by G J Ogden
Shade acknowledged the order, then hurried out of the hospital wing, barking orders at the Obsidian Soldiers as she went. Sterling watched the mechanical warriors file in behind his weapons officer, but noticed that one of the machines had remained. He recognized it immediately as the leader – the Obsidian Soldier that had continually questioned Sterling about the mission and its role in it. The robot lingered for a few moments, its optical scanners flicking from Sterling to the pistol in Banks’ hand. Then it turned and stomped off in pursuit of its mechanical comrades.
“Well, this is awkward,” said Banks, falling back on her usual trick of resorting to dark humor in difficult circumstances. “What does the Omega Directive say in situations like this?”
Sterling smiled. “I think it says that you’re supposed to blast my head off,” he replied, honestly. “You can’t take the chance that I’m turned. And you can’t prove that I’m not, so you have no choice.”
Banks took another step forward, her pistol still trained on Sterling. Her aim was steady and true. “Give me an option, Captain,” Banks said. “There has to be another way.”
Sterling’s breathing was becoming more erratic and he realized that he was feeling dizzy and slightly nauseous. He look at his hand – the one he had left – and noted that his skin was clammy.
“I’m going into shock, Mercedes,” Sterling said, recognizing the symptoms at once. “So soon it won’t matter anyway.” He then tried to adopt a more rigid posture – one befitting his rank and status – as he resolved to issue his final command. “I order you to re-take the Invictus then take command of the Vanguard. It’s down to you now, Mercedes. You’re the captain now.”
“Bullshit,” Banks spat back, becoming suddenly angry. “The real Lucas Sterling would never say that. He’d never give up while there was still breath in his lungs.”
“I’m not giving up, damn it!” Sterling snapped. “But you can’t prove I haven’t been turned and you can’t just walk out of here and leave me. So you have no choice. You have to shoot.”
Banks shook her head then tapped her neural interface. Sterling felt the connection form in his mind, but didn’t immediately allow it.
“Accept the link, Lucas,” Banks said, realizing that Sterling was blocking him. “If it’s really you then I’ll know.”
“You might not like what you see in there,” Sterling replied, his eyes falling on the body of Corporal Jeanette Dietrich.
“Whatever you’ve done was necessary,” Banks hit back. “Now, let me in.”
Sterling sighed, then accepted the link and felt Banks enter his mind. The connection was strong, as it always was between them. Whereas most people could sense emotions through a link, for Banks and Sterling the connection ran deeper. They usually knew what the other was feeling better than they knew themselves.
The mental energy required to maintain the link was sapping the little strength Sterling had left. Dizziness was starting to overwhelm him, and his thoughts strayed back to the moment when he’d strangled Corporal Dietrich. He saw Banks wince as Sterling’s brutal actions were played out through their link.
“You did what was necessary, Lucas,” he heard Banks say, though her voice was distant in his mind. Even so, Sterling could feel that she was certain of her judgement. “I’d have done the same.”
Sterling’s thoughts then strayed to what happened next, and the memory of these events disgusted him even more than the act of killing Dietrich. He again felt the wetness of McQueen’s lips on his and the feel of her hands on his body. And he remembered how he’d reciprocated the embrace, caressing the Emissary like she was his true love. The sickness in his gut threatened to overwhelm him and he tasted bile in his mouth. Then his eyes met those of Commander Mercedes Banks. She had now fixed him with a murderous glare and suddenly Sterling could feel the revulsion and anger inside her. He realized that she had felt what he had felt and that she knew what he had done.
“I’m sorry, Mercedes,” Sterling said through the link. He wasn’t even sure what he was apologizing for. He’d done nothing wrong. He’d only done what he’d had to do, for the sake of the mission. Then he realized why his first officer was angry. It was not that she’d questioned his actions, and it was clear that she no longer believed Sterling had been turned. Instead, she was crippled by bitterness and even jealously. More than that, she was repulsed by him.
Sterling saw Banks’ eyes widen and her hand tighten around the grip of the pistol. He could feel panic rising in her gut and knew she was about to fire. Then there was a bright flash and Sterling was blinded by the burning light racing toward his head.
Chapter 19
Awkward bedside manner
The roar of the plasma blast fizzing past Sterling’s ear was like a flashbang grenade going off next to his head. The next thing he knew he’d been tackled and dragged down to the deck. He landed hard and the pain on top of his existing injuries almost caused him to black out. As the ringing in his ears subsided, he heard the familiar, waspish hiss of Sa’Nerran warriors.
“Get into cover!” Banks cried, noticing that Sterling was conscious again. She was crouched a couple of meters to Sterling’s side, firing into one of the corridors adjoining the medical wing.
Cursing, Sterling found concealment then began to scour the deck for a weapon he could use to help fight off the new attackers. He suddenly found himself staring into the yellow eyes of a dead Sa’Nerran warrior, smoke rising from a crater blasted out of the top of its head. Sterling guessed that this alien had been the intended target of Banks’ close-range shot, and was again thankful for his first officer’s exceptional aim.
Searching the creature, Sterling pulled a plasma pistol from its armor and struggled to fit it into his left hand. Even with his right hand he wasn’t the best shot in the Fleet, but since he no longer had a right hand, there was no choice. Using his stump to push himself to his knees, screaming with pain as he did so, Sterling opened fire with the pistol. His initial shots were wayward, but by the third blast he’d landed a shot on target.
“Fall back!” Banks cried out, tossing her spent pistol to the deck and retrieving one of the Homewreckers she’d discarded earlier.
Sterling scrambled back to join Banks as blasts flashed past to his left and right. He was now running purely on adrenaline and instinct, but despite his injuries his reflexes were still keen. Squeezing the trigger of the alien pistol, Sterling blasted the foot off one of the warriors before hitting another in the gut. Then the pneumatic thud of the Homewrecker drowned out any other sound. Sterling watched in awe as Banks tore through the remaining warriors with the weapon set to automatic and to maximum power. He’d never seen anyone with the strength to maintain this mode of fire for long, at least without the benefit of an exosuit. Teeth bared, his first officer continued to hold down the trigger, until the corridor the aliens were advancing along collapsed, trapping the warriors outside the medical wing. Eventually, the energy cell in the weapon ran dry and the room fell silent, apart from the fizz and crackle of burning machinery and flesh. Banks reloaded the Homewrecker then lifted her forearm to activate her computer.
“The corridor is sealed and I don’t see any other warriors heading this way,” she said, frowning down at the screen.
Sterling hobbled to her side, feeling the effects of his injuries and exertions even more than before. He tried to look at the screen, but his vision was blurry. He felt Banks’ hand gripping his arm and realized that if it weren’t for her steadying influence, he would have fallen flat on his face.
“We need to get back to the Invictus,” Sterling said, blinking his eyes rapidly in an attempt to make them focus. “Whatever is left of the Sa’Nerran forces will now concentrate their attack there.”
Sterling tried to head out, but either because of Banks’ hold on him, or the lack of strength in his legs, he couldn’t move.
“We need to patch you up first,” Banks said, scooping him up like a child and carrying him to a medical bed.
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“There’s no time, just leave me here,” Sterling groaned, trying to struggle against Banks’ hold, despite knowing this would have been futile even if he had his full strength.
“You’re no use to anyone if you’re dead,” Banks replied, dumping him on the bed. She then activated the medical bay’s systems, which flickered into life. “And you’ll be dead in a matter of minutes if this thing is right.”
Sterling reached out and grabbed Banks’ arm, using it as leverage to help lift his head from the bed. “It doesn’t matter what happens to me, Mercedes,” Sterling said, while his first officer dragged a metal cabinet toward her. “The Omega Directive is in effect. Save the ship and continue the mission, that’s an order.”
“Sorry, Captain, I didn’t quite catch that.” Banks removed an injector from the cabinet and pulled off the cap with her teeth. “Your speech is slurring badly,” she added, while stabbing the device into Sterling’s neck.
Whatever she’d injected him with worked with near-immediate effect, helping to clear Sterling’s vision and senses.
“Damn it, Mercedes, I know you can hear me just fine,” he said. His first officer was now tearing sections of his Sa’Nerran armor away, around the areas where he’d taken hits. “You don’t have time to waste on me.”
“I’m linked in to Lieutenant Razor and she’s holding the fort just fine,” Banks hit back. “Now just lay back and stop giving me a hard time so I can save your life.”
Despite feeling stronger, Sterling still didn’t have the energy to argue back. He flopped his head onto the hard padded surface of the trauma bed and let his first officer work. As he relaxed, his mind wandered back to the moments before Banks had fired and tackled him to the deck. Their link had been severed during the fight, but the memory of how she’d felt about him and his actions still weighed heavily on his mind.
“You know, when you fired at that warrior behind me, I actually thought you were shooting at me,” he admitted, cocking his head slightly so he could look at his first officer.
Banks glanced over to Sterling then returned to the part of his body she was working on. “I knew by that point that you hadn’t been turned,” she replied, flatly.
“I had to maintain the ruse with McQueen,” Sterling went on. For some reason, he felt like he needed to explain himself. “If there was another way, I would have…”
“You did what you had to do,” Banks cut in, “and that’s all there is to it.”
Sterling let his head relax back on the bed. Without the benefit of a neural link, he couldn’t tell if Banks was being genuine, but it still felt good to hear her say it.
“I’d have done the same thing in your shoes,” Banks went on, while applying a dressing to one of Sterling’s burns. “Well, apart from playing tonsil tennis with the Emissary to the Sa’Nerra,” she added with a shrug, causing Sterling to strain his neck to look at her again. “I’d have just ripped her damned head off.”
Despite everything, Sterling found himself laughing. Banks tried to maintain a straight face, but he could see that she was grinning too.
“Well, if by some miracle we get out of this, don’t tell the Admiral about the tonsil tennis part, okay?” Sterling said, again flopping back on the bed. “I’m pretty sure that consorting with the enemy carries a life term in Grimaldi.”
Banks shook her head and muttered something under her breath that Sterling couldn’t hear. Though, since she was still smiling, he guessed it wasn’t anything too uncomplimentary. The two then remained silent for the next few minutes, while Banks continued to patch up Sterling’s wounds.
“Graves is going to have a heart-attack when he’s sees the hack-job I’ve done on these injuries,” Banks said, applying the final dressing to a burn on Sterling’s side. The patch latched on like a suction cup sticking to a window and straight away the pain was gone.
“I’m more concerned about overdosing on all the drugs you’ve pumped me full of.” Sterling raised his arm with the intention of scratching some dried Sa’Nerran guts off his face and saw the cauterized stump. “I don’t suppose you have any spare hands in that cabinet, Commander?” he asked, rotating the stump, which oddly no longer hurt.
Banks pressed Sterling’s arm back down to the bed. “How about you leave the dark and inappropriate jokes to me, sir?” she said, scowling at him. Then Banks raised a device that looked like a long, fingerless glove made out of a metallic, mesh-like material. Placing the glove on the bed next to Sterling, she then removed a spray can from the cabinet. Sterling’s gut tightened as he recognized the bottle. “Even with all the drugs flooding through your body, this is still going to hurt like hell.”
“Can’t we just skip this part?” Sterling whined, trying to sit up and pull his injured arm away. “I feel fine.”
“I have to cleanse the wound or Graves will end up having to remove your whole arm,” Banks hit back, holding onto Sterling with godlike strength.
Sterling cursed then lay back and closed his eyes. “Fine, but make it quick,” he said before clamping his jaw shut in readiness for the agony he was about to endure.
Banks knocked the cap off the bottle, gave it a little shake as if she was mixing a cocktail, then began spraying the contents all over Sterling’s stump. The pain was intense and immediate, paralyzing Sterling even more effectively than his first officer’s inhuman grip had done. He cried out, unable to bear down against the agony any longer, and was embarrassed for doing so. He felt Banks take his good hand and squeeze it gently. Despite doing nothing to help with the pain, that single act alone helped Sterling to endure.
“It should start to ease in a second,” Banks said, tossing the spent can to the deck, where it rattled away into the darkness underneath a storage cabinet.
Immediately, Sterling felt the pain ease. It was like his arm had been doused in ice cold water. Banks then picked up the metallic glove she’d laid out earlier and pulled it over the stump. The glove shrank around his arm and formed a tight seal. Sterling raised the bandaged arm to inspect it. The pain was now completely gone.
“Graves can fabricate you a new hand once we get through this,” Banks said, finishing up her ministrations. “With the facilities on the Vanguard, it’ll look a lot better than Jinx’s robotic leg too.”
Sterling huffed a laugh. “Assuming he doesn’t do a Frankenstein job on me, and I end up with seven fingers or a damned claw,” he replied.
Sliding his legs off the bed, Sterling jumped up feeling strong again. He knew that he would suffer the effects of his injuries and treatments more severely later, but for now the wonders of Fleet medicine had put him back in the fight. Checking his own computer, he saw that the motion scanner was picking up heavy activity around the port docking garage. The remaining forces on both sides were already engaged.
“Now, find me a weapon and let’s get the hell out of here,” he added, turning back to his first officer.
Banks grabbed a dead warrior off the deck and slammed it onto the medical bed. She removed its plasma pistol and handed it to Sterling. “That’s the best you’ll be able to use for now,” she said, readying her Homewrecker and preparing to move.
Sterling then saw the glint of a Sa’Nerran half-moon blade on the warrior’s armor and had an idea. “Wait, strap that to my right hand,” he said, tapping the blade with the pistol. “Until Graves can fix me up, I’ll need every protection I can get.”
Banks frowned at the blade, but removed it as instructed and placed it on the bed before heading to a storage cabinet. Pulling open the door, she began to ransack the cabinet, tossing items onto the deck like a burglar looking for valuables. Finally, she emerged with a roll of strong tape.
“Just be careful you don’t try to scratch an itch,” Banks said, strapping the blade to the end of Sterling’s stump. “I don’t think Graves is as adept at creating bionic noses and ears as he is hands and feet.” She tore the tape with her teeth and took a step back. “How does it feel?”
Sterling flexe
d the improvised weapon. The blade, plus the thickness of the tape on top of the metallic-mesh dressing added significant heft to his arm. It was like the limb had been transformed into a scythe.
“It feel like I’m a walking weapon,” Sterling said, giving the blade a few practice swings.
“Good,” said Banks before slapping Sterling on the back and heading for the exit. “Now you know how I feel every damn day.”
Chapter 20
Don’t make me angry
Sterling stopped two sections away from the docking garage and checked the scanner readings on his computer. The sound of plasma weapons-fire was already filtering along the corridor, so he knew the fighting was close. The bulk of movement was still concentrated in the docking garage where the Invictus had crash landed. However, Sterling could now see a small group of contacts heading their way.
“I think they’ve detected us,” said Sterling, as Banks dropped to a crouch at his side and glanced at his computer screen. “There’s a blip coming this way. That could mean perhaps three or four warriors, roughly fifty meters ahead.”
“I suggest we take them out from here,” Bank said, while covering the corridor with her Homewrecker rifle. “Then we can cut through to the docking garage at the next intersection. That will bring us out about a hundred meters ahead of where the Invictus is.”
“Agreed,” said Sterling. He then tapped his neural interface and reached out to Lieutenant Shade. His weapons officer accepted the link, and he immediately sensed some apprehension.
“Captain, is that you?” said Shade. Her voice was faint, as if she was on the other end of a tin can telephone. Sterling assumed that the drugs rushing around his body were interfering with his link.
“Not quite all of me, Lieutenant, but yes,” Sterling replied. “The neural firewall worked. I’m fine.”
“No offense, sir, but that’s exactly what you’d say if you were turned,” Shade replied, flatly.
