Augment

by C R MacFarlane

  The junkyard smoked from multiple explosions. Hoepe’s men ran into the open cargo bay. Rayne’s lifetime of military training clicked into place. They were at an extreme tactical disadvantage. Retreat was their best option.

  Gal shook, clutching his knees to his chest. She reached for him, but her hand also trembled, and she clutched it against her side.

  They could have died.

  She tried again, reaching out to tap him.

  His eyes lit up with recognition. “Rayne, you’re here. I’m glad.” His lips twitched into a smile, but it didn’t last long. He glanced worriedly from side to side. “Get down, we have to hide.”

  She crouched without hesitation.

  He reached out with his hand to cup her face. “It means everything to me that you’re here, I didn’t think you’d understand.”

  She flushed, her hand reaching up to cover his. His gentle embrace promised safety, and she pushed into it. “We have to get out of here.”

  “Has everyone gotten out?”

  “Yes, Sarrin and Kieran got back to the ship. Hoepe’s men just ran in. We’re the last ones. We have to go.”

  He gave her his hand and she helped pull him to his feet. He stumbled once. “We have to hide, I don’t want them to see us.”

  She frowned.

  “No one can know we were here, Rayne. Ever.” His voice was urgent. “The Speakers…. Get out of here. It’s not safe, not at all. Who knows how long until they find us — I don’t know what they’ll do if they ever find out, if anyone ever finds out.”

  He pulled her to the ship, slamming his fist on the control to close the cargo bay door as they ran by and through the cargo bay to the main ship.

  “What was that thing?” she asked breathlessly, still clutching his other hand.

  He stopped suddenly in the middle of the corridor. “What thing?”

  “Didn’t you see? The bombs….”

  “Five Gods, the bombs.” He turned his head away, looking into an unseen distance. She thought she heard him mutter a name under his breath: “Aaron?”

  “Who?” Her heart leapt into her throat. Gal’s hand went limp in hers

  He turned back to her, his expression far away. “We have to get out of here.”

  She pulled her hand out of his, the moment of closeness and safety fleeting as she remembered the situation, and all of the choices — Gal’s choices — that got them here. Still, some thing on the planet had tried to kill them. She turned in the direction of the engineering bay. “Come on. We have to figure out how to turn on the thruster engines.”

  She stomped down the corridor, determined not going to die on some scrapyard in the deep black, and definitely not going to die a traitor. She expected Gal to follow, but when she looked back, he was no where in sight.

  * * *

  Gal tumbled into his ready room, arms raised to protect his head from the falling explosions. He hid in the trees, in the vision that had overtaken him. No one could ever know he was here — they would kill him for sure.

  Horrible demons ran back and forth, screaming. They paid no attention to him, their haggard grey mouth open in silent screams. He kept his head down. They were on their own now. He had done all he could.

  He took his clothes from the bag he had hidden and changed, burning the rest.

  The demons threw themselves against the walls over and over.

  Bombs fell. Bright flashes of fire and crashing thunder.

  He threw himself to the floor.

  It wasn’t real. It wasn’t happening.

  He groped around, crawling on all fours, searching for his flask. Glass dug into his palm, drawing blood. He held the piece of broken bathroom mirror, his reflection obscured by red.

  Fitting. A vision of who he had been.

  He crawled instead to the desk, finding the secret drawer and the bottle within.

  Suckling, he waited for the visions to end. For the memories to fade.

  The thunder grew distant, the demons silent and still. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  He stood, steadying himself until he could fall into the chair. He took another draw of the Jin-Jiu and shook his head, laughing.

  What a cracked individual he was, the bloody mirror still in his hand. He laughed and laughed and laughed. And he stopped.

  Aaron stood in the corner, his arms crossed, his face drawn with real anger.

  Gal needed another drink. Blinking, he waited for the apparition to fade with the others.

  “Galiant John Peroneus Idim.” In all the years, Aaron had called him by his full name only once, and Gal cringed. The mirror dropped to the floor.

  “So this is who you are now.” Aaron stepped forward, wiping a hand across the desk sending the Jin-Jiu flying across the room. The hand-drawn picture of Aaron slammed into the wall, tearing.

  Gal scrambled to pick it up, clutching the photo to his chest.

  Around him, the explosions started anew. Children screaming. Laz-cannons blazing. Hover transports dropping platoons of soldiers. Bodies piling up across the field.

  Aaron pulled the picture from his hand, snapping the wooden frame. “I died for this. Did you forget? My life gone. Did it mean nothing to you?”

  Gal let out a whimper.

  “They caught me and burned me and still I didn’t get up the fight. I bought your freedom with my life. And you’re cowering.”

  Gal reached across the room, aiming for his small flask that lay on the floor, contents dripping into the grey carpet. Aaron blocked him. “Please!” he shouted. “I need to forget.”

  “You can’t forget! This is who you are.”

  “No, no! I can’t.”

  Aaron snarled. “Embrace your fear and you will become brave. What have you become?”

  “There’s nothing left.”

  Aaron pushed him, Gal’s head slamming into the wall. “I know.”

  Gal found himself alone, picking through bodies on the charred remains of a battlefield. The first real battle he had seen as a young cadet. Not the last and not the worst catastrophe he had seen. Far from the worst disaster he had ever had a hand in creating.

  As he crawled on his hands and his knees, blood seeping from his head and down his arm, his quarters and the freightship slipped far away and the memory swallowed him whole.

  * * *

  Rayne rammed her finger into the controls. Wasn’t it enough that they’d taken her, held her, and brought an Augment on board? Now there was a… a thing out there, trying to blow them all up.

  The communication panel flashed, and she shouted into it, “Kieran to Engineering.”

  The creature was out there — how long until it returned with more explosives and it destroyed them? Without the engine generator running, they couldn’t even power the shields.

  Halud appeared. “Where’s Sarrin?”

  “You!” she narrowed her eyes. The false prophet who had brought her into this mess.

  The comm sounded: “This is Hoepe, Kieran is indisposed.”

  “What?” she cried. “We need him to start the engines.”

  “I’m afraid he’s unconscious.”

  Her blood ran cold, and she stared at the pale Poet willing him to undo the entire situation.

  “Sutherland is knowledgeable about shuttle engines. I’ll send him.”

  She tapped frantically on a console. Years ago, she’d been trained how to start the complex thrusters, but she couldn’t remember the steps.

  “I have to go find her,” said Halud.

  “You and your stupid sister.” She stabbed a menacing finger at him. “I don’t like you, but we need to get these engines running. If that thing comes back, who knows what it will do.”

  He shrank away, trembling.

  “Gods! This is your mess,” she screamed. She found the instruction manual on the computer terminal and read out loud: “Ensure all switches are in ‘off’ position. Engage hyper-coolant system to sixty-percent capacity. Connect run-off re-return.” She shook her head. �
��What does this mean?”

  She stared blankly at the console, hoping for some inspiration or flash of memory, when four of Hoepe’s men appeared at the door. “We heard you could use some help,” said the first.

  Rayne hesitated. But they were all in the same danger. She was a tactician, not an engineer, what choice did she have? “Yeah, okay.” She showed them the instruction manual.

  The first one — Sutherland — nodded as he read. “We need to find the hyper-coolant system,” he said, disappearing into the engine room.

  She stood frozen, next to Halud, and watched them dart back and forth. She hated these reapers, wanted nothing to do with them, and yet, it warred with her that she needed them now.

  Sutherland shouted from the engine room, “What’s he done to the FTL?”

  She sprinted to the engine room, seeing the mess of wires and conduits scattered around the normally bare space. The main panel hung open, revealing the engine’s innards. Wires spilled from inside, connecting it to a messy looking object she could only guess was the repaired Kepheus Drive.

  Sutherland held up a several loose wires in his hands. “What if we need the FTL?”

  She tapped her fingers to her chest reflexively. “We only need to get off the planet.”

  “Okay.” He flipped a set of switches and ran back to the console. He tapped the controls again, and the engines hummed to life. “Quincy, get to the bridge, fly us out of here,” he ordered. He turned to Rayne. “You too, miss.”

  “Yes, sir.” She nodded and ran. Her eyes closed briefly. How did it come to this? A reaper in the engine room and a reaper on the bridge — which was worse? Needs must, she told herself. She had to return them to the Path, but first she had to get off the stupid planet.

  TWELVE

  GRANT PARKER WOKE IN HIS cell, staring up at the harsh fluorescent lighting that buzzed in the distance. Four thick, permaglass walls surrounded him, monitoring stations at every corner. Before, they had kept him with the others in the dark cells below, but the experiments were becoming too drastic and his last escape attempt too dramatic.

  The grey-brown suit of second skin had retreated to its resting place under the skin in his mid back, leaving an oozing wound. A deep feeling of loss choked him, as it always did after one of their sessions. Memories started to come to him, flashing before his eyes, things he had seen without any recollection of how he got there or why. Their experiments controlled him, but his vision recorded events all the same.

  During their test, he had stumbled across a ship. Scavengers who were too close to the compound and needed to be sent away. He rigged the bombs from scraps and threw them. In the past, scavengers and trespassers had fled at the first sight of him, but these people were different. Some girl snatched one of his bombs from the air. Some girl….

  Sarrin. Grant jolted. Sarrin was the girl; alive; here.

  His eyes sought out the ceiling and light fixtures therein, seriously this time. The walls were over ten metres high, but he could see his escape above.

  He steadied his breathing. As soon as he sat up, as soon as he jumped, they would gas him. And then they would take control, and his escape would turn into a hunt. His pressed his palms into his legs to steady them. He had to take the chance.

  Faster than he had moved in a long time, Grant sprung up onto his bed and then leaped straight up into the air.

  Alarms and flashing lights flared. Gas hissed as it filled the cell.

  His feet met the slick surface of the permaglass, but he pressed off quickly, leaping from side to side, climbing. Thee guards wearing respiratory masks rushed in, aiming their sedative darts. They clanked off the wall, passing behind him as he jumped.

  His lungs screamed for lack of oxygen, but he forced himself to stay calm, keep his heart rate level and even.

  Another volley of darts came his way, and he leapt, nearly at the top, grasping the narrow edge of the vent on the ceiling. The gas whispered past his body, it’s slightly sweet odour invading his nose.

  He pushed up on the ceiling panel, hearing it pop open, and climbed through the hole.

  The guards below called to the others, shouting frantically.

  Ducking in the narrow space between floors, he gasped for air and started scooting himself through the ceiling, up and over walls. He climbed through a refuse hatch and reached the outside of the building, just in time to see the freightship leave the atmosphere.

  He sagged. It couldn’t be too late. No, Sarrin would wait for him. But did she see him, or just some thing?

  He needed a shuttle. Now or never.

  The shuttle hangar was on the upper floor of the compound — he had mapped the facility top to bottom in his years of captivity. Klaxons shrieked as he made his way through the walls in the building.

  There were twenty guards in the shuttle hangar. He wiped sweaty palms on his jumpsuit. Not a problem. Dropping down, he took out two guards as he landed. A third let out a yell and raised his laz-rifle. Grant dispatched him with a swift kick and grabbed the rifle. He used the rifle to take out three more guards before running for the nearest shuttle.

  He pressed the manual door release hidden to the bottom left, and thanked the UECs for being so wholly uncreative in their new designs.

  A laz-bolt seared across his shoulder, causing him to grunt in surprise. He spun away and lifted his rifle to aim. Soon, an additional four guards lay prone on the ground.

  Grant climbed into the shuttle and sealed the door behind him. Laz-bolts pinged off the titanium hull. He set himself to bypassing the security codes and initiating the start-up sequence.

  The door opened behind him — one of the idiot guards must have managed to override the lock-out. Grant jumped to the entrance and shot him point-blank. Rapidly, he fired on the two guards flanking the first, who seemed frozen where they stood. He rolled his shoulders; it felt good to move again.

  He locked the door and blocked it shut.

  The engines cycled through their warm-up automatically. Grant let out a small relieved laugh. Angling the shuttle towards the open hangar door, he left the compound and accelerated through the atmosphere, the shuttle rumbling as it passed into space.

  He scanned the stars around him, looking for the ship. For Sarrin’s ship.

  Warmth radiated in his body, spreading into a huge smile. From the moment he’d met her, they had been a team — he was the fight, the muscle, and she was the engineer. Together they were unstoppable. He would see her again, and they’d blast the UECs from the sky for all eternity.

  * * *

  Hoepe bent over the meticulous work that lay on the table before him. Here he truly felt at peace, doing the actions that had become so rote. With professional detachment, he ignored the girl the hands were attached to and focussed on piecing the jigsaw of burned flesh back together.

  The microscars of fine suturing were evident, would have been evident to someone with his training and keen eye — no wonder she’d never wanted him to look. The ‘bones’ and ‘joints’ were an incredible feat of engineering, if nothing else. They were perfectly smooth and moved effortlessly, designed for precision and strength. But why had she never told him?

  On the bench, Kieran started to stir. He sat up and rubbed his head, clutching at the cold pack resting over his swollen cranium.

  “What happened?” he asked groggily.

  “You suffered acute cerebral hypotension likely attributed to shock.” Then, in response to the blank stare, he said, “You fainted and hit your head on the table.”

  “Ah, that’s why it hurts so much.”

  Hoepe’s instruments clinked softly as he manipulated the charred tissue.

  Kieran looked away over his shoulder, his cheeks turning a pale green.

  “Never seen a scratch before, Lieutenant?”

  Kieran made no response. Few people appreciated Hoepe’s humour. Possibly it was the timing.

  “How is she?”

  The monitor beeped steadily beside her head. “Stable
,” Hoepe concluded. “Her hands will heal once the tissue is sutured.”

  Kieran gulped audibly and looked at the exposed hand. His face turned as grey as the walls of the infirmary.

  “Can you push point-two cc’s?” Hoepe asked quickly, nodding to the syringe stuck in the IV that ran into her leg. “It’s sedation — midazolam — we don’t have anything stronger, and she metabolizes it so fast.”

  Stoically, the engineer nodded and fumbled with the syringe. Hoepe watched him work — confident and careful at the same time. Kieran had proved nothing but useful, a pleasant surprise in the rest of the chaos.

  “Is that… normal?” Kieran asked, slumping down on the bench. “The hands, like that.”

  Hoepe raised a single eyebrow, debating how much to tell him. Something had happened to Sarrin to necessitate replacing all the bones in her hands with prosthetics. It must have been in Evangecore, before he knew her — he hadn’t done the work, but someone else equally skilled had. “No,” he answered.

  “Then, why? It seems… barbaric.”

  Hoepe shook his head. Sarrin had never mentioned it, never in the three years they had spent running and fighting together — not that she ever talked about anything that happened in that place. No one really talked about it, Hoepe was just there to patch them up.

  The hole in his sole flared. It hadn’t been easy, putting back together kid after kid, pulling them from the brink of death. Sometimes they slipped over and he couldn’t resuscitate them. The others didn’t understand how similar they were, didn’t think he understood them, just because he’d been trained as a doctor and they as soldiers.

  He snipped the last piece of suture, examining his work. There were a few places where the skin wouldn’t pull together, which he’d had to leave open, but the skin would scab and granulate together. The scars would fade just like the others.

  “Can I ask you something?” Kieran said quietly.

  Hoepe glanced up from bandaging Sarrin’s hand.

  The engineer studied him intently. “Are you one too? An Augment, I mean. You knew Sarrin — that’s why you took her in, and you knew what she could do.”