by Ben Weaver
“How’s he doing, sir?” I asked.
“After your conditioning treatments, you can ask him yourself.”
“Those treatments are going to happen right away?” I asked.
“Deck one-twenty-five, hatch nineteen,” the colonel said.
“Sir, if the treatments are successful, will we be reassigned to combat duty?” I asked.
“If that’s what you want. But son, haven’t you seen your share of blood?”
“Yes, sir. But I’d like to make sure that no one else does. That’s why I need to be out there.”
“I understand.”
“We’ll be setting up quarters for you two here,” said Ms. Brooks. “You know the transfer drill.”
Hatch nineteen slid open, and Halitov and I stepped warily into a chillingly familiar room, though it was much smaller and less elaborate than the chamber it had been designed to imitate. A half dozen black tubes about three meters tall and with diameters of just over a meter stood in a row along one dimly lit bulkhead. Two of the tubes had been peeled back, their skins flapping like metallic rinds. Inside hung scores of gossamer leads that I assumed would be attached to my body. Nearby lay a control panel of sorts, with data scrolling across a bank of touch screens.
“It’s just like the conditioning facility on Exeter,” Halitov said. “They’ve re-created our torture chamber in splendid detail.”
“Gentlemen,” came a husky sounding voice from behind one tube. “These MRSDs are completely safe.” The man behind the voice appeared and strode excitedly toward us, his olive drab lab coat whipping behind him, his gray whiskers standing on end as he smiled broadly. “I’m Dr. Jim Vesbesky.” He shook our hands as though we were celebrities. “I’ve been working on your problem ever since Ms. Brooks brought it to my attention.” He suddenly chuckled over some private irony. “We’ve finally made some progress.”
“MRSDs?” Halitov asked.
“Mnemosyne Reversion Stabilization Devices,” he said, pronouncing the mouthful with utter precision. He had probably created the name. “My assistants will be here momentarily to prepare you for insertion.”
“I’m not sure I’m in the mood for insertion today, Doctor,” said Halitov.
“Relax. You’ll find the experience quite painless. And I must say it’s a real honor to finally meet you. I’ve been waiting for this moment for months.”
“Sir, we appreciate all the work you’ve obviously done,” I said, though I had trouble purging the skepticism from my tone. “You really think you can help us?”
“Absolutely. We’ve studied the effects of premature extraction and pinpointed one cause of the defect lying within the DNA of the mnemosyne themselves.” Believing his technobabble was lost on me, he smiled and added, “It seems those little parasites in your brain were not given the proper time to assimilate and subsequently, they developed a mutation. We’ve developed a multistage treatment that’s already proven effective in test subjects.”
“Test subjects. You mean other soldiers?” Halitov asked.
Our mad scientist winced. “Not exactly.”
“Has this treatment been tested on a human being?” I asked.
“As far as we know, all of the other soldiers whose conditioning was compromised have either been killed or reconditioned. You gentlemen are the last two. That’s why this moment is so exciting,” he said, shaking his fists.
Halitov swore under his breath. “You know, Doc, I’ve been slapped, punched, kicked, stabbed, blown up, and shot at. Sounds like shit, I know. Still, every time I walk onto a battlefield, I know what I’m getting into.” He pointed at one open chamber. “But I’m not getting in there.”
“No one’s ordering you,” Vesbesky said. “But look at yourself, Captain. Are you even twenty-one yet?”
For a moment, Halitov recoiled self-consciously, then spat, “Doc, I didn’t sign on to become a lab rat.” He raised his brows. “It’s the cheese I can’t stand…”
“Doctor, is there any chance that we could be harmed, or something could go wrong with this?” I asked. “I mean, how dangerous is it? Exactly?”
Vesbesky hissed with impatience. “I’m doing this as a personal favor to Ms. Brooks. Do you really think I’d want to endanger the lives of two very valuable Colonial Wardens?”
I tensed, hardening my tone. “What are the risks?”
“All right, there’s a remote—and I mean remote—chance that your brain patterns could become unstable, but we’ve already developed an emergency response to that. Believe me, you have more to worry about if you’re not treated. In this case, the cure won’t kill you.”
That hatch opened, and in stepped two middle-aged women wearing lab coats and beaming at us with that same silly expression Vesbesky had worn. The brunette, in particular, was quite attractive.
“Ladies,” called the doctor. “Major St. Andrew and Captain Halitov have been waiting. Let’s get them prepped.”
“Whoa, I still haven’t agreed to any of this,” said Halitov, pulling his wrist from the brunette’s grip.
“I don’t like this either,” I told my former XO. “But I don’t like growing old. I don’t like it at all.”
I left him standing there as the other assistant led me toward an open hatch and a small office beyond. She instructed me to strip down to my boxers, and as I did so, Halitov joined me and furiously undressed.
“I think we’re making a big mistake here,” he said. “I’m blaming this all on you.”
“You always do.”
“No, this time I really am,” he said, eyeballing me like a gunnery sergeant.
“Hey, that brunette was pretty cute,” I said.
“Cute? She’s old enough to be my mother.”
“Not anymore she’s not,” I said, wriggling my brows. “You’re Mister Mid-life Crisis.”
He looked at me. “I get the point. Let’s go sniffing for cheese.” He trudged off, back toward the tubes.
Within five minutes, tiny, mechanical talons within the tubes had attached over one hundred translucent tubes to our bodies. We didn’t feel a thing, since a warm feeling had come up through our feet and had passed through our bodies, numbing us entirely. I wasn’t sure how the device had managed that, but I sure as hell was thankful as I stared with a weird fascination and a sense of déjà vu at my body, now an ugly, fleshy vegetable sprouting roots. The C-shaped cerebro extended on a boom from the back of the tube and cupped our heads as the doctor told us to stand by.
“Scott?” Halitov called from his chamber.
“Yeah?”
“They’re going to lock us in here, aren’t they.”
“It’ll happen fast. You’ll lose consciousness. You won’t know it. Just close your eyes.”
“It’s not helping.”
“Then why don’t you tell me about, I don’t know, what you miss most about home?”
“Nothing. I don’t miss a damned thing.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“I don’t miss a place. I miss a person,” he said, his voice cracking.
“Kristi…” I replied softly.
“Yeah, and can I tell you something, now that we’re about to die—again?”
“We’re not going to die, you idiot,” I said, dismissing his melodrama.
“I was in love with Dina, too.”
I tried to lean out from my tube so I could look at him, but I could barely feel my lips, let alone my legs. “What did you say?”
His reply came slurred and unintelligible. I couldn’t work my mouth anymore, either, so I just hung there, contemplating what he had just said. Why had he bothered to share that with me? Was he feeling guilty? I wasn’t sure, but as I thought back to our days at the academy, I couldn’t remember anything he had said or done that would’ve betrayed his feelings. I couldn’t blame him, though—Dina had been an amazing woman. But she was gone forever. It was time to concentrate on the living, and in my case, on Jing, whose secrets troubled me and tainted the vivid memory of o
ur lovemaking. Somewhere during all of that numbness and hard thought, I lost consciousness.
When the tubes finally whispered open, I shuddered violently and snapped open eyes, anticipating some change in me, perhaps a more youthful appearance and renewed vigor.
Something had changed, all right. But it had nothing to do with me. Dr. Vesbesky and his two assistants lay on the chamber floor. I couldn’t tell if they were dead or unconscious, but I saw no blood. Perhaps they had been drugged or their necks broken. Panicking, my gaze flicked to the gossamers still attached to my chest, neck, and limbs. Though sensation was beginning to return, I still couldn’t move.
“Rooslin?”
He moaned a reply.
“Wake up, man,” I sang ominously.
A flash came from near the control panel, where a figure concealed by the dark phosphorus green of a combat skin stood, working a finger over one touch screen. Judging from the height and build, I assumed he was male.
“Hey!” I shouted, but the figure ignored me, intent on doing something to the machine.
“Who are you?” Halitov cried.
The tube emitted a low hum, and the gossamers tugged at my skin. I could either stand there and perhaps wind up like the doctor and his assistants or make a move, a move I knew depended upon my accessing the bond. I reached into it, and lo and behold, I sensed the energy binding the particles of my body to the gossamers. Concentrating so hard that it hurt, I willed myself away from them, to a point across the room, near the main hatch, where I hoped I could cut off our amateur scientist and potential saboteur.
Before I could bat an eyelash, I stood at the hatch, tingling from the pinpricks where the gossamers had been attached, the deck tipping forty-five degrees as I paid for my magic.
The figure whirled, leveling a pistol on me.
A still middle-aged looking Halitov materialized beside the guy and drove a hand through the guy’s skin to latch onto his wrist.
A round exploded from the pistol’s muzzle before Halitov could misdirect the fire. That wasn’t a particle round but a hiza dart equipped with a drug-filled syringe and onboard computer to control the dose.
I dropped to my stomach, ears ringing, wondering if I’d been hit. I looked up—
Halitov swore and grappled with the figure, his hand still latched on the guy’s wrist—even as the assailant booted him in the head and another dart burst from the weapon.
The bulkheads had been designed to capture and dissolve particle, conventional, and even dart fire, and that second hiza round vanished into the overhead as I hauled myself up and felt something wet on my collarbone. My fingers came up bloody. Without time to contemplate the wound, I launched myself into a dirc, answering our attacker’s dart by turning myself into one. I reached out and grabbed the guy’s neck as my momentum wrenched him away from Halitov. We hit the deck, and I lost my grip on the figure as I rolled and turned.
What I didn’t realize was that the guy’s second dart—the one that had struck the overhead—had tripped alarms and had alerted shipboard security. Those officers were en route and would arrive within a minute. The figure knew, though, because instead of turning the pistol on me he bolted for the hatch and dematerialized before it even opened.
Halitov charged to the hatch panel, keyed open the door, then burst into the corridor as I came up hard at his heels. Far ahead, a couple of midshipmen stared aghast at us, both in our boxers, me bleeding, Halitov screaming for them to make way. Beyond them, our phosphorescent phantom appeared, clutched the wall a moment, dazed, then looked back, spotted us, and took off.
“Stay here! I’ll get him,” barked Halitov, his gaze locked on my bloody neck for a split second before he reached into the bond and sped off as though surfing a bolt of lightning.
Bullshit, I thought and caught the next bolt, racing madly through the corridor, whipping around the corner, and carrying myself deeper into the ship’s bowels. The importance of what we were doing began to take hold. There was a saboteur—maybe even the traitor—aboard Vanguard One. If this person was operating freely aboard Colonel Beauregard’s own vessel, then much more than fleet defenses over a single colony were at stake. This mole could conceivably provide information to the Alliances regarding all major campaigns taking place throughout the entire seventeen systems. The enemy would learn of our troop numbers, ordnance, location, and even our battle plans. This was an inconceivable breach of security. How had the Alliances managed to penetrate our ranks? Had they brainwiped and reconditioned one of our own? I had assumed that something that complicated, that risky, would never work—but apparently it had.
I’m not sure how many officers and crew members Halitov and I veered around, bumped into, shoved, or completely knocked over, but the number rose well into the double digits. Throngs of angry personnel gathered in our wake and began chasing us, even as security team members threaded through them. My friend and I turned deck one-twenty-five into a ward for the exceedingly pissed off, and when I finally caught up with Halitov and we took a moment to catch our breaths, we realized that our attacker was long gone and our new “friends” there on that deck were heated enough to finish our executions. Halitov nearly got into a fistfight with two young second lieutenants that he had shoved against one bulkhead, but the security people arrived.
We returned to Vesbesky’s chamber, where military police were already combing over the scene. Vesbesky and his assistants had been stunned into unconsciousness with hiza darts but were still alive. Apparently, our attacker had done nothing to sabotage the controls or our treatment, but had been merely taking us out of stasis.
Back in the sickbay, the doctors shook their heads at the synthskin on my shoulder used to repair the wound I’d received at LockMar Randall, then started work on my neck. “Can you wait until one wound fully heals before you collect another?” one doc asked me.
I grinned at the amiable black man. “Funny thing is, I was just removed from combat duty and given a consultant’s job.”
“Maybe you ought to go back to the battlefield, where it’s safer,” he said with a wink.
As the doctor continued his work, Halitov sat nearby, sipping on a cup of tea. He really did like tea. With lemon.
“So if this guy wasn’t trying to kill us, then what do you think?” I asked. “Was he trying to kidnap us or what?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure what the Alliances hope to gain by capturing two broken down warhorses. It’s not as though we’re carrying around that much classified data. Other than being conditioned—and even that doesn’t work—we’re really not worth much…”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Captain,” said Dr. Vesbesky, lying on a stretcher across from mine and recovering from the stun attack he had received. “I said you were the last two that we know of whose conditioning suffered an anomaly. However, we’re not certain how many soldiers the Alliances have who are suffering from the same accelerated aging that you are.”
“Their conditioned soldiers should be fine,” Halitov said. “The conditioning accident happened on Exeter, and it only happened to us cadets, not Alliance people.”
“Remember Captain, the Alliances have been trying to get that facility back online for months now. They’ve been experimenting with it, sending troops in, trying to get them conditioned. I’ve been told that those troops are now suffering from the same ill effects that you are.”
“But you’ve discovered a treatment,” I said. “And if they can’t get their hands on data regarding the treatment, then why not grab a few patients and reverse engineer it from there?”
Vesbesky nodded. “The person who stunned me was trying to get to you—because when it comes to security, I defy even God to get inside my database.”
Our personal mad scientist thought he could take on God, but first he had to deal with alien parasites. And the real irony, the irony that left Halitov chuckling like a madman and me stoop-shouldered, came later, after Vesbesky ran diagnostics on us to check for mnemosyne stabilization.
The treatment had done nothing. Absolutely nothing.
6
Ms. Brooks insisted that we keep the treatment’s failure to ourselves. She even suggested that Halitov and I get haircuts, use skin-softening cosmetics, and even darken our hair a little to convey to anyone watching that we were, in fact, being helped by Vesbesky. Neither Halitov nor I would submit to cosmetic surgery, though the option had been discussed. While our faith in Vesbesky had waned considerably, we would give him another chance before making irreversible changes to our bodies. The good doctor, working in a fever pitch, swore he would have the problem solved as soon as possible and urged Colonel Beauregard to keep us close by for another treatment.
I welcomed some R&R and much-needed time to recuperate. That shot had only glanced off my neck and had missed my jugular, but between that wound and the dull ache in my shoulder, I could barely turn without flinching. I returned to my quarters, ordered the supplies I needed, then called over to the Roger Harrington in search of Jing. According to the flight boss’s log, she had left the ship and had been ordered aboard Vanguard One shortly after we had departed. Interesting timing there. Could she have been our attacker? Combat skins could be manipulated to alter one’s outline, though you would probably need an engineer to help you do that. No, the figure couldn’t be Jing. Why would she turn coat? What did she possibly have to gain? And didn’t she have feelings for me? Then again, if she wasn’t a traitor, why hadn’t she come to visit me? Was she too busy working for Ms. Brooks? I wanted to locate her and demand answers, but the more I thought about it, the more I resigned to the situation. She would come to me when she was ready. She knew where to find me, and you couldn’t miss the two MPs standing guard outside my hatch. I lay on my gelrack and switched on the news feed. The menu lit on the bulkhead screen, and I scrolled through the listing until a familiar name struck me cold: Ms. Elise Rainey. Damn it. I had stood her up, and I didn’t even have her satnet address. I felt terrible and wondered whether she’d try to contact my father. All I could do was shake my head, sigh, and at least watch her story about Columbia. I was about to ask for it when my tablet beeped and Halitov’s mug polluted the screen. “What’re you doing?” he asked.
