Ghost of Mind Episode One (7 page)

It was automatic. A habit she would never
forget. It was her last line of defense against being
recognized.

Then she stood. She wobbled at first, her
addled body trying to find the rigidity to support herself against
the roar and bite of the wind.

But she managed it. Barely.

Bringing an arm up, she pushed it in front of
her face, protecting her eyes and cheeks.

Though she had blithely jumped off the
promenade into the ferocious gale without the possibility of being
scratched, that had all changed.

That transport beam had sucked her energy
right out of her. And if it hadn't lost lock at the last second, it
would have killed her. She'd had just enough power left to
withstand the fall.

She could no longer redirect her energy into
her skin, arms, and legs, and steadily the salt crystals were
lashing into her.

Turning from the brunt of it, Alice huddled
an arm around her middle.

At least her hood would remain uncut. It was
still Old Tech, unlike the simple, unsophisticated clothes that
covered the rest of her body.

Taking a shuddering step forward, her knees
jolting at the effort of moving against the wind, Alice began to
walk.

She had not been expecting the transport
beam; in jumping off the building she had been sure that the
velocity of her fall would have made getting a lock on her
impossible.

Yet he'd managed it. John freaking Doe.

Groaning, clutching a hand to her shoulder,
Alice moved.

The more she did, the easier it got. She
invited the wind to blast into her now, letting her arms drop a
little; the more it buffeted against her, the more energy returned
to her limbs. The bite of the salt was still harsh against her
skin, and the cold was still ferocious. Alice would also have to
get out of it as soon as she could, but for the immediate future
the wind was the only thing keeping her going.

Letting her eyes close for a moment, she
cursed the fact she'd gotten out of bed that morning. She also
cursed the fact she'd been unlucky enough to run into Commander
Doe.

Her situation was now unbelievably perilous.
If anyone had seen her fall, the Orion Minor ICN would be
redirecting its sensors to get a lock on her position. They would
also be sending in the security forces.

Minutes ago, at her top strength, Alice would
have been able to fight them off easily. Then she'd had her energy
ripped right out of her, syphoned off by a technology hungry to
claim the power it had once had.

The wind picking up in a greater roar,
rushing so fast past her body that Alice felt as if she was in free
fall again, she forced one foot in front of the other.

It was all she could do.

Chapter 10

John Doe

He was on his feet. Nearly everyone else was
on their feet too. The holo feed in the center of the bridge showed
one thing. A woman, arms huddled around herself, walking through
the barren white wasteland of Orion Minor.

‘
How the hell is she doing that?’ Foster
said under his breath for about the eight time.

John did not have an answer for him; John had
no clue how someone could survive that kind of fall, let alone get
up to walk against the wind of the planet below.

‘
We need long-range scanners now,’ Chado
snapped again.

Parka groaned over the comline, swearing in
her own unique tongue.

‘
Get me the Orion Prime. We need to access
the planet's own scanners,’ John managed.

He'd been silent for too long, just watching
mesmerized as she'd taken one labored step after another.

He still hadn't seen her face. When they had
re-established a visual lock on her, she'd already tugged her hood
into place. And no matter how hard the wind buffeted and ripped at
the rest of her clothes and body, it did not shift the hood
once.

He frowned harder. His lips seemed to be
stuck in the gravitational pull of the planet below as his body
stiffened further.

John had seen a lot in his time. From the
worst the slums of the Universe could provide to the strangest and
wildest experiences being a Union commander had delivered him. But
he'd never seen anything like this.

‘
She may be a robot,’ Chado suggested,
voice curt and sharp.

John had thought of that. She wasn't though;
he'd seen her heat signature. She was biological.

‘
She may possess those advanced implants
the Union is working on, the ones for use on extreme planets,’
Foster offered, voice breathy.

‘
The ICN would have picked that up
immediately,’ John replied.

‘
Perhaps she is an Ionian Jumper?’ Chado
suggested.

‘
She would have survived the fall, but not
the cold,’ John kept staring at the woman, not shifting his gaze to
the rest of the bridge once. ‘As soon as we get access to the Orion
ICN, get it to send a super-fast probe. I want a visual of that
woman's face.’

John's gaze darted over the hood as he
spoke.

He was standing right in front of her. As she
walked, huddling against her own body, she moved just before him.
He was just outside of the hologram field, but if he'd felt like
it, he could have reached out his arm a few bare centimeters and
grabbed hold of her hood.

‘
Sir, we've gained access,’ Foster finally
informed him.

Sucking in a breath so large his chest
punched forward against the tight-fit of his uniform, John whirled
on his foot. ‘Send the probe, alert the security forces, tell them
this is a Union Forces override. I want a team at her location in
the next two minutes,’ he snapped.

And he meant it.

Whirling on his foot again, he nodded sharply
at Chado.

His XO narrowed his large blue eyes, the
flecked skin of his blue face tightening. It was a very knowing
look. ‘I suppose you are going back down there?’

John offered a simple and brief nod. Hell yes
he was going back down there.

But that wasn't all. Transport was a
systems-heavy activity. It took a lot of energy, and you had to
justify it every single time you used it. But so was upgrading into
armor. Especially the specific kind John had in mind.

Crunching his shoulders and clenching his
hands for a brief moment, John took a sniff. ‘Computer, select
restricted upgrade alpha 1,’ John said.

Chado looked at him, and John's XO's eyes
blazed.

Technically it was the job of an XO to not
only ensure the safety of the crew, but also the commanding
officer. But John had a nasty habit of being the first one to put
his hand up whenever danger reared its ugly head, and would run
off, leaving Chado to simmer in the corner.

As the computer lifted John off the ground,
it did not have to - very thankfully - take apart his clothes in
order to recalibrate the matter to generate his armor. Neither did
it take a chunk out of the floor or reef off a whole section of
hull.

The Pegasus had a full store of elements on
board from which all the system’s recalibraters could draw. And
they had just been restocked.

The armor took seconds to knit over his
muscles and skin, and the process wasn't nearly as biting and
uncomfortable as the one he'd undergone on Orion Minor. The ICN in
the slums had done its best job, but the Pegasus’ computers were
designed with knitting upgrades and armor in mind.

In seconds John landed, his boots hitting the
floor with a resounding and satisfying clang.

He was good to go in some of the best armor
the Union could manufacture. Unlike the crap he'd received in the
slums, this stuff would not be eaten apart by the wind. The second
he touched down on the ice-covered surface of the planet, his armor
would generate an impediment field, slowing the wind down to a bare
puff, the salt dashing against his jet-black and grey armor as if
it had been thrown by a child.

‘
Lock onto me, transport form here,’ John
snapped.

Technically he could have run down to one of
the transporter bays, but he didn't have the time. Instead he kept
his gaze focused on the image of the woman walking against the
wind.

Was it just him or was she getting quicker?
Her arms were no longer gripped around her middle, the shoulders
high as she huddled against them. They were loose and free by her
sides, her fingers not even clutched into fists.

Her head was level, then it snapped up. She'd
obviously seen something in the distance.

‘
Security forces en route, will reach
target in 30 seconds,’ the computer informed him just as a yellow
light shot through the floor at a 90 degree angle and locked him in
place.

John's molecules began to break down.

It was never a pleasant feeling. Talk about
being ripped in two; if you didn't know you'd be rematerialized on
the other end, you'd think death had finally reached you.

It could send people mad; John had seen it on
numerous occasions. One of the men he'd gone through military
academy with had lost his mind the first time he'd gone through a
beam.

But John had found the secret of surviving;
have something to live for. Have something to justify going through
the torture of being transported for, and you're mind would quickly
forget the latent sensation of having your muscles ripped from your
bones.

And right now John had something to live for.
He had something he desperately needed to find out. Just who in the
universe that woman was.

Chapter 11

Alice

The cold wasn't bothering her as much
anymore, and neither was the salt. Though her skin still did smart
from them, they no longer threatened to send her back into blissful
unconsciousness.

Her body was regaining the energy that had
been ripped form it by the transporter beam. She would not be back
to her usual cynical and paranoid self until she could get inside
one of the blocks, but she could survive out here.

Could
being the operative word. Because at that exact
moment she snapped her head around. The sound of a security
transport humming overhead momentarily blasted over the roar of the
wind.

She looked up to see the black behemoth
descend from above. Security robots were lining up just inside the
slowly-opening hanger-bay door, getting ready to jump down and
apprehend her.

The blast from the transport’s engines
flattened against her, tugging at her remaining clothes, almost
threatening to yank them right off her.

Huddling against the downdraft, she brought
her arms over her head. Her hair whipped around her face, slapping
into her nose and cheeks, but not once did it pull the hood from
over her head.

Nothing but her own hands could do that.

‘
By the moons of Orion,’ she
snapped.

This was not good.

But if she was lucky, and she timed it right,
she could still get out of here. The transport above would not have
a human pilot; the conditions of the planet were so inhospitable to
life that there was little point in risking a biological when you
could just send a hunk of metal controlled by the ICN to do your
dirty work for you.

Which meant there would be no one up there
to stop Alice from taking control. Though she was perilously low on
energy, she was desperate. She'd use what little juice she had to
hack right into the ICN and give her control of the transport,
disabling the security bots as she did. Then
she'd . . . figure out a way to somehow get off the
ship and back to safety.

She was going to have to come up with a plan
on the fly. But first things first.

Alice closed her eyes, ignoring the growing,
deafening hum of the engines above her.

She tried to concentrate long enough to
access the ICN, forcing whatever circuits that ran through the
barren snow and salt-covered ground below her to redirect, latch
hold of her message, and propagate it through the system.

But Alice did not get the chance to finish
the job.

The transport still had not landed and would
take another 30 seconds before it could touch down close enough for
the security bots to jump out.

But something did land, right beside her.

She snapped her eyes open in time to see a
transport beam slice out of the sky.

She just had time to crumple her arms over
her head, fearing the beam would latch onto her again and suck the
rest of her life form her bones.

It didn't happen.

What happened instead was a man - covered in
particularly sophisticated-looking black and grey armor -
rematerialized a meter form her side.

With one hand planted on the ground, his head
momentarily dropped between his shoulders, he snapped it up in an
instant.

John Doe, it just had to be.

Alice whirled on her foot, getting ready to
run.

He jumped from behind her - she could hear
the wind buffet into his armor.

He landed in front of her. ‘We're here to
help,’ his voice sounded out loud and clear, the roar of the wind
nothing against the boosted audio his armor gave him.

No, he really wasn't.

Alice lashed out at him.

She usually never fought. Not unless she
absolutely had to. Defend herself, yes; she did that all the time.
But fighting made her sick to her stomach.

She did not have any other option.

She flung her arm towards him, redirecting
her energy until it made her skin and muscle as strong as smart
concrete.

For a second he did nothing. Maybe he wasn't
expecting it. Maybe he had expected, upon his offer to help, that
Alice would collapse in his arms again and let the hero save her
for the second time that day.