“Or…not like us,” Dreyer says. “I’d bet my life that Theron isn’t where she’s from, but where her false memories came from. And as a sort of science geek Easter egg, the memory programmer named Grace’s fictional homeworld after his own lab.”
“So, Meshach’s cargo is from the same lab as Grace’s false memories,” I say, thinking out loud as I stroke hair back from my mate’s forehead.
“That’s a good bet,” Dreyer says. “And if there’s one thing a lab will be full of, it’s doctors.”
16
VAUGHN
“HEY. SHE’S FINE,” Dreyer says as she sinks into the chair next to mine, at her console. “Lilli’s keeping a solid eye on her.”
“I know.”
Lilli’s sitting cross legged on the floor, in a nest of pillows she took from the bunks. She’s holding Grace’s hand while she reads a book on her com device, and every couple of minutes, she looks up to check the display on the cuff around Grace’s right upper arm, which is constantly monitoring her vital statistics.
Zamora found the cuff in the med kit. Fortunately it, like everything else in the kit, is automatic.
“The best thing you can do for Grace is help me find that lab,” Dreyer says. “She needs answers and a doctor, and that lab is our best chance for both. Not to mention information about Meshach’s crate.”
I turn back to my console. “What the hell could he want from a memory implantation lab? Do you think he bought equipment that will let him implant false memories himself? So he can make his own perfect sex slaves, rather than having to pay someone else to do it for him.”
“Or so he can reverse-engineer the process, like with the nano-tech sheaths?” Lawrence suggests.
“He does seem invested in keeping women on Gebose…subservient,” Lilli adds.
“Okay, but memory implantation isn’t illegal, so why would the Bureau get involved?” Lawrence seems to be thinking aloud.
“Maybe the crime isn’t implantation,” Dreyer says. “Maybe it’s wiping the original memories that’s illegal. The Bureau could see that as a version of brainwashing, which has been considered a form of torture since long before the Great Expansion.”
“So, Meshach bought Grace, and he was so pleased with the mind-wipe they did on her at Theron Laboratories that he bought the equipment to do it himself, on other women?” I glance around the main hold at my fellow crew members. “Is that what we’re thinking?”
Lawrence nods. “But then the Bureau found out what was going on at Theron, and Meshach’s equipment is part of what they took for evidence, before it could be shipped to him.”
“That scenario makes sense,” Dreyer says. “But we don’t know any of that for sure. What we do know is that whatever is in that crate, the Bureau wants it as evidence. Which means that in our efforts to avoid attention from the authorities, we’ve basically put ourselves right in their crosshairs.”
“But once we deliver the crate to Meshach, the heat is off of us,” Jamison points out from the pilot’s chair. “So we just have to find it and get it to him. Then we get our new ship and get the hell out of this sector. With a doctor on board, if necessary.”
Dreyer turns back to her console. “So, let’s find that damn lab.”
I do my best to focus on the job at hand—to depend upon Lilli to tell me if anything changes with Grace—but that’s much harder than it seems. Especially when we’re still at square one a couple of hours later. “Even knowing that Theron is a business, rather than a location, I can’t find a single mention of it online. And that makes no sense, because they clearly manufacture and sell things like that automated syringe tester.”
Dreyer’s gaze meets mine, her eyes wide. “The tester,” she breathes as she dives back into the search.
“Find the tester, find the lab,” I mumble as I type.
But an hour later, neither of us have gotten anywhere.
“These things don’t exist.” Dreyer spins her chair around and stands in a huff, then she stomps across the main hold toward the galley.
“What things?” Jamison asks from the pilot’s chair. Zamora and Sotelo are off duty, and Lawrence is pretending he knows what a co-pilot does.
“The automatic blood vial-slash-testers, like the one I used on Grace. Like the ones Dr. Brennan and her team used on us in the zone X lab.” Dreyer pulls a mug from the upper cabinet and glances at me with one brow arched. “Coffee?”
“Please and thank you.” I turn back to Lawrence and Jamison. “We know damn well they’re made by Theron Labs, and they have to be commercially available for UA to have access to— Oh shit.”
“Universal Authority isn’t buying them,” Lawrence says, as he catches onto my conclusion.
“Exactly. We can’t find those vials for sale, because they aren’t for sale. They’re being manufactured in-house for UA, from another one of its evil hydra tentacles. Another arm of the conglomerate.”
“Holy shit.” Dreyer’s hand clenches around an instant coffee packet. “UA owns Theron Labs.”
Jamison nods. “That explains why we can’t find any mention of it online. The only entity with enough power and resources to delete every mention of a company—or to keep it from being mentioned in the first place—is Universal Authority.”
“Wait.” Lilli looks up from her book. “You’re saying that Universal Authority, the company—”
“More like a gargantuan soulless corporation,” I interject.
“—that owns and runs the Rhodon prison planet and turned you all into alien super-soldier hybrids also owns the lab that gave Grace her false memories? And sold something to Meshach, which was later seized as evidence in a criminal trial?”
“And then disappeared from the evidentiary transport,” Jamison says.
“Or…” Lawrence adds. “Never made it onto that transport in the first place.”
“So, if Universal Authority is behind all of those things, then Grace really could have been a prisoner, like me,” Lilli says. “UA could have rerouted her during or after her transportation to the Red Rock, wiped her memories and implanted her with fake ones, then sold her to Meshach. They could be doing that on a large scale.”
“I don’t think so.” I head into the galley, and Dreyer slides a cup of instant coffee toward me. “If they were selling brainwashed sex slaves for profit, they’d have to charge a fortune for each one, to make back their costs, and there can’t be that much of a market for expensive, brainwashed concubines.” I shrug. “I suspect most people who buy sex slaves are perfectly willing to beat them into submission, if that keeps the cost down.”
“Which means turning Grace into a sex slave from a fictional, ridiculously idealistic convent wasn’t their goal,” Dreyer says. “Maybe it was part of the development of some new technology. A new method of memory wiping or implantation? They probably experimented on her just like they experimented on us.”
“Then, when they were done with her, they just sold her to Meshach.” Jamison shrugs. “I’m sure they made money on her, but I suspect she functions as more of a sample of things to come. An advertisement for whatever product or process they plan to sell down the line.”
“And we’re not talking about more sex slaves, are we?” I sip from my mug, pushing past the bitter taste to embrace the temporary energy boost. “If they’re developing some new kind of memory manipulation—or a new memory wipe technique—they have much bigger things in mind for it.”
“Just like they developed alien-hybrid super soldiers as part of a much bigger sales strategy,” Lawrence says.
“Okay. So, how do we find Theron labs?” Dreyer is thinking out loud, a habit we’ve all become accustomed to. “If these blood vial things aren’t being sold commercially, we won’t be able to find public record of a production site, or a storage warehouse, or anything.”
I take my mug back to my console. “Maybe we’re making this harder than it needs to be. I mean there’s no way the Bureau raided Theron Labs and only took
one piece of evidence, right?”
“Yet Meshach’s crate was the only one on the manifest that didn’t have a description. Or a planet of origin.” Dreyer sits next to me again, with her own mug. “So let’s go back to the manifest.”
“Already on it.” I swipe my screen up onto the overhead display. “The items on the transport Willie Green robbed—presumably all evidence, headed for one or more trials at the sector capital—only came from two different planets. Assuming that Meshach’s crate—and Grace’s memories—also came from one of those two planets, they’re either from Notus 3 or Zelos.”
“Well, that should make things easier.” Dreyer is already typing. “I can’t get into any of the banking information, to find out if UA is paying employees stationed on either of those planets. Not without much better equipment than we have here. But I should be able to look at employee transport flight plans…”
“Or regularly scheduled supply shipments.” I dig into another search on my console, racing against Dreyer’s rapid-fire tapping on her virtual keyboard.
“Got it.” She swipes her screen up to replace mine on the display.
“Me too.”
“Zelos,” we say in unison, and I continue on my own, a victorious jolt of adrenaline firing through me. “Theron Laboratories is based on Zelos.”
“And we’re thinking that if Meshach’s crate never made it onto the evidentiary transport, it might still be on that planet? In the lab?” Lilli asks.
“That’s my hope,” I tell her. “And even if it isn’t still on Zelos, someone there—someone in the lab—will be able to give us some real information, both about Grace and about Meshach’s cargo.”
“And where is Zelos?” Lilli asks.
“On the edge of the sector.” Jamison is already plotting a course. “It’s going to take us a full day to get there.”
“Well then, let’s get going.” I leave my console and sink onto the floor next to Lilli, where I take Grace’s other hand. “We’re going to find a doctor on Zelos,” I tell her, though I’m far from sure she can actually hear me. “And if that doctor had anything to do with selling you to Meshach, you have my word that I’ll kill him the moment we’re done with him.”
“ETA: ONE HOUR,” Zamora announces as he swivels in the pilot’s chair. “Someone wake up Jamison and Dreyer.” Who’ve been off shift for the past eight hours.
I’ve been off-shift too, and I haven’t left Grace’s side at all during that time, except to use the restroom.
The floor of the main deck is cold and hard, but I can’t relieve my stiff back by sitting in a chair while she’s unable to take that same comfort. What she suffers, I suffer, until I’m able to help her.
Sotelo knocks on the panels enclosing the two top bunks, then he kneels and slides open the bottom bunk on the right, where Lilli is sleeping. “Hey.” He brushes hair back from her face, as I’ve been doing with Grace for hours. “We’re nearly there.”
Lilli blinks, confused for a second. Then comprehension widens her eyes and she sits up. “Oh, good. Dibs on the shower. I wanna smell nice when we get to the lab.”
Sotelo laughs. “You’re staying on the ship.”
“The hell I am.”
“At least until we know it’s safe,” he insists.
“Fine. But only because I’m making decisions for two now. Speaking of which, the baby would kill for some chocolate milk. Is there any left?”
“I picked up a new canister on Miscellany,” Zamora tells her. “Had to stare down a lady in full body armor.”
“I’ll mix up a glass for you while you shower,” Sotelo offers.
I squeeze Grace’s hand, hoping she can feel that, even if she can’t respond. That somehow, she knows I’m here. Then I stand and follow the captain across the main deck.
“Eat something,” he says when he sees me staring at the cabinet where Zamora stashed all the military surplus food envelopes. “You need to fuel up. Have some coffee too.”
“I can’t lose her,” I tell him as I rip into an envelope without reading the label.
“You won’t. I promise.” Sotelo mixes a glass of powdered chocolate milk for Lilli, then he leaves me in the galley, where I devour my meal in silence, without tasting a single bite. Distressingly aware that Grace must be hungry, but I can’t feed her. She must be thirsty, but I can’t give her a drink.
I can’t do anything for her, other than find a doctor.
“Heads up,” Zamora says as Jamison emerges from the bathroom just in time to see a planet growing rapidly in the viewshield. “Zelos, straight ahead. Do we know where the lab is?”
“Yes. Just a second.” I throw my trash away, then I sink into the chair in front of my console again. “I’m sending you the coordinates we got from supply shipments and employee transport drop-offs.”
“Got it,” Zamora says as the coordinates pop up on his screen. “I’m programming our approach and landing now.”
“Zamora, you and Jamison flip a coin,” Sotelo says. Because one of our two pilots has to stay with the ship, and with Lilli and Grace.
“You go,” Jamison says. “I’ll stay and keep the engines running.”
“Give me an earpiece,” Lilli says. “I want to hear everything.”
While the rest of us arm ourselves, Burke Jamison fits Lilli and himself with earpieces, then he takes over the controls so he can land the ship while Zamora gets ready.
“Guys, this is weird.” Jamison runs one hand through a headful of brown hair. “Our salutation has gone unreturned.”
“What does that mean?” Lilli asks from the floor, where she’s holding Grace’s hand. “You said hi, and they didn’t say it back?”
“Pretty much,” Jamison says. “Only in this scenario, our ‘hi’ is actually something like, ‘Hey, we’d like to land in your dock,’ and their response should either be to grant us permission or tell us to back the fuck off.”
“Which of those were we expecting?” she asks.
“With UA, there’s no way to tell.” Sotelo steps closer to the viewshield, as the planet zooms closer and closer. “If they’d said, ‘sure, come on down,’ I’d assume it was a trap because they recognized the Dinghy as the ship we escaped Rhodon in. If they said ‘fuck off,’ I’d know that we’re going to have to strong-arm our way in, but that they haven’t figured out who we are.”
“So, what does no response mean?”
“We’re about to find out,” I say, when Sotelo doesn’t seem to have an answer for her.
“Are they armed?” Dreyer asks.
“Yes.” Jamison taps something on the control panel in front of him, and a diagram of the landing bay appears on the screen, with tactically positioned turrets highlighted in red. “But they’re not taking aim.”
“Signs of life?”
Jamison snorts as he spins in his chair to aim an amused look at Sotelo. “The Dinghy doesn’t have the capability to scan for signs of life, Captain.”
“Or to synthesize a glass of real chocolate milk,” Lilli adds.
Sotelo scowls. “Fine, then, we go in prepared for anything.”
17
VAUGHN
“EVERYONE BUCKLE IN,” Jamison says, and I insert my earpiece as he spins back to his console. “We’re about to enter the atmosphere.”
As Sotelo helps Lilli to her seat, I pick up Grace and lay her in one of the top bunks. Instead of buckling myself in at my console, I slide the bunk panel most of the way closed, then I grab the exposed frame of her sleeping compartment with one hand and lay my other arm over her waist, to keep her from rolling around when our flight gets rough.
I hold on tight, while the ship shudders and lurches beneath me. I’m not going to leave her side until I have to. And to my surprise, no one asks me to, even when our trip through the atmosphere slams my right shoulder into the wall next to Grace’s bunk.
“Okay, we’re fifteen minutes out,” Jamison says, as we break through the atmosphere and our ride smooths out. A series of
clicks echo through the main deck as seat belts are unbuckled, and the rest of the crew prepares for our unknown landing situation wearing nearly identical determined expressions.
“Still nothing from the ground,” Jamison says. “If anyone’s home, they don’t want us to know about it.”
“Be prepared for anything,” Lawrence says, repeating a mantra we’ve shared since we were all in service together.
I watch through the viewshield as the ground zooms closer. There’s a lot of land on Zelos, at least compared to my homeworld. But it’s a golden brown, like the deserts of old Earth, rather than green, like the jungles and forests. And though the landscape isn’t pretty—not even once we’re close enough to make out formations—anything would be better than the swamps of Gebose.
“There.” Jamison points through the viewshield at a cluster of buildings, the only structures for miles and miles. The only ones I can see, in fact. “That’s Theron. The entire complex. It looks like there’s an underground tunnel system connecting the buildings.”
“You can see that, but you can’t tell me if anyone’s alive down there?” Sotelo demands.
“Those are completely different scanning systems, Captain,” Zamora tells him.
“Yes,” Jamison agrees. “The tunnels register on our radar as hollow subterranean pathways, but I can’t tell what the buildings are. Once we’ve landed, I should be able to talk you through navigating the tunnels, but I’ll have no idea where I’m leading you.”
“Understood.” Sotelo moves toward the red button on the wall next to the ramp. “Let’s do this.”
“Two minutes.” Jamison disengages the Dinghy’s landing auto-assist and takes full control of the shuttle. I watch through the viewshield as he flies us toward a building near the center of the cluster, where a nano-barrier shimmers at the end of a landing bay. Which seems to indicate that the building has an artificial climate, as if we’re in orbit, rather than within the atmosphere of a terraformed planet.
“What the hell is that for?” Dreyer frowns at the shimmering barrier.
Vendetta (Project Vetus Book 2) Page 21