The idea spooked me so much that I threw some clothes in a suitcase and drove to the nearest hotel. I didn’t check in. I couldn’t. I sat in the parking lot and thought about the house, the hand, the plants, and all the times Carmody had helped me out, and realized I couldn’t desert him.
Not even for a single night.
I didn’t return to the lab that night, though, nor did I sleep. Another storm was rising and I lay on the bed, sipping Bushmills and waiting for dawn, one part of me hoping that the tapping would start back up, another part praying I’d never hear it again.
I found the markings on the floor that afternoon when I entered the lab to check for messages. At first I thought they were simply tiny shadows gathered around the base of the chair. It was only when I reached the table and dropped to my knees to examine them that I realized they were numerals. An equation. Hell. Carmody had figured it out, and somehow gathered the energy to scratch it in the dust.
I’d barely scribbled down the first line when I heard the front door open.
“Hello,” Wilma Larsson called. “Are you here? I’ve brought some bread and some of my…”
My heart stopped. The pen fell from my hand. I dived for the door the instant the first leaves flicked into the room, but a chill blast of wind swept past me before I made it halfway. By the time I turned, a cloud of dust was already billowing up around the chair. I crawled across the room and started pawing at the air as if I could somehow salvage any details from it.
Pointless. All it did was make me sneeze.
That was three days ago. I’m still here, still waiting. The moment I hustled Wilma Larsson out of the house the other day, I spread another layer of dust across the floor. There’s been nothing since; not so much as a fingerprint. Perhaps Carmody doesn’t have the strength to write in the dust anymore. Or perhaps he can’t even send as much as a finger this way now.
Either way, I’m not giving up.
Now when I look out that window, I don’t see a fjord. I see a great runway that stretches off into the horizon and far beyond. I’m staying. The rent is covered for six months, and I don’t give a toss about TrentLabs anymore. I’ll send my resignation soon. I guess I should play it safe and drive up to Oslo to mail it. A bit of confusion might buy me time if they come looking.
Carmody needs me much more than they do.
I’ve been thinking about the dust. Perhaps chalk dust or flour might work better. Perhaps he could write in that. I think I saw a hardware store in town the other day. I’ll check it out later.
Oh yes—and I’ll buy some nails and planks, too. I don’t care what Wilma Larsson thinks. That front door’s staying shut from now on.
The Sun Dodgers
By Kate O’Connor
“Promise me I will never have to change a tire in stockings and heels again.” Lieutenant Amelia Redgrave shoved a slightly browned celery stick in the face of her table companion for emphasis. Calvin Taylor was an eye-catching man with dark hair that managed to show a bit of curl in spite of his rather severe military haircut. He was shorter than her usual taste: about five foot seven, with his boots on. The perfect size for a pilot, but maybe not so great if she ever wanted to wear heels in public again without looking like a giraffe.
“Mel! Seriously! What do you take me for?” Cal’s grin was one of the reasons she was still toying with the idea of acknowledging his not-so-subtle hints about taking their relationship beyond flirting. He flashed it at her again, fending off the celery with both hands. “I’m a gentleman. Stick around for a bit, newbie, and you’ll figure that out.”
Amelia rolled her eyes. Four months in the pool and still the newcomer. She supposed it was only fair. She hadn’t been through a Selection yet, and that was what defined everything around here.
“Did some guy really make you change a tire on a date?” Cal didn’t bother to hide his amusement. They had been playing the worst date ever game off and on for a few weeks now. All the more reason for her to make a decision about him before things got complicated.
“Yeah, no idea how to do it himself. He was going to call for a tow—for a flat. I couldn’t exactly stand around and just let that happen. Besides, I was hungry.”
Shaking his head and trying to stifle his decidedly ungentlemanly snickering, Cal dug into his food. Amelia grimaced as he all but inhaled something that looked only vaguely like meatloaf. Not for the first time, she was glad she didn’t suffer from a delicate constitution. If she had, the food alone might have been enough to finish her off. The mess hall always smelled like stale hotdogs and aged cabbage. And that was the good part.
“Didja hear?” he mumbled through a mouthful, and then continued without waiting for an answer, “The Dodgers are due in tonight. Rumor says they’re three down. Selection again soon.”
Amelia’s hand froze with her fork halfway to her mouth. “How long have you been waiting to spring that bit of news on me?”
“An hour and a half, at least.”
“What’s it like?” It wasn’t the first time she had asked, but she kept hoping for some kind of clue. They had studied everything from checklists to the inner workings of the LP jump system, but pilot selection remained a mystery.
“I told you before, Mel. I don’t really remember it. If you don’t get picked, the nanobot purge makes it all pretty fuzzy.” He was quiet for a minute and a muscle twitched at the corner of his left eye. It made her wonder if he really was as ignorant as he claimed. Whatever was going on in his head, he shook it off quickly. “Anyway…let’s just hope for third time being the charm for me, and beginner’s luck for you.”
Amelia raised her bottle of water in a mock toast to that statement, knowing it would probably never happen. The odds of landing a pilot slot with the Sun Dodgers were about three hundred to one. They were the best elite flight unit in the planetary military. They had the newest tech, the finest pilots, and the highest pay grade. Everything they did was classified way beyond her security clearance. She hadn’t even been able to track down exactly what kind of spacecraft they flew.
The mystery had gotten old in a hurry. She had already given up four months’ worth of flight time without finding out any real information about what she would be doing even if she did make the cut. Others had been here a lot longer.
The control upgrade worried her as well. On arrival, Medical had told them that all prospective pilots received a nanobot infusion a week prior to Selection to help them integrate more fully with the ship’s systems. No one had cared to clarify why the standard controlchip linkage wasn’t enough. If something like that went bad, it could mess up her entire career.
Her comm beeped simultaneously with everyone else’s, jolting her out of her thoughts. There was a general hush as the entire mess hall checked their messages. Amelia punched in her code and scanned her updated orders quickly. Cal’s rumor must have been true. Regular classes were canceled. Instead, she was to report to quarters until her newly-scheduled time with Medical. No explanation was given. Typical.
At fourteen hundred hours, Amelia reported to the infirmary with her bunk mates. All four of them were taken directly to a small, sterile-smelling room. The nurse left and a stiff silence descended. Amelia scanned the faces around her and kept her mouth shut. She was the only one here who hadn’t done this before. Breaking tension had never been her strong suit. She watched the clock instead, trying to ignore the butterflies doing touch-and-gos under her ribs.
The doctor arrived twelve minutes later with a swirl of blazingly white lab coat and too much energy. “All right, ladies, pay attention.” He was tall and just a touch gawky in a way that had Amelia thinking he looked more like he belonged at a college frat party—one of the really nerdy ones. She squashed the smile that was trying to form and fixed her eyes straight ahead as he continued.
“I’m Dr. Harris. I’m here to give you your briefing and oversee your health throughout the next twelve days or so. You will each be getting a nanobot feed directly into your blood s
tream. Sticking your face in a lit afterburner would probably hurt less, so you’ll be restrained for the safety of yourselves and my staff. Remember that this is a voluntary process. Up until we start the drip, all you have to do is say the word, and you’re free to walk. That said, there are a couple of things you should know about this procedure.
“First, if you don’t get a ship, the nanobots will burn out in about a week and a half. Without a ship to provide power, there is nothing to sustain them. The good news is that as they die off and are purged from your system, they trigger a reaction that will wipe out just about all of your memories of the time period they were in your body. There is a slight possibility that the amnesia may be more extensive. You may lose as much as a month or two. We see that in about two percent of the candidates, but most of those regain their earlier memories within a year.”
“Second, you are going to feel like hell for the next five or six days while your body adapts to the nanobots. We can’t give you much to help with the pain. It would interfere with the process. You’ll just have to tough it out. Any questions? No?” He clapped his hands together once and looked at the space above each of their heads in turn. When no one immediately spoke up, he breezed out the door without a backward glance.”
Amelia’s mind raced, trying to process what she had just heard. It all sounded far more significant than a simple control upgrade. When she had originally been fitted with her chips, the injection sites had hurt for a few hours and never given her a problem since then. A week of pain and potential memory loss were a bit much to take onboard at such short notice. She took a breath and let it out slowly. How bad could it possibly be? It didn’t really matter. She wanted a shot at the Sun Dodgers, and this was the only way to get there.
Amelia tongued the plastic mouth guard and tried not to feel nauseous. The padded restraints added to the general feeling of claustrophobia. The vinyl creaked as she shifted uncomfortably. A middle-aged nurse glanced up from arranging an IV bag. She gave Amelia an enigmatic look.
“Do you want out?” Her tone was brisk and reserved. Amelia shook her head, not wanting to try to talk around the mouth guard. “There are always a few who do.” Amelia was surprised. After all of the work she had done to get here, it was unbelievable that anyone would bail out just because it might get a bit uncomfortable. The nurse shrugged and hung the IV bag on a metal clip above the chair. “All right then.”
The needle slid almost painlessly into the big vein at her elbow. Amelia watched the bruise-purple liquid ooze down the line, deciding that she really didn’t want to know exactly what kind of substance they were using as a carrier. With the light shining through it, it looked like grape jell-o.
When it reached her arm, she didn’t feel anything at first. The skin around the needle took on a violet hue that darkened as she watched. Thirty seconds later, the itching started. She shifted uncomfortably, wanting to scratch at it. The sensation multiplied, spreading out from the needle and worsening by the second until her whole arm burned. She took a deep breath, consciously relaxing her back and shoulders. It helped for a minute. The pain receded slightly as she breathed through it.
She told herself it wasn’t going to be that bad—no worse than the time she had broken her arm. Then the pain surged back again. In spite of her resolution not to, she jerked her arm hard against the restraints. Her veins stood out deep purple against her pale skin. Her muscles trembled and jerked out of her control. She sank her teeth into plastic.
Another wave of pain surged over her and her vision darkened. She gasped frantically, fighting the feeling of suffocation. Passing out was a quick way to kill a pilot—that was one of the earliest AvMed lessons. She had to get air. She gagged and jerked her head back. Her entire right side was agonizing. Calm down. Calm down. Calm down. Panic used oxygen and dulled reasoning skills. She was losing the battle. Her vision spiraled into red and white flashes and finally, terrifyingly, to black.
A high-pitched whistle followed by a bass rumble that was felt more than heard. Huddling in the shelter, bodies pressed in all around, smelling of salt and fear. The panicked hush of small creatures in desperate hiding as soft, terrifying noises whispered above. Voices. A musical flow at odds with the deadly quiet steps of booted feet passing overhead and then gone. Her first time knowing that war was more than just a word.
Amelia surged forward, trained reactions warring with childhood terror. A sharp tug at her wrists arrested her flight and sent her sprawling sideways. She kicked out and pain shot up her leg as her bare heel caught something cold and unyielding. Suddenly there were voices over her head and hands holding her down. She fought.
“Would you put her out already?”
“Can’t. No depressants,” the voice sounded strained. “Just hold her! It won’t last long.”
Amelia felt her muscles weakening. She struggled to find control of her tongue, to demand an explanation. All that came out was a garbled moan as her stomach turned over. She vomited explosively. The ringing in her ears almost overpowered the cursing coming from one of her captors. Darkness closed in again.
The horizon lay slantways across her vision, the setting sun glowing vermillion pink and huge. A planetary ring arched through the center of it, silver and bronze in the fading light. She reached toward her face with a gloved hand, ineffectually brushing at imbedded gravel, heavy fabric causing new cuts to sting.
The buckle on the harness wouldn’t give. Her shaking hands found the regulation knife strapped to her thigh. A few frantic minutes of sawing and the safety belt gave way. She paused for a moment, listening closely for any sound. Nothing. She pulled her shoulders out of the harness and tumbled to the ground.
The ejection seat had lodged head down with its base on the curb of what had once been a smoothly paved street. Wrecked shells of buildings lined either side. She limped for the nearest one. Further down, brilliant flames shot blue smoke high into the darkening sky, licking around the tail of one of her wing’s fighters.
The fire had been too hot to get within ten meters of it. She had been lucky. Eight of twelve shot down. Only two others were pulled off the plant’s surface still breathing.
Amelia lay on her back, weakly staring at the off-white ceiling and wondering how this could possibly be worth it. This time she had known where she was when she woke up. The display across from her bed said it had been three days since the nanobot infusion. Three days of memory-fueled hallucination and puking into a standard-issue bedpan. No wonder they didn’t disclose details about the infusion. They would have lost any candidate with sense before they began.
Dr. Harris arrived at four minutes after eleven, looking significantly less enthusiastic than the last time she could remember seeing him. Amelia held up her left hand before he could ask for it. Without bothering to respond, he took her wrist and arranged her hand on the scanner. She felt the familiar tingle of the control chips at the tips of her fingers connecting, sending her biodata straight to the doctor’s display.
“Good progress,” Harris muttered mostly to himself as he examined the readings. “Another two days at the most. About average.” Amelia didn’t think anything sounded good about two more days of “progress”.
The door opened again as the doctor disconnected the scanner. A nervous-looking technician stepped forward, hovering in the doorway. “Sir, General Sloan is here to see you. He’s in the hall. Apparently it can’t wait.” The huffiness in the tech’s voice stated quite clearly how the man felt about someone thinking he had the right to interfere with medical personnel. Harris apparently agreed. He walked out with the tech, shutting the door with enough force to bounce it back open again.
“Pilot Selection has been moved to tomorrow,” said an unfamiliar and officious sounding voice.
“Tomorrow?” Dr. Harris obviously wasn’t pleased. “You can’t do it that quickly. More than half of your candidates aren’t even on their feet yet. You’ll be running a much higher risk of rejection at this stage.”
&nb
sp; “A risk that has been calculated, I assure you, Doctor. We need as many more operational pilots as we can get right now. If we lose one, we’ll still have a window to get a replacement from this group.”
“Is four or five days really too long to wait?” the doctor’s voice already had a defeated edge to it. “By then, the first group will be ready, and the next two will be close enough to go without much additional risk.”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t ask me that. Get any you can ready to go. If it weren’t necessary, I wouldn’t ask. You and I have both committed too much to this project to take any unnecessary risks.”
“Yes, sir.” Footsteps, first one set and then another, faded down the corridor. Amelia closed her eyes for a moment and lost track of time. When she opened them again, a nurse was standing over her, pulling an empty syringe out of her IV line.
“On your feet, Lieutenant.” Strong hands eased her up by the shoulders. “Selection is today. I’ve given you a stimulant injection. That should keep you conscious through the Selection, at least. Focus; move around as much as you can, get as many fluids as you can keep down. Your orders are to report to Briefing Room Echo as soon as you can get there with your uniform on.” The nurse gestured to the dress uniform hanging on the back of the door before shining a light in Amelia’s eyes, scanning her vitals, and then hurrying out the door.
The uniform was, fortunately, as neat as she remembered leaving it. She was glad she had thought to reattach her insignia and name plate after getting it cleaned a few days ago. She didn’t think her fingers would be capable of doing it properly now. As it was, it took her twenty minutes to get her shaking limbs to cooperate enough to dress.
Fortunately, Echo was the briefing room closest to the infirmary. The long conference table at the front of the room was stacked with plastic water bottles. Her stomach heaved at the idea, and Amelia opted instead for the closest unoccupied chair. She misjudged and caught her thigh sharply on the metal arm. The pain felt worse than it should have.
Pressure Suite - Digital Science Fiction Anthology 3 Page 14
