Architects of Memory

by Karen Osborne

  Sharma grimaced. “Scuttled. With a spinal lance, so you couldn’t escape. Ramsay told me you were still aboard. I thought I was going to be stuck doing this alone.”

  “Doing what alone?” Keller wiped water from the corner of her lip and sucked it off her finger. “Getting off this bucket?”

  Sharma hesitated. “Not quite. This racket—Baywell, they call themselves now, when they’re trying to be a real Company—isn’t as put together as it looks. She didn’t know about the weapon until you did, so they have just as much information as Aurora does. I know more at this point than both companies combined, so that gives us room to make a more considered move.”

  Keller finished off the liquid in the glass and handed it back to Sharma, feeling marginally calmer. “Is Len on the ship? He’ll know this cruiser type.”

  The doctor hesitated. She looked away, and something like shame flickered in her eyes. “I don’t know if he’s alive.”

  “What happened?”

  “He left to relieve himself, before I was taken. He’s not aboard—or at least, I haven’t seen him, if he is.”

  “Alien planet with possible hostiles, and you let him go out alone? Didn’t you listen to your training? My orders? What the hell were you thinking?” Keller fought a hot, terrible anger, and raised her voice, ignoring her better angels.

  Sharma leaned in and snatched up the glass. “I was thinking that he didn’t need to pee in front of me.” She sighed. “Things are complicated. We can talk about that in a moment. Alison thinks you’re dead, and she needs to continue to think you’re dead. And since she’s on her way for an appointment, you can’t be here.”

  “Complicated?” Keller’s voice gained a register.

  Sharma snatched at Keller’s shoulder and turned her around, propelling her toward the wall. “She’s on her way. I’ll have to be nice to her, so both of our lives are about to get quite disgusting. Walk toward the back wall. Slow. Steady. Keep your chin down. Get in the drawer.”

  “But the cameras—”

  “There’s nowhere else to hide.”

  Four large drawers were built into the bulkhead—a morgue, which they didn’t have on Twenty-Five. Sharma slipped the latch and pulled out the top drawer to reveal a dead body, corpse-cold, its skin tinged with malicious blue and a blackened, congealed bolt-burn right under a broken sternum. His face was a gnarled, inhuman death mask, but she remembered him. She’d be remembering him for the rest of her life.

  The man I killed.

  Keller’s guts rebelled. “Not in a million years.”

  “I can’t do this without you, Captain. The other bodies are worse. They burned during the core fire. It’ll be tight, but it’s better than the alternative.”

  Keller groaned, feeling a deep revulsion wrest control of her spine. It’s going back to the crate. It’s worse than being back in the crate. “You don’t understand. I can’t.”

  “Then all is lost.” Sharma’s voice was hard metal, her mouth an apologetic twist. “Then Ash and Natalie died in vain.”

  Keller gulped down vomit and acquiesced with an angry gulp, using her hands to hoist herself onto the platform, putting one leg on each side of the dead man’s body, and pushing herself into a plank position. Her calves screamed.

  “You won’t fit that way. Lie down,” Sharma said. “Hurry.”

  “You were my least favorite crewmember, Dr. Sharma,” Keller hissed.

  “I know.”

  Keller caught the mixed odor of death and formaldehyde as she let herself rest on the dead body, gulping down sudden acid in her throat.

  The drawer was cold storage, and the man was dead ice. She shivered, and Sharma pushed the door closed with a brisk finality that startled Keller. Her world shifted into darkness, into pollution, into keeping her stomach from sending up what little was left inside. She pressed against the platform and pushed herself up as far as possible, breathing in thin streams through her mouth, trying not to vomit, trying to direct her attention back to the sounds outside rather than the dead man below her.

  Sharma had just arrived at her chair when the swift flutter of the door sounded. Keller heard hard-heeled executive’s shoes making their way across the room.

  “Where’s the guard that was just here?” Ramsay, Keller thought, and her stomach seized.

  “I believe he went to find some lunch.” Sharma’s voice was nonchalant.

  Silence.

  Keller distracted herself from the stench of death and chemicals by imagining all the ways in which she could break Alison Ramsay’s filigree nose.

  “Fine,” Ramsay said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “I didn’t think you would go through with the procedure yourself, Ms. Ramsay.” Sharma stressed the woman’s last name, adding the citizen’s honorific, as if Keller didn’t know who it was, as if she wouldn’t already hear that voice in every single one of her nightmares for the rest of her days.

  Ramsay’s tone was naked annoyance. “The analysis I asked for?”

  “It’s here. Like most Vai devices, this one functions on low power until it comes into the presence of a Vai or Vai cognate.” Keller heard a flimsy being pushed across a table. High heels clicked again, crossing the rest of the way to the doctor’s desk. A few seconds passed in silence.

  “This was worth waiting for. It really is an elegant way to kill.”

  “It’s a battery. Not a weapon. And it doesn’t kill. Not exactly.”

  Ramsay sighed. “Can you make it work against Aurora?”

  Sharma’s voice was incredulous. “Zero-point energy isn’t enough for you?”

  “Enough is never enough,” Ramsay said. Her voice wore a smooth, nasty edge that made Keller shiver. “We need to be competitive again.”

  “Then don’t set it off anywhere near your side. The device is faction-agnostic,” Sharma said. “It doesn’t care who owns the local power sources; it’ll draw power from all of them.”

  “And it can’t be changed.”

  “Not unless you’re Vai, I imagine.”

  Ramsay sighed. “Understood. I’ll take the injection now.”

  Keller tried not to breathe. She smelled death, rot, sour blood. Her stomach roared its emptiness; the sound echoed against the raw metal of the drawer.

  “Alison, I’m a doctor,” Sharma said, after a tense moment of silence. “I am your doctor and you are asking me to go against my oath to do no harm. Do not force me to do this. Taking the captain’s blood to make this was bad enough, but forcing me to—”

  Ramsay’s voice brightened. “I’m not forcing you to do anything. I want this.”

  “That’s not how this works.” Sharma clearly did not believe her.

  “So you’re negotiating. All right, let’s negotiate. Aurora never saw your worth. Your research and ours—it dovetails perfectly, like we were always meant to work together. Baylor Wellspring is prepared to provide you with equipment, personnel, and a carte blanche fiat to pursue research on Vai technology. You’re a birthright now, yes, but imagine what it would be like to have founding status. What it would mean for your family. We can give that to you. Or—here’s your other option, let me get the picture—”

  Silence. Kate heard the rustling of a duty jacket, the click of fingernails on a computer surface, and set her jaw against the ache of her legs and her desire to scream.

  “No,” Sharma said, her voice hoarse.

  “Aurora won’t find her until it’s too late. There are always jobs at Bittersweet for children.” Ramsay’s voice was calm and quiet and dangerous, like the echo of broken machinery. “Your granddaughter is small. She’ll fit in the new veins they’ve found in the wreckage.”

  Chair legs scraped against the decking. “Don’t touch her.”

  “As I said. We’re negotiating.”

  The room was quiet for a few long seconds. Keller heard the thump of Sharma’s slight body as it fell back into the chair, and the angry animal huff of her acquiescing breath. “The research is import
ant, and you’re right. Baylor Wellspring is a good place for it,” the doctor said.

  “I’m glad you see it my way.”

  Keller wanted to scream. No. No.

  “I thought they’d send someone less important for this,” Sharma said.

  “Someone on the junior staff? What, the power to bend worlds, to remake the galaxy, to silence the Vai themselves—and you think I’d just waste that on some mewling birthright? This gift is mine.”

  “This isn’t a gift.” The doctor’s voice was modulated, comforting, careful, like this was still Twenty-Five and Ramsay had come in for one migraine pill too many. “The original test subjects on Bittersweet went less than a year between their initial dose of Vai blood and the first terminal symptoms. Christopher Durant succumbed within a year and a half. Ash was already screwing up out there at eight months. She had a couple of really close calls. And I have no idea how any of it works. You’re head of Baylor Wellspring’s R&D. You know the scientific method. You know this is madness. Suicide.”

  Christopher Durant.

  Keller knew that name.

  Ramsay snorted. “Durant was ours before you even touched his body, Reva. I know what I’m asking you to do.”

  “This will kill you. You will die.”

  “You’re going to save me.”

  “I don’t know how,” Sharma said, her voice pained.

  “I believe in you.”

  Sharma huffed an exasperated sigh. “I’m just saying that you can’t rush science this complicated like this lab is a machine shop pushing out screwdrivers.”

  “I understand what I’m asking you to do.”

  “No, you don’t.” Sharma spat the words. “This is alien nanoscale technology, and it’s so far beyond our current science that any promise to save you is a promise I may not be able to keep. Ash’s illness functioned like celestium sickness, yes—but that’s just because Vai blood contains celestium. It was poisoning her directly, from the inside, not just through the mucous membranes. On top of that, the nanoscale material that lives inside is inexplicable. It’ll take years to figure out the basic physics behind it, and you just won’t have that much time.”

  Ramsay’s voice was warm, like she was smiling. “It’s not inexplicable. We both saw her react to the weapon in the pod.”

  Sharma sputtered. “The battery was using the pod to charge itself. That is all.”

  “Come on, Reva. I saw the footage you took. She reacted.”

  “You will die.”

  Ramsay raised her voice. “You will save me. We worked together long enough that I know you’re going to try.”

  “What if I don’t?” Sharma’s voice was quiet. Challenging.

  “Like you said.” Ramsay’s voice matched Sharma’s for volume. “You’re a doctor.”

  Keller felt her legs starting to cramp again in the silence that followed. She bit her lip to channel the pain.

  “I’ll need nanoscale engineers, then,” Sharma said, soft and slow. “The best you can get. You’ll have to give them similar founders’ deals. Genetic scientists. Surgeons—a hematology background is preferable. I want people who worked with Vai tech before. I can give you names and numbers for their citizenship buyouts. It’ll be expensive, but I can’t do it alone.”

  “We’ll get you what you need,” Ramsay said.

  Sharma’s voice adopted an edge of defeat. “Then roll up your sleeve.”

  Keller heard the crackling of a sterile pack opening. Her stomach turned in the stink, and the swallowing, resonant sound seemed to echo off the morgue drawer walls and fold back in on itself.

  “All right,” Sharma said. “It’s done.”

  Ramsay’s voice lost some of its sun-bright steel. “What am I supposed to feel like?”

  “Nothing, for now.”

  “When will it start working?”

  “Immediately, but you have to give the nanotech time to replicate. The celestium will take a month or two to poison you to the point that you notice, but the nanobots should start working immediately. I’ve hypothesized that the weapon’s effective range has something to do with how much of the technology is active in your system. Again, that’s just a hypothesis. I didn’t get enough time to really study the effects in the field, thanks to you.”

  “So the Vai set the weapon off at the Battle of Tribulation.”

  “That is also a hypothesis.”

  “And now I can, as well.”

  Sharma didn’t pause this time. “You are the only living Vai cognate, now.”

  “Well.” Keller heard the executive’s heels on the ground again. “As long as we’re ready for what’s ahead, everything will be fine.” Her voice had a familiar sharp point to it.

  Sharma’s voice went soft. “That’s the plan.”

  “We’re going to do great work together, Dr. Sharma.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Keller heard footsteps once more, and the door opened with an airy swish, clicking shut like a toast at a funeral. Keller heard Sharma rise, then walk closer. The doctor fussed with the latch before yanking the door open and sliding the drawer back into the light. Keller took hungry lungfuls of clean, processed air, swung herself off the drawer and the corpse with an angry, woozy purpose, then staggered over and retched into a nearby disposal chute. She knew anger was clouding her judgment. She knew Sharma was in a terrible position. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

  All she wanted to do was nail the doctor to the wall.

  “You knew what was wrong with Ashlan,” Keller said, wiping her mouth on the back of her sleeve, a fist forming. “You knew what was wrong the whole time. You could have saved her.”

  Sharma looked tired. “No. There’s a treatment for celestium sickness, yes, but not for this. I’ll need funding for a cure, and funding is funding, no matter where you get it.”

  “The cure. Which you’ll give to our competitor.”

  Sharma crossed her arms. Her shoulders tightened. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll make sure it gets out.”

  “It sure as hell does matter. Ramsay can use the weapon now!”

  “It won’t matter. Kate—” Sharma tried to push Keller into the position that was best for the cameras. Keller was having none of it; she knocked Sharma’s wrist away.

  “Don’t Kate me. We’re not friends.”

  The doctor’s jaw set. “It won’t matter, because you’re going to steal the weapon and return to Auroran space with it. Now. Before Ramsay’s abilities kick in.”

  Keller blinked. “I— What?”

  “I estimate your ability to fully operate the device at somewhere near to fifty percent, seeing as you’ve been exposed for at least three months. You won’t be able to disable Phoenix entirely, but nobody’s going to be able to stop you from just walking out with it.”

  Keller’s mouth swung open. “Operate it?”

  She’d never seen the doctor give bad news, never seen the woman disappoint a patient, but Keller imagined it had to look something like this. Sharma’s mouth turned into a frown, and she reached into her pocket, taking out her ubiquitous penlight, switching it on, and shining it into Keller’s eyes. Keller tried to swat it away, but Sharma was too fast for her. Her vision went star-white.

  “Are you hallucinating yet? Hearing voices?”

  Keller went ice cold. Remembered Ash’s ghost sitting on the desk in the crew boss’s office a few decks below. Smiling.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “So you have.”

  Keller’s mouth hung open. “Dr. Sharma.”

  “I suspect the indenture started seeing visual artifacts—flashes, dizziness—shortly after her Auroran onboarding. It lines up with some of the mistakes she was making in the field. Celestium sickness is part of my field of study. I noticed. She would have seen bright lights, at first, bright lights and black dots. Does any of this sound familiar? What did she tell you?”

  Betrayal shocked Keller’s body. “Why didn’t you tell me that you knew?”

&nb
sp; Sharma was quiet for a moment, and then she uncrossed her arms. “Until we found the weapon, I was just monitoring her condition. Tracking it. Just because there’s no profit advantage for a corporation in treating celestium sickness doesn’t mean I’m a monster. I couldn’t tell you.”

  “We could have helped her together.”

  “I know. But I’m a Company doctor subject to reporting regulations. I justified it to myself by saying that if she never came to me—if you never came to me—that I wouldn’t have to report on it to the indenture health department. I didn’t want to ruin her life if I was wrong, or add years to her indenture. Captain, I didn’t understand it was more than celestium sickness until Ash came into contact with the weapon.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I couldn’t, Captain. You were rearranging Indenture Ashlan’s schedule so she’d be able to get away from her routine blood tests. You were not following Company protocol.”

  Keller felt a burning, embarrassed anger prickling in her cheeks. “You know how much that shit costs on the indenture account.”

  Sharma sighed. “I do. Which is why I went along with it until I could no longer. I was going to show you the results of the test, the danger it posed to all of us, to force the issue and get the weapon back to where it belonged.” She sighed, her hands moving to her hips. “But then, you listened to the indentures over me, and we went to the planet, not Europa.”

  Keller shoved the extra questions down her throat. “It is a weapon.”

  “Oh, yes. And it should never be used.”

  “By Baywell? Or is Mr. Solano trustworthy enough?” The words had sharp edges; they were meant to cut. Kate felt a quiet pride when Sharma winced.

  “No. I serve humanity, not just Aurora.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Keller.

  “It means I’m on your side, not hers. Did Ashlan ever tell you about her fiancé?”

  Keller flashed back to the cavern where she’d found Ashlan and dead Christopher during the Bittersweet rescue: the thick stink of stone, the dark stains of blood on the ground, the dead bodies like scattered leaves. She shuddered, drawing the stolen coat closer around her shoulders. “She didn’t really talk about him.”