The Initiative: Book One of the Jannah Cycle

by D. Brumbley

  “We’ll come find you right before. Do you have anyone else here to help you? Any of your nurses, the other doctors?”

  She shook her head. “No, you know me. I don’t have a lot of close friends, but that’s alright. It won’t be complicated, I just have a simple dress to wear. I don’t want to make this into something outrageous. Simple.”

  That statement brought her father’s smile back. “So that’s why you didn’t want to get married back home. You knew I’d have had the entire station in attendance.” He chuckled and nodded to her, since he could respect her wanting something less ostentatious. “Well, if you do need us for anything, you know where to find us. We’ll see you soon, dear.”

  Mercury nodded and gave each of her parents a hug and a kiss on her father’s cheek before she saw them into their unit and then headed back through the hallways to get back to her own unit. The residential hallways of Seven were always the most quiet, since medical professionals spent most of their time in their units sleeping or relaxing. Everything else was so busy they almost had no choice but to view their units as a kind of haven or retreat. Mercury wasn’t paying much mind to the few passers-by as she walked, but as soon as she heard someone say her name from behind her, she stopped cold.

  Even if she had mistaken his voice, she couldn’t have mistaken the sound of his footsteps. Oh right, he did live on this level. “I didn’t realize you were back already. I thought you were coming in later this afternoon, before…” he didn’t seem able to bring himself to even say why she was back, his voice just trailing off instead as he approached.

  She pulled her lips into a polite smile before she turned around to look at Greg, even though she knew he wasn’t likely to be smiling. “I’ve been home for a few days now. I didn’t seek you out because I thought it might be uncomfortable. I left here thinking that I would return the same day and be back at work again, but things happened very differently than I imagined.”

  “Well, there was a lot of that going around when you left.” He was clearly every bit as uncomfortable about the meeting as she was, since he was actually keeping his distance for a change. The look in his eyes was no different than her father had anticipated. Mercury hadn’t seen many puppies in her life, but they looked at their masters exactly the way Greg was looking at her. “I um, I thought, for my part, that you were going to go, find out the guy was nothing like you wanted or needed, then come back to work and I could maybe convince you to stay here with me instead of going to Jannah. Seeing as I don’t seem qualified to make the trip across the galaxy with the rest of you.”

  Mercury felt a pang of guilt when he said that, since she knew he wanted to go to Jannah. So many people did. “You know that there’s more that went into the selection process than qualifications. You’re an amazing doctor.” Mercury didn’t hand out compliments out of pity, she gave them when she meant them. His talent as a doctor was one of the biggest reasons she had been even a little attracted to him in the first place, and why she considered him a good friend. She felt like she could learn from him and that was what made their friendship so beneficial. “I don’t know everything that went into the selection process, but you will get your opportunity. Jannah needs doctors like you.”

  “If half of what I’ve heard about the Initiative so far is true, it’s doctors like you that they’ll need, not like me.” He attempted to give her a smile, but she could tell it was just him making an effort for her benefit. “Listen, I um, can you wait right here for just a second? My unit is just up the hallway and I put something together for you, but I didn’t know when I’d see you. Sort of a going-away/wedding present.”

  Clearly she was surprised by that. He wanted to give her a present? “Um, sure, I can wait here.” She didn’t know what he meant about what he heard about the Initiative or doctors like her, but she was definitely curious.

  He nodded without quite looking at her, and turned around to go back to his unit. The block through which she was walking had steps and lifts to take people from one level to another, but she wasn’t far from her own unit. The gravity was light enough that all Greg needed to do was take a few steps and launch himself up to the railing of the next level, then the next and the next, climbing quickly. He’d always been fairly athletic, even if the only times she’d been able to see the evidence of his physical fitness was when he was running down the corridors to tend to a patient’s emergency.

  Eventually he disappeared inside his unit three floors and half a hall away, but he was only inside for a moment before he came back out. Both his hands were still free, strangely, but he swung himself down over the railings in the light gravity, catching himself on each floor on the way down to break his fall, until he landed softly on the walkway she was still standing on. He wasn’t even breathing hard or sweating, since all the movement took so little real effort in such low gravity.

  He reached into his pocket as he approached her, and retrieved a small data core, of the type that wasn’t really necessary very often since it was only used for externally stored data. Most of their world and work was always stored on Station servers, accessible from anywhere on the orbital network. “I’ve been working on a historical trend analysis for the past six years or so, ever since I finished my residency. Most of my work has been cobbling together demographic and diagnostic data from about a thousand different sources, or at least it feels that way. More like high four hundreds. Anyway, my goal of examination was a macro-analysis of all pediatric exam results charted against mortality rates, looking for patterns and trends in the data. I’ve never even gotten it to the point where I even know what I’m looking for, but I’ve always thought that if we could get all of humanity’s data in one place, in one examination, then we can really start seeing some overall trends and doing something important about it. I’ve just been hung up on the data gathering for so long that I’ve never gotten around to the actual researching or analysis. But you’re better than I am at those things anyway.”

  He handed the core over to her with the same weak smile that had been on his face before. “There’s still a lot of shaky data right after Crisis in Asia, of course, since everything went crazy and a lot of the facilities housing them were destroyed, and for some reason I’ve never been able to pull in data from western Africa near the end of the twenty-second century, but everything else is either comprehensive or substantially representative all the way up to the last medical census of orbital and earth populations five years ago. After the census this past summer, I was hoping to use an entire year in transit between here and Jannah to really buckle down and do some analysis, finally write the book to put all the data out for public utilization. But it looks like I’m not going to have that kind of window any time soon.”

  Mercury looked down at the small core in her hands and she was speechless for a couple minutes as she really thought about everything he just told her. To her, what he had given her was invaluable, and she was taken aback that he would give it to her in the first place. Especially when he could put his name to the research and product thereof entirely himself. She stepped up to him and hugged him, even if he wasn’t interested in any kind of contact. “Thank you so much, this is great. It…I don’t know why you would entrust me with something like this, but thank you. I, um, I really am at a loss for words. This is one of the most amazing gifts anyone has ever given me.”

  He returned the hug, and he wasn’t the first one of them to let go, though he didn’t try to hold onto her for too long after she stepped back from him. “You’re incredible, Mercury. Incredible things should go together.” He nodded down at the data core and then tried to hide a sigh as he stepped back to put some more distance between them. “You’re gonna do great things. Here and on Jannah. I wish you all the best.” He nodded as if that was satisfactory in his own mind, and finally turned away, since he knew she had things to get back to that didn’t involve him, and he was off up the corridors the same way he’d come, jumping up from one level to another to get back t
o his own unit.

  Mercury just stayed there, stunned, even after he was gone, but she eventually made her way back to her unit. She had preparations to make for the rest of her life.

  * * * * *

  Mercury was grateful for the hours spent alone, but she was also grateful for her parents when they showed up to walk with her to the Observatory to meet with Orion and his family. She hadn’t met his parents yet, simply because she’d stayed behind to get ready, but they were kind to her and seemed genuinely affectionate even though she could tell she was not the person they would have chosen for their son. Apparently the parents had something in common that day between them. There was no pomp or circumstance when Mercury entered the Observatory, no music or friends in fancy dresses, there was just Mercury in a silver dress with her hair in shocking red waves down and over her shoulders, her green eyes sparkling with excitement and emotion. The dress she wore was long, the silky fabric flowing to her ankles, with silver heels underneath that added more than a few centimeters to her height. The top of the dress went over one shoulder, embellished with tiny crystals, while the other shoulder was left bare, and the only other embellishment to the dress was another sunburst of crystals at her waist. She looked beautiful and dignified, and most of all, she was smiling at the man waiting for her.

  Orion and the Station Captain were the only people standing at the end of the aisle between the chairs that had been set up, but Orion’s side of the aisle was fairly well represented and dressed in their finest for the occasion. Orion’s father was dressed in a suit that was very respectable, if not quite as embellished or ornamented as her father’s. His mother and Misha were dressed in beautiful dresses, but the only part of either of them that could be seen was their faces. Little Ahmed looked like he might be on the verge of sleeping through the wedding, since he had run himself ragged earlier that day. Khadijah was the standout of his family, not to mention a knockout in her own right. Carl was beside her, along with a few other friends of Orion’s whom she hadn’t met yet, but who obviously knew him through the military since they were also in uniform. His commanding officer stood out like a sore thumb, an older woman with dark skin and hair beginning to show hints of grey, with distinctly sharp features that marked her as not African by descent, but Indian, a rarity both on Earth and in orbit in the world following the Crisis.

  Orion himself looked very much like he had when she first met him, and the image of him in his formal uniform made it seem, just for a moment, as though he was standing on the other side of that screen again, announcing himself to her as a stranger. But he was a stranger she knew so much better after weeks in his company. She knew what was behind the glimmer of mischief in his eyes, behind the knowing curve of his grin. Mercury could look at his hands, clasped in front of him as he waited, and remember everything that they were capable of doing when they touched her, the ease with which they handled both the controls of a spacecraft and every nerve in her body. She knew now, as she had wondered the first time she met him, what was under his uniform, and she could see the outlines of his tattoos so clearly she could almost read the Arabic for herself and trace the lines of his unit tattoo along his shoulder. She knew what was inside the stranger she was marrying. Where his heart rested, what he wanted, what he intended to do and be in his life. She knew the important things, and he knew her.

  When she was finally standing in front of him, Mercury’s eyes were fixed on Orion. There were fewer people on her side of the room, her parents, a few of her colleagues, but she didn’t care about any of that, other than her parents. “You look wonderful.” She whispered through her smile and reached out for his hand. “The afternoon took too long.”

  “Yes it did.” He agreed as he squeezed her hand. “You look incredible. I would ask for someone to pinch me, except I know Carl too well, he’ll get up and do it.”

  “I don’t need Carl to come up here and interrupt.” Mercury playfully chastised with a smirk and then she looked over at the station captain. “We’re ready, Captain.”

  The older woman nodded in acknowledgement and smiled. “Sometimes there are ceremonies of extravagance and sometimes there are just simple ceremonies of love and affection. Today we are here to celebrate Orion Al-Jabbar and Mercury Finnegan becoming one unit.” She looked between them and then smiled brighter. “Do you have anything to say to each other first?”

  Orion looked down at Mercury with a warm smile, partly at the fact that they were the two tallest people in the room, with the exception of Carl. He was a fan of being a gentleman in all situations and letting women go first, but in that instance, it looked like he was the one who was going first. “So…it took most of…these people over here,” he turned and gestured vaguely to his side of the room, “to convince me that entering the Matching program was actually a good idea. It wasn’t easy for them, but they eventually managed, and I showed up. Easily one of the best choices I have ever made in my life. That got me here, and I’m a fan of here.” He turned back to Mercury and took both of her hands. “Two years from now, you and I are gonna be in Firsthaven on Jannah, in a house that no one’s lived in before, on ground that no one’s ever lived on before, building a home for ourselves and a home for the rest of the world. Love is looking together in the same direction, and you and me are looking across the entire galaxy. That’s a powerful thing, and it’s what I want with you. I will love you from one end of this universe to the other, Mercury Finnegan.”

  Mercury didn’t have a lot to say, but she felt touched by his words and by his emotion behind it. He really did want a future with her. That was more than enough. “I’m not a woman of a lot of words unless they’re for medical purposes.” That got a chuckle from the small crowd, but she didn’t look away from him. “But I have enough words to tell you that you mean more to me than anyone ever has. I have so much to learn, but I’m glad that I will learn it with you, that I will learn more about you every day. Jannah waits for us, and I look forward to our life together. I love you.” Her green eyes glimmered with happiness as squeezed his hand tightly. Their love had developed quickly and had more room to grow, but she meant the words as she said them.

  “The most important words are those that you can say to each other.” The captain resumed with a generous smile. “In my capacity as Captain of this station, and under the laws of the Consortium, I now pronounce you man and wife.” Traditional vows were not requested or required, and most matched couples didn’t care to have them. Sickness, health, to have and to hold, they were words from an old tradition, an Earth tradition, which didn’t apply in Orbit.

  Orion grinned at the official words, since that declaration was all that was required for the legality to be completed. Most of the weddings he’d been to had some kind of encouragement afterward, or were much more involved, but he was happy that there didn’t need to be much more to it. Instead of waiting for anything else, he leaned in with eagerness and kissed her with fervor, dipping her backward a little with his hands on her waist to hold her against him.

  Mercury was surprised by the way he kissed her, especially being dipped backward, but she easily wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him with just as much intensity. There were a few whoops and hollers before their kiss broke, and Mercury chuckled beneath her flushed cheeks. “That was quite a kiss.”

  “Well, you know, wanted to start things off right.” He responded with a mischievous grin, as the rest of the small audience continued clapping with a round of laughter. “Come on. Let’s mingle and then go get some dinner, Wife.”

  She nodded her agreement and then looked back at their friends and family with joy on her face. It happened so fast, and yet she didn’t care that there wasn’t much to it. It was simple, but it was everything. “Wife. Husband. Wow.” She gave him a featherlight kiss on the lips. “What a day.”

  17

  Time was ticking closer to leaving Earth and Anna was more anxious about it with every passing moment. She enjoyed her time with Logan, of course, all
of which felt like a dreamy sex vacation, even after the insane wedding in the weeks following her own where Liam married all three of his loves. The Bickford house was already busy when Anna woke, though she happened upon Liam and Brianne in the kitchen before she saw anyone else. They were only days away from leaving Earth for good. Anna and Logan were planning to go out to Doc Weber’s for more bloodwork, but she was lured by the smell of bacon first and foremost. “Didn’t know you could cook, Bri.” Anna poured herself a coffee and sat down at the table next to Liam.

  “I’m full of surprises.” Brianne said with a smirk that both Anna and Liam could hear before Brianne looked back at her new husband. True to the word she’d been promised, Brianne had a sizeable diamond on her finger, and she seemed to love having it there. Each of the women had wanted something different. Margo wanted a smaller diamond surrounded with rubies, and Rachel wanted a big blue sapphire as her center stone with a diamond set on each side of it. Brianne’s ring was the simplest, only a gold band, but it also had the biggest rock, though the rock wasn’t accompanied by any other jewels. “I think Liam can attest to that, can’t ya, babe?”

  “You know, I didn’t actually think you would be.” Liam grinned from the table, popping another piece of bacon in his mouth mid-sentence. “But that’s what I get for thinking I’ve got your number locked down. You come back and hit me with something I’d never even heard of before.”

  “That’s right.” She pointed her spatula at Liam and a grin and her smile didn’t disappear when Rachel showed up. They oddly continued to get along, even as newlyweds. “Hey, Rach. You said you were really missing your mom’s pancakes. I took a shot at her recipe.”

  “Thank you, that’s thoughtful.” Rachel said as she plopped down into Liam’s lap and then snagged one of his pieces bacon. “Did you sleep alright last night?” Rachel said as she turned and looked at Liam more directly. “You said your arm was hurting after you got down under Logan’s truck to take a look.”