He had spent most of the day drifting in and out of consciousness. He knew that he had been borne back to the camp for pods one and two, and that he had been tended to by a doctor, who had sedated him heavily after a quick examination. Afterwards, his sleep came in fits, and every time he woke up in a cold sweat. Sometime during the night he became fully conscious, and the excruciating pain of the wounds kept him in agony for what seemed like hours. His restlessness must have caught someone’s attention, as a nurse had entered the tent in the darkness and, with a flashlight as a guide, put him under sedation again.
It wasn’t until the sun came up in the morning that he could see the dressings on his wounds. Blood seeped from the bandage on his abdomen, and there was a rancid smell. There was little doubt in his mind that the situation was dire. Information was something he was in short supply of, so Darren resolved to ask for more details about his condition and that of his group of survivors as soon as the nurse returned.
Darren grunted as a shooting pain in his gut brought him back to the moment. The haze of the drugs was beginning to wear off; the seam of the tent came into sharp focus when he concentrated, and he could hear the lapping of water from somewhere nearby.
Water. I knew it.
He heard approaching footsteps outside the tent, and several shadows quickly flashed across the side of the tent, moving toward the front. The zipper pulled open with a long groan. Darren lifted his head slightly to see who had entered. The face that poked through the flap was one he had not expected to see.
“Denise?” he mouthed.
His former captor entered the tent. Her civilian clothes had been abandoned in favor of a clean flight suit. Her right hand was wrapped tightly with gauze, and she bore a listless expression. Her brown eyes blinked, but he had difficulty reading her emotion.
“Lieutenant,” she acknowledged in an equally flat tone.
“What are you doing here?”
Her eyes scanned him from head to toe and back again, and she shook her head. “I’m sorry. I… I’m not sure what I was expecting.”
“What do you mean?”
“They told me that the doctor had a lot to do to put you back together. I know I should be waiting to tell you this, but I couldn’t. Not now.”
Darren tried to lift himself up on his elbows, but both his shoulder and abdomen responded with a searing rebuke. He winced and dropped back to the floor.
“What do you mean? What’s going on?”
“For what it’s worth,” she said, averting her eyes and wiping away a single tear, “I wanted to thank you for saving my life. You threw yourself in front of me when the shots started flying, and then on top of me when hell broke loose.”
“You’re welcome,” Darren replied. He hadn’t planned to use his body as a shield, but in the heat of the moment he had simply reacted without thought.
“I was wrong about you. I thought you were just some callous prick with a gun herding us around. You made it feel like we were all beneath you, and that you weren’t approachable. Like some sort of God just because you had stripes and a weapon. But yesterday I learned that, despite my view of you, and how I treated you over the past few days, you’re actually a hero. You sacrificed yourself for me.”
Sacrificed. His throat began to tighten and his heart sunk. I’m dying.
“I know the way I handled things was wrong. I was just doing the best I could with what we had and what I knew. I couldn’t handle it.”
Denise frowned slightly. “You could have asked for help.”
“I should have. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize to me. Not after what you’ve done for me. I just wanted you to know that even if no one else appreciates you, I do.”
“Thank you,” he said with a nod.
She turned and exited through the flap, and seconds later was replaced in the tent by Sergeant Daniels, who wore a grim look.
“You don’t have to tell me, Sergeant. I know I’m done for.”
“I’m so sorry, sir.”
“No need to apologize. You’re not the one that shot me.”
“Don’t worry, sir. I’m dealing with him.”
“Dealing with who?”
“Sinclair. The one who opened fire on your group when they came up. The others who were with him started firing because they thought they were under attack. Turns out the only one of your group that even got a shot off was Hank. He fired twice and missed.”
“Take it easy on him, Daniels. It might have been a misunderstanding. I heard him yell when Logan grabbed for his rifle.” Darren sighed and closed his eyes, recalling the moment. “The damn thing slipped off the kid’s shoulder. Logan was just trying to pick it up. It was really tense, so I guess that’s why he might have misunderstood Logan’s movement.”
“Sir, it’s going to be hard for me to take it easy on someone who wounded eight and killed nine.”
Ten. I’m as good as dead, he thought. At least my failure is at an end and the survivors have made it.
“Don’t take revenge on my part. I deserve this.”
“No you don’t, sir,” she said, furrowing her brow at him.
“I do,” he retorted. “I know that we wouldn’t have lost so many along the way if I hadn’t tried to keep control over everything. I didn’t want to get tangled up in their lives because I thought it would keep me from making emotional decisions. It just kept me in the dark and all alone.”
“It kept you strong.”
“It kept me arrogant. Blind.” He stared into the sergeant’s eyes and saw his own stone demeanor reflected within. “Don’t make the same mistake that I did. I was an idiot. I never would have made it on this world anyway, acting the way I did. You need to make it. These people need you, Daniels.”
“I’m here for them, sir.”
“No, you’re not. Sergeant Daniels is here. Karen Daniels is not. Do you know the difference?”
She paused and bit her lip in thought. Her head bobbed in acknowledgement, and a chink in her emotional armor showed through as her shoulders slumped and her gaze lowered.
“Good.”
“Lieutenant Marsolek is here to see you,” she added softly. “When you’re ready.”
“I’m ready now.”
Daniels reached for his hand and squeezed it as she gave Darren a somber smile. As she left the tent, he caught a glimpse of her snapping to attention and giving a salute to someone outside the tent, presumably Marsolek. A moment later, a tall thin man with an immaculately shaven face entered the tent. His ice blue eyes peered at him from behind floppy locks of sandy blonde hair. Lieutenant Marsolek’s flight suit was almost as clean as his face, and it struck Darren as being odd that, in the midst of a camp with very few amenities, there would be a man who was able to keep himself so meticulously groomed. Darren waited for Marsolek to salute – which the lieutenant did with utter crispness – before Darren returned his own weak gesture that more closely resembled wiping his forehead.
“I’m sorry that we had to meet under these conditions, Lieutenant,” Marsolek began. “I bear a measure of blame for what happened to you and your people. I had instructed my pickets to turn back any group that had signs of the disease until we could verify they weren’t a threat to our camp. Something went horribly wrong, and Sinclair and his men opened fire. Trust me that I will investigate and…”
“Shut up, Marsolek,” Darren coughed. “I don’t care what you promise to investigate. I only care about one thing.”
Marsolek spluttered and let slip an indignant huff, then closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me. Please, go on.”
“I want to make sure that my people are taken in to your camp and taken care of accordingly. They’ll be an asset to you out here.”
“I’m sorry, but there were a number of your march party that showed signs of the disease. Your scout, Sergeant Daniels, showed up here over a week ago and almost died at my feet while giving her report. We took he
r in and gave her care, but two of my people got sick and almost died themselves. We got lucky, until your second group showed up, all twelve of them.”
“Twelve? There were seventeen when they left our camp.” Darren felt it best to omit the fact that they had stolen supplies from the camp when they left.
“Hmm, that might explain why they were in such a hurry to have the two sick ones in their group taken care of. So we took them in and cared for them, but both of their ill died, and one of my own people. That’s when I knew I had to set up the pickets and keep out anyone else who is sick,” the lieutenant explained. “That’s why I can’t take your people in until we’re sure this is over.”
“You lost one person?” Darren growled.
“Yes. It was a damn shame, too. She was a nurse. All she wanted to do was see them through until they recovered.”
“Then take Brett Wu and we’ll be even. He’s a nurse, and he’s got a lot of experience with fighting this bug.”
Marsolek shook his head and crossed his pencil-like arms across his chest. “I’m not going to risk another one of my people.”
“Listen to yourself,” Darren spat. “My people. My people. You’re like a kid with an ice cream cone. They’re people, you son of a bitch. All of them. It doesn’t matter if they’re from pod one, two, or seven. Shit, where the hell are you even keeping them if you’re so damned insistent that they not be around your precious people?”
Marsolek shifted his body slightly and he avoided eye contact with Darren. “Those that we could find are at a camp a mile away from here.”
Darren sat upright, pushing through the intense stabbing in his gut. “Do I even want to know if you left them with any supplies? Weapons?”
“Of course they have food, water, shelter, and tools. What kind of a monster do you think I am? We just took away any firearms. I mean, after what happened, did you really think we’d just let them walk right in here at night and kill us all?”
Darren could barely believe the admission. “An idiotic monster, that’s what you are. No one was going to storm your precious sleeper pod. We all know you’re as well armed as we were, possibly even more so. But you’re having them sleep out in the jungle with no protection? God damn it, Lieutenant, do you even know what’s out there?”
“Uh, trees? Birds? Bugs?”
“And an aggressive predatory cat with no fear of humans, you moron.” Darren grunted as he clutched his stomach. He felt something wet, and he drew back his hand, covered in blood.
Damn.
“Daniels,” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Get in here.”
In a matter of seconds, Sergeant Daniels had returned to the tent.
“What’s this about?” Marsolek asked.
“Fixing your mistake. Daniels, go to the camp where the pod seven survivors are quarantined and bring them back here.”
Marsolek blurted, “But they can’t come here if there are any sick.”
“Damn it, Lieutenant, they’re out there scared out of their minds and defenseless against everything. You’ve had one person die, right?” Darren waited for the shocked lieutenant to nod. “I’ve watched almost thirty people die, some from the disease, some from your so-called pickets’ paranoia. If you really think that you share a measure of responsibility for what’s happened, then you need to do just that. Take responsibility. Give them a tomorrow to build. Don’t condemn these people to death because you’re afraid of it yourself.”
Marsolek hung his head in shame. Darren knew that his message had finally sunk in. “Alright. They’re all welcome in, no matter what.”
“One last request,” Darren said with a cough.
“Yes?”
“Take me outside. I want to die with the sun on my face.”
Marsolek and Daniels both paused for a full minute. Darren could see a little more of the emotional armor erode from his former second in command every second. Marsolek simply tried to pick up a façade of dignity after having his guilt flaunted in his face. They nodded in silent agreement, and in short order carried him to a secluded spot on the shore of a small lake, where they lay him underneath a tall, willowy palm. Lieutenant Marsolek left shortly after, but Daniels stayed by his side. She did her best to hold back her tears as she recalled stories of better times: times before the destruction of Raphael.
After a few minutes, Darren began to cough violently, and his lungs gasped for air. The three wounds burned with pain for a moment, and then they were numb, and a feeling of euphoria began to wash over him. He looked to his side at Daniels, who capped an empty syringe of morphine and tucked it into her pocket.
“It’s time, sir.”
“Darren.”
“Darren,” she repeated with a tearful smile.
“I’m not ready,” he mumbled, his lips becoming heavy.
“I wasn’t ready either,” she replied.
He closed his eyes and dreamed for a moment of the life that could have been, of the café he had planned. Of sandwiches made on fresh crusty bread, and pastries being eaten by children.
Darren passed from the world.
Capt Haruka Kimura
Planetfall +25 days, early evening
Camp Eight
The reflection of Alpha Centauri B glinted off of the blue sea, its form stretched in a long orange oval running from the shore to near the horizon. It was interrupted only by the dark hulk of pod twelve, over a hundred feet off shore and partially submerged. From her vantage point on top of pod eleven’s roof, Haruka could see the entire beach, from well past the river mouth at the north, to where a spit of land jutted into the ocean to the south.
Squeals of joy drowned out the calls of four-winged native gulls as children played games in the waning sun, their duties for the day complete. The last few stubborn fishermen waded from shallow shoals with their latest catch of surf crabs, mottled sharks, and a form of anemone that, if stewed, was both incredibly delicious and mildly intoxicating. Several adults could be seen in the tree line near the river taking down the laundry that had been hung out to dry earlier in the day. The sounds of construction from nearby Camp Eight had ceased for the day, and Haruka knew that hundreds of crash survivors would soon gather on or below the hill to share a meal and stories of the day.
It’s almost like it never happened.
Haruka sighed and sat cross legged on the domed metal roof of the sleeper pod; she had selected a point just to the port of the centerline, which was now the level point thanks to the list that the pod developed courtesy of the extreme tide a few days prior. A fresh breeze kicked up and swirled her jet black hair into her eyes. The activity of their newfound settlement was a disheartening paradox to her. On one hand, she was relieved to see that the survivors from all four pods were integrating well, in no small part due to the efforts of James to keep every person occupied with a task. Even Sergeant Leight’s problematic beach slackers had given in to his orders without much of a fight. The other part of Haruka was bitterly conflicted, knowing that the Serranos were struggling to cope with a heinous act committed against them, and Maria had withdrawn from Haruka. No matter what she tried, the woman that she called “friend” would not let her help, or even provide company and conversation.
Only I could make hell out of paradise, she thought as she closed her eyes and gave a long sigh. I wish you were here, Marco. Not for the view, or the beaches. I need you.
The rhythmic clank of rubber on metal to her left gave away the approach of a visitor. She opened her eyes and glanced over, watching as Sergeant Leight emerged from the pod below. He nodded and crossed the roof in a stooped walk, then sat down next to her without a word. His stare locked on the horizon, beyond the beach, where Haruka’s had been just minutes before. She resumed her hawk-like observation of the beach below, and an uncomfortable silence settled in the void between them.
After a few minutes, it became more than she could bear. “It’s bad, isn’t it?” she blurted.
“We’ll live.”
&
nbsp; “Do we know what the hell it even was? That tide thing?”
Leight nodded. “We do. At least I think I understood the explanation that I got.”
“So someone has an idea what that mess was all about a couple days ago?”
“Either that, or there’s someone down there that can bullshit me well enough to make me believe it. Science teacher. She thinks that it had something to do with the fact that both moons passed over during the daytime, and the pull from both of them plus the sun made a ‘supertide’, as she called it.”
“That’s a little disturbing.”
“You’re telling me. As soon as she said it, I had this image of some apocalyptic tidal wave sweeping away our whole camp,” he said, gesticulating in a dramatic motion to illustrate the point. “She said we shouldn’t worry too much, though. She doesn’t think that it will regularly, if ever, get past where the bank is there at the tree line. She said that if it did, all those trees would be dead and buried in sand.”
Haruka grimaced. “That’s comforting. I think.”
“That doesn’t mean that it hasn’t screwed up our little slice of heaven, though, Captain.”
“It did something to the pod, didn’t it?” she asked.
Leight chewed on his lip and nodded.
“Well, first off, knowing that there is this tide thing going on, I don’t think we can allow anyone to sleep in the pod any more. We don’t know how often this happens, and if it happens over and over, the salt will rust out the bottom of the can anyway.”
She nodded. It was a little early to set her plan in motion, but it had been something she had considered ever since James had explained why Leight was apprehensive of helping them. “That’s ok. There’s tons of room outside, and we’ve already got an established camp. Things might be a bit cozy for a while, but everyone is welcome in Camp Eight.”
Project Columbus: Omnibus Page 52
