Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4)

by S J MacDonald

  Alex shook his head. ‘Sorry. You may be able to fill in the gaps by asking people who know, but the original memories are gone.’

  ‘Oh.’ Ali looked down at his hands, twisting his fingers together and gazing at the bone which showed through clenched knuckles. ‘I’m out, then, aren’t I?’ he said, in a trying-to-be-brave voice that was just desolate. ‘Brain damaged. Out on my ear.’

  ‘No.’ Alex said, and it would not have needed Simon pushing him to do the right thing. ‘Well, of course, if you want,’ he said, and as Ali glanced up at him, smiled. ‘You can certainly have a medical discharge if you want one, on full pension, go off and do whatever you want. But having snatched you from the jaws of death, as it were, I am rather hoping that you’ll stick around.’

  Ali looked at him doubtfully.

  ‘Really?’ he said, because he knew Fleet policy on this as well as Alex did. ‘I could go back to work?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Alex said. ‘Though I do have to tell you, I’m really sorry, but you will have to re-sit all your tests and exams to re-acquire qualifications.’

  ‘Aww, skipper!’ Ali looked appalled. ‘Oh, no!’ he lamented. ‘Eight years to do, all over again!’

  ‘No, it won’t be quite as bad as that,’ Alex assured him. ‘You do have quite a lot of your old memories and you’ll have picked up quite a bit from the re-acquire. We’ll have to identify what gaps there are, and there will be several months at least of retraining, but I will absolutely not bust you back to ordinary star and make you do it all over again – you’ll hold your rank while you’re in rehab, all right?’

  ‘Really?’ He saw the confirmation in Alex’s face, and relaxed. ‘Thanks, skipper.’ He let go a breath, shaking his head a little, ‘Woah. I really have taken a slammer, huh? You’re not joking with that ‘snatched from the jaws of death’ thing, are you?’

  ‘Not really, no.’ Alex said. ‘I have to tell you, Dr Tekawa wanted to call it. He was breaking his heart, but he said you were gone. Simon said he could save you but I had to give permission under medical power of attorney because it was experimental – you’re only the second patient he’s done this surgery on, it is radical, pioneering surgery, and it is still under review by the Medical Ethics Board. There are rules, ethical rules, about how much cloned material doctors are allowed to use in brain surgery, see. And Simon, he’s pushing at that limit… beyond that limit.’

  Ali became very still.

  ‘How much?’ he asked, and seeing that Alex hesitated, pleaded, ‘I have to know, skipper.’

  ‘Thirty four per cent of your brain.’

  There was another long silence while Ali took that in.

  ‘Thirty four per cent?’ He looked doubtful. ‘You can’t survive that.’

  ‘Evidently,’ Alex indicated him, ‘You can.’

  ‘But you’d be a vegetable,’ Ali said. ‘And I’m not a vegetable. Unless I am and I’m in a coma and just hallucinating this. I could be, right? I mean, how would I know?’

  Alex reached out, took his hand, and gripped it, tight.

  ‘You’re not hallucinating,’ he said. ‘But you are a medical miracle. Your case will be studied by neurosurgeons right across the League, for sure, and written up in textbooks. You survived against massive odds, Mr Jezno. Simon saved you. He is a genius, as he frequently reminds us, and he has worked like a demon to save you – twenty seven hours of neurosurgery, for a start, and five days of round the clock intensive rehab.’

  ‘I owe him one, then,’ Ali observed. ‘Big time. But – thirty four per cent? If that much is gone, am I even the same person? Am I still me? Or am I like a ghost of myself, haunting my own body?’

  Alex burst out laughing – just couldn’t help it, gripping Ali’s hand tightly again and grinning hugely at him.

  ‘Oh, you are very definitely and one hundred per cent you, Ali Jezno!’

  ‘Oh.’ Ali looked as if he wanted to believe it, but still, had his doubts. ‘Sure?’

  ‘Positive,’ Alex said, and Ali relaxed at that, breaking into an answering grin.

  ‘All right, skipper – I’ll take your word for it. But thirty four per cent, that’s freaky. Am I a kind of one third clone now, or what?’

  ‘You are Petty Officer Ali Jezno,’ Alex told him, firmly, ‘with a rebuilt frontal cortex. You’re not a clone or any other kind of thing, all right?’

  ‘Okay,’ Ali said, but his forehead was creased again, struggling with thought. ‘Out of the jaws of death by the skin of my teeth,’ he observed. ‘But that’s not it, is it, skipper? There’s something you’re not telling me.’

  ‘Would you accept ‘Trust me on this, you don’t need to know right now, leave it till you’re feeling stronger?’’ Alex enquired, and smiled ruefully as he saw the answer. ‘No, of course not. And fair enough, I wouldn’t, either. So, all right. Deep breath, Mr Jezno. There is a word, all right? Just a word – let’s call it the zed word. Doctors use it as medical jargon – as far as they’re concerned all it means is someone with more than thirty per cent brain replacement. Unfortunately, though, in common usage, it’s a word which carries a lot of baggage. That isn’t a problem here, in any way, we all know it’s just a medical term. Once we’re back in the League, though, and people hear about the surgery… the media... well, I’m sorry, Mr Jezno, I really am, I wish there was any way to protect you from it, but I’m afraid you are going to have to contend with a good deal of stupid, ignorant, hysterical reaction from people using the zed word about you.’

  ‘The zed word…’ Ali said, very slowly, and Alex could see him putting the pieces together. ‘Oh my God,’ he said, and the face he turned to Alex was wondering. ‘I’m a …’ he hesitated, stumbling over the word, then blurted it, ‘I’m a zombie?’

  Alex was starting to speak, to tell him emphatically that he was not any kind of zombie or clone or anything other than himself, but he broke off as he saw that Ali was actually laughing.

  ‘Cool!’ said Ali, his face alight with excitement. ‘I was dead! And now I’m a zombie! Can’t wait to tell that one at Jacksy’s!’

  Jacksy’s was the Fourth’s hangout of choice, back at Therik – a traditional spacer bar aboard a freight station where they could have a drink and ‘swap the goss’, exchanging news and telling stories.

  ‘It is just a word, and no you’re not a zombie,’ Alex said, but he grinned, too, with relief at the way Ali was taking it. ‘It does have to be said, though,’ he conceded, ‘that I doubt you’ll ever have to buy another drink, again.’

  ‘I never do anyway,’ Ali said, and then looked thunderstruck. ‘Hey, I know that! I mean, really know it, for real. I remember, all these memories, hopping up on the bar…’ he held out a hand in unconscious echo, and Alex saw the Ali he had seen so often, getting ready to spin some yarn. He was known for his ghost stories, particularly, throughout the spacer community, and the news that Ali was going on the bar would pack any hangout to capacity. ‘Beer in the hand,’ Ali said, and took a ceremonious sip of an invisible drink, ‘Take a sup – look around, got them. That’s real, I know it is, that’s actually me.’

  ‘It certainly is,’ said Alex, and gripped his hand again, briefly, before releasing it. ‘You’ll do,’ he told him, and seeing that laughter was turning to tears, got up, then, tactfully heading over to the other side of sickbay and taking his time about getting Ali some tea.

  Ali was wiping his eyes when the skipper came back, accepting the tea with a rather shamefaced ‘Ta.’ He knew what it would taste like, before he sipped it, and he knew that it was just the way he liked it, too. ‘Thanks, skipper,’ he said, and settled back down, then, with a sigh. ‘I’m shattered,’ he admitted.

  ‘Good,’ said Alex, and smiled. ‘I would be worried,’ he explained, ‘if you thought you were fine. Feeling shattered and emotional is absolutely normal and healthy at this stage of post-op recovery, all right? So just rest, now – let Simon take care of you. I know, he is the most annoying person in the universe, but you co
uld not be in better hands.’

  ‘Hey!’ Ali was starting to say something, then realisation dawned. ‘I said that! I told him that if there was a competition for the most annoying person in the universe, he’d win! That was weeks ago, when he was on at me for skipping breakfast. Oh, that is so weird! It’s like thinking something was a dream but then something clicks and you know it was real.’

  ‘You’re assimilating memories,’ Alex told him. ‘Simon said you’d do that, as you make sense of things. And that will take time, so don’t try to force it. Just rest, and get your strength up.’ He grinned. ‘You’re going to need it,’ he predicted, ‘to cope with all the visitors.’

  He was right about that – there were several people hovering right outside sickbay, as he left, talking to Simon but obviously waiting for news.

  ‘How is he, skipper?’

  ‘Himself,’ Alex said, knowing very well what they were asking, there, and giving a reassuring smile. ‘Absolutely himself.’

  ‘Well who else would he be?’ Simon put in, over the exclamations of relief and pleasure, and fending off a couple of attempts to shake his hand, too. ‘You lot, always working the drama! Get on with you!’ He flapped at them, dismissively. ‘I told you he’d be fine. And we don’t need a flash-mob hanging out here, thank you. Go and do some diagnostics or something. And no – no!’ he raised his voice and addressed the comm system with a pointed finger, ‘no visitors today, only Hali, so stop asking!’

  The crew scattered reluctantly and Simon turned to head back into sickbay, giving Alex just the briefest nod and a grin of condescending approval before he breezed off. Alex felt a surge of happiness so intense that he almost wanted to run through the ship, laughing, shaking hands with everyone, telling all of them that Ali was back, they’d saved him, they really had.

  Since he was the skipper, however, he conveyed his emotion merely by doing a hand-slap turn on the zero-gee ladderway heading back up to the command deck, somersaulting neatly through the hatch and grinning as he stepped back into gravity, walking away as the ship erupted with cheers.

  Twenty Five

  Ali Jezno’s recovery re-energised the crew. The tension and tiredness Alex had been starting to worry about melted away under the blaze of happy energy, not just in the hours after Ali’s waking up but through the days that followed. By the second day, Ali was taking his first wobbly steps out of sickbay. What he needed now, Rangi said, was to build up his strength with good food, gentle exercise, to see familiar things and talk to people.

  It was clear to everyone that his recovery was going to take some time. He might be regaining weight very rapidly with all the snacks people kept pushing on him, and physiotherapy was helping him regain his muscle tone, too. But assimilating his memories would take a lot longer – weeks, months, nobody really knew how long, since Simon said that would depend on how well he re-engaged with his life.

  Watching Ali begin to do that was just a joy. It was as if he was re-experiencing things, as disconnected dream-like memories were triggered into clear focus.

  The first time they saw that happen was with Mako. Ali couldn’t remember Mako’s name at first – he was having some problems putting names to faces, with that frustrating sense of ‘right on the tip of my tongue!’ as he struggled to make the connections. He knew that Mako and he had been good friends ever since Mako’s first trip on the Minnow. He had memories of things they’d done together, but to him, it was like remembering a movie he’d seen, something experienced as an observer, not as participant.

  Mako managed to hide his upset, finding that he was only half-recognised. Simon had told them all to expect this and how to help with it. So Mako held out his hand and introduced himself just as he had when he’d met Ali for the first time. ‘Inspector Mako Ireson, League Prisons Authority.’

  Ali shook hands with him, staring, a tumble of memories sliding into place, and in the next moment, he had burst out laughing.

  ‘Oh!’ He guffawed, and overcome with merriment, reminded Mako, ‘splat through the crust! Covered in slime!’

  Mako laughed too, remembering the incident. It had been his first visit to a slimeworld. Ali Jezno had taken him out on a little jaunt to plant some trees and spread seeds for the Terraforming Society.

  ‘And then I took my mask off,’ Mako lamented, at which Ali laughed so much that he had to catch his breath. He had been very sympathetic at the time, and concerned, too, as he was responsible for looking after the civilian who was now covered in stinking slime and throwing up. Both he and Mako had laughed about it afterwards, though, and did again, then, with as much glee as if it had only just happened. ‘Oh, Mako, man!’ Ali gave him a back-slapping hug, beaming at him as if they hadn’t seen one another for years. ‘Good to see you!’

  It caused even more hilarity through the ship as Ali put his memories back together with respect to Hali Burdon.

  Everyone knew they were mates, of course – Hali had been chosen as his oppo, to help look after him in sickbay and rehab. Hali was the ship’s senior petty officer and master at arms – Alex had headhunted her specifically for that role, back when he was first forming a crew for the Minnow. Ali was a petty officer too, working towards the qualifications which would get him promotion to chief. Hali was helping him with that, and it was well known that they were good friends.

  Neither of them had ever betrayed any sign, aboard ship, that they were any more than that. There had been some gossip, of course, and some teasing – Hali was twenty six, with a sweet heart-shaped face and a smatter of freckles. Ali was twenty four, clean-featured and athletic. Rumour was that they had spent some of their long leave at Therik together. When teasing hadn’t got any response from either of them and they had continued to be no more than ‘good-friend shipmates’ as the Fleet required of personnel aboard ship, the gossip had been dropped.

  Now, though, Ali was rediscovering not only his memories of time he’d spent with Hali, but his feelings about her. They were having lunch on the mess deck, talking about what Ali would have to do to get his ordinary star rigger certificate, when people noticed that he was looking into her eyes with an all-too obvious stunned-sheep expression. In the next moment, he had taken her hand, lifted it to his lips and kissed it – re-living a memory, there, of the moment their relationship had moved from that of friends, to lovers.

  ‘Ali!’ Hali was half laughing, half tearful, but subsuming both under a mock-stern rebuke. ‘Shipboard!’ She reminded him, pulling her hand away. ‘Behave!’

  Ali, however, was lost in rapture.

  ‘I love you,’ he told her, and marvelled, ‘How could I have forgotten that?’

  ‘It’s a secret, you nana!’ Hali scolded, and then, becoming aware of the delighted faces all around, ‘Well, it was.’

  People on the mess deck started to applaud, and hoot, and as others around the ship picked up on that and looked to see what had happened, hilarity engulfed the ship. It was all the more delicious, that, because Hali, as master at arms, was responsible for ‘interpersonal relationship’ discipline amongst the ratings.

  Ali knew that, but he was still so caught up in the revelation and intensity of his feelings that he hardly even noticed the applause.

  ‘But we…’ he gestured back and forth between them. ‘The beach house. Did we…?’

  He was remembering the time they’d spent together at a beach-side castaway lodge, on Therik. Hali had provided her own holo-album from that trip as part of the data Simon had shown Ali while he was in the tank. There were certain things they had not filmed, of course, but there were holiday snaps there of the two of them splashing in the sea and walking hand in hand.

  Hali turned a rosy pink.

  ‘Ali, shut up!’ she said, half commanding and half imploring, and laughing, too, as she got to her feet and took his hand, pulling him to get up, too. ‘Sickbay!’ she told him, and as he looked at her in bewilderment, ‘we can talk about this privately!’

  It was way too late for that,
though.

  ‘I’m really sorry, Buzz.’ Hali came to see the exec later that day, finding that everywhere she went people were grinning and pulling her leg. ‘Totally unprofessional, I know.’

  ‘My dear girl,’ Buzz said, with an amused look, ‘did you honestly think we didn’t know?’

  ‘Oh.’ She grimaced, and sighed. ‘Ah. But… discreet, off the ship, that’s one thing. This…’ she gestured helplessly.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Buzz told her, kindly. ‘There’s an amnesty, remember? No action to be taken on anything revealed through providing private records for Ali. Yes, I know, everyone’s finding it hilarious at the moment, but you know, rise above it and people will soon find something else to gossip about.’

  Hali sighed again.

  ‘I should have told him,’ she admitted. ‘Privately, in sickbay, before. But I just couldn’t say it, and it was so hard…’ her chin quivered, at that, and her eyes filled with tears. She had had to play the role of ‘good mate’ all the way through dealing with Ali’s injury and surgery, the days he’d been in a coma, sitting by his bunk as he began to recover, and all without betraying the fact that the two of them were in a relationship. ‘I just wanted to kiss him! But I couldn’t!’

  Buzz provided a shoulder to lean on, a comforting hug and a tissue.

  ‘I know. I know, dear girl. But it’s all right now. He’s back, and he does still feel the same.’ He understood entirely that one of the fears she had been contending with was the dread that even if Ali was still Ali, with most of his memories intact, he wouldn’t love her any more. ‘And as for kissing him … he is on stand-down, Hali, long term stand-down, so technically, he is now a passenger.’ He grinned at her astounded, searching look. ‘Obviously, use discretion. Normal interpersonal protocols around the ship, okay? But what happens in sickbay, in private, is your business.’