The Expendable Few: A Spinward Fringe Novel (3 page)

I find a hidden reserve of strength and smile at her. “It’s all right, I don’t blame you. You’re a botanist trapped on a space station,” I explain for her. I even start convincing myself.

“It was so stupid,” she warbles. “I love you Clark, I’m so sorry.”

“I love you, Sis.” I reach out and pretend to touch her holographic cheek. The tears flow under my fingers unswept.

“I have to say goodbye now,” she says, uncharacteristically resigned. The little sister I know is a brawler, a fighter when things get tough.

“I love you,” I repeat.

Like a phantom the hologram fades. Desperation and grief take over.

I picture her being gassed to death in a hollow room. I’m on my feet screaming, hurling myself at the bars so hard that before long, I’m bleeding from somewhere. The pain doesn’t matter. Visions of my little sister and the partnership we had for as long as I can remember stoke the inferno in my head.

My vision narrows, and the last rational shred of me realises that they’re filling my room with odourless, invisible gas. The difference between the gas I’m getting and what my sister is breathing is that I’ll wake up. The world spins one last time.

Mad gas. I can’t smell it, I can’t see it, but something is holding me down on my cot. High school wrestling with Sarah Piper comes to mind. A girl with two first names, who was twice my scrawny weight back then. Damn girl took to the mat with me in co-ed phys-ed, and the class laughed as she flipped me down and smothered me to the floor with her soft-yet-crushing bulk. Through one eye I could see the class laughing as I was mashed into the mat. They’re laughing now, as my body feels so heavy on the cot that I try to tap out, and manage to flick my index finger instead. Tap-tap - little tap out. Can the ref see this through the circle of laughing students? My laughter joins in, and the echo reminds me of where I am.

The cell. I’m sinking into my cot and remembering that my sister is gone forever. I feel guilty for taking a break under Sarah Piper, about spending even a moment without thinking about Connie. My face feels hot, a tear pools in my eye and grows as I refuse to roll my upturned face. Moving is out of the question while pressed under a girl with two first names. Laughter bubbles up through my lips and it turns into a short wail as I regret the strange, amusing mental image. My vision is blurry, like I’m sinking into a shallow pool, then I feel a tear break free of my eye and roll down the side of my face.

My chest expands and rattles, filling with air. It doesn’t feel natural. It’s as if someone flipped a switch and my body is rebelling against my grief by taking deep, slow breaths. I don’t want to calm down, I want to remember my sister and wonder if she was forced to perform in some elaborate scenario, in some kind of ruse. Maybe I’m a candidate for Freeground Intelligence, and it’s all a test. Holograms can be faked. My sister is smarter than that. The alternative explanations cloud my pain but before I know it I’m remembering sitting at her table after dinner, arguing about censorship and the transit ban. She was never much of a patriot.

I don’t know how long I had my eyes closed, or what I was doing under those heavy lids, but when I open them, Shannon from Fleet Intelligence is standing over me with some squat-headed doctor. I can tell he’s a doctor because he has a long white coat and those searching eyes. I chortle, surprised by the man with the too-short head. It gives his face an unnatural roundedness. “Commander Patterson, can you hear me?” His head splits in the middle with each word like some kind of pre-school puppet. It’s at the same time horrifying and the most amusing thing I’ve ever seen.

“Flip top head,” I whisper as I tap my fingers on the mattress - tap-tap, little tap out.

“What did he say?” Shannon says. The way she speaks, the way she looks is completely normal.

“It’s the ichni,” says the doctor, his head flapping open and closed with each syllable. “He’s under such a heavy dose that he’s hallucinating.”

“Will he remember everything we’re saying?” asks Shannon, taking no notice of the Doctor’s unusual physiology.

“What good would this treatment be if he didn’t? Be careful, his subconscious is wide open.”

I check the top of my head and, to my relief, find no new orifices through which they can access my subconscious. Then I remember how heavy my hand is and it flops onto the mattress.

“Do I ask the questions now?” Shannon the Fleet Intelligence officer asks the Doctor in a whisper.

“Yes, but do not deviate,” Doctor flip-top head replies.

“Commander Patterson,” says Shannon, raising her voice slightly as if there was something wrong with my hearing. “You are undergoing an expedited trauma treatment so we can get you back onto your feet as soon as possible. Is there anything I can get you?”

“New doctor,” I manage even though my tongue suddenly seems too big for my mouth. “This one’s too…” I hesitate to finish the thought.

“Doctor Marlin is the best we have,” Shannon tells me. “You’re in good hands.”

“Marlin is a fish,” I comment aloud. Just like that, everything made sense. I blink a few times and they’re both gone. The passage of air across my teeth, tongue, down my throat and into my lungs becomes a conscious thing. Thoughts of better days, and a time of innocence begin flowing in and out of my thoughts. At best it feels like my life is being rolled out onto an examination table, at worst it’s as though it’s being repackaged so it can be placed in an overhead bin. Save it all for later, it does this soldier little good spread all over the floor, tripping him up.

I don’t know how I got here, but all that matters is the exercise table on my lap. Put the block in the square cutout. Put the ball in the circle cut out. Punch the octagon button when the red light flashes, the square when the yellow flashes, and when the table beeps I’ve done it all correctly and fast enough. I feel like I’ve been doing it for hours from the edge of my bed. Why is this hard?

Just as the thought occurs to me, Doctor Marlin - I’ve started calling him Fish - stands up from his fold up chair and fixes me with a grin. “Very good. You beat your best time from Academy training,” he tells me.

I look back down at the table balanced across my knees and realise that the simple puzzle I was doing is gone. Maybe it never existed. Instead I’m looking at a VX-77, or Vex, as we used to call them. It’s the nastiest handgun anyone in the Freeground Fleet is allowed to carry. My hands remember what I was actually doing: disassembling and reassembling the deadly double barrelled death dealer.

A pair of hands takes it and the padded lap table away. I look up and the Doctor is leading the way out of the cell. “You have a visitor,” he says.

I’m still stunned, feeling as though I have been asleep for days. The ache that sat in my belly like a stone doesn’t seem as important or overwhelming as it once did. My sister was a traitor, and now she’s a dead traitor. Images of her appearing in my cell, or of our past together, don’t come up at the recollection of recent events this time. It’s as if the connective tissue between the fact of her death and those memories has been weakened.

Mary Reed enters. Her eyes nearly boggle at the sight of me. Still, she doesn’t rush over. Instead she pretends there’s nothing wrong and sits down beside me. “They’ve got you pretty heavily medicated,” she says as she wipes the corner of my mouth with her long sleeve. She’s in loose red and black striped prisoner’s clothing. For the first time I realize I’m dressed the same way. “I’m probably pretty heavily medicated,” I admit slowly.

She laughs and puts her arm around my shoulders. I didn’t mean to say that last bit aloud, but hearing her laugh feels good. I always enjoyed that, making her laugh. I lean towards her and my head lands in her lap. I close my eyes and see myself picking up that Vex hand cannon, raising it to my temple and pulling the trigger. I don’t know where that ultra-clear image comes from, it’s just there until I feel her hand stroke my face. Life gets easier, everything feels softer.

“They’re running you through accelerated rehabilitation,” she explains. “A lot like Minh-Chu Buu started when he got back, only with a real kick.”

“Got you, too,” I tell her.

“Yup. I thought I’d come in here and break your nose since you got me locked up. I was holding your contraband when they took me in for questioning,” she tells me. “But I’m not one for preying on the defenceless.”

“Sorry,” I say. “So sorry.”

“It’ll be okay,” she replies. I’ve never seen her take care of anyone before, but she’s doing a pretty good job. “A little time in the stockade never did me any harm, especially in isolation. Besides, no point in pretending I’m anything other than who I am anymore.”

“Wonder where you’ll get stationed?” I ask. My speech is still slow.

“Well, I’m not getting busted down to private, but there are a lot of new restrictions on my file, so it’ll be interesting.”

“Wonder when they’ll fire me,” I ask, picturing a military policeman entering my cell and announcing my discharge. It’s so clear in my mind’s eye that I’m sure he’ll be standing right there if I open my eyes.

“They don’t work this hard on commanders who are about to get drummed out of the service,” she chuckles.

That leads me to a far darker thought. “Will I be me?” I ask.

“What’s that?” she asks as though prompting a child.

I don’t mind. A little soft condescension goes a long way in my soft-headed state. “Will I still be me at the end of therapy?” I ask, chortling at the ring of the rhyme.

“I’ll make sure,” she promises. “I’ll tell you all about yourself.” They let us stay together for a long time, even though I can’t think of anything to talk about while she’s cradling my head in her lap.

“Open your eyes, Clark,” says the big voice from above.

I’m struggling to stay on my feet in the middle of an arid plain. The sand swirls around my feet, the sun summons beads of sweat from my pores. Everything feels heavy again, but I remain on my feet. “Where am I?”

“What do you want to do, Clark?”

What a ridiculous question. In all directions there’s nothing but sand, scrub bush, and sky. I meet the question head on with a worthy answer. “Dig a hole.” It ceases to make sense the moment I speak it aloud. “For water,” I add, trying to sound a little more intelligent. My mouth is dry. I check for the emergency water tube in the collar of my vacsuit and, to my surprise, find it. I stick the tube in my mouth and bury it in my cheek, sucking precious moisture.

“You’re hydrating, very good,” congratulates the voice from above. “Now find your way out.”

I want to lay down, but find myself looking in each direction. The heads-up display from my comm unit appears before my eyes. My fingers feel my left wrist for my command and control unit but find nothing but bare vacsuit. I ignore that discrepancy and glance towards the scanner icons in my peripheral view. Within a few seconds I locate a map of the area - I’m in the Scacha Valley, the nearest town is called Christine. It should be surrounded by a landing field.

Without a second thought, I seal my vacsuit. It begins cooling my skin, lowering my body temperature back down to normal, and I start walking. Despite weariness and leaden limbs, I place one foot in front of the other, sometimes having to steady myself by extending my arms, but one step follows another.

My lids begin closing on their own, as heavy as emergency bulkheads. I force them back up every time, eventually gnashing my teeth and grunting forth. This is a battle for survival. There are no medical scans available from my vacsuit, I keep trying to scan myself, but the system isn’t working. I could be injured, drugged, there’s no way for me to know. I have to use any time I have to get to civilisation, it’s my best shot at surviving.

My eyes close again, and I hit the ground as limp as a training dummy. I try to press against the ground, to get myself back up on my feet but fail. The sounds of running feet come towards me, the sun goes down in an instant, and then I see something that can’t be real.

On the First Light, that ship I once studied, there was a Doctor named Carl Anderson. He was at once the advisor and the overseer of the First Light crew. He allowed them to make their own decisions, but reported their actions back to Freeground Intelligence. He’s running towards me now, in a black vacsuit with red pinstripes down the arms, legs and shoulders. The official Freeground Intelligence uniform that I’ve only ever seen in training manuals.

Doctor Anderson turns me over onto my back and disables the hood of my vacsuit. “Just breathe, son. The air is cool, you’re in your cell.”

A few blinks later, I realise that he’s right. I’m in my cell. He’s kneeling over me. Doctor Marlin is standing behind the bars. I’m still in my prisoner’s uniform. My limbs still feel like they’re weighted down, however. It’s difficult to move.

“What the hell are you doing to him?” Doctor Anderson asks, appalled. “He’s a few cc’s away from overdosing.”

“He’s becoming more difficult to manipulate,” explains Doctor Marlin. “We have to perform this series of tests now, before it’s too late.”

“This series of tests? What kind of testing is this?”

“We’re trying to find out how ingrained his training really is. The order came down from Fleet Command; he’s not to be released until we are absolutely certain he can perform.”

Doctor Anderson picks me up and puts me down on the bed. I’m like a child in his arms. He has more grey hair than he did in his profile. Other than that, he’s exactly as I would have expected. “He finished the grief therapy, what else are you going to take away from him?”

“Take away?” asked Doctor Marlin irritably. “We’re making sure he’s ready to reenter service. This deep psychological character and skill building could save his life, and the lives of those under his command.”

“This stops here,” Doctor Anderson says. I’m watching, my mind a complete blank. “You’re going to let the ichni and everything else in his system wear off, give him a chance to sleep for a day or two, then you’ll call me and I’ll give him his choices.”