I was falling to my death, and all I could think about was how much I hated my clone-father. I'd managed to get my feet underneath me but landing on my feet wouldn't save me from a fifty-foot ten gee fall. The smooth surface of the acceleration couches lining the walkway of my shuttle left me nothing to grab. I only cracked my fingers and pushed myself closer to the middle of the aisle.
Moments before I splattered across the back wall of the passenger bay, an acceleration couch opened up beneath me. It slammed into my side. Ribs cracked. I screamed from pain and terror as I spun around, smashing the side of my head on another couch, catching my ankle in the metal grip of the couch's hinge. Red spangled with black and white static filled my vision, and my scream became a shriek when my hip popped from its socket.
A vise clamped onto my other ankle, and the cool slime of acceleration gel slipped down the pants of my dress uniform. Inch by inch the wall beneath me pulled away, and a clamp worked its way up my leg. Red and black washed across my vision, and I couldn't breathe. A steel bar slipped around my belly and pulled me back into the confines of a warmed acceleration couch. The couch slid shut around me, cutting off the light. Before I could recover from my fall, the tiny space started to fill with more cold, slimy gel.
"Empress on an EVA! I just..." my impending rant about my ruined dress uniform cut off at the twitch of the body beside me. The reason I'd been out of my seat when the shuttle took off like the 'Sects were after it slammed back to the forefront of my mind, overriding the pain of my dislocated hip, shocking me into sudden clarity despite the growing lump on my head. I'd been rescued from death by deceleration trauma by none other than my creepy stalker.
"Just breathe normally, and don't panic." That tore it. To die for baritone or not, no way I was going to let this guy have his way with me without a fight.
Close combat training for Cadets doesn't officially start until we're sixteen years old, but that doesn't mean we aren't prepped before then. Calisthenics, weightlifting, acrobatics, even dance had its place in training, and the memories my clone-father stuck in my head showed me how each of those long-practiced moves could be used. In rapid succession I elbowed my stalker in the ribs, brought my other elbow down on his arm where it wrapped around me, and used both hands to pry his pinky back until I felt it give way. Just about then the accel gel washed over my torso, pinning my hands and arms in place as it solidified.
I gulped for air before it reached my face. I'd been trained for this; school ships are never supposed to do high G maneuvers, but the Imperial military takes nothing for granted. I was supposed to breathe it in, let it fill my lungs, where my essie would extract the oxygen from it to keep me alive and conscious. Supposedly, it would even stay liquid inside me, making extraction that much simpler.
I'd never managed to breathe the stuff in during training, and now, with panic the only thing keeping the pain of my dislocated hip at bay, I fell back on old habits, gulping air right up until the moment the slimy stuff covered my face, then clamping my lips shut. Pressure forced some of the gel into my nose, but I spent a little of my precious air keeping my nostrils clear of slime.
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The accel gel filled the confined space of the couch. The moment it did, it thickened. It's possible to fight in accel gel, even when it's thickened, but it's entirely a thing of leverage and main strength; you can't move fast enough to damage someone by swinging at them. I leaned on his finger, hoping to keep him distracted.
Cut that out! It hurts! I froze. Creepy stalker guy's finger slipped from my grip as his voice rang through my head. My stalker was a telepath.
"Flaming Clutter!" The words were out of my mouth before I could think, wasting precious air and filling my mouth with chunks of solidified accel gel. I twisted, trying to find some way to get leverage... I tried to twist, but the accel gel held me like set ferro-crete. This stuff wasn't the juvie accel gel I'd trained with; it was Imperial Marine accel gel. Not only was it holding me paralyzed for Creepy Stalker Guy, it also wasn’t buoyancy neutral for me. I was gradually sliding away from him as gee forces pushed me sideways through the dense gel.
Creepy Stalker Guy's arm still circled my waist, cutting into my stomach, but I slipped away inch by inch anyway. He tried to keep me next to him, and all I could do was wriggle my hips, trying to get out of his clutches. For the first time in my life I thanked my long dead clone-father for my wasp waist. My attacker lost his grip on me, and I oozed away from him completely. A moment later gee forces squashed me against the side of the couch. I managed to hold myself rigid for a few seconds before the gel forced the air from my lungs.
I gulped at the air, trying desperately to get even a little oxygen back in my lungs. Instead I got chunks of solidified accel gel mixed with the air I'd just breathed out. Little spots flashed before my eyes as my struggles burned up the little oxygen I had left.
Of course, my essie chose that exact moment to start fixing the damage I'd done to myself in my fall. My lower body tingled, and my waist twisted of its own accord. Despite my essie's best efforts, I screamed again when my hip popped back into its socket. The last of my air rushed from my lungs, churning the gel around my face into a frothy mess. I couldn't see, couldn't breathe, couldn't even talk.
Lights sparkled across the darkness, my brain playing tricks on me as it ran out of oxygen. I tried to scrabble my fingers along the inner surface of the couch, hoping I'd come to rest near the manual emergency controls. If I could open the couch I could breathe. Even a light switch would let me see what Creepy Stalker Guy was up to.
The sparkly lights got dimmer. I gave one last, feeble thrash against the weight of the gel. It was no use. I went limp, the gel squashing me against the padded side of the couch.
Without warning, the crushing weight of the gel lifted. I tried to suck in a breath, and only got another mouthful of half solidified gel for my trouble, the chunky stuff making me gag as it lodged in my windpipe. Something was happening. The shuttle was about to do something, but my tortured brain couldn't remember what.
My clone-father's memories washed over me again. Acceleration, weightlessness, deceleration, a pattern repeated thousands upon thousands of times. The weightlessness only lasted long enough to do something... something with the drive systems. My inherited memories sparkled as badly as anything else, now. I came back to myself just in time to feel the gel shove me against something warm and hard. Whatever it was, it wrapped itself around me, trapping me as the sparks in my vision faded with my consciousness.