by Deanna Lee
Eliza leaned against the wall, weak at the knees, and exhaled roughly. “The population of Earth when we left was several billion people, Arti.”
“Nuclear fallout and biological warfare does not discriminate,” Arti said gently. “Captain, perhaps you should leave the shower stall before you slip and fall.”
Eliza nodded and rinsed the last of the soap from her body before stepping out. She dried herself off quickly and pulled on the scrubs. The cleaning unit opened, and a shelf slid out with her socks folded neatly on it.
“There are no socks in the medical lab,” Arti explained. “And as you’ve declined the sanctioned invasion of Dr. Cohen’s clothing—I thought perhaps you’d like these back first.”
She accepted the socks and pulled them onto her rapidly chilling feet. “Thank you.”
Eliza walked back into the medical lab, went to the still open drawer, and collected the data-pad that Arti had prepared for her. The technology wasn’t completely unfamiliar, so she took the micro-thin tablet back to her platform and scooted up onto it. It wasn’t remotely comfortable, but she didn’t want to wander about the station while the man in charge of it slept. Besides being near him, even while he was asleep, was an immense comfort.
She played with it for a few minutes before finding a program similar to the one she’d used to create reports and oral presentations. The interface was intuitive, so after a minute, she was ready to record.
“This is Captain Eliza Hawthorne, mission leader for the Kepler Exploration Initiative. The Earth-date is March 6, 2245. I was recovered from an evacuation pod on March 5, 2245 by my husband, Dr. Sean Cohen, who works as a researcher for the company Teko Solutions in the private sector.” She hadn’t stumbled over the word husband, so that was something. Hesitation in an official report would give anyone wanting it evidence to declare her very hasty marriage invalid.
“My team left Mars on board the NAU-SC Columbus on January 9, 2145. Twenty of the twenty-two members of the crew were in cryo-sleep, myself among them. I woke for my crew rotation on December 16, 2147. Realizing that I’d been pulled from cryo-sleep twenty-four days early, I checked the pods of the rest of the crew and found them all deceased.” She exhaled sharply. “The two crew members who had taken the first crew rotation were missing. When I checked the crew manifest, I discovered their names missing from the official crew roster. The ship’s computer recorded their departure from the ship just three weeks after we left Mars. Various systems had been sabotaged and were failing; the ship’s computer woke me up as a final act of self-preservation, but I didn’t have the materials to fix what had been done to the ship. I had no choice but to abandon ship. All but one of the evacuation pods were damaged beyond repair, and the one remaining took me weeks to fix. I wasn’t sure it would get me home, but I was unable to do more work on it as the ship was literally falling to pieces around me.”
“Jesus.”
Eliza’s gaze jerked across the room and connected with Sean Cohen’s. She ended the recording with a grimace. “Hi.”
The man rolled off the platform in one fluid motion and crossed to her. With a frown, he took the data-pad from her and pressed it on the wall next to the comm panel where it automatically adhered. “Lay down so we can do a scan.”
Eliza frowned at him but nodded. “Arti said I was healing on schedule.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” Sean murmured. “Arti, full body scan and start a medical chart for her. Go ahead and give me the particulars on her neural implant as well. The older models were prone to disintegration, though cryo-sleep should’ve preserved it as well.”
“What happens if it disintegrates?” Eliza asked as a machine slid down out of the ceiling and started to scan her.
“Severe headaches, decreased impulse control, mood swings, and in some hallucinations. We’ll upgrade your implant before you get anywhere near Earth so no one can use it against you.”
“Thank you, Dr. Cohen.”
“Sean,” he said. “Call me Sean. No one is going to believe our situation is anything less than what it is, Eliza, but we have forty or so days to build an intimate relationship that will withstand scrutiny. I take my commitments seriously no matter how little time I’m given to think about them.”
Eliza nodded. “Right. I…thank you, Sean, and I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” Sean questioned as he pulled a data-pad from his pocket and unfolded it. “Arti, send all of her results to my pad for review.”
“Of course, Dr. Cohen.”
Sean looked toward her when she didn’t respond. “What are you sorry for?”
She released her bottom lip. “I’m so sorry if this gets you killed.”
He frowned and folded his pad carefully into a small square before putting it away. “Admiral McAlister is a liar.”
“Excuse me?” Eliza demanded. She batted the robotic scanner away from her and sat up. “Jason McAlister is a great man and one of the best commanding officers I’ve ever had. Don’t you…don’t you dare…”
He put two fingers to her full mouth and smirked a little when she huffed furiously at him. “What are the chances, Captain Hawthorne, that your pod would end up rushing past my research outpost without getting the attention of Jupiter Station? There are ten people on that station, any one of which could’ve been roped into playing at being your spouse. Yet, you were all but delivered to me on a silver platter.”
She huffed. “And just what makes you so fucking special?”
“I’m the grandson of the recently re-elected prime minister of the European Union.” He let her absorb that. “I’m really looking forward to introducing you to my grandmother.”
“Oh, that crafty bastard.” Eliza exhaled sharply.
“He explained that his plan had been to redirect your pod to Mars, and that might have been what he let his people believe, but I must have looked like a really attractive option sitting out here all by myself for ten months,” Sean said dryly. “Why not toss a beautiful, endangered woman in my lap? I was fucking patriotic enough to join Space Command and serve for ten years despite the wealth of my family after all.”
“He was always a very good strategist,” Eliza said. “Why didn’t you bring any of this up when I woke up?”
“Our time was short and…” He ran a hand over short, dark brown hair. “Well, I can’t say I’m strictly opposed to playing the hero for a beautiful woman.”
“Thanks.” Eliza relaxed and laid back down on the platform. The scanner swung back over and resumed its duties.
“What were their names?” Sean asked.
“Who?”
“The men who murdered your crew and abandoned the Columbus?”
“Dr. Alan Christian and Lt. Commander Eli Felix, but I can assume those names are false.”
“But you know their faces,” Sean murmured. “That is if they haven’t gotten any cosmetic work done, and why would they have? They never expected any of the crew to make it back. How did they explain their return to Mars or Earth?”
“Maybe they had temporary enhancements done,” Eliza theorized. “Maybe they were killed before they could return themselves. None of the evacuation pods looked damaged. I checked them because of the rest of the sabotage done to the ship. I was just being paranoid. Maybe they didn’t check the ones they used and they’re out there—somewhere drifting.”
“Maybe, but I wouldn’t count on it,” Sean cautioned. “Someone’s got McAlister worried, and he has four stars on his collar. Men of his rank don’t often appear as rattled as he was on that transmission.”
The scanner disappeared into the ceiling, and she sat back up. “Arti tells me you’re a Sherlock Holmes fan.”
“I’m a fan of mystery and intelligence,” Sean said and leaned one hip against the platform. “We can probably find something a little more comfortable for you to wear than those thin scrubs.”
“Arti did offer me the entire contents of your closet,” Eliza said with a slight quirk of her lips. “But I
figured our marriage was a bit too new for clothes sharing.”
“Our courtship was short but epic,” Sean said firmly. “I’ll allow no one else to believe otherwise.” He grinned when she laughed. “Come on then, I’ll review your scans, plan the updates to your implant, and see about a standard set of bio-mods. We’ll get those sent from Jupiter Station. They have a full medical lab over there, so they can manufacture anything I need to get you up to standard. You’ll need a few vaccinations as well.”
“Do I really need biological modification?” she asked as she scooted off the platform and snatched her data-pad off the wall.
“If you want to visit Earth without having to receive cancer treatments, yes. The long-term survival rate without bio-mods on Earth is zero. Between nuclear fallout and the biological weapons used during the last stages of the global war—our species hovered on the edge of extinction for nearly eighty years. The last and most significant biological attack happened about six months after your mission left Mars, and the impact of it still lingers over sixty percent of the planet. The bio-domes didn’t keep it out, and if it weren’t for nano-tech and bio-mods, you’d have come home to an empty world and two sparsely populated colonies.”
“I take it Moonbase and Mars are still thriving?”
“Moonbase achieved independence and was recognized as a sovereign nation by the UN Security Council sixteen years ago. Mars Colony remains a joint military/civilian operation, though these days there are more military personnel on the colony than there are civilians. The NAU keeps a tight rein on the colony, and any talk of independence is quickly dealt with.”
She made a face but nodded as he guided her out of the medical lab and down a narrow hall. “I have no doubts.”
“This research station is set up to be manned by a crew of one but can easily support up to eight without significant strain on the environmental systems. I receive fresh food from Jupiter Station and only just recently received a supply, so we’re good on that front. That being said, I have enough rations for a year if something catastrophic happened.”
“Have rations improved at all?”
“You’ll survive on them,” Sean said. “That’s about all you can expect. A half dozen people have proposed improvements over the years for the things, but it never seems to go anywhere.”
She laughed. “A half dozen people or you a half dozen times?”
He grinned. “I can’t say I didn’t submit a few ideas. Even nutrition bars would be an improvement over the current ration formulas, which all taste like crème of wheat no matter what the package says.”
“Fantastic. So much for the future having it better.”
“Right.” Sean shrugged. “So basically the habitat area of the station is one floor, and this hall circles around the entire thing. Living quarters, workout room, the medical lab, the kitchen, and the operations center are all here. Below us is engineering, but droids handle most of the station maintenance. I rarely have to go down myself. The top of the station is dedicated to sensors, relays, communication systems, and of course computer processing. There are three super computers on the station, each currently engaged in projects which I’m overseeing. Arti is housed on a server in the command deck but currently has access to everything on the station. He directs repairs, keeps my schedule, and all of that jazz.”
“Does everyone at Teko Solutions have their own personal AI?”
“No, but there is an AI for this station. It is currently hibernating. Arti and I have done this rotation three times since joining Teko Solutions, and the on board AI has hibernated each time. Arti travels with me no matter where I go.”
“He did say he was your brother from another mother,” Eliza admitted and shrugged when Sean glanced at her with a slightly horrified look on his face. “You might want to take him aside and let him know what a secret is.”
“Arti,” Sean complained.
“She is your wife, Dr. Cohen.”
“You know there is a Bro Code, and I think you’ve violated it,” Sean said. “This is a serious program failure.”
Eliza just laughed as she followed him into a kitchen area. She slid up onto a stool and put her data-pad on the counter in front of her. “Anything I should read first?”
Sean winced and glanced her way. “Regulations regarding domestic partnerships probably. Apparently, we have to consummate…the marriage.”
She raised an eyebrow in question and wet her bottom lip. “Well, I’d been celibate for nearly three years before my mission.”
“With or without a libido inhibitor?” Sean asked, shocked.
“A what?”
“Never mind.” Sean sighed. “Jesus, women are like sexual camels or something.”
“Men, on the other hand, are gluttons. Arti told me all about your sordid past.”
Sean just grinned. “I love to fuck, but I’m a considerate partner, and I have a birth control protocol in place.”
“STDs?” she asked.
He blinked in surprise and paused in his collection of sandwich supplies. “Oh, well, hmm, they eradicated sexually transmitted diseases before I was born.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Wha… How old are you?”
“How old do I look?” he asked.
“Not falling for that trick, and I’m completely unwilling to feed your ego.”
“You already told most of the people I know and your commanding officer that I’m smoking hot,” Sean reminded. “The entire crew of the Jupiter Station watched us get married, you know. An edited version of the little ceremony is probably already on Earth being viewed by various powers that be.”
“Including your grandmother.”
“She probably got an unedited version,” Sean said. “She went to high school with the CEO of Teko Solutions, so…there’s that.” He made them both sandwiches in the silence that followed and pushed a plate across the counter toward her. “Eat slowly. There is no telling how your stomach is going to react to food after such a long cryo-sleep.”
“Right.” Eliza stared at the plate for a few seconds. “Your grandmother…is she going to be amused, proud, or furious?”
“A mixture, I can assume. The details of how and why your mission failed will infuriate her. I can’t imagine how many people will suffer her wrath on that front. I get my impulsive, foolish heroic crap from her, so she won’t be angry with me or you for our hasty little marriage of convenience. Amused, obviously, because I vowed on my sixteenth birthday to never, ever get married.”
She snorted and covered her mouth in embarrassment. “Sorry.”
Sean sighed. “How can you still be hot after that?”
“Tits?”
He nodded. “Could be. Eat your sandwich, Captain.”
“Slowly.”
“Very slowly,” he admonished.
Eliza pulled her data-pad close and sighed. “Arti, show me the marriage laws for the NAU. Everything that pertains to our situation.”
Sean let her read in silence and instead focused on the results from the scans he’d done on her nano-bots and implant. The neural implant would have to be replaced, but it was easily done with nanites. He input a few orders manually to get the medical lab set up for the procedure and had Arti set up a production run on reconstruction nanites.
She was basically healthy, but extended cryo-sleep had caused some of her organs to labor far beyond what standard nano-bots could repair. He pinched his nose as he made a list of bio-mods to request that Jupiter Station could create for her. Her heart and kidneys had suffered the most atrophy in cryo-sleep, and it would take standard nano-bots working at a hundred percent at all times to prevent further damage. It wasn’t optimal and would strain the technology to its limits.
“You look upset.”
“The long-term impact of cryo-sleep on the human body isn’t pretty. Frankly, you’re the first person I’ve ever known of to come out of a hundred-year cryo-sleep. There was another mission that the NAU funded about forty years ago, and the en
tire crew was accidentally left in cryo-sleep for twenty-two years. They all recovered pretty easily.”
“I’m sick.”
“No, nothing like that. Standard nano-bots have a finite skill-set, and the organ atrophy you are experiencing will wear the ones I’ve given you out in just a few years.”
“So the solution?”
“Bio-mods sooner rather than later,” Sean admitted. “Even if I was willing to wait until you were on Earth to give them to you before, I’m not now. To be frank, you couldn’t pass the physical for active duty at this moment.”
“I’m not sure I will remain with Space Command.”
“I honestly don’t recommend it, but that is your call. They might try to compel you to stay with them, but since I’m not a NAU citizen, they’ll have to acknowledge your dual citizenship. The European Union has laws in place to prevent forced service in the military,” Sean said. “They’ll want to debrief you and submit you to truth testing.”
“Truth testing?”
“We’ve come a long way, Eliza,” Sean began. “You won’t be able to lie or mislead them during your debrief. They’ll inject you with a special nano-bot protocol that will tell them when you are being dishonest.”
“So, I won’t be able to lie and say our marriage has been consummated.”
“No.”
She exhaled deeply and finished off her sandwich with a little frown. “Well, there is one good thing.”
“What’s that?” Sean asked.
“You apparently love to fuck.”
He grinned and saluted her with his water bottle.
Chapter Three
“Captain Hawthorne’s location?” Sean asked absently as he continued to review the specs for an atmospheric probe Jupiter Station had manufactured and sent to him.
“She is in the cargo bay sitting on the floor in front of the evacuation pod.” Arti paused. “I believe, Dr. Cohen, that this is where you offer physical comfort.”
“I’m not socially inept,” Sean muttered as he set aside the data-pad he’d been reading and stood up. “How many hours of rest did she get?”