Wings

by Fearadhach MecRaudri

  Whole towns were sometimes put to the torch for nothing more than some petty self-styled autocrat deciding he had been offended, with the blame usually laid at his own feet. Much of the public, swallowed the lies whole. Most of those who saw below the surface did not see far enough, believed The Column to be no better than CentGov or organize crime…never even realized that the various Mob organizations were all but an arm of CentGov. People found it easier to ignore the confusing world seen by glimpsing beneath the fictions. People did not want to contemplate the possibility of living in a war, and so chose a path of willful ignorance.

  Lucas couldn’t say that he blamed them. Most days he wished –just for a moment- that he could just stick his head in the sand and go back to ignoring it all. By all accounts, the same held true for most of the people in The Column.

  A faint groan of pain came from behind him, and he stopped short. His boot scuffed rough-hewn rock and he stopped, and he realized the pitch of his footfalls had changed some moments ago. He had become so absorbed in his thoughts that he had passed the door, and would have kept going had it not been for the groans of the wounded.

  He turned around, retraced his path to the door, and made himself put on a brave face. Wounded, always wounded. Here, the bill for the meager freedom they kept got paid: paid in pain and blood. The bunks held several rows of men and women. A few sick, but mostly wounded. The dimly lit long cavern had a low, curving ceiling. Many of the occupied beds were recent refugees from a tiny settlement they rescued the week before. Their only real crime had been resorting to smugglers to get essential medicines, meaning that some senator did not get his graft. So- because they were kept too dirt poor to afford medication- the entire village had been accused of conspiracy with The Column and put to the torch.

  Lucas made a pass through the ward and took a moment for each patient. It took great effort to keep a pleasant expression when every fiber of his being wanted to scream with rage. There were women and children here, some irrevocably scarred. Some would not survive.

  He put his hand on the back of a woman sitting beside a girl with nearly a dozen instruments hooked up to her small body. The mother did not even look up, just placed her hand quietly over his. He looked at a nearby nurse, allowing his eyes to ask the question. The nurse, tight lips framed with sorrow, gave a fractional shake of her head. He felt his eyes begin to water, and allowed one tear to come before clamping down on all emotion. The tear -born of rage and sadness- he let out, but kept the rage from his down turned face.

  The single tear trickled down his nose onto the mother’s hand. She looked up at him, pain and fear in her eyes. He held her gaze, trying in vain to find words to say, felt a moment of total helplessness, every word discarded as inadequate. The mother recognized him, tried to smile. A valiant attempt, but unsuccessful. He squeezed her shoulder, nodding slightly. The touch of another human being, a tear shed in shared pain, he wished for a way to offer more. She laid her cheek atop his tear-stained hand for a moment, mixing her tears with his. Her hand then slid away, and she continued her vigil.

  Lucas squeezed her shoulder one more time, removed his hand and began to tremble with rage. It took several moments to calm down and continue up the rows of beds. Everyone had been watching them, and understood the brief exchange. The words he exchanged with the remaining refugees and Column injured were quieter, more somber, but somehow more heartfelt as well. They had seen The Leader count the cost, and seen him shake with rage at the price paid.

  At last, he came to the bed of the cadet who had saved his life a few days before. Korla lay on his back in a special bed designed to accommodate flyers. The bed had a narrow section below the shoulders which fit between a flyer’s wings, allowing the wings to drape below him. Most of the time a flyer would lie on his side or stomach to rest, but lying on the back brought better circulation to a damaged wing, helping it heal.

  Korla’s damaged wing stretched out to the side with other beds laid out to support it. Two plastic bags hung from a hook in the rock ceiling above the bed. The tube from one ended in an IV in the young man's arm, the other snaked across his wing and ended at the small hole made by the bullet.

  The feathers around the hole had been pushed aside or plucked, and the line slowly dripped some sort of fluid…probably a saline mix. The bucket underneath the hole contained a fair amount of water, tinted ever so slightly red. Lucas picked up the chart, attempting to decipher it, when a voice came from behind him.

  "Still trying to figure those things out, eh? I keep telling you it takes years of schooling, far too complicated for a solider, who only needs to know which end of a blaster points at the other guy." Lucas couldn’t help but smile at the jab from Hardy Cathar, head doctor for Farung Sanctuary.

  Lucas replied in a quieted tone, "I can tell that he hasn't been operated on, but that's about it. I just hope that you can fully repair the damage to his wing, we have so few flyers."

  "Yea, everything should turn out fine. The kid has a number of factors in his favor: the wing is new enough that it had not quite finished growing, the bullet went nowhere near a bone, and slugs don’t burn tissue on the way through. An energy weapon? The wound would have cauterized and we’d have to cut away the burnt tissue in order to have a hope of it healing properly. As it is, this is all we have to do with this wound, though, you know how tender new wings are."

  "Yea, how long will it be before he can start being re-trained? I don’t want to have to keep this kid permanently under wraps. There is something about him I rather like. I just hope we can convince him."

  The doctor paused for a long moment to consider, "Well, it wi.. No!!" the doctor broke off and nearly bowled Lucas over as he noticed that the young man’s IV hung out of his arm.

  ***

  Korla found himself back in that black sea of pain. He saw nothing, heard nothing; felt only the pain. He tried to rise above it, to think clearly. It came back to him as if from a dream, being shot, seeing Lucas, being shot again- by Lucas. He cautiously opened his eyes, even the thought of movement seemed to hurt his injured wing. He lay on what had to be one of those flyer hospital beds.

  At first, he felt relief, figuring that The Column would have killed him rather than keep him around. Then he looked at the foot of his bed, and his hopes were dashed as his blood froze in sheer terror; Lucas himself stood at the foot of his bead, talking to someone who appeared to be some sort of doctor. He began to listen to their conversation,

  "... how long will it before he can start being re-trained?"

  Korla’s mind started racing. He had heard of the rebel brainwashing techniques, and had no desire to learn more first-hand. Death would be far better. A few agonizing, stealthy movements and the I.V. slipped out of his arm. He sat there and willed the darkness to come. At first, he thought he had succeeded, but the doctor yelled just as he passed out.

  Consciousness began pulling at him. He attempted to flee into the darkness, but the pain of his freshly grown wing prevented even this. Sounds were filtering through his fight against the surface of consciousness; He feared what lay there even more than the pain.

  Korla slowly came to, finding his eyes shut tight. He finally opened them to see a couple of nurses assisting the doctor, and Lucas leaning directly over his face. The blood-thirsty Column leader had a strange look on his face, one which could only be described as concern; but that could not be possible.

  He saw Lucas look up briefly, "He's coming to." This time the genuine concern in the murderer’s voice could not be mistaken. "You really gave us quite a scare there, kid. Just stay with us here, we all hope to see you hale and whole again soon."

  Yea, so you can brainwash me, Korla thought to himself. Still, something in the back of his mind said otherwise... suggested that the sentiment truly seemed sincere. That lingering thought chased him down into the blackness.

  ***

  Lucas felt sympathy while watching the young man's eyes close, "I think he's gone back to sleep."

/>   "He should have, as much sedative as we've given ‘im, why do you think he would go do a darn fool thing like that for?"

  "Fear of me, most likely, I was standing right there when he woke.. I imagine that it surprised him that I didn't have blood-dripping fangs or something."

  "Yea, I just hope he doesn’t do something like that again. It won't kill him, but if he messes up that nutrient flow he could just make that damage to his wing permanent, and we definitely don't want that."

  "How true. I hate to see anyone robbed of flight, but one who barely got to fly at all…" Lucas shook his head and saw a young lady, a research assistant judging by her lab coat, enter the infirmary. She hesitated at a polite distance until he waved her forward.

  She wasted no time in delivering her message: "The genetics lab has finished decoding that bit of genetic code from the raid last week. Jared thought you might be interested in the results, though the situation doesn't require your immediate attention."

  "Any progress in the genetics lab is worth my immediate attention. Hardy, I'll talk to you later; keep a close eye on our boy."

  "Will do." Hardy waved to him then turned a worried eye back to his patient as Lucas rushed out of the infirmary with the girl in tow. He set a brisk pace toward the genetics lab, keeping a tight rein on his urge to take to the air in breach of courtesy.

  They reached the labs soon enough and Lucas found himself balling his hands into fists to keep from busting with excitement. They had made a major find during a recent raid on a corporate storage and transport depot which Intelligence had suggested stored a half dozen meat vats. Instead they found the one thing he could get just as excited about: ‘trial organs’ used for genetic research being stored for disposal.

  Researchers tended to test code on vat-grown organs -similar to the ones used for replacements in people- in order to check for unexpected interactions with other code. It had turned out that some of these samples contained portions of the Wing Formula, so they had been top priority for analysis. Lucas hoped there had been some breakthrough with this, and said so to Jared Tavish; The Column genetic research director.

  The director seemed terribly nervous to have him personally present, but Lucas understood that all too well. Only Jared’s dedication to The Column rivaled his passion for his work. As a boy, he had lived in a remote farming community, and dreamed only of getting his wings. Disaster had struck at an early age in the form of a young, hotheaded senator’s son. He had been a Flyer, chosen for the Academy because of his father. He had dropped into Jared’s village one day when an unexpected rain forced him to land. He had demanded room and board, which the villagers were only too happy to provide, then decided to help himself to the charms of one of the underage ladies of the village while waiting for the storm to pass. He got out of town before the villagers discovered what had happened.

  Before they could make a formal protest, however, he came back with over a dozen flyers. They tried to intimidate the villagers into keeping quiet, but the town closed ranks against him. He and his buddies burned the village to the ground. They slaughtered everyone they could find, and set off some serious explosives for good measure. A few children who had been well hidden by frightened parents were the only survivors, and the ‘incident’ had been blamed on Column ‘terrorists’.

  Lucas knew that Jared had never learned how to really handle being brought up as one of the many orphans in The Column, but his aptitude for genetics had been recognized early when they found him playing with a genetic model after mistaking it for a math game. The trauma from his youth had been impressed deeply into his psyche, and had left him a quiet man who did not like to draw attention to himself or his labs. He preferred to just sit and work, then report his findings through normal channels.

  That tendency lay behind Lucas’s excitement. The find must have been major for the geneticist to ask his personal presence. The nearly excited look on Jared’s usually unanimated face suggested that he would not be disappointed.

  Jared smiled nervously as he spoke, "I hope you didn't interrupt anything to make a personal appearance down here."

  Lucas returned the smile warmly while taking note of the clean, precise lines of the lab. Everything in here was exacting, sterile, white, and clean. Not just clean like a lab would be expected to be clean, but clean to the point that even the chemical smell had been washed away. Only a slight mint smell hung in the air, probably some sort of air freshener. He spoke softly, hoping to put the perpetually nervous man at ease. "Any advancement here is worth my personal attention, Jared. You and your people are absolutely vital to the success of this cause and may, in the end, be our only route to victory. You should never feel that you are imposing on my time, whether what you have for me is news or a request. That said, what have you got for me?"

  Jared’s back straightened slightly at the oblique praise, though his face suggested that the news about to be shared might not be as good as Lucas hoped. "Bad news first: The formulas we found were not for improvements in the next batch of Wing Formula headed for the Legion, like we thought." Lucas felt his stomach drop. It must have shown on his face because Jared went on quickly. "They are wing research, however. Bat wings, to be precise, like yours. They just don’t have the markers which are placed in all Legionaries. About all we can tell from what remained is that the growth of these wings would not involve nearly so long or painful a growth process, but they would still be just as sturdy.

  “In other words, the completed version of this formula would allow anyone to undergo wing growth without the risk of life due to system shock, nor would there be the terrible pain currently associated with wing growth. This strain also confirmed our suspicions from the last one about inheriting the wings. The block against wings being passed on to children it is not an intrinsic problem with the formula, at least not any more. In fact, my estimation is that they are going to considerable effort to maintain it. It’s like you always say, ‘where there is a wing there is a way’."

  Lucas felt the puzzlement show on his face as he spoke, “Wait, back up a second. You are saying that we found a version of the wing formula meant to be used on non-Legion individuals? Also, what makes you so sure that the anti-inheritance trait of the formula is deliberate?”

  “Yes, sir. This version of the formula is unquestionably meant for use on non-Legion folks. As you know all too well, they don’t approve you for bat-wings until you have grown your feather-wings. That means that the bat-formula has to have certain elements in it to deal with the feather-winged code. The partial formula we have has some of the sections where that code should be, and it isn’t there. This formula is not meant for Legion use.

  “As for the confirmation of inheritance prevention, there are a number of markers which just aren’t present in this batch, and some of those are ones we suspected were tied to the block. I believe these wings will be inherited by the children, and that this isn’t the first generation of formula to not have the block. I would imagine that there are children as old as 4 or 5 who have had wings all their lives. Not only that, but now we will be better able to find those blocks in the future. Generally, they obfuscate this sort of thing very well, but this time they didn’t. In fact…”

  Lucas interrupted by whistling softly and shaking his head. They had long suspected that the true reason for the bat wings lay in giving the privileged covertly implanted wings. This news could be a major PR boon, if handled properly. “Do you realize what this means Jared? I have suspected for a while that the real reason for these wings was to allow the privileged to give wings to wives and children. Goodness knows they don't have the utility in covert ops that is claimed. But... to prove it in public... if we could identify a wife and child, and get their shirts off in a live broadcast..."

  Jared nodded somewhat dismissively and talked over him. Lucas had never seen, or heard of, Jared speaking without being specifically asked to do so, much less interrupting someone. He let the man speak, "There is more, far more. Something
I believe to be of greater importance. We’ve talked at length in the past about why my people and I haven’t been able to decode the wing formula, nor to do anything with most of the samples that have been procured. They do a very good job of obfuscating the genetic code, scrambling it in ways where it works in the body but is nearly impossible to reverse-engineer. Well, this code was only slightly scrambled. These samples were not anything that had to do with the wing growth formulas at all. As best I can tell, Intel was right. They were cast-offs from attempts to improve meat-vat production.

  “Unfortunately, as far as that goes, they were cast-off for a reason. The only thing that code will grow is big lumps of cancerous tissue. The efforts with them have not been a total loss, though. We have learned a few things, and if you can get me a single vat that so much as almost works, we should be able to start producing them.

  “That out of the way, the wing formula bits we found were in segments of unused code. All living organisms have portions of genetic code which are ‘turned off’ and unused. You see a little less of it in heavily engineered life, but it is still there. I don’t know how, but someone managed to sneak bits of wing formula into those sections of toggled code.”

  Lucas felt his eyes go wide, and felt like he’d been rocked back on his heels. “You don’t mean…you can’t possibly mean…?”

  Jared actually grinned, and the female assistant giggled slightly in shared excitement, “Yes, sir. That is exactly what I mean. There is someone, somewhere, inside the genetics labs who is smuggling information out- probably meant for us- and this person has figured out how to get past the censors.”

  Lucas felt a grin widen on his face, stretching out of control. To have someone inside one of the principle genetics labs smuggling information out…that could bring them decades of progress in months. A chilling thought stole his fire, “What if it is a decoy, though? What if they are doing this on purpose, to get us to trust deadly code?”