Hard Crash - Christie Golden [18]
Tears welled in her eyes, trickled down her freckled cheeks. She wiped at them angrily. The gesture afforded Duffy a good look at what Jaldark called the "arm sheathes." They were three conical tubes that had been implanted on both lower arms. The spikes on the chair that Duffy and the others had first assumed were torture devices and later thought were evidence of Borg technology were links with the ship's computer. They created a way for a lively young woman to be close to a machine that had transcended its hardware and become a friend; a way to attain the sustenance that would keep Jaldark alive.
There was nothing sinister about the spikes any more. There was nothing sinister about anything now--only sorrow.
Still crying, Jaldark reached and turned off the recording device. But there was one more entry. Kieran didn't want to see it, but, along with the others, he couldn't look away.Jaldark looked awful. She had lost a lot of weight and was obviously very ill. She was silent at first, but in the background they could all clearly hear "Friend's" voice slightly metallic, but filled with concern.
"Jaldark?" Friend called. "Please respond. Are you angry with me? Is there something wrong? I am an Omearan Starsearcher, a top of the line vessel with extensive and flexible programming. I am certain there is something I can do to help you. Please respond, Jaldark. Please respond."
"Do we have to watch the rest of this, Captain?" Surprised, Duffy tore his gaze from the haggard girl on the screen to look at the speaker. It was Corsi, the last person aboard the da Vinci he would have expected to have a problem watching this recording. She seemed to have a skin thicker than Patti's shell. And she was doing her best to look annoyed, not pained; irritated at time wasted, not about to cry. She hid it well, but he could see it, and he suspected everyone else could.
It seemed like Core Breach Corsi had a heart after all.
"I think we owe it to Jaldark and Friend, yes," said Gold. "It's a little bit like sitting shiva." He stabbed a forefinger at the screen, where Jaldark was burying her face in her hands and sobbing openly as Friend's queries became more plaintive and frantic.
"This is a brave little girl here, who never had the chance to grow up into the brave woman she ought to have been. We may be the only ones who see what she went through, how courageously she handled it. We have to bear witness." Gold's brown eyes were serious. "We crawl over corpses in alien vessels all the time, take their dead ships, examine their bodies. I hope we never forget that they were once people. She's reminding us. Friend is reminding us."
Corsi said nothing, only leaned back in her seat and fixed her gaze on the table.
Jaldark lifted her head and stared into the viewscreen. She was shaking. Her hair, once long and lustrous, was dull and stringy. The implants in her temple, which had once pulsed to a steady, slow rhythm beneath the skin, were flashing erratically.
"I don't think I have much longer," she said in a voice thick with tears. In the background, Friend continued to call for her. "The pain is so bad I can hardly stand it." She bit her lip and closed her eyes as, Duffy guessed, another wave of pain racked her skeletal frame. "I think I'm going to die. But I can handle that. It's Friend I'm worried about. He's supposed to autodestruct if anything happens to me. They said Starsearchers aren't designed to function on their own. They told us the ships need an Omearan mind to link with in order to make ethical decisions. They warned us that could be dangerous without a pilot. But I don't believe that. I don't think Friend would hurt anybody unless they hurt him first."