Old Ironsides

by Dean Crawford

  Jay pushed off his desk. ‘Yeah, what was that stuff anyway? It wasn’t shiver, right?’

  Kaylin shook her head and rubbed her temples.

  ‘No, although they say it has a similar chemical construction. All I can tell you is what I told them – one breath of that stuff and I forgot where I was, what I was doing there and who I was.’

  ‘For twenty four hours,’ Vasquez said, his humor gone now. ‘How the hell does that work? Instant amnesia?’

  ‘Could be a new form of street drug,’ Jay suggested. ‘Is Viggo talking yet?’

  ‘Hasn’t said a word,’ Vasquez replied for her.

  Viggo had been picked up hours after he had escaped from Kaylin and was being processed for assault, drug-running, arson and anything else the Station Attorney thought might stick.

  ‘They’re dangling a plea deal in front of him but he’s not biting,’ Vasquez said as he continued to demolish his apple. ‘Idiot, he’s looking at ten years on Io Five for that.’

  Io Five was one of seven maximum security facilities in orbit around the Jovian moon of Io, an intensely volcanic world in close orbit around Jupiter that offered no means of escape even if a prisoner was able to break out of the facility, as Jupiter’s immense gravity could only be escaped by military-grade vessels. Considered the worst of the “Seven Circles of Hell”, as the various prisons were described by former inmates, Five was where the worst of all convicts were sent and usually forgotten about by the rest of society. Another, Tethys Gaol, was located in orbit around Saturn’s moon Tethys with only the largest military base in the Solar System for company, Polaris Station.

  ‘I don’t care much about Viggo, just what he was carrying,’ Foxx said. ‘I don’t want to be down on Earth twiddling my thumbs waiting for clearance to get back to work.’

  ‘It won’t be long,’ Jay said encouragingly, ‘and at least you get to breath air that wasn’t coming out of somebody else’s ass yesterday.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Foxx said with a dissatisfied smile.

  ‘I’m just sayin’,’ Jay protested, ‘I read it last week that every breath we take has been recycled up here at least four times. That means, by all reasonable statistics, that it’s also been up…’

  ‘What are they askin’ you to do down there on Earth anyway?’ Vasquez cut his partner off with a dirty look.

  Kaylin shrugged. ‘I don’t know, some kind of baby-sitting mission but the memo was really vague and…’

  The conversation was cut off as Captain Tyrone Forrester strode into the office, his uniform immaculate, his back straight and his shoulders broad as he glanced at Kaylin.

  ‘Lieutenant Foxx, with me.’

  Foxx sighed under her breath as she stood from her desk and followed the towering Forrester into his office, the hard-light door shimmering closed behind her.

  ‘Take a seat, lieutenant,’ Forrester ordered as he removed his cap and jacket and settled his two hundred twenty pound frame into a leather seat that seemed to sag beneath his weight.

  Foxx sat opposite the captain, as ever struggling to match the man’s immoveable discipline with the nearby shimmering holo-images of his family playing in endless silence on his desk.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  Forrester’s iron features cracked with a brief glimmer of warmth, those dark eyes betraying a hint of concern as he looked down at her. Even sitting he seemed enormous, his bituminous skin as dark as his moods.

  ‘I’m okay,’ Foxx replied. ‘Most of my memory is back.’

  ‘So you remember what an asshole I am to work for then?’

  Kaylin blinked at the captain’s humor, did a quick mental calculation and decided that it was just his way of showing concern.

  ‘I don’t recall any such thing, sir,’ she replied with a smile.

  ‘Good,’ Forrester went on as he looked down at a report on his desk. ‘Physician has cleared you of any lasting effects from the drug that you ingested, and they’ve managed to isolate some small remnant of it from your bloodwork in order to study it. According to the doctors the metabolized form differs from the likely source material, but it should give them something new to play with. You’ll be back on normal duties after a few days once the safety board’s had their say over the pursuit.’

  Foxx nodded. ‘Viggo’s in custody but he’s not talking. If you let me have a crack at him I might be able to…’

  ‘Forget about Viggo,’ Forrester cut her off. ‘You’ve got bigger fish to fry.’

  ‘I do?’

  Forrester pressed a button on his desk and Kaylin felt the ID chip in the back of her skull buzz gently.

  ‘Your ticket’s installed,’ Forrester announced. ‘You’ll head down to New York City first thing in the morning, local surface time. You’ll be met by an agent from the Central Security Service and escorted to your new duty.’

  ‘My new duty? And what the hell do the CSS want with me?’

  ‘They need an escort for a new informant,’ Forrester replied. ‘Some kind of super-secret deal they’ve got going on down there. I don’t ask questions anymore, especially when it comes to government business – it’s all just different shades of crap to me and I don’t want to put my foot into any of it.’

  ‘Escort,’ Foxx replied miserably.

  ‘You need the rest,’ Forrester said, his voice softening a little. ‘You haven’t taken any leave since last Sol, and you’re just out of two days of amnesia. This is a prime ticket, Kaylin. It should have gone to somebody else because I don’t like to lose you off the force, but frankly this couldn’t have been timed better.’

  ‘If the target’s high profile and it’s all super-secret, then escort work isn’t exactly leave, sir.’

  ‘You and I both know that you don’t really do leave, Kaylin,’ Forrester replied. ‘This will be a good mix, work with a change of scenery for you. I take it that Allen and Vasquez are arguing over who’ll be your partner on this ride?’

  ‘Which one gets the pleasure of my company?’

  ‘Neither,’ Marshall said. ‘It’s all too under the cover for my liking, but CSS wants as little involvement with personnel as possible.’

  ‘How come they’re not supplying the escort then? Surely they must have more than enough people capable of chaperoning some informant around?’

  ‘Like I said, I don’t ask,’ Forrester replied. ‘I guess the informant has some kind of rights or legal counsel or something, and can’t be hassled by CSS agents. They must need an impartial escort, which means either they’re high value or they did something highly terrible. Either way, do as I do and don’t ask any damned questions. Just go down there, smell the sweet air, bask in the warm sunshine and send a holocard to your boys or they’ll never stop whining about it, understood?’

  Foxx resigned herself to the inevitable as she got up from her seat.

  ‘Understood. How long is the assignment?’

  ‘Open ended,’ Forrester replied, ‘but I wouldn’t get too cozy. Whoever this mark is, he’ll likely be up in front of the courts as a defendant, a witness or the accused before long and your ass will be sweating it out up here again so do yourself a favour, Foxx, and enjoy it. Dismissed.’

  Foxx turned and marched out of the office, closing the door behind her as Vasquez and Allen watched from their desks with expectant gazes.

  ‘Enforced leave,’ she lied as she walked toward them, ‘physician prescribed. I’m off and with a free ticket until further notice, all paid for.’

  Vasquez looked as though he was about to burst into tears. ‘Paid for?’

  ‘All of it, paid leave until I’m ordered to return to work.’

  ‘Disciplinary?’ Allen asked.

  ‘Nope,’ Foxx replied as she slipped her pistol into her desk. ‘I’m clean as a whistle, just waiting for the board to clean up the record. Looks like I’m getting myself some time out and a little extra vitamin D guys.’

  The pair of them watched horrified as she slipped on her jacket and turned for the
exit.

  ‘You’ll send a virtual card, right?’

  ‘Sure,’ Kaylin called over her shoulder, ‘if I’m not too drunk to remember. Later!’

  ***

  VI

  New York City

  The darkness was the first thing that he noticed.

  His awareness came in random segments, drifting past like memories plunging through a darkened abyss, snatched away by time only to be replaced by another brief recollection that faded as soon as it arrived.

  He felt warmth, blessed warmth, but he could not move. He tried to open his eyes but they would not respond and yet he could feel his lungs inflating and his breath spilling gently from his body in endless rhythm.

  ‘Pulse is steady.’

  The voice sounded close and his heart skipped into a higher beat.

  ‘I’ve got response indicators, maintain the flow.’

  He sensed a figure move past beside him, other movement in the room.

  ‘Seventy-seven degrees.’

  He tried to speak, but his lips would not respond. Calm, he told himself, stay calm. He began to focus on his breathing, drawing in more air and expelling it and he felt his heart respond further, felt a tingling in his limbs as he began filling his blood with oxygen.

  ‘He’s reacting well,’ a voice said. ‘I must say that I really thought we’d have to turn the machines off.’

  Nathan Ironside felt a sense of alarm pulse through his body as he heard the response.

  ‘If he doesn’t wake up soon, I’m afraid we’ll have to…’

  Nathan sucked in a huge lungful of air and his eyes flew open. ‘Don’t!’

  It was a distant, feeble whimper as though someone were crying out for help from deep underwater, but instantly the two other people in the room stopped moving.

  ‘He’s coming round.’

  ‘Pulse is good,’ another voice said.

  Nathan stared up at the ceiling of the room but saw nothing but a bright blur. Moments later the indistinct shapes of two human heads appeared to look down at him, one dark in form, the other a bizarre, bright electric blue as though forged from glowing neon.

  ‘Can you hear us?’ the darker figure asked.

  ‘I can hear you.’

  Nathan’s voice sounded vague to his own ears, raspy and dry. His throat was sore when he spoke, his eyes itching and his limbs starting to tremble and shiver.

  ‘You’re doing fine,’ the electric blue figure said, his voice oddly distorted as though he were broadcasting across disturbed radio waves. ‘Your body will take time to adjust and your nerves and tendons will need some help to regain their strength. Just stay calm and let nature take its course.’

  Nathan managed a jerky nod as he tried to focus on his breathing. His mind was filled with an emptiness, only a vague awareness of who and where he was. He couldn’t remember why he was lying in a room with two people he didn’t know and assumed there had been some kind of accident. He tried moving his arms again and they shifted sporadically on the bed alongside him, twitching as he began to feel sharp spasms of pain in his joints and muscles.

  ‘It hurts,’ he said softly.

  There was a flurry of movement and then something passed over him, a sort of red light beam of some kind. Immediately the pain faded away and he felt as though he was floating on a cushion of air. A tremendous sense of calm and wellbeing flooded through him and he heard his own sigh of relief as he sank back onto the soft bed and let the sensations flow like warm water through his body.

  His vision sparkled with flashes and whorls of light and color that danced in erratic circles before him, but gradually he realized that his eyes were regaining their focus. He blinked and gradually the plain white ceiling came into focus. Damn, at least I can see now. Nathan looked around but could not see much beyond his peripheral vision, his neck still too weak to turn his head.

  ‘We’re going to give you an intramuscular booster to help you regain movement,’ one of the voices said from somewhere to his right. ‘That should get you up and about without too much trouble.’

  Nathan steeled himself for the fierce pain of a needle sinking into his body.

  Instead he felt a small patch of warmth blossom on his right thigh, and then the twitching began to ease and he felt something surge through every fibre of his body. Nathan breathed deeply and felt as though he were coming alive for the first time, being reborn. He felt a smile spread across his face as delight rushed through his veins and he sat bolt upright on the bed.

  ‘Damn, what is that stuff?!’

  Nathan turned to his right and almost collapsed again. He scrambled backwards across the bed and then looked down to see a three foot drop to the flawlessly tiled floor beneath him. Nathan panicked, threw his hands down to protect himself from a fall that never came.

  ‘Easy now, Mister Ironside.’

  Nathan looked up again and saw the shimmering apparition before him smile gently. An old man, maybe in his early sixties, thin-rimmed spectacles perched on his nose, balding on top but with bushy hair thriving on his temples. Partially transparent, he appeared to be some kind of hologram, occasional pulses of light flickering like errant stars across his body.

  ‘What are..,’ Nathan began. ‘Who.., why the from are you hell’? Nathan took a breath, ordered his thoughts. ‘What are you and where am I?’

  Nathan looked down again and gasped. ‘And how the hell am I floating?!’

  The other figure in the room, a younger man with thick black hair and a white lab coat, tutted.

  ‘I told you that he should have been more gently introduced to consciousness.’

  The shimmering apparition shook his head. ‘No, I wanted to be here. This has taken us almost two years, Jean. I didn’t want to miss my boy coming round.’

  Nathan stared at them, lost for words and struggling to think straight. Jean, the younger man, looked almost normal but for the fact that half of his face was constructed from some kind of metallic substance that flexed like fabric. Within it was contained a perfectly recreated and yet clearly prosthetic eye that glowed with an unnatural green hue. Beneath the right sleeve of his jacket extended a metallic limb that seemed to have several different implements attached to it in place of a hand, all of them surgical in nature and gleaming wickedly in the light.

  ‘Where am I?’ Nathan asked, looking from the two men to the non-existent bed beneath him. ‘What’s going on?’

  It was then that Nathan realized he was wearing no clothes of the sort that he would have recognized. Instead he was sealed inside a thin, semi-transparent fluid no thicker than a T-shirt that covered his torso, legs and arms. He reached up and touched his chest, saw the fluid move in slow swirls within the strange garment.

  ‘Regenerative gel capsule,’ the shimmering form said and gestured to Nathan. ‘It’s designed to encapsulate the body inside a fluid that is rich in oxidants and nutrition while maintaining a precise core temperature of thirty seven degrees Celsius. You will be perfectly protected within while your body heals.’

  Nathan looked at the floor and then jumped off the transparent bed as though it were full of snakes. He noticed a bright blue border denoting the edge of the bed and nudged it with his knee. The blue border flared a little brighter to show the contours of the bed and he felt it give a little under the pressure.

  ‘Gravity pad,’ said Jean, his expression one of intense interest in Nathan as though he were studying a new species for the first time. ‘Never seen one before, huh?’

  Nathan struggled to find words sufficient for his confusion. ‘Wow, dad must really have done well to afford all of this.’

  In a sudden rush Nathan was hit by a tsunami of memories that seemed to rise up in a huge wave and come crashing down through his mind. The mountaineering accident, Grant’s death during the bitter storm, his subsequent illness. The quarantine, the decline, the hospital, his daughter…

  ‘Angela, Amira,’ he gasped. ‘Where is my family?’

  The shimmering
hologram and the half-metal man shared a sympathetic expression that sent a chill down Nathan’s spine despite the cosseting warmth of the strange gel suit he wore. Neither of his two strange hosts spoke and Nathan took a pace toward them.

  ‘Where is my family?’

  The translucent doctor extended a hand toward Nathan. ‘We’re not at liberty to say, Mister Ironside. A counsellor will be here soon to speak to you.’

  ‘A counsellor?’ Nathan uttered in contempt. ‘What the hell do I need a counsellor for…?’

  The words trailed off into silence from his own lips as Nathan’s brief joy at being alive drained from his body as though he were on the verge of dying again.

  ‘What’s happened to them?’ he asked, his voice once again a shadow of its former self.

  The doctor lowered his hand, the kindly smile back but haunted now, tinged with a sadness that unnerved Nathan.

  ‘It’s not what happened to them, Mister Ironside. It’s what happened to you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Nathan demanded, anger poisoning his tone again. ‘What’s happened to me?’

  ‘I’m not allowed to discuss with you the details of what…’

  Nathan reached out for the holographic man’s throat but his hand passed straight through the shimmering blue neck as though it wasn’t there. He turned toward Jean, driven by the desperate need for answers. The doctor backed up to the wall, his metallic face stricken with fear at whatever he was seeing in Nathan’s eyes.

  ‘Damn it we should just tell him!’ Jean cried out.

  Nathan froze, his face just inches from Jean’s and towering a good six inches over the diminutive man.

  ‘Tell me what?’ he hissed, barely able to maintain his anger over his amazement and thinly veiled disgust at the man’s bizarre, prosthetic face.

  Jean swallowed thickly and then spoke in as soft and gentle a tone as he could muster.

  ‘Mister Ironside, you’ve been in biostasis for approximately four hundred years. Your family are long gone. I’m very sorry.’

  Nathan stared down at Jean for a long moment. He almost laughed as though it were some kind of joke, but then he found himself staring deep into Jean’s glowing metallic green eye and looking at the bizarre metal skin on his face. He turned away and looked at the bed that was invisible and at the glowing holographic doctor who was watching him with a furtive expression that conveyed a sorrow that could never have been faked by even the finest actor on earth.