by K S Augustin
She hadn’t wanted to take the cloth with her at all, but knew she needed every bit of advantage she could get. A conscious and oblivious Srin was still much better than one ostensibly cured, but left with permanent brain damage.
To her mingled disgust and relief, the towel worked its magic and Srin fell into a deep, silent sleep, his head by her feet, his feet by her hair.
Leen told her later that a Republic sensor crew had come aboard to scan the vessel, delaying the Merry-Go-Round’s departure by forty minutes. They found nothing to alert them, and had disembarked before lift-off.
The Lunar Fifteen facility was like nothing Moon had been on—or in. To maximise atmospheric containment, most of the Lunar Fifteen facility was built underground, with airtight locks between different sections. Leen had two of the Merry-Go-Round’s crewmembers deliver Srin’s unconscious form to a clinic some distance from the stubby docking tower they had locked with upon arrival. They set him down and left with quick nods of their heads to Leen. It was obvious she was a well-known, well-respected person at the exotic ore mining camp.
Moon followed, looking around. An ante-room, which looked like it handled less severe cases, contained a desk, three chairs and a narrow adjustable bed. This connected to a bay that looked a lot more serious. This is where the crewmembers had delivered Srin. The wide single bed was away from the door and below an ancient-looking bio-diagnostic panel. The panel was still dark. Did that mean it was manually activated? Or that it didn’t work at all?
The room, cramped and claustrophobic, also contained a small desk and a couple of chairs, arranged haphazardly against the far wall. On the desk sat a compact computer but, like the bio-diagnostic panel, it looked dated. The only other piece of equipment in the room was a comms unit, slapped against the wall near one of the chairs. It took some manoeuvring to walk from one room corner to another and avoid the furniture that had been shoehorned into the little hemisphere of space.
“This is the oldest clinic in the camp,” Leen said, without any prompting. “It’s far enough away from the main entrance that, if anybody tries to visit us, we’ll have enough notice to hide both of you.” She walked to the desk and sat herself on top of it, letting her legs dangle over the edge.
“So,” she said, “tell me about this magic green cloth of yours?”
Away from Slater’s End and the immediate danger of being captured by the Republic, Moon found Leen Vazueb to be a competent and brisk doctor. She wasn’t going to hug the woman and declare her her best friend, but she liked her and found a lot to admire about the way the other woman conducted herself.
Moon worked beside Leen as she explained as much as she could about the drug. She relayed the conversations she’d held with Savic, and answered questions regarding any changes she’d noticed in Srin’s behaviour between his Day Two and spanking new Day One personas. She told Leen that, in addition to the cognition enhancing aspect of what Srin was given, there was also something that suppressed a triggering of extremely high fever. It was wrapped beneath the mechanism that delivered benzodiazepine—Srin’s mental choke collar—straight to his brain.
“So you’re saying they infected his DNA with something that made him prone to hyperpyrexia, then delivered the antidote, plus an amnesiac drug coupled with a cognitive enhancer, every two days.”
“I’m no pharmacologist,” Moon admitted, “but that’s what it sounded like.”
Leen shook her head in dismay. “What kind of mind sits down and creates demons like this?” She was obviously shaken by what she heard. She directed a gaze at Srin’s supine figure with narrowed and disbelieving eyes.
“Do you know if anyone’s attempted to craft a cure for the raft of things he’s suffering from?” Leen asked.
“No, I don’t think so. I get the impression that this is the first time Sr? Turk has ever escaped. Why do you ask? Do you think you can create a cure?”
“Assassination pharmacology isn’t my specialty either,” the doctor told her grimly. “I’ll need lots of help from external sources and the hope that the fool who put this concoction together was too lazy to finesse his technique. But it will take time.” She met Moon’s eyes squarely. “I can help with the fever—treat the outward symptoms for the moment—but we can’t avoid the actual effects of withdrawal. He really needs to get every gram of those drugs out of his system.”
“I understand.”
Srin woke up, puzzled by his lethargy, but as charming as ever, the next day. Two days after that, he started going into withdrawal again and Moon looked on with agony in her eyes as Leen brought down his fever but otherwise left him to work through the effects of withdrawal himself.
Moon didn’t leave his side for the next three days. In between her normal rounds of the facility, Leen spent every waking moment in her lab conferring with trusted colleagues, trolling through infobanks, or examining the viral material she had extracted from the rag Moon brought. When they were together, most of their talk centred on medical issues, and Srin’s progress during the day. But lulls in conversation inevitably formed, and Moon found someone a little more eager to talk about anti-Republic sympathisers than Kad had been.
“We’re a loose coalition,” she told Moon over Srin’s unconscious form. Leen had just given him a sedative and muscle relaxant to help with the spasms, but was loath to do that more often, in case there was an adverse reaction to all the other alien compounds swirling around in his system. All they could do now was wait and hope he came out of his fugue with his mind still intact while Leen worked on a way to safely and permanently repress the hyperpyrexia effect.
“Kad is head of my cell and situated halfway across the galaxy. The cells are deliberately organised to be as dispersed as possible. That way, if one of us is caught, there’s still a chance to get a warning to the others so they’ll escape.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Thousands,” was all Leen said. “Kad told me you’re an old friend, from his research days?”
“That’s right. We were at the Phyllis Centre together.”
“So you’re the stellar missile scientist?” she asked, with a quick darting look upwards to Moon.
“Yes.”
The physician straightened. “Didn’t it bother you that you were working on such a powerful weapon?”
“I didn’t see it as a weapon,” Moon replied, stung. “I saw it as a way of providing more habitable star systems for people.”
Leen looked unconvinced and Moon knew that that was how people would view her achievements in the future. She would be remembered, not as the scientist who tried to pioneer stellar re-ignition, but as the failed creator of a system-busting stellar missile.
“How’s Turk?” she asked, seeking to deflect attention from her depressing thoughts.
“You said he was on the drug for almost twenty years?”
Moon nodded.
Leen’s expression was grim. “The bastards. Do you know why they did that to him?”
“They wanted him under control.”
“Twenty years.” She walked away from the bed. “Do you know anything about the drugs they pumped him with, besides the names?”
Moon shrugged. “A little. But I’m a stellar physicist, not a doctor.”
“They’re all highly addictive, even for short exposures. I don’t think I’ve ever come across someone who’s taken any of the benzodiazepine family of drugs for longer than two months.”
“Can he come out of it?” Moon asked.
Worry was clear in Leen’s eyes. “He’s doing well so far. I think he can come out of it. But what I don’t know are the long-term effects. Will the memory loss stay as a permanent part of his biochemistry? Will the hyperpyrexia repression treatment I’m putting together cause other side-effects, such as marrow damage? I hate inflicting the possibility of more harm on someone, but I just don’t have a choice.”
Moon saw that Leen was no clearer to resolving the medical and ethical problems in her mind whe
n she left an hour later, the door thudding shut behind her.
All that was left was to wait. And hope.
Hope that Srin could pull himself out of withdrawal with no adverse effects. Hope that the repression treatment Leen Vazueb was finalising would work.
Hope that Srin remembered that he loved her. As she loved him.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Moon stayed by Srin’s side for the next day, watching him like a mother bird fussing over her chicks, adjusting his blanket, or rearranging the quaint tray of two glasses that Leen had brought in and left on the small desk. Maybe the doctor thought it leant an air of hospitality to the cave that had been gouged out of the rock. Moon didn’t care. She was just happy to have something to fiddle with while she waited.
Outside the room, life at the Lunar Fifteen mining facility continued as normal. Even if she wanted to explore the network of oppressive tunnels farther, Moon wasn’t given the opportunity. Leen told her that while the vast majority of the mining staff were anti-Republic, it was more of a private philosophy than public policy. Then too, there was always the chance of someone after extra privileges, or passage away from the isolated system, who might be tempted to turn Moon and Srin in. Better off to remain as hidden as possible and hold on.
It was like being in jail, with the warden visiting once a day. The monotonous track of inactivity, after the frantic energy of escaping from Moises’s clutches, was driving Moon crazy. She paced the room, watching as the chrono’s digits slowly advanced. There was a computer and a comms unit in the room, but there was nothing to access and nobody to call. Every now and then, Moon plugged into the local net and flicked through a variety of news from the facility. All of the shaft cameras showed the same ochre dust and the same nondescript ore extractors swarming with bulky, suited figures who spoke the local patois like it was some kind of crackling code. It was like being in stasis, except that she felt every minute as it crawled away.
She looked over at Srin, lying in his bunk, his chest rising and falling rhythmically.
He had been put in a medicated sleep and it was now the fourth day that he’d been slumbering. Moon was opposed to the treatment, and had said so, arguing that Srin had suffered enough. Leen’s patient response was that, while she was still trying to come up with something to stop his hyperpyrexia and perhaps also help with memory re-knitting, it was best that Srin remain in a state that minimised his metabolic cost—and that was sleep. Bowing to an apparent compromise, and without a word of justification, Leen had administered the last available dose of sedative the day before, but Srin remained asleep. Maybe he was too weak to come out of it? What if he remained unconscious forever?
She gazed at him. He was relaxed, but the signs of decades of stress were still evident in his craggy features. He looked thin, and she saw faint hollows beneath his cheekbones she swore weren’t there before. Without the life sparkling from his grey eyes, he looked ordinary, diminished. Moon, who always prided herself on her self-control and discipline almost cried for what he’d been reduced to.
What had possessed them to defy the might of the Republic and escape its clutches in some hare-brained scheme? Maybe they would have been better off if they had remained. At least Srin would always be guaranteed the best of medical attention. And as for her, what did she care if the Republic used her work as a weapon? If she succeeded, she would have been rewarded with influence and maybe that influence would have been enough to somehow engineer a permanent home for Srin near her. Instead, they were hiding out on a dead-end moon and sequestered away like diseased vermin. Maybe if she somehow contacted someone, got a query to Drue, he could do something. Recapturing two of the Republic’s prizes might rebuild his career and give Srin the kind of medical—
The bed groaned.
No, not the bed. It was Srin!
Moon rushed to him, her face a mixture of worry and surprise.
“You’re awake.” Her hands moved over his body, pressing into him. She almost couldn’t believe it.
His eyes were unfocused, but clear of pain. “Where?” he swallowed, “? am I?”
It was all too difficult to explain. “A kind of safe house,” she finally told him. “How do you feel?”
“Weak. Fuzzy. Like I swallowed a container of hull insulation.”
Moon fetched some tablets and water from a nearby table. “The doctor told me to give you this when you woke.” She didn’t add that she had grilled Leen for twenty minutes about what was in the medicine before she agreed to give it to him. “It should clear your head.”
Srin took the tablets without hesitation. This time, when he looked at her, she saw that the spark of intelligence was back in his grey eyes. But was it enough?
“What do you remember?” she asked after he gave her back the empty beaker, sighed and leant back against the back of the bed.
He frowned. “Very little. It’s like reaching through fog. You.” He stared at her. “I know you. But…”
Apologetic, he shook his head and Moon closed her eyes for a moment. What had she been expecting? That Srin would suddenly awaken to full recollection and remember that he cared for her?
“It’ll come,” she told him, patting his arm, as much to reassure herself as him. “You just need to rest.”
But it seemed they were not to get that chance. When Leen visited them later that night, her expression was more than usually grim.
“The Republic has upped the stakes,” she said, setting a large bag on the table. Seeing Srin was awake, she went over to check his condition, then walked back to the table, evidently satisfied by what she saw. “They’re deploying more ships to the area in an attempt to find both of you. They must want you pretty bad. If you stay, you’ll compromise my cover. You need to leave in the morning.”
“But how?” Moon asked. “You’ve told me before that the only transport off Lunar Fifteen is back to Slater’s End. If we go back there, we’re bound to get discovered.”
“The only official transport off Lunar Fifteen is to Slater’s End. We sometimes do business with the bigger smuggler cartels based in the region—we trade ore and occasional medical aid for other things we need. I’ve already contacted one of those ships. They’re willing to take you to the next stop. And Kad wants to talk to you. He’ll be online in two hours.”
She opened the bag and methodically laid its contents out on the table.
“I’ve brought money, weapons and some fake identification. It’s very high-level and won’t pass any detailed scans, but it should be enough to keep you one step ahead of the Republic.” Lastly, she pulled out two sets of spare clothes.
“What about Turk?”
“I can’t do anything about the memory rebuild. I’m sorry. There wasn’t enough time. But I’ve got something for the fever.” She indicated a compact soft-case of dark blue. “In there you’ll find a small case of capsules. Each one lasts for about ten days. They’ll help stop the fever effect.”
Moon was not happy. That much was obvious from the expression on her face. “Ten days? Can’t you come up with something more permanent? Will he need to take this for the rest of his life?”
Leen’s lips tightened with annoyance. “Have you looked around you, Dr. Thadin? Have you noticed what we have to work with? This isn’t some state-of-the-art medical facility at the centre of the Republic. This is a clinic for a mining complex on the edge of space. The only reason that it’s stocked as well as it is, is through the judicious trading with a bunch of criminals. I’m sorry we’re not up to your high standards, but you’ll just have to make do for now.” She grabbed some clothes and flung them at Moon’s chest. “I’ll be back when Kad’s call comes through.”
Moon watched the woman exit the room, her back stiff with annoyance, and sighed. She was in another universe here, one that didn’t automatically recognise her skills and knowledge. Even in the detention centres, she was known as “the scientist,” but here…here, she was worth nothing beyond perhaps a month’s supply of some
vaccine paid to a space-faring pirate. And Srin, still suffering from a punishing drug regime, weak and recovering, was a liability.
“She didn’t sound happy.” Srin’s voice, weak and gruff, carried from the bed.
Moon smoothed the clothes and put them down on the table. “She’s not as bad as she sounds. She’s just under a lot of stress.”
She pinned an upbeat expression on her face and turned, walking back to the bed.
“How are you feeling?”
“Weak.” He smiled and the Srin she loved was there, in the affection that warmed his eyes, and the humour that curved his lips.
“You’ve been…sick for a while. It’ll take some time to get over.”
He looked around. “I don’t remember this place. Should I?”
“No. We’re on a moon, off the sixth planet in the system.”
“Slater’s End? I thought I heard you mention the name.”
“Slater’s End is the fourth planet. We were brought here so Leen could treat you.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “A mining facility?”
She smiled. He was really a remarkable man—even weak and conscious for only a few hours, his mind was sharp.
“It’s a long story. I’ll explain later.”
“And who’s Kad?”
“A friend.”
“Like you’re a friend?” But there was a gentle teasing in his gaze.
It was the familiarity of that look that gave her courage.
“Oh, I’d like to think I’m more than a friend,” she breathed, sitting on the bed facing him. “I’d like to think I’m someone you owe something very important to.”
“My life?”
“Hmm. Could be.”
She touched his face, one hand on each cheek, and pulled him forward. She thought back to their tryst metres below the complex on Slater’s End, of the cold—quickly forgotten—and of the passion that heated her blood. His lips were dry and rough against hers. She wasted no time, kissing them gently—once, twice—then forcing her tongue between them. Srin was surprised, she could tell by the way he moved beneath her fingers, but he recovered quickly, extending his arms and cradling her body with his hands so his thumbs caressed the underside of her breasts. Erotic, ticklish tingles shot up to her nipples, hardening them, and she moaned into his mouth.