Augment

by C R MacFarlane

  Kieran nodded. “Okay. Get back in the bay.” He pushed the Augment back into the shuttle bay, and hit the controls to close the door.

  “Kieran?” Rayne held out a hand, alarmed at her own shaking. “What’s going on?” Her voice bordered on hysteria, but she didn’t care anymore.

  “Keep an eye on him,” he shouted, already running out the door. “I gotta reset the FTL.”

  Rayne stared, arms hanging limp by her sides. She had been so close to going home.

  * * *

  Kieran rushed to Engineering. The FTL was too hot, but they didn’t have any other choice — even with weapons modifications, they didn’t have a chance against the warship for more than a couple minutes.

  He shouted orders to the men clustered around console displays.

  How had the Comrade followed them through? The ship should have been too big to fit through their FTL hole. And jumps were impossible to track. Was it just bad luck? There had to be a way to get the warship to go away.

  Sutherland came up beside him. “Tell me you’ve got a demon on our side for once.”

  “Get those guys to stop touching the shield controls,” he pointed across the engineering bay.

  Sutherland shouted, and the men moved away.

  “Think, think, think.” Kieran pressed his head into his hands. “I don’t know how many jumps the engine can take. And if they just keep following us through….” His mind went blank with despair.

  Sutherland growled, “I just want to punt these guys to the next dimension.”

  “Wait, that’s it!”

  “What?”

  Kieran laughed. It was crazy enough to work. “We’re gonna put a rabbit in a hat.”

  “A what?” Sutherland took a step back, eyes wide.

  “Bad joke,” he waved it off. Of course no one here had ever even heard of a rabbit.

  Sparks flew as Kieran modified the FTL. They would need a bigger hole for this to work. His mind raced as he thought through the modifications and rough calculations and odd of success. “Vazquez, can you prepare to reverse the polarity of the shields?”

  A wide-eyed stare.

  Kieran rushed over and keyed in the codes himself. He grabbed the stunned man’s hand. “When I say ‘go,’ press this button,” he told the man, “this one right here.”

  He closed his eyes, vaguely wishing Sarrin could help — there was too much to do, too many permutations to think through by himself.

  He pulled another of Hoepe’s men to the life systems support console. “When I say ‘now,’ you need to push this button and then this one. Got it? This one and this one.” Another, he brought to the controls for their modified cloaking device.

  The men nodded. At least they were good at taking orders.

  “Quincy,” he called into the comm, “ready for this?”

  “Uh, sure.”

  Sutherland stood beside him. “Kieran, what are you planning?”

  “This is gonna work, ok,” he shouted into the comm.

  “Sure. What do you want me to do?”

  “Get close, get them on our tail.” If they followed through once, maybe they would try it again.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Kieran felt the shift of the ship as it made a hard turn. He took a deep breath — even his dad, the crazy wildcard who taught him everything he knew, would have thought this was too much. Kieran estimated a 67-percent chance of success. But hey, two out of three ain’t bad.

  “They’re on us, sir,” Quincy’s harried voice carried over the comm.

  “Good, when I say ‘go,’ turn hard left.”

  He took a deep breath, subtly made the sign of the cross over himself and said a little prayer. “Ok, ready?” He threw the FTL switch, shouting, “Go! Now!”

  The ship veered. Consoles sparked. The shields reversed polarity, combined with the gamma gravitation in the cloak, and repelled them from the gaping FTL hole.

  “Full power!” Kieran shouted into the comm. He could hear the thruster engines straining, could feel the ship fighting the pull of gravity, the drag causing the whole ship to go sideways.

  Please, God, he prayed, let the ship hold together. Let the warship slide through that open wormhole. He really didn’t want to die here.

  The strain eased, the FTL closing, and the ship released, slingshotting them across the deck. Kieran scrambled to check the hologram.

  Sutherland, white-faced, picked himself up, shaking. “Are they gone? I can’t believe it worked.”

  Together, they clutched the edge of the display, watching for five standard minutes, then ten. No sign of the warship, no grav-hole re-opening. Kieran let out a laugh, slumping to the floor on his weak knees.

  Beside him, Sutherland breathed a sigh of relief. “Just one thing, Kieran. What’s a rabbit?”

  THIRTEEN

  RAYNE SAT AT A DARK table in the empty mess hall. It was well into the ship’s night cycle. She wrapped her hands around a warmed ration container, hoping it would stop the shaking. It didn’t.

  Over and over she played the scene from the shuttle bay in her head, trying to determine if it was real or not. First, the man arriving in the shuttle bay from nowhere — the same man that had attacked them on the planet. Then, Kieran telling her to help him before running off. She had been so shocked by it all, she had missed her opportunity to re-open the external airlock — something she hadn’t realized until the third playback, some tactical officer she turned out to be. At the end of it, Hoepe arrived in the shuttle hangar, and she watched dumbfounded while Hoepe released the man, they embraced, and then Hoepe had nodded appreciatively at her as the two men left.

  The rations in front of her grew cold, her fingers tapping anxiously on the side of the flimsy container. Now, there were two Augments on board — Sarrin and this new Grant. Either one of them could destroy the ship in an instant. Did no one else see that?

  The doors to the mess hall opened. Familiar grey, regulation coveralls strode in, and she smiled in recognition: Kieran. He whistled as he opened two ration packs and put them in the warmer.

  She called his name.

  Pausing, he glanced over. “Hey, Commander.” A polite smile spread over his otherwise exhausted features. “I didn’t see you there. What’s up?”

  Rayne let out a breath, letting the tension roll out of her shoulders. Everything had been so upside down lately, but Kieran… Kieran was dependable. She had watched him go with the flow, his head up, shoulders back, confident. She motioned for him to come to her small table, and waited for him to settle into the chair opposite her. “Kieran, maybe you can tell me what’s going on with these Augments?”

  He frowned. “What do you mean?”

  She leaned forward on her elbows, whispering even though they were alone. Hoepe and his men had already shackled her and put her on trial once, and she had no interest in repeating the scenario. “First Sarrin. And now Grant. The ship is taken over by Reapers, and Gal isn’t doing a thing about it. And then there’s the Poet — are we with him or against him?” She lifted her hands up to cover her face, leaning heavily on the table, suddenly exhausted by the gravity of their situation. She squeezed her eyes shut and groaned in an effort to pretend it wasn’t happening. “Ugh. We need to do something. We’re soldiers in the United Earth Central Army. We serve the Gods.”

  Kieran nodded, his gaze shifting to the floor while he chewed the inside of his lip. “Well, Raynie,” — he picked his words slowly — “I think we’ve found ourselves in a very complicated situation.”

  “I almost saved us,” she said. “I contacted the warship — they were going to help us. But then we broke away.”

  Kieran’s eyes grew dark and he leaned back in his chair. Surely, Kieran understood — there had to be someone on this ship still loyal to the Gods besides her. But the typically unflappable lieutenant clenched his jaw, ropey muscles along the side of his cheek twitching angrily under his skin. “You did what? I don’t think they’re exaggerating when they say the U
ECs will kill us all. Like it or not, we’re all trying to survive together.”

  Her breath caught in her throat as she jerked back. Her stomach rolled, her mouth suddenly too dry to speak. Her voice came out as a whisper: “I just wanted to reunite us with the Path.” She was trying to work for the Gods, surely it was right. “I don’t know what else to do. This is our duty.”

  He sighed, his shoulders relaxing, and a sad smile crossed his face. “I dunno what to do.”

  For the first time, she noted the bags under his eyes, the rumpled and stained uniform that was only partly done up, the stoop in his upper back. She’d been neglecting her duties as First Officer, failing to take care of her crew. “You’re tired,” she said. “You’re not getting enough rest.”

  “Yeah.” He chuckled. “There’s been a lot to do. You know, I lost my whole staff and this old freightship’s been falling apart for years.”

  Immediately, her mind fell to the familiar task of determining which crew, which resources could be re-assigned to help with the extra workload in Engineering. But there was no one. Just her and Gal and Kieran.

  “It’s been a huge help to have Sarrin — do you know she reprogrammed the shields to be more effective? She’s the one that figured out how to fix the FTL. But now she’s hurt, so it’s just me and I’m doing what I can to keep this old boat in the sky.”

  Rayne’s breath caught, the memory of the girl catching the bomb and the explosion that engulfed her playing across her mind. She hadn’t even asked about the injuries. It wasn’t important, she reminded herself, the girl was an Augment. An enemy. She turned her gaze back to Kieran. “I didn’t think about all the work you’ve been doing. I’m going to recommend you for a commendation when we get back.”

  Instead of the smile she expected, he frowned. “Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this, but have you ever considered that this whole thing, finding Sarrin and Grant and Hoepe, that this might be the right thing to do — the Path of the Gods?”

  “Careful, Kieran!” She ducked her head as though it could keep the ever-watchful Gods from noticing his blasphemy. “The Speakers tell us the Will of the Gods.”

  He stuck his tongue in the corner of his mouth, biting on it while he looked straight into her eyes. “Grant flew through space into our airlock from an exploding shuttle. What are the odds? A billion to one?

  “What are you implying?”

  “Finding Sarrin, Halud choosing this ship, boarding a warship — the odds are all unbelievable. Like there’s something bigger going on, some unseen force.”

  Bile rose in her throat. “You think the Gods are protecting us, them?”

  “I don’t know what I believe.”

  “The Augments are monsters. The virus changed them to be hyper-aggressive and dangerous. They don’t think the way we do. They don’t connect with or see other people the way we do. They killed our soldiers without blinking an eye, destroyed a planet without hesitation.”

  The muscles running the angle of Kieran’s jaw twitched again. “Sarrin saved your life. She ran across the yard and grabbed that bomb out of the air. She carried it far away enough no one else got hurt. Seems she does think differently than the rest of us.”

  The air rushed out of her lungs, and Rayne suddenly felt no more than a foot tall. But still… surely… Augments were enemies. The Gods said it was so. Her father said it was so.

  Kieran stood, leaning across the table. “Don’t forget, she released you when everyone else thought you were behind the attack on Contyna.” He stepped back, scrubbing a hand across his tired eyes. “Maybe…. Look, maybe the Gods and the Speakers are not the same; we haven’t been told the whole story. Sarrin isn’t a monster. If you would open your eyes, you would see. It’s not her fault, the UECs trained her, made her what she is, and she fights it every day. We’ve just met Grant, but I doubt he’s a psychotic killing machine either.”

  Rayne’s mouth went dry.

  “I’m too tired. I said some things I shouldn’t have.” He walked away, calling behind him, “Keep an open mind is all. Don’t let someone else do your thinking for you.”

  She turned, watching him pass through the kitchenette on his way to the door. “Where are you going?”

  He sighed, scooping two steaming dishes from the warmer into his hands. “Sarrin should be waking up soon, and I think she’ll need some help. I owe her, after all.”

  * * *

  Hoepe kicked a path across the floor of the infirmary, pushing aside fallen medicine and bandages. He led Grant to the table and made him sit.

  “What happened here?” Grant asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Turbulence.”

  Grant snorted. “The whole ship went sideways for a little while. I got tossed around that airlock like a practice dummy.”

  Hoepe raised an eyebrow. “Not the worse you’ve had.”

  A familiar impish grin lit up his old friend’s face. “No, not by far.”

  “Let me take a look at you?”

  Grant pulled off his shirt and turned around.

  Hoepe noted the large oozing hole in the middle of his back, already healing. There were more of the geometric procedural marks running down the side of his spine than he had four years ago.

  “The implant is biologic, I think,” said Grant. “Strong, flexible. Protective, no problem with fire or explosives.”

  “You always did favour incendiaries. Probably too much.”

  Grant turned his head and smirked. But his bravado failed, and his expression grew sombre. He hung his head. Quietly, he said, “They can control my mind. With the suit I think. That’s what happened on the planet. I didn’t know what I was doing; it was all them. But, I woke up and remembered and realized I had to go.”

  Hoepe put a hand on his shoulder, happier than he could say to be with him again. A little warmth inside of him had been filled, and maybe he could fill some of Grant’s. “It’s good to see you.”

  “Yeah, you too.” But all of the muscles in his shoulders rippled with tension. Grant asked, “How’s Sarrin? That was her, right?”

  Hoepe pulled out a stethoscope, running it over Grant’s chest. “She’ll be okay. Some burns. Nothing that won’t heal in a few days.” His hands moved through a long-familiar physical pressure point scan, checking for areas of injury or weakness.

  Grant sighed, “There’s something you’re not telling me. I’ve known you too long.”

  There was no way to explain what he had been thinking, that she would be okay physically but the new procedural marks and the episodes where she lost control made him think there was far more to deal with than the superficial wounds. She needed something he couldn’t offer, healing in an area he had no understanding of.

  “I want to see her,” Grant said.

  Hoepe pushed and twisted a few active points, boosting the body’s ability to heal. “Not now. She needs to rest.”

  “Things didn’t end well. The last time I saw her was a confused mess.” Grant looked up at him. “Has she said anything?”

  “You know she’s always been quiet.”

  Grant winced as Hoepe released a tight point.

  “You never told me what happened.”

  “It was stupid. We disagreed on how to handle a situation. And I did what I thought best.”

  “I’m sure it’s in the past.”

  He snorted. “I’m sure it is; not like she has an eidetic memory or anything.”

  Hoepe chuckled. “That’s the spirit.” He twisted another point. “How did you end up on Junk?”

  Pausing a moment, Grant shrugged as though trying to brush it off. “Typical story. I fell into one of their traps. How did you end up out here? You and Sarrin must have a pretty good operation going.”

  Hoepe shook his head. “Sarrin was on Selousa until a couple weeks ago.”

  “How did she get caught? If anyone was going to avoid it, you think she would have.”

  “I don’t know. Her brother found her actually.”

  �
�The Poet?”

  “Yes. He’s here as well. I’ve got a crew, we were based on Contyna, doing food and supply smuggling, but that’s over. I haven’t found anyone else.”

  Grant raised an eyebrow. “Omblepharon, Maisie, the Pauls — they’re all on Junk. Thirty-three total, I think, but I haven’t seen all of them. There are facilities on Jade and Porter as well, if I heard right.”

  Hoepe’s mouth dropped open, his hands falling to his sides. “What?”

  “Yeah,” Grant twisted around to look at him, his eyebrows knitting together. “Isn’t that why you came to Junk in the first place?”

  Hoepe’s soul soared. “N-No,” he stammered. “We needed a spare part.”

  Grant jumped off the table. “Then, we have to go back. It’s spread what Guitteriez is doing now, worse than before.”

  Hoepe nodded. “You said there’s thirty-three Augments?”

  Grant grinned his eyes sparking with excitement. “It’s just you, me, and Sarrin. It will be a bit tricky, but we can do it. I’ve got a plan.”

  “Yes.” Hoepe felt his own, usually reserved, excitement starting to rise. “We’ve got my crew as well.”

  Grant paused. “But they’re not —. They’re commons, aren’t they?”

  “They’re good men,” Hoepe assured him. “They’re tough, strong, know their work.”

  “Still, Hoepe. This is a UEC facility.”

  “We can’t infiltrate the facility just the three of us. I’m no fighter, you know that. And Sarrin… you haven’t seen…. What if there’s trouble, what if something goes wrong? We could use the men for leg power if nothing else.”

  “You know how I feel about the commons. Especially if they’re all like those lunatics in the shuttle bay. I thought for sure that woman was going to shoot me out the airlock.”

  “Ah. Be glad Rayne didn’t.” He triggered another point, Grant grunting as his body adjusted. “My men are useful. Loyal. Trust me.”

  Grant eyed him warily. “I never took you for such a lover of commons, not after what they did to us in the war, and what they let happen to us for all those years in Evangecore.”

  They all bore a resentment of commons — normal people not infected with the Red Fever virus — for their complacency when they turned their backs on all those children held in the UEC facility, and for their mindless fear during the war when the Augments only wanted to escape and protect themselves. But Hoepe had been forced to make peace with it; he needed his crew, he had even come to appreciate their company from time to time. “You need rest,” he told Grant, hoping to steer away from the topic. Grant’s anger ran deep, and Hoepe doubted spending years in another research facility had helped.