The Jurassic Chronicles (Future Chronicles Book 15)

by Samuel Peralta

  “Okay,” Brak said. “Let’s wake him up.”

  While she kept her eyes on his brain and the implant, a nurse made the necessary adjustment on the techbed controls. A moment later, the man’s eyelids lifted.

  “How did it go?” His voice had none of the grogginess associated with other varieties of surgery. For this particular surgery, they needed his senses sharp. He was plain looking for a human, but his eyes had the warmth of a good-natured person, even in the midst of brain surgery.

  “So far so good,” Jerin’s smooth, warm voice answered. “We need you to perform a series of actions, as we discussed earlier, to check everything out.”

  “Right.”

  “Can you wiggle your big toe for me?” Brak asked. The man complied. Perfect.

  “Now all of them?” she asked. Perfect again.

  “Rotate your ankle to the right in a full circle, then to the left?”

  Everything about the foot checked out.

  “Can you lift your leg at the knee?”

  Brak made a soft sound of dissatisfaction low in her throat. The knee came up, but slower than it should. The command had taken too long to go from the brain to the prosthetic. She instructed him to put the leg back down while she made an adjustment.

  “Again, please?”

  Ah. Now it was perfect. She ran through the rest of the necessary movements, then had the nurses touch the prosthetic in various ways, with both hot and cold probes, to test his sensitivity. Only a few minor adjustments were needed to get the network performing at peak efficiency.

  “Congratulations, Governor Trosc, you are now a marvel of science,” she told him, then stepped aside to let an intern close up the man’s skull and skin.

  Trosc smiled. “Thank you.”

  “What are you most looking forward to doing?” Jerin asked him. Brak had long admired Jerin’s bedside matter. The lovely Bennite had clearly been born to be a doctor. But then, most Bennites were. Brak, for her part, was glad to let this portion of the man’s treatment fall to someone better equipped for it.

  Governor Trosc’s eyes brightened. “Playing soccer with my son. The boy will never be an all-star, but he loves playing more than just about anything.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” Jerin said. “I’m sure he’ll be delighted.”

  Content to observe from a distance, Brak remained to see the man sit, stand, and test out his new leg. Jerin reminded him about proper maintenance as well as unlikely but potential issues to watch out for. Then a nurse escorted him out of the infirmary to introduce him to his physical therapist. Within a week, Trosc would be playing soccer better than he ever had, even before he’d lost his leg. Brak regretted that medical care had been too far from him at the time of his accident to salvage his limb, but at least he could afford a replacement. Many could not.

  “Nice work.” Jerin interrupted her thoughts before Brak could go too far down the railing-against-the-system road. Again.

  Brak accepted the compliment with a lift of her chin, then returned the pleasantry. A mercifully short ritual.

  “Really,” Jerin emphasized. Her kind green eyes and golden-tan skin, combined with her coiled black hair, had always struck Brak as strangely beautiful. She had a pleasing way of speaking, too, as all Bennites seemed to. At least, Brak found the up and down cadence pleasing.

  Jerin persisted. “It’s procedures like those that keep us in business. If we didn’t have paying customers like him we could never afford to do our pro bono work. I know how much money you could make on a station or planetside somewhere. Or even another hospi-ship. You make a difference here and I appreciate it.”

  Brak shifted, and she smelled the faint ammonia scent of her own discomfort. Admiral Krazinski had given her the chance to earn a tremendous amount of money, but she hadn’t taken it. Was that disloyal to Jerin and the rest of the crew? As a Bennite, Jerin had been accustomed to a life of plenty before becoming captain of the Onari and a crusader for healthcare provision. She’d made it her life’s work to help others, patients and caregivers alike, and Brak felt like she was holding out on her. She burned with guilt.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask if last week’s patient bothered you,” said Jerin. “Society hasn’t yet decided what to make of people who remove perfectly healthy limbs in favor of enhanced cybernetic ones.”

  The woman in question had traded in her own legs from thigh down for a lightweight but massively strong polymechrine pair that would aid her in her passion—rock climbing. Her new cybernetics had much greater range of motion as well as durability, since the woman had opted not to have synthetic skin overlaid. A functional choice for her, though many people, Brak included, enjoyed the look of undisguised cybernetics.

  Brak wondered if Jerin’s question about the woman’s procedure alluded to her own limbs or if it was a strictly professional question. Anyone overhearing the conversation would not hear the potential subtext, if it was even there.

  “Vanity enhancements don’t bother me. People are free to make their own choices. I certainly wouldn’t want anyone telling me what I could or couldn’t do with my body.” She rolled her shoulders meaningfully.

  Jerin nodded and her eyes flickered with thoughts she kept to herself. “Good,” the doctor said briskly. “I wanted to be sure procedures like that did not infringe on your moral code.”

  Brak sniffed appreciatively. “If they did, I’d be sure to let you know about it beforehand. Loudly.”

  Jerin chuckled. “Good.” She patted Brak’s forearm. “That’s just another reason you’re a perfect fit for this ship.”

  Brak didn’t feel as certain about that herself, but she knew she didn’t fit anywhere else.

  * * *

  The surgery had taken most of the day, and Brak decided it didn’t make sense to start working on something else so close to evening. Not yet hungry for dinner, she returned to her quarters for a short rest. It would feel good to get her prostheses off for a bit.

  She spent hours wrestling with her dilemma. What was worse? Developing something that she felt was a slippery slope toward class warfare, or refusing to help a great many people on the basis of her own ethics? It was easy enough for her to apply morality because she, personally, wanted for nothing. But when a mother wanted to give her child the ability to walk, what rules weren’t worth bending to make it happen? And if she refused Krazinski, would he pull her funding? That would affect the entire crew of the Onari, as well as everyone they helped. What’s more, how could she say no to Krazinski if it meant losing the only home she had?

  She wished she had access to a gym or a running track. She had too much nervous energy. She settled for doing weight-bearing exercise in her room until she was so exhausted she had to fall into bed. Finally, her mind stopped running the same repeating logic loops that plagued her and she fell into a deep sleep.

  * * *

  The next morning, Brak threw herself into her work. She was so fully immersed in circuits and synthetic skin that a chirp from the voicecom startled her. Demitri Belinsky’s voice rang through her lab. As the ship’s ops commander, he handled the majority of the Onari’s navigation and space travel, as well as ship’s operations.

  “All personnel be aware that the Onari is making in unscheduled stop at Blackthorn Station in two hours. We will be dropping off a supply of arisiprazine. Shore leave will be permitted for all non-essential personnel for the next eighteen hours. Belinsky out.” The voicecom fell silent.

  Arisiprazine was used to treat a particular strain of food poisoning. If Blackthorn Station had used up their supply, Brak supposed things must have gotten pretty unpleasant. She hoped they hadn’t run completely out of the drug. Although the source of the illness had surely been found and handled already, she made a mental note to take a field medical scanner with her. Just in case. She had no intentions of turning her insides out after enjoying the station’s food court. Which she planned to do. Blackthorn always had mandren meat, which the Onari did not stock. Non-Briv
een did not care for the robust flavor of the giant rodent.

  A change of scenery and a good meal might be exactly what she needed to figure things out. She’d made more than one difficult decision while staring out of Blackthorn’s starport. Brak imagined the scent of mandren and bared her fangs in anticipation.

  She checked the time and estimated that they would arrive at the station in time for a late lunch. Perfect. She returned to her work, but Krazinski’s ultimatum began cycling through her head again.

  She clacked her teeth in irritation. She wished everything made as much sense as her work. Technology either worked or it didn’t. It was like binary code. Either a zero or a one. There was no gray area. No ambiguity. Completely unlike ethical considerations. But somehow she had to translate her conundrum into binary. Yes or no. There was no third option.

  She looked at the chronometer. Scrap. She’d gotten sucked into it again and had lost an hour staring at her hands and ruminating. She’d have to hurry to finish her work before they arrived at Blackthorn. Hopefully the answer she needed awaited her there.

  * * *

  The docking bay provided the best view beyond the Onari. Brak had gathered there along with a dozen other crew members to watch their approach. Blackthorn Station was one of the larger PAC-controlled stations, housing both transient guests and a population of residents. Given that docking with a station or outpost was quicker and simpler than a planetary interface, such installations served as hubs of commerce. Blackthorn in particular catered to spacefaring travelers and diplomats, offering them excellent amenities and entertainment.

  “Are people still sick over there?” Trin asked, standing near the front as the large, mushroom-like station came into view. Brak had been glad to see him, but she stood near the back since she was taller than most.

  “Not really,” replied Ben, a broad-chested human nurse. “They’ve either recovered or are mostly recovered. Took out almost their whole supply of arisiprazine though. Must have been a nasty outbreak.”

  “Did they track down the source?” Trin asked. He was an outgoing Kenaran and popular with the crew. His people were androgynous, but Trin had identified as male and left his homeworld. In spite of all he’d been through, or maybe because of it, he was always open and genuine with others. Brak suspected that he had a soft spot for forlorn people, and that he went out of his way to befriend them. Which probably explained her fondness for him, since he’d done that very thing with her.

  “Yup.” Ben didn’t take his eyes off the station as it grew larger in the starport. Most of the ship’s porthole windows were small, but the docking bay had a small starport—about the arm span of an adult person.

  Ben shook his head. “A tainted shipment of apples, for Prelin’s sake. You know how it goes when unscrupulous traders pay off the customs inspectors for a quicker import.”

  “There should be laws against that,” Trin joked. A chuckle went through the small crowd.

  Brak decided to take a stab at joining in. Trin had often told her that she should, and practice was the only way she’d get better at it. “On my planet, those traders would be bound and left for the mandren to eat. After a lengthy ceremony of guilt and shame, of course.”

  Feet shuffled and a few uneasy “heh” sounds broke the silence. For some reason her colleagues still didn’t quite get her humor. Possibly because smiling didn’t come naturally to her, and she usually forgot to do so when she joked. Ah well. Trin had turned and made his strange little finger-gun gesture that always indicated approval. At least he’d appreciated it.

  The station loomed in the starport and soon Brak felt the docking clamps lock into place. The deck of the ship shivered almost imperceptibly beneath her feet. A few minutes later, the airlock opened.

  Trin caught her gaze and raised his eyebrows, inviting her to join his group, but she gave him a shake of her head and a wave. She wanted to park herself at the starport and hope that the immensity of the universe would whisper an answer to her. She’d been at that same starport when she’d made her decision to go to medical school after earning her engineering degree. She’d also stood in that same spot after running away from home. She’d agonized between turning around and going home to be a good Briveen and keeping her arms. Years later, she remained satisfied with the decisions she’d made.

  Maybe this time the starport would tell her that helping people was what she’d been born for, and that whatever technology she created, she bore no responsibility in how it might be used. No one could know which innovations would lead to the betterment of people and which would not. Technology itself was innocent. It was what people did with it that either helped or harmed. If only the stars and open space would tell her that it would not be her responsibility if Krazinski and his associates chose to do harm.

  Trin waved back, and in no time the eager group of Onari crew disappeared. Brak walked slowly, noting every face in the crowd and every smile shared. She felt excluded from all of life’s pleasant interactions. The thoughts inside her were too dark. Each step took her further into her own mind, deeper into her problem. Without realizing it, she folded her hands into the ritual posture of solitude. When she noticed what she was doing, she snorted and dropped her hands to her sides, startling a Rescan trader as he walked by. He turned his head and watched her worriedly until the concourse led him out of sight.

  She followed the all-access concourse in the other direction, letting it lead her around the common areas of the station, known as the boardwalk. As a visitor, she did not have authorization to visit the command or habitat areas on the upper decks, but Blackthorn offered plenty for wayfarers. She watched people going in and out of shops and restaurants. She noticed a new fragrance shop and gave it a wide berth. Though she appreciated many varieties of scent, a shop like that would be far too overwhelming for her acute sense of smell.

  She passed the food court. It teemed with people and open-air vendors of food, which she usually preferred to the enclosed restaurants. She enjoyed people-watching as she ate. It provided a pleasant change from life on board the comparatively tight confines of a ship.

  Though the food court was her favorite spot on Blackthorn, she didn’t want to eat just yet. Instead, she walked further down the boardwalk and turned left. She walked through a doorway and out into space. Or so it felt.

  Finally she arrived at the station’s starport. It was one of the best she’d ever seen, and she felt like she was visiting an old friend. She cast her eyes about, scanning for any changes, but all was just as it should be. It felt like leaving home only to return years later and find that it was as if no time had passed.

  She looked up. And up. All five decks of starport were composed of translucent material, allowing her to see through the floors above, which was quite the novelty. But the main attraction was the window straight ahead, like an open mouth yawning out into the vast abyss of space.

  Blackthorn had been constructed in a particularly dark part of the galaxy, which made the planets and stars beyond stand out like beacons. To each side of Brak, two rows of theater-style seats lined the center of the space, while a few chairs dotted the periphery.

  Since no one else occupied the bottom deck with her, she felt comfortable selecting a center seat and reclining into it. She stared out to the stars. Sitting here always made her feel insignificant. In a good way. No matter what she did, the vastness of the universe remained unaffected. It was all so much bigger than she was. She found it comforting that whatever problems she had, they were so tiny in comparison. That was probably why she made her best decisions here. Lucky for her, events had brought her to Blackthorn. The universe at work, maybe? The idea bled some of her tension away, sucking it out into space.

  She heard footfalls before she caught the familiar scent of a friend.

  “Thought I’d find you here.” Trin sat down two seats over from her.

  “Where’s everyone else?” she asked. He’d been with at least three other people before.

&nbs
p; “Lunch. I wasn’t hungry yet.”

  That might or might not be true. He had a habit of looking out for her, which she appreciated. He knew that this was her thinking place.

  “Want to talk?” he asked.

  “Not really.” Even if she did, she’d have a hard time explaining her problem to him without divulging classified information. Better to keep her own counsel.

  “How about a game of Dire Consequences?” he offered.

  She started to say no, but then hesitated. Trin had taught her the game, which he said was a popular one on his homeworld. One person presented the other with a difficult decision. The other had to make a choice and defend it. She doubted his suggestion was without an ulterior motive. “All right,” she agreed.

  “You go first.”

  She stared out into space as she thought. “Okay. You help a patient with physical therapy, rehabilitating them from a massive injury that had rendered them helpless. Later, you find out that person went on to murder three people. If you had the chance to go back in time and not rehabilitate that person, would you?”

  “Hmm.” Trin tapped a finger against his chin as he thought. “How long after the murders are we talking?”

  “Right after. The only timeline change would be avoiding the deaths.”

  “I suppose if I had the ability to keep a murderer from murdering, I would. So yes, I’d go back in time and refuse to treat that patient.”

  “What if you were only pretty sure the patient would end up doing something bad?” she asked.

  “You mean without knowing for certain?”

  “Yes.”