by Greg Dragon
“Helga Ate?” said a voice, causing her to jump backwards and squeak. It was a Cel-toc, dressed in white like the bulkheads, her skin a flawless shade of turquoise. She looked Louine, but for the crease running from her earlobes down to her throat. If not for that, Helga would have been fooled. It was frightening to her, how close to life these modern androids were. “Helga Ate, you’re early for your appointment. Could you wait inside the lobby until you are called?”
“Wait, I came early to see Lieutenant Cilas Mec,” she said. “Could you take me to his compartment? I can wait in there until my time.”
“Is Lieutenant Mec expecting you, Helga Ate?”
“He is, and you better not ask me another thyping question.”
Helga pushed her way past her to the medbay’s door, and was surprised that the Cel-toc offered no objection. Inside was an expansive compartment, longer than it was wide. Stretching from the door, she entered to a wall of screens displaying different readouts.
Helga focused on one of these, an old feed from Meluvia. It was saying that a terrorist cell had been obliterated by a missile launched from orbit. A successful strike, coordinated by several governments to destroy the Meluvian Liberation Front. It was a bogus report, and Helga knew it better than anyone else, since the destruction of that cell had been the Nighthawk’s doing.
Only a handful of people knew this, and Helga did not want the credit, not for the incredible loss of life that they had caused. Even if it was justified, and millions of lives had been saved as a result.
She snapped out of her daze and scanned the compartment. There were two rows of beds running the length of the bulkhead from the door all the way to the screens. Some she could see were occupied while others were shielded by a set of translucent walls.
On the far right side where the beds ended, she saw several locked doors. One of them would have Cilas inside, and her excitement rose at the prospect of seeing him. It had been fourteen cycles, but it felt even longer due to the daily training routine. She wondered if he would be awake, or even coherent. Did it feel like two Vestalian weeks had passed for him, or would he think that only a few cycles had gone by?
When she found his room and entered it, he was sitting up in bed, hunched over watching a vid, an action movie with giant monsters. He looked like a child enjoying his favorite show, and he was so into the action that he missed her coming in.
The door clicked shut, startling him. “Ate?” He gave her a warm smile that showed he was indeed happy to see her.
“How do you feel, Rend?” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.
“I feel amazing, you wouldn’t believe it. Like I can kill a hundred lizards by myself, with just my fists. That’s how good I feel. Tutt wasn’t lying about the tank. It’s like I’m fresh out of the academy, I feel so good.”
“When will you be released?” she said, walking over to the side of his bed where she could examine him a bit closer. She looked for the bruises that had been all over his chest, from where he had been shot. “Maker, you weren’t lying, your skin is practically flawless.”
“Next cycle they take me back to my compartment, but I’m grounded for another twenty following this procedure. I’m sorry, Ate, I know there’s pressure from command and I’m not there to help you.”
She waved him off. “Forget it, we’re good. I know it sounds crazy, but do you ever feel like you’re suffocating on this ship? I grew up here, this is all I know. So why is it that I feel the walls pressing in, making me want to find an escape pod?”
“You’ve been deployed to Meluvia twice in the last hundred or so cycles,” he said. “What you’re experiencing is nothing new. Ask Tutt where he’d rather be, up here or on a planet or moon. It’s why Marines rarely come home, Ate. Once you’ve felt the ground, it has a way of holding on to you.”
“Do you feel it too, Cilas?”
“All the thyping time. If I stop moving, I might lose my mind.” He looked thoughtful and clicked his tongue as if he had just confirmed something to himself. “Physical work is the answer. You have to break a sweat. The sweatier you are when working at a problem, the less you tend to think about the walls closing in.”
“What do you have in mind?” she said, looking at him skeptically.
“That’s up to you. All I can tell you is what I do.”
“Which is?”
“I get out of my mind. As soon as those feelings start creeping in, I get thyping busy.”
“So you run away from them?”
“Yes,” he said matter-of-factly, his eyes daring her to challenge him. “I clean my weapons, practice my counters, and train a few select cadets to help prepare them for BLAST. I do my rounds to appease the captain, hang out with Joy, and that’s my cycle. When you’re moving, there is no time to think about Meluvian jungles. You’re too busy sharpening your blades, so when the lizards come you’re ready.”
It was the answer she’d expected from him—delayed, yes, but classic Cilas Mec. What was his solution? Suffocate the feelings by becoming a perfectionist at killing. “You do know that isn’t normal behavior, right?” she said. “What does Joy think of this theory?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said, resolutely.
Cilas was the type to make any situation manageable, but her issues went beyond being bored; it had to do with the layout of the ship. While there were large compartments like medbay and passageways where spacers could walk three or four abreast, the majority of the Rendron was tunnels and crawl spaces.
Every cycle she would walk tight passageways, popping open airlocks, ascending ladders into even tighter spaces. She wondered how a giant like Quentin Tutt felt about moving about the ship, and if he too had nightmares of being stuck with no way out.
It was an irrational fear for a spacer raised on a starship, but it was real and it lingered, especially when she thought back on Meluvia and all of that wide open country. She feared for her future. It wasn’t realistic to be deployed all the time. How did I feel before I became a Nighthawk? she wondered. What had I been doing with myself?
Training to become a Nighthawk was the answer. A glance back at her life showed that she had always been working up to something bigger. So, what was she working up to now? Leadership of the Nighthawks? “You give good advice,” she said. “You always do.”
“Sure, but what are you doing here, Ate?” he said, looking behind her as if he expected someone else. “Thought it was the whole crew. Is it just you?”
“Just me this time, but it was spur of the moment, since I was called in for a check-up. Came early so I said to myself, let me see how the old man is doing in here.”
“I feel fantastic, Ate.”
“I know, you’ve said that,” she said. “Why don’t you get some rest, Lieutenant, you seem tired and I don’t want to—”
“No, it’s fine, Ate. I’m rested, believe me. It’s this shot that they gave me, my mind is swimming right now. They called you in? I bet it’s for your psych. You’ve been dodging it so long, you should really give it a chance. Just like the tank, it could be the healing that you didn’t know you needed.”
“I do know I need it,” she said, remembering her appointment. “I’m just not big on the idea of someone playing inside my head.”
They spoke for a time until a Cel-toc came into the compartment. “Helga Ate?” She beamed as if the two of them were old friends. “We’re ready for your examination. Please follow me next door.”
6
Helga didn’t just wake up to the psych, she sort of drifted up into consciousness. When she had been escorted in earlier, she was made to undress and was fed a few cocktails to prep her for the procedure. This included a physical, followed by blood work, and after a series of probing questions, she had drifted off to sleep.
Now as her eyes focused on the clean surface of the overhead, she could sense the Cel-toc standing somewhere behind her chair. The android was talking and she was answering, though she couldn’t control what was c
oming out of her mouth.
Helga panicked at the implications. There were classified things that only she, Cilas and the captain were supposed to know. That wasn’t even the worst part, though. There were her personal feelings as well—who she liked, who she truly disliked, and the deeply personal thoughts, like her questioning of life, and a deep fear of the Geralos.
Conscious Helga was genuinely appalled at the forthcoming nature of her sedated self. It betrayed her intentions, refusing to stop, even though she willed it with every ounce of her being. It felt as if she was inside a cockpit, and someone else—perhaps the computer’s artificial intelligence—had taken over the controls.
“Your accolades are impressive, Helga Ate,” the Cel-toc was saying. “The Rendron’s records show that you are an exceptional pilot—”
“One of the best,” Helga said, cutting the android off. In this dreamlike state from the drugs she was on, she could no longer play at humility or discretion when it came to her abilities. Inside, the true Helga listened, embarrassed to hear herself behaving like such a showoff. Is any of this even real? she thought. How can I be here, but not really here?
“What sets you apart from the other Rendron spacers, Helga? How did you manage so high an achievement in the short time you’ve been a Nighthawk?”
“I have no life outside of duty and this Alliance, plus I’m small and vulnerable, so I train harder than the rest. I care more than they do, and … I’m different from them.”
“Different, how? Could you please elaborate?”
“Different in my blood, being of both Casanian and Vestalian parents. I also possess a rare gene that gives me the ability to react faster than most.”
“Are you a Seeker, Helga?”
“So I’ve been told, but how much this plays into my abilities, that I can’t tell you. It’s not like there’s a Seeker school to train us on our abilities. I’m just good in a dogfight, and I’ve managed to perform exceptionally on the ground as well.”
They had been talking for quite some time before the subject of her abilities came up, but even with the pleasant android, Helga would have never mentioned being a Seeker. It was the sort of news that, in the wrong hands, would have her dissected in a lab or ostracized by the crew. The forthcoming, drug-induced Helga, however, seemed to forget the danger in talking, and was explaining to the Cel-toc how she found out that she was special.
It was after they had been captured on the moon of Dyn, when instead of killing her for being part Casanian, the Geralos segregated her and tried to chemically change her blood. They had seen something in her that was worth the lengthy process of transfusion, and the only thing that made sense was that she had what they slaughtered millions of Vestalians to find.
Biting into a Seeker’s head would give the Geralos powers beyond measure, but only one in 500,000 Vestalians had it, primarily women, but there had been a few men. The Louine who tested Helga after her rescue had determined that there was a strong possibility she was indeed a Seeker. “This rare gift of the Vestalian species ended up inside a half-breed outcast that they refused to claim,” she said.
“There it is again, Helga, the name-calling from your childhood. From everything that we have discussed, this seems to be the root of your discomfort on the ship. Your traumatic experience as a cadet has become a confined space in your mind. You expect to be denigrated by people you love and respect. This box of safety that you’ve created is too small, even for you, and it adds to your discomfort in social settings, even with friends.
“I cannot recommend a memory wipe from that period of life that is causing this pain because it’s interspersed with the training that has made you what you are. What I can do, however, is remove certain incidents that have become triggers. It may take some time to adjust, and you may have some confusion in the upcoming cycles. Do not panic; it will improve, and you’ll be yourself in no time, able to love, laugh, and sleep. All of the components of a healthy, happy life.”
Helga wanted to object, but knew that it was hopeless. She was stuck playing passenger with the drugs taking the helm. All she could do was observe as the Cel-toc played in her head, and she wondered if this was normal. Was she conscious because she was a Seeker? Cilas had never mentioned this out-of-body experience when he recommended her doing it. He had seemed so sincere when he suggested she come here, and at the time she felt unstable, an ESO time bomb about to go off.
She had wanted to be better, and the prospect of sleep had been the biggest selling point. Oh, to rest without the nightmares or the insomnia borne of fear. It had brought her to the medbay but now she saw that it was a mistake.
Even Quentin had backed up Cilas, saying he saw the psych after every mission. “It’s what keeps me sane,” he had said, “considering the things we see out there. You don’t want to hold on to that, not if you don’t have to.” But this Cel-toc was talking about her childhood, which was a much different memory than one of her missions. How was forgetting things from childhood a valid solution to her depression?
She felt hopeless and disappointed as the Cel-toc placed something cold and metallic over her head. It began to heat up, then her vision was gone, followed by her consciousness, throwing her back into the abyss.
When she awoke she was inside of her compartment, and the light on her comm-link was flashing, demanding her attention. She eased herself up to a sitting position and examined her feet. A neat row of toes poked out from the sheets, showing no signs of the scars from her past. Was this a dream? Her feet never looked this good. Between BLAST training and her time on the moon of Dyn, her feet had always looked as if they’d been caught inside a crystal reactor.
She looked up suddenly and scanned her compartment for something else to be off. Everything was in place and it didn’t feel much like a dream. There was something else too: she didn’t feel any pain, and when she stuck out her hands to examine them, the nails were trimmed and her scars were gone, just like her feet.
Helga hopped up and strode to the mirror to see what else had been done. She looked like herself, which was good, but her hair was longer, and the bags under her eyes had disappeared. Smiling at the improvement in her appearance, Helga checked her messages and saw the date. Her mouth fell open with disbelief. If what she was seeing was right, seven cycles had passed.
“They put me in the tank,” she whispered with a resolute sigh. She didn’t recall approving it, but in her drugged-up state, she would have. Now she understood what Cilas meant when he said he felt capable of fighting the Geralos himself.
This was euphoria, better than liquor or Meluvian spiced tea. You could name the vice, and it wouldn’t come close to the way she felt. There was something else too, a fire in her loins so intense that a cold shower wouldn’t suffice. It was a side effect of the treatment that Cilas and Quentin hadn’t bothered to tell her, and it became so intense that she climbed back into bed.
With her newly repaired hands she worked at dousing the fire with pleasant thoughts from past experiences. At the crescendo of this solo exercise, she actually lost feeling in her legs. It felt good, and though she wished it could have been shared with someone special, her mind felt clear, and for the first time in what seemed like forever, the silence wasn’t a portal to the demons of her past.
She stretched and her joints cracked, adding more good feelings to her tingly, rested body. She got up again and stepped out for a shower, taking the time to shave the sides of her head and style her hair into a low Mohawk. When she left the officer’s quarters she was a confident, good-looking ESO, and she was ready for whatever the Rendron threw at her.
As she walked, she slipped on her earpiece to listen to the messages that had been left while she was out. There were plenty of well wishes from the three members of her team, and a nice one from the new XO, Jit Nam, and unsurprisingly her captain, Retzo Sho. This made her realize that she had been treated for more than depression, which explained the tank treatment and the way she was feeling now.
She looked at the time and reasoned that the Nighthawks would be training. Her original plan was to pop up to see how well they were doing, but decided instead to look in on her friend. Joy Valance stayed on the lower deck in the guest quarters of the ship, next to the newly graduated and privileged cadets. An entire section of this honeycomb had been given to the Revenant squadron, so that they could be together and separated from the rates, who were mostly loud and unruly teenagers.
It was a cramped living space, full of lockers and racks stacked like shelves all the way up to the overhead. A wave of nostalgia struck Helga as she remembered her berthing back when she’d first come aboard. It was tiny but so was she at only nine years of age. She had been a miserable child, who didn’t want to be on the Rendron, but with both of her parents gone, she’d had no choice.
She walked past a pair of cadets who froze as if she’d caught them doing something below board. Outside of the Revenants they were not used to seeing officers above their cadet commander, so they must have thought she was there to hand down discipline.
Helga ignored them and made her way through several tight passageways to the space dedicated to the Revenant squadron. Millicent Ral was on her rack, speaking with another Revenant by the name of Darius Gan. The two were seated close enough for it to be considered intimate, and Helga made to leave, fearing she had walked in on something she shouldn’t have.
“Ate,” said a familiar voice, and Joy touched her elbow, bringing her around. “What are you doing down here in the foot?”
“Looking for you, actually. Do you have time to talk?”
“Girl, you know it’s my free cycle or you wouldn’t have walked all this way,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’m just giving you schtill. Come, you can follow me to medbay to see your grumpy CO.”
“How’s he doing?”
“You tell me. I heard that you went to see him a few cycles back. I, on the other hand, haven’t, not since he came out of the tank.”
Joy was out of uniform and casual but for the tags around her neck denoting her name and rank. Helga was impressed with her physique; she was Navy excellence in solid form. Every step of hers was confident, as if she knew her path was one leading to greatness. She was vulgar but professional, harsh yet caring, and her temper ran as hot as her passion.
