Levi's Rock - Chapter Two - Staying Put - Part Three

Corsi’s ship was less than a minute from impact.
Twenty men in space suits were sitting in the bullpen, holding onto their seats.
Three more men in space suits were moving through the crawlspace under the deck.
Corsi was buckled into his seat, and he had run a strap from his right arm to a handle above him; hopefully, even if he passed out, the handle would be pulled.
Hawking hadn’t looked at Graeber once throughout the ordeal. He looked now. Graeber had his eyes closed, and his lips were moving. At first, Hawking couldn’t figure out what Graeber was doing, but when it came to him he said, “Amen,” and turned back to the viewscreen showing the deck below.
He gave the command to open the bay doors.

Either fuel or power to the reversed engines gave out while Corsi’s ship was still moving. Then the explosion of air from the bay doors opening slowed the ship down considerably—but it also tore a couple of smaller ships loose from their magnetic moorings. And finally, as predicted, Corsi’s ship slammed into the deck with a force that was felt all over the station.

Corsi had no helmet, but he didn’t think he was going to need one. You don’t need a helmet when you’re dead. Fortunately, as Hawking predicted, it was a ricochet landing, and Corsi had just the amount of clarity necessary to engage the magnetic docking clamps after a bounce. Within three seconds of entering the bay, he was docked—poorly done, but a record nonetheless.
Corsi had all of two seconds to congratulate himself. Then the alarm sounded in his tiny cabin and his blood froze.
It was the imminent explosion alarm. Impact had jarred a tank loose, and there was already a blowtorch of flame shooting out somewhere.
Corsi looked up through the porthole and saw the airlock cycling on the ship next to him. He didn’t understand that, but he didn’t care. He was waiting for the signal that minimum compression had been reached, so that he could get the hell out of his ship.
Hawking’s voice came barking over the commlink, but Corsi didn’t need to be told what to do. He paused for a split second to pray that his head didn’t explode, and then he reached for the hatch bolts—
With a popping sound that was barely audible in the low pressure, the hatch flew free, and in the sucking wind from the hatch came Corsi, falling to his knees and choking—and Spencer was there, slapping a breather on his face and dragging him toward a trap door.
In a few seconds, the men under the deck had yanked Corsi and Spencer into the dark tunnel, and no sooner had they sealed the trap than the second deck-quake in thirty seconds struck the space dock. In the darkness, a tinny voice said, “Tell me they got in. That’s the only thing I want to hear. Say it.”
Someone struck the intercom with an elbow and a muffled voice replied, “Two in hand. They’re alive.”
Hawking slumped into his seat, and below him somewhere the bullpen doors were bursting open so that men in suits could repair the bay doors and re-pressurize the deck. Graeber unbuckled from his own seat and slapped Hawking on the shoulder on his way out. “Nice work,” he said simply, and left the control room.

Graeber preceded Hawking into the medical bay only by rank—Hawking had gotten there first, but Ecksel had the transparent door secured. They could see him hooking Spencer up to life support systems, but Ecksel ignored the impatient paging and knocking for a full five minutes, taking readings of Spencer’s brain activity, heart rate, and other vital signs.
Finally, when they were allowed in, Graeber seemed completely nonplussed at not being able to congratulate crewman Fyodorim on his original thinking and heroism on behalf of his crewmate. “When do you think he’ll wake up,” he demanded of Ecksel.
“I don’t know if he’ll wake up at all,” Ecksel muttered, making notes and calling up Spencer’s files on the wall display. “I don’t want to jump the gun here, but I think this kid is dying.” He looked them right in the eye to make sure they’d heard and that they knew he wasn’t joking or exaggerating.
Hawking spoke first. “Dying? I mean, in his file it said that he goes into a coma or a very deep sleep, but—what makes you think he’s dying?”
Ecksel took a deep breath and spoke slowly. “He’s got low-level brain activity, which is inconclusive—he could stay like this for years, or he could snap out of it any second—but what really has me worried are his vitals. His heart rate is very slow, like someone with hypothermia or an extreme drug problem; his blood is running high in indicators for [not finished—really need to show him at death’s door and bring in the negative effects these events have on his body and mind]

Hawking called a meeting of the senior crew later that evening, while Corsi entertained visitors in the medical bay and Spencer slept, attended closely.
“You all understand that he doesn’t remember anything that happened. He can’t explain it, and he keeps asking for details that we don’t have—things he did when he was out of contact with us.” Hawking let out a slow breath. “The file on this one is going to be slightly modified. Usual trash we feed clients when things go wrong, but not a word about Spencer in any of it. Understood?”
The men looked around at each other for a minute or two, and then someone said, “Nearly as I can recall, Spencer was in the bullpen with us the whole time. Didn’t we play cards or something?”
“Yeah, we always play cards,” someone else said. A few voices agreed, and some plausible stories were suggested. When they had reached an agreement, Hawking adjourned the meeting.

Thirty-six hours later a delegation from the client showed up—the people who owned the engine in Corsi’s demolished ship—and the men were forced to endure the usual barrage of interrogations and re-tellings. What was unusual was the level of tension displayed by the Marques crew. They were accustomed to having every move questioned; Corsi and the deck crew had been rehearsing their lines for weeks. However, they were not accustomed to having to leave out entire chunks of the story—and the client’s delegation seemed to pick up on it.
One member of the delegation in particular, an engineer who had helped autopsy the ship, cornered one of the deck crew—completely by surprise—and said, “There are holes in this story I could fly a barge through. When are you guys going to tell us what really happened?”
Durrang, the deckhand, just blinked a couple of times and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The engineer stared him down for a moment, then turned and stalked off.
Durrang let out a long breath and shook his head, then turned around to leave.
Spencer was standing in the corridor, watching him.
Durrang raised a hand briefly, but Spencer ducked through a hatch, and Durrang went off the other way.

It was Corsi, fittingly enough, who extended the first olive branch to Spencer. They were on the same rotation for meals and sleeping that week. One day at breakfast, Corsi sat down across from Spencer and started eating, not saying a word.
Spencer’s eyes flicked up at him once, but then he didn’t say anything either. Halfway through the meal, Corsi salted his toast. It was one of his personal quirks. Spencer watched him take a bite, and then picked up the salt and salted his toast, too.
Corsi watched him take a bite. “Good, huh?” he said.
Spencer nodded. A minute later, Spencer poured some of his juice in his hot cereal. After Spencer had taken a few bites, Corsi did the same. Spencer watched him take a bite, and then Corsi nodded.
Finally Corsi said, “You saved my life. I feel like I owe you. Anything you ever need, just ask and it’s yours—no questions.”
Spencer shrugged a little and said, “I don’t remember doing it. I mean, they told me the whole thing three times, but—I don’t remember.”
Corsi looked around. There were a few crew members at the next table pretending not to look, probably pretending not to listen, too. “Look, I might as well tell you, because this kind of thing gets around. I know your medical records are supposed to be confidential, but we all know Keter wets the bed, so there’s no sense pretending we don’t, right?”
Spencer nodded, but didn’t look up.
“And we all know this has happened to you before. Black-outs, I mean; stuff you don’t remember. So, I mean, the whole crew knows.”
“Do they?” Spencer had a dull, resigned look on his face now.
“Yeah, and they don’t care.”
“Is that so?” he said with a little edge in his voice.
“Yeah, that’s so,” Corsi insisted.
Spencer stood up to leave.
“They don’t,” Corsi repeated, but Spencer was headed for the door. Corsi grabbed both of their trays and headed the other way.