by Charlie Nash
“I’m sorry, what?”
“You have an infection. Pseudomonas astrolix and Radiosolis virus.”
Bugs born in the gamma radiation-soaked cold space, so far departed from Earth species it’s like they never saw planet-side at all.
Murphy scratches at his armpit, beetroot fingers deep within starched khakis. Looks like he gets along with Gibbon.
Someone at the back pipes up.
“Is that a software virus?”
“Can they even get infected?” Their voices flutter into a rabble.
And Murphy comes to where I want him: impatience.
“Alright, ok. Infection. What do we do? Is it serious?”
I breathe out. Once they start asking for advice, usually things go smoothly. I melt a little.
“Can be, but you’re fortunate. These cores have an immune system, too. She actually fights pathogens all the time. This infection’s a bit more serious, but I’ll find a suitable course of anti-viral and anti-microbe. Order it on the next fast shuttle. We’ll shut down to critical systems. You don’t want to maneuver. She’ll recover.”
I look around their faces. Relief, boredom, acceptance. House of monkeys.
I press forward.
“You know, this is pretty straightforward stuff. If you had a resident doc, you’d have had it sorted out a week ago.”
At this, Murphy’s face squashes into a disgruntled humph.
“We did,” he grunts. “He died, that’s why you’re here.”
Something wicked claws my innards. It feels like freefalling to planet-side, turning inside-out, drifting in space without a suit.
“When?” My voice is a knife, sharp, fearful. Please no …
Murphy shrugs.
“Just on an earth week ago. Space fever. Died in his bunk.”
I hiss involuntarily. My teeth chill from the air rush. “In his bunk?”
“What?”
I force myself to be calm, pleasant. Make him forget the hiss. As pleasant as I can get. Space fever. Code for infection.
“Captain, order the station to quarantine.”
“What? Why?” demands Murphy.
“Do it! I’ll be back in an hour.”
I grab Riley by the collar. “Take me to the doctor’s bunk,” I hiss.
The doctor’s bunk is cramped and cluttered with journal papers and yellowing texts in piles and spilling from suitcases. I run my fingers across the crumbling sheets; not many use paper anymore. Dirty cups and a crumb-speckled plate sit atop the stacks on the tiny desk. Twisted-nail and holographic puzzles cluster in rows on a high shelf. Regs say the crew must wait a fortnight before they can dispose of his gear. That might save the station yet. The bed is still rumpled. A touch screen blinks idle over the bed.
“I need his notes. He would have recorded all he did.”
I touch the screen but it asks for a print-scan and password. I swear at my lack of implants.
Riley moves close, his fingers replacing mine.
He glances sidelong as the system screen glows in our faces.
“We could have done this from operations,” says Riley. The screen reflects in his eyes.
“No, not this. Records are confidential. Can’t be stored on the central system. Has to be here.”
Riley’s hands move deftly, opening the personal folders, bringing up screen after black screen. From the side, those strange red eyes brim like red caramel. I wonder if he has grafts. But just the thought brings excitement and I look away.
“Nothing. It’s empty.”
“It has to be there. He would have recorded something like this.”
He checks again. I feel the block between me and the system, an agonizing distance. I long to jack in but I’ve never allowed myself the hardware. I don’t think I could stop.
Then I look around me.
“Riley. Stop.”
“What?”
“It’s not in there.”
I begin on the stacks of papers. Of course. All the ship’s docs have a problem with machine fascination. Some think it’s because we want to get inside our patients. But it’s more than that. It’s addiction. The way your heart skips when you control something this big. The way the universe expands in hard-wire connection. And more, we all knew how much it could bring us unstuck. Unable to do our jobs. Useless. We took measures. This doc kept his hands off the machines even for records. My problem, my insistent urge, is a little shade different, but not much.
Riley thumbs through piles alongside me, the cabin keeping us close. I hold my breath because he smells of spice and machine oil and the round muscle of his shoulder shows through his shirt as he reaches under my arm. He comes up with a fat leather-bound notebook, pages edged in grime.
I take the book, breathing in grease and sterilizer, anchoring myself back in the realm of doctoring. I flip to the last entry logs, half-way through the pages. I read it under my breath.
Drive continues in flux. Edema in capillary supply lines. Suspect pathogen. Sample analyzer requiring part. Aspirate sent fast pulse to Poseidon.
“So?” asks Riley.
“He did the same thing. But the on-station analyzer’s broken. He sent the sample on a fast shuttle to Poseidon. He wouldn’t have dared start a treatment without the sensitivity analysis. This could be good news; we’ll have that earlier than I thought...”
But he’d died. And there’s something not right about that. My eyes scan higher. I flip back a page, past the station’s early clinical signs. Then, I find another entry. I feel cold writhe in my skin.
I point to the date.
“When was this?”
Riley tilts the book, eyes narrowed.
“Um, two weeks ago. Just after the last supply boat.”
“When was the next one?”
“It was today – your boat.”
I hiss, the sound rising from beneath my soul.
I drop the log, and it falls open at the entry: Last order not sent. Reordered masks.
Riley meets my eyes. His pupils contract, understanding.
“He took a sample,” he says slowly. “But he was out of masks.”
“First rule: no mask, no sample. Not when you might aerosolize an infection, breathe it right into your lungs…” I speak right from the handbook, that first week in the docks.
Then the comms buzz Riley’s tracer; it comes through on the overhead speaker.
“Doctor. We have an issue in med dock. I’d like you back in operations… please.”
It’s Murphy. About to learn his law.
With the station in lock-down, all door readers are set to red, but Riley’s micromesh fingertip is customized to allow. We glide seamlessly through empty corridors, feet falling in step. There’s urgency, doubled by my compulsion, which is starting to assert itself again. I curse it, but it’s there. And I feel the pressure of company as soon as we’re inside operations. Then I know I’m not going to be able to put it aside. It will grow until Freya is only at the edge of my mind, unable to perform my function, victim to my failing. And that’s the only thing that’s worse than the urge itself.
Murphy quilts his jaw while the other captains sit around the low table, crumpled gray faces above crumpled shirts. Riley is bright and fresh in the corner of my eye. I clench my teeth, holding onto focus.
“How many cases do you have, Captain?”
Murphy shifts in his seat.
“Four.”
“Who are they?”
“Two émigrés serving waiting times, staying near the doc’s room. And a cook, and a cleaner.”
“Shit.” I say it out loud. I never got the pre-processor implant, the one that lets you review messages sent to the speech center before they go out. I suspect Murphy has one. Right now, he probably wishes I did too. But a cook and a cleaner see dozens of people every day. If the station had infected the doc, the doc had infected the station.
To his credit, Murphy only raises a caterpillar eyebrow.
“How long till it spr
eads? What do we do?”
I sigh, allowing him to feel a little weight of the issue. But I try not to think of spreads.
“Seems a week for incubation. There’s nothing to do. Stay in lock-down. The sample was sent, we have to wait for the sensitivity. You have a doc in the med lab?”
A real doc, that is. Murphy nods.
“Let him handle it. Alone. Minimize contacts. I’ll handle the station. Go back to your quarters. The fast shuttle will have the answer here as soon as they can. I will monitor Freya with Officer Riley.”
The captains are caught uncomfortable needing to take direction from another and there’s a lull. But I’ve seen this before. It’s quick, and then comes relief: doing something that feels so easy, much like doing nothing. They leave, a flotilla of military walks, stodged with age, emptying the halls and into the bullets. Riley turns his back to follow them.
I wait.
He glances back as he walks, a smile on his lips, red blush creeping down his cheekbones. I take just the moment to watch the hall, feeling Freya turn around us, her sickened soul filling the walls. The sensation blooms to full perception just then: I’ve made full connection. Blood rushes to my head and my lips tingle, like a moment in freefall, pure thrill.
And at least she’s stable. Because now, the need is upon me, strong and unyielding. So, when Riley turns unhurried at the end of the hall, I follow.
This is the way it goes.
Riley’s room is a standard issue gray-walled serviced cabin. The air is dry, with a faint musk that disguises the usual bouquet of cleaning chemicals from the bathroom.
He holds open the door. On the low shelves, a squat glass bottle is the origin of his smell; it’s on his clothes, even on the rough blankets made to military precision on the bed. The small table holds a pile of yellowing paperbacks next to a wireless tablet, like a Zen garden. Uniforms, pressed and crisp, fill the slim tall cupboard, jeans and shirts stuffed on the shelves below. A digital frame on the wall scrolls photos; heavy military freighters in dock, Riley in civvies with a tall man, a bikini model I recognize from Poseidon. Two lives in the same cabin.
Riley presses the door closed and locks it with his fingertip. My pulse quickens at the glow under his skin, and the flash of his eyes as the light catches the edge of the grafts. He leans against the door.
“Nice place.” I speak only to cut the air. Too much tension, it will be over too fast. He looks at me steadily.
“I’ve never met a woman like you before,” he says, the blush creeping a little lower. He can’t quite meet my eyes.
I tilt my head very slightly. “No, you haven’t.”
The cabin is small, we are very close. The scent of him grows stronger. I step forward. The low light glints off his red-blond stubble. We stand an inch apart. The air heats between us. His eyelashes dip as he glances down. His pupils expand so they become red rims, then contract to pinpricks as I cast a shadow on his face. Nice.
“Who did your eyes?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Fed forces?”
He doesn’t answer but taps finger to thumb; the lights fade. I sense myself in green afterglow on his retinas. Those aren’t passive grafts. They’re clever parts with an AI that demands a link-up. My brain doesn’t have a gate in that circuit and I can’t turn off. Built to bond to hybrid systems. Men and their machines.
Our left fingers brush together and his right hand cups my head, tilting. I feel the connecting electro-nerve pulse sparkle. But I’m in long before he is. I brace, my fingers hook his back and I jack his mind through those eyes.
It is over, but he doesn’t leave.
I lie in the crook of his arm, all heated skin. His fingers play idly on my shoulder.
“How old are you?” he asks.
I smile in the dark. Freya beats in the wall behind me, tiny pulses in her supply capillaries matching Riley’s heartbeat.
“Old enough,” I say.
He strokes my neck. He takes a breath to say something. Stops, and doesn’t. Raises the lights just a fraction.
“Star Ops,” he says finally. “My eyes.”
I nod in the dim, looking up. His irises give a slight rainbow shimmer as he shifts from infrared back to light spectrum. It’s a good job; the early grafts had no control, infrared all the time. I tell him so. He knows. Says his dad knew people.
“You don’t have any machine splices. No implants, hybrids?” he asks softly.
“No. It’s best I don’t. I couldn’t stop.”
I sense him frown.
“Odd for a ship’s doc. But you’re not a clean slate, are you? What do you have?”
Perceptive. Have to be for Star Ops.
“Not implants,” I say quickly. “Transplant. Autologous.”
“What is that?”
I stifle a sigh. I am released now, and Freya’s presence sits heavy in my mind. Her cells vibrate with mine, like strings of one instrument. She is sluggish, but though nothing has changed with her, I don’t like to linger. It is not for me.
I go to get up, but his hand closes on my arm. My hair tumbles around my face; its touch is odd, something I almost never feel.
“I want to understand,” he says.
I try to shake him off, but he is persistent. Lapse of my judgment, I can usually avoid the inquisitive ones.
“Please,” he presses. Asking, not begging.
I look him right in the eye. And my transplant finishes its connection to his graft. Dammit.
“A long time ago, when the techs were new—” I begin.
“In a galaxy far, far away?” he asks with a grin.
I stop, unsmiling. To his credit, he lets the grin fall. I’m not a roll to joke with.
We stare at each other, his grafted eyes glimmering. From our wireless connection, I see the image of me in his mind: pearly skin, with dark eyes he thinks are sucking at his soul. Genuine regret, genuine interest. I stop pulling against his arm.
“If I wanted to be a ship’s doc like you, what would I need to do?” he asks softly.
I remember steel and a clean smell. Long ago. No time for the details.
“Have your neurons harvested. Then, have a bright tech sequence a DNA facilitation program”—I mesh my fingers together—“software for your hardware.”
“Then what?”
“They go into the machine scaffold. Live with the grafted machine neurons. Learn their frequencies. Then, they go back in your head. You hear the machine.”
“That simple, huh?”
“Of course not.”
Spend a decade going crazy, before you get that first twitch. Watch the others around you dying five to one.
His eyes run over me meditatively.
“That what you’re doing with me now? Listening to my machines?” he says finally, softly.
I find myself hostile. So I lie.
“No.”
But there’s a tenderness in his face. No. Some memory maybe. A look like something admired.
Then Freya sounds a warning. The vibration has changed. There is no siren, no voice on the speakers, but there’s been a violation. At the docks. I put my hand to the wall.
“You know—”
“Shhhh! An alarm’s been tripped.”
Riley frowns.
“I don’t hear—”
“The alert systems are disabled. Someone’s in the system at the docks.”
Riley’s on his feet in an instant, naked before the console, his fingers flying over the keys.
“They’ve locked it out,” he says. “Ops will be sealed. No, wait—” His eyes rake back and forth between shifting screens. “They’re already in Ops… running a routine to override the quarantine.”
I swear. “Why would Murphy—”
“It’s not him.”
Riley stands back from the terminal, turns his red eyes on my face.
“You familiar with military protocol, Doctor?”
I stare back at him. The station pulses messages i
n my brain; she already knows what Riley suspects.
“It’s a coup,” I say.
He nods. “And they’ve shut the port.”
I slam my fist into the wall, letting her feel my frustration. That I’m still on her side. However much I neglect in my distraction. Because they’ll be no analysis while there’s no port, and no treatment either.
And she tells me more.
That they’re trying to access the pulse drive.
“What the f—-” Riley’s seen it too.
But I am already out the door, clothes in my hands.
Riley stops me before I knock down the ops doors.
“There’s ten guys on the other side that won’t stop to ask who you are before they kill you.”
I growl, throwing him off. Protect the station.
“I know ten ways to put you on the floor right now,” he hisses.
I grab him back, snake my hand around his neck, thumb on his soft throat. I’m quick; he doesn’t know enough about me. His red eyes shift spectrum in surprise.
“And I know three ways to make your eyes bleed without touching you.” My own breath is hot on my lips. I wouldn’t do it intentionally, but worse has happened to a system linked with me when I’m angry.
He backs off, but the doors are already open.
And a familiar voice reaches me from the depths of ops.
“Doctor, if you would, please.”
There’s a group of them, in space fatigues, camouflage in grays and shadows. I block the door, taking them in. The first and second captains are bound on the floor, diminished, under guard. And there at the front is the voice’s owner: radiation etched hands, short blond military cut. I hold my face expressionless while underneath I swear a savage curse. Under that shirt are whip scars, and everything else I touched in his serviced shuttle cabin.
He grins at me, power and precision. No wonder he was good. Gun-runner. Do-no-gooder. I give him a cold eye. Then as I move inside, I see his shirt: pips on the shoulder announce him a commander. Riley stitched in red against the blue.
Riley starts in my shadow.
“Dad?”
What the f—-
“Good timing, Officer Riley,” says the commander. Ah, irony. I feel Riley through his eye hardware in my senses. His signal is cold and confused; he has no part in it. The Commander nods and two heavies take Riley to the flight panel. “Now, if you please, we need a small orbit adjustment.”