Augment

by C R MacFarlane

  “We should head to Junk right away.” Grant’s eyes lit up with a familiar wildness. “They’re still in there.”

  “We can’t afford to be reckless. We need to plan,” said Hoepe. “Besides, it will be a few hours before the jump coils are ready. The engineer tells me the FTL is ‘on thin ice’ — his words, not mine.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know, honestly, but I think we should heed his warning.”

  “You trust him, even though he’s a common wearing a UEC uniform?”

  Hoepe shrugged, avoiding a direct answer. He had enough trouble explaining it to himself.

  “Fine, we’ll wait. No more than a day.” Grant pulled his stained, torn shirt back on as he headed to the door. “I’m going to go find Sarrin. We’ll make a plan.”

  “No, don’t,” Hoepe called after him. “I told you she needs rest. We all do. I’ll set up a meeting with my men for tomorrow.”

  “But, she’s —.”

  Hoepe crossed his arms over his chest, putting on his sternest physician’s scowl. “Let her rest.”

  “I have to see her. You don’t understand what happened that day she left. I have to talk to her. I’ve been killing myself over it for four years.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Hoepe bit his lip. “She got hurt.” He held up his hands before Grant could get too upset and start flinging himself around the room. “But she’s okay. She’s resting and being looked after.”

  Both Grant’s hands raked through his hair. “By who? Her brother?”

  He’d known it was the right decision when he’d asked Kieran to look after her, but he wasn’t looking forward to explaining it. Hoepe looked directly into Grant’s eyes, hoping to convey an expression of certainty, of his superior ranking when it came to medical decisions. “By the engineer.”

  Grant’s upper lip twitched. “What?”

  Hoepe shrugged again. “He was the best option.”

  “What about me? What about her brother?”

  He gave a quick shake of his head. “Don’t go looking for her, Grant. Doctor’s orders.”

  Grant scowled, turning on his heel he marched out of the infirmary.

  * * *

  Sarrin dreamed: An invisible force held her to the table, gravity crushing her. Bright lights shone down, dazzling her eyes. She should scream, but she was too tired.

  A man with a jagged, curving scar running down the side of his face appeared above her, silhouetted in the light: Luis Guitteriez. He grinned behind his surgical mask, long scar warping into something wicked.

  A scar she had put there with her own hands — her real hands. That was when she had had small freedom, enough freedom to rebel. That was the day they started whispering her name through the barracks, ‘Twenty-seven’. The day Guitteriez had started watching her every movement.

  The whirring sound of a saw brought her attention. Her arms were shackled, the muscles frozen so she couldn’t move them. The skin peeled from her hands. Guitteriez pulled the bones out one-by-one, a terrible popping sound with each joint he tore apart. He replaced hem with prosthetics offered from a steel tray.

  Her hand flexed, bright skeleton glimmering. “You’re mine now,” said Guitteriez.

  She woke in an unfamiliar place, panting. It took a full minute to bring her heart rate under control. Her mind quickly calculated the thirteen escape routes and twenty-six deadly objects in the room.

  Standard layout for officer’s quarters: bed, desk, cabinet, latrine. On the nightstand sat a framed picture of Kieran and a girl, roughly his age — they were smiling, their arms wrapped around each other. With a start, she realized this was his room. The smell of engine oil assaulted her nostrils.

  The desk held a neat row of engineering texts stacked under the computer access console. On the wall hung a schematic of the Comrade, its engine systems highlighted, and neat little notes printed by the corner. The floor was clear and the sheets on the bed were tightly turned in.

  Rolling from the bed, she automatically pressed her hands into the corner of the mattress to push off. Her hands were more numb than usual. She looked down and saw they were wrapped in think cotton, turning them into almost comical clubs at the ends of her arms. She blinked, trying to compute the incongruence of the harsh mechanical structure buried underneath to the soft coverings.

  Above the computer console, an unusual knick-knack caught her eye. Its use as a weapon was limited, being only a small soft-plastic cube, each side faced with nine squares of differing colours. She picked it up clumsily, twisting it between her clubs.

  The door slid open without warning, surprising her.

  “Oh, you’re up.” Kieran smiled, a steaming container in each hand. “Uh, Hoepe suggested you hide out here until you’re feelin’ better.”

  She reached to put the cube back in its place, somehow embarrassed to be caught. It slid out of her bulky hands and tumbled across the floor.

  Kieran laughed, stopping her from bending to retrieve it. “Here, I’ll get it. No worries.” Quickly, he set his containers on the desk and squatted down. He popped back up, smiling. “It’s a puzzle,” he told her. “You want to make it so each side has just one colour.” He spun it around a few times to show her.

  Her eyes tracked the movements of the device.

  “I brought you something to eat.” He pulled a trunk next to the desk, offering her the single chair and the ration bowl placed closest to the edge. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starvin’.”

  She stared at the bowl.

  “Oh.” He rubbed his leg anxiously. “I, uh, didn’t think about how you would use that spoon. Do you, um, want me to, uh, feed you?”

  A growl caught in her throat and she took a step back.

  He snorted, “Yeah, sorry, bad idea.”

  The room felt incongruent, a peculiarity she couldn’t name. A star chart she didn’t recognize from the government’s database hung on the wall beside her. Mostly, though, her attention fixated on the picture on the nightstand. She pointed at it grunting.

  “Huh?” Kieran’s gaze followed her club. “Oh, that’s my sister, Lauren.”

  She tilted her head, marvelling at the normal sibling relationship, studying it. “Where is she?”

  “Um, well” — Kieran’s face darkened — “she died.” He tried to brush away the sadness with a laugh.

  A twinge of regret twisted in her stomach. Her brother was down the hall — she could hear him fussing in his room if she listened for it — but she couldn’t find the words to say to him. What if he was dead? “I’m sorry.” Normal people said that to one another, didn’t they?

  Kieran’s expression relaxed. He suddenly looked very different — older, wearier — his carefree mask slipping off and revealing a glimpse of his true self. “Thanks.”

  “How?”

  The mask replaced instantly. He changed the subject instead: “How are your hands?”

  Sarrin felt her own walls go up. “There is no discomfort.”

  He nodded and took another sip of his ration. His gaze stayed fixed to the floor between them, one leg bouncing erratically.

  She watched him curiously, the furrow in his brow, the set of his shoulders, the greyness in his skin. “Are you not going to ask more questions? Hoepe suggests we are ‘friends’.”

  She expected him to laugh — he had never missed a joke before — but he didn’t. After a minute, he said, “Oh, I guess I should.” But his gaze strained into the distance. He rubbed his hands over his face, the mask crumbling. His normally bright complexion paled, eyes dull. Finally he sighed, his gaze dropping to her bandaged hands. “It’s just enough to wrap my head around for one day. Maybe tomorrow.”

  So he had seen. Knew she was a monster. He no longer held interested in friendship, if he had in the first place. Her heart panged, and the darkness whispered to her. Had Halud seen?

  “We didn’t tell anybody, Hoepe and I, just so you know. No one else
saw.”

  She stared at her hands, the pristine bandages bringing another flood of memory: Rubble poured down over her, the lighting overhead flickered and went out. The faintest glow seeped through the spaces in the crumbled con-plas stone.

  Unfamiliar and invigorating air hit her nostrils: outside.

  Evangecore had been bombed.

  Her bandaged hands fumbled on the rocks as she dug and climbed her way out. The fingers and palm were numb, no feeling in them whatsoever.

  Sarrin could see others, hundreds of them pop up out of the ruined building, look around, and start to run. They were running for the trees beyond the fence. The drone of an aerial hovercraft warned her before it began raining laz-fire across the field.

  She unwrapped the bandages, skin not yet healed from a procedure done a day ago. But the bandages would make it impossible to climb the fence, and speed was paramount.

  In the distance she saw something out of place: a man running into the rubble, a duffel in hand. He pulled at his outer clothes exposing a UEC soldier uniform. The bomber. Familiarity tugged at her, although she did not see his face.

  “Too bad those bandages are so bulky,” said Kieran.

  “What?” The laz-beams and fire receded, her hands still wrapped.

  “Hoepe said you would need them for three or four days, and I’m supposed to make sure you keep ‘em on.” His eyes glinted warmly, a trace of laughter in his voice. Perhaps he sought friendship after all.

  Sarrin raised an eyebrow. “I would not risk going against the doctor’s orders. His bedside manner is … unpredictable.”

  Kieran laughed, full and true, music warming her soul.

  “One of your friends came on board,” he told her, “someone named Grant.”

  Her good mood dissipated, sucked out an open airlock. So, it was him, the skin-who-was-not-Grant, throwing bombs on Junk. “How?”

  Kieran scratched his back idly. “I’m not sure exactly, fell into the ship somewhere between Junk and our first grav-hole. Is he a friend of yours? Do you want to see him?”

  She shook her head no. Grant who had found her in the woods, her bleeding hands ripped open, and helped her. Grant who had been the closest thing to a friend for years. Grant whom she had left in the forest after he had killed commons and Augments alike, proving she hadn’t truly known him at all. She certainly didn’t want to see him.

  FOURTEEN

  KIERAN SAT DOWN AT THE console in his office in Engineering to write a letter home. His fingers hovered over the keypad, but the words didn’t come. Where could he even start, at this point, too much had happened to sum it up quickly.

  Three living Augments. Sarrin had metal in her hands and forty-two procedural marks. Grant had something else entirely. They were being chased by a warship. Gal was an addict. Rayne had tried to surrender them. How could he report it all? The feelings? The excitement? The fear? How could he say all that and make his parents not worry, not come and retrieve him immediately for his safety? Heck, he was worried, but he wanted to see it through until the end.

  But would it be so bad if he called for an extraction? He didn’t want to die out here, and the likelihood seemed particularly high. Regardless of how he felt, this was their fight, not his. He had to remind himself of that. His tour would be officially over in three months, whenever his parents’ ship came close enough to this region of space. Then he would go home. There would be a big celebration, a graduation of sorts, from child-apprentice to full-fledged contributing adult. He’d take a position in research or engine maintenance, wherever they wanted him.

  A knock at the partition wall that separated his office from the rest of the bay startled him, and he punched the console to turn the display off.

  Hoepe stepped into the office space. “Am I interrupting?”

  Kieran swallowed, forcing a smile. “No, sir. What’s up?”

  “Shouldn’t you be sleeping?” The doctor’s hand came up to examine him.

  “Oh, ah, no room. Plus, still trying to catch up on work.” He waved his hand vaguely.

  “Right.” Hoepe nodded. “How is Sarrin?”

  “Sleeping, I think. She ate a little earlier. Seemed okay.” He handed Hoepe a tablet from his desk. “I am worried about the FTL though, and the Kepheus Drive.”

  “I thought you’d found a spare.”

  “We did, but I — ah — dropped it in all the commotion. I can fortify the chamber, but I don’t know how long it will hold. We almost cooked ‘er with the two jumps back to back. It’s the strangest thing, it keeps shifting out of alignment, no matter what I do.”

  Hoepe nodded, frowning at the tablet.

  “We need to get a replacement part. There’s no way around it. Maybe now that Grant is on our side, we could go back.”

  Hoepe’s frown deepened. “That’s actually what I came here to talk to you about. I need you to plot the jumps to Junk. There are more Augments there.”

  “What?”

  “Grant has seen them. Thirty-three more, he says.”

  Kieran’s mouth hung open.

  The doctor’s face was grim. “It will be a technically challenging mission.”

  Thirty-three Augments, plus three. His mind boggled at the possibility. Could they rescue them all? Grant had done most of the work when he escaped, and still they had almost been caught. A whole group would be that much harder.

  Another thought occurred to him: what would happen if the UECs caught him and found out who he was? He had a cover, sure, but if anyone looked closely they would see it was just a flimsy story. The last time someone had been found, it had altered history. Forever. He glanced at the dark console screen, perhaps an extraction wouldn’t be so bad.

  And yet, he had signed on to the crew. If Hoepe ordered him to join the mission, he would — observe and participate. Plus, thirty-six Augments. Incredible. “Count me in, Doc.”

  Hoepe searched his face for a minute. “We are going to have a briefing in the cargo bay in half an hour.”

  “Sure.”

  “One more thing.” The doctor pressed his lips together. “Would you mind telling Sarrin?”

  Kieran raised an eyebrow.

  “It will be better coming from you.”

  “Me? Why not you or Grant, if it’s his idea?”

  Hoepe shook his head. “She seems to like you, more than the rest of us anyhow. Maybe you can talk her into it. Grant mentioned their last parting was not entirely amicable.”

  Kieran faltered. “Yeah, I guess, I can ask.”

  “Good. Do you have a syringe still?”

  He tried to chuckle, although he still found the weight and bulk of the auto-injector in his pocket uncomfortable. “Always do, now.”

  Hoepe reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “Thank you for taking care of her earlier. I hope you don’t have to use the sedative, but her neural pathways haven’t fully regenerated and I don’t want to take any chances. Anywhere you can make contact, press the injector to her skin and it will do the rest.”

  “Was she always like that?”

  “No.”

  Kieran stared after the doctor as he left, and the injector pinched as he shifted his leg. How had going to his quarters become a possibly lethal situation?

  * * *

  Stars twinkled in unusual constellations as she stared at the star chart on the wall. Absently, she bounced her bandaged hands together, the dull, repetitive thunk soothing her mind into blankness. It was a welcome change from the constant thought stream that flooded her with images of Grant and Halud, Kieran and Evangecore, the freightship and explosive fireballs.

  The door opened, the hiss shaking her from her lost thoughts. She hadn’t heard the footsteps. Or the keypad.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when Kieran entered. His face was drawn, his hand buried in his pocket, the silhouette of an auto-injector apparent through the grey fabric of his coveralls. She flinched.

  The tendons in his arm strained as his grip tightened. His eyes narrowed, cal
culating, preparing. Her heart rate sped up. The rapid movement of his arm brought up all of her defences.

  But his hand came out empty, customary grin painted back across his features. “Sorry, sorry,” he said. “I just came from talking with Hoepe, and he had me thinking the worst.”

  She frowned, but her breathing normalized.

  “Just….” He ran his hand through his hair, tousling the short strands so they stood up in fat spikes. “Sorry.” He turned, tossing the auto-syringe carelessly on top of the short dresser. His skin sagged, dark smudging under his eyes.

  “You didn’t sleep last night,” she noted. He hadn’t returned to the room in nearly thirty-six hours.

  An easy grin slipped over his face again, part of the mask. “No, ah, no room. Besides, I had work to do.”

  It was his bed she sat on. A place she had occupied for two days. She had meant to leave, but Grant’s footsteps continually prowled the corridors. A meeting she would avoid as long as possible.

  Besides, the engineer had been absent, too busy making repairs. She would have helped, but her hands, wrapped as they were, were too clumsy to be of any use. And unwrapping them meant facing what lay underneath, another meeting she desperately wanted to avoid.

  The bed shifted, Kieran flopping so he lay across the far end. She watched him, eyes wide, as he sighed and stretched his arms over his head, bringing them back to rub his eyes.

  She swallowed heavily. “It’s careless to leave the sedative out of reach.”

  “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “Why?” She pulled her legs up tight to her chest.

  He chuckled, the light playing across his features where he lay face-up. “Hoepe seems to think you’re starting to like me.”