by Hellfire
“The rest of the your crewmates, your fellow officers, your friends,” Alkema touched the COM Link on his cuff. “Cleolanta, would you come in please.” The hatch to his healing room slid open, revealing a tall, thin striking woman in black velvet dress and silver jewelry. Alkema introduced her, “This is Mind Specialist Cleolanta. She is here to help you recover your memories and figure out what happened down there.” Atlantic recognized her. “She’s a truth-machine.” “Part of one,” Alkema corrected.
“Don’t be frightened,” Cleolanta purred, and put a gentle and reaffirming hand on his bare, smooth chest.
“I’m not frightened,” Atlantic protested.
“Oh, well… good then,” She smiled, with big white teeth that contrasted with the chocolaty darkness of her skin. “All I’m going to do is help focus your mind. Everything that happened to you is still in your head. I sense there’s some trauma standing between you and your memories. I am going to help you get around the trauma.” “Is this necessary?” Atlantic hoped it wasn’t.
Alkema adopted that faux-chummy tone of voice, “Don’t you want to know what happened down there?”
Atlantic had a very strong feeling that he didn’t.
“You would be within your rights to refuse the probe,” Cleolanta told him. “I can tell you, even if this works, it will be limited to memories of your time on the island, and I am honor-bound to keep anything else that surfaces secret.” “She’ll make a telepathic bond with you,” Alkema explained patiently. “Then, you’ll just describe to us what you remember. Simple as that.”
“What about the others? What about Flight Lieutenant Aramburuzabala?” Atlantic demanded.
Cleolanta shook her head. Alkema explained, “We’ve tried. They have no recoverable memories.”
Atlantic groaned. “What makes you think I’ll be any different?”
“We won’t know until we try. C’mon, there are worse kinds of probes. At least this one doesn’t involve sticking anything into you.” Alkema appeared a little too eager for Atlantic’s comfort.
Atlantic closed his eyes, and realized he did not like the idea of a gap in his memories either. Because of this, he acquiesced. “All right. How do we do this?” Cleolanta took over. “Just relax and clear your mind.” She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and gently touched the backs of her fingers against his temples, then suddenly pulled them away as though she had touched a hot cooking unit.
“What is it?” Atlantic asked.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” she answered, but she did not put her hand back. She nodded to Alkema, who activated the device that would record Atlantic’s memories as they were brought forward – the Recollect-o-tron. “Just relax … just go back to the first thing you can remember before leaving Pegasus.” “I was on the Bridge,” Atlantic began. And he felt an odd sensation in his head, the mental equivalent of when one’s ears popped at high altitude. He found he was recalling the events on the Bridge with perfect clarity.
Pegasus – Main Bridge, Nine Days Earlier – What Atlantic remembered was monitoring the ship’s orbital stability and trying not to keel over face first to the deck from sheer boredom as Lt. Commander Alkema reviewed the telemetry their probes were returning from the planet thought to be Fallon colony.
“Luckily for the Hellions, there is an inhabitable world in this system,” Alkema was saying from the forepart of the Main Bridge. He activated a hologram showing the planet: “166
200 Ara III. Equatorial radius: 5,051.9 km. Mass: 4.5×10 to the 24th kg. Gravity, 71% of Sapphire’s. Mean Surface Temperature: 16 degrees Celsius. Nitrogen, Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide atmosphere, with a Xenon-rich layer at about 11,000 meters.” Alkema circled the meter-and-a-half diameter sphere, which showed a purple-white planet with a large multi-colored continent in the southern hemisphere surrounded by large, medium, and small islands on all sides. Prime Commander Keeler slouched in the command station, also looking quite bored.
“The surface shows signs of recently eroded chaotic terrain,” Alkema droned on.
“Tectonic activity on the planet is minimal, and it has a weak magnetic field…” Atlantic had been at the helm almost three hours, and had done little besides guide the ship through a comfortable, low-maintenance orbit 17,700 kilometers above the planet’s mean surface level. He looked at his fingernails, and observed that one had been clipped shorter than the others. He wondered what he was going to eat at the end of his watch. He wondered if he should go on a run through the Agro-Botany Bays that evening or for a swim in one of the pools. Every seventeen seconds, or so, he thought about sex.
“Cute,” Keeler interrupted when Alkema stopped for breath. “What’s the civilization like?”
Atlantic deactivated the sphere hologram and brought up three display screens, two of which showed probe telemetry and the third an analysis of planetary conditions. “Our probes have been inside the atmosphere for something like sixteen hours now. Here’s what they’ve found, civilization wise.” The probe crossed over a small village of ten or twenty stone huts, topped by wood and thatch, surrounded by a wall of pointy timber. Ill-kept fields lay beyond the fortifications.
Keeler offered his analysis. “Ah, it’s boring.”
“But there’s also this…” Alkema continued.
The probe’s telemetry showed a notably larger village surrounded by stone instead of timber. Several ox-carts could be seen trundling up the road toward the settlement. Alkema switched to another view of another village. This view lingered on the view of a woman skinning and dissecting some kind of animal near a flame pit.
“That doesn’t look like the kind of planet that would have a thriving market for Tritium,” Keeler deduced.
“Not now, but we also found this,” Alkema brought up another view, of what apparently had been a city of some size. It looked uninhabited, now. Many of the tall buildings had been stripped of their stone so that only their steel skeletons remained. The streets were filled with rubbish and debris. A number of the buildings were canted at angles that suggested part of their foundations had given way.
“There were close to two hundred cities like this on the planet, based on probe data,” Alkema went on. “But it appears that every last one of them has been abandoned. If their civilization collapsed, that would explain why they stopped sending ships to Hellfire.” “Well, this is depressing,” Keeler said. “Each of the three colonies we have so far encountered in the Orion Quadrant seem set on a course toward even further decline. “ Alkema grinned. “I would have thought the collapse of civilizations was one of your passions.” “Studying it, or causing it?” Keeler asked.
“Whichever,” Alkema said.
Keeler sighed, “Have Planetology Survey plan cultural and physical mapping expeditions for both the cities and the villages… and sign me up for one of the city missions.” Atlantic checked his orbit. Pegasus was staying exactly where she should be, without any help from him. He decided he would rather go on the run than the swim. He noticed that his nipples itched, but he didn’t think he should scratch them on the Bridge because if anyone else was as bored as he was, they might look over and see him.
“One other thing, Lieutenant,” Keeler was saying to Alkema when Atlantic drifted back into the conversation
“Lieutenant Commander,” Alkema corrected. Atlantic thought he invested too much ego in his rank.
Keeler, however, did not. “Whatever you are this week, are there any remote, uninhabited areas on this planet where the crew could take shore leave without running into any natives? I ask because it’s been well over two years since most of us have been on anything even remotely resembling a nice planet.” Atlantic had perked up a little bit at the mention of shore leave. And a memory had come up of the first shore leave he had ever taken.
FLASHBACK – Another beach, on another planet, a low-gravity world where he had felt nigh-on weightless. He remembered warm black sand under his feet as the sun was going into eclipse behind a great gas-giant that hung in the
sky like a beach-ball. He had been swimming in warm water the color of ale while his mates played wally-ball on the beach and as he came out of the surf, a warm tropical breeze kissed his bare skin. He had been 15, then.
That’s when he saw her for the first time. An exquisite female, a little older than he, but whose tawny breasts were perfection, she was just a few meters away from him, standing in the surf, which seemed delighted for the privilege of splashing between her legs, and she was staring off at the sea.
He wondered if he dared to say anything to her, and realized even if he had the nerve, his brain was refusing to come up with anything. But then she had looked right at him and from her sweet lips fell the six words that would be seared in his memory forever.
“Did I just see a robo-shark?”Specialist Brainiacsdaughter asked.
“Well, pick nine or ten of the nicer spots and begin planning shore parties,” Keeler ordered as Atlantic’s daydreams yielded to the then and there. “I’d like to give everyone on the ship a chance to spend at least ten days on the surface.” “I’ll have the rotation schedules worked out third watch tomorrow,” Alkema offered.
Ass-Kisser, Atlantic had thought.
Pegasus – Hospital Four – Alkema interrupted the memory tap, “O.K., I think we know what happened the day between the day we made orbit and the time your ship departed.” Atlantic saw that Alkema was blushing, and realized to his own embarrassment that Alkema had been aware of all his thoughts. He was too satisfied by this knowledge to apologize.
Alkema continued. “I’d like to skip ahead to your journey to the surface. You left on the Aves Leo with 26 other people and a cargo of supplies six days after we made orbit. Can you try to remember your flight to the surface?” “I will try,” Atlantic told him. “But I don’t…”
“All your memories are there, you just need to bring them out.” Cleolanta gave him a most demure smile.
“That flashback to an earlier memory was distracting,” Alkema interrupted. “Can we filter those out somehow?
“Memory is a complicated thing,” Cleolanta said. “The way we weave them together is tight and intricate. If he has a vivid memory during the recall, it is best to let it record also.” Alkema seemed disappointed. “All right, let’s continue. Can we move forward to the day you left Pegasus?” “I don’t remember the day I left Pegasus.” Atlantic protested.
“It’s in there,” Cleolanta pointed to his head, and then to hers. “I can feel it. I want you to picture the sky of the planet, as it was when you were rescued, and concentrate while I pull your memories forward.” Atlantic closed his eyes, and tried to remember the planet. As he focused, an image of a vast and purple sky came into his mind. And fire.
The Island - Day One
Fallon, at High Altitude – Leo entered Fallon’s atmosphere a little too fast and too steeply, resulting in a fireball that flashed over the command module until Flight Lieutenant Aramburuzabala adjusted the ship’s angle of attack.
“We came in a little steep,” Flight Lieutenant Mayte Iphigenia Aramburuzabala said to Atlantic, who was in the second seat. “You have to consider atmospheric density as a component of your descent.” “You’re in the pilot’s seat. How is the angle of descent my fault?” Atlantic countered.
“I didn’t say it was your fault, I was just advising you,” Aramburuzabala turned her chin up a little, checking a navigation display, deliberately looking away from him.
“It sounded like you were,” Atlantic retorted.
Aramburuzabala was unmoved. “If you want back into Flight Core, you should use constructive criticism to improve your flight skills.” Atlantic was not all that sure he wanted to be in Flight Core, but he knew he wanted to do more than what he was doing on the ship, and none of his other options was any more appealing. He brought a projection of the planet’s surface to the head’s-up display, and saw beneath them a vast purple sea.
Technically, this was not a training flight, but as his mentor, Aramburuzabala had chosen to make it one. His responsibility, as acting logistics officer, was the 5 tons of snacks, booze, wally-balls, and other party gear in the secondary hold.
“My scans show nothing airborne for 1,000 kilometers in any direction,” reported Warfighter Shea Herrald from the tactical station. “Which begs the question, why am I up here, in uniform, and not down on the Main Deck?” Shea Herrald was one of the ship’s warfighters. His body was lean, but muscular beneath the tactical gear. His hair was a darker, dirtier blond than Atlantic’s, and no one would call him pretty. Not to his face, anyway.
“New tactical protocol,” Aramburuzabala answered, even though she must have known that he knew. “The commander wants a weapons officer in the command module whenever approaching an unexplored planet.” “But this planet is primitive, the probes said so,” Herrald argued.
“They thought Yronwode was safe and look what happened to them,” Aramburuzabala answered.
“Only when they tried to leave,” Herrald pointed out.
In the course of this back-and-forth, Technician Bart Savagewood and Medical Technician Skinner climbed up to the command deck from the main deck. “Would anyone like drinks, or a snack?” Savagewood offered them from a cold-pack he had brought from below. Savagewood was a tall, thin man, with a chin like a mountain ridgeline. Skinner was a middle-aged man with flowing silver hair and a stiff demeanor.
“We’ll be on the ground in less than 40 minutes,” Aramburuzabala protested. “Take your drinks back below.”
“I told you they wouldn’t want any of your decadent libations,” Skinner insisted.
“I would,” said Herrald. Savagewood grinned and passed him a bottle.
While the bottle was still in mid-air, something came out of the sky and slammed into them. The canopy was filled with brilliant light. The ship rolled over, and then there was a sensation of falling. Atlantic could see the drinks from Savagewood’s tray suspended in free fall, as though time was standing still.
Then, chaos, as a dozen command deck alarms activated, and a hard punch of g-forces as the command module ejected from the body of the mortally wounded spacecraft. Atlantic recalled looking upward, through the canopy, to see the sea rushing up toward him.
Atlantic was reasonably certain he was going to die. He had heard a tale once that in the Afterlife, one is allowed to hold a single memory from the living world. He was nearly weightless and he was falling into the sea.
FLASHBACK – “Unaccompanied males are not permitted to use beach facilities!” the stern woman with the stocky body, the iron-gray hair cut into a short masculine bob shouted at him.
“I just want to swim while my mom is at the cultural exchange,” Atlantic had insisted.
“Rules are for the good of everyone,” the woman’s cohort, a slightly more demure battle-axe barked at him. Both wore the customary blue-black skirts and white head coverings that left only a slit for the eyes and nose, Second woman turned to her companion, “Note well, sister, the assertiveness and disrespect
engendered by children raised in a patriarchal” system. Her voice mastered the dual feat of being simultaneously shrill and grating.
“Unaccompanied males are not permitted to use beach facilities!” the gray lady barked again.
“Return to the visitors’ compound, or you will be arrested and interrogated!”
“For what?” Atlantic demanded. Which was a mistake, because gray lady reached out, grabbed his arm, and tried to twist it behind his back. His reflexes and strength were a lot better than hers, and he jumped clear.
The gray lady immediately began to blow a very loud and obnoxious whistle, and at the periphery of his vision, Atlantic saw two more guards, converging on him.
“Hell,” Atlantic had said, he leapt and sprinted between the two guards and made for the beach at a dead run. Slam them! He would get his swim. He ran for the water with four, then six, then eight guards chasing him.
He nearly made it to the waters edge when he saw Specialist Brainiacsdau
ghter tossing a breach-disc at Johnny Rook, and the sight of her rack in the golden light of the Bodicean sun made him trip, and dive headlong into the sand.
Fallon, The Island – The next thing Specialist Atlantic remembered was regaining consciousness on a tropical beach, staring up into a purple sky. Above his headache, he could hear the susurrus of waves gently lashing a shoreline. There was a scent of oil and birds, and he could feel hot sunlight bathing his face. And he was very wet, although not thoroughly soaked.
He forced himself to sit up and take a look around at his surroundings. The wrecked command deck of the Aves had come to rest offshore of the beach, maybe 20 meters from where he had awakened. The emergency parafoils lay limp and disappointed, undulating on the waves like giant lazy jellyfish.
Atlantic slowly stood, stumbled over to the edge of the sea, and looked out over the deep maroon waters. On either side of him, a sandy beach stretched for as far as he could see.
He turned and looked the other way, and saw a jungle that began about a hundred meters away. Thick clots of red, yellow, and turquoise trees pressed toward the sand. Beyond that, a few kilometers in, the land began to rise, eventually creating a pair of cone-shaped peaks, so perfectly symmetrical to each other for a moment Atlantic thought he was seeing double.
Tears of sweat dripped from his brow into his eyes, the heat of the sun registered on him again. He eventually became aware of someone calling his name.
He ran toward the sound. A little way down the beach, Flight Lieutenant Aramburuzabala was lying on seat cushions salvaged from the command module. Medical Technician Skinner was attending to her injuries.