The Kepler Rescue

by James David Victor

  Jezebel Wen waited for the shape of her Gold Squad Specialist Commander to move out from the food hall before she followed. She was no thief or burglar, but the skills of a Yakuza executioner had a lot of crossover. She knew how to move silently, and she knew how to listen to her body in a way that kept her calm and focused. Little did either Jezebel or Solomon know that their aptitudes in this regard were very similar. Both man and woman had settled into a self-awareness of their own breathing, the push and pull of their muscles, as well as a heightened sense of any possible threat. Would a piece of their suit snag as they walked past that wall? Where were the blindside entrances and exits around them?

  But whereas Solomon’s mind had been washed with the anxieties of a thief, Jezebel Wen’s mind was clean. That was where her previous training had been far, far different than Solomon’s.

  She had started with the Yakuza at a fairly young age—a not-so-tender nineteen years old. She was already the head of a notorious neo-punk girl gang that ran the Tokyo streets.

  That was how she had come to the attention of the Yakuza, and her choice had been simple—join or be punished.

  It had been no choice, really.

  But of the many perks of her new family, one of them had been the rigorous and vigorous training that she had received both physically and mentally. The Yakuza prided themselves that they not only turned out excellent killers, but that they also taught their family members how to think.

  And so, with the aid of many years of meditation and concentration exercises, Jezebel’s mind was now a calm, still pond as she ghosted through the food hall after Cready. To peer around the door just as he disappeared into the medical lounge.

  Damn. A small disturbance in that clear pond of her mind. Cready must have found a way to fool the restricted area sensors, she thought as the ripples of her agitation settled once more into tranquillity.

  Well, tranquil and deadly, anyway…

  Solomon turned on one heel to swing his body to the side of the nearest window, breathing. He waited first for any signs or sounds of surprise, or any movement from the white-coated scientists inside. None. Then he waited a little more, in case one of the scientists was having second thoughts about whether they really did see a sedated adjunct-Marine out of their bunks.

  No one did.

  The problem was that there were also windows on the other side of the wide corridor. Even though Solomon couldn’t see anyone in them, he could see the ghost-like reflection of himself pressed against the wall in them.

  Solomon’s eyes tracked the reflective glass until he found the blindspot that he had been looking for. That was another thing that he had learned from his criminal activities. Windows and mirrors are a pain, but people get used to looking at them. They get lazy and stop looking at any of the places that aren’t reflected. Solomon lowered himself to the floor and crab-crawled along the very middle of the corridor, underneath the level where the windows met the metal walls, and out of sight.

  It was slow going, but he crawled all of the way to the end of the corridor to Doctor Palinov’s private medical suite, and he eased himself up to peer out of the lower corner, inside.

  She wasn’t there. Good.

  Whisk! Another wave of the good doctor’s ID card, and the door opened. He rolled inside as the door clicked behind him.

  Now, time to get to work…

  It took Solomon a couple of tries before he had mimicked the hand movement that turned Palinov’s window dark. I don’t want any chance staffer peering in and seeing what I’m up to, he thought as a line of darker and darker gray and then eventual black shimmered down through the glass.

  Next, it was to the cabinets that held the ‘unique antibiotic cultures’ that the doctor had injected him with. He took the first few he saw, before hunting for his own, and moving to the desk to fire up the medical scanner.

  Solomon had never used one of these machines before. It looked a little like a three-dimensional printer, crossed with a holographic generator with its bright white bed underneath two arching sensor arms. He had seen various medical staff using one before.

  He set first one test tube on the bright bed and hunted for a ‘scan’ command—which turned out to be just a small green triangle—and hit it.

  The bright underlit bed flashed once, twice, and a third time before the two robotic arms started to whirr and wind lower over the test tube, seeming to detect where it was on the bed. Tiny LED lights flashed on at the tips of the metal pointer-arms, and Solomon saw a haze of golden light flare into the test tube. He leaned back, half-expecting the thing to shatter from the apparent laser beam. This medical scanner, however, was far more sophisticated than a mere point-and-shoot laser, and he watched as the twin beams of laser light diffused into a broad glow, and then recalibrated until he was looking at two thin beams of shimmering reddish-gold light, penetrating the tube.

  The nearest screen suddenly flared to life and started displaying the results.

  COMPOSITION:

  Poly-crystallite: 70%

  Organic Rubber: 5%

  Liquid Solution: 25%

  …

  ANALYSIS:

  Poly-Crystallite… Widespread manufacture. Industry standard 4.3mm thick. Medical apparatus. CONCLUSION: Test tube.

  Organic Rubber… Widespread processing. Heat resistant to 200degC. CONCLUSION: Cork.

  Liquid Solution… PROCESSING… PROCESSING…PROCESSING…

  H2O solution (base carrier).

  Antibiotics – Cefitibrole, Valacin.

  Vitamins – Thiamin, Niacin, Arginine.

  Amino Complex – Creatine.

  Minerals – Potassium, Phosphorous, Magnesium.

  DNA Complex-strand variant 21.

  “What?” Solomon frowned at the last element contained within the test tube. “What the frack is a DNA Complex-strand variant 21?” He could almost understand all of the others. Just as the doctor had said, the solutions appeared to be a mixture of minerals and nutrients and antibiotics designed to keep all of the adjuncts at peak physical performance.

  But she didn’t mention anything about that last one, Solomon thought.

  “Hmm…” He flicked through the screen into the medical database so he could run a search for this ‘DNA Complex-strand 21’ while he powered down the machine and ran the next test tube.

  COMPOSITION…

  ANALYSIS…

  PROCESSING… PROCESSSING…

  It turned out that each one was almost exactly the same except for the percentages of nutrients, minerals, and the exact quantities of the antibiotics. Palinov hadn’t been joking, apparently, when she had been talking about how each of these cultures were specifically tailored to each person.

  The one thing that remained absolutely constant throughout each and every test tube that he checked was this ‘DNA Complex-strand 21’ thing. The amount that had been given to every adjunct-Marine was always, precisely, to the microgram, exactly the same.

  Solomon came to the last test tube—his own—and paused for a moment before he put it on the medical scanner bed and ran the test. A part of him didn’t really want to know, but he knew that he had to. He had come this far, and there was every reason to believe that his results would be exactly the same as everyone else’s.

  He hoped, anyway.

  ENTRY: “DNA Complex-strand variant 21”

  SOURCE: CMC Medical Database v5.1

  Last Updated: 9 days ago.

  OVERVIEW:

  The Complex-strand variant 21 is a synthetic chain of DNA, able to be gene-edited and shaped to attach to specific parts of the host’s own genetic structure. Unfortunately, as any mammalian genetic structure is encoded throughout the body (in each individual cell), multiple and some might say excessive doses of said variant 21 have to be administered to get a full-spectrum coverage. Discontinued in 2183, for this reason, and for the Confederate Health Investigation Report 781, which claimed that such genetic-editing was tantamount to ‘a crime against the species of h
umanity’.

  ORIGINATOR:

  American Confederacy, Virginia.

  USES:

  Discontinued, but has led to the development of more site-specific gene-editing complex strands. Variant 21 was used as a means to increase metabolic rates, auto-immune functions, cell regeneration, and neurological development, as well as enhance general mammalian healing and recovery properties. Deemed too expensive to be of use and was taken off of public licensing database.

  SIDE EFFECTS:

  Brain seizures. Fits. Convulsions. Auto-immune system collapse. Neurological disorders (paralysis, fatigue, migraines). Death.

  PROPIETOR:

  Neuro-Tech Biofirm (originally); rights since bought by Confederate Marine Corps (current).

  DEVELOPMENT:

  Variant 21 has shown to produce astounding performance results in higher mammalian species, but has lacked the ability to maintain said higher results over time as the synthetic gene strands break down. Possible avenues of development have seen this lifespan of the effects spread for longer periods of time, but nothing longer than 12 years has been reported.

  Continual administering has been the favored route of action, during which time individuals naturally plateau at their new levels of peak performance. Possible avenues of development include ways in how to administer smaller doses to have more permanent effects.

  “Twelve years, eh?” Solomon frowned at the screen. Which was funny, because that was precisely the amount of time that the Outcasts were given as their military sentence. At which time they would be more or less free to return to civilian life, with their criminal records, if not expunged, then at least obscured a good bit.

  The Confederacy had bought the rights to this experimental gene therapy drug. Solomon’s mind, honed and trained through years of working out complicated cons and now working out battle strategies, put the pieces together.

  And then they created the Outcasts… Which were an experimental Marine outfit made entirely out of ex-convicts and attached to the Rapid Response Fleet of the Marine Corps. The unit who had to bust in first and do all of the dirtiest, messiest fighting in the name of Earth.

  Who better than a bunch of life-long criminals that Earth has already exiled to use as guinea-pigs for their experimental, illegal drug? Solomon saw. It made sense to use people that no one else cared about, right?

  We get twelve years of being superhuman, Solomon realized. Superhuman in the name of Confederate Earth, that is, he corrected. And then when the drug started wearing off and their bodies gave up and returned to whatever shabby state that they had been before, that was when they got retired from the program.

  And then what happens? If he was a betting man—which he wasn’t, at least, not with money anyway, only with his life—then he would say that one of the reasons why Warden Coates was pushing them so hard was to prove results from this Serum 21 to his paymasters further up the paygrades. If he could show that Serum 21 worked, then why not fund more development into it to make the results permanent? Or administer it to every Marine in the Confederate Corps?

  Or maybe they’ll just pick up another batch of exiled cons set for Titan. Solomon thought that was a much more likely scenario. Why bother creating permanent superhumans, who one day would leave the service and could get in to all sorts of mischief out there, when you could just simply have any number of convict super soldiers for your little army?

  The idea was pretty genius really, Solomon thought. He was annoyed that he hadn’t realized it earlier!

  “But I’m not liking that list of side effects,” he muttered at the screen, as the scanner reached the end of its cycle on his own test tube.

  “Paralysis. Fits. Brain seizures. Death,” Solomon sighed. He wondered if there was a way that he could stop eating the protein gunk. How many Outcast adjuncts had they already lost so far? Ten? Twelve? And not all of them had been busted out to Titan, either, he knew. Word was going around the bunks that some of those empty bunks had been the result of their occupiers being ill.

  Had been having some sort of seizure, in fact… he thought with a fair bit of dread. Would he be next? Would one of his squad just never wake up?

  The screen above him flashed as the readout of his own, uniquely-administered Serum 21 test tube appeared. He read through the exact same facts and names just as before, finding small differences in the amount of potassium or B-vitamin or antibiotic that the doctor thought his body needed.

  And then he coughed out loud, and suddenly felt faint.

  There was one huge difference in his own test tube results. Something that was different from each of the previous three other adjunct test tunes that he had seen. Their percentage levels of ‘DNA Complex-strand variant 21’ had been imperceptibly small. And always the exact same number: 2.3%.

  A solution of 2.3% concentration of the gene-editing strand in each of the test tubes, all apart from his.

  His stood at 48%.

  “What!?” Solomon gasped as he looked at the screen. Surely there must have been a mistake. He read the numbers again, then scrolled back up to see that yes, the previous concentrations of the drug had all been exactly the same, apart from him.

  He was sorely tempted to start going though each and every adjunct-Marine test tube that he had in the cupboard behind him to see if he was the only one, but he could feel, deep down in his gut, that he already knew the answer.

  Doctor Palinov had been the one to defend my actions to the colonels, when they were arguing about whether to dismiss me and send me to the Titan prison camp. Solomon’s heart was starting to race. Was this what a seizure felt like as it started?

  She must have known. She must have administered the high dose to him, after all. And she had argued to keep him here on Ganymede, under her watchful supervision so…what? So she would get a pet experiment to play with? Did she want to see how far she could push the drug? What would happen if she completely went beyond all safe limits?

  Other Outcasts have already started dying thanks to this serum, Solomon thought darkly. Had they been on the 2.3% dose, or the same as him, the higher 48%?

  He was busy having his own personal panic attack when the next thought hit him. Why am I not dead yet?

  And a moment later, he heard the distant, muffled sound of footsteps coming down the hall.

  “Frack!” He seized the test tubes, punched the computer off, and stuffed the tubes back into their cupboard as the footsteps got closer and closer. They weren’t pausing or halting beside one of the other medical laboratories. With a sickening feeling, he realized that whomever it was, they were coming right to him.

  It has to be Palinov, he thought. Could he reason with her? Stop her from reporting him?

  All hope failed in that eventuality, as Solomon could hear, muffled through the dark window, the angered tones of Warden Coates himself.

  “…still don’t know why you couldn’t schedule the meeting for the morning, Doctor…” Coates sounded annoyed and tired.

  Great, Solomon thought dourly, his eyes scanning around for somewhere—anywhere—to hide in this small room. The last thing he wanted was a grumpy Warden Coates in charge of his electro-shock command unit. It was bad enough when he was in a good mood.

  There. The other side of the desk was half-walled with a line of metal container boxes, boxing off one corner of the room. So long as the warden and the doctor didn’t decide to do any furniture arranging during this meeting of theirs. He dove for the other side of the metal crates and wedged himself as small as he could against the corner of the wall, wishing that his heart wasn’t about ready to punch its way out of his chest.

  “Strange, I don’t remember shading the windows last night…” the hiding Solomon heard Palinov mutter. “I must have been exhausted.”

  “I hope this doesn’t mean that your work has been suffering, if you are allowing yourself to get exhausted all the time!” Warden Coates snapped at her in his usual snide voice.

  He really isn’t a happy bunny
when he’s missed his beauty sleep, is he? Solomon thought.

  “Of course not, Warden,” Palinov’s voice floated over the metal medical crates as they walked into the room, and the door whisked shut behind them. She did sound tired, but more exasperated with the warden. Solomon could almost feel a sort of pity for someone in her position, having to work with such a nasty little man as Warden Coates But then again, she was the person who was experimenting on him and putting him in danger of imminent death at any moment of the day, so he wasn’t that sorry for her.

  “Anyway. What is this all about?” the warden snapped.

  Solomon heard their boots slapping forward into the room, and then scrape to a stop abruptly. He hadn’t turned the scanner off! The thought speared through him. Would she notice?

  She did.

  “Too many late nights,” he heard her mutter as lighter, softer feet moved swiftly to the other side of the desk, uncomfortably close to his hiding place. There was the diffusing hum of the medical scanner as Solomon presumed that Palinov had turned it off. There was an impatient sigh from behind her, and Solomon found himself thinking that it was almost encouraging to find that the warden was a complete prick to everyone he worked with and not just him.

  “Well, you know the general told us to report back to him on the development of Serum 21,” Palinov said, her voice sounding tense.

  Solomon’s ears pricked up. I knew it!

  “Well, I just got the latest analysis through to my personal screen this morning, which is why I brought you down here. The results are…significant.”

  “Explain,” Warden Coates said.

  “Here, I can show you.” There was a flurry of tapping and typing, and the soft electric hum of one of the screens firing up. “You see, here…?”