Orion Rising: A Military Science Fiction Space Opera Epic (The Orion War Book 3)
Page 27
Perhaps, once this war was over, he would use whatever technology the Canners had come up with to clean up that mess.
As he took a ladder down to the officer’s deck, Garza wondered what things his clone may have learned before it died. He had looked forward to merging his thoughts with it and gaining it experiences—a euphoric experience that he quite enjoyed, notwithstanding the new things he’d learn.
He did hope that his clone had died a quick death as it was consumed by the creatures. Better that than to be captured by the Canners—though he knew that they would learn little through the torture they would surely to employ. The clone did not possess his most important memories. Even so, he would not wish such a fate on anyone, especially himself.
He had read of Tanis Richards’s brutality when she was an officer in the Terran Space Force. She was not a woman to be trifled with—as his defeat here showed all too clearly.
Garza palmed the door to his cabin open and crossed the room to his small bar, where he pulled a bottle of brandy out of its case and poured himself four fingers’ worth of the light brown liquid.
He swirled it in the glass, enjoying the aroma before throwing it back in two gulps. He poured another and sat at his desk. He would need to go to Kirkland directly with this news. The praetor would not be happy to learn that their plan had failed so spectacularly.
It may be wise to send in a clone.
DISCOVERY
STELLAR DATE: 04.02.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Wreckage of Trisilieds Halcyon Class Carrier
REGION: In Orbit of Hannibal, Carthage, New Canaan System
She had opened her eyes for a moment and immediately closed them again. The scene around her didn’t bear mental processing, yet she couldn’t keep herself from stepping through the logical path that brought her to her current location.
Saanvi remembered the last few moments before the Illyria slammed into the Trisilieds’ Halcyon Class carrier, apparently making a large enough hole for the RMs tailing their ship to destroy it. Cary had withdrawn from her mind, leaving her feeling profoundly empty and alone—rather like she did right now.
Their eyes had locked, and their lips whispered their love for one another, before the chair’s snapped on their stasis fields. The stasis fields should have held them until rescue, but the field could not be maintained from within, which meant that the external systems must have been destroyed.
And now she found herself here, still strapped to her chair from the bridge, but inside what must be one of the Illyria’s machine shops, or maybe it was one from the Trisilieds carrier. The chance that Cary was anywhere nearby was slim, to say the least. With any luck, her sister was still in stasis, blissfully unaware that they were trapped within a twisted cocoon of ship guts that was in a slowly decaying orbit around Hannibal.
Cary’s mental voice carried a note of desperation.
Neither girl spoke for a moment, and then the thought crept into Saanvi’s mind that Cary was gone.
Saanvi knew that fear, it was in her mind, as well. She pushed it away. She had to be strong for her little sister.
Cary replied, her voice growing faint as she spoke. It took Saanvi a moment to realize that it wasn’t signal degradation, but rather her sister slipping into unconsciousness.
A faint chuckle entered her mind.
Saanvi called.
Silence was the only response, and Saanvi took long, slow breaths, desperate not to cry—she knew if she cried, the pain would make her pass out and she may never wake again. She wasn’t going to hide from the darkness again like that. This time, she would be awake and fighting.
The thought made her open her eyes—and that moment was one of the happiest of her life. Through the twisted metal, she saw a light flash in the distance.
She sent out a manual signal on the emergency channels, and then the worry hit her that these may not be New Canaan rescuers coming for her, but maybe they were they enemy. She almost stopped transmitting, but her fear of dying alone in the dark overcame her, and she screamed across the radio for help until the most welcome sound she had ever heard came into her mind.
The voice was male, warm, and encouraging. Saanvi felt her fears fall away and she remembered her sister.
There was a moment’s silence and Saanvi imagined a thousand things that could have happened to her rescuer.
RESCUE
STELLAR DATE: 04.02.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS I2
REGION: High Orbit over Carthage, New Canaan System
Tanis sat bolt upright, the realization that she had passed out in Captain Espensen’s ready room taking a second to dawn on her.
Tanis was already out the door, dashing through the bridge as she replied, and called out to Rachel Espensen as she passed, “They found them! They’re alive!”
Cheers erupted behind her as she raced down the short corridor to the bridge’s foyer, barely sketching a wave to Priscilla on her plinth as she dashed through.
Tanis allowed herself a smile, perhaps the first in the day since the end of the battle with the invaders.
Tanis took a moment to look up where Cary and Saanvi had been found. It was deep within a section of the final carrier they had destroyed. Like much of the wreckage from that stage of the battle, the debris was in a low, decaying orbit around Hannibal. She flipped to the portion of the report describing the girls’ condition, steeling herself for what she would see.
Tears formed in her eyes and she placed a hand over her mouth, attempting to stifle a gasp when she saw the images. Both of the girls’ bodies were still in their chairs from the bridge, but neither were in stasis. Their faces were misshapen from broken cheekbones, and both their jaws were dislocated. Their form-fitting environmental suits revealed sunken chests, and broken hip-bones.
The onsite rescuers’ report estimated that they had suffered multiple impacts in excess of 100gs. Only their cranial implants—a part of their L2 elevation—had kept their skulls from collapsing and their brains safe.
The sob Tanis had been trying to hold back escaped her throat just as the maglev doors closed and gave her a private space to let her grief overcome her. She prayed to whatever gods may exist in the depths of space that her girls hadn’t suffered brain damage.
She re-opened the report and saw that Saanvi was conscious, though just barely, and had related that Cary was communicating just a few minutes before their rescue. That was a good sign—though it certainly didn’t mean that all was well.
Tanis pushed those worries from her mind. She had to hope for the best. The girls’ bodies could be rebuilt—though that much damage would take some time to recover from, and they were strong, and their neural networks were recently imaged. It would be possible to recover from even moderate brain damage if needed.
Before her maglev car came to the bay, a new report came in from the S&R crew that the girls were safely in stasis pods. A shuttle was taking them to the Argos—with an ETA of forty minutes.
The maglev stopped at the docking bay, and Tanis raced to the shuttle, her only thought that it would take her three hours to reach the Argos where it rested deep in the debris field, and she needed to be present when her daughters awoke.
A thought flashed into her mind that she was being selfish. She had work to do, prisoners to interrogate, defenses to review. Nearly everyone in New Canaan had lost family in the last two days. What made her so special that she could run off like this?
Tanis nodded in response as she dropped into the small cockpit’s pilot’s chair and ran an abbreviated pre-flight check before signaling for clearance. The I2’s space traffic control NSAI gave it, and she lanced out into the night, diving toward Hannibal and the hospital ship that would soon receive her daughters.
* * * * *
Tanis clutched Joe’s hand as they watched through the window as the autodoc worked on Cary’s body under the guidance of a team of surgeons. Saanvi was already out of surgery, her bones reset and organs repairing. It would take days for them to properly re-knit—there was only so much rapid change a human body could undergo, it still needed to grow its own cells.
She had considered instructing the doctors to replace much of her girls ruined bodies with artificial components—it would make their recovery that much faster—but she decided against it. That was their decision to make, and she could wait until they healed organically and she spoke with them once more.
In the room, one of the surgeons nodded, and the machine wrapped around Cary’s head retracted the hundreds of tendrils from her skull. He turned and looked at them through the window and gave a firm nod, followed by a thumbs up.
Tanis sagged into Joe. “Thank the stars,” she whispered.
Joe stroked her arm then pulled her into an embrace. “They’re young, they’re strong, we’ll have them back with us in no time.”
The surgeon exited the room and approached the pair.
“She’s in good shape. Her neural lattice held up well against the impacts, and she only lost three percent of her brain-tissue. Most of it was in muscle control regions, so she’ll have a bit of work to do relearning how to walk, and probably trouble controlling her left hand for a bit, but that should be it.”
“Cognitive functionality?” Tanis asked anxiously.
“Should be fine,” the surgeon replied. “I can’t say with one hundred percent certainty, of course, but we had her neural network on file, and as best we can tell while she’s unconscious, all appears to be firing as it should be.”
“Thank you, doctor,” Joe said and shook the man’s hand, while Tanis turned back toward the window and watched as the other doctors worked on Cary’s remaining injuries.
Tanis glanced at Joe. “I’ll go, you stay here.”
Joe shook his head. “Cary is in good hands, let’s make sure Saanvi gets a full welcome from both of us when she wakes.”
* * * * *
Saanvi felt consciousness return slowly. It didn’t hurt as much as she expected, but she worried that pain would return to assault her at any moment. She flipped through her most recent memories, trying to recall where she would be. She remembered the collision, waking up in the dark, reaching out to Cary, and then the rescue.
Cary.
She had to know if her sister was OK. That was worth opening her eyes for. She struggled to do so, but found that she couldn’t raise her eyelids. She suspected that there had been some reconstructive surgery. Maybe she’d have eyes like her mother now.
As if her thoughts summoned her, Tanis’s voice reached her ears.
“Saanvi, we’re here.”
“And your sister is OK,” Joe’s voice followed after. “The S&R teams found you just in time. You did good calling out for help when you did.”
Saanvi tried to speak and found that her lips could move, but her voice was a thin rasp. Something touched her lips and her mother’s voice came to her.
“Drink this.”
The cool liquid washed down her parched throat, almost hurting as it first made contact, then numbing and soothing as it went. Saanvi took a second pull from the straw and then tried to speak again.
“Cary’s safe, then? Her brain?” she asked.
“The doctors are confident that all will be well with her when she wakes,” Joe said.
Saanvi noted her mother’s silence and knew that Tanis felt as she did—they would worry after Cary until she was speaking to them and they could tell for themselves that she was undamaged.
“Did we win?” Saanvi asked, then realized that they must have won if they were all talking.
“We did,” Tanis replied before she could amend her question. “We lost a lot of good people, but we won. Carthage and New Canaan are safe.”
Saanvi nodded silently. That was what she needed to hear. They had won, they were safe, her sister would be well. Everything could go back to how it was.
She drifted into a peaceful sleep, dreaming of a happy breakfast with her family around their kitchen table, laughing and smiling as they talked about what the future would now hold.
NEW BEGINNINGS
STELLAR DATE: 04.06.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Forward Emitter Lounge, ISS I2
REGION: In Orbit of Hannibal, Carthage, New Canaan System
“They’ll have had observers out at the edge of the system.” Joe said as he and Tanis sat at the bar in the I2’s little-known lounge above the ramscoop emitter.
Even though the ship was now built for war
, and the ramscoop wasn’t needed to ply vast interstellar spaces, the scoop techs had protected their little refuge, and Tanis had supported that initiative.
Besides, no one mixed a drink like their favorite servitor, Steve.
“Of that there is little doubt,” Tanis replied and leaned into her husband. “How did we come to this, Joe? I’m going to go down in history as the greatest mass murderer, tyrant, dictator of all time. Parents are going to scare their children with tales of Tanis the Destroyer who will unleash the horrors of the dark on them, if they’re not good.”
“I think you’re being a bit melodramatic, dear,” Joe replied as he stroked her hair. “Maybe Tanis the Marauder, but certainly not the Destroyer.”
“Joe!” Tanis sat up and gazed crossly into his eyes. “I’m serious! What are we going to do?”
“Follow the plan you laid out while we were still coming here. We knew this could happen—Bob saw it as the most likely eventuality. If you want to be known as the savior of humanity and not its worst villain, then you need to see this through, and win.”
“The plan…” Tanis whispered. “The plan saw us lose nearly a hundred thousand people in one day. In one day, Joe! And Ouri—”
She stopped, her voice catching. She didn’t trust herself to speak further, people were already looking in her direction.
“I know,” Joe replied as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “We lost so many friends, Ouri...and so many others, so many of my kids from the academy. I’m going to miss them all.”
“Eighteen years,” Tanis said quietly. “Eighteen short years was all we got before these…invaders…all showed up.”
Tanis wanted to say a lot worse about the enemy fleets that had attacked them, wanted to scream and rail, but she had to be the resolute leader, the voice of reason. She may no longer be Governor, but Fleet Admiral and Field Marshall was no smaller responsibility.