by M. D. Cooper
Right through her heart.
UNBREAKABLE
STELLAR DATE: 07.27.8927 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sabrina, Interstellar Dark Layer
REGION: 72 Light Years Core-Ward of Ayrea
It was that reoccurring nightmare again. Something was chasing her through the dark corridors of the Intrepid where there was no power, no lights, no Link. It was gaining on her, no matter how hard she ran, it grew ever closer, its clawed feet scraping the decking, the sound echoing around her. Tanis was sick of these nightmares, she wanted to wake up. She was done running.
Repeating the mantra over and over in her subconsciousness, she felt herself rise from the mire, from the darkness, moving to the light, and gradually come awake. The light pressed against her eyelids. It was going to be bright again. Steeling herself, she cracked one eye and then the other. She seemed to be in some med lab, not on the Intrepid, that much was for certain. Her chest hurt; hurt a lot.
Angela sounded concerned, but not alarmed. Tanis knew that was a good sign; Angela wouldn’t hide her condition if it were bad. She concentrated for a moment, and the memories slowly trickled back; the escape pod, the abduction by Padre’s pirates, Sera saving her, and then her saving Sera. She took a deep breath and smiled. They’d be on their way to the Intrepid now. This leg of her journey was finally coming to an end.
“We seem to be making a habit of this,” a nearby voice said.
Tanis turned her head to see Sera sitting beside her, a look of concern mixed with relief on her face. She handed Tanis a bottle of water with a straw, and Tanis took several long pulls, washing the moisture around her parched mouth.
“We do seem to be,” she agreed when she had finished. “Thank you for patching me back together again.”
“Nance and Angela did most of the work. I’m all thumbs when it comes to hooking up artificial hearts and then growing new organic ones.”
“Heart?”
“When that guy shot at us with the rail gun, I thought he had hit me at first. I figured if I was still standing, I was going to take him down. Later, after I got him, I realized what I thought had been the railgun slug hitting me was a piece of your rib cage. It punctured my right lung, but my fancy new skin sealed around it and kept me breathing.”
“Good to know my impending death didn’t inconvenience you too much,” Tanis smiled. “I did notice back on the ship that you had replaced your skin with some sort of polymer, glad to see it proved useful.”
Sera looked down at herself and smiled. “I was saved by fashion. Anyway, when you tried to speak, I turned and…well, let’s just say it wasn’t pretty. Angela is really the one who saved you. She sealed up your arteries as fast as she could, and managed to keep most of your blood in while we got you on a medical stasis rack and raced you back to Sabrina. The pellet the rail gun fired was soft and hollow. It mushroomed inside your chest and ripped your heart apart. The mass hit the inside of the armor on the back, and the shockwave rippled back through the rest of your torso. It did a number on your internal organs.”
“Better than the last time I got hit by a rail,” Tanis said with a weak smile. “Thanks for keeping me together again, Angela.”
Sera continued, unaware of Tanis’s private conversation.
“Nance got you hooked up to a circulatory machine while she picked bits of shattered bone out of your chest. We fed Angela so much silicon she could have made a replica of you, and Sabrina helped make raw, unprogrammed nano as fast as she could. They shored up all your internal bleeding and slowly re-constructed your organs. Some of them we ended up having to grow fresh—you don’t have a bone ribcage anymore, though Angela says she’ll slowly replace the artificial one with living tissue over time.”
Tanis chuckled. “Also not the first time.”
“Sounds like there’s a story I’d like to hear when you’re not lying here in recovery,” Sera said.
“It’s a good one, I’ll be sure to swap it with one of yours—I see it’s only been five days since we took the Dawn. That’s quite the medical feat you all pulled off, Ang,” Tanis said with a yawn.
“It sure was,” Sera replied. “Did you used to be a doctor?”
“I guess that makes sense,” Sera said.
“So, how long am I bedridden for?” Tanis asked.
“Doc knows best,” Sera smiled.
Sera helped Tanis raise her legs and move her arms in their full range of motion before she sat up and took a deep breath.
“Everything seems to be in working order,” she looked to Sera. “Are you all healed up? I recall you saying something about a rib of mine making a hole in you.”
Sera ran a hand down her ‘skin’. “All healed and right as rain. Angela knew a few things about flesh and polymer bonding. She and Helen gave me a bit of an upgrade—now it grows back on its own.”
“It’s a pretty straight-forward mod,” Tanis agreed.
“Fina. You’ve called her that a few times,” Tanis observed. “What does it mean?”
“Hush.” Sera looked perturbed.
“Now I have to know what it is,” Tanis said.
“Sera is my name; it’s just shortened a bit.”
“No!” Sera shouted in dismay.
“I must swear you all to secrecy,” Sera said. “I’m completely serious—I can’t wheel, deal, and smuggle with a name like Seraphina.”
“Who else knows?” Tanis asked.
“Other than you, just Flaherty.”
“Stop it! You’re giving all my secrets away,” Sera’s face was beginning to redden. Tanis could tell she was adding some choice comments to her AI in private.
“You two are quite the puzzle,” Tanis said with an eyebrow raised.
“Hey, on a different track,” Sera began, appearing to choose her words carefully, “have you thought about what your ship will do now that it’s stuck in the ninetieth century?”
Tanis let out a long sigh. “Not really. I imagine we could find a moon somewhere in some system and terraform it in trade for what we have. I’ve looked at the star charts; there aren’t a lot of options around—not without a really long trip.”
“I…this isn’t the sort of information that one bandies about, but I think I can help. I have contacts I can reach out to when we get to Bollam’s World.” Sera paused, indecision clouding her features, then finished her statement, “I can get in touch with the FGT.”
Tanis sat up, locking eyes with Sera, sea
rching for a sign that his was subterfuge…or a joke.
“You’re serious?”
Sera nodded. “Serious as a railgun slug to the chest.”
“How do you have contacts like this?” Tanis asked.
Sera didn’t reply right away and Tanis waited in silence for the captain to make up her mind.
“I…I’m not ready to talk about that yet. It’s not a part of my life I like to reflect on.” Her face lightened. “But I promise I’ll tell you, just not yet.”
Tanis wasn’t sure what to make of Sera’s admission, but even suspect contact with the FGT was more to go on than she had five minutes ago.
“OK, thanks for your offer. I can wait for the details,” she replied
“You ready to get some solid food in you?” Sera asked and stood from her chair.
“More than ready, my stomach is grumbling like it hasn’t had food in a year,” Tanis replied as she carefully settled on her feet.
She stepped gingerly as they walked out of the med-lab into the central corridor on the freight deck. “Angela wasn’t kidding when she said I’d have to take it easy until my muscles get back in sync.”
“I had a full rebuild once,” Sera said over her shoulder. “Was quite the experience. The nerves and muscles are never exactly where they were before. Takes some time to get your responses timed properly again.”
“Now you have a story I’d like to hear some time,” Tanis said.
“I bet you would.” Sera smiled back at her.
Nance met them at the ladder to the crew level; Tanis noticed the woman’s head was exposed for only the second time since she had been on board, and her long, brown hair was brushed to gleaming perfection.
“Tanis, it’s good to see you conscious. Sabrina notified me that you were awake,” she said pleasantly.
Sabrina seemed much calmer than even before Sera had been captured. Perhaps the AI had realized that even without her captain near, the crew wasn’t going to abandon her to some scrap yard.
“Thanks, Nance,” Tanis said aloud. “Sera tells me I’m currently breathing thanks to in no small part your actions.” She patted her chest. “I’m quite impressed that you could grow a new heart with what you have available on this ship.”
Nance smiled. “It’s the least I could do.”
Tanis turned and took a long look at the ladder before letting out a long sigh. “I think I’ll use the lift today.”
“Probably a wise choice,” Nance agreed.
The rest of the crew was waiting in the wardroom when she entered, trailing a hand along the bulkhead to assist her uncertain balance.
“Hey folks,” Tanis summoned all her energy to give a winning smile.
There were greetings all around; even Flaherty actually used words rather than his customary grunt. Tanis sat as gracefully as she could manage and Cheeky poured her a cup of coffee.
“How do you always have such wonderful coffee on this ship?” Tanis asked as she inhaled the aroma.
“Sera blackmails station masters,” Cheeky replied with a shrug.
“Now you’re giving away my secrets, too?” Sera threw her hands in the air.
“Other secrets have been shared?” Cheeky asked. “Why wasn’t I informed?”
As they all ate, Sera retold the story of her escape from the pirate headquarters for Tanis’s benefit. When she reached the part where she left Rebecca alive, Cargo shook his head with disbelief.
“I still can’t fathom what possessed you to leave her alive; she’s going to gun for you—for us—forever.”
Tanis watched a brief war of emotions play across Sera’s face.
“I could have, I really wanted to…” the captain finally replied. “But for some reason I didn’t have cold-blooded murder in my heart that day.”
The crew nodded respectfully, though Tanis wondered if they noticed what she had; Sera had committed murder before—and not just once.
Tanis wondered what she would have done with Rebecca, were she in Sera’s position. It had been a long time since she had taken a life with her own hands; it changed a person, and not just the first time either—there was a definite cumulative effect. Perhaps Sera, like her, had spent some time recovering that part of her soul and didn’t want to lose it again.
When she described the ransacking of Rebecca’s quarters, Tanis couldn’t help but laugh.
“I’ve only known you for a short time, Sera, but it does not surprise me one bit that you spent no small amount of time in another woman’s wardrobe.”
“Given her current condition, there’s probably a parable of greed in there somewhere,” Cargo said with a shake of his head.
Sera gave a simple shrug in response. “All I was wearing was a hazsuit. I couldn’t wander through their platform like that.”
“Why not?” Nance asked. “I bet it would have attracted a lot less attention than the state you’re in now.”
Cheeky laughed. “Surely you know by now, Nance. Sera loves attracting attention. It may be her dominant personality trait.”
Sera’s face turned down in a brief sulk. Everyone else was looking at Cheeky and missed the expression, but Tanis’s ever-present nano-cloud spotted the reaction.
“Fine, mock me, but you’re all jealous of this stuff—at least now that Helen and Angela have made it less intent on killing me, and a little more accommodating to my biology.”
Cheeky gave a mischievous grin. “I wouldn’t mind getting into your new skin, just not the way you are.”
Sera flushed, and quickly returned to telling the rest of her tale; the battle in the warehouse, and hiding in the stack of crates. Tanis noticed there was no mention of the case that Sera had with her on the Regal Dawn. No one else mentioned the omission and she wondered if the crew knew anything about it.
“So, what are the chances that we have to worry about Rebecca sending her entire fleet after us?” Cheeky asked.
“I think they’re pretty slim—for now,” Sera said. “They’re probably looking for a new headquarters.”
“Why’s that?” Thompson asked.
“I destroyed their last one,” Sera smiled mischievously.
“Wait,” Cheeky raised her hand. “You didn’t mention that before. How did you do that?”
Sera paused, and Tanis wondered what she had done that she didn’t want to share with the crew. After a glance at Flaherty, the captain continued with her tale.
“I did tell, I said that I altered their sensor array.”
“Yeah,” Thompson agreed. “But what for?”
“So I altered it to emit a very specific signal.”
“You mean it’s true?” Nance asked; her eyes wide.
Sera nodded in response.
“You’re killing me with all this crypticness,” Cheeky yelled. “What did you do?”
Nance pulled her eyes from Sera and cast a wary look out the porthole into the dark layer. “I’ve heard stories…. If Sera means what I think she does…she had it eaten.”
Tanis leaned back in her chair and took a long, slow breath. Everyone looked surprised—except Flaherty, who looked slightly upset. The most emotion she had ever seen him display, outside of when Sera was captured.
“Something ate the space station?” Thompson asked.
“There are things that live in the dark layer,” Sera spoke slowly, as though searching o
r the right words. “Things that no one understands. We don’t know if they are organic, silicate, or purely energy based. No one has been able to learn anything about them—or if anyone has, they didn’t live to tell the tale. However, there is a signal which attracts them, and they move fast. Somehow they can propel themselves though the dark layer.”
Everyone looked somewhat paler—Tanis was certain she did, as well; not a few nervous eyes glanced out the porthole into the blackness.
“So, these things eat stations?” Thompson asked.
“They are attracted to gravitons, from what we can tell. Mostly, they stay very close to the largest clumps of dark matter, which are clustered near stars in relative space. It’s why transitioning into the Dark Layer too close to a star is often a one-way trip—even if there are no clumps of dark matter nearby,” Sera replied.
“Are they out in interstellar space at all?” Tanis asked.
“Every so often one is spotted.” Mostly ships don’t emit enough gravitons to attract them that far out, but like I said, there is a signal you can emit that’s like ringing the dinner bell—even out in the void, they’ll come—in this case, they most certainly have already come.”
“So, you killed an entire station full of people?” Tanis asked.
Sera scowled and her voice gained a cold edge. “Of course not. Do I look like a barbarian?”
“More like a Barbie doll,” Flaherty said softly.
Sera stuck her tongue out at him. “I gave them fair warning.”
“If these things are real, and you know so much about them, how come I’ve never heard of them?” Cheeky asked. “You’d think pilots would have stories.”
Angela replied.
