Sergeant Gupta’s orders were so vague these days that Delta Section had set off on patrol with neither a route nor a timetable. Lance Sergeant Brandt was supposed to back him up, but his mind was in an even worse state than Gupta’s.
Where would they be now?
Arun guessed that by this time, his section’s reserves of lucidity and purpose had already fizzled out. And when they did that, an irresistible attraction drew them to the place where most Marines always gravitated: the recreation deck.
Arun set off for the bars on Deck 11.
— Chapter 19 —
“No, wait! We can’t afford to fragment,” said Finfth once they’d all assembled in the Freak Lab. Indiya had activated the security gadget Furn had provided, and they’d commenced their meeting by skirting around with barbed pleasantries before Finfth had decided enough was enough.
“Indiya,” continued Finfth, “your body language says you would like to kick Furn out the nearest airlock and watch as he asphyxiates. We can’t afford secrets. Especially not now. What’s happened?”
Indiya looked from face to face. All five of ‘B’ Crew’s augments were here. ‘C’ Crew didn’t have any. Tizer and Freeze from ‘A’ Crew were safely frozen in their pods. Normally the Freak Lab was a place of refuge, where they could play with their special projects by grace of the reserve captain’s indulgence. Not today.
“Fern is a total bakri-chodding shunter,” Indiya growled. “He’s done something that he is ashamed of. The details aren’t important. Long after this crisis is over, I might forgive him. But that’s a long way off.”
“So it’s a crisis now,” cried Fant. “We had a power blackout and… your uncle, Indiya. I’m not belittling your grief but that’s not a crisis. Will someone explain what the hell is going on?”
“Quiet!” spat Loobie. Indiya could hug her. Leading Spacer Lubricant, to give Loobie her proper rank, always deferred to Indiya, but when Indiya was not in the right place to lead, her best friend would temporarily step in to run the group of augment freaks.
If only I were a real leader, thought Indiya. Loobie wouldn’t need to keep helping out.
“One step at a time, Furn,” said Loobie. “Give us all that little gift you explained to me earlier.”
Indiya mind-linked to Loobie.
Furn stared at the two women intently. He couldn’t listen in to their mind-talk. Even if the girls had wanted him to, mind-linking was only possible between two individuals. Every time they’d tried multi-way linking, the result had been searing agony, and blood streaming from noses and eyes. Indiya shuddered at the memory.
“Take it in turns,” said Furn with bad grace. “Hold your hand out and let me explain mentally.”
Fant went first, which befitted his view of himself as the brave vanguard of any risky undertaking. He floated toward Furn, his ungloved hand out in front. When they touched, palm-to-palm, it looked like two space vehicles docking.
Indiya felt she should be speculating frantically to the nature of Furn’s gift. She didn’t. The chance to briefly allow her mind to rest was too precious to waste.
The five of them in the Freak Lab were the reserve captain’s super-augments, but they weren’t alone amongst the crew to be given control of their endocrine system. Even a few of the ship’s detachment of Marines could control their own hormones. The basic idea behind endocrine control was something other spacefaring species had used since the dawn of interstellar history. But humans had taken it further. Indiya was intensely proud of how humans had hacked the alien technology so quickly.
Even with the zero-point energy drives and ability to mine power directly from the quantum foam of the deep void, mass and space on a starship were always in critically short supply. With journeys between stars lasting decades in objective years (time counted on calendars outside of the ship) a pressure valve was needed to release the unbearable social pressures borne by the crew cramped up together for so long. Sleeping during most of the journey helped but also caused its own mental pressures. Spending most of your waking life as a caretaker on a deserted ship with only a handful of other humans for company was just as bad for morale and mental health. Allowing the crew to direct their own endocrine system – the mechanism for transmitting hormonal message across their bodies – gave the crew the pressure valve they so badly needed.
The freaks’ augmentation system went further. Implants under the skin, normally on palms, but also sometimes under wrists, allowed nanoscale transport robots to leave the implants of the donor and enter the bloodstream of a recipient where their cargo would be released. Augments called this gifting.
This opened a whole new dimension to crew interaction. With physical space so limited, gifting opened up whole new universes of social possibility inside their minds.
The whole of ‘B’ Crew had been awakened for the adventure with Bonaventure, which was a departure from the skeleton watches who kept the ship ticking over during the long years between stars. The only time all three crews were awake was when arriving at their planet of destination.
Freeze was one of the two ‘A’ Crew specials. He’d gifted all the ‘B’ Crew freaks, giving them examples of how to do far more than communicate emotional gifts. Configuring your nano-transports as a short-wave microwave transceiver – mind-linking – was just one. Now that their ingenuity had been alerted to the possibilities, the ‘B’ Crew specials were all mining their implants to make them do things their designers had never conceived.
The last to take the gift from Furn’s implants was Indiya. < When you want Heidi to pretend she can’t see or hear you,> Furn told her
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