Pandora's Chase

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chase and Paira counted to twenty-four before they lost track of the days while locked in Chase's bunk. They shared a bathroom and he gave Paira use of the bed. Though Braider did give extra blankets, so that was something. A couple scrawny meals a day were passed to them through a small opening on the floor to the right of the door. They were quickly deteriorating and needed to walk around and have something to do other than talk and tell stories while playing cards. They played so many games of two-handed spades and euchre, which didn't work too well, that the edges of the cards frayed. They even ventured into team solitaire, which immediately lost its luster.

With the less than adequate meals, Chase assumed Braider was attempting to weaken him. It was a smart plan only if Chase were too shy to workout in front of Paira. The harshness of space life had been grinding shyness away the day he left his small town on Earth.

It surprised Paira to learn Chase had been working out the whole time he was with her crew. He walked her through his daily regimen of sit ups, push-ups, and other exercises fit for closely confined quarters. She added some of her favorites and they even started using the doorway to the bathroom for pull-ups, though the lip of the door header was quite painful.

Two more weeks had gone by and nearly three hours of each of those days they used for working out and the rest for scheming about how they might take out Braider's crew. It was tough with the limited food. Their energy was low, so they needed to summon a willpower to muscle out the workouts. However, they did manage to workout everyday though.

They lost weight from the workouts and malnutrition, but Chase noticed his body managed to gain muscle in exchange for the fat loss. If it were Braider's intention to starve them to weaken them, it would look that way but Chase felt lean and strong instead.

Their time together in the bunk abruptly ended one day when the steel door to the room rang out with a loud bang. The handle rotated and the door swung open and there were Braider and Tommy towering over them. Tommy was holding a large wrench. He was the kind of person that would bang on a steel door with a wrench to torture the people inside.

Chase and Paira had just finished stretching and were thankful they were not seen working out. Any surprise of their strength and well-being to Braider's crew would be a great advantage. They did their best to look slim and weak inside their stretched out clothing. That was Paira's idea. Their faces had slimmed a noticeable amount, and that was easily mistaken for the lack of nutrition. Braider, and certainly Tommy, had no suspicions.

Chase and Paira were on the floor facing each other with knees bent upward and perched against cots with playing cards scattered all over the floor. They did well to look skinny and starving. Playing the part to perfection they looked weak. They both calmly turned their heads and looked up, displaying a lack of energy to even talk first.

"Do you want to stay in here or be allowed to walk about?" Braider asked.

"Walk about please." Chase's voice cracked a little, making him cough.

Paira looked at him funny, and they both laughed deliriously, which made them laugh even more, which put them into a laughing fit that cramped Chase's side, sending him to the floor. They really were delirious. Spending weeks on end in the same room with someone had this effect.

"Enough!" Braider shouted, and like two scolded kids, Chase and Paira donned straight faces and held their breath. They should not have looked at each other right then. It only sent them back into another laughing fit. It might have been pure jubilation for the coming release from the bunk, but they thoroughly enjoyed this moment. Especially when Chase straightened his face and said seriously, "Enough!", acting as if he were Braider. It sent Paira spiraling down into an abyss of laughter.

Braider was irate. "Get him up!" he yelled at Tommy, pointing at Chase, who was seemingly losing his mind on the floor. Tommy grabbed Chase's shirt at the collar and dragged him up to a standing position. Chase continued to laugh, and this aggravated Tommy so much he slapped Chase across the face.

This did not have the effect Tommy may have been looking for. It didn't command Chase's obedience. Instead, the slap sent his mind to his family, to his brother, to the people of Earth. For weeks his mind had hungered for nutrition and somewhere along the way he lost his sense of urgency. The slap only woke him up.

Chase smiled at Tommy and brushed the grip he had on Chase's shirt aside with his right arm and then swung the backside of his hand, connecting it perfectly on Tommy's right cheek. Tommy reacted as if he were revving up to slug Chase in the face, but Chase beat him to it with another regular slap, his left palm this time, but with more force. This second slap kept Tommy from retaliating, but he still stood tall in front of Chase. He could almost see Tommy considering a next move. Then he thought of how Tommy had Paira up against the wall the day they left Esandrea.

Chase slapped Tommy again as hard as he could. Paira chortled. This last slap across the face put Tommy in a place that left him with no respect from anyone. Not even self-respect. He could only look to the ground.

The Chase on Earth would never in a million years have conducted such a feat of emasculating a man like this. But Chase in space was quickly learning how things had to go if he were to survive.

Tommy took a step back and raised his hands in forfeit. "All right."

"Well wasn't that just wonderful?" Braider said, waving a gun. "Chase," he said, "don't forget that I will shoot her if you don't help me."

"Yeah," Chase said, sitting down on the bed, as if he weren't threatened at all by the situation. "I understand. What do you want?"

Braider offered Chase the map. "Show me how this works and you'll be allowed out to walk around today. Any muckin' about, and she'll be sent out to sail on her own in the cold and dark, got it?"

Chase and Paira both nodded in acceptance.

"Get cleaned up and meet us in the mess hall." Braider left, followed by Tommy, leaving the door open.

Chase and Paira took turns cleaning up in the bathroom and headed to the mess hall. There they received some rather tattered food. It wasn't much better than what they'd had for the last couple of weeks, but it was a larger serving and had bread to go with it, so that was something.

After Scrat slammed their dinner trays on the table, he walked back over to the kitchen area of the mess. He scowled at Lendar sitting at the end of the table, cleaning his gun. "Ya know, you could help out with some of the chores 'round here."

"That wasn't part of the deal," he said, never taking his eyes off his gun. "I don't do chores. I make sure the job is done." He glared at Chase.

"Yeah, well, we might have to renegotiate the terms soon. Get you on sanitation crew," Tommy said as he threw some dishes into the sink.

"I'm never doing that again," Lendar said, continuing his focus on his gun. That's when Chase realized that the gun he was cleaning was his. The gun his father had given him.