Plague of Memory

by S. L. Viehl

  “You wear another’s hide, but it will never be your own,” ChoVa said, “as long as others wish to see her in it. Although I wonder if she was so well loved.”

  “They cannot stop talking about how much she was honored and loved.” I made an exasperated sound. “I can recite hundreds of anecdotes. They treasure stories of her as a mother does her son’s milk teeth. No woman in existence was ever loved and pampered and spoiled as well as she.”

  “Yet her transport crashed on your homeworld,” ChoVa said. “The League has been hunting Cherijo since she escaped Kevarzangia Two. The Hsktskt would have captured her and brought her back to Vtaga to pay the blood price on her head. How did she—you—end up on Akkabarr?”

  “It could not be the Jorenians’ doing,” I assured her. “They have shown me only kindness. They also consider me kin; they would eviscerate anyone who even hinted at harming me.”

  She inclined her head. “Then you must ask yourself why such a valuable and beloved being as Cherijo was being transported to an ice world, the surface of which no one can reach, and on which females are raised to be slaves.”

  I thought of worgald, the face skins the skela had been forced to cut off ensleg cadavers to sell in the Toskald’s skim cities. Had someone wished that fate for Cherijo, too? Or was it as ChoVa thought, that my former self had been deliberately marooned on Akkabarr, where she might be treated as poorly as the other females trapped there by Toskald cruelty and Iisleg ignorance?

  Yet if these things had not happened to her, I would never have been born.

  My head began to ache. “I complain too much. I am alive. I have a child, a husband, and the work. The Jorenians have given me their protection. Despite her unlikable personality, my former self did many wonderful things for others, and will always be remembered for it. That is enough.”

  Her eyelids lowered a fraction. “Is it?”

  A large female garbed in a Hsktskt nursing uniform came around the corner and called to ChoVa. “Doctor, a fatality was brought in, and the administrator thought you and the warm-blood would wish to perform the autopsy.” She flicked a slightly disgusted look down toward me.

  “The warm-blood’s title is Dr. Torin,” ChoVa said, her tone suddenly chilled. “Use it.” She dismissed the nurse and led me through the corridor toward the facility’s forensic department. “We had many more fatalities in the beginning, but the Hanar enacted a law to have anyone showing even mild symptoms brought to the hospital.”

  “Fear of the contagion would also cause concern.” I stopped at a rack of protective garments, made to fit bodies much larger than mine. As I reached for what appeared the smallest size, something rumbled above our heads. I glanced up. “Some of your equipment here is noisy.”

  “We channel sound into power for the facility.” ChoVa’s tongue flickered rapidly. “That noise cannot be coming from our equipment.”

  A short interval of silence followed, and then a larger roaring sound came through the walls, shaking them and the floor. Lights blinked on and off, and dust showered down on our heads. A second explosion plunged us into darkness until the red gleam from an emergency emitter snapped on.

  “Over here.” ChoVa seized my arm and guided me through the crimson-tinged haze to a staircase. She wrenched open the door, peered inside, and then pushed me in. “Go, quickly.”

  I ran up the staircase to the next level, but the door panel was without power and would not open. “How can we get to the patients?” I shouted over the rumbling, which had grown much louder.

  “Step back.” ChoVa shoved her claws into the center seam of the door and, after several moments of grunting and straining, forced the two sides apart. She had to shove some debris out of the way before we could squeeze through to the other side. An inch of gummy liquid coated the floor.

  “The containers have ruptured.” ChoVa hurried to a cabinet recessed into the wall and removed two instruments. “These are loaded with neuroparalyzer.” She handed one to me.

  I squinted at it. “It looks like a pistol.”

  “It is. Our raiders use them to subdue captives. If a patient charges at you, shoot him in the center of the chest.” She turned and sloshed through the spilled suspension gel toward the first row of patient tubes.

  I remained at her side, observing how she checked the first tube before I moved on to do the same on my own. The patients were more agitated than before, their eyes wide and rolling, their muscles bunching as they struggled to free themselves. Beyond the tubes I could see nothing; the emergency lights were few and far between.

  “I have a crack in this container,” I called to her as I found gel oozing from one damaged tube. “How can we seal it?”

  ChoVa did not have time to reply before plas exploded around me, and the patient inside the unit burst free of its confines. He released a terrible screech, and swiped at my head with wet, glistening claws.

  I jerked out of reach, raised the infuser weapon, and shot him. A long, narrow dart buried itself in his sternum. I had to move quickly to avoid his body as he tumbled over.

  “Never mind,” I called to ChoVa.

  “Well done.” She came and helped me roll the heavy, limp patient over onto his back so he wouldn’t aspirate the gel spilling from the tube. Distant, higher-pitched explosions sounded, and she lifted her head and tasted the air. “That is weapons fire.”

  I thought of my husband and the Adan, and glanced down at the device on my wrist. I could not signal Reever and ask if he was shooting at Hsktskt.

  “It is not from your men. Those are Hsktskt thermal weapons firing,” ChoVa said. She rose and helped me to my feet. “It is more likely the facility security guards. We must stop them from killing the patients.”

  We made our way through the debris and darkness out to the ward station, which appeared empty at first. Then I heard low hissing sounds that seemed to be coming out of the walls themselves.

  “Jarn.” ChoVa put her hand on my shoulder. “Do not move.”

  I froze, and followed her gaze. A heap of debris near us twitched, and then I saw the blood, and the outlines of bodies and uniforms. They were the ward staff, and they had been torn to pieces. Parts of their bodies were missing, too, as if they had been eaten. Beyond them, dozens of ruptured patient tubes sat empty, and I counted only five that had remained intact and still retained their contents.

  The darkness shifted as things moved all around us.

  “How many can we sedate before the infusers empty?” I murmured, shifting my grip on the handle and watching the darker shadows creep closer to the pool of light surrounding us.

  “If they do not jam, fifty each.”

  I peered through the darkness. There had to be more than two hundred empty tubes. The hissing sounds closed in around us. “Will the others attack the ones we sedate?”

  “No,” ChoVa said, “in this state, they pursue only whatever moves. Put your back to mine, Jarn, and try to remain as still as you can.”

  I moved until my shoulders brushed the center of the back of her jacket. The dark, smoky air and the acrid scent of blood reminded me of the battlefields of Akkabarr. Sweat oozed into my eyes, and I blinked hard to clear them.

  I expected the escaped patients to come rushing at us all at once, but a fierce light shot through the corridor wall and whined as it encountered—and quickly melted—an alloy diagnostics cart.

  “Rrrrggggrrrr.”

  Towering figures wrapped in black-and-brown garments and wearing breathers shoved their way through the gap burned in the wall, and began firing at the escaped patients, ChoVa, and me.

  I abandoned my efforts to remain motionless and ducked to avoid one wide beam. “Security?”

  “Outlaws.” ChoVa whirled around, grabbing me by the waist and falling to the floor with me under her. Suspension liquid and rubble covered me, and the impact of her heavy body on mine should have crushed me. But at the last second she rolled to one side instead of landing on me, using two of her upper limbs to cover my
face and chest.

  I saw the ones she called outlaws firing at the last of the unruptured containers. Plas melted and liquid spilled as the patients inside broke free. A moment later Chova stood and threw me over her shoulder like the strap of a medical case before she ran down the hall.

  I had nowhere to look but behind us, and watched as the outlaws shoved the hysterical patients into the stairwell. They weren’t killing them, they were herding them out. One of the patients turned around and attacked an outlaw with wild, vicious swipes of her talons. That tore the breather from the outlaw’s head, and as he avoided another blow and shot her, the flare of energy from his weapon briefly illuminated his face. A face that was not green and reptilian, but blue and humanoid. His black hair had been pulled back from his face by a knotted thong and tucked beneath his collar to conceal it.

  Xonea?

  All-white eyes met mine as I stared at the outlaw. He was not Xonea, not with those six diagonal scars slashed across the left side of his face. But he looked enough like the captain to be family. How was this possible? Was he an escaped slave, as Teulon had been?

  He did not reveal any indication of his reaction to seeing me except by a slight narrowing of his eyes.

  Just before ChoVa carried me around the corner into another corridor, the outlaw turned to retreat into the stairwell. That was when I saw the mark on the side of his throat.

  “Jarn.” Reever was suddenly there, pulling me down from ChoVa’s shoulder. He carried a blade I had never seen before—long, curved, and made of some darkly worked ensleg alloy—and held it ready as he moved his free hand over me.

  He was searching me for injuries.

  “I am not hurt,” I told him, catching his hand in mine. I looked into his eyes, which had changed color again and now were so dark gray they were almost black. “You?”

  “Fine.” As the whine of weapons fire came from the other side of the ward, he put his arm around me. “We are leaving.”

  “It is not secure.” ChoVa shoved both of us through a panel into another area. Here power and lights had been restored, and the containers lining the walls were intact, yet the patients within them writhed, trying to break free. “Jarn, I need your help with the patients. We must sedate them.”

  Reever stepped between us. “I did not bring my wife here to play nurse for you.”

  “This ward’s nurses are all dead now. Do as you will.” ChoVa went to the first tube to administer the needed tranquilizer.

  When I would have followed her, Reever grabbed my arm. “No, Jarn. We will return to the ship now.”

  “She cannot cope with all the patients by herself.” I glanced at ChoVa, who seemed just as furious as my husband. “Stay, guard me if you must, but allow me to help her. The nurses really are dead.”

  He looked for a moment as if he might beat me. “Who is attacking the facility?”

  “I don’t know. ChoVa called them outlaws.” That one male’s face was imprinted on my memory, however, and dread over what I had seen crept deep into my bones. “There was one who might be from our ship.”

  The lines across his brow deepened. “What?”

  “I saw the face of one of the outlaws. He was humanoid, with blue skin and all-white eyes, like the Jorenians,” I said, my voice a bare murmur now.

  He straightened and scanned the area. “That is not possible. It was a runaway slave, perhaps. One whose species resembles the Jorenians.”

  I checked the level of tranquilizer in my infuser. “Another species would not possess the mark of HouseClan Torin on his neck.”

  NINE

  As soon as I, ChoVa, and the other Hsktskt physicians who came to assist us had stabilized and secured the patients, Reever and the Adan decided we would return to the ship. Still shaken by the attack, I did not argue. As we left I saw that the streets were no longer empty, and the dwellings surrounding the medical facility were being searched. Everywhere I looked centurons in thick body armor patrolled in pairs and threes. These soldiers had been armed with more weapons than even the guards at the Hanar’s Palace had possessed.

  “Are the outlaws still in the city?” I asked my husband.

  He did not stop scanning the area around us, and only adjusted his hold on his pulse rifle so that he could rest a hand on my neck. “We will not wait to find out.”

  Qonja, who had stationed himself on my other side, eyed my husband before smiling at me. “All will be well, Healer.”

  With outlaws attacking the quarantined, the Hsktskt searching their own city, and Reever so agitated that he had to hold me like a wayward jlorra cub, I doubted that.

  Back on board the ship, the entire jaunt team was subjected to a thorough biodecon before being immediately escorted to the captain’s briefing room. I sat down and sipped a server of something that was supposed to taste like idleberry tea while the men related what had happened to Xonea and the senior members of the crew. Reever asked me to describe what I had seen of the attack and the strange outlaw, and with great reluctance I did so.

  As soon as I finished speaking, I glanced at the other men. From their expressions, it seemed that no one believed me.

  “There are none of our people on Vtaga save those we sent with you.” Xonea turned on the Adan ClanLeader. “Are you missing any men?”

  “All of my kin have reported back to the ship.” The ClanLeader offered me a reassuring smile. “There is no shame in making such a mistake, Lady. Fear often clouds the mind and, at times, plays tricks on the vision.”

  “There is a humanoid male among the Hsktskt outlaws. He has dark blue skin, all-white eyes, and the skin mark of HouseClan Torin on his throat,” I repeated carefully. “I was not mistaken or hysterical. I saw him clearly. My eyes functioned without impairment.”

  The men said nothing for a time. Some looked at me, while others looked away.

  “I am a battlefield surgeon,” I reminded them. “I have done my work under direct enemy fire on the ice for many seasons. I did not panic and I never mistook a Toskald for an Iisleg. I know what I saw. That outlaw was a Jorenian.” From their expressions I could tell they still did not believe me. “Why do you doubt what I say?”

  “The device on your head,” one of the men said, gesturing to the band. “Could it have made you hallucinate?”

  “It is simply a monitoring device,” I assured him. “It can only record my brain activity, not distort it.”

  Finally Salo shifted in his seat. “What you saw, Healer, simply could not be. Jorenian HouseClans always know where their kin are. If we did not, we could not protect each other.”

  “What about the Torin who stayed behind on your homeworld?” Reever asked suddenly. “Could one of them have come to Vtaga for some reason, or been captured and made a slave, without your knowledge?”

  The captain shook his head. “All Torin are here on the Sunlace or back on the homeworld. We would have been informed if one of our kin chose to travel alone, and alerted if any went missing. HouseClan honor requires us to perform immediate search and rescue.”

  “Perhaps the outlaw’s skin mark was altered to look like that of your clan,” Tlore, the Adan Clan-Leader, suggested. “The Torin have taken a prominent part in the peace talks between the League and the Hsktskt. It may be an attempt to defame your kin, through use of some being alterformed to appear Jorenian.”

  That theory made the men begin muttering among themselves. Reever had already spoken to me of the new alterform technology, which manipulated DNA to transform beings of one species into another. The bioengineered beings had usually been utilized by the League for intelligence gathering or infiltration during the war, and there had been rumors that the Hsktskt now possessed the technology.

  “I am more likely to believe this outlaw an alter-form than an escaped Jorenian slave,” Xonea said.

  This also puzzled me. “Why?”

  “No Jorenian would voluntarily live among the Hsktskt,” the captain informed me in a peculiar tone, “and none who have been made slav
es in the past survived long in captivity.”

  I folded my arms. “Teulon Jado survived more than two years after being made a slave.”

  “He took back his freedom, such as it was.” His gaze turned as cold as a dark-season ice storm. “Are you certain it was not another humanoid species? One that is dark-skinned and light-eyed, like us?”

  I wanted to agree with Xonea simply to be done with the matter, and to remove that coldness from his eyes, but I could not. “He looked like a Jorenian. He had the skin mark of a Torin.”

  “There is one manner in which we can verify the healer’s claim,” Qonja said. “With the permission of the Hsktskt, I will scan the surface of the planet for Jorenian life signs. Among this population, they will be simple to locate.”

  It was an excellent idea. The Hsktskt were coldblooded reptilians, while the Jorenians were warmblooded humanoids. The outlaw would show up very differently on long-range bioscans.

  “Telling the Hsktskt that a rogue Jorenian may have led the attack on their medical facility would not be wise,” the captain said. “They may decide that we are responsible, and attack the Sunlace.”

  “You need not tell them you are scanning for a Jorenian,” I said, feeling slightly exasperated. “You need not lie, either. Merely say Qonja is scanning for beings that may be carrying exotic pathogens.”

  “That is not true.”

  “It is partial truth,” I countered. “Jorenians carry many types of natural bacteria in their bodies that can be considered exotic.”

  Xonea scowled as if my suggestion offended him. “Deception will not endear us to the Hsktskt.”

  “Neither will discovering that they have a rogue Jorenian among these outlaws,” my husband pointed out, “or that we kept our knowledge of it from them.”

  “Very well.” A light flickered on Xonea’s console, and he glanced at the screen. “The Senior Healer summons you to Medical, Cherijo. That is where you directed the female Hsktskt to report?”