by MK Clark
Don shuffled the food around his plate as he searched for answers. He had asked himself this question many times. He had yet to come up with a suitable response. Finally, he sighed and shrugged. “I dunno. I can only assume that the same thing in those Wasps that messed us up triggered the memories. What I wanna know is why just those?”
“That’s easy. Dreams usually come from your subconscious mind, right?”
“So what? You’re saying my subconscious is trying to tell me something?”
Tyson shrugged and sat forward. “It might. I mean, think about it. You’ve basically been trying to force yourself to remember things, but you can’t. You don’t know how to remember them. I think your subconscious is providing the answer that you can’t grasp.”
“And what is that?” Don asked, humoring his friend.
“That you are never going to be able to remember them on your own. You can’t force yourself to remember things that someone else has locked away. At least not without a key, and at this point, it sounds like someone else has it.” Tyson spoke in dead earnestness now, as if he truly believed what he was saying. Don was done playing along.
“Ty, you make a terrible psychologist.”
“O’Hara, you a smart kid, but you are so thick when it comes to yourself! Look, you talked about a box, and it was locked, right? Eli said you had to have a key. When you touched it, that’s when you remembered what you did. All I’m saying is that box is your memories. They’re locked, and someone else has the key. That’s why you didn’t have it. That’s why you can’t open it.”
Don pursed his lips and shoved his plate away. He’d barely eaten a quarter of the food. He wasn’t hungry. “Even if you’re right, that doesn’t solve anything. I don’t know who locked them away, and I don’t know how to find them.”
Tyson pushed his plate back toward him. “Eat. That’s an order. Now, I don’t know how, but I think I know who.”
“You kno―?”
“Eat, soldier!”
Don made a face and began to shovel food into his mouth. “Who?”
“Okay, so you got four memories, right? The first three were intriguing, but the fourth is what got me. See, you said you already had that memory, just this time around, you recognized your mum in it, whereas before, you never knew who she was.”
Don found it hard to swallow as Tyson brought back the subject of his mother. No matter how hard he had tried while growing up, that moment had been as far back as he could remember, though he had never known what it had meant until now.
“You also said there were these people at the beginning of the memory that told you to hide. I think they’re the ones. They are the first thing you remember because they are the ones that locked the rest of your memories away.”
“I don’t think they’re people,” Don interjected slowly, wondering if he was saying too much. “I said people because, as a kid, that’s the only thing I knew to think.”
At this Tyson leaned in closer. “What do you mean?”
“They weren’t human, and they definitely weren’t Zarwean,” Don answered, not looking at Tyson. “I was young at the time, so it didn’t bother me. I didn’t know better. As I got older, the memory got fuzzy. Seeing it again like this, I noticed things. They weren’t human, Ty.”
Tyson’s eyebrows rose a fraction. Don could not tell what he was thinking. “Okay, so that’s the who, although, this does make the how a bit harder, since we don’t know of any other alien races besides the Zarweans.”
“Or none that we’ve been told about.”
“But if no one knows about them, where do you start looking?” Tyson inquired. “You can’t very well ask anyone on the street.”
For the first time, Don felt as if there might be a glimmer of hope. “I think I know where to start looking”
“That’s good. You want to share?”
“The captain of a ship I met a while back, when my old flight helped to escort a convoy,” Don said, finishing the last of his food and holding up the empty plate for Tyson to see.
“How is he going to help you?”
“He knew my mum.”
“Okay?”
Don hesitated. Guilt gnawed at his insides. He should stop now. In order to protect Tyson, he couldn’t tell him anything else. “Ty―”
“Stop,” Tyson interrupted him. “You have that look again. You’re going to say you can’t tell me, aren’t you?”
Don nodded miserably.
“Is it classified? Then what is the big idea? I told you to tell me what’s going on. I know you think it’s dangerous; I’ll make my own decision on that. I want to help you. I want to know why you’re always looking over your shoulder. I want to know what happened to you since we left Basic. You are not the same person, and that story you told me when you got here doesn’t explain why.”
“Listen. Either the Council wants my memories as much as I do, or they don’t want me to ever remember them. Either way, if you get caught up in it—”
“The Council? You’re certain?”
Don nodded.
“You suspect it’s the latter, don’t you?” Tyson asked slowly.
“Aye.”
Tyson shook his head. “You don’t just suspect, you know, don’t you? Something happened, didn’t it?”
Tyson waited expectantly for Don to answer, but he said nothing.
Tyson finally shook his head, his face stern. “You’re going to tell me everything right now, and I mean everything.”
At Tyson's words, Don felt a knot in his chest begin to unravel, and he knew he’d already decided to do as his friend asked, so he surrendered without any more protest. “There’s so much to tell, and no real beginning.”
“Start with your mum. Why is this captain’s friendship with her such a big deal?”
“Because it’s about her. It’s all about her.”
“What are you talking about?”
Don knew he wasn’t making sense. He’d just have to spit it out. “She ran an underground movement, Ty. She worked with the Freemen. She tried to bring down the Council.”
“Oh, shit.”
“This guy worked with her. He’s the one who told me. He was in my memories. For a long time, I didn’t know what to think about what he’d said or what he said she’d done. My dad never talked about her, and I’d always been told the Zarweans killed her. I guess I wanted to believe the captain’s words were a lie because I didn’t want to live with her betrayal.
“But the way he told it, it was like he still believed she was right. And it wasn’t just what he said. When the Streets caught us during Basic, the Freeman leader hinted at it. I didn’t know what he was talking about at the time, but I do now. Even the Suits have approached me with their own cryptic messages. I can’t really deny it anymore.”
Don paused. Tyson had let him rush on, but Don desperately wanted to know what he was thinking.
“Well, I can definitely say I wasn’t expecting to hear anything like that, but I don’t see what it has to do with you.”
“The captain said everyone was waiting for me to pick a side.”
“Pick a side?” Tyson’s voice hinted at incredulity. “You’re not your mum. You never really knew her. For crying out loud, you joined the Space Jumpers! That’s a side, isn’t it?”
Don nodded. “That’s why I don’t think he’s right. That’s why I think it’s about my memories.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I see a doctor every few years, and he runs a bunch of tests that tell him if I’ve remembered anything. Da and he swear it’s about helping me, but last time the tests came back showing something, and Da asked what I remembered about my mum. He never talks about her.”
“What was the memory?”
“It wasn’t. I never remembered anything. I think what the captain told me must have triggered something on the test. Whatever it was, Dr. Ward didn’t want to let me go, but I kept insisting I hadn’t remembered anything, so they had to re
lease me in order to keep up the ruse.”
Tyson sat back in his chair; a wrinkle appeared between his eyes. “That’s why you think the Council wants you? Because of this doctor?”
“That, and after we left Dr. Ward’s office, my da kept looking around like he expected someone to come and take me away. You should have seen him. He was scared. When I asked him to tell me about my memories, I thought he was going to have a heart attack. He told me never to speak about it again.”
“So what are you going to do now that you have some of your memories back?” The question came immediately. It was the same question he’d asked himself over and over.
“I don’t know,” Don answered truthfully. “I can’t decide whether to suspect the worst and try to hide it or to just tell them what I’ve remembered and be done with it.”
This time, Tyson did not answer immediately. Don watched him stare across the crowded mess hall. He could almost see gears turning behind his friend’s eyes. Finally, he shook his head. “I’m having a hard time with this. I just don’t get what you’ll be able to tell them. I don’t buy it.”
“It’s what I told you,” Don interjected earnestly. “It’s what the man in my memory said. My mum took me everywhere. She never left me at home. The Council must think I heard things, that I know things from back then that can help them. For all I know,I might―”
“How can any of that help them now?” Tyson interrupted. “That was over a decade ago.”
“I don’t know, Ty! If I knew what my memories were, we wouldn’t be having this conversation! Anyway, that’s not the point. I’m a Space Jumper. I shouldn’t be hiding from the Council, but I’m too damn scared to do anything else. I don’t even know what I’m running from or why I’m running.”
Tyson held up a hand to stop him before any more words could tumble out. “O’Hara, why the hell are you afraid of the Council? You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“That’s just it. I don’t think I have to do anything. It’s like I said earlier. I don’t think this has to do with what they want as much as it has to do with what they don’t want me finding out.”
“Do you even know how this sounds right now? What do you think you’re going to remember?”
“That’s the point. I don’t have any idea what I might remember, but based on everything I’ve seen and heard, if that ever happens―” Don shrugged, unable to finish his thought.
“If that happens, then what? They can’t make you disappear. You’re the general’s son.”
“Can’t they?” Don asked quietly. “After all, didn’t Zarweans kill my mother?”
“What are you saying?”
Don’s answer came slowly, and as he spoke, he couldn’t bring himself to meet his friend’s eyes. “It feels wrong, Ty. Something isn’t right. The more time goes by, the stronger the feeling gets. I don’t know why my mum did what she did, but I think she might have been on to something. I just... I’m not sure I believe in this anymore.”
Tyson glanced around, checking to make sure their neighbors were not listening in. Don could see the conversation’s turn had made him uncomfortable. “What do you mean, you don’t believe in this anymore?”
“Ty, listen. You’re not the only one who’s had a lot of time to think about things. I used to think everything was about my da, who he was and what that made me, but it wasn’t. It’s been about my mum the whole time. About her and about my memories. I don’t know what’s going on, but from what I saw, from what I felt, she loved us. She wouldn’t have done what she did without good reason.
“I want to know what that reason was. I want to know why she gave up everything, gave me up, to bring them down. I need to know if she really deserved to die. I need to know.”
Tyson shook his head as if he couldn’t or wouldn’t accept what he was hearing. “Don,” he started. It sounded like an appeal. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t trust them anymore, Ty. How could I, after everything that’s happened?”
“Everything that’s happened?” Tyson shot back. “Nothing has happened! You got spooked a few times. So what?”
Don closed his eyes for a moment, searching for the words to explain himself. “This isn’t just about my memories or my mum. It’s about my last station. It’s about these Wasps. It’s about this war. There is so much that doesn’t make sense.”
He could see Tyson struggle with what he was saying, and he sighed. “I’m tired, Ty. I’m just so tired of it all. I’m tired of being jerked around and screwed with for something that I don’t even believe in anymore. I’m not going to let them keep doing it to me. Our contracts come up in two months, and I don’t plan on renewing mine. I’m out.”
Tyson ran a hand across his face. “Sounds like your mind is already made up.”
“I’m a dead man either way. At least if I’m not following orders, I might have a chance.”
“You don’t know that you’re a dead man. Try to keep things in perspective. Please?”
“You’re right,” Don admitted. “I don’t know, but I’m not going to wait until it’s too late to find out. I can’t live like this. You said it yourself: I’m dangerous and unreliable.”
Tyson nodded, although Don could see he hated admitting it. “I get it. You’re not going to be able to function until you know. The longer you live believing you’re a hunted man, the worse this will get.”
Don let out a sigh of relief, but Tyson wasn’t finished.
“I think I understand you now. At least, I understand the mess I inherited. You really believe they sent you down here to get you killed, don’t you?”
“Aye,”
“But you know, they put you in my platoon. That couldn’t have been coincidence. Maybe things aren’t as bleak as you think they are.”
Don didn’t answer. He’d had the same thought. It was one of the few pieces that didn’t fit into his theory, and it irked him. When he thought about it, it made him question everything all over again.
“All right, so we just have to get through two months,” Tyson finally said. “Think you can get your act together for that long?”
“I don’t—”
“No, listen. Just follow your orders and keep your head down. You don’t have to like them. You don’t have to understand them. Just follow them, okay?”
Don sighed and nodded. He knew Tyson was right. In a few months, he would have all the time he needed to figure things out. For now, he just had to focus on surviving.
Tyson clapped his hands together and stood. “Good. Now promise me one thing, okay?”
“What?”
“That after we find out what you need to know, and it’s not the end of the world or your life, we’ll come back.”
Don stared at his friend, trying to make sense of what he’d said. “What do you mean?”
“I promised to help you, didn’t I?”
“Ty―”
“I’m not letting you go off and get yourself into trouble. You need someone to sanity-check you.” Tyson interrupted, and Don could see him preparing for a fight.
“What about your career? If you leave now―”
Tyson waved him off with a smile. “I’m not completely selfless here. I’m hedging my bets with you. Graduating from the Space Jumpers as a platoon leader means nothing. I’m not really interested in fighting my way back through the ranks. If anyone can get me a job in the Space Forces that doesn’t suck, it’s gonna be your da.”
Chapter 32
December 2, 627 T.A.
Don pushed his way through the crowded halls. He’d just finished his latest physical. The doctor was still not satisfied that he and York were completely healed, no matter how many times they told him they felt fine.
“I can’t be certain,” he had informed them when they brought it up again. “Not when I don’t know what caused it in the first place.”
Truthfully, Don didn’t really mind these daily visits. The doctor never spoke more than he needed to, and he never que
stioned the boys if it did not specifically deal with curing them. He simply took their vitals, administered a shot, and made notes in their charts.
Don squeezed himself up against a wall as a group of grizzled soldiers passed. More and more, he and his comrades had been seeing soldiers arrive in unfamiliar uniforms. The halls and rooms were becoming crowded. Even though they hadn’t been told anything, they knew what it meant: something big was about to happen.
He did not head straight back to the commons, but instead detoured to a training room he had recently found. It contained simulators for the few pilots who found themselves temporarily at the base. It was a different room from the one in which he and York ran Wasp simulations. Don knew the higher-ups would probably disapprove, but he had begun coming here nearly every day and flying simulations. He made sure to practice flying a variety of ships so that if asked, he could claim he was brushing up on skills he knew were dulling. It was a lie. He set the simulation to the Cobra more than anything else. He found himself constantly defending his actions in his head. This was something he knew and understood. He always felt more like himself afterward.
Don was halfway through a simulation when he felt someone watching over his shoulder. They said nothing, so Don ignored them till he had finished. He turned to find Tyson.
“Not bad,” his friend admitted. Don shrugged, a little guilty that he’d been caught.
“You already been to see the doc?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have the other two woken yet?”
Don looked back at the screen. “No,” he answered quietly, shutting the simulation down.
“That’s a shame. We probably could have used them.”
“It’s starting, then?”
Tyson nodded and held out a hand. “I’ve assembled the men.”
Don let himself be pulled from the seat of the simulator and followed Tyson out into the crowded hall. “Did you find out what all the new guys are here for?”
“Yes and no. I’ve picked up a little here and there by listening around, but no, they didn’t tell us anything. They only told us our part, not the big picture.” He paused and pointed at a door. “This is your stop.”