by Isaac Hooke
“You’re just jealous that you can’t piss, Einstein,” Manic said.
It was good to see that they were in somewhat good spirits, at least. But that could be expected. These were his MOTHs, after all. Men who were used to staring death in the face.
Rade was never more proud of them than in that moment.
Forty-five minutes passed. Power levels were low. The others were careful not to make too many unnecessary movements, lest they drain the backups even faster. Once those levels reached zero, oxygen would cease to pump throughout their suits.
“I’m going to return your batteries,” Rade said.
“Not yet,” TJ said. “Give it a bit longer.”
At the ten minute mark, Rade tried to give them back again. Still his brothers refused.
With five minutes to go, an Avenger pulled alongside.
A voice echoed in his helmet. “Greetings, leading petty officer Rade Galaal. This is Lieutenant Barnes. Nice day for a spacewalk.”
“It is indeed,” Rade said.
He did his best to suppress the tears of joy that came then, but he failed miserably.
His brothers weren’t going to die.
He stared at the stars around him. They had never seemed more beautiful.
twenty-six
As soon as the Rhodes finished major combat operations in orbit, the captain of the vessel dispatched a Dragonfly to retrieve the commander from the planet 11-Aquarii III. New booster payloads were dropped for the stranded members of Alpha Platoon, facilitating the return of their Hoplites into orbit.
Every member of the landing party, including the chief and the commander, spent several hours under decontamination watch before being moved to the isolation ward for further observation. Those who had boarded the alien vessel were held separately from the others: Rade, TJ, Manic and Skullcracker shared the same glass-walled berth.
Keelhaul domiciled alone in a glass chamber across from them. He was kept isolated because the scientists had discovered some sort of nano machines reproducing inside his Implant; they had removed the device, but wanted to make sure none of the machines had spread to any other part of his brain.
No updates had been given regarding Lieutenant Vicks: she was held in a completely different part of the ship. But given the nano machines they’d found infecting Keelhaul, Rade feared the worst.
During their remote debriefing, Lieutenant Commander Braggs had explained what happened to the fleet. Coinciding with the attack experienced by the landing party, four of the dodecahedral vessels launched from the surface, where they had been masquerading as mountains. In the initial engagement, the enemy managed to drive away the fleet, causing severe losses among the UC task unit while suffering no casualties themselves.
The fleet returned a few days later, employing a strategy developed from detailed review of the first encounter. As an unexpected bonus, the UC only had to face three of the ships, as one of the enemy had returned to the surface—the same ship Rade and his team had boarded. By the time the final ship reached orbit, the other three were disabled, and the remaining enemy found itself facing the combined firepower of the task unit.
Shortly after Rade and the others were rescued, all four vessels self-destructed. Planet-side sweeps performed by drones reported no further sign of the enemy: the robots and biologically engineered lifeforms had gone into permanent hiding. Meanwhile, those UC personnel who had escaped the sinking of their ships by jettisoning in lifepods were rescued.
“So the four ships self-destructed,” Rade had said. “Leaving us empty-handed.”
“Yes, but we weren’t left with nothing,” Braggs had answered. “We collected several of the fallen machines littering the sites of your planet-side engagements, for example. As well as the corpses of bio weapons. Not to mention the nano machines we’ve extracted from Keelhaul. Will it be enough to track down the perpetrators? Who can say... I only know that the MOTHs will be called upon to fight once again. Sooner, rather than later. “
Though Keelhaul resided in a separate chamber, he had been provided with a pair of aReal glasses, so even though he had no Implant, Rade and the others were able to communicate with him.
“You look like a professor with those glasses,” Manic told Keelhaul one time.
“A professor?” TJ scoffed. “If the village idiot wore glasses, he’d look like Keelhaul.”
“You know, something’s been bothering me, Keelhaul,” Skullcracker said.
“Yeah, what’s that?” Keelhaul asked.
“What you told us about your sister,” Skullcracker continued. “Was it true? Did she really die like that?”
Keelhaul lowered his gaze. “She did. Though I didn’t call myself Keelhaul to remind myself of what I had done to her, but to remind myself that I had to live my life to the fullest, to repay my debt to her. I still believe it should have been me who had died, not her. I was the one who made the dare. I promised her spirit I would live my life to the fullest, and that I wouldn’t let her death be for nothing. So Keelhaul was kind of a way for me to honor her.”
“Sounds a bit morbid, if you ask me,” TJ said.
“Or in bad taste, at the very least,” Manic added. He switched to a Czech accent. “I keelhauled my sister, so now I’m going to call myself Keelhaul. Because I’m so very good at it.”
“Come on people,” Rade said. “Let’s go easy on him, all right? The death of his sister obviously caused a lot of pain.”
“We’d go easy on him if he chose a better callsign,” TJ complained. “It would make sense if he’d dragged an enemy underneath a boat or something. But I have to agree with Manic, it doesn’t work when you’ve keelhauled your own damn sister.”
Keelhaul sighed. “You’ll never understand.”
“I suppose we won’t,” Manic said.
“What was your old callsign?” Skullcracker asked.
Keelhaul shrugged. “I don’t want to say.”
“Come on, you can tell us,” Manic said. “We risked our lives to board an alien ship to get you out, after all. It’s the least you can do.”
Keelhaul opened his lips, then shook his head. “I can’t...”
TJ threw up his arms. “That’s gratitude for you.”
Keelhaul hesitated a moment longer, then: “Bootlicker.”
“Your nickname was Bootlicker?” Manic said in disbelief. “No, I don’t believe it. Boss, is it true?”
As LPO, Rade had access to Keelhaul’s complete record. He couldn’t recall seeing that callsign, however, so he refreshed the entry on his Implant. “It seems his old callsign was indeed Bootlicker.”
“Well I’ll be dipped in fecal-based products,” TJ exclaimed.
“Apparently Team Eight uses different rules when it comes to callsigns,” Rade said.
“I took the name in good humor,” Keelhaul said. “It’s all part of the camaraderie of the Teams.”
“I suppose so,” Rade said. “While I don’t necessarily approve, who am I to judge how another Team is run?”
“I’m just glad I’m on Team Seven,” Skullcracker muttered.
Roughly a week later Rade and those with him were released. Keelhaul was cleared a few days after, and scheduled to receive a new Implant.
As one of the first orders of business, Rade contacted Lieutenant Commander Braggs in regards to Vicks.
“Sorry Mr. Galaal,” Braggs told him. “Her location, and her condition, are classified.”
“Don’t you think the platoon has the right to know what happened to her?” Rade said. “Given that we were the ones who risked our lives to rescue her?”
“Preaching to the choir, Mr. Galaal,” the lieutenant commander answered. “Captain’s orders.”
“Can’t you talk to the captain?” Rade asked.
“Already have,” Braggs replied. “He won’t budge on the issue.”
When Rade told Tahoe, his friend was devastated.
“I can’t believe not even Braggs will help us,” Tahoe said. “After
everything we’ve done.”
Rade rested a hand on his friend’s arms. “We’ll find out what happened to her.”
Rade went to Chief Facehopper next. “I don’t suppose the LC has told you Lieutenant Vicks’ condition?”
“No, Braggs hasn’t told me a thing,” the chief replied. “Sorry.” Before Rade left, Facehopper added: “Leave it alone, Rage.”
“What?” Rade said, all innocent-like. “I haven’t done anything.”
“Not yet,” the chief replied. “But I can see it in your eyes. You’re planning something.”
Rade pursed his lips. “Not at all.”
Rade scheduled a clandestine meeting with TJ and Bender. He had them assemble in a corner of the galley, in a blind spot where the ship’s AI had no cameras for lip reading. As the robot cooks clattered their pans and whirred their blenders, he applied a noise canceller about the three of them and spoke.
“Have you disabled recording in your Implants?” he asked.
“What the frick!” Bender said. “You think we’re amateurs? We, the two people who taught you how to hack your own Implant to do the same?” He stared at Rade in what seemed utter outrage, then smiled sheepishly. “Yeah I forgot. I’m shutting it down now, boss.”
“All right, good,” Rade said. “Listen. You guys are the best hackers in my platoon. If anyone can find out where they’re keeping Lieutenant Vicks, it’s you guys.”
And so they did. Compartment 2-75-9-C.
Rade, Tahoe and Manic visited the two masters-at-arms on duty outside 2-75-9-C the next morning.
The first MA stepped forward. “This is a restricted area.”
“Wait a second,” the second MA said. “I think these guys are MOTHs!” He seemed overawed by their presence. Good.
After some friendly banter, Rade stared the first MA directly in the eye and said: “The woman you’re guarding inside is a good friend of ours. We’d like to see her. Will you let us pass?”
“I’m sorry, petty officer Galaal, I can’t do that,” the MA told him.
Rade nodded. “I didn’t expect you would.”
The two MAs stiffened, as if expecting trouble.
Rade stared at the man for a moment longer, then he glanced at Tahoe and Manic. “Let’s go.”
He and Manic turned around but Tahoe still lingered by the entrance.
“Tahoe,” Rade said.
Tahoe didn’t reply. Rade was worried he was going to do something they would all regret.
“Cyclone,” Rade repeated.
Finally Tahoe obeyed.
“So what are we going to do?” Tahoe said when they were out of hearing range.
“I have an idea,” Rade told him.
He called upon the chief later that day. “My men are getting antsy. I’d like some duty assignments at the earliest possible opportunity.”
“You’re talking menial shipboard assignments, mate?” Facehopper asked. “Like assisting the MAs with security?”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Rade said. “We’ve taken on patrols and watches as necessary in the past...”
Facehopper shrugged. “I’ll see if anything opens up.”
Rade wasn’t about to leave the openings to fate. With the help of Bender and TJ, he worked out the guard rotation of that particular MA division, and hatched a plan to incapacitate them all.
“How do we know they won’t replace them with robot MAs?” Manic asked when Rade imparted his plan.
“They’ll want human beings on watch for this operation,” Rade said. “Trust me.”
He had Manic and Fret visit the various shifts when they were off duty in the mess hall. While Fret distracted the men, Manic swapped their drinks; Tahoe and Bomb stood in strategic locations, shielding Manic from the watching eyes of the mess hall cameras.
Bender and Skullcracker were called in to serve the first watch shift in front of 2-75-9-C the next morning, as most of the MAs from the respective division had reported in sick, it seemed.
Rade and Tahoe approached at 0700. They were jogging, pretending to be engaged in PT. They paused just before the bend that led to the destination compartment, and leaned against the bulkhead as if to catch their collective breaths.
A sparrow chirped—a notification tone that played over his Implant. That meant TJ had successfully substituted a looping video feed for the passageway, as well as the adjacent passageway and the area immediately in front of 2-75-9-C, so that the ship’s AI would be none the wiser to what would happen next. TJ had promised to add some randomization elements to the loop, to fool the watchful, algorithmically sensitive eye of the AI.
Rade and Tahoe shut down the audio and video logging of their respective Implants and approached.
The two MOTHs on guard duty, Bender and Skullcracker, stepped aside so that Rade and Tahoe could enter the compartment.
A man dressed in a white lab coat in front of a glass isolation chamber looked up. As expected, he was the only one on duty at that hour.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” the scientist said.
Rade gazed at the container. Vicks lay on a bed inside it, along with various monitoring equipment.
“I’m part of the platoon that rescued her from the enemy,” Rade said. “I protected her with my life. I have every right to be here.”
Tahoe went to the container and rested a longing palm on the glass.
“The ship’s AI is recording everything that’s taking place here,” the scientist said. “You’ll be arrested.”
“My men have momentarily locked-out the AI,” Rade said. “Everything you say and do here is off the record.”
The scientist cocked an eyebrow. “You have skilled men, then.”
“The best,” Rade said. “Now, I have some questions, if you don’t mind.”
His eyes defocused, as if he were accessing an Implant or contact lens aReal. “It seems you are telling the truth, Mr. Galaal. Fine, then. What is it you wish to know?”
Rade studied Vicks. “Well, first of all, what’s the prognosis?”
The scientist joined Tahoe at the glass. “Nano-machines swarm inside her head.”
“Nano-machines?”
“Yes,” the scientist replied. “The same machines we found in the Implant of your MOTH friend. Except she has not been so lucky: she has no Implant, you see. She wears the contact lens equivalents. So she had nothing to draw the machines away from her brain tissue. Though I suppose it’s also possible your MOTH friend would have suffered the same fate, if you hadn’t gotten to him in time.
“The things are systematically destroying her neurons, using the constituent molecules to construct new versions of themselves, replacing her brain cells, forming their own neural net. Her brain is slowly moving from organic-based, to machine-based. The interesting thing is, the new nano parts exactly mimic the specialized neurons they replace, taking over the same functions. The hippocampus becomes the hippocampus. The thalamus the thalamus. In memory cells, the same engrams are appearing in the replacements. It’s as if her entire consciousness is slowly transferring over to the new machine neural net. When she wakes up, she might not even know that she has changed—that she no longer has a living brain. It’s quite extraordinary, really.”
“Come on, Tahoe, let’s go,” Rade said. “There’s nothing more we can do here.” He turned toward the scientist. “We’ll be back when she awakens.”
“But how will you know?” the scientist asked.
“We’ll know,” Rade said. “In the meantime, would you mind deleting our little conversation from the logs of your aReal?”
The scientist frowned. “This is very unprofessional behavior on your part.” He glanced at Tahoe, and when he saw the pained expression the MOTH wore, the scientist’s face softened. “It’s done.”
A few days later Bender informed him she had awakened. Once more they arranged for a certain MA division to fall ill, and members of Alpha Platoon were assigned as their replacements.
“You probably shoul
dn’t go,” Rade told Tahoe before they left their berthing area to pay a visit.
“Why not?” Tahoe asked.
“It’s not Vicks, not anymore,” Rade said. “Her brain has been completely replaced by nano machines.”
“I thought those machines mimicked her axons and dendrites precisely?” Tahoe said. “Transferring her consciousness neuron by neuron?”
“That’s what the doctor believes,” Rade said. “But not me. You can’t transfer consciousness like that. I’m pretty certain the Vicks we knew is dead. While she might have the same memories, and perhaps even the same personality, she won’t be the same person. Definitely not human, not anymore.”
“I’ll decide that for myself.”
Rade sighed. “All right.”
When Rade and Tahoe arrived, they found the scientist seated in front of the glass chamber, engaged in conversation with her.
He stood up when they entered. “I was wondering when you would arrive.” He beckoned toward the chamber. “She’s been asking for you. She’s all yours.”
Rade had seen the video recording Tahoe had shared during his debriefing of the survivor from the John A. McDonald—the man he had met on the surface while rescuing the lieutenant. Vicks had those same dead eyes.
“Hello, Tahoe,” she said.
Tahoe approached and rested a hand on the glass. She didn’t mimic the gesture.
“I can’t tell you how good it is to see you,” she said.
“It’s good to see you as well,” Tahoe said.
“No, you don’t understand,” Vicks said. “I can really see now. Everything around us, I perceive for what it actually is. None of this is real. Quantum properties. Bundles. Spin states. The higher dimensions. You have no idea. It’s quite extraordinary. I finally understand the cosmos. And who we are. We’re all just embodiments of the universe. The universe doesn’t realize it exists, except through us, and the existential loops that develop in our minds. If you could see what I’m seeing... it goes beyond augmented reality. Far beyond it. I perceive the reality that exists beyond this one. The real reality.”
Tahoe sighed sadly. He lowered his hand and gave Rade a forlorn look.
Vicks stood up and approached the glass. “I have a link to them, you know.”
