“Right.” Battlesuits were customized to their wearers, but the spares could theoretically be operated by anyone—anyone that could fit in them, that was. He wished he had the luxury of a spare in his size, but war materiel was always in short supply, even for frontline Fleet Marines. “You got comms? I can’t seem to raise anyone.”
Kang slapped his helmet. “Yes, sir. Ultra-wideband is functional, but the HUD system’s having trouble updating and passing data with all this damage. Reaper’s got a scratch squad finishing off the last resistance.”
“Captain Morehead?”
“No contact, sir. Might be KIA.”
“Bridge? Aux-conn?”
“Aux-conn is coordinating.”
“Fleet SITREP?”
“Winning the engagement, though with severe casualties. Some kind of stealth ambush, but no details. My gut tells me if we get through the next hour, we’ll be okay.”
“The next hour…” Bull checked his chrono. Twenty minutes since he’d left Jennifer Wang stuck in the bunkroom. The Pureling should be all right, but it was remarkable that Bull hadn’t run out of air yet. He was sure he’d only had about ten minutes.
He unsealed his clear flexible helmet, taking a deep breath of ship’s air. It smelled of metal and burnt plastic, but it refreshed him anyway. He then shrugged out of the harness that held the air supply on his back. “I need a couple of full bottles. This one’s gotta be empty…”
Bull trailed off in confusion as he looked at the air tank’s gauge. Forty minutes of air remained. That was impossible. Unless… He felt the color drain from his face and fear seize him. “Oh, shit!”
“What, sir?”
“Get a breathing rig or a spare suit and two extra bottles, now! And follow me!” Bull pulled the rig back on and sealed it.
Kang scrambled to find the gear while Bull readied the hatch for opening. When Kang came back with a sack, Bull popped the seal and yanked the hatch open, waving for Kang to go through first. That allowed the armored Marine to take point security and left Bull free to shut and dog the hatch. Then he took the sack from Kang.
Using standard combat hand signals, Bull directed Kang toward the bunkroom. They didn’t encounter any resistance, and soon reached the door. Bull opened the sack and took out a breathing rig, checking to make sure it could be activated with the flip of a switch. He then undogged the door, slamming his shoulder into it to pop it open, knowing as soon as he did, all the air in the room would vanish and he’d have to help get the rig onto Jennifer so she could breathe.
The door flew open and far less air than Bull hoped rushed out … as little air as he feared. Jennifer lay in one bunk, eyes closed and a faint smile on her face, the empty air bottle she’d taken from Bull’s rig clutched to her chest.
The bottle that should have contained an hour’s air when she took it.
But Bull’s bottle still showed forty minutes left.
Which meant that Jennifer had deliberately taken the near-empty one, and when she’d opened it after Bull left, she’d had no more than ten minutes to breathe, if that.
Why the hell had she done it?
Jennifer wasn’t breathing, and her face was pale and bluish. Bull fitted the rig onto the woman, activated it and began an awkward CPR sequence. “Give her a battle-stim!” Bull barked, forgetting that no sound carried in vacuum. He showed Kang the hand signal for medical assistance and mimed injection with one hand, the other continuing the chest compressions.
Kang popped open his drug module and injected the motionless woman with a battle-stim, and then shut the door and cracked the valve on an air tank. Air flooded the room and Bull’s ears popped, and for another ten minutes he worked on Jennifer. “Come on. Come on!” he recited, over and over.
But it was clearly too late. There was no sign of life. Even the Eden Plague couldn’t overcome total lack of oxygen and cell death.
Bull sat back and wept, gasping.
Kang turned away.
Bull shook his head awkwardly to clear his eyes, and then peeled open his helmet to wipe them with the back of his hand. “Dammit. Why did she do it?”
Kang’s harsh voice was uncharacteristically gentle. “Do what, sir?”
Bull waved vaguely, as if at flies. “Against my orders, she took the empty bottle. She left me with all the air.”
Kang sketched a salute. “Then she was a hero, sir. She sacrificed her life for you. She was EarthFleet.”
“She wasn’t EarthFleet.”
“Sir?”
“She was a Pureling.” Bull reached over to close her eyes.
Kang didn’t reply for a long moment. “I don’t understand.”
Bull picked up Jennifer’s air bottle and turned it until he could see something written on it in large block letters. She must have found a marker. “I don’t understand either, but she did. Better than most, I think.”
He handed the bottle to Kang, who read the words aloud.
“I am human.”
About David VanDyke
If you enjoyed this Plague Wars/Stellar Conquest short story, check out the full series at David VanDyke’s website, or connect with him on Facebook.
David VanDyke is a Hugo Award and Dragon Award finalist and bestselling author of the Plague Wars, Stellar Conquest, and Galactic Liberation Sci-Fi adventure series, which have sold more than 300,000 copies to date. He is co-author of BV Larson's million-selling Star Force Series, Books 10, 11 and 12. He’s a retired U.S. military officer, veteran of two branches of the armed forces, and has served in several combat zones. He lives with his wife and dogs near Tucson, Arizona.
Peace Force
by Ann Christy
One
“HOW LONG?” THE OLD WOMAN SAYS when she finally lifts into consciousness.
“A long time. Take it slow.”
The old woman looks up at the person and sees a caring face. She’s too blurry to make out details, but the old woman’s vision will clear. It always does.
“How long?” she repeats, her voice a creaking rasp.
“Two hundred-thirty years, Director Swanson,” the sweet-faced, younger woman answers.
Her arm tingles when she lifts it to her forehead. Soon the tingles will become pain, but that too will pass. “So long.”
“Let me help you,” the younger woman says, slipping an arm around the Director to take her weight.
The helper is stronger than she looks. There’s not a hint of effort as she lifts her charge into a sitting position. Director Swanson tries to look around the room as she rises free from the cryo-couch’s sides, but the blur prevents her seeing more than a room with too much white in it. A hospital room? It’s certainly not the room she went to sleep in. A lumpy bit of gray moves along a distant wall.
“Who are you?” she asks the human-shaped lump.
“Director Swanson, I’m Facilitator Gray.”
The director chuckles at the appropriate name; a gray swath is someone named Gray. How funny.
“Come closer so I can see you. And don’t call me that or else I’ll feel old. Just call me Swanson. I like that better.”
The form approaches, resolving into another woman, though one of such angular slenderness that she barely registers as that gender. “As you wish,” Gray says, inclining her head.
The pain begins and Swanson tries to hide a grimace. It’s always like this. Numbness replaced by tingling replaced by a searing pain. It shoots down each limb like lightning. But after the pain passes she will feel herself again, so it’s not worth acknowledging. Everyone must deal with pain sometimes.
“Healer Four-Alpha, is there something wrong with her?” Gray asks.
Swanson eyes the Facilitator. Gray’s voice is strangely without compassion or emotion, as if Swanson were a machine with a glitch rather than a human waking from a too-long cryo-sleep. And that name. Who calls another person Four-Alpha? More changes?
The Healer leans down to look at Swanson’s face. Unlike Gray, her expression is exactly w
hat one would expect from a good nurse. She smiles and attaches a small patch to the back of Swanson’s thin-skinned hand, then looks at a display next to the cryo-couch.
“No, Facilitator Gray. This is entirely normal for such a waking. She’s in pain, but it will pass. She’s awakened seventeen times before, however, and each will be more difficult than the last.”
The Facilitator nods, satisfied, then stands still to wait.
Swanson has been asleep a long time, but all this is very strange and not what she expected. The Facilitator Class was designed to be efficient and less emotionally driven, but this one seems almost too cool. “What’s wrong with you? You’re a very odd duck,” she says.
A flash of confusion crosses the angular face, which is actually a relief. At least Swanson can be sure Gray is human. Well, she can be almost sure. That certainty evaporates when the Facilitator answers her.
“I’m not a duck. I’m a Facilitator.”
With a snort, Swanson holds out her hand for the Healer. “Help me up. I need to stab that thing to be sure it bleeds. Got anything sharp?”
Even Gray looks alarmed at those words. The Healer merely pushes the medical cart a little further away from Swanson with her foot. It’s done very discreetly, but Swanson laughs anyway.
“Why would you want to make sure I bleed?” Gray asks.
“Because I want to deal with a human and you’re like a ghoul, maybe a robot or something.”
“I’m human. I assure you. There’s no need to stab me.”
The delivery is so deadpan that Swanson can only shake her head. “Whatever.” Now that she’s standing, she finally notices that hers is the only cryo-couch in the room. “Where are the others?” she asks.
The Healer still grips her hand and places her other hand securely on Swanson’s back to help her take her first steps in over two centuries. Swanson watches the Healer carefully as she answers. “Gone. The Humanity Directors made their final decisions. Of your group, the Peace Force Directors, you are the last. Director Glenn went into the virtual world and Director Taylor died during his last revival.”
This is surprising news, and also sobering. Swanson realizes she is now alone, the sole decision maker left in the entire human race. Her body seems to come alive with adrenaline. She hadn’t expected to be the last. Surely, out of the eight Director types, the Humanity Directors would have been last. Shouldn’t they be tweaking these final humans until the last moment? Glancing at Gray, Swanson can’t help but wonder if the Humanity Directors hadn’t tweaked too much.
Gray is still watching her with complete calm, an unsettling lack of interest in her halting steps or the old body in front of her. Swanson asks, “Why did you let Glenn go into the Virtual?”
“I did not,” Gray says without missing a beat. “That was my predecessor. The reason was logical, however. Director Glenn would not have survived another cryo-sleep.”
Quite suddenly, everything comes together. Swanson’s DNA imprint was chosen for this job because she would be smart and quick. And she was, usually seeing all the angles before anyone else at the table. This moment was no exception.
“Ah, I see,” she says, then glances at the Healer still preventing her from keeling over on wasted limbs. No matter how brilliant the cryo-sleep technology, there was always some residual effect and the length of sleep she’d just endured had never been intended.
The Healer lacks subtlety, but at least she seems to care, thought Swanson. “Facilitator, this is not seemly.”
Gray answers in that same deadpan manner. “The truth is always correct.”
With a roll of her eyes, Swanson eases her hand from the Healer’s and faces Gray, standing as straight as she’s able to. “Well, you’re at least true to your design. Let me be sure I understand. You waited so long to wake me because you believe I will not be able to sleep again. Is this correct?”
“Yes.”
“And that means you need a decision maker. A final decision. Correct?”
“Yes, Swanson. This is correct. Or we will need your authorization to create another Director if a decision is not yet deemed wise.”
A ghost of a smile touches Swanson’s lips. All these centuries and now, it’s time. Finally. “That means we’re finally done. At last. Let’s make some decisions then, shall we?”
Two
Swanson feels good, or at least as good as someone of her normal biological age should feel. The effects of her long cryo-sleep have either worn off or been pushed away by good medicine and excellent care. The Healers are marvelous. She sips a cup of hot tea as she reads yet another of the reports that have piled up during her latest, long absence.
The room around her feels empty, and it’s distracting. The Director’s Conference Hall was meant to hold all the Directors from all eight lines while they worked. Each line was tasked with decisions in one area. The Humanity Directors worked on putting the last biological humans into the virtual worlds, then with tweaking the Facilitators and Healers—well, their Loaded Strands—so they would have humans perfectly suited to tending the virtual worlds. The Nature Directors repaired the planet and repopulated it with animals either recreated from historical samples or bred from existing members. The Infrastructure Directors, the Space Directors … and all the rest … had their tasks. So many generations of them had been born, learned their trade, then faded for the next in their line.
Only when their Final Decision was made, and their tasks confirmed complete, could they join the other Directors in the Virtual and have no more Directors in that line decanted to continue the work.
It was strange to be the last. Swanson had never expected it, so she hadn’t prepared herself for this feeling. Shaking her head to get rid of the strange sense of isolation, she returns to the report in front of her.
It’s yet another of the bad ones. Making a face at the horrific details collected from the quantum buoys, she sips again, but this time, there is a bitter aftertaste. It isn’t from the tea really, but rather from the evil transmitted back to Earth with such ease. The ones who created the Seed ships had much to answer for. And they would have answered, had they still been alive. Perhaps it’s good that the virtual worlds came into being long after those responsible for the atrocities born from those first colony ships had passed into history.
Her eyes flick to the side. Facilitator Gray is sitting with unnatural stillness at the table to her left. At least Gray’s no longer staring at her. With a snort of disgust, Swanson lowers the tablet and says, “You really will sit there all day, won’t you?”
Gray meets her gaze with perfect equanimity. “Of course. It’s my duty.”
The label on the report Swanson’s just read tells her it’s number thirteen out of sixty-four. She narrows her eyes at the tablet, then asks, “And all of those reports are bad? All aberrant?”
Tilting her head the tiniest bit, Gray says, “Most of them. But we don’t receive all reports anymore. Decay or breakage has cut some of the buoy communications.”
Her teacup rattles a little in the saucer as Swanson sets it down. The shakes are still there. “But this last one here was a report from a planet in progress. They hadn’t even gotten the world habitable yet. They have some sort of slave situation, yet they’ve barely begun their work. How could things go so wrong so quickly?”
Gray’s shrug is awkward, as if she were unaccustomed to such gestures. “We’re not sure, and there’s no way to find out. The Seed ships were entirely divorced from our data streams prior to launch to protect their integrity. Nothing of their design or specific protocols was left on Earth—to prevent us from interfering in the future. Unfortunately, that also means we can’t correct our errors. There is…”
Swanson waits for Gray to continue, but she doesn’t, merely looking uncomfortable in her seat. “Well, what is it?”
“It is possible that one line of the ships has been corrupted from the beginning.”
“One line? Explain.”
When Gray begi
ns to speak again, Swanson can see that stating facts eases Gray, makes her more comfortable. It’s hard not to wonder if perhaps they hadn’t gone too far in designing the Facilitator class. Perhaps they should have left more people skills in place.
“Director, as you know, there were two Seed ships initially. Each would go to a different planet already determined to be a good candidate, confirm that data, and then replicate themselves using locally sourced materials. Then they launched their replicated ship toward the next candidate—which was determined during the replication phase—and only then begin the terraforming process. All the while, they expanded themselves into their final state, complete with all the facilities required for the long terraforming process. Only when all that initial work was done did they decant the first wave of Loaded Strands—the scientists and engineers—to confirm and guide the work planetside. You know all this?”
Waving her hand for Gray to get to the point, she answers, “Yes, of course.”
“Well, the number designation for each ship is coded so no one on Earth would ever know exactly where the ships are located or which ship line they were created from. Again, it was done to prevent interference by Earth at some future date. The numbering system almost seems random.”
Understanding now where Gray is heading, Swanson says, “But it’s not truly random.”
A hint of a smile lifts Gray’s angular features. “No. We deciphered the code. In most cases, the corruptions appear to be from the line of the first Seed ship. There are two—both probably caused by planetary disasters after colonization—that we link to the second ship, but none during development. The slavery issue you just read about takes place on approximately half the ships in the first Seed line. This cannot be coincidence. It is likely a shared flaw in the code across that first line of ships.”
Swanson takes up her teacup again and sips, considering all the ramifications. “Well, that does make the initial tracking easier in some ways. If our Peace Forces can catch up to the ships of the second line, then they can wipe out the problem once and for all.”
Bridge Across the Stars: A Sci-Fi Bridge Original Anthology Page 3