by J. N. Chaney
Since there was no one else in the room, I leaned closer to study the fallen soldier. Most of the ugly black lines of infected veins had receded, leaving Avery looking more or less normal.
She had been killed—and I did consider it killed rather than just dying—by the First. They had tried to Turn her into one of their assets. It worked too, for a time. Until Dr. St. John and his Volcurian counterpart Skan worked out a cure.
A temporary one, it turned out.
Science wasn’t really my thing, but Dr. St. John’s explanation had been clear enough. Avery’s DNA was altered by whatever Makin’s people did to her. The cure undid some of the change, but after a few minutes it couldn’t sustain her nervous system. It crashed, and there had been no way to bring her back.
My teammate died in front of me while I was powerless to do anything about it, which troubled me more to think about than her death. The First’s infection wasn’t something I could shoot or rip apart with my bare hands, my usual methods of dealing with threats. Avery’s last moments might have been filled with agony, but here she looked peaceful, like she might wake up at any second and wonder why the hell I was watching her.
I didn’t know precisely why that thought came to mind. Maybe it was because I’d watched her die. An unfamiliar feeling built up inside me. There was tightness in my chest and churning in my gut as I continued to stare down at the woman who had been so dedicated to her cause that she’d flown across the universe to do her patriotic duty.
My thoughts continued to swirl.
She’d made a personal choice. Something I had never been given until recently. The terms of my employment with Rodon were clear, but the Director, a man named Jacob Wright, had never brought it up. Not to mention that we were far out of the corporation’s reach. That went both ways, I supposed. Thanks to Avery, we now knew that Rodon Corp was not only aware of intelligent alien life, but they had gone so far as to order an investigation.
The whole situation didn’t make a lot of sense to me. They were hundreds of years into Earth’s future by now, though the exact date still eluded us. I had a feeling that this was important but couldn’t say why.
The sound of a door sliding open pulled me from my thoughts. It was Tara. Our eyes met briefly before her gaze drifted to the pod in the middle of the room. Emotion flashed over her face for the briefest of moments. Tara and Avery hadn’t been close, but I knew that when most other people trusted someone with their life, an unspoken bond formed.
She’d been one of us, especially at the end.
The door slid open again to admit the last two members of my team. Mitch and Noah both wore somber expressions as they approached Avery’s pod.
“Should we say something?” The question came from Tara. Her gaze shifted to me once more, as though she expected me to speak.
I almost shook my head, but it occurred to me that as Avery Garnett’s leader, the responsibility fell to me. There was just one problem. I knew nothing about giving a eulogy. Before I could come up with anything, the door slid open for the last time.
Dr. Rhys St. John entered the room, his features uncharacteristically drawn—a look I wasn’t used to seeing on the scientist’s face. “Sorry I’m late. Research, you know how it is. Just working to find a way...”
He hesitated, looking down at Avery’s visible face. “Looking for a way to prevent this from happening again,” he finished.
“It’s not your fault, doc,” said Mitch.
“That’s kind of you to say, Mr. Collins. But I think we all know that it is.”
I watched the scene unfold in front of me in silence until a sharp elbow poked me in the side. It was Tara, and she jerked her head in the doctor’s direction. The implication being that this was one of those unedited human things. What had she told me before? When people feel guilty, they need reassurance? I didn’t know how to do that in a comforting way, so I went with facts.
“He’s right, Dr. St. John.” I waited until he looked at me to continue. “Avery was a soldier. She knew her life was on the line with every mission, and she was willing to make that sacrifice.”
His shoulders slumped, and I wondered if I’d made the situation worse. “But... I had the chance to save her. And I failed. It’s on me that she’s dead.”
“No.” I said it firmly, leaving no room for argument. “The First are responsible. If you hadn’t done what you did, Avery might still be one of them.”
“The Chief has a point,” Noah added. “Because of you, she gave us information. Avery knew who she was and that she was surrounded by friends when the end came. That’s more than a lot of people in our line of work get.”
Noah didn’t usually speak much but others tended to listen when he did. His words seemed to calm Dr. St. John because the man didn’t look quite so miserable.
“Okay,” he said. “Thank you. I just feel awful. I don’t want to fail again.”
I didn’t have a response for that. St. John was working on a cure for removing the First’s... infection, for lack of a better word, from the human body. Since I wasn’t a scientist, I had no idea whether he would—or hell, could—do such a thing.
“Let’s get this over with so you can keep working on it,” Tara put in. Her words weren’t quite gruff, but it was clear she wanted to be done with the ritual.
I cleared my throat in an effort to give myself another second to come up with something meaningful to say about a woman I barely knew. Then again, I thought, looking down at her, maybe I knew her better than I was allowing myself to think.
“Avery Garnett was a soldier,” I finally said. “A patriot and a teammate. She made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure we made it off the mountain. Whatever chance we have against the First we owe to her. I don’t plan on wasting it.”
The room went silent.
I knew that back home there were more customs to be observed, but this wasn’t a typical funeral service. Avery would not be buried six feet deep or cremated with her ashes to be spread somewhere. Her body, per the ship’s protocols, was to be released into space.
Beside me, Tara produced a small flask. “To Avery and Miguel.”
She took a quick swallow, then passed it to me. I repeated the motion and managed not to cough when it burned my throat.
Dr. St. John wasn’t so lucky. He didn’t quite spit it out, but Mitch had to thump him on the back a few times. The moment had the effect of lightening the mood some, and the bottle made its way to Mitch and Noah.
When it was done, Dr. St. John held up a pad. “I can start the procedure whenever we’re ready.”
There was a beat of silence in the room.
“Do it,” I instructed. “We have a war to train for. Avery would want our focus on that.”
The doctor tapped a few times on the pad before sticking it in his pocket. “It’s done.”
A soft whirring emitted from the pod, then it began to move.
“Please stand back,” a computer’s voice announced.
It sounded a little like AMI, but it wasn’t the version I was used to dealing with. The automated processes didn’t require an AI of her caliber to actively handle those kinds of tasks, but they still used the same voice print.
A large panel opened on the wall opposite the pod. There were no mausoleums or burial grounds on the Ark—all bodies were, for practical reasons, jettisoned into the void. Since that couldn’t be directly observed, a nearby wall screen turned on. The outer camera feed showed the hull opening to reveal the pod in its airlock. The pod opened, and Petty Officer Avery Garnett was released, forever relieved from duty.
“Let’s go grab a drink,” Tara suggested.
No one objected, not even me, though I typically preferred the quiet solitude of my quarters. The rituals that people used to get themselves through certain events seemed to help. I’d noticed that many of the Ark’s passengers frequented the on board bar, something that hadn’t made a lot of sense to me given the attack. For me, drinking was akin to sleeping while on p
atrol.
This was just one of those things that I dealt with even if I didn’t understand it. My gut sensed this was something my people needed, so I could force myself to socialize for one night.
The bartender, a brunette with dark skin and startling green eyes, seemed to know all three of my team members. She offered me a warm smile and I nodded back. I knew better than to attempt a smile of my own because Tara had once told me that when I forced that particular facial expression it could scare small children.
“You’re the Chief Mission Ward,” the woman said amiably. “I’m Candace Ross. Nice to see you in our little corner of the ship. What’s your poison?”
I stared for a moment, incredulous. “Why would you serve poison?”
“Haha. No one mentioned you were funny.” She leaned over and gave me an appraising look.
This was another weird thing that unedited people did; get into each other’s personal space. I wanted to lean back, away from her piercing gaze, but managed to stay in place.
“You look like a beer kind of man. Hang tight, I’ll get you a draft. First drink’s on me, Chief,” she added.
I shook my head. “It’s customary for the superior to purchase the first round. We’re coming from a funeral and I’m going to take care of my people. Put it on my account, please.”
Candace’s playful expression sobered and her gaze flicked over to the others. “Avery?”
When Tara just nodded, the bartender reached behind the counter and produced five shot glasses. A bottle of amber colored liquid came next, which she poured expertly into the glasses, then slid one each to us and kept the last for herself.
It seemed everyone was waiting for something but this time I wasn’t clear on what that might be. Thankfully, Tara took the lead by picking up the glass and raising it in the air. “To Avery.”
Mitch, Noah, and Candace all repeated the short phrase on a murmur, and I joined in, tipping my glass back to follow suit. It burned going down, but somehow wasn’t unpleasant.
Candace smiled again, but it didn’t quite banish the sadness from her eyes. “I met her once, Avery. She struck me as decent. The first round is on me.” The last part was said firmly and left no room for argument.
“Thank you,” I told her. “I’ll get the next then. Whatever they want.”
Tara laughed, a genuine one. “Careful with that kind of offer, boss. Some people will take advantage.
That got a chuckle out of everyone, breaking through the dark cloud that had hung over our group. The next round came, this time in the form of beer. I had witnessed unedited soldiers come back from occasions such as this, wakes they were called, if memory served. Until this very moment, I hadn’t understood the meaning, or why it could be important.
Now, I got it. Avery Garnett had lived and died, leaving her mark on people she met. Forming relationships with those people had made her important to them. Even the likes of someone like me. It felt… good to be part of this celebration of her life.
And, as it happened, I didn’t mind the drinks like I thought I would. Thanks to my edited genes and enhanced healing abilities, my liver filtered out the alcohol faster than my friends. At one point, Mitch and Noah wandered off to talk to other people, leaving Tara and me alone.
She spun on her stool to face me, then put an elbow on the bar and propped her chin on it. Her eyes were glassy, a sign that the shots and beer were starting to have an effect on her.
“I gotta say, Kent. I mean, boss. You’ve come a long way from the robot that helped us deal with the Flux.”
I raised an eyebrow at her when her chin came off her fist and she jerked. “You okay, Perez?”
She pushed her hand at me in a ‘I’m fine’ motion. “Never better. Anyway, I’m just saying that my people training is working out pretty well. If I had gold stars to give you, I’d put them all over.”
The words came out a little slurred and the grin was lopsided. Still, I found that I liked the sentiment.
“Thanks, Perez. Between you and me, I think I’m starting to feel like an unedited human.”
“Psh. You’re human alright.” Her brow furrowed and she made a hmm sound. “I think I’m drunk. Time to call it a night. I don’t want my boss to give me an earful.”
I laughed and helped her up. “I’ll take you back. But you’re right, I have something to say. Be ready tomorrow. I have a feeling we’ll be heading back down to Kainos pretty soon.”
She snorted in response and shuffled to the exit.
“Take care of that one,” said Candace behind me.
“Don’t worry,” I replied, my eyes on Tara as she started making her way through the crowd. “I plan on it.”
That night, I dreamt. Not an altogether unusual occurrence, and even in my slumber I knew it was connected to the day’s events. I was back in a familiar scene, but only in the sense that it was a copy of so many others I’d found myself in.
Barracks, cold and impersonal on our side. The Black Shield side. The unedited side showed evidence of the men who occupied it. Photos of people intimately connected to them, personal effects, and trash cans filled with items I’d never used before, like candy and cigarette wrappers. Soldiers who were just regular humans didn’t typically bunk with us for a number of reasons. In this case, circumstances during the mission had left one of the temporary barracks unusable.
The unedited soldiers knew how to be neat, but they still had personal effects. Holo pictures pinned up under their bunks or affixed some other way so their owners could see them. Lovers, family, friends. It wasn’t anything new.
Personally, I didn’t see the point. My brothers and I followed orders together, fought together, and sometimes died together. Beyond our interactions in the field, I rarely thought of them, if at all.
Just then, a group of our unedited counterparts filed in from an impromptu funeral for a fallen friend. Those that weren’t scheduled to be on duty for the next twenty-four hours carried cans of beer and stunk of it.
My eyes and ears tracked their movement, but I didn’t move.
One of the soldiers in my line of vision saw me staring and frowned. When I didn’t look away, he stalked over, the frown turning into a scowl. He clearly thought I was issuing a challenge, when in truth I was only observing because he exhibited signs of aggression.
“You got a problem, Batty?”
I ignored his insipid reference about a fictional character and continued to stare, taking in everything about him. Skein, according to his name patch, was more rangy than muscular. At almost two meters, he had decent height for someone whose genes hadn’t been perfected. I could tell by the way he carried himself that the man could hold his own in a fight. Well, under normal circumstances.
One of his squad mates, PFC Gibson, put a hand on his shoulder. “Skein, back off. You don’t want to pick a fight with BCS. They’re on our side, man.”
“Yeah right,” he sneered. “Look at these assholes. They lost three men out there today and didn’t bat an eye.”
Skein’s gaze drifted down the neat row of bunks and paused at the large gap. If the rest of us hadn’t been sitting, you wouldn’t have known they belonged to anyone.
“We all lost people,” Gibson reminded him, the voice of reason. “Shit day, all around. Why don’t you ease up?”
“We just buried Tanner and Crosby.” Skein shook off the hand and crossed the last meter to my bunk. His fists balled up at his sides and he glared at me. “You didn’t bother to come, 9464. You have ice in those perfect veins instead of blood? Hell, do they even run on blood?” The last question hadn’t been aimed at anyone in particular. In fact, the soldier seemed to have lost his focus for a second.
“C’mon, Skein. Let’s go pour one out for Tanner and Crosby.”
I thought for a second Skein might go with his friend, but the rage blazed in his eyes again.
“No. Not until this goddamn robot stops staring at me.”
Gibson’s expression turned hopeful that I might
look away, but I was going to disappoint him. I didn’t take my focus off a potential threat unless there was a bigger one to deal with. At the moment, Skein had my full and undivided attention.
It was no surprise when the soldier got within reaching distance and stabbed a finger into my chest. “I said, stop staring at me.”
I continued to ignore him.
“Oh, I get it. Perfect soldier doesn’t have to answer a lowly human. Maybe I ought to teach you a lesson.”
Gibson opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off. “I would advise against that action, sir. If you attack me, I will be forced to defend myself.”
The sneer came back, laced with a little liquid courage. If I was one for sighing, that would have been the perfect moment.
Skein rammed his fist into my face. I had to let him, otherwise regs would have demanded I get in trouble. Since he hit me first, I was well within my rights to do bodily harm back, so long as it wasn’t excessive. As soon as his fist touched my face, my arm shot up and grabbed his wrist. I held him in place and kicked out while still sitting, and made him lose his balance. As he fell, I wrenched the arm, twisting him, and pinned it behind his back.
I let go of the wrist just before the bone snapped.
With about as much grace as a newborn giraffe, Skein fell forward. His face bounced off the floor once, and he made an oof sound, then grunted in pain. I didn’t smile, but something inside me felt oddly satisfied at the sight of his sprawled form.
The barracks were almost deathly silent. The BSC operatives in front of me were still sitting in the same position, hands resting lightly on their knees, as though nothing had happened. I didn’t have to check behind me to know the rest were the same.
As for the unedited soldiers, they appeared to be in shock rather than keeping still due to discipline. The moment broke when Skein finally regained his faculties and clambered to his feet.
“You’re gonna pay for that.”