Three Lives Of Mary
By
David M. Kelly
Copyright © 2016 by David M. Kelly
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead, or undead, human or extraterrestrial, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 978-0-9938890-1-1
Nemesis Press
www.nemesispress.com
Mary gasped as her legs were ripped from under her and she slammed face down into the ground. Several tendril-like vines wrapped around her arms and legs and she instinctively pulled against them. Thorn-like bristles clawed at her burnished skin as the vines coiled tighter around her, despite her struggles.
She rotated her head one hundred and eighty degrees and simultaneously reversed the movement restrictions on her joints. She was now effectively lying on her back, which she hoped would give her a better idea of what was happening.
She was only forty-three minutes into her ground survey of ST2398-5 and had seen nothing unexpected—just the ever-present vegetation they'd detected from orbit. Plant life wasn't unusual on planets inside a star's habitable zone and was typically a minor threat to her armored body. Toxicity might be a cause of concern for humans, but not Mary.
She flexed her limbs, but the leathery tendrils tightened further. Her enhanced strength meant she should have been able to break free easily, but the net of vines resisted like titanium ropes. An oily liquid dripped from the barbs onto her skin, its alloy surface hissing as it turned to powder, allowing the claws to dig deeper. Mary cursed at the damage signals she registered as pain. If she didn't free herself, she realized, it was possible the animated vegetation might actually damage her, despite how absurd that should have been.
"Ben. I'm in trouble."
Even over the SLink, there were a few seconds before he responded and Mary fought to keep the tendrils from immobilizing her further. It was impossible though. The plants swarmed around her forming a vermilion carpet and more thick vines wrapped around her chest and midsection, the acid secretions burning their way towards her vital areas.
Her skin sensors incongruously popped up a diagnostic of the liquid eating away at it. A mixture of hydrofluoric and nitric acids along with several other compounds that were logged, but would need further analysis.
"On my way." Ben sounded calm. The way he used to before they'd joined the CySap program and become an explorer team. Since then he was given to emotional outbursts on occasion, something she'd never had to deal with when they were simply an ordinary married couple.
Mary electrified her skin hoping the charge might deter the vines and it did momentarily, but after a few seconds the plants gripped her even tighter. It was enough so that she could raise herself to one knee, but couldn't lift any further, and the tendrils threatened to pull her flat again in a few seconds.
She scanned the sky looking for Ben and relaxed a little when she spotted the fast moving point in the sky. As he approached, his hull caught the feeble sun and his engines provided a dramatic halo of flickering light. He'd always been an impressive sight, she thought, even when human. It was one of the things that originally attracted her to him and right now it was especially welcome.
Mary froze the image so she could share it with him later, her confidence returning with his arrival. It will be okay now Ben's here, she thought.
"Head down, Munchkin. Step One. Save the lady."
His words were accompanied by a sliding whistle and Mary smiled. She stopped fighting the vines and curled into a tight ball, closing her optical feeds and sealing her external ports.
Ben swooped low. Flame units fanning in a wide arc that seared a broad section of the vegetation, leaving Mary in a clear charred area thirty meters across.
"And Step Two. The perfect pickup line."
Ben wolf whistled and Mary glanced around. He'd banked and turned hard, rocketing back in her direction as soon as he lined up. The plants weren't about to give in so easily though and as Ben closed they slithered across the blackened earth towards her once more. She knew there was no way he'd be able to land, pick her up, and still get away. They'd both end up trapped.
Ben throttled back until it looked like he was almost floating, like a Magellan Kestrel catching an up-draft before stooping to attack. Mary saw a bright flash from his underside. Something coiled around her mid-section and, as the first of the wave of plants reached her again, she was tugged into the air by the magnetic line Ben had shot down.
"Would you care to climb aboard, Madam? You look kind of silly dangling with your ass in the air."
"At least I still have an ass."
"True. Though my aft storage is my 'ass' and much more practi-" Ben let out a low whistle. "What the hell is that?"
Mary looked back to where she'd been trapped. The plants were now climbing on top of each other, forming an inverted cone shape that writhed and pulsed rhythmically as it weaved further into the air, stretching towards them.
"Weird, but they don't have a hope of reaching us," she said.
"That storm does."
As Ben spoke an intense electric flash ripped through the skies around them, black clouds forming almost in an instant. Wind and rain buffeted Mary and she almost slipped from the line. Coiling it around her hand, she started hauling herself up towards the hatch, fighting to see clearly through the barrage of water lashing at her.
"Just a few more seconds, Ben."
"Don't stop to see the sights, there's-"
Ben screamed as a double bolt of lightning struck him. One bolt hit on the starboard side of his streamlined fuselage, the second stabbing one of his sub-c engines.
Mary held on tight as she was whipped through the air by Ben swerving violently. The lightning must have hurt him badly to cause such wild maneuvers, she realized. The flight stabilized and she clawed frantically at the rope, knowing that he had to keep his speed down until she was safely inside.
Another bolt struck Ben and he grunted, but held his course. Mary grabbed the edge of the hatch and heaved, throwing herself bodily through the opening and thumping the button to close the hatch.
"Punch it, I'm in," she yelled and the airlock wall slammed into her back as Ben triggered maximum thrust.
For thirty agonizing seconds the decontamination sequence locked the inner door. As soon as it opened Mary sprinted through the tight corridor into the main control room. She threw herself into the acceleration chair that dominated the area, banks of glowing systems monitors forming a wall in front of it.
"What's happening?" Mary quickly glanced at a number of sensor displays, but in her panic everything seemed a jumbled blur.
"Accelerating. Altitude 11,000 and climbing. The storm is following us."
"Following? How long till we're safe?"
"Exosphere boundary in just over two minutes. We should be clear of any atmospheric phenomenon there."
Booms of thunder shook Ben's superstructure and Mary jumped in her seat. She pulled the straps tight across her body, something she rarely needed to do.
"You sure know how to impress a girl," she said.
"Twenty seconds… fifteen… ten… five…"
Mary wasn't sure later if Ben announced "zero" or not. An intense burst of light flooded the cabin and she instinctively covered her eyes. The room filled with a high-pitched sizzl
e that overloaded her audio and made her head ring. Ben lurched violently, then recovered. Seconds later the light and noise faded and Mary saw the comforting darkness of space engulf the external display screens.
"You okay?" Mary unlocked the harness and slipped out of the seat. She checked herself and fingered some of the welts burned through the titanium ceramic layers. This is going to be expensive, she thought.
"Ben?" He hadn't answered her and several minutes had passed, an eternity for SLink communication.
"Mary… I'm hurt…"
Ben sounded almost like a child when he finally spoke and Mary wanted to wrap him in her arms and hold him until it went away, but that was impossible. Ben was the whole ship.
"Don't worry. Whatever it is, we'll fix it." A moment of fear hit her, and she struggled to keep her SLink neutral. "Can we get back to Haven?"
Again the response was slow. "I think so. I lost a sub-c engine. Some of my control circuits are damaged. There's damage to the hull, but the FTL drive is okay from what I can tell. Mary… some of my Cynetics aren't working properly."
Mary revised her estimates. This was going to be very expensive. The Cynetics interfaced between the human brain and the hardware they controlled. Without them a CySap literally couldn't function—especially Total Conversions like Ben and her.
"It's okay. We'll take care of that too."
****
Mary ran a number of diagnostic checks, her fingers sliding deftly across the arched, white control panel. She always felt that she was intruding when she had to "poke about" Ben's internals, but knew from long experience that it no longer bothered him. Whether the diagnostics would tell her anything more than he could, she wasn't sure.
"Port rear sub-c engine is out. You're limping here, bud," she said.
"I'm compensating with the three remaining ones. We can still break orbit. It'll take us longer to get to the Jump point though."
Mary tapped the console. "How much?"
"About thirty percent. Nothing to worry about, unless those critters develop space travel in the next seventeen hours." Ben dimmed the lights in the control room.
"Seventeen? Can't be helped, I guess."
"Not unless you want to step out and hitch a ride. I'm sure with your 'natural talents' you'd have no problem."
Mary laughed, for the first time since coming back on-board. Her "talents" were no longer natural and unlikely to attract anyone except another CySap. But it still felt good that Ben thought about her that way after all their years together.
"Now you'll have to upgrade me to the new XR-13 engines. Twenty percent more thrust. Think how much time we'd save."
"We upgraded you just a couple of missions ago. Doesn't it ever stop?"
Ben ignored her question. "There's some damage to my hull armor that will be expensive to fix, but isn't a threat to structural or atmospheric integrity. Still worried about my Cynetics though." Ben hesitated. "I can't diagnose them internally with any accuracy."
So was Mary. The Cynetic interfaces were highly complex signal processors that mapped the hardware to the neural connections of the brain. From the perspective of the brain, the attached hardware replaced the human organs and limbs. If damaged their signals couldn't be relied on, making accurate self-diagnosis impossible.
"Lemme take a look. See what I can find." Mary isolated the main signals and fed the diagnostics directly to her optical circuits, rather than the screens where Ben would be able to "see" them too. Almost half of the readouts were blinking dark red signifying heavy damage.
"There's some damage, but nothing too bad." She didn't want Ben to worry more than he already was. He had the whole ship to run. "They'll patch you up in five minutes once we get to Haven. You'll see."
Mary traced some of the heavier damage trails and found a clump leading to Ben's Dataract. The Dataract was a holographic supplemental memory that stored the information he gathered on the surveys, along with a mountain of data related to interstellar navigation and spaceship operations. She felt cold, even though she was no longer affected by ambient temperatures. "Ben, have you got the Jump sequence for Haven programmed in?"
"Sure, why?"
"No reason, just want to get back as soon as possible. That place has me on edge."
"That was something for sure. The professor types will love the reports. They'll be flocking to DX5151-4 inside of twelve months, you'll see."
"Fat lot of good that will do us." Mary closed off the diagnostics. She wouldn't learn any more by watching them. They needed to get back for a full set of tests. "We only get paid for potential habitable worlds. Anything below fifty-five percent gets us pocket change, you know that."
Mary didn't correct Ben's error on the planetary designation. It could have been an honest mistake or a sign of a deeper problem. Either way it wasn't worth worrying him further over it. They couldn't do anything until they reached Haven.
"Mary, do you remember when we first met? At Gina's party?"
It was "Ginny's" party, but Mary remembered perfectly. They'd fallen in love that first night, despite the circumstances.
"I remember you were making goo-goo eyes at that over-pneumatic Rhyana all night that she'd set you up with."
"I was just being polite."
Mary laughed. "Politely engrossed by her cleavage."
"She wasn't my type."
"I knew that, but you didn't for the first hour and seventeen minutes."
"You timed it?"
****
Mary had slipped out into the semi-secret balcony of Ginny's apartment, feeling helpless and a little sorry for herself. Although her cousin's parties were always a spectacle of fashion and good taste, her guests were generally equal parts shallow and vain. Mary disliked the mutual cooing and preening that went on, along with the mix of heavy, expensive fragrances that stuffed up her nose and always made her skin blotch. She sometimes wondered if the only reason Ginny invited her to the damn things was to make herself look good and wished, not for the first time, that she'd made an excuse not to come.
The city looked beautiful under the double moon-rise, the taller buildings painting the others with overlapping patterns of orange and yellow to create an abstract three-dimensional checkerboard. Magellan might be "just" a space port, but the skyline was one of the most beautiful she could imagine.
"Hey." It was Ben. "I thought I was the only one who knew about this spot."
Mary felt uncomfortable and a little cheated by his intrusion. "You must be looking for a place to escape with your friend. I'll get out of your way."
Ben stepped up to the terrace wall next to her. "Are you always so accommodating?"
"No, but I'd hate to see you deprived."
"Depraved?" Ben grinned. "I sure am. Especially for the right woman."
"So I saw." Mary moved to leave, but Ben got in her way.
"So you know all about me and my motives?"
"It doesn't take a mind-reader." Mary moved the other way, but again Ben blocked her.
"What if you're wrong about my reason for coming out here?"
Mary leaned back against the railing, the smell of jasmine wafting from the shrubs along the wall and around the archway. "Perhaps you'd care to enlighten me?"
Ben looked out across the city. "Would you believe me if I told you that I came here looking to escape?"
"Probably not…" Mary caught herself, not wanting to sound too negative. "The hasty fiction is entertaining though. Let me guess, you're a Ridellian cattle rustler on the run?"
Ben leaned in closer, his voice dropping. "I wanted to get away from the woman you saw me with."
"I don't believe it. You're a man on the make, you'd say anything." Mary knew she should have left, but the moonlight reflected in Ben's eyes seemed to hold her there.
"Ouch." Ben leaned casually against one of the pillars framing the door, his broad torso still blocking any chance of escape. "I can prove it."
"How?"
"With this." Ben reached insid
e his jacket and pulled out a shiny metal tube with what looked like a bent piece of wire sticking out at one end. He pressed it to his lips and blew.
A squeaking whistle came from the tube, varying in pitch in a way that was almost musical, but failed to quite get there. Mary winced—it conjured up visions of a small rodent in pain. Then, after a little while, she recognized the classic tune "All My Words Are True"—a normally soulful ballad, which Ben was joyously murdering.
"Stop!"
Ben carried on playing, grinning constantly. "Leave the party with me and I'll stop." He resumed the raucous whistling.
"No, you idiot." Mary pushed her fingers in her ears, but the squeaks still penetrated. Several heads appeared through the archway, then a few more and suddenly the balcony entrance was jammed with a throng of people.
Mary realized how silly she must look and took her fingers from her ears, trying to squeeze through the door. Every time she thought she'd made an opening, Ben would worm in front and stop her. She saw Rhyana through the crowd, the other girl looking as if she'd tasted something unpleasant. Mary couldn't help but laugh. She grabbed Ben's wrist and pulled him with her through the crowd and out the front door.
They'd spent all night together. And every night since. His whistling hadn't improved though.
****
Mary felt a pleasant stirring in the right orbitofrontal cortex of her brain and instinctively stretched as Ben stimulated it. "I see some things aren't damaged."
"You know me."
Mary did and tried to relax, but it took a lot longer than usual. The plant-things on ST2398-5 kept popping into her thoughts, disrupting her efforts to soften to Ben's SLink.
"What were those things?" she asked later. "I thought there were no signs of animal life."
"There weren't. They weren't animals in a classical sense." Ben sounded confident. "With the data you gathered they'd be classified as plant-animal hybrids. Physically they seem to be composed of individual independent specialized zooids forming a colonial animal. Fifty bucks says the scientists will be flocking there within twelve months."
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