by Allen Ivers
The entire team started talking at once, berating and soothing in equal measure. The raw volume of noise was not helpful for the colonist’s state.
“Everyone, shut up!” Locklear bellowed, loud enough that he didn’t need to remember to hit transmit.
Even the colonist stopped struggling on the order. He looked back toward Locklear, eyes faded grey. Lips chapped and scabbed. Nose dried with blood.
Locklear climbed to his feet, marching over to Jericho’s captive. “What happened here?”
No response. The man just looked Locklear up and down. Studying, but only the way a cornered animal might. He wanted to know where the hit would come from.
Stitched to his uniform, a name: Mathers, D.
Locklear sighed, “We’re not going to hurt you, Mathers. We’re the cavalry.”
Chapter 6
Manifest
It sounded like a rat in a cage, clattering against irons wherever it could find purchase. It pounded then murmured, storming the gates before falling back into dormancy. Or at the very least, it was laying siege with smaller munitions during that respite.
“Arrhythmia,” Locklear noted out loud, as he moved his stethoscope across Mathers’ chest.
The team had stripped off their suits, going so far as to hang them up in some empty lockers. How downright civilized. They took this time to re-set their gear and packs, with Amelia taking inventory of what was lost outside.
Locklear wasn’t really listening, sitting with Jericho and the survivor, Mathers. Who knew how long this kid had been out here by himself. Three weeks, a month maybe? Since Leo and the Murci had received word, at least. Three weeks on your own in this place?
Locklear locked eyes with the kid -- he really was little more than a child, maybe twenty two. Old enough to drink, not old enough to know what to drink.
Jericho was more talkative than this broken shell of a man, so Mathers hadn’t given up much. Hadn’t even confirmed if that was his real name, but there wasn’t exactly a lot of cause to doubt that. Repeated careful interrogation via Jazmin’s lack of volume control had yielded nothing but blank stares. And those grey eyes, pupils reduced to mere pinpricks in the dim locker room.
Panic? Fair enough. Possible malnutrition and radiation sickness -- not likely he was taking his meds. The body tended to get real pissy about that. He was going to need a fresh supply before his liver went shocky, if it hadn’t already.
He reached over to Mathers’ wrist, soft and slow. Mathers just watched him, swallowing the nothing in his dried throat. Ragged breathing, creaking. Fluid in the lungs, maybe?
Locklear pressed down on Mathers’ wrist, feeling for a pulse just behind the thumb. Mathers pulled back, but Locklear held fast, keeping warm eyes on this frightened puppy. A blend of force and tenderness might just get his patient to calm down, like the comfort of being in the well-worn hands of a stern parent.
Now that was distressing. Locklear could feel the arrhythmia pumping under his thumb, but the pressure of it was hard. His heart was cranking like it might leap from his chest.
He could stroke out right here.
Now, Locklear was no doctor, but he’d treated enough field injuries and been to enough med tents to pick up some jargon, even guessed right on some of the more eclectic diagnoses. Shock, he’d seen before, and this kid was in that, for sure. Whatever other injuries he had, were going to have to be treated sooner rather than later.
Locklear stood up. “This guy needs a medevac to Murci.”
His answer from Jazmin was a clean and snappy right hook, cracking high his face, forward of the cheek, most of the energy lost. It more drove his head down and right, rather than spinning him.
Sloppy. She’d reached for him, over-extending the strike. The soft thud of knuckles against his cheek bone didn’t even blur his vision.
“You really going to talk to me right now?” Jazmin snarled at him, coiled back for another blow. Strangely, she was leaning forward, presenting her own head for a riposte.
Not a trained fighter, but a brawler. She was used to getting hit, and hitting back harder.
Amelia eyed Locklear, not intervening. Yeah, even she thought he deserved this.
Locklear rubbed his cheek, standing up straight. “You want to really clock somebody, you go for the jaw, not the cheek. Use the momentum to whip their head around. That’s what really dazes ya. Connect at 90 degrees. You’re aiming through me, not at me. Go again.”
Jazmin’s eyes pan over him. Those same adrenaline-thin pupils than Mathers had. The gates to the soul locked up tight.
She swung again, wide and hard. Locklear stayed in, but leaned just a tad away from the hit -- knowing that rolling with the arc would diminish the impact. She needed to work out her grief, but they didn’t need any more wounded down here. They were officially short on upright uniforms.
This would be harder than her first, and she was hardly a lightweight. He doubted it would compare to that Marine in Okinawa.
Didn’t stop it from ringing his bell like the best of ‘em. God, his ex-wife used to hit like that. He actually heard his jaw pop out of its socket for just a moment before snapping back in. That hadn’t happened to him since the first alimony hearing.
Wonder if the reduced gravity had something to do with that, loosening everything up.
Locklear curled over, working his mouth to make sure nothing permanent had been done. Finished, he lifted his head back up. “Feel better?”
“Bits and pieces,” she sneered at him. At least she’d gotten to blow a gasket a little, even if it was his gasket. She wasn’t set to blow her top in the near future.
“That’s what I like to hear,” Locklear responded, “Now, this guy should get up to Doc Gamble — yesterday. He’s going to need hand holdin’. Any takers?”
Romanov raised his quivering fingers. Locklear nodded, “Get him to the shuttle, get prepped. We’ll hit the radio tower, and let ‘em know you’re coming.”
Romanov seemed to shake for a moment, before dashing to Mathers’ side. Jericho eased up his grip on Mathers, to see if the little scrapper would try to scramble away.
The kid looked ready to skitter right up the wall. But Mathers laid still, cautious and wary. Romanov smiled, a yellow coffee-stained olive branch, “Hello. I’ll help you…”
Mathers seems to understand, although a good half of that sentence and intent were left hanging for interpretation. He swung his feet down off his cot, taking Romanov’s hand for assistance.
Sure enough, Mathers needed a bit of help standing up, shaky on his feet.
Romanov slid under Mathers’ shoulder, allowing the colonist to lean on his slight frame. Mathers peered at him, throwing glances at the rest of the team. Wary, paranoid.
“My name is Dmitri?” That came out of Romanov’s mouth a question for some reason, “Can you say that, Dmitri?”
“We’re going to be here a while,” Jazmin sniped, ignoring the biting stares that came in her direction. Trying to calm their charge was hard enough without someone sniping from the sidelines.
Romanov never broke eye contact with Mathers. “You are Mathers? Yes? Do you have a first name, maybe?”
There was no response for the longest moment.
Romanov smiled, soft and patient. “That’s okay. Not everybody has two names. I have four, actually. So I can spare you some. See, that way, I will never forget my family, because I carry them with me.”
Romanov dug into his pants pocket, sliding out a bleary copy of his ID card. Locklear couldn’t read the whole run-on sentence that must’ve been Romanov’s legal name, but the picture was surprisingly charismatic.
He had cleaned up well for that photo, and worn his Sunday best. When he wasn’t stained with tears, blood, and dirt, he might even pass for normal.
Mathers broke eye contact, scanning the lockers. Romanov followed his gaze, but kept speaking. Good, didn’t want to lose the engagement he had already won. “Names are important to my family. They tell us who we are, where we com
e from, so no matter who we become or where we go, we will always remember. Do you have a name?”
It sounded like a bullfrog trying to whisper, creaking gravel fighting the dried out vocal chords grown tight in his throat, “Ru…. Ru…”
The room seemed to lean in, all of a sudden hushed and claustrophobic. Like this kid needed more pressure right now. He shook against Romanov, a whole body shiver that rolled from head to toe. He tossed his head from left to right, like he was trying to shake water out of his ears, before --
“Mathers. Me.”
“Son of a bitch,” Locklear muttered. “Score one for Rom.”
Locklear took a moment to shake his own head, as that tinnitus ringing started up again. God, Jaz hit him hard. What would have happened if he had leaned into that blow?
He turned back, half-expecting another blind-shot to be coming his way, “Amelia, what do we got?”
“No radio,” Amelia blurted, trying to be as clinical as possible. “Your IFAK, side arms with two extra mags each. My shotgun, with a single tube. And flash grenades.”
“We were told to pack light,” Jazmin chimed in, yet another barb for the veritable quiver full of shots into Locklear’s back today.
He shook that off. It was the right call, even in hindsight. How the Hell could he possibly have known what was waiting down here?
He had to push aside that little voice gnawing on his ear, blaming and cursing himself. He had work to do.
Locklear squared his shoulders, “Then we have to find the radio, and make it work.”
“None of us are technical experts,” Amelia noted the obvious. “If it’s damaged in any way…”
Locklear followed Jazmin’s eyes, for the first time in a while stabbing into the flesh of something other than him.
Romanov was helping Mathers into a suit, and the colonist seemed to be having trouble with the entire concept of vertical, as he swayed left and right. It was like watching a child with sea sickness, pallid skin and sweat dripping, stomach churning and tossing.
“Something tells me the radio’s fine, it’s the people that are fucked,” Locklear cautioned, “We deal with the problems, one at a time, as they come to us. Anybody have any adjustments they’d like to add? Any objections?”
Jazmin wanted to object more at the person speaking than the plan itself -- such as it was. It’s not like she had a better suggestion.
“Alright then.” Locklear slung his aid kit onto his shoulder, magnets snapping it to its slot on his hip. “Let’s move like we have a purpose.”
He had sent them down into a garbage disposal, whirring blades and grinding noise, that skipping metal on metal violence heard whenever cutlery falls into a blender.
The satellites had spun over Manifest again, and Piotr compared the photographs taken. Bodies littered the ground outside the colony main gate, four by official count, but it was hard to pick individual people out of the assortment of pieces collecting dust in the Martian evening.
Leo could feel the bile rising in his throat, burning at his tongue and right through his chest. It grabbed at his collar bone, pulling tight and clenching on his neck, to choke him.
There was no pragmatic reason for this feeling to be wracking his body: he was a janitor. What could he possibly have done to help prepare them for what they faced down there?
Nothing. So why did this hurt so much?
If there was a clock within eye sight, he would have been counting the minutes, the seconds, upward until nothing, until something happened, until the worst was confirmed. The acid jumped up again, liquid guilt ramming its way up into the back of his eyes. It was like he swallowed a dagger as a circus act, and it was trying to worm its way back up and out.
If this was how Commanders felt sending troops into battle, Leo wasn’t certain they were human. Of course, they might be able to stomach this burn and it was Leo who was fainthearted.
Piotr didn’t have much to say either. He might be regretting some of his cracks, that is if he even remembered making them. His fingers flicked the edges of the fashion mag he’d been loving on, an idle nervous tick to keep his hands busy.
Better than conversation at least. Neither of them wanted to talk about much of anything, really. This was going to be a new normal for them, Leo figured -- it’s not often he met people and then sent them to their final rest. The world had changed, and they could not go back to who they once were.
Leo’s dad had left his hat behind, hanging off the side of a bland, suede couch. He was going to the shuttle depot, and he forgot his hat.
That’s right. That’s where Leo knew this feeling from. That familiar itch that introduced itself like it was new, that ugly reunion with a childhood tormentor, all smiles but yellow serpent eyes. It wreaked havoc upon its surroundings and then sidled up into the closest seat, simultaneously familiar but eerily new each time.
He was never comfortable with that particular visitor, and he paled at the thought that he ever might be.
That’s grief and sorrow, Leo supposed. Or maybe, that was just what it felt like to have a friend stolen without warning or farewell.
A crackle restarted both of their hearts, Leo and Piotr pressing against their seatbelts. The radio whimpered and coughed, like an ailing person clearing their throat. But then a voice pierced through, “Murci-One-One, this is Nomad-Actual on Manifest, how copy?”
That smoky smooth voice, that tall glass of scotch on the rocks, that storm made regal by distance -- it was Locklear. Leo never thought the angst would wash off, and there it was, with just a few formal, authoritative words.
Piotr slipped his headset on. “Check check, Nomad-Actual, this is Murci. Solid copy. Gateway is requesting an update on the mission?”
Leo didn’t really listen to anything other than the surprising melody of Locklear’s voice, the curves and gravity and the cadence, a minor key humming a well-known hymn. He was relaying news they mostly knew already, but it was just soothing to hear someone in control of their situation.
But the tell-tale quivers in his voice betrayed how shaken Locklear really was. The cocky veneer of just a few weeks ago had slipped right off, sloughed into the dirt outside the colony’s retaining wall. It hadn’t broken him, but it had done something.
“...Colony transmitter was undamaged.”
The phrase caught Leo’s attention, the first real break from the established story. What now?
Leo grabbed his own headset, pulling the microphone close to his lips, “Say again, Nomad? What—uh, it was fine?”
“Hey, Leo…” Names. Enough of this official bullshit, “Yeah, the transmitter was completely operational. Just nobody around to drive it.”
“Everybody’s dead?” Piotr asked, grave, his voice cracking at the very thought.
It wasn’t an entirely unpredictable outcome. Space travel might have just had its first total loss since Luna twelve years ago. Over a hundred people died when a small asteroid tore open one of the airlocks, and ripped through a half dozen decks.
There isn’t any real way to protect against that kind of force. When you live off-planet, that’s the just the risk you take. If something like that had happened here...
“Negative,” Locklear chimed through the weak static. “Nobody’s home. No bodies, no nothing.”
Now there was a puzzle, one that turned Leo’s brain right upside down in his skull. There weren’t enough EVA suits for the entire colony and the Martian atmosphere was too low pressure to just walk around unexposed, let alone the extremes in temperature and spikes in solar radiation. If a disaster struck the base, or even a skirmish between civilians, caused environment breaches, there would be casualties everywhere.
A ghost town was a practical impossibility.
Locklear had kept talking, about signs of battle damage near Operations and at the Front Gate, but the majority of the complex was just completely dry. It was an empty apartment, already furnished, lights on and water running, just creaking from the lack of life.
<
br /> A haunted house long abandoned.
“We do have one survivor,” Locklear interjected. “He’s in bad shape, and barely talking. Rom is firing up the bird to bring him topside. You can fly ‘em in, Piotr?”
Leo nodded to Piotr. “I’ll prep the docking collar.”
Piotr leaned forward, tapping an intercom switch. “Gamble, receiving at Collar in one hour. Prep for quarantine, triage, and ready a surgical bed.”
Damn, didn’t know Piotr could sound that official. Piotr might have actually been the one technically in charge, but he’d never enjoyed wearing that badge. Did Cabby become a genuine person in the last few hours, or had that leadership potential always laid dormant somewhere behind that buck-toothed grin?
“What’s the play, Lock?” Leo asked, trying to hide the quiver in his own voice, and that damp feeling at the corners of his eyes.
“Frankly?” Leo could almost hear Locklear glancing around his room, as if afraid others might see his panic, “I have no fuckin’ idea.”
Leo nodded, trying not to laugh at that degree of honesty. “Keep your head down, we’ll see what our survivor has to say.”
“Sure, knock yourself out.”
There’s the Locklear he remembered -- abrasive, authoritative, and arrogant. It was nice to hear a little bit of normal, even for that split second.
“How’re the piglets?” My god, Piotr, couldn’t pick his words any less carelessly, the colossal twat.
There was a moment’s pause before the answer came, and thankfully, it sounded like it was accompanied with a smirk. “They’re… they’re at fight or flight right now.”
“Well, tell ‘em we got a whole boat up here pulling for ‘em,” Piotr chirped.
“Yeah, I’m probably not going to remind ‘em.”
Leo had to say something. “Lock…”
But it was like he knew where it was going, “It wasn’t your fault, Leo. It wasn’t my fault, wasn’t anybody’s fault.”
“We had pictures, we had--” Leo cut himself off, just dropping back into his chair.
