6. If you look too long to the depth…
Dan slipped in and out of consciousness. A moment he saw a dead body deformed and floating by it, the next darkness, then again, a moment…
Dan slipped in and out of consciousness. A moment he saw a dead body deformed and floating by it, the next darkness, then again, a moment of Ava holding him and pulling, her scent reminded him of a few years spent on a planet before this ship, maybe a spring flowering. Though his mind slipped again as an undecipherable shouting reached them.
Coming to senses again to look to Ava’s eyes closely, instead of the coldness he saw darkness now. A darkness that was somehow flowing like a light breeze moves the dark sea against the climbing sun, then the darkness just enveloped him as he fall down to it rapidly.
Next moment he woke up with pain, laying in a bed, feeling two straps around his body loosely holding him down. His side in pain, slow to think and move, around him the room was as busy as a mall on Saturday evening. People flowing in from one direction, a few who seemed to be examining them then directing their move to other ways or pulling those who are seriously injured to a bed. A muffled scream pulled Dan’s look to his right, a guy being operated in zero-g without painkillers or anesthetics, just a cloth in his mouth to block him from biting down his own tongue.
Ava floated gently to him from a corner where she waited so far out of sight, out of way,
- “The docs stabilized your bleeding for now” — Dan could not form any words yet, still fixated on the desperate scene — “But you won’t heal without gravity”
Dan knew, he lived out here on the ship for years, one of the basics everyone learns from first safety instructions then sees countless times, a smallest of injuries with internal bleedings can just be stabilized for a while without healing as the body needs gravity to drain and to have proper blood clotting.
- “How long was I out?”
- “Roughly an hour, we pulled you here with the messenger’s help, if he does not come to our way, we would have no chance to find the docs” — Ava’s dry monologue though conveyed caring words, was devoid of emotions.
- “Any news from the crew? What happened to the ship?” — Dan still too dizzy to pay too much attention beside the words of Ava
- “Nothing, I would assume some explosion, the deceleration must have been a surprise to everyone, none of the comms work, the docs said they send out the able to act as messengers and try to get injured survivors and necessary supplies here”
As a small gurgling pulled Dan’s look back to the unfortunate guy under operation, the doc just confirmed death and moved away, he spotted the fish tattoo on his neck.
- “Shit!” — slipped from Dan’s half open mouth
- “A dozen died at least while we are here”
- “Not about that, help me a bit” — Dan frantically opened his strap
Ava had no idea what Dan meant so just observed him air-jumping to the dead guy, pulling his own data port out and connecting to him.
- “This guy tried to kill me before the accident, I need to get some info before his connection decomposes. I have a few seconds only. Ava! Count to 10 and pull out my port if I don’t do anything!” — and with that Dan’s grace faded as he focused to the data connection.
He avoided this at any other circumstances due to the immense risk of brain damage, feedback from the decomposing connection can fry his own dataport and that would be unfortunate result for a data broker like him. He hoped Ava can be trusted, as she already saved him instead of just leaving his unconscious butt in the corridors. Even if not, he had to risk it.
These data connections are like child’s game, you just think of what you want or need and the system interprets the intent, if someone has a more expensive port, it may check for actual access rights, not just give out anything to anyone, or fun extra features like secondary chips containing your ID and will for the authorities to recover. On-the-market data ports block connections close to brain death, but this guy had a black market one with no such protections. Dan was copying files as quickly as he could, the data port got a bit warm too after a second. Then the flow of data decreased to almost a halt and Dan was looking into the darkness again. As its waves now targeted him, getting closer and washing away his body from the beach, losing his firm standing in the ensuing storm.
Then the whole thing stopped and he was again back in the bustling infirmary, Ava pulled the connection, even a bit earlier. They stared into each other, eyes locked for moments. In the meantime, Dan’s data port analyzed and summarized the data and put to his eyesight, though only in his mind, the results:
- Downloaded fifty gigabytes, forty percent unencrypted footage from the last 24 hours
- Met with 6 people, 2 unidentified as they had anonymizing tech, remaining are …
The list of names were unfamiliar for Dan except Fred, as he was in the list, due to the fight. Dan focused on his follow up questions and the system interpreted the intent again, printing the info, each of the people’s first time this guy met and related low-quality footage. Fred’s timestamp stood out for Dan immediately, as it was 18 hours earlier then it should be so he looked into the footage for a few seconds:
- “Okey, deal, but you can’t hurt him!” — Fred said into the camera directly.
- “Deal, here is your scoop. Enjoy.” — The sound was weird as it wrapped around in his head, still he recognized it as the leader of the thugs he had dealings earlier.
So Fred sold me out for drugs, great — Dan drew the conclusion quickly, he knew his friend had some problems lately this still hurt him to the core. Ava grabbed his shoulders:
- “We can’t stay here”
- “Yeah, but where to go?” — Dan recognized the place Fred and the thug were talking, down in the docks, not a place he wanted to visit this time.
- “You have a data port, can you control the ship systems with it?”
- “Worked in the docks, may still have access to some of the low level systems”
- “Good enough for a start” — and she pushed him toward the exit — “Let’s find a working control panel”
