Sonata in Orionis (Earth Song Book 2)

by Mark Wandrey

  The transport landed on the parking lot at Steven’s Pass and she jumped clear even before it came to a stop. The pain from her right calf was excruciating and made her stumble and nearly fall. Aaron was there in a second to steady her. She shook off his arm without a word of thanks. The lifts were out of service so they climbed the stairs instead. Every step hurt and she took each jolt of pain as no more than she deserved. The hallway into the medical center showed temporary repairs, Bjorn’s old office was no longer a triage center. As she went by Jasmine was standing in the doorway looking at a computer. When she saw Minu she stepped out in front of her.

  "We need to talk."

  "Get out of my way," she said and tried to side step. Jasmine moved to intercede and Minu exploded. Jasmine yelped in surprise as Minu snagged her by an outstretched wrist, turned, pulled her over a hip and threw. The yelp of surprise turned into a cry of dismay as Jasmine crashed into the wall and slid down to land in a painful pile on the floor. The obstacle removed, Minu marched on down toward the medical bay.

  "Mess with the kloth..." Aaron said as he went by.

  "And you get the teeth," Gregg finished. Jasmine didn't comment. She was crunched up against the wall, head down and bent into a fetal position. She appeared unconscious. Dram noted she was breathing and didn't stop.

  The medical center was not extensive, the Chosen often used civilian facilities so it was mainly for emergencies, such as this. There were beds for forty patients, two operating theaters, and a small intensive care ward for ten that could double as isolation on the rare case that someone brought back an alien bug. As Minu walked in and looked around, the doctor in charge stepped out to intercede. He was a civilian, brought in by the Chosen to help out with the large number of casualties. Those still in Steven’s Pass would either recover shortly, or were to grievously injured to survive if moved. Pip fit into the later.

  "I'm afraid you can't go any farther," he said. As Minu moved to push past the much taller man he put a hand on her shoulder. Minu looked down at the hand and up into his face with an expression of malice that made him swallow and pull the hand back as if he'd been shocked.

  "You'd be wise to let us see our friend," Aaron said with just as much venom as Minu was feeling.

  "Pip," Dram said to the now frightened doctor who was wondering what had possessed him to work for the crazed Chosen, even temporarily.

  "I don't know of any Pip," he said indignantly.

  "Pipson Leata," Minu said through clenched teeth.

  "Oh, why didn't you say so?" No one spoke. He cleared his throat and indicated the ICU. "But there is no way I can let you-argh!" Minu clenched his fists and the doctor took a step back.

  "Let the Chosen through," Dram said, "before she hurts you. Can't you see she's family?"

  "Let them in." Minu looked up and saw Doctor Tasker coming from a surgical theater. He wore red scrubs that were dark in places from fresh blood and was pulling off surgical gloves. "He's just trying to do his job, and if you hurt him we will have to hire another doctor to replace him."

  The doctor was nearly shaking with fear and trying to find the nearest exit. After moment he nodded toward the ICU and got out of the way.

  "Pip," Minu said, "now!"

  "Right this way," he said, casually tossing the gloves in a nearly overflowing receptacle and walking into the ICU. He stopped just through the door and put on a mask, handing them out to all the others. "Put it on or you're not seeing him, and I don't care if you break both my arms and legs. If you want to give him any chance at survival you will follow basic hospital protocol." She put the mask on without protest.

  The procession moved down the line of ICU beds, each shielded by a retractable moliplas barrier and self-contained filtering environment. Minu was acutely aware that each bed held a Chosen fighting for their life. They stopped at the end and Dr. Tasker turned to face her. "Have they told you his condition?"

  "No," she said and gave her friends an accusatorial glare.

  "Pip was shot through the head by one of their flechette darts. They're hard enough on bone, but they're hell on soft tissue. The dart hit him just above the right occipital ridge and entered through the eye socket. The dart fragmented, the plastic doing some widespread , incidental damage to his frontal lobe. We won't know the extent of that until the brain swelling has gone down enough to do a good scan. What we're most worried about is the motor cortex and the amygdala."

  "Go on," Minu said, sounding much calmer than she felt.

  "The largest fraction of the dart cut sideways through the Broca's area of his motor cortex. This is the area that controls speech. It was effectively destroyed. The amygdala was also hurt, but we aren't certain of the effects there. It seems to be sending out waves of neural lighting storms to the rest of his brain. I can't conjecture what that will cause. He may not ever be able to regain consciousness."

  "Can't you fix him?"

  "It isn't that easy."

  "With all the Concordia technology out there?" She held up her three fingered cybernetic hand a centimeter from his face. "You're telling me there is nothing possible?"

  "I'm telling you that we're babies on the block here. I'm telling you that there might be a thousand things we can do, the technology has not been adapted for our use! The network has all kinds of devices for use on brain injuries, we have no idea what they might do on human physiology. We give him time to heal from the wounds, and we can start working on it. If we start just slapping alien tech into his brain with no idea of the ramification, then death might seem like the lesser of two evils."

  "I understand," she said and put her arm down. "Can I see him?"

  "You have to realize he's in a coma. We just aren't even sure he's in there anymore. The noise his motor cortex is putting out is making a brain scan hard to read."

  "I know, but I want to see him."

  "Okay, keep the mask on." He touched a control and an opening in the moliplas barrier appeared. She stepped in and saw her friend wasn't alone. A girl sat on the far side of th bed, relatively short and a little overweight, her face wet with tears. Though she'd never met her, Minu knew that must be Pip's girlfriend from Chelan, Cynthia. She glanced up at Minu, nodding sightly and sniffing. Minu returned the nod and looked at Pip.

  Bandages covered his face, right eye and head, his leg was elevated where a bone healing cast was now installed to repair the ankle. Dozens of machines were attached via leads or had little antenna pointed at him to monitor body functions. A tube led from the left side of his head. Occasionally the tube would twitch and she could hear a machine hum. A few drops of dark blood would ooze down the tube.

  "Oh, Pip," she said and moved next to the head of bed. The others came in but stayed by the end of the bed. Every few seconds his chest would rise and fall, a monitor beeped each time he breathed and his heartbeat. She took his hand in her living hand and squeezed gently. There was no response. She leaned over next to his head and whispered in his ear. "I love you, Pip, I'm so sorry." The devices continued to beep and he continued to breath with no change. She didn't cry, it didn't feel like anything was left in her to cry with. After a few minutes she turned to leave.

  “He'd be glad you came,” Cynthia said.

  Minu stopped but didn't turn. She couldn't face the girl, not now. “I'm sorry,” she said simply then left the ward.

  "We need to look at that leg," Dr. Tasker said outside. She nodded and spent the rest of the afternoon woodenly allowing them to operate on the injured muscle. She was under local anesthetic and watched with some interest as her muscles were cut apart and put back together. A machine that would stimulate her body to grow replacement muscle and skin was sewn in and the whole thing enclosed in a short cast. Her leg looked unusual under her uniform, but not freakishly so.

  "Thanks," she said as she got up to leave.

  "We'll do everything we can for Pip," Dr. Tasker told her at the door.

  "I've said my goodbyes," she said and left.

  "You
going to be okay?" Aaron asked in the hallway. Gregg and Dram also stood nearby.

  "No," she said and headed for the stairs. Down in her billet she crawled into her bed and turned the lights off. Here it was like nothing had happened. More than two hundred Chosen weren't dead along with twenty five hundred civilians. Her best friend wasn't lying in a room with chunks missing from his brain, waiting to die while machines stubbornly kept his body alive against its will. She'd almost used her cybernetic arm to destroy those machines, almost. It would not have taken a great deal of effort. Something stopped her. Maybe it was because a chance still existed, even a small chance, Pip would come back to her, and he'd want a fighting chance. She'd had enough human biology in school to know that even if they woke him up, he wouldn't be Pip again. The gentle little man who'd wanted to be her first lover, who's intellect was only exceeded by his heart. A less then physically capable man who'd beat the odds to become Chosen, that man was the last lingering casualty of the vendetta, too stubborn to die.

  "Tomorrow is another day," she said and drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter 12

  Julast 24th, 518 AE

  Basic Billets, Chosen Headquarters, Steven’s Pass

  Nobody bothered Minu for days. She woke up at one point, went and got food, returned to her billet, ate, used the bathroom, and went back to sleep. She didn't know how many times she repeated that ritual. The sleep was mostly dreamless, aided by the medical pack on her leg. Along with drugs to stimulate growth of new muscle, it also trickled a minor anesthetic into her bloodstream. Occasionally she would see images of friends living, dead, and not quite dead. Finally she woke up with a start.

  "Who's there?" she asked the darkened room. Only the quiet humming of the air circulation system answered her. Of course she was alone, but what had she heard? The unmistakable after image in her brain of an incredibly familiar voice speaking one word. "Sapphire."

  "Sapphire..." she said, feeling how the word ran across her tongue. Just saying it made her brain itch. Obviously she knew it was a gemstone, the most valuable on Bellatrix. Once, a long time ago on earth, diamonds were the most valuable stones, on Bellatrix they were common, and the sapphires were rare.

  "This belonged to the matriarch of our family," she heard a distant memory in her mind.

  In a flash she was up and digging under her bed, boxes of family pictures and other things skidding across the floor. Most of the things from her dead family was still stored in the basement of the Chosen Tower back in Tranquility. She'd only taken a few keep sakes. There, at the bottom of a box full of childhood art from school, she found a dusty wooden box. The box was made in the Penninsula Tribe territory, the people who still lived the most simplest lives on Bellatrix. Inside, her fingers shaking as she lifted the lid, was a necklace. In the old worn green setting, a single large sapphire so dark blue it was almost black.

  She suddenly remembered, sitting on the dock outside their family cabin in the woods miles from Tranquility. She was five and her father was giving her something very important. "This," he said taking the necklace from the box, "belonged to the matriarch of our family, Mindy Harper." They'd gone there many times, it was where her mother and father fell in love. That time when she was five was the earliest visit she could remember. Her mother knew the importance of that necklace and was careful to be sure her daughter only wore it while home, and then secured it away for safe keeping. Minu had been so enamored with the necklace that it became her father’s pet name for her. Sapphire. He presented it to her formally at her graduation from the Keepers Academy, a statement of her adulthood that it no longer needed to be guarded by an adult. She'd kept it in her bedroom and taken it from all the other possessions back in storage without really thinking about it.

  Minu unhooked the clasp and put on the necklace. As a five year old the chain was long enough to hang down between her nonexistent breasts, now it was more like a choker, the mounting holding the heavy sapphire hung down in the hollow of her her throat. The necklace was a delicate serpentine gold, she made a mental note to replace it with something more robust. "Sapphire, sapphire," she said over and over. The voice that spoke in her dream wasn't her father. This voice possessed an inhuman quality.

  She got up and stripped before climbing into the shower, turning the spray as hot as it would go. The water eased the tense muscles in her neck and body and cleared her mind. Finishing in the shower she dried and went to sit naked on her bed, legs crossed and mind deep in thought. After a minute she reached over to her desk and snagged the closest tablet. Not even understanding why she stood and opened the tiny secure safe in her room and removed a little metal case. From the case came a computer chip she'd only used once. Sitting back on the bed the chip loaded and the encryption program came alive requesting it's frustrating password. "I'm pretty sure its eight letters," Pip had told her, "even if we use known words and names that's thousands of possibilities. And the danger still exists that there are only a limited number of attempts allowed." With trembling fingers she entered "SAPPHIRE". An instant later the chips file directories opened to her for the first time. “Dad!” she sobbed, tears falling onto the waterproof keyboard.

  Minu scanned the file list while trying to control the trembling in her hands. She tried the first file and found it encrypted. "Damn," she said. There were hundreds of main files with thousands of sub files. Many showed names with corresponding dates, others simple words, and still others planet names and designations. It was the files with dates that got her thinking. "This is his personal diary," she realized. During training they were all been encouraged to keep a log or diary, a practice initiated by her father years ago. There was so much, where to start? It made sense that a key was hidden somewhere, a final level of security? But where? There, amidst the files, one was titled "Start Here!" Minu laughed and wiped away tears, that was her father, through and through! She opened the file and found a series of nestled text files numbered one to five. Naturally she opened number one.

  "Minu, my daughter, my Sapphire. I am sorry you are reading this, because it probably means I am dead." The tears were there again, but this time she kept them at bay. "However don't write me off just yet. I have a high degree of confidence that only you could be reading this, but also knowing the level of sophistication of Concordia programming, it isn't a one hundred percent certainty. There is a level two cypher that will allow you access to all these files, the contents of many will leave you stunned, amazed, and more than a little outraged. I am sorry for this level of paranoia, it comes with the job. Go to where you found the necklace, and we'll take the next step together." She tried the other four files, they were all encrypted. Obviously it was now some sort of treasure hunt.

  Minu almost returned to the apartment in Tranquility. “I'm being too literal, “she said in her dark billet as she dressed. Dad would never have known she would find it again in storage after he was declared dead. She'd stopped by earlier that night and spoke to Pip for a few minutes, telling him she loved him and kissing his cheek. Cynthia was there, her head on his bed and snoring lightly. She promised herself to come back and see him as often as possible.

  As she was climbing into her aerocar, an overnight bag tossed into the passenger seat, a deep voice spoke nearby. "Not running away, are you?"

  "No, Dram, I'm not running away." I'm quitting, was the words in the back of her mind. Just like that act of destroying the life support in Pip's hospital room, something kept her from speaking the words out loud.

  He strode up next to her, standing by the cars open door and looked past her at the bag. "Sure looks like it."

  "I'll be back," she said without much conviction, “I just need some time.”

  "Okay, when? We have to make plans and you've set some changes in motion, albeit accidentally, that I would like you to follow through to the end. At least maybe help guide the course once it's set."

  "I'm in no position to lead anyone just now."

  "I know you're torn up inside."


  "Do you really? I lost my entire team except for one civilian, the only one with the common sense to run before the fighting started."

  "You think you're the only one who lost?" he suddenly yelled. "Over two hundred Chosen are dead, and I knew the names of each and every one of them. Every, god damned, one, of, them.” He smacked a huge fist into his other hand to emphasize each work. “Forty were from my Trials group. People I've called friends for longer than you've been alive! Should you feel bad? Sure. Maybe you think you should feel like shit, but I don' t know why you would. Without your invention, the ingenuity to carry it through, and on the spot thinking to implement it in the face of insurmountable obstacles, we would have lost this world to the Rasa. The fighting is over, that was the easy part. The hard part will be surviving. We heal the wounded, bury and mourn the dead, then go on."

  "You make it sound so easy."

  "I never said it was easy, I'm just saying it's necessary. The whole of humanity is depending on us, and you." She heaved a great sigh and fell into the cars seat. "So tell me when you'll be back."

  "It isn't that easy."

  "Sure it is. Take a week, take a month, take two, just set a date so I can tell the council.”

  “The Chosen council cares that much for a young four star?”

  “Yes.”

  "Okay, I'll be back in two weeks," she said, not knowing where the number came from.

  "We'll be expecting you, Chosen Alma."

  The aerocar circled the cabin twice until she found a place to set down. The land around the cabin was only a few dozen meters in each direction before precipitously sloping down toward the water. The small lake where the tiny island lay was surrounded by arboreal forest for many kilometers in all directions. The land surrounding the cabin was covered with thick undergrowth that held uncertain ground, and a few trees managing a foothold on the island further complicated her landing. Flipping the aerocar while trying to land would strand her out here, a good five hundred kilometers from the nearest sizable settlement. Finally deciding on a pile of lumber (what was once a barn?) she set down in the center of the debris. She crossed her fingers there was no basement as she disengaged the gravitic impellers. Several boards snapped with resounding pops and the car settled slightly. The landing spot held.