavy as she looks, you know...."
"Get to the point!"
"She's sleeping it off now. When she wakes up, she won't remember anything."
"Is she still naked in there?"
"Yeah."
"She'll figure out what happened pretty quickly if she wakes up like that."
"So we get her dressed and stash her on the couch. We can manage it, no big deal. She should be out cold for at least another hour."
Much as Trent hated to admit it, Damien hadn't done as badly as he'd initially thought. The situation was salvageable... awkward as hell, but salvageable. "Alright. I'll help you get her dressed and haul her out here, but you're going to get rid of her when she wakes up."
"Believe me, I have no problem with that." Damien shuddered. "I can't believe I made it through that without taking something. She never gave me a chance, though, she was all over me. She ripped my clothes off, and then...."
Trent clapped his hands over his ears. "Too much information!"
Damien smirked. "I never knew you were such a prude. I hadn't even gotten to the part where she ripped her clothes off yet."
* * *
Damien slumped in his seat and stared at Fran's sleeping body listlessly. It had taken him and Trent the better part of thirty minutes just to force her clothes back on. That wasn't what had put him in a foul mood, though. It was the waiting. Damien wasn't very good at it and Trent had left him with little else to do. He had tinkered around with his computer for a bit, but that had fast proven uninteresting.
After a while, Fran's eyelids began to flutter. Damien straightened up in his seat and stared at her expectantly. She moaned and tried to roll over, but that proved to be difficult due to the position Damien and Trent had put her in when they dumped on the couch. Her eyes opened and she looked at Damien blearily. "What happened?"
"I'm not sure... you passed out just after you finished working on the stabilizers."
Fran's eyes widened. "I did?"
Damien nodded. "It must have been stress. Stress can do strange things to a person." He leaned forward in his chair. "You should probably rest for awhile."
"I can't, I have another appointment at three...."
Damien looked over at the clock; it was almost five. "Sorry, but it looks like you missed it.... You were out for a long time."
Fran's eyes widened in alarm. "Oh, shit, my boss is gonna kill me."
"Just explain to him what happened and see if he won't let you off easy this time. Maybe you should see a doctor about this stress thing."
"I don't have a stress thing."
"Are you sure? It never hurts to check."
"Just leave me alone, OK?" Fran stood up and looked around to get her bearings. "I need to go, now."
"I'll show you to the door."
"I want to look my work over first, though. If I screwed this up somehow...."
"Believe me, you did a very good job."
After a few more minutes of arguing, Damien convinced her it would be safe to go. He muttered a quick prayer of thanks when she walked onto the landing platform, then headed toward the laundry room. Trent had sequestered himself there and was doing his laundry with a vigor Damien had never seen before.
Damien slumped against the wall next to the washing machine and let out a long sigh.
Trent glanced toward him. "So she's gone, then?"
"She's gone."
"Thank God."
Damien frowned in confusion. "I thought you were agnostic."
"I am."
Damien couldn't conceal a snort of laughter, but Trent's stern glare kept him from continuing on in the same pattern. He cleared his throat in an attempt to regain his composure and asked, "So, when are we getting out of here?"
"As soon as they send us confirmation that we can leave."
"And that'll be...?"
"Sometime in the next 24 hours."
Damien clambered into a seated position on top of the washing machine and tilted his head to the side curiously. "So, how'd it go?"
"What?"
"The deal. How'd it go?"
"Oh. That." Trent shrugged. "It went fine."
Damien put on his pouty puppy-dog expression. "Aw, c'mon. 'Fine' could mean anything."
Trent gestured toward the far corner of the room. "Check the pack."
Damien leapt off the washer and picked up the backpack, then opened it with a flourish. He reached inside and pulled out a wad of credit chips. He added up the total in his mind, then let out a long, low whistle. "Not bad."
"Some of it's been pretty scarce on the market lately. I was able to drive up the prices."
Damien's elation turned to panic as he realized that there was nothing but credit chips left in the pack. "Oh, no, you didn't... you didn't sell all of it, did you?"
Trent's expression darkened. "I needed to sell all of it. You know that." He cast a suspicious glance in Damien's direction. "Don't you?"
"Yeah, but... couldn't you have kept a little anyway?" Damien whined.
"I figured you had some stashed on the ship. Especially after you drugged out the mechanic."
"Are you kidding me? I never keep stuff stashed when we have it in the cargo bay."
"Then how'd you drug the mechanic?"
"You left one."
"No I didn't."
"Yes. You did. It was stuck in the back of the compartment. You wouldn't have noticed it unless you were looking for it."
Trent glowered at Damien sternly. "If you're lying to me, so help me I'll...."
"Do you think I'd lie to you about something like this? We need to get some of that helionin back now." He knew he was being unreasonable, but he couldn't help it. "Do you realize what's going to happen if I don't get my fix soon?"
Trent just gave him a stern look. "When I first met you, you were one of the smartest guys I'd ever known. You had a real head for numbers, you were great with computers... hell, I couldn't believe they'd managed to catch you long enough to indict you. But now...." He shook his head. "Now you're just like one of those junkies I sell to on the street. All you care about now is your damned fix. Do you realize that?"
Try as he might, Damien could think of nothing to say that would refute Trent's accusation.
"Well, I'm sick of it. If you want to keep using, go right ahead. But you're not doing it on my ship. If you want your precious drugs, you're gonna have to go out and get them yourself. And I won't be here when you come back."
Damien leaned back and stared up at the ceiling, face twisted up into a grimace. "You're asking for an awful lot here, Trent. I'm not sure I can."
"Look. You're clean. I gave you the flushers. You're clean. There's nothing in your system, withdrawal's over, we don't have anything on the ship... and we're heading out as soon as we can. If you can make it through the next 24 hours, you'll be okay."
Damien closed his eyes and ran his tongue across his teeth. After a moment of hard consideration, he looked Trent straight in the eye. "Alright... I'll try. But I'm not promising anything."
The right-hand corner of Trent's mouth twisted up into a half-smile. "That's all I needed to hear, D. That's all I needed to hear." And, with that said, he punched Damien in the jaw.
By the time Damien was lucid again, he was lying on Trent's bedroom floor. He sat up and rubbed his chin, staring at Trent indignantly. "What'd you do that for?"
Trent shrugged. "Sorry, D. I trust you... but not this much." He stepped out of the room and closed the door. Damien leapt to his feet and tried to open it, but it was locked.
"Trent! Let me out of here right now!"
Trent's voice echoed through the door; it seemed almost jovial. "No can do. This is your first step on the road to recovery, and I'll be damned before I let you screw it up. That's the one room on the ship that I know you haven't planted anything in."
"I told you, I never--"
"Keep drugs around when we've got 'em in the cargo bay? Sorry. Not gonna risk it."
"But you're gonna need clothes...."
"Why do you think I've been doing my laundry?"
"And I'll need food...."
"Don't worry, you won't starve."
"If you leave me here, I'll... I'll pee on your pillows!"
"Tough luck. You're the one who'll have to sleep on 'em." Trent laughed. "Don't forget: you agreed to try. I'm just making sure you don't fail."
Damien let out an incoherent growl and flopped down on the bed like a petulant child. If he'd known this was the first step on the road to recovery, he would have punched Trent right back.