by Linda Mooney
Lawn knew what she was allowed, especially after Brune had told her the mission had been deemed a success.
Lawn stared at the man in shock. The captain returned her unspoken question with a nod. “Yes, Officer Bascomb. And congratulations!”
“How can my mission be deemed a success?” she finally managed to ask. “The Vogt is gone! I barely managed to survive!”
“Vogt Twenty Twenty-three ACE responded to the emergency with commended performance.” The man smiled.
“Deep did what he had been trained to do.”
“He blew himself up!” Lawn almost screamed at the man.
“And in doing so, he managed to disburse the meteorite cloud enough to where the Fourteenth Squadron was able to 142
destroy the remnants without further loss of life. If the Vogt had not done so, there’s no telling how many more outposts, or ships, or planets would have been shredded to pieces, including Earth.”
She ran a hand through her hair. She could use her right arm again, although it would take a little more time before the nerves in her hand would allow her to firmly grasp an object without dropping it. In the meantime, she had been teaching herself to write with her left.
“So what does this mean?” she asked the image wavering on the viewscreen before her.
The captain frowned. “In what way?”
“What happens to Deep?”
“The ship? The Vogt is being decommissioned.”
Lawn started. “All of them?”
“No. Only the ACE.”
“But the Vogt line will continue?” she insisted.
Brune pursed his lips. After silently conversing with someone off-camera, he reopened communications. “For the time being, the Vogt line is on hiatus.”
“Even Velderman?” Lawn specifically asked about the fourth crewman due to replace her and Deep when their shift was over.
“The time line for the fourth bonded pair has been brought forward. They are scheduled to take off in twelve days. But after their year is over, and that’s assuming they won’t have any level of difficulty, there should be a ruling announced as to whether or not to continue the Vogt line, or to resort to another method.”
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“What about the buoy? Who’s protecting that area until they arrive?”
“A doubled squadron of vipers has been ordered from Outposts Nine and Four to keep that area under surveillance until the Vogt arrives. In the meantime, a new crew has already left to begin construction of a replacement buoy. They should be finished by the time Velderman arrives.” Brune ran the back of his hand across his forehead. “Technically, Officer Bascomb, the information I just gave you is classified, but your current status remains as ‘enlisted’.”
“Once I get back to Earth and you debrief me, will my status change?”
Brune nodded. “Vogt ACE’s decommissioned status will not affect your status. I can tell you your contract remains in full effect.”
“And Deep and I will go down in the books as a successful mission because we did what we were trained to do,” Lawn paraphrased.
The captain nodded again. “You successfully protected your assigned quadrant without further loss of life.”
Lawn felt her face harden. “Deep lost his life,” she coldly reminded the man.
“True, but he was just a ship.”
He was just a ship. At that moment, Lawn had never hated a man as much as she did the captain.
Staring at the front of the Bureau’s main headquarters, Lawn knew she’d gotten her backbone the moment Captain Brune had summarily dismissed Deep’s life as if he was a piece of machinery that had run into a glitch. A broken toy 144
that had since been relegated to the garbage can. An advanced computer the Bureau preferred to trash rather than repair.
But you can’t repair a sentient ship. A ship with a brain and a personality and a soul is as unique and one-of-a-kind as any human being.
But that didn’t mean there couldn’t be another Vogt made to replace Deep.
Lawn winced. As much as she hated the idea of another ship and another sentient personality taking Deep’s place, it was the captain’s cold, almost nonchalant, callous, and uncaring attitude that had sealed her determination.
Reaching inside her pants pocket, Lawn gripped the tiny recorder she’d been given while aboard the Von deBont.
Communique Dee Cee Three.
“Let me find out what’s in that communique, get a few sound bytes of Deep’s voice and a few seconds of his image, and I’ll be done with you,” she whispered at the building. “I promise. When I leave here, I’ll never have to answer to you again.”
Having said it aloud, she felt better. Straightening her shoulders, Lawn continued walking toward the building.
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Chapter 20
Filed Under “DC3”
The foyer was empty except for the kiosk standing in the middle of the shiny metallic entryway. Lawn caught sight of her deformed face in the reflective surface, but she dismissed it. Her ogre side no longer bothered her, and she had Deep to thank for that. He had gone out of his way to caress the scarred tissue and the misshapen features, and he had convinced her that her outward appearance wasn’t what fueled his love for her. It was the person she was inside. The same way she didn’t love the holographic image, but the soul of the man contained within the little canopic jar that had been buried inside the ship’s core.
“State name and purpose,” the machine bleeted.
“Vogt Officer Lawn Bascomb. I’m here to review the archived communications between Vogt Twenty Twenty-three ACE and galactic base.”
“Slip finger in slot, please.”
Lawn slid her right pinky into the recessed slot. The computer nicked the tip enough to get a full DNA scan.
“Identification confirmed. Proceed to your left. Take elevator four to the second floor. Thank you.”
Sticking her finger in her mouth to ease the sting, Lawn hurried to the bank of elevators. Once she reached the second floor, another kiosk a few feet away was blinking her 146
name on its screen. Lawn tapped the screen to let the machine know she had arrived.
“Proceed to room eight. Your key code is below. You have one hour before your code expires. Thank you.”
A tiny slip of paper bearing a printed code had been spit out of a slot below the screen. Lawn took it and followed the wide hallway until she reached room eight. She punched in the long code in the box by the wall, and the door opened itself for her.
The moment she stepped into the room, she felt herself walking through a security net that gave her a thorough examination, right down to her skeletal structure. It didn’t matter. She knew she had nothing on her that would be construed or misinterpreted as being a weapon of any sort.
And the recorder in her pocket was an acceptable piece of equipment, especially here in the records hall.
There was a table and two chairs in the tiny room. The monitor was built into the wall, and the keyboard was built into the tabletop. Putting the recorder on the table, Lawn sat and waited.
Her hands felt clammy. She was nervous, and it took her a few minutes to realize why. She would hear Deep’s voice again, and that meant more to her than anything else in the world at this moment. She would hear his voice in the messages he’d sent. And although it wouldn’t be him alive and responsive, it would be the first time she would hear him speak since the tragedy.
“Please state objective and specific time frame.”
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Wiping her hands on the legs of her jumpsuit, Lawn said,
“Play back message Dee Cee Three.” That had been her first priority. She had to know what was in Deep’s coded message to her. She had to find out why it had been so important to him that he had to bring it to her attention. It was obvious he didn’t want anyone else to know about it, or else the communique would have become just another one of the archived messages.
“There is no message Dee Cee Th
ree in the Vogt Twenty Twenty-three ACE archives.”
Lawn stared at the dark screen. In the pale glare of the room’s only light source, she could see her outline reflected on the screen’s surface.
“Check again, computer.”
If computers could sound peeved, this one did. “I repeat, there is no message Dee Cee Three in the Vogt Twenty Twenty-three ACE archives. All messages are relegated a number and an alphabetical listing, in that order.”
“Is there a message labeled or coded Three-Dee-Cee?”
Maybe Deep had given her the wrong code? She shook her head. No, that wouldn’t be right. He had specifically given her Dee Cee Three for a reason. He wouldn’t have made a mistake. Not Deep.
“There is no message Three-Dee-Cee in the Vogt Twenty Twenty-three ACE archives. All messages are relegated a single number and a single alphabetical letter listing, in that order.”
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Lawn made a face. All right. Let’s play the game your way.
“Computer, please play first recorded message sent by Vogt Twenty Twenty-three ACE to bureau headquarters.
The screen went from dark to a pale blue. And then she heard him.
“Scanning complete. Full acceptance integrated. All systems are go for launch tomorrow.”
Lawn burst into tears as the sound of his voice touched the rawness inside her. Her body’s emotional betrayal shocked her, but it couldn’t be helped. She understood that now. From the time her lifepod had been picked up, until this moment, Lawn realized she still had not mourned for him. She had been living inside an insulated little canopic jar of her own.
Sealed and insulated away from life and humanity, until she could find her own way of dealing with her loss. She wiped her eyes and nose on her sleeve before continuing.
“Computer, how many sound bytes are there?”
“One hundred seventy-seven.”
“In total, how much time do those total sound bytes consume?”
“In seconds, minutes, or hours?”
“Minutes.”
“Four hundred three minutes.”
Lawn felt her hopes lift. “Computer, I would like to download a holographic image of Vogt Twenty Twenty-three ACE. How many gigabytes would the image contain?”
“Depending on the size of the image, anywhere from nine to eighty gig of memory.”
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She plugged the recorder into the slot in the table.
“Computer, please record all sound bytes and holographic form to fit the recorder’s available memory chips.”
“Affirmative.”
A little blue light appeared at the top of the recorder to let her know the information was being transferred. Lawn pushed herself away from the table and stared at the empty monitor.
She would take this precious bit of Deep with her back to her apartment where she could make a copy into her personal computer. That way she would have him with her forever, as she’d promised.
Nothing she was downloading was classified, so there was no fear of being slapped down for breaking any rules. All the important stuff was kept elsewhere, more than likely over in the big black basalt building behind the training hall.
The blue light turned white. The computer was double-checking to ensure playback.
She grimaced. There still remained the mystery around the Dee Cee Three message. Why would Deep give her a clue to something that didn’t exist?
She paused. Maybe Dee Cee Three wasn’t a message.
But he said it was a communique.
A communique doesn’t necessarily have to be a direct message. It could be a recorded conversation between people. Or a sound byte of an instance in time. Or an official statement.
“Download complete and verified.”
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“Computer, are there any other messages, sound bytes, or recordings of any kind with the indicator of Dee Cee Three in their label or heading?”
“Negative.”
Shit.
A lassitude was beginning to creep into her muscles. She had done what she had come to do. Her mission was almost over, and her body was telling her she was almost at the point where she could rest. Rest, then rejoin humanity.
Maybe it was because she was tired that she wasn’t able to think straight at the moment. “Maybe I should stop trying so hard to think about what Deep meant by his Dee Cee Three comment, and it’ll eventually come to me.” She could always come back at a later time and see if she could discover the code. That would always be her right as his paired partner.
She ejected the recorder from its slot and slipped the piece of equipment back into her pocket. As she started to rise, the computer sensed her movements.
“Will that be all?”
Lawn started to affirm when a stray thought suddenly popped into her head. “No. Computer, you said that all messages were given a single numeric and single alphabetic listing, correct?”
“That is correct.”
“Those listings were given to all communications from Vogt Twenty Twenty-three ACE, correct?”
“That is correct.”
She bit her lower lip. “Computer, how were messages designated by me?” Lawn knew she hadn’t personally given 151
any one message she’d sent to either Millner or Brune a specific heading.
“All communications from Vogt Officer Lawn Bascomb were given a single alphabetic and single numeric listing.”
Just the opposite.
Her heart picked up speed.
“Computer, is there a message Dee Three from me to base?”
“Affirmative.”
She felt her body shaking to the point where she collapsed back into the chair.
“Computer, is there a message Cee Three from me to base?”
“Affirmative.”
“Computer, is there a message Dee Cee Three from me to base?”
“Negative. All communications from Vogt Officer Lawn Bascomb were given a single alphabetic and single numeric listing.”
Shit. Back to square one.
But what if there’s an addendum given to one of the messages? Like a tagged message?
“Computer, how are messages containing tagged information designated?”
“All communications from Vogt Officer Lawn Bascomb were given a single alphabetic and single numeric listing.”
She growled to herself. “Computer, how is the tagged information on messages designated?”
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“All tagged communiques are given either a double alphabetic or a double numeric heading.”
A coldness, like little rivulets of ice water, trickled over her skin. A shiver ran through her as Lawn stared at the table top.
Look for communique Dee Cee Three. She could hear Deep whispering in her ear. Look for communique Dee Cee Three.
“Computer, is there a tagged communique Dee Cee?”
“Affirmative.”
“From Vogt Twenty Twenty-three ACE or from me?”
“From Vogt Twenty Twenty-three ACE.”
“Play it.”
“There are six such tagged communiques labeled as Dee Cee. Do you want me to play them all?”
“Is there a tagged communique Dee Cee to message three?”
“Affirmative.”
“Play the tagged communique.”
There were a few seconds of silence, then a deep sigh. “I don’t know, Brant. This is definitely writing a whole new set of rules that I don’t think you or your army of scientists ever anticipated.”
It was Deep’s voice. Brant had to be Captain Brune.
“Do you honestly expect me to lie here and not feel anything for her? You guys fucked up big time when you paired us up this way. I’ll be very interested to find out if the Velderman mission encounters the same problem.” There was another frustrated sigh. “I promised you six years of my life.
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There was nothing in the contract about my fucking heart.
Transmission ended. Mehra out.”
“Will that be all?”
Her hand automatically reached for the recorder in her pocket and plugged it back into the console. “Computer, record tagged communique Dee Cee from message three.”
The recorder light went from blue to white.
“Download complete and verified.”
This time when Lawn got up from her seat, she moved with a purpose.
Her mind was in turmoil. She had to get back to her apartment and give herself time to digest what she’d heard.
About what she’d learned.
It was impossible…but what if.
What if?
“I promised you six years of my life. There was nothing in the contract about my fucking heart. Transmission ended.
Mehra out.”
Oh, God. Please. Please!
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Chapter 21
Filed Under “Debriefing”
It was either wear the jumpsuit, or wear nothing at all.
Within a week, Lawn preferred to wear nothing at all. Deep preferred it that way as well.
The only time she felt the need to get dressed was either when she was chilled, or when she had to don the bulky spacesuit and go over to run the diagnostics in the buoy because the spacesuit was too abrasive on her skin.
Whenever she did, it left her hot and sweaty. Deep often teased her about her constant need to shower.
“There’s you and there’s me, and I already know every inch of you.” He laughed.
“I don’t like feeling sticky,” she shot back at him as she climbed into the stall.
“Sticky doesn’t bother me,” he murmured directly in her ear. A hand came out of the wall and stroked her bare ass.
“Well, it does me. And I stink, too.”
“I don’tâ��”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Lawn interrupted, trying unsuccessfully to hide her grin. “You don’t have a nose, soâ��”
“On the contrary,” he interrupted in kind. “My olfactory sensors are about four thousand times greater than yours.
