“Midshipman,” Rami warned, stepping round his bed. “He must be allowed to rest.”
“Oh drop the act, Anita,” Dana grumbled. “The bastard survived, didn’t he? Though he might not wish he did when I’m through with him.”
“What happened?” Hugo croaked again, rubbing at his chest that burned and ached.
“You got yourself shot is what happened,” Dana said, stepping around Rami to loom over him, arms folded. She tried to sound angry but her eyes were large and her voice was thick. “I thought you were a goner for sure, you reckless idiot.”
“Shot?” Hugo blinked. His chest heaved and he remembered staring at Paragon’s wide eyes and the smell of burning somewhere and Dana calling his name. “I…what…where’s Webb?”
“He’s getting too agitated,” Rami said to the room at large. “I think you should all come back later.”
“No,” he mumbled, lifting heavy arms to try and push away the mask that Rami was trying to press on his face. “No, tell me.”
Dana and Giles exchanged glances as Rami looked at them both.
“Kale, we got Ariel,” Dana said, a small smile reaching her face.
Hugo blinked. “We did?”
Dana nodded, smile widening.
“How?”
“Haven turned him over,” Dana said. “They spared us on the condition we take down all the Orbit connections him and the Ghosts had with the colony.”
“He’s in the lowest level of secure lock-up under Headquarters,” Giles said. “Along with his friends. They’re all falling over each other to try and squeal on the others in exchange for clemency. The Analysts are having a field day. Unofficially, that is, as they were apprehended under, well, less than official circumstances.”
Hugo felt something shudder out of him. He closed his eyes and floated on the relief that was so tangible it was like the blood in his veins. It was like a thorn had been removed or an ache suddenly eased. Tightness disappeared from his chest and he breathed more easily than he’d remember doing in a long time.
“We should let him sleep,” Giles murmured.
“Wait,” Hugo said, looking at his sister. “Dana, tell me where Webb is.”
Dana’s face fell. Whatever it was that had haunted the back of her eyes now was written all over her face.
“Where is he, Dana?”
She took a breath, glanced at the others in the room for guidance but they looked back at her helplessly. Hugo felt cold build inside him.
“He’s ok,” Dana said. “As far as I know, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
Dana shut her eyes and let out a breath. “He’s with Yoshida.”
“What?” Hugo’s voice cracked. “Why?”
“They made a deal,” Dana said, face hardening.
“What deal?”
Dana’s jaw worked. Anger built in her eyes but he didn’t think it was at him. Her gaze slid out the window and she started to explain in short sentences and clipped words. Hugo listened. The cold that had settled into him turn to heat. The thumping ache in his chest increased. He tried to swallow but his throat was too tight.
“Ok, enough for now,” Rami said firmly after Dana had finished. “I’m putting him back under.”
“Mother’s nearly here,” Giles started but Rami cut him off.
“Well the Special Commander can just wait.”
Hugo didn’t protest when Rami brought a syringe over to the joint in his IV line. He couldn’t move or think. He blinked at the white ceiling and all he could think of was the alien feeling of the cloned organ in his chest. Even when the voices around him faded away and the whiteness melted to black in front of his eyes, he could still feel and hear it beating.
*
Time didn’t mean anything for Hugo in the days that followed. He found out later that he was in the hospital for weeks whilst Rami took time out from her unit to treat him with Yoshida’s drugs, though she never looked happy about it. But whenever he tried to ask her about what had happened to him or about the treatments, she evaded giving her opinion.
“It saved your life, there’s no question. But that’s all I’ll say.”
He hurt like he never had before, even with Rami’s careful pain management. It was like the very fabric of his body had been ripped to shreds. He passed in and out of consciousness according to Rami’s drug regime but it was a long time before he actually began to sleep normally.
His mother came to see him. So did his father. They were grim on the surface, rebuking him for taking matters into his own hands and operating against orders yet again, but they could not hide the pain and relief that flooded their faces in equal measure whenever they looked at him. None of them discussed his return to duty and Hugo found himself relieved knowing that the decision probably wasn’t his.
Dana was sent back to the Academy. She sat in his room holding his hand and staring at the wall the day before she left.
“God knows what strings Mother had to pull to get them to take me back,” she said. She made a show of being indignant, but Hugo could read her well enough now to tell she was also relieved.
She talked a lot in those seemingly endless days in the white room. All he had to do was sit and listen about what she thought about Rami’s treatments, Giles’s management decisions for Eclipse or their Mother’s dealings with her generals. She never stopped disagreeing, but her voice was soothing and, despite everything, she had an air of contentment over her now that he’d never known in her before.
But they never spoke about Webb and when the conversation steered toward him she went quiet and turned her face away.
By the time Rami finally agreed he could go home to continue his convalescence, it was Harvey that came to get him and that, for a long time, made him forget everything else. She took him back to their home, settled him in their bed and applied for a further leave of absence from Eclipse. She said it was to make sure he didn’t do anything else stupid.
Waking up in the night and having her curled against his back was enough to ensure he didn’t think about anything else for a long time.
Dana called on the video comm regularly to begin with. She told Harvey about how she’d placed top in Medic Science and Strategy and how she couldn’t wait to be sent out in the field and start sorting out the mess that was Service Procedure in the Lunar Strip. She talked to Hugo too, though they found they had less and less to say to each other.
“You’re just too alike,” Harvey said as she put away the scanning panel Rami had leant them to keep an eye on his vitals. “You always were. You stormed Haven together, but still have nothing to talk about. It’s because you think the same. About everything.”
As time went on, Dana’s calls became less frequent and on some level Hugo knew it was at least partly because every time she called, she was hoping he’d heard from Webb.
But he never had.
It took more time than he cared to consider before he was able to not think about his heartbeat. Rami told him it was psychological and unsurprising, considering. But in quiet moments, laid in bed at night, or when he started to build his strength up again in the Headquarters gym, he was sure it felt different. It felt…wrong.
Harvey told him to stop whining and to consider himself lucky, but when he looked at the scar in the bedroom mirror, he wondered what the cost had been.
Yoshida's shuttle-lab was never found. It wasn’t in the official commissioning specs for the Perseverance so, as far as the Service was concerned, it never existed. His attempts to engage Analysts fell on deaf ears and Harvey, intercepting some of his messages, scolded him to leave well alone.
“Webb made this deal to save your life,” she’d say as patiently as she could. “Whatever you think of it, you’re honour-bound to uphold your part.”
“I’m not withdrawing my ban,” Hugo replied, leaning on his stick to hobble out onto their balcony so he could breathe the fresh air. It usually calmed him. “There will be no more clones. No one will have t
o live through what he did. Or what I did. Not ever again.”
Harvey folded her arms and set her jaw. The breeze off the bay tugged at her curls and for a minute he just watched that, forgetting what he’d been angry about.
“There’s good to be done with this science,” she said, as she always did. “You’d do far better commissioning it officially and having proper restrictions and monitoring put in place than letting him scurry around in backwaters getting what work and funding he can to carry on.”
And that’s where the discussion would end. He knew she was right. He also knew that Rami and possibly even his mother thought the same way.
But try as he might, he couldn’t set aside the things he’d heard Webb say about himself or the image he had in his mind from Jazz’s description of finding him almost dead in an alley because of his inability to cope with what he was. But more often than those things, the image his imagination fed him was one of his friend strapped to a table at Yoshida’s mercy, sometimes dead, sometimes not, undergoing studies and testing he couldn’t bear to think about, all in the name of this research.
In his bitterest moments, alone in the apartment, staring at the wall, with his alien heart pushing the feelings around his veins, he wondered if it would have been best all round if Paragon had been a better shot, then he wouldn’t have to deal with any of this.
Then Harvey would come home and she’d smile at him or tell him off for brooding and the thought would melt away again and he would remember why he did it all.
Epilogue
Hugo’s breath was heaving and his muscles were burning by the time he crested the rise. He stood panting and revelled in the feel of the breeze cooling the sweat on his skin and the smell of the water and the trees. The towering shapes of Spacescrapers were grey against the horizon but the sounds of Sydney didn’t reach this far. There was only the breeze in the trees and the flurry of birdsong. The water of the secluded reservoir, achingly blue, took his breath away as always. The sky arched overhead in a clear and lighter colour, pure and cool, though the sun beat down fiercely and danced on the water below.
He sat on one of the boulders littering the cliff top and took a long moment just to sit and breathe the air.
“Well, isn’t this a turn up for the books?”
Hugo span, reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there but then his hand dropped and he gaped. A tall figure clad in a vest and shorts, tattoos on his arms and black hair pulled back into a tail, climbed up to the top of the rise and stood panting from the climb and grinning at him.
“Webb?”
Webb laughed, wiping sweat off his forehead. “Yes it’s me, Hugo. Well, you know. Me number two.”
Hugo shook his head in disbelief, found himself checking for Ariel’s scarring to be sure. “What…how?”
“Harvey said you’d gone out,” the clone replied, taking a step up to stand next to him and stare out over the lake. “She said you came here to exercise. I’ve been trying to catch you up for half an hour,” he turned, grin widening and slapped him on the arm. “Guess you’re doing good, huh?”
“And you?” Hugo said, taking in his friend’s confident stance and the increased muscle along his arms and shoulders. “You look…different. Are you really ok?”
Webb shrugged and looked away. “Yoshida never wanted to hurt me, Hugo,” he said, taking in Hugo’s look. “He fed me properly, exercised me, monitored me. He just wanted to see if I was, well…” he scratched his head. “Human, I suppose.”
“And?”
Webb laughed. “Afraid so. No immortality or super powers for me.” His smile, genuine and lacking any kind of edge, told Hugo that something had changed in his friend. “Thanks for my fee, by the way. I had a pretty luxurious trip back.”
“You spent it all on space passage?”
His smile widened. “And a new motorbike. Thank your mom for me.”
“Mother?”
“I’m assuming she authorised it?”
Hugo gave half a shrug. “Consider it recompense. So…Yoshida? He just…let you go?”
“I wasn’t a prisoner,” Webb said mildly.
“Then why haven’t we heard from you?” Hugo felt heat rush his face. “Not one lousy message, Webb.”
Webb raised his eyebrows. “He didn’t want me contacting anyone in case you came to find me. I had to stick to his rules, man. I owed him.”
Silence fell about them like a curtain. Webb searched his face. Hugo wasn’t sure what his friend found there but it clearly didn’t please him.
“I knew you’d be pissed about this whole thing,” Webb said. “But it’s not like I could really ask your opinion at the time, was it?”
Webb was standing with a straight back and folded arms, clearly ready for an argument, but Hugo felt everything evaporate from inside him. He flung his arms round his friend. They stumbled and Webb swore but then hugged him back.
“Steady now, Commodore,” he muttered. “I might think you’ve gone soft.”
“I’m just glad...glad it’s over.”
“Me too,” Webb said, pulling away and grinning. “And we got Ariel, didn’t we?”
Hugo looked back over the lake. “We did. But he won’t talk. The Analysts say he hasn’t said a single word about anything since being taken into custody. We’ve got information from the others, but Ariel’s been reclassified and transferred to a secure hospital.”
“I hope the medics have needles,” Webb muttered. “Big needles.”
“Me too,” Hugo said, earning another smile from his friend. “So…are you back? Back for good?”
“Afraid so, Commodore. Yoshida’s had all he needs from me.”
Hugo sniffed and coughed and looked away. “Have you contacted Dana?”
“I kinda did that first,” he said with a lopsided grin. “Hope that’s ok.”
Hugo took in his bashful expression, trying to figure out just what Webb was asking. “Yes,” Hugo aid. “Yes, that’s ok.”
Webb nodded, looking noticeably relieved. “Good,” he said, then rubbed his mouth and took a breath. “There’s one other thing. I’ve come here see…well, to ask…”
“Spit it out.”
“I’ve come to see if you’ll give me a job,” he said, looking like he was expecting Hugo to laugh.
“A job?”
Webb nodded. “Drifting…well. It’s not what it used to be.”
Hugo sat on the boulder again and stared out over the lake. He searched inside him for what to say then looked back up at his friend who was now looking a little concerned. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Why not?”
Hugo leant forward on his elbows and ran his hands through his hair. “Because I don’t know if I’m going back myself.”
“To the Service?”
Hugo nodded. Webb sighed and perched himself next to him on the boulder. “You once told me the Service wasn’t perfect, but it was the only chance the Orbit had. Do you still believe that?”
“I don’t know. It was all true, Webb,” he said, looking at his hands. “Everything I said to August when we landed on Haven. We’ve all bled for change that hasn’t happened.”
“Well it definitely won’t happen if you don’t go back and make it,” Webb said.
“I’m just one man.”
“But you’ve got an advantage this time.”
“And what’s that?”
Webb grinned again. “Me.”
Hugo couldn’t fight the smile. “I’m not sure. Your employment record is not exactly the best.”
Webb frowned. “I can get you references,” he said. “They’ll be fake, but I can get them.”
Hugo laughed for the first time in as long as he could remember. “It would be good to have someone on my side against the generals.”
“Well I don’t know about that. I’ve known you to have some pretty stupid ideas.”
“Not as stupid as some of yours.”
Webb frowned then smiled. “I take your point,”
he said, sighed then stood and stepped closer to the edge of the cliff and shaded his hands with his eyes and let out a breath. “You were right, you know. This place is amazing.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Hugo said stepping up to him. He pointed below to a small, sandy cove between the tree line and the water. “That’s where we’re getting married.”
Webb turned to him. “You?” Hugo nodded. “And Harvey?”
Hugo nodded again and couldn’t quite stop the smile from his face. “Two weeks.”
“She finally signed the deed then, huh? That’s brilliant, Hugo, that’s…” Webb heaved a sigh and shook his head. “It’s really brilliant.”
“You’ll have to come.”
“Try and stop me,” Webb grinned again, then his face fell. “No, wait. There’ll be a free bar, right?”
“Yes, why?”
“There’s no way I’m attending a social function with your mom without some Dutch courage on standby.”
“You’ll have to man up. She’s the one you’re going to have to ask for a job if you really want one,” Hugo said, fighting another smile.
Webb visibly blanched. “For real?”
“Webb, you’ve brought down torturers, terrorists and genocidal revolutionists. You’ll be fine.”
“If you say so.”
“If you get what you want,” Hugo mused, looking out over the view again. “She’ll be your boss, remember.”
Webb mumbled something incomprehensible. “I’ll manage if you’re there. I think.”
“Then anything’s possible.”
END
Acknowledgements
I know everyone always says this, but I really don’t know where to begin. So many wonderful people, friends, family, readers, convention attendees, gamers, Tweeters, bloggers, designers and other writers are all instrumental in helping me get this far, to the point where I’m actually seeing the release of my second novel. It’s a stone-cut truth that I wouldn’t be here without their unending support, encouragement, feedback and unwavering dedication to books, whether that be buying, reading, reviewing, collecting, supporting or designing.
Haven (The Orbit Series Book 2) Page 35