Bless Me On My Way - English Edition by dublinertinte (each kindness read aloud txt) 📖

Jack to where he belongs.”
Bessinger’s voice was still loud and hard, and Rachel understood suddenly.
“There must be something I can do to take me on board. I’ll do what you want, as long I can stay with him.”
Bessinger slapped her. She hit her with the palm of her hand, her face flushed and she trembled backwards, tears in her eyes. Rachel had never been hit and she was shocked. Not because of the pain that numbed her face, but the fact that one woman beat her without a reason.
“You can beat me up if you want”, she said, wiping the tears away and cleaning her throat, “but I will not leave Jack alone.”
Bessinger received a signal, reacted frantically and put her helmet on again. She could have left Rachel alone and disappear, but she did not.
“If we take you with us”, she said, her voice sounded hollow and strange under the helmet, “there is no way back for you. You don’t have the time to think about it. You step into the glider and you’ll never return to your forest. Make up your mind.”
They went up to the glider, a run-down vehicle gives places for a half a dozen men. Rachel went inside without hesitation, took a seat and did not even looked around. She was not interested in the technology around her, she just stared at Jack, who was in the stretcher, surrounded by life-support equipment. She had never seen such things, but she knew that everything was fine as long as the devices making the noises. She went dizzy as the glider took off and she swallowed the sudden nausea. She would have liked one last look at the woods, but there were no windows in the glider. No one spoke to her and no one told her what would happen next.
“Rachel”, said Bessinger when they left the glider and entered the station, which was so big that Rachel even did not noticed it as a ship, “what I’m telling you now I will not repeat. This is a single offer and we will not discuss about it. I am the commander of the station and you do what I say. If you want to stay on board, you only have one possibility. If you reject the offer, we will bring you down into the woods and that its. I did say that you will not see your forest again, but I wanted to see how far you’d go. You can only stay on board if you join the fleet. As a soldier you can stay, not as a civilian.”
Rachel cried. She knew the consequences of her decision she had already made a few hours ago. She nodded, raised her bandaged hands when Bessinger started to explain what her life would be as a soldier.
“I don’t want to know what I have to expect”, she said, “I will know soon enough. I am not prepared for this. And I agree to all conditions.”
Bessinger took her to a booth, gave her the gear and told her to get dressed and keep ready. Rachel looked around, felt again the pressure of the small room and thought: Get used to it. You are in a spaceship.
She dressed quickly, put her old clothes neatly on the bed. At the cabin door she heard a nasty noise (she was not accustomed to electronic noises) and the door opened. One of the soldiers came in to take her to the next task.
“If I lose my way”, said Rachel, “is there a trick how to find my way again?”
“You’re not supposed to run around alone. What do you think where you are? On a pleasure boat?”
She decided to stop asking questions.
After further instructions and long procedures, she met Roger, who said that it was a pity about her long hair. They had shaved her head and treated her with antiseptic which made her feel so sick that she vomited. She did not apologize for it.
Roger was the first man on board who treated her kindly, he offered her a cup of tea and asked “Did you see him?”
She shook her head.
“I did not ask to see him. Every time I ask something I am told that I should not ask questions as a private. I do not even really know what a private is and what I have to do here.”
“Take your tea and I’ll take you to him.”
The tea was added with a little bit of sugar and contained bitterness and Rachel still only tasted the Styrofoam cup.
If everything tastes like this I’ll starve

, she thought.

The hospital was on a different level on the ship which they reached with the automatic elevators. Roger told her some details about the ship and why they circled in the orbit of this little unimportant planet instead of searching new worlds.
Jack was not the only patient on the ward, but he was the only one who was under an oxygen tube, surrounded by medical equipment and devices. In the neon light he looked pale as the death, the wounds were treated and bonded and he slept in a daze.
“We have taken good care of him”, said Roger, “and we hope he will make it. I never thought that we would ever see him again after he was gone for so long.”
“Can I stay with him for a moment?”
She had the feeling that she had not seem him for months and felt the tears again in her eyes. She swallowed hard a few times and was very grateful as Roger said: “Do you mind if I keep your company?”
Roger organized two folding chairs and set down right next to Jack.
“Can he hear us?”
“Probably not”, said Roger, “but as soon as the Doc will wake him, you can tell him that you’ve been with him.”
“Did you talk to the doctor?”
Roger grinned and moved his head.
“The doc is the computer”, he said, “he is supervising him day and night and will let him wake up if he is better.”
“A machine?” Rachel made almost the suggestion that she could stay with Jack and take care of him, but she understood the advantage of a machine.
“Tell me how Jack came to you”, Roger said.
She made a few words about it, told that he had worked as the blacksmith and that he had had some bad dreams.
We never asked where he came from”, she said, “this is not usual for us. There are always men from the mines coming to us. If they adapt, they stay.” She looked over to Jack. “When the Tusk attached he went into the dome and directed the attack upon himself. He did this only for us. Why don’t you let us return as soon he is fine again?”
Roger explained that would break the rules. The computer monitoring Jacks conditions changed the rhythm of the respirator and varied the supply of drugs. Roger paused for a moment. He could not tell Rachel about Jacks past. They both came from a planet from Rachel had probably never heard of. The children who were born there grew up in a supra-national organization because they had no parents who could care for them. It was a category five planet where they housed the part of the population they wanted to get rid of. The children paid for the deeds of their parents and the organization was originated to the military. The only sensible thing that could make such children were soldiers. Jack was one of those who understood and coped with every situation, but he took the advantage of every situation to turn his own thing. Sometimes he had tried to escape, sometimes he had started clandestine operations that almost broke his neck. But he was unbeatable as a co-commander. He was appointed everywhere and always brought back the boys, no matter how critical the situation was. He was born to fight. There would be no other life for him until his final breath.
“He should have known that they kill him in the dome, right? Why didn’t he save himself?”
“He is trained to save others”, said Roger, “and in extreme cases it excludes himself.”

Rachel was treated very tough on the first days on the ship, she received a hard training and Roger was in charge for her fitness training to prepare her for the hyenas operations. Shaving her head was just the beginning.
“She’s not tough enough”, said Bessinger, “it will take two more days and she will be on her knees to bring her down into the forest.”
“She will make it. Finally, she knows this is the only way to stay here.”
“Bloody hell”, swore Bessinger, “I have to explain even the toilet to her. She gets panic attacks when she’s in a room where she can see both sides of the walls, which means that she is going from one panic attack into the other. I don’t know how it will go on.”
Roger was patient with Rachel because he knew that everything was new and strange to her. He saw it as an opportunity to shape a recruit as he wanted him. Rachel was the perfect raw material and he formed her. Within two months she performed perfectly in the way he wanted her. She controlled the weapons and the equipment. They turned her from a panicky girl into a weapon.
“I get my period no longer”, she said during the short lunch break.
“This is due to the drugs, Bessinger already told you. It’s okay.”
“She said that women should not have children here. I would have liked to have a child down in our woods.”
“Why did it not work?”
“That can happen to us”, she said curtly.
“Women in the station are only soldiers and therefore we regulate it. It makes you stronger.”
Rachel thought about it, drank the rest of her coffee and said: “I would fight more better if I knew I have to protect a child on board.”

Now and then she asked for Jack. Roger knew that Jack was the only power to keep her going. She hoped to see him again and to work with him. Roger had not said that this would never happen.
Since three weeks Jack was back on duty as a pilot. He was not quite the same again, but he was on a good way. He did not know that Rachel was on board. He even did not ask what had become of the Ciudad or Rachel.
Roger had developed a very special interest in Rachel and although he knew that it was against the law, he used her for his purposes. During the exercises, which took partly place in the rooms without monitors, he whispered to her: “If you like, I’ll bring you news about Jack. He is still on the station, he’s getting better. I can tell him that you’re here.”
She was on the treadmill doing her daily quota, Roger checked her cardiovascular values. He stood next to the treadmill, his hands on his notes that Rachel could not read it. She stared straight ahead, running in her perfect rhythm. Only her eyes flashed once in his direction as she heard his whisper. When her routine ended, she sat on the bench and checked the values on the monitor in the opposite wall and said: “I haven’t seen him for so long. Would you tell him that I think of him every day?”
“Sure, but you have to do something for me.” He looked at her. Her female figure had disappeared during the training and due to the medications, her face had lost the soft features, but still she showed something that all other women on board had lost long time