Augment

by C R MacFarlane

  “Others? Why? It’s a fools errand, they’ve been cursed by the Gods.”

  Hoepe raised an eyebrow. “And still here you are. My reasons are my own.” He knew he’d been lucky so far, that one day they would come for him. But he had to keep looking. It would have been much easier to turn his head away from the whole thing, but some unnamed organ ached in him, a hole in his soul that couldn’t be filled. And this was the only place he could think to look, his desperate longing bordering on obsession.

  Halud bit his lip. “I will do whatever you ask of me, but leave Sarrin out of this, she doesn’t have to go.”

  “I’m afraid we need her.”

  “You don’t. She’s not well, she can’t go.”

  “We won’t have another chance.”

  “Not Sarrin.”

  “My men will provide a distraction, but any database will be heavily fortified. Sarrin can get you there safely.”

  “What?”

  “Through the walls.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No, I see that,” Hoepe said. He bit his lip before he laid down the threat: “If you want to stay here, you need to help me with this.” Not that he meant it, not really, but time was critical.

  “That wasn’t part of the arrangement.”

  “This opportunity only made itself known recently. I didn’t think you’d be so difficult.”

  “The only ship scheduled for maneuvers out here is the Aitor, a survey ship. It doesn’t carry a database.”

  “My sources are well trusted. I’m sorry, Poet, I can’t think how to explain the level of importance.”

  “I don’t want Sarrin in danger.”

  “Properly executed, there is no danger. It’s a survey ship. My men will work with the engineer to retrofit your ship.”

  “It’s not my ship.”

  “You obviously hold say, I need you to speak with the captain.”

  “He won’t agree.”

  “Then I will speak to him.”

  “There’s no point. He’s not who I thought; he won’t agree.”

  “He will.” Hoepe punched the communicator on his desk, shouting his orders into it. How had he let the Poet rile him up so much — more than exploded limbs or infected implants or open heart surgery ever had?

  Still, his sources had never been wrong, and a database would be on the ship; he had to stay focussed on the mission at hand.

  He closed his eyes until two of his men dragged the captain into the office and set out a chair for him.

  “Trouble, Boss?” asked Sutherland, his unofficial right hand man. Sutherland glanced at Halud, his eyes scanning up and down. “Let us know whatever you need.”

  Hoepe sighed, smoothing over his emotions. “No, thank you.” The Poet had brought him Sarrin and that was worth twice as much annoyance.

  The captain fell into the chair by the desk. “What do you want? I was busy.”

  “Busy with what?”

  “Busy.” His pupils were unnecessarily dilated in the bright light and his jugular pulse beat at an erratically high rate; Hoepe made his diagnosis quickly.

  “When I returned your effects, I didn’t expect you would drink the flask all at once.”

  “None of your cracked business.”

  “It’s not good for you. Highly addictive, mood altering.”

  “I said, none of your cracked business,” the captain growled.

  Hoepe glanced at Halud, who only shrugged. The man did seem rather difficult, but he would certainly have a price — they all did. “You weren’t expecting this journey,” said Hoepe, “I imagine you’re undersupplied. Perhaps you’ve thought of rationing but are feeling the effects of withdrawal. I can get you more.”

  The captain’s jaw worked side to side.

  Beside the captain, the Poet’s eyes flashed wide and horrified. “Don’t enable him!”

  Beyond caring, Hoepe saw himself as the kind of person who weighed the costs and benefits of each decision, the overall good more important than the warm-fuzzies of morality. Some of men called him ruthless, he preferred driven.

  Twice before, his crew had tried to collect a database, and they’d lost men with nothing to show for the trouble. But this time, he could already see it, feel the data-tablet in his hands.

  “Galiant, — may I call you Galiant?”

  “Call me whatever you want,” said the captain, his words slurring with intoxication.

  The man was obviously in trouble, but it was hardly Hoepe’s problem. He hadn’t broken Galiant, the captain had already had the fractures of addiction written all over him when he walked into the facility. The ends justified, thought Hoepe, the good of the many over the few. The captain was expendable, the database was not. “I need your ship.”

  “I intend to fly it as far from here as possible as soon as possible.” There was still some shrewdness left in his eyes. “I’d appreciate if you asked your men to stop tinkering with my ship.”

  Hoepe tried to reproduce an appropriately understanding smile. “Galiant, I —.”

  The captain heaved himself forward, markedly uncoordinated. “I don’t know what kind of cracked situation we’re in, and I don’t want to know. The Poet’s got my first officer convinced this is a mission for the Gods, but there’s no way Hap Lansford sent you to me. I’ve lost enough friends to cracked do-good plans. As soon as she wakes up, we’re out of here.” He flopped back into the chair. “And another thing: don’t you lay a hand on her. If my first officer doesn’t wake up feeling one-hundred-percent, I’ll throw you to the Demons of the Deep myself. Got it?”

  Hoepe raised both eyebrows. “Captain, I am a highly trained medical doctor. Your first officer is in excellent health and will make a full recovery once the effects of the gas wear off. I imagine they have already started to do so.”

  “Good.”

  A new idea crawled into Hoepe’s synapses, potentially terrible, potentially brilliant. “The first officer is a person of significance to you, yes?”

  “This situation is cracked enough, I don’t want her any further into it.”

  Halud began, “Gal, I think if you knew what was really going on, you would be more interested in helping us. The Path of the Gods is —.”

  “Don’t give me that drivel about the Gods! What have they ever done for me?”

  “Where would you go?” Hoepe asked.

  Gal turned his head. “Away. Far away. Beyond the Deep.”

  “And what would your first officer say about that?”

  Sighing, he shut his eyes. “She’s not going to like it. No thanks to you, Poet. The military is her life, but what choice have you left me with?”

  The Poet interrupted again, “If you go to the Army outpost and say you were following my orders, it won’t be easy but you can —.”

  Gal laughed, loud and barking. “You’re a fool. I’m already dead.”

  “My words are the words of the Gods, they can’t punish you for following them.”

  “The worst part is you don’t even know what you’ve pulled us all into.” Gal shuddered, reaching around to pull his flask from his pocket. He took a long drink. “I had a life on that freightship, maybe not a good one, but something. Something safe. I’m as good as dead. Worse, Rayne is as good as dead. And you did that.”

  “If you —.”

  “I don’t want to hear it. You’ve killed me for this fool dream of yours. Sister or not, you’ve damned us all.”

  Halud slumping against his chair.

  Hoepe chose bluntness. “I need your ship, Captain.”

  “Didn’t you hear me? I have to make my way to the deep Deep, before they put me there.”

  “You don’t know me. You don’t know the empire I control. I can make a person disappear, give them a new life. A person like your first officer.”

  “What?”

  “Records are easy to falsify. Maybe she was transferred, maybe she never served aboard your ship. It won’t be perfect, but she can be hidden. Ret
ain a semblance of the life you value so much.”

  Gal leaned forwards again, but his voice softened, keen instead of defensive. “Are you saying you can keep her safe? Whatever cracked business the Poet has brought down on us, you can keep her out of all of it?”

  Hoepe grinned, a real smile now that they were getting somewhere. “Yes. And for you as well, Captain.”

  “Not me,” gal shook his head, “I’m too far gone. But the engineer? They’re good people, they shouldn’t have gotten caught up in this.”

  Hoepe nodded. Two wasn’t any more difficult than one.

  “What do you need from me?”

  “Your ship.”

  “You can have the old tin can if you can make this unhappen for my officers.”

  Hoepe touched his fingers to his chest and reached across the desk to touch Gal in the same spot, the promise made. “Consider it done.”

  “No.” Gal shook his head. “Not until it is. You can borrow the ship, but it’s not yours until I see they’re safe.”

  “Huh,” said Hoepe. Even spread-drunk, the captain was no fool. “I need to make modifications to your ship.”

  He took another drink. “For what?”

  Hoepe considered, but bluntness won out again. “I intend to follow a survey ship through their FTL hole, board them, and take their food supplies. Consider it a downpayment, then I will start working on hiding your people.”

  Gal shrugged. “Believe it or not, that’s not the dumbest thing I’ve heard today.”

  Hoepe raised an eyebrow while an uncertain fear settled in his gut.

  “I assume you have a plan that won’t get us all killed,” said the captain.

  SIX

  SARRIN CLIMBED OUT OF AN access port, landing in a quiet corridor of the freightship. She tested the feel of the carpet, spreading her toes across the grey surface; worn fibres poking into her bare feet. She closed her eyes and grounded herself in the sensation, hoping that her mind would relax. It had been on high alert even though the danger had passed. She tracked every sound and shuffle in the warehouse, unable to cope with the sudden exposure to the real world after years in a sound-proofed white cell.

  She walked, rapping her knuckles on the grey walls, beating out a coded pattern. Of course, no one answered, no one ever did, not anymore, but the habit comforted her. She thought back to the bunkhouse, to the girls who had been her squadron, her friends. They used to communicate with each other through their tapping — before Sarrin was selected and made to be alone.

  The memory warmed her, only for a millisecond. Her mind travelled in time again, clippers buzzing as clumps of her hair fell away, someone screamed in her head. Involuntarily, her hands went up, bringing her back to the present.

  Kieran had appeared somewhere during her blackout, and he was talking to her: “Do you know anything about it, Sarrin?”

  Her mind scrambled, unsure how to answer, terrified he had snuck up so easily. He always asked questions, questions, questions.

  “… There’s six of ‘em. They look like a cross between a ray-gun and an air-vent, pieced together from spare parts. I can’t get one open, looks like they were put together and then sealed shut. All I can see is reams of wires and a massive solenoid.” Kieran’s hands flitted distractingly in front of his face. “Hoepe’s man, Sutherland, told me it’s a cloaking device. Have you ever seen anything like that?”

  She frowned. “Yes.” Once, she had built a cloak to cover small things, inanimate objects they wanted hidden.

  “Really?” His eyes lit up. “Can we take a look? I need to know if you think it will actually hide the entire ship.”

  “Entire ship?” she gasped, shock rooting her in place.

  “Yeah. Your buddy, Hoepe, seems to have a plan.” Kieran didn’t wait, already half-way down the corridor before she caught up to him. His excessive hand motions distracted her thoughts. He droned on about something excitedly, but her mind slipped out of focus. She slapped at the ghost of sensors probing her body.

  Why was she remembering these things?

  He led her to the cargo bay and down to the open main level, stopping in front of a collection of mid-sized welded boxes. One was split open a crack, wires bulging out. “So? Whaddya think?”

  Across the bay, a familiar clicking caught her attention: Rayne stood by a table, laz-rifles spread across the surface. She disassembled a 450mV she held in her hands — click, click.

  Sarrin gulped and turned her attention to the device in front of her, pushing back a flood of memories.

  “He sent specific instructions on where to place them, equidistant on both sides of the hull,” said Kieran.

  She rocked the partly-open box, peering into the crack from different angles, assessing the large, compressed-transistor-solenoid. With the right amperage, it would bend the light around them and act like a cloak. A big one. Powerful enough to hide a ship.

  The click-click drew her attention again. In her mind’s ear, she heard the rapid echo of dozens of laz-guns being assembled and disassembled while little hands fumbled through the movement.

  Kieran coughed, drawing her attention. His eyes met hers, a bemused grin on his face.

  “Hoepe feels this will be safe?”

  “Safe? Yeah. Why?”

  She’d never been confident to test it on a living creature. But Hoepe was a doctor. If anyone would know about safety, he would.

  “Wait, so it is a cloaking device. You think it’ll work?”

  It was bigger in scale, but the principle was the same. She nodded.

  He stared at the boxes in awe. “How do you know?”

  Her mind slipped in time again, explosions echoing around her. She shook her head to clear the noise. “Built … before.”

  “Wow.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw, studying the machine. “I thought it couldn’t be done. How does it work?”

  “It…,” she started. She did know, schematics and force diagrams coming to her easily, but her mind was too wrecked to put it into words. The pressure of injections ghosted on her skin, laz-beams seared the air next to her body, all her senses turning cold as she touched the lifeless body of a friend. “Gravimetrics,” she forced out. Sweat beaded on her back.

  “Ah! Together these generators create a gravity field that bends photons and other particles around the ship.” Kieran smiled with understanding. “Right?”

  Sarrin heard the click-click across the cargo bay, and her feet moved towards it.

  “Sarrin?” He jogged after her.

  Her ears picked up an irregularity. Nothing specific, an indescribable change in pitch, and she bent her ear to it as she came closer. She took the laz-rifle from Rayne’s hands, oblivious to the shout the commander made.

  Rayne reached to get it back, but Sarrin easily stepped out of the way.

  Kieran held up his hand, his words a distant echo in her mind. He whispered, “I want to see this.”

  Rayne whispered back, “It’s against regulation.”

  “I think she knows what she’s doing.”

  Sarrin studied the rifle, weighing it in her hands as a schematic drew itself in front of her, her focus narrowing down to a singular problem: an engineering problem.

  “What if she hurts herself? What will the Poet say?”

  “Give her some credit,” said Kieran. “Besides, aren’t you curious about this whole thing?”

  “You’re asking too many questions. If the Gods mean for us to know, they’ll tell us.”

  “I’m not sure the Gods even know.”

  Sarrin spun the rifle around, twisted and popped open the refraction chamber. She adjusted the calibration, moving the lenses a fraction of a millimetre until the balance normalized. Then, she clicked it back together, rapidly, the way her hands had memorized so many years ago. The rifle was to her shoulder, her eye in the sight with the laz-rifle humming before she knew what she was doing.

  She forced her hands to relax, finger sliding off the trigger. Breathing slowly, she neutraliz
ed the rifle’s charge and set it on the table.

  Rayne stared, and Sarrin waited, heart beating frantically. Kieran would have questions for sure, Rayne looked ready to unleash a string of reprimands. I would be better if Rayne did reprimand her — she had been careless to pick-up the rifle. Something had stopped her from firing it, but she could have just as easily lost control.

  Hoepe shouted her name from the open cargo ramp, oblivious to the tense looks that passed between Kieran and Rayne. “There you are. I’ve been looking for you.” His long, lanky stride carried him across the bay quickly, and he stood, dwarfing them all with his 7-foot frame. “You were supposed to report for a physical,” he said to Sarrin.

  His hand reached out and she flinched away. She had no interest in doctors, none whatsoever. “I’m fine.” She glanced to her left, identifying six separate escape routes.

  Hoepe opened his mouth to argue, but Kieran stepped forward, interrupting. “You know, Sarrin was just giving us a hand. We shouldn’t be too much longer.”

  Unsmiling, Hoepe cast a skeptical gaze at the table. “Rifles? This is a stealth operation.”

  Rayne coughed nervously. “You can never be too careful.”

  “You’re the tactician Gal seems so fond of.” It was not a question.

  “Er, yes.”

  Hoepe’s attention turned back to Sarrin, intense blue gaze impatient, and she shifted back preparing to run.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t like or trust Hoepe — he’d been a friend in the short time they had travelled together — but she had tasted freedom, and part of that freedom included never submitting to another doctor or exam or experiment again.

  Kieran interrupted again, his sidelong glance silently assessing her. “I just need her help for a few more minutes. Then she’s all yours, okay?”

  It occurred to Sarrin that he was trying to buy her time, or an escape — why?

  A muscle in Hoepe’s cheek twitched. “I see the cloak remains on your floor awaiting installation. I would like to leave you to complete your job. Please allow me to do my job.”

  “Look, I’m not trying to get in the way of anything here. If she wants to go, that’s one thing, but she’s just a girl and she looks right uncomfortable. If she was my sister…, well, you’re a whole lot bigger, and the whole thing doesn’t sit well with me.”