Mind to Body

by Sandra Bard

  Kaishi vocalized his worries. "But if someone were to find out—"

  "It'd be worth it." She dismissed his worries with a shake of her head. "And if you must know, I knew Mark before he decided the best thing to do was grow humans in vats."

  "How do you know Mark?" Kaishi had problems thinking of Dr. Stevenson, shaggy haired and thin with nervous, long fingered hands and pale skin, as Mark.

  "We went to the same school." His mother stood up and smiled down at her son. She'd gotten better at looking at what was left of him without flinching. "You really shouldn't be that shocked about this—I didn't become mayor of Luna base by playing softball."

  Unless it's using someone else's balls.

  "Unless it's using someone else's balls," the vocal synthesizer said.

  Kaishi winced, wondering what his mother's reaction to that would be.

  To his surprise, the words of admonition didn't come. Instead, his mother laughed softly and shook her head, her eyes crinkling in delight. For the first time in a long time, Kaishi saw his mother, the woman he remembered from before his father's death, older, more lines around her eyes even though treatment and Moon gravity still held the rest of her face preserved in her youth, looking for the world like a twenty year old.

  It was then Kaishi uttered the words he'd been holding back for so long:

  "I'm sorry."

  His mother looked down at Kaishi with a shake of her head. "No, sometimes it's nice to know what people think of me. I think I should install one of these neural interface thingies for all my ministers."

  "No, I meant about the accident."

  His mother stopped smiling as she sat back down. "What do you mean, Kaishi?"

  "I mean … the attack on the space shuttle was because of me, wasn't it?" he asked in what he hoped was a soft voice. Hearing the modulator repeat the words in a cold, dead tone made him wince. "I heard some of the medical staff here speaking about it. They said it was some kind of terrorist attack and … that meant it was aimed at me, wasn't it?" The last words he asked hesitantly, since he really didn't need the confirmation that he was responsible for the death of one hundred and twenty people, including the crew and two scientists on a ground observation outpost.

  "Oh, honey," his mother said softly. "When Mark said you hadn't asked about the accident, I told him it was because you were too traumatized by it. I didn't know you thought it was your fault."

  Kaishi remained silent as his mother smiled at him gently.

  "I would have cleared that out earlier if I'd known what was bothering you. There was an attack on your space shuttle, but really, if you want to blame someone, blame the pirates who attacked it.

  "I suppose I should explain a few things to you." His mother grimaced and got to her feet abruptly. Kaishi could see she had no intention of leaving; she was just too agitated to sit still. "I was … I suppose I was becoming a little too ambitious for my own good."

  "I … don't know what you mean."

  "I was becoming a little too confident in Luna Base security. I offered to hold a wanted fugitive—a very dangerous space pirate—here until he was to be transported to the Alama base."

  "He was in the same space shuttle I was on." Kaishi knew whom she was referring to.

  "I know," she admitted. "I thought it would be a good idea to transport him under the radar using the bounty hunter who captured him and—"

  "Earth enforcers don't know. He was transported by a bounty hunter on a budget shuttle." He could understand his mother's reasoning. She had been vying for a promotion on Earth but so far had been ignored. By claiming to have captured a dangerous criminal she would have boosted her ratings—hence the plan to transport the captured criminal from Earth to Luna base using a private security agency instead of Earth law enforcement.

  "Didn't," she said, her back turned to him.

  "Was it coincidence he was transported via the same shuttle I was on?" Kaishi asked, wishing the vocalizer had more than one setting so he could express his anger better, this time because he was coming to the understanding he was in this condition because of his mother's bid for power. She had probably put them both on the same shuttle for some unknown reason. "You were the person who told me to come in that shuttle instead of flying on my own."

  "I was told there was a chance the pirates would attack Luna space shuttles as retaliation." She still had her back to him. "I thought if they knew one of their own was on it, they wouldn't attack it. Hence, you were supposed to be safe on it. I just wanted you here with me on my big day, when I handed over Croinsky."

  "Really, Mother." Kaishi couldn't help snapping, and the voice synthesizer garbled the words as a result.

  "The people who analyzed the wreckage tell me it was a botched attempt at capturing the shuttle. The pirates attempted to take control of the shuttle by a remote navigation unit that overrode the main controls. This caused a system overload, which resulted in a navigational glitch."

  "A glitch that killed all those people." Kaishi could feel his anger at his mother rising. "How could you, Mother? You could have at least warned the other people on the shuttle—"

  "Then my plan wouldn't have—"

  "It didn't!" The words reverberated through the gel chamber.

  "I'm doing all this for you." She turned towards him. "I want you to—"

  "No, Mother," Kaishi thought, heard the words through the feed. "You want what's best for you. You want to control Earth base from here, and you don't care who gets hurt in the process."

  "You act like I neglected you."

  "No, you did that when you sent me to school on Earth."

  "It was your father's school."

  "As if I cared. I hated it there. You never listened to me then. You … you just wanted to ship me off and forget I ever existed."

  "My, big words." She had donned her Mayor Yamato armor, and even the best of people had fallen prey to that. "Don't you think you're being a little melodramatic, dear? After all, all young people here with the means go study on Earth. Didn't your school counselor tell you about it?"

  "I believe I can afford to be melodramatic since I'm stuck in a gel tank as a floating brain. You always had words to save yourself, Mother. Even Father couldn't win an argument with you."

  "I wasn't aware we were having an argument."

  "No, we're not. It's alright, Mother, you can go now."

  "I will stop by …"

  "There's no need. I did wonder why you went through all this trouble to heal me, Mother. Guilt is stronger than family, it would seem." It did explain why Dr. Stevenson was working hard on the criminal, trying to keep him alive. Kaishi wondered whether Dr. Stevenson had been brought to save him or Croinsky. With his mother, he was never sure. "I don't want to see you again."

  "You really think you can hurt me with your petty words?" She stood to her full height and looked down at him with disdain on her face. "Get well, Kaishi. We'll speak when you can stand on your feet again."

  Kaishi closed his eyes. He could never win against his mother. He waited until the last of the footsteps had faded, wishing he at least had arms, since then he could pick something up and throw it. All that time he'd spent thinking the shuttle crash had been his fault, and she had never even admitted to it. Didn't even see how her ambition had destroyed his life.

  NOW

  Mobile Armored Units, MAUs for short, had been all the rage several centuries ago when space exploration was in its infancy. The private company that had originally designed the roughly humanoid battle suit had advertised them heavily to both the military and the private sector. They claimed the mechanical units provided the pilot inside with adequate protection from harsh environments and other man-made dangers, making it an ideal vehicle for waging war and for exploring unknown territories.

  While many had been interested in it initially, no one had been able to control them with the finesse the designers had intended, the controls and the software interface been too unyielding for a single pilot, and ev
entually the original MAUs were scaled down to the more manageable exoskeleton units that were still in use. However, what Tyler had was an original MAU. Hideki didn't need to see the specs to verify that.

  The MAU launched out of the docking bay, missing the top by mere inches. The entire unit was close to sixty feet in height, bulky with sharp edges like a collection of rectangles. The smaller square on top was shaped like a head. There were the glowing eyes, a camera of some sort, the old fashioned comm antennas shaped like antlers on either side of the 'head'. The head joined the chest of the MAU abruptly, no 'neck' to complete the illusion of a humanoid shape. The 'chest' was extremely broad with a collection of cannon muzzles of different sizes bristling out from it. There wasn't all that much room for the pilot inside the cockpit.

  The hands and legs of the MAU were the most humanlike. The hands had five fingers with three sections each and were double jointed for grasping objects without having to turn the whole limb 180 degrees, capable of picking up and smashing things with ease. The legs were equipped with flight stabilizers at the end of each foot and knee guns, which forced them to bend in one direction. Tyler's MAU in action was an impressive thing to see.

  Only the original MAUs had that design. The newer ones were sleeker, more streamlined and smaller. The colors of the original were also a little different from the modified camo-painted units—the initial idea had been that if it was too big to hide, why not just flaunt it? Tyler's MAU was bright green and red with an outline of silver light, resembling a rather large Christmas tree. At least it was easy to spot it in the distance and no one on either side would mistake it for anything but what it was.

  Hideki leaned into one of the screens to see what was happening as the MAU paused inside the Marion defense space, probably getting a reading of the full situation.

  The drones the space pirates had released were drawing fire from Marion's automatic array defensive guns, being destroyed in waves. Hideki narrowed his eyes as he tried to figure out what sort of battle strategy was being employed by the pirates. The drones were flimsy, hastily built with none of the finesse of the ISF military Juno drones he'd seen around Earth, but what they had, they had in droves.

  The array of guns didn't have a manual control override. If he were to take control of one of the guns, it might disrupt the rest of the guns. Hideki would have to wait for the drones to come closer and shoot a few down—if it ever came to that. Hideki felt he'd been conned into entering the safest place in the centre of Marion. Tyler had control of the situation. The MAU moved forward in quick, decisive moves, showing more maneuverability than a machine that size and weight should or could. Hideki wasn't sure why the first models had been phased out—from what he could see, they were extremely strong and lethal in battle.

  The MAU grabbed fistfuls of drones, crushing them before grabbing more. There were minor explosions as the rest of the drones zeroed in on it, but the bombardment of shots didn't slow it down a bit.

  Hideki jerked back from the screen as he heard a familiar tapping of high heels. Florence Tan entered the room quietly with a quick nod to the technicians and Hideki before bending over a screen. Hideki felt his respect for her grow. She preferred to take in information first hand and understand what was happening for herself. She didn't rely on other people to tell her things she could do for herself. While it made her an extremely capable leader, it would also make her a very formidable foe when it came to evacuating the station.

  Hideki looked at the monitor and scowled. The monitors were 3D but spatially fixed, and, as he'd discovered the hard way, Tyler had sent him into a virtual armored closet. It was one of the most secure areas on Marion.

  "The manned crafts aren't coming in any closer and the drones aren't drawing fire like they should," Hideki told Florence, his eyes on the screen. "What's their usual strategy when attacking the station?"

  "They'd normally wait until the guns overheat or run out of firepower. There's only so much power we can afford to feed the guns before the station has to shut down noncritical systems to power the defense system. Then the manned crafts will fly in through the gaps and threaten to shoot the bay doors unless we open them." She looked up from the screen and made a face. "Once they shot a couple of crew quarters open … including the one Manning was in."

  "I would have thought you'd have evacuated crew quarters that open to space when the pirates come."

  "We have." Florence frowned.

  "What are they usually after?" Hideki asked, watching as the MAU drifted toward the manned crafts in the distance.

  "We have tech," Florence told him. "And … the ground-siders have taken to storing their harvests with us to keep it safe from the pirates who ransack their farms."

  So Marion was deliberately making themselves a target for the pirates. Perhaps there was money involved. Hideki didn't think Marion would take such a risk without pay of sorts.

  "And the recent attack?" Hideki didn't move as he watched the MAU grab one of the fighters and crush it. The rest of the fighters started concentrating fire on the MAU, but Hideki knew unless every single fighter fired on the same spot, nonstop, for five hours, the armor would hold.

  "We did get a couple of shipments of weapons-grade bio-dust from Orange, recently." Hideki grimaced but filed it as another point to raise later. Florence spoke as if unaware how much her words were disturbing him. "One of the transport ships was damaged on the way over. We think there's someone here on the station feeding information to the pirates."

  Which was something Hideki was banking on, and he cursed himself for expecting the people on the station to be too dumb to have noticed a spy in their midst. Florence was obviously an intelligent woman who'd noticed it for sure … unless she was the one who was giving information to the pirates …

  Hideki switched to scanners; there were at least two people per ship. He leaned on the framework to the side, wanting to take a better look. The MAU had more firepower but not the speed to match a modern fighter.

  The alarms were so loud they shook the station and the screen flickered; Hideki, muscles tensed, crouched to maintain his sense of balance. Florence staggered, kept a hand on the monitor bay for balance but missed and fell back, right through a holo-screen onto the floor, hard. He helped her up quickly, looking at the technician who was reaching for something—a comm, perhaps to tell them what had happened.

  It was Florence who spoke in a shaky voice. "A few drones made it through, or … some of the fighters. That's a proximity alarm."

  The first wave had been a distraction. Hideki let go of Florence and started to run towards the docking bay. The MAU was powerful but it was only one unit. Even with Tyler's amazing piloting, it couldn't be everywhere, all the time.

  The docking bay was still vented and the airlock refused to let him enter, flashing red. Hideki cursed his luck. Marion probably kept it vented since it was easier than allowing for pressurizing and then venting it a second time when the MAU came in. It would be a waste of perfectly usable air, and in space, air was as valuable as water.

  He balled his fist and hit the airlock, feeling the satisfying crunch as the metal plate crumpled under his fist. His knuckles split and three of his fingers crunched unpleasantly but he ignored it. His hand would receive proper medical care once he was in Assumption.

  As he jumpstarted the airlock circuit with one hand, he activated the emergency helmet he'd been assigned as the door slid open with a reluctant hiss. The small power unit displayed green, fully charged.

  "Inspector Takamura." Florence's voice through the helmet made him jump before he realized she must have linked to him. "Whatever you're thinking of doing, forget it and come back. You'll be safe here. The pirates have never harmed the base; they won't destroy their income generator."

  Hideki paused as her words sank in. "I'm not running away."

  "I want you back here safely."

  Hideki didn't bother replying as the airlock opened enough for him to squeeze through to the docking bay.
As he did, he slid his hand back and detached the two connectors he'd pushed together to open the airlock. It wouldn't do to kill the next person coming through the airlock without a helmet.

  He sprinted towards Assumption, hating as always the feeling of being in an airless place. Everything in his body seemed to be drying, pulling, fizzing … His artificial body could theoretically withstand the vacuum of space for a good ten minutes with little side effect, longer if he were wearing his emergency depressurization suit. The emergency helmet was designed to protect him in just such a situation, with enough air to last him fifteen minutes. He knew there was also an air recycling unit, but it needed to be connected to an external power supply to work and his helmet hadn't been provided with one.

  Not that he needed it. The docking bay had close to zero pressure, and the temperature controllers were all but useless in such a situation. Assumption was not that far away, but he felt fear in his stomach as he ran, the knowledge that he was in a vacuum, that he could die with his blood boiling. He felt his saliva bubbling on the tip of his tongue as it had the last time.

  He reached Assumption within seconds and jumped at the pilot hatch, his hand resting on the frame, coming away red. His injured knuckles were covered with bubbles of blood that seemed to disperse into the surroundings and he grimaced: he must have lost at least a liter of blood without noticing it. He should have at least bound up his injury before rushing in.

  The bio lock activated and the hatch slid open. He used the magnetic grips of his boots to climb the side of the ship and into the hatch, not wanting to waste time waiting for the ladder to descend. As the hatch closed over his head, he closed his eyes and sighed in relief, just as Marion shuddered.

  Another hit. He actually felt the station list to a side before the geo-orbital stabilizers kicked in and steadied the station. Something must have given way.

  Hideki sank into the cockpit, letting the ship scan him and encase him in the body sealant that would cushion him from the worst of the g-forces while in motion. As the gel closed over his injured hand, he winced but held still, knowing he would be fully healed when he finally emerged. He was ready. Hideki felt the secondary engines warm up even as he sank further into the pilot interface. The delicate neural interface was still adjusting around him as he manually reached for the firing button.