Memory's Exile

by Anna Gaffey

  “That wasn’t even funny,” Jake said.

  They laughed even harder. Jake crossed his arms. “Fine, have your damned giggle fits. Don’t worry about, I don’t know, the station or our lives.”

  Con snickered. “Guess you had to be there.”

  “I am here. Gods, Defense humor is so stupid.”

  Santos guffawed and slapped Con’s shoulder.

  As if in response, the groan of metal filled their ears. The floor rattled under their feet. All the viewscreens glowed as one as Heart spoke.

  Warning. Approaching irreversible entry path. Reinstatement of orbit required.

  Santos swore and dashed back to the workspace. “Kai! Our workstation is out—”

  Kai’s voice boomed out over the level. “What did you do? I just lost half of the connection gains I made.”

  “We were scanning Heart,” Santos barked. “It shouldn’t have affected anything. What should we do?”

  “Control level cleared. Fuel banks cut off. And I need help.”

  “All right.” Santos ran back, ripped the tablet out of the well, and handed it to Jake. “You and Con go down.”

  “What?” Jake shouted over the repeating din of Heart. “No. You need me to stay here, help Kai—”

  “I’m more qualified than you are with Heart’s overall systems. Kai and I can deal with these problems, and we have the techs from the Harmon. But I’m not as familiar with the ground down there. You know it better. You’ve studied it. Whatever that stuff is contributing to this craziness, we won’t know any more until you get the hell down there and find out. Con will fly you.”

  She patted Jake’s shoulder, sending a surprise jolt of pain through his back. He tried to suppress a wince. Santos saw it. She shook her head and scowled. “I’m sorry. I know you’re hurt. But I’m thinking of what’s best for the station. And that is me here. Not you.”

  Jake swallowed. “You’re in charge.” He reached for a fresh power gem and changed out the one behind his ankle. “Down we go, then. There’s no place I’d rather be. Just ask Lindy. Try not to blow this place up.”

  Santos’ eyes widened, and she hurried over to the corner workstation. She hefted a small tubular case. “I remembered this. It’s Toby’s rocket launcher.”

  “You’re joking.” Jake boggled at her. “It doesn’t have any ammo, remember?”

  “It does. He was keeping it quiet.”

  “And it works?”

  “It’s replica, not antique,” she snapped. “The frygun didn’t do much to Mei, and we don’t have any other weapons on board. Not that we could use it here.”

  “I don’t have a clue how to use something like this, Rachel—”

  “There’s a manual. Figure it out.” She pushed the case into Jake’s hands. “Consider it backup.”

  Backup, backup, backup. To his surprise, it was lightweight. He judged it to be less than a couple of kilos. Jake hoisted the strap carefully over his good shoulder. “Carmichael’s going to kill you.”

  “Let’s hope so. At least then he’d be awake.”

  The floor shifted gently under their feet. Then Santos held out a hand to him, and Jake took it.

  He cleared his throat. “Be back before you know it.”

  “Try to do something useful down there first,” she snapped back. She squeezed his hand painfully. For a second he could feel her worry, palpable and foreign, like a stiff brush against his skin. Santos dropped his hand, and the strange sensation vanished. They were all worried. He’d probably imagined it.

  Then they were all three of them running out the door and to the lifts. Santos hurtled into Alpha as the doors opened. “Jake! Where are you going?”

  “Quarters!” Jake called over his shoulder. The launcher case bumped rhythmically, uncomfortably against his back. “Go on!”

  He heard Santos swear and then Con say, “I’ll go with him. Go. We’ll be fine,” and Jake kept running, his gait awkward and mechanized, ignoring the tiny, red-hot warning jostles squiggling through the immobilizer to his kneecap, until he got to his quarters. Con caught up with him at the door.

  “Jake, what are you doing?”

  “We might not be coming back here.” Jake swiped his thumb and leaned into the protesting door.

  Main lighting was down, but the recessed auxiliaries cast irregular spectral gleams from the corners, enough for him to see obstacles. The fine white powder of halodine blanketed and softened the sharp corners of every surface in his quarters. Jake dodged in and to his desk. He lifted the chemistry set satchel off the shelf and shook away the pale dust.

  “Jake, you don’t need that.”

  “How do you know?” Jake undid the clasps. “I know Silverman was looking for Restore, Con. I don’t know how the hell my mother shipped it to me, or why she thought something like that would be a good idea. But if I’ve had it all this time, then this is the only place it could be.”

  Con reached over and pressed the satchel shut. “It’s not there.”

  Jake went very still. “How do you know?”

  “Because I have it here.” Con reached into his pocket and pulled out a glassine double-vial. He held it up, and the liquid contents flashed sickly yellow in the dim lighting.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “I’m willing to reconsider Jeong’s involvement.”

  Excerpt: personal ship’s log

  30 October 2242

  Dr. Alice Silverman

  Clinical pathologist

  Personnel Carrier Leah Harmon

  United Worlds DS 2150-1

  Docking, Selas Station, Satellite, Eos System

  [Data recovered 02 Dec 2242, Gunaji rights per salvage]

  2 November 2242 AEC

  00:48

  Selas Station’s littlest shuttlepod trundled through space like a beetle. Colder and more cramped than the rest of the station’s pods, the two-seat model had been the quickest to prep and launch. They’d stuffed extra fusion fuel pods into the back half, and fully stocked the storage and survival racks. If that wasn’t enough to induce claustrophobia, the stepladder to the top hatch locked down directly behind the two passenger seats, which were welded solidly side by side and facing the holoscreen. The safety harnesses fit as snugly as straitjackets.

  Con sat in the pilot chair, with Jake crammed in the copilot berth. The immobilizer would only fit into the footwell when he bent his uninjured leg at a tight angle. His knee was coming back to life under the brace, and it wasn’t happy. He planted his feet, held his breath, and tried to become a stone, a stone that liked being entombed with other stones while hurtling through space. Though “hurtling” was putting it kindly. They were piddling around the planet as if they were on a pleasure cruise.

  Jake tried to use the time to his advantage. He unpacked the launcher case and read the manual twice over on his small display screen in front of his seat, and then practiced assembling the thing. It was simpler than he’d expected: the short tube fitted into the long tube. Connected, the launch tube was less than the length of his arm. The rocket grenades were small and green and tubular, like three short breakfast sausages, and he was supposed to plop them into the designated opening and then press the load button. When he slotted the sights into place, the whole tube vibrated with a synthetic hum. Plaguing demons, another musical antique. Replica. Whichever.

  “If you discharge that in here and we survive, I’ll kill you,” Con said. He pulled up a glittering vaporous display of the planet and plotted their entry path on Selas’ far side. Too far away. Jake scowled as he stowed the ammo.

  “We’ll die of oxygen deprivation first. Hey, why don’t we loop the planet, get a real sense of where we want to go, eh?”

  Con shot him a piqued look. “This is new, all right? And I’m a little distracted. I’m trying to fly into a forest planet with almost no visual cues for a landing and no experience of the terrain—”

  “Trees,” Jake said. “Lots and lots of trees.”

  “—apart from the obv
ious geography that any idiot could identify.” Con took a deep breath. “And I’m so tired I’m seeing double.”

  “Good thing I’m all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”

  Con gave him a narrow look. “You said you were all right.”

  “I am, I am,” Jake said hastily. “And impending doom is a great motivator.”

  “You guys were doomed before I ever got here,” Con snapped back. “I tried to tell you. Give you a way out.”

  “Yeah, here’s a tip, hints don’t work so well. Tablet vids that melt a guy’s brain? Also not good.” Con flinched, but he kept the pod on its smooth unbroken path. “And ‘doomed’? Seriously? You’ve had a ton of experience with boosting morale, haven’t you?”

  “Look, some things you just don’t come out and say.”

  “Things other than ‘you’re all doomed,’ you mean.” Jake subsided, watched him tap at the flight controls in obdurate silence. He’d been on a slow simmer since Con had held up the glass vial of supposed Restore and now, trapped in fidgety constricted intimacy, he was starting to boil. He wanted all the answers, everything. Con had to have them and, this being Con, it would likely take five Carmichaels with antiquated torture implements to wring a simple name-rank-UWD serial number from him.

  He realized it’d been hours since he’d last spared a thought for Carmichael and his still form, his imagined slow-beating azure heart. The realization did nothing to cool his ire. If anything, it jarred the lid, the one he’d been keeping tight on Mick and Mei and Toby. Maybe Jake didn’t want answers. Maybe he just wanted a slap fight. It’d be cathartic, at least.

  Careful. He didn’t want another freakout. He focused on the disassembly and repacking of the launcher pieces. “Why don’t you say some of those things now?”

  “Or I could just concentrate on flying us safely down,” Con said, an edge creeping into his voice.

  Jake waved a hand. “This pod must feel like a toy compared to the Harmon. You twitch and it responds. You don’t need to concentrate that much.”

  “Jake, I—”

  “I think we should talk about Alice Silverman. About how you came by that vial. About everything I’ve forgotten that you know about, no matter how damned concerned you are that I’ll flip my nut and conk us into a tailspin. Because if you talk, I’m a lot less liable to do either of those things.”

  “To try, anyway,” Con said dryly.

  “What do you say?” His leg was beginning to ache again. Jake dug in his shirt pocket for one of Lindy’s pain patches and slapped it on his neck. The molten circle in the center of his knee dimmed somewhat.

  “All right,” Con said.

  That was unexpected. “All right? Really?”

  “Yeah.” Con leaned forward and followed the holo display’s flight path with his fingers. The lines brightened as he touched them, casting sketches of green tracery throughout the cockpit.

  “Okay then.” Jake sturdied himself. “Your commission for your trip out here, it came from Science.”

  But Con was reaching into his shirt pocket. He extracted a gold memory gem, sleek and new and familiar.

  “Is that…?” Jake frowned.

  “Silverman’s logs, yeah. From the Warringer tablet.”

  A curl of foreboding unfurled in Jake’s gut. “I gave that to Kai. Why do you have it?”

  “I asked one of the Harmon crew to get it for us. Dr. Murakami gave it up willingly.”

  “Right. Kai gave up state-of-the-art tech and sensitive info because you said pretty sweet please. Tell me another.”

  “He knew you needed to see it.” Con slotted the memory gem into the one of the shuttlepod’s connective wells and set their trajectory on autopilot.

  The holoscreen shimmered with green, and then shifted to full color. The date and locale materialized in the lower right corner of the screen:

  30 Jun 2242

  Personnel Carrier Leah Harmon

  UWDS 2150-1, console CQ4

  A time counter displaying full zeroes appeared opposite in the lower left corner. Then they stuttered to life, and with them came a slow fade-in of a woman’s slim, pale face, her skin contoured by shadows. Strange, Jake thought, to look on the animated, living features he’d known only in death. A face he remembered only in death. He was uncomfortably reminded of his young, chipper vid-self. Like Silverman, that man was dead.

  Alice Silverman’s curling hair bloomed red as a flame in the dim light, stretching to the far edges of the screen and blocking the view behind her. Her wide, washed-out blue eyes dominated her face. She spoke directly to the screen, to them, to Jake. He forgot Con beside him. He leaned in and lost himself in her moving lips and her ingenuous, intelligent eyes.

  30 Jun 2242

  Timer: 07:29

  “Good morning, all. Alice Silverman, aboard the carrier Leah Harmon. I’ve decided to treat my personal log as a report, and I’ll forward the whole file to you at the culmination of the operation, as backup. I’ll send the updates daily, of course. Before you say anything, Mahine, yes, I’m encrypting with the new cipher.”

  [Pause. Log cut, time counter jump]

  “Pardon the interruption. General comm system—I’ve just received word we are to report to the cryo bay for the remainder of the trip. We’re only a day out from Earth, but already I feel as though I’ve spent months aboard the Harmon. And still, that’s too short. In the words of our dear Will, ‘Make haste, the hour of death is expiate!’ ”

  “There’s so much to do. I’ve barely scratched the surface of the legacy notes we pieced together from memory. I’m very eager to begin my tenure on Selas Station, which will hopefully be short and sweet. It’d be one thing to simply count on our man to get in and out with the package. But I need to see what Jeong knows. If there’s anything that can be salvaged. I’m doubtful, knowing Boudrette’s skill with a limbic modulator. He shouldn’t remember anything. And the implant should have reinforced matters.”

  “I’d rather leave him out there. I tried to talk him down once, and he wouldn’t listen. I doubt he will now. Our new version will work, I think. I’d rather he wasn’t alive at all. But I’ll bring him back to Earth if necessary. I do think we should continue with the original testing trajectory, with a few adjustments.”

  12 Jul 2242

  Timer: 09:30

  Silverman’s quarters were more visible this time, a small blue room with round light fixtures, portholes, and an unmade berth lounge. Her face was smooth and serene, rested.

  “Brief break from cryo sleep this morning. I’ve read about the possibility of dreams in cryo but never experienced them before now. I was back in surgery again, waiting for Hel to finish the prep on a standard op, and I couldn’t find my gloves. So I went into the OR with my bare hands. I went ahead with the procedure, and as I finished my exploratory into the skull, I looked down to see the prep team hadn’t covered his face. His face. Jeong’s. Instead of the patient’s, who was, oh, I forget. I can’t get it out of my mind. Horrible. I plan on requesting my dampening cocktail be fed through the cryo berth system for the duration of the trip to limit any further such meditations. I don’t know if it will work. Feel free to commtext me pertinent articles when you receive this.

  [Pause. Log cut, time counter jump]

  “Boudrette, please send me that packet we all cosigned. I need to warn our pilot not to try anything…funny out here. I fancy he grows a bit more rebellious the further we travel, and if he’s faced with irrefutable exile from Earth, he might think twice. He’s a bright enough boy. He still hasn’t agreed to allow official testing, but I’ll get him channeled so he has to when we get back. It’s a crime against humanity if he doesn’t, and the Science Board’ll approve me once they see the immuno-samples and the DNA I managed to get.

  “He still pretends to do a boost along with the rest of his crew, to shine them on. It’s hilarious.

  “I wish we’d found him even earlier. Though it’s difficult to command the loyalties of a former ops man, and we
couldn’t very well fry him without raising some suspicion in unhelpful quarters.

  “Maybe you should’ve come after all.”

  03 Aug 2242

  Timer: 10:48

  “Damn that diversion. I’m on somewhat of a tight schedule here. Can you appeal that with the Board, please?”

  [Pause. Log cut, time counter jump]

  “Fine. As of twelve-oh-two central space time, we have been diverted to Marathon to investigate interstellar communication phenomena. Top priority. Still waiting on those official transfer papers, though. Can you forward them directly to Selas? I don’t want to look at them right now.

  “I’ve been thinking more about this, though, and I’m optimistic now. No matter what wild nonsense is going on out there, I think this is a boon. This ship is a more controlled environment than our lab. I’ve been performing some final tests and I think…no. I know that our Restore, our manna, is ready. Yes, ready without the input of Jeong. Since we’ve achieved this without him, we could rename it, yes? Because honestly, ‘Restore’ is tainted. We could bill it as original research without contention. I’m including my results. Let me know your thoughts. I’m anxious out here.

  “We had a wake up drill instead of a break this morning, which is why I’m logging. The pilot assures us that it was just a drill, and, as we have an hour-long stasis break each week, he wanted to practice emergency procedures. Scared some of the newly contracted, especially a young man named Arsène. I helped him clean out his berth, but his arms are still dreadfully scored from the broken lid. Med techs on board have turned out to be very inefficient in many ways. They were unable to fill my earlier request for the dampening cocktail, and the dreams aren’t stopping or slowing. I wonder if this is what it’s like to have an ERPIC chip?

  [Buzzing alarm]

  “That’s the general hail for back to berths. You should hear the chem mask one, it’s excruciating. Signing off.”