by Amy Cross
The screen flickers for a moment, and finally a familiar face appears. It's hard to believe that after all these years, I'm seeing her again as she used to be. It's not as if there was ever any chance that I'd forget her face, but still, a shiver passes through my body as I realize that we've finally reached the day we planned for all those years ago. There have been some dark times in the intervening years, and I'm not afraid to admit that occasionally I came to believe that we had no hope of success. Finally, however, we're starting to emerge from the darkness, and hope is stirring in my soul again.
"If you're watching this message," she says, staring straight at the camera, "it means one of two things. Either our whole plan has come undone and the file has been decrypted, or some kind of miracle has taken place and everything's worked out. If it's the former, I guess there's nothing else that can be done and everyone's already been rounded up, so I'm going to assume that it's the latter." She pauses, and finally a faint smile crosses her lips. "Hello, Sutter."
"Hello," I whisper involuntarily, although I immediately wince as I realize that I'm being sentimental and nostalgic. The old days are over.
"It's hard to believe things might be falling into place, but then again, we've always aimed for impossible things. So I'm guessing you're out on some remote station, probably orbiting a mining planet, and the fact that you've retrieved this message means that..." She pauses again. "If we were right about their plans for me, I guess I'm there, but then again I guess I'm also not there. I don't know what that's like for you, Sutter, but it must be difficult to deal with another personality walking around in my body. Except... it really is me, you know. Never lose sight of that. I know I'll still be in there somewhere, waiting for you to let me out. It'll probably be harder than you expect, but you need to keep pushing."
She glances over her shoulder, as if she expects to be interrupted at any moment.
"They're coming for me," she continues, turning back to the camera. "We've been betrayed. I don't know who ratted us out, and I'm not going to waste energy trying to find out. If you happen to come up with a name, though, I hope you make the bastard pay. Right now, though, all that matters is that we find a way to regroup. I don't trust many people, Sutter, but I trust you with my life. Literally. It's going to take a hell of a long time, and we need to wait until they think they've won. Five years, minimum, or even ten to be absolutely certain. There's still a chance that they might put me to death, but I think they'll probably decide to go with personality suppression instead. You know what they're like. Cruelty presses all their buttons."
Again, she looks over her shoulder, and this time there's a distant sound of gunfire. When she turns back to the camera, there's fear in her eyes. I don't think I've ever seen her look scared before.
"They're close," she says. "I'm going to hide this message in the place we agreed. I hope you didn't start perving when you retrieved it, but I know what you're like. I just hope that somehow we're able to find a way out of this mess and continue the fight. They're probably going to take me straight to the courthouse once they've got their hands on me. I've considered making the ultimate sacrifice and fighting to the death, but martyrdom is too easy. I can be more useful if I'm alive. Don't worry, though. I'll put on quite a show in front of the judges. I want them to believe that I'm desperate, but the deal is..." She pauses yet again, and this time she seems to be close to tears. "I need you to help me, Sutter," she says finally. "Don't give up on me. No matter how far gone I seem, you have to help me remember!"
There's a pause, and then finally the message ends.
Staring at the blank screen, I try to imagine her being hauled out of the safe-house and taken to the court. I remember the images of her trial all too clearly, but at least she's here now. There was a time when I thought that Amanda was going to lead us all to victory, and those long-dormant hopes are starting to return. First, though, I have to get her memory back. Crizz Arnold has to remember who she really is, and then she needs to embrace her destiny. If I can't find a way to make her remember, the entire fight will have been in vain.
Part Three
Dark Orbit
Prologue
Ten years ago
"You were right," I say, turning to Deborah. "They're going to go for it."
"Of course they are," she replies, squeezing onto the bench next to me. Staring at the screen for a moment, she reaches out and scrolls down for a moment. "After her court appearance, they took her to the reprogramming facility in the middle of the Amazonis Planitia. I imagine they'll start the surgery within twenty-four hours, and then it'll take anything from two to four weeks for her to recover fully. There's a risk, though. Roughly one in every two hundred patients end up suffering permanent psychological damage. We have to be alert to that possibility."
"Do you think we can storm it"? I ask. "How well-guarded would a place like that be?"
"It's too strong for us."
"But if we -"
"Nick," she says firmly, "I really think you need to stay focused here. Amanda never wanted us to go charging in with guns blazing. Remember the plan."
"The plan is insane," I point out.
"Not necessarily. Amanda was right. If they're going to do this to her, we need to turn it into an advantage. They think they're wiping her mind, but all they're actually doing is making it easier for her to eventually disappear. You know their arrogance has no limits; they'll drop her into the cadet pool and randomize her identity, purely so they can sit back and tell themselves that they've beaten her. They won't retain any record of her old identity, because they'll be too paranoid that someone might find it. That way -"
"That way she'll be lost forever."
She shakes her head.
"Then how are we going to keep track of her?" I ask.
"The old-fashioned way," she continues. "We're going to put in the hard work and keep tabs on every single cadet who passes through the Martian academy in the next nine years."
"You've got to be kidding," I reply. "How the hell are we going to do that?"
"We'll have our own moles," she replies. "Amanda was busy in the last few months. She managed to get people into some pretty useful positions at Supreme Command. No real power, of course, but sometimes all you need are a few pairs of eyes in the right places. Meanwhile, most of the team can go into hiding. We'll send them out to the Nebulan Cluster and tell them to work on our tech demand while they wait. It's not ideal, but again, it's like Amanda said: take the cards we've been dealt and try to turn the negatives into positives. If we can't attack, we regroup."
"And then what?" I ask. "Amanda's plan made no sense."
"Where do they send all cadets after their training is over?" she replies. "Most of them get shuffled out to deep space stations and left to rot out there for a few years so they can gain some experience. She'll probably be assigned to some rundown mining station near the rim, which means she'll be isolated. It'll be just her and some other mindless drone sitting in a little metal sphere and spinning around a dead rock while they try not to lose their sanity. Our job is to make sure that the mindless drone just happens to be on our side."
"How do you propose to do that?" I ask.
She smiles.
I wait for her to answer.
Her smile broadens.
"You've got to be kidding," I reply, as I realize what she means. "Me? I'm absolutely the last person who should ever be stuck out in one of those places. I'd lose my mind in half an hour!"
"You're stubborn," she replies, "and you've got a strong character. You'd fill your time with millions of unimportant little jobs, and you'd never lose sight of the overall goal."
I shake my head.
"Someone would go with you," she continues. "Hell, maybe I'd be there. We'd try to swing it so we had a full team in place."
"No way," I reply. "Even if we could set things up like that -"
"We have someone in the assignment bureau," she replies
"Of course you do," I
say with a sigh.
"If we time it right," she continues, "we can make sure that Amanda is sent out to a specific station that we've already infiltrated. Once she's there, we can work on her mind and get rid of any programming they've used. It'll take a while, but we can undo all the damage and get her back, and then we'll be ready to really strike at Supreme Command. They can build up their S.E.A.S. units all they like, but we'll have the element of surprise. It's perfect!"
"It's insane," I tell her. "You know those plans that are so insane, they might actually work? This is so insane, it's gone all the way round the scale and come back to being pure madness. You're risking the fate of our entire organization on a scheme that's held together by string and putty."
"Then what's the alternative?" she asks.
"We strike."
"They'll be expecting that."
"Of course they will," I continue, "it's the only option that's even remotely plausible. They'll be expecting us to do something unexpected, so instead we'll do something they absolutely expect. It'll take them by surprise."
"And we'll end up dead," she hisses, before checking over her shoulder to make sure that no-one else in the archive room can hear us. "They'll annihilate us, Nick, and then what'll be left?" Staring at me for a moment, she seems to be on the verge of tears. "Think about all the people who've died to help us get this far," she continues eventually. "Think about Jon and Tobias and Nicole and hundreds and hundreds of others who gave their lives because they believed we were right. We carry the weight of their sacrifice on our shoulders, and we can't let them down!"
"How long is this plan supposed to take?" I ask after a moment, realizing that it's not going to be easy to dissuade her.
"Amanda and I worked it out," she replies. "Eight to twelve years. Somewhere in the middle, probably. We're not sure, it depends on a few things, but -"
"Eight to twelve years?" I continue. "Are you insane? Think how fast things will move in eight to twelve years! Hell, Caleb de Montemelo might not even be alive by then! His godawful son might have succeeded the old bastard..."
"The cause will stay the same," she says firmly. "Supreme Command will still be run by tyrants, and S.E.A.S. will still be their militarized little gang of thugs. If anything, they'll have got worse. I know it'll be hard to stay dormant for a decade, but at least we'll have hope. Right now, we don't even have that!"
"You call this hope?" I ask. "Sitting here, plotting under our breaths and coming up with insane plans? Really?"
"I call it a chance," she continues. "It's better than letting ourselves get gunned down in some pointless fight. It's what Amanda wants, and..." She pauses for a moment. "It's what we're going to do. If you're not with us, that's your choice, but there's no more time for debate. We're going to get started tonight." Getting to her feet, she heads toward the door before turning back to me. "We need you, Nick, but if you won't come with us, we'll have no choice but to go it alone."
As she walks away, I turn to look at the screen for a moment. I can't deny that there's a part of me that's tiring of the fight. At the same time, I know what Amanda would want, and I also know that her crazy plans have turned out just fine in the past. Despite the soreness in my joints and the weight on my shoulders, I haul myself off the bench and hurry after Deborah. If this insane strategy is going to have any chance of working, they're going to need my help, but I know one thing for certain: there's absolutely no way I'm ever going to let them shuffle me off to some deep-space station.
Ten years later
Chapter One
Crizz
Sitting on the floor with my back against the wall, I watch as the soldering arm slowly burns its way across the edge of the bay door. It's a long, meandering and mind-numbing job that could just as easily be automated, but after a week on the station I've come to realize that this type of job is better done manually; not only because I want to check there are no problems, but also because the rhythm of the work keeps me sane.
The trainer at my psych class back at the academy was right: deep space work is mentally exhausting.
As I wait for the soldering arm to finish, I glance out the porthole and watch as the huge reddish-orange planet Io-5 spins slowly, almost a hundred miles beneath us. We're on an old high orbit mining control station, one that was introduced into service more than fifty years ago and quickly superseded by newer, more modern models. A few have remained in use, however, since the effort required to replace them has never quite been justified by the bureaucrats back at our home-base. This particular station is little more than a silver metal sphere, roughly thirty meters in diameter, with half a dozen small rooms that allow a two-man crew to monitor the methane-hydrozone mining procedures down on the planet's surface.
"Try not to look out the window," my psych trainer told us when we began our class a couple of years ago. "That's what gets to people. The vastness, the loneliness... It eats into their minds and makes their irrational fears start to grow. We all have those fears; it's only human to question ourselves when we're surrounded by silence, but you need to learn to stay strong. I'm not talking about innate abilities here. I'm talking about a skill that each and every human being is capable of learning."
At the time, I thought he was exaggerating. I'd read about the people who went on deep space missions and lost their sanity, but I assumed they must have had some kind of pre-existing problem that was simply magnified by the nature of the mission. I remember joking with a friend that we'd end up in the same cell together at a psychiatric facility, but in truth I never seriously thought that I'd struggle; I had this inner certainty that my mind was strong enough, that I had a kind of strength that everyone else lacked. I guess I was over-confident and a little cocky, but I'm definitely learning the error of my ways right now.
"It can happen to anyone," the psych trainer told us back in that first class. "Hidden Eye Syndrome is the worst. I'm sure you've all heard of it, but maybe you're not aware of just how it works. There are two forms. One is temporary and can usually be treated with rest and counseling. The other is permanent and results in a complete emotional breakdown. Research is ongoing, but people just don't tend to recover from that one. They break and they stay broken."
Still staring out the window, I watch the starfield for a moment. Hidden Eye Syndrome is the most common manifestation of madness on deep space station; the human mind just can't accept so much emptiness, and the idea of a vast and silent universe starts to weigh down. In the old days, when humanity was still stuck on one planet, many people used to look to the skies and believe in a divine figure who ruled their lives; religion is still around in modern human society, but it has kind of retreated and become less respectable. People who believe in unseen, unseeable forces tend to be marginalized and labeled as cranks; most of them are conspiracy theorists who believe that despite all official communications, there must have been contact with alien life. They insist that mankind can't be alone in the universe, so they concoct elaborate stories to explain why base-command is hiding the truth and trying to cover up contact with alien civilization. In short, they believe that they're being watched by the hidden eyes of an alien civilization.
It's a tempting idea, but that way madness lies.
Hearing a noise somewhere below, I look down at the floor and listen to the sound of footsteps in the main control room. I guess Sutter's down there, fiddling about with equipment as usual. It's amazing to realize that the pair of us sometimes only grunt a few words at one another during the average day. Our personalities don't really mix too well, and he seems very distracted most of the time. When I arrived, I thought that maybe he was suffering from fatigue, having been out here alone for four months between the death of his previous colleague and my arrival, but now I just think that he's a slightly off-center kind of guy. Not mad, but not normal either. Different.
As the soldering arm finally finishes its work, I disconnect the equipment and inspect the job. It's not exactly highly-skilled work, but I did a g
ood job.
"There," I say quietly. "No bay door has ever been more comprehensively sealed."
Yeah, Crizz. Talk to yourself. That'll help.
It takes me a few minutes to pack up the equipment, but finally I climb up through the service hatch and haul myself into the control room. I was expecting to find Sutter in here, muttering to himself while hunched over one of the monitors, but there's no sign of him. After stowing my equipment back in the storage area, I wander over to the main control terminal and take a cursory look at the diagnostics panel, but all the readings are in order. It's not as if I want some kind of emergency to strike, but the fact that Sutter has kept the place in such great shape means that sometimes I find myself having to work hard just to find things to do. The alternative would be to just stare out the window.
"Keep yourself busy and active," my psych trainer said repeatedly during our classes. "An empty mind is a vacuum, and vacuums tend to get themselves filled one way or another."
"Damn it!" Sutter shouts suddenly, from somewhere above the control room.
I can't help but smile as I hear metal banging against metal, and it's clear that whatever he's doing, it's not going particularly well. A moment later I spot a pair of legs emerging from the access panel in the ceiling, and finally Sutter climbs down, nursing a small cut on his hand.
"Problem?" I ask, grateful for the fact that finally something is happening.
"It's fine," he mutters, grabbing a towel and wiping a few spots of blood away. "Just a scratch."
"I put a new layer of sealant on the bay door," I tell him. "The procedure manifest said it was due in the next six months, so I decided to get ahead of the schedule. I just figured it was worth doing."
"Bad idea," he replies. "Once you start getting ahead of the schedule, you just make things worse. Try to learn how to work slowly and calmly instead of racing through the list of jobs."