Minutes, maybe.
“Blackwood!” He realized shouting like a moron wouldn’t do anything either. Despite the sudden bitter cold, despite the threat of a lack of air and the instinctive panic it caused, he forced his breathing to be regular. Even. And then he thought through his problem logically.
How can I unblock a blocked plug on the inside of my suit without opening it?
Most suit systems had redundancies built in—ways to solve various problems that might arise. For example, he possessed two oxygen tanks in case one failed. But they both exited through the same outlet.
He couldn’t reach inside the suit, and he couldn’t remove his helmet. But he could possibly increase the oxygen pressure; that might blow out the blockage. Or it might only make it worse, because compressed air was cold. But the pressure…
No time to think. If he didn’t try something now he would die. Gritting his teeth against the unbearable chill, Mattis struggled blindly for the oxygen knob on the side of his suit, grasping it roughly and turning up the pressure on the left tank to maximum.
The pressure on the other side of the vent blockage built and built, and another wailing alarm joined the previous ones—a cacophonous racket that railed in his ears. The pipes cracked and leaked, but he kept the knob turned to the maximum. Shards of ice broke off, the pressure blasting them into his face, tiny little pieces of shrapnel cutting up his cheeks.
Freezing compressed air flooded his suit, the high oxygen content making him swoon.
And then the left tank spluttered and ran dry, and the vent slowly began to close again.
Damn. With only one tank left, even if he could clear it, then… then it would be pointless anyway.
His hand trembled as it sought out the other knob to emergency-blow his secondary tank. Maybe it would be enough. It was terrifying to be blind and mute, floating in an endlessly expanding debris field, and he wanted to be free of it.
But he felt so lightheaded. So dizzy. Too much oxygen? Or not enough? Or was it the cold—that biting, aching cold that stole the heat from his bones?
Lethargy took over, a wave of palpable emptiness that sapped his energy. He had just had a massive jolt of oxygen, so his suit would be over-pressurized. He had plenty to breathe at the moment. Maybe he should wait to blow the second tank. Just wait.
How idiotic of him to die on a salvage mission. He just had to hold tight and wait for rescue. Not think about how freezing cold it was, or about how dizzy he was…
Just wait…
Wait…
A firm jolt startled him, but he was so far gone it barely registered.
Then he felt his helmet slipping off, but darkness claimed him before he could protest.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Surgical Ward 1
Infirmary
HMS Caernarvon
Low Earth Orbit
Guano raised her hands experimentally, testing the limits of her new restraints. They’d tied her hands and feet down with steel cables thick enough to hold down a Warbird on a ship experiencing emergency Z-space translation, and another extra-thick leather strap was clamped around her neck and another around her forehead to secure her head. The leather creaked ominously every time she moved.
“This is some kinky stuff right here,” she said, in an attempt at levity. “Doctor fantasies, leather stuff, a hospital gown that shows my butt… lady, you are into some weird shit.”
Doctor Manda chuckled. She was out of view but close to Guano, judging by the immediacy of her laughter. “Well, that’s one way to look at it. They’re just for my protection.”
“I know.”
“Honestly, if they’re uncomfortable, we can have one of these fine Marines check them for you. Just say the word.”
Guano glared at the backs of Ken and Mayaan’s heads standing guard outside the small glass window of the infirmary door. She sighed. If she was going to spend the rest of her life as a prisoner, she could at least get these damn things out of her head.
“Honestly it’s fine. But now I’m all BDSM’d up to the max, what’s the next step?”
“Well,” said Doctor Manda, matter-of-factly, “We need access to your prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia. The basal ganglia is a subcortical collection of neuron clusters, including the ventral tegmental area and substantia nigra—they produce the majority of the brain’s dopamine—and the striatum, an important site of action of dopamine. To do this we’re going to make an incision in your scalp, creating a hole known as a bone flap. It’s all done with high precision lasers of course, and you’ll be well-sedated, so I doubt you’ll feel much more than a pinch.”
“Great. Scientific proof that I have a brain. The flight crew will be so proud.” Of course, she had received enough injections to know that they were rarely just a pinch, but she would deal with that when it happened. “Why do I need to be conscious for this?”
“Because,” said the Doctor, “we think that the nanobots do more than cause disordered thinking when they emit their chemicals in low doses. There might be side effects; things like psychosis from the excess release of the neurotransmitter dopamine into regions deep inside the brain.” Manda paused, as though reading off something Guano couldn’t see. “While this theory offers a compelling explanation for the co-occurrence of symptoms like hearing in schizophrenia, there have been only a small handful of studies that have directly supported this theory.”
“Oh, great,” said Guano, groaning out loud. “It’s not just open brain surgery. It’s experimental open brain surgery. Based on a theory.”
“A theory well supported by strong observational evidence. But you should count yourself fortunate, Lieutenant Corrick; the source of your illness, the nanobots, are actually known. Compare and contrast with schizophrenia… a very complex condition, involving a constellation of diverse symptoms. Obviously this presents both a challenge and a constraint for figuring out the neurobiological root causes of it—if indeed it is caused by something similar to what affects you—brain lesions, that is. In the case of a schizophrenia diagnosis, there is likely not just one lesion but a number of lesions that are present across different brain regions that are the proximal causes for these symptoms.”
“But I don’t have schizophrenia,” said Guano.
Doctor Manda tittered a bit. “It’s the nearest thing, and my personal speciality of study.”
She didn’t need to ask. Schizophrenia. “And you’re sure you can get rid of these nanobots?”
Doctor Manda hesitated. “I’m not sure of anything. This is experimental surgery being conducted aboard a British warship… who knows what could go wrong?”
“Okay,” said Guano, trying desperately not to think about that. “So what do you need me to do?”’
“Just tell me what you see,” said Doctor Manda. “If you can.”
“Okay.”
Something out of sight beeped softly, then Doctor Manda’s voice rose. “Okay. Engaging the device again in three, two, one—”
A jolt of energy ran through Guano, seizing her muscles and causing her whole body to spasm with pain. It faded after just a moment, a momentary spike, and she opened her mouth to say everything was fine.
Instead, she found herself sitting by a night-time campfire in the woods, a stick in her hand and a marshmallow on the other end. The thick smell of pine trees washed over her nose, and the stars above twinkled. The owls called…
“Hello again,” said Brooks—Spectre—sitting opposite her, the flames dancing and casting strange, lurid shadows across his face. “I wasn’t sure if you were coming back.”
Guano glared at him darkly. “Fuck you,” she spat. “You made me kill Roadie. Flatline. Betray my nation, betray my oath, and kidnap a fucking baby.” She hissed. “If a Spectre falls in the woods, does anyone give a shit?”
Brooks laughed. “Oh, calm down. You can no more harm me here than I can harm you. This isn’t even your fantasy.”
“Figures,” said Guano, venomously. “I�
�ve never been camping in my life. Especially not in this Yukon-looking shit hole.”
Brooks casually turned his marshmallow over, letting the embers roast the other side. “Like I said, this is a fragment of my memories. My real memories.” He laughed gently, as though the notion amused him somehow. “One time, when I was young and idiotic, I went camping with my buddies. It was my first time out of the cities really—of course today camping in a genuine forest is nearly impossible—and one of said buddies bought bear spray. Never even heard of the stuff before. So, I assumed it was like bug spray, and when I got the tent set up, I let rip with about half the can. While we were inside it.”
“I hope it really, really hurt,” said Guano dryly.
“Quite. But I did enjoy the wilderness, the outdoors, and while I was young, I always managed to find time to go be one with nature. If only for a little while. Even if I sometimes bear-maced myself.”
Guano grunted. “Okay. So what, shithead?” She shrugged helplessly. “So you maced yourself. Big deal. What’s the moral of the story?”
“Sometimes,” said Brooks, “you have to learn a lesson the hard way for it to stick.”
“What are you trying to say?” Guano demanded, chucking her marshmallow stick into the woods defiantly. “C’mon. Out with it. What’s the lesson?”
Brooks withdrew his perfectly browned treat from the fire, blowing on it gently. “How was prison?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes.
Brooks smiled at her. “All right. Here is your lesson: you can’t win. Not against me. Not against what I have and what I can do. My influence, my technology, me. You’re just pathetically outclassed in every single way.”
Rude. “You’ll find that we’re really resourceful. I wouldn’t write us off just yet.”
“Mmm. That remains to be seen, I suppose.” He regarded his snack. “Also, I was thinking. You did so well on your last job for me, I thought you might want another opportunity to prove yourself.”
“Fuck you. Suck a billion dicks and die.”
Brooks took a bite out of his marshmallow, chewing thoughtfully. “Did you know they never recovered Roadie and Flatline’s bodies?”
Guano narrowed her eyes at him. “So? They died on a junk world. Because you made me shoot them. I know they’re dead, asshole. I was there.”
Brooks took another bite. “You know, if you do a little favor for me, we can bring them back. Did you know that?”
She wanted to stab him with a snappy comeback, but nothing came. Instead, her heart thumped and her mind raced. She told herself that it was a trap, that she shouldn’t trust this monster. Of course she shouldn’t.
But how could she shake the thought? Roadie and Flatline… alive again…
Chapter Twenty-Three
Bridge
HMS Caernarvon
Space, near Earth
Spears drummed her fingers on the armrest of her chair in frustration, watching the swarm of civilian ships descend upon the expanding debris field like a cloud of piranhas, cutting and devouring and stealing pieces of the wreckage.
“What do you mean” she asked, carefully and deliberately, “you lost them?”
“Just that, Ma’am,” said Locke, swallowing apologetically. “Blackwood and Mattis’s signals have vanished. Simultaneously. At the exact moment we detected that energy pulse from the piece they were salvaging. They were extremely close to it…extremely close.”
Dammit. That kind of highly detectable, powerful energy burst would not do well for two humans out there. EVA suits were highly shielded, but even so—“You gotta give me more,” Spears said, adjusting her collar. “Tell me more about this energy pulse. Describe its nature.”
“Unknown, Ma’am,” said Locke. “It was just… a big pulse of cross-band EM radiation. And we were probably not even scanning for it. We’re a warship, Ma’am, not a science vessel. And the civilian scavengers are making it difficult to separate wreckage from suits.”
Blast it all to hell. “Very well,” she said. “Try to filter out the illegal salvagers if you can, and focus only on military assets. Have all other teams reported back safely?”
“Aye aye, Ma’am.”
“Good. Ensure that whatever they managed to grab is secured and untouched. I don’t want whatever happened to Blackwood and Mattis to happen to us.” Now that her ship itself was sorted out, Spears needed to take the next important step. “Send an SAR shuttle to pick them up. I want them found. Options?”
Ensign Locke thought for a moment. “Ma’am, we might be able to scan for their thermal signature. The sun’s light will warm them up, and reflect off their white EVA suits. It might be enough to pick them out from the rest of the debris.”
She shook her head. “No, that junk was just blown to kingdom come. It’ll still be hot from the explosion—whatever signal the reflected heat will give us will be lost.”
This was precisely Blackwood’s area of expertise. Spears was the warrior, the commander. Blackwood was the scientist. The thinker. That’s why they worked so well together, and without Blackwood, Spears was solving this problem without her better half.
“Any word from the scavs? Have any of them seen our wayward souls?”
“No Ma’am,” said Locke. “Not yet.”
She bit the inside of her cheek. Of course they wouldn’t say anything even if they had… of course they wouldn’t.
“Send out a transmission,” she said, finally. “Say there’s been a terrible tragedy and that the salvage is dangerous—not that they’ll listen—and offer ten thousand US dollars for each one of our team recovered. Fifteen thousand if they’re alive.” She groaned softly to herself. “And try to ward away the scammers. Tell them we know who’s our crew or not, so if they try to stuff some random bloke into a fifteen-year-old borrowed EVA suit, we’ll know.”
“Very well, Ma’am. Drafting a transmission now.”
Maybe it would help, or maybe it was a complete waste of their time. But she couldn’t just do nothing. “And keep scanning,” she said. “If I see even a squeak from their distress beacons, I want us on them like gravy on chips.”
“Absolutely, Ma’am.”
Spears sank into her chair, glaring despondently at the growing swarm of civilian ships. Even from their considerable distance, she could see the bright sparks of their cutting lasers, their grinders, their torches, searching and grabbing whatever they could.
Any intelligence they might divine from the wreck of the ship would be contaminated and limited at best, but at the moment, she was not even concerned with that at all.
“Mattis, Blackwood, come on,” she muttered to herself. “Where the devil are you?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Cargo bay
Unknown Ship
Unknown Location
Mattis greedily gasped in a lungful of air and opened his eyes.
He was on a ship. A strange, dirty, cobbled-together ship. The cargo bay. Tables and benches lined the walls, haphazardly strewn with tools, half-completed projects, tools, and things which he could only classify as junk. Packed around them were cut metal sheets, more junk, and battle debris.
“Hey, wakey wakey!” said a guy crouching nearby, a pistol resting casually in his hand. He was dark skinned, sporting a thick stubble on his face and wearing a bomber jacket and aviator glasses that hid his eyes. From the few words the kid had spoken, Mattis thought he caught a pretty thick Indian accent. Mattis watched him wave the weapon around casually. “Wasn’t sure if you were going to be okay. Your face got chewed up pretty good,” the kid said.
Mattis propped himself up on his elbows. He was naked, his spacesuit thrown in a crude pile in the corner. His skin was covered in biofoam, giving him a kind of ‘clothing’ made of fluffy white bubbles. It also covered his face like shaving cream. Blackwood lay near him, similarly covered in gunk, her own spacesuit piled up against the wall. She was still unconscious. “What happened?”
“Yeah, well, I was kind of hopin
g you would be able to tell us that, you freaking alien piece of shit.”
“Alien?” Mattis stared at him. “What the hell are you saying?”
The stranger waved his pistol in Mattis’s general direction. He seemed vaguely familiar. “So, my brother and I were out performing humble salvage on the battle damage heroically scattered about the Sol system—the star system that cradled our species out of the primordial soup and to the stars—and we’re cleaning it up, like the noble patriotic humans we are, selflessly, like space janitors working for free.” He paused. “Or, you know, standard scrap rates and whatever the US military will pay for recovered technology, which is actually a lot.” Then he smiled. “And instead of juicy, juicy tech we find you. And your cute little girlfriend there. Both of you covered in ice and freeze-burns, wearing Royal space suits and all. Yet, somehow, alive.”
Mattis groaned and rubbed his temples. “What the hell does—”
The guy pulled back the hammer on his pistol. “Don’t think you’re worth quite as much as a nice juicy piece of tech,” he said, all the playfulness disappearing from his voice. “And that healing shit ain’t cheap.”
Would he really shoot? It seemed like a bluff, but Mattis couldn’t be certain. “I’m sure,” he said carefully, “that the Royal Navy will reimburse you for the cost of the foam. And I’m also sure there’s plenty on this ship that you’ve recovered already. Threatening me won’t help fill your wallets. And… I am grateful to you for saving us both.”
“Hmm.” The kid considered, then holstered his pistol. “Fair enough.” He clapped his hands together, beaming. “So how much will the Royal Navy be paying me for you, huh?”
Mattis scowled. “Okay, listen. I’m an officer in the United States Navy. I’m out here on special assignment attached to the HMS Caernarvon. I’m sure you’ll be well compensated in the end.”
The Last Strike: Book 5 of The Last War Series Page 11