Julia Dream
Page 15
+04.00h. A dive in the black ink of a night without moon yet brilliant with stars – two moving shadows crossing the sky, meteors of darkness.
Dilated pupils in gray eyes calculate distances, movements and turns – yet the unquestionable curve of a smile animates Julia’s lips.
Beyond the difficulty of the task, the weight of X39 attached to her shoulders like a backpack, and the risks of a head-first dive in a war zone, there is the euphoria of flight.
Of the cold wind in her hair, of the feeling of constant acceleration, of the resilience of ionized lungs and reinforced skeleton.
-6, -4, -2 meters to impact – an electromagnetic slide slows the fall, which gracefully ends in a light forward roll, as X39 jumps off in this final phase of the landing.
F17 closes the flight with a flash of nostalgia on her still smiling face, and the sinking of her boots in the sands of occupied territory.
Their arrival at the base on the border had been followed by a chorus of surprised looks and relieved smiles – to the eyes of the soldiers of the outpost, flimsily holding up against the treachery of Province P, BioMec warriors had just dropped from the heavens to re-establish the natural order of things. Expectation was painted on every single one of their faces, excited beyond measure by the spectacular free-fall landing.
Julia was happy and grateful she didn’t have to bear the burden of the strategic management of the operation. X39’s orders for the following day were simple and clear – meet the loyal Imperials they had tracked with their airborne sensors and escort them out of the province.
But under the immense dome of the starry sky, F17 was tossing and turning, unable to sleep.
“X39… John…”
He answered immediately to her whisper, showing he was just as restless.
“I’m here.”
“We’re here to avoid an escalation of bloodshed, right?”
X39 nodded, barely visible in the starlight.
“Yes. I don’t have other orders, at least for the moment.”
Julia closed her eyes, relieved. And both lay in silence, avoiding to think of what would happen to Province Y once their mission was over.
The following morning F17 departed from the outpost lightheaded and with black war painting all over her face. X39 himself gave her a surprised stare, as if he were seeing her for the first time. She answered with eyes that were made even more stormy by the cosmetic black.
“Psychological warfare. I’m pretty good at it. Any excuse is good to instill fear in the enemy.”
She stressed the word “fear” – F17 was off to war and there was no compromising on her determination.
John silently nodded, as they walked towards the border until they vanished from sight in the reddish sand. Satellite recon showed movement of tanks and electrocarts not far from the spot, but from that distance the sand made it impossible to read the plates which would have qualified the vehicles as belonging to one side or the other – no one was communicating in order to keep their position secret.
X39 was counting the dunes, matching the scenery with the maps he had studied and what he had seen from the aerovehicle. According to his calculations, there was a precise path leading from province Y to the border and then the base, avoiding the steepest and most dangerous slopes.
They were now running on that trail, showing how John’s intuition had been correct since their boots were not sinking in the compact sand, allowing them to keep a constant speed. The sun was high in the sky when they finally reached what where looking for – deep tracks left by tanks, heading straight up to a convoy that was shimmering metallically at the end of a valley formed by a range of dunes.
X39 rapidly examined the plates on the vehicles with his electronic binoculars: friends.
F17 spins around abruptly, then the sudden buzz of a column of enemy electrocarts pursuing the convoy.
Julia breathes out.
“Go! I’ll keep them at bay and try to slow them down!”
And then X39 finds himself alone on the crest of the dune, briefly following Julia with wide eyes, before bolting towards the loyalist tanks.
F17 is running zig-zag, intercepting the enemy - and then she jumps in the valley, rolls back up, as bullets bounce off her magnetic shields, shimmering ovals following every single movement. The shields shiver and produce a gong-like sound when hit, but do not falter.
200, 100 steps to get close enough to attack. F17 stops for a moment in front of the enemy line to throw two objects at the advancing tank. Without looking back, she turns on her tracks to run back and meet the friendly transport as it gains distance.
She doesn’t turn around as a flash grenade and a fire grenade explode in rapid succession, as she leaps forward to skip slopes.
Legs sink in the sand, while breathing becomes shallow and rattling, the convoy now only a speck on the horizon – she pauses for a moment with her head bowed, the time needed to activate auxiliary adrenaline.
A she sprints forward the distance to her goal diminishes, the enemy now limping behind her – 5, 7, 10, 20 breaths to measure the distance to salvation, and then John’s extended hand, pulling her up on the last tank of the line.
The time for a smile – then blackout.
X39 had been able to follow the operation from a distance, leveraging the time provided by F17’s sabotage on the enemy lines, his binoculars set on Julia’s leaps and strides. While the head of the convoy hurried to the border, the rearguard was lingering to cover F17’s retreat, with him screaming on the videophone for airborne support.
All had gone according to the plans – until he saw Julia’s face. Insanely white, even considering the effort, the black war paint smudged by streaks of sweat and with spirited eyes where a dilated pupil was all but hiding the iris. John barely had the time to help her up to the electrocart, when the girl suddenly lost consciousness.
X39 sat down to hold her head up, with his melancholy smile taking the hues of a more immediate concern.
XIV
Dizziness and blurry, fleeting visions of swirling faces and white ceilings. The warm grip of someone holding the inert fingers of her left hand. A barely expressed thought.
“Did they hit me?”
The hand, and the answering voice, is John’s.
“No. Relax, you only have to rest.”
The world and the environment shrink to an endless feverish shiver, a trembling at the borders of awareness, darkness and broken delirious images.
John’s hand, stubbornly squeezing hers, constant guide in the confused whirlwind of disconnected perception.
The echo of distant voices, heavy eyelids which prevent her from watching.
“X39, you’re wasting your time. It’s a battle she must fight on her own.”
“Be careful of what you say, doctor. She can hear us.”
“I don’t see how you could make this statement, there is nothing indicat-“
“I remember it.”
The physician fled from the room with a surprised and guilty stare.
Julia’s mind had recorded the conversation without understanding it. Her body had stopped shaking, but was struck now and then by violent muscular cramps – her hair and clothes were damp with cold sweat.
John could do nothing but observe, powerless, these crises and the delirious moments when the high fever had the girl either curling up in tears or screaming in rage against the entire Empire, his expressive eyes fleeting from pain to concern to shame at the feeling that he was perhaps somehow violating the privacy of the partner he was watching over.
48 hours of darkness, then the fever had started to go down.
+52 hours. Julia’s hand responds to the grip, and John suddenly opens his eyes, shaking off sleep in a moment, his gaze lit up by a thousand repressed emotions.
A gray and sober eye highlights the request, formulated in a hoarse voice.
“H2O.”
“X39.”
Julia was aware enough not to call him with his true name. She had pulled up from the stretcher with her shoulders, to lean her back and her head against the wall behind her. Her glazed eyes still shone in her pale face.
She was staring at him with an almost disquieting intensity, as if hoping to gain answers by simply studying his looks.
He moved closer, once again at her side. He had retreated to rest only when she had started to regain consciousness.
Julia graced him with a rare performance and smiled.
“You were with me all the time. I know, I could feel you. Thank you.”
John simply squeezed her fingers.
“What happened to me? I wasn’t wounded.”
X39 closed his eyes.
“Do you want to hear it now?”
Her voice was soft but determined.
“I want to know everything now.”
John sighed and bowed his head.
“All BioMec units suffer from a similar fever when they encounter a pathogen for the first time. It’s because of the adjustment of the nanomachines to the body’s natural defenses.”
John looked up, staring at her with liquid eyes.
“Only 7% survives.”
Julia closed her eyes, her lips white and tight.
He squeezed her hand tighter.
“But you’re not in danger anymore. It won’t happen again. That is how it was for me.”
She opened her eyes, breathing out.
“I imagined there was a price to pay. How do they choose their candidates for this death sentence?”
“Personalities they can’t decipher.”
“So sending me to Rossis was a test? I guessed I failed it.”
“No. You would have failed had you let the past determine the present. They would have found a way to get rid of you, deeming you unreliable. Had you given the answer they expected to hear, they would probably have reserved you a standard career path.”
John’s eyes shone suddenly.
“But your answer must have shown personality, a personality they decided to place a bet on despite the consequences you would have to pay, branding you as an interesting hothead that can be a good investment, yet not a great loss.”
Julia gave in to a bitter smile at this definition. She observed the young man at her side with tenderness and sadness.
“And what did you do to deserve this?”
“I spoke to you that day, in that base.”
It was her turn to lower her eyes and squeeze his hand. She wanted to say something, but he interrupted before she could speak.
“… I wanted to talk to you about this risk you were running, but I couldn’t. My orders were not to say anything, and they told me that revealing too much could actually lower your defenses.”
Julia shook her head.
“It doesn’t matter.”
John kept on speaking, his voice distant.
“They experiment, you know… to decrease the mortality rate.”
“I don’t doubt it. 3 months of surgery are expensive.”
At those words he answered with the shadow of an ironic smile, the only possible answer.
“We’ll be back to Province I as soon as your condition is stable enough to leave.”
Julia tried sitting up straight, flinching in pain at the reaction of her muscles, tight as if she had just been training or on the battlefield. She let herself fall back on the pillow.
“I fear I will need at least 24 hours. What about Province Y?”
X39 answered in his professionally detached voice.
“Mission accomplished. It appears that the Emperor himself has spoken against bombing the area, so the army is currently occupying and cleansing the territory.”
“Julia!”
As she spoke through the videophone, the shadows under Cleo’s eyes and the unusual ruffled look of her curls were evident.
“Cleo!… I’m fine.”
“How did they wound you?”
The entire demeanor of F17 became a shade darker for a moment, piercing the videophone and any possible argumentation.
“We’ll talk about this in person. I’m coming home.”
F17 tottered on unstable legs up to the small room of the doctor on duty. She paused at the door for a moment, observing the receding hairline of the man sitting behind his desk, filling in reports and files.
A few seconds passed before the doctor finally became aware of her presence, startled by the silent and almost spectral figure standing in front of him. He nervously cleared his voice, pushing up an old pair of glassed on his nose.
“Unit F17, how can I help you?”
“What did you tell my sister?”
The man blanched at her tone. He quickly licked his lips before answering.
“I’m not aware of your familiar situation. I followed the protocol, informing the Ministry of a situation similar to a serious wound. It’s the standard we adopt considering the… low percentage of healing in cases like yours.”
Julia didn’t make any attempt to answer, provoking a hurried and embarrassed reprise.
“Event that has clearly filled everyone with joy…”
“What is going to grant me that I won’t get sick again?”
The doctor shook his head, suddenly at ease with a conversation which had finally entered his field of expertise.
“There is no similar risk. The nanomachines have learned how to coordinate the defenses during an infection. We’ve noted that your standard body temperature has been raised to approximately 37.5 degrees Celsius.”
XV
Sunset filled the hall with light, a crimson and orange fire veiled by the dark gray of the clouds. Lit up by this spectacle, the eyes of the girls were pools of bright color, barely shadowed by a pupil reduced to minimum terms.
Julia had turned to the window to avoid a room full of stares.
“Why are they looking at me like that?”
Cleo cocked her head sideways, with a slightly perplexed smile.
“They envy you, can’t you see it?”
“Envy what?”
“Well, in their noble eyes, you – and expendable warrior – have what they don’t have the courage to risk for: youth, power…”
“If they know this much, they know of the probability of success and the risks! They know I didn’t choose this knowingly.”
“Why should they care, now that you have gone through the worst and are now here, to be presented at the court of the Emperor?”
Julia looked down. When she started speaking again her voice was little more than a whisper.
“You don’t envy me, do you?”
Cleo moved closer to her, smiling sadly.
“Are you joking? No, I don’t. I know the price you pay every day. How the bonds holding you tighten, even as your power seemingly increases.”
F17 sighed, answering her sister’s gesture and words with a grateful look worth more than a thousand words.
That moment, they noticed Marcus was approaching. The Secretary appeared overjoyed.
“Ladies.”
He graced them with a small bow, focusing on Cleo.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, at last.”
Cleo’s face burned a different shade of pink, while she answered with an embarrassment that betrayed all of her surprise in being acknowledged.
“I’ve heard a lot about you as well, Secretary.”
Julia joined the conversation which was reaching an impasse, trying to relax. Yet from how she kept her back arched, her eyes half closed and from the way she kept fidgeting to tie her hair, all her anxiety and nervousness kept floating to the surface.
“What is going to happen today, Marcus?”
He laughed.
“Oh, nothing is going to happen today. This is your debut at court, but was not organized for you. The point is to prove to those who are here today that the Emperor
has some who answer to him directly…”
“I don’t understand.”
Marcus laughed.
“You heard me. You are a BioMec Unit at all effects, and you will take orders directly from the Emperor. I believe he is probably going to want to meet you, after completing all the final medical tests in En’s base.
Julia’s face was covered by a shadow of doubt.
“Simple tests?”
“Yes, from what I know.”
“And who is that?”
The conversation is interrupted by Cleo’s obvious awe. They follow her stare up to a pale, almost transparent figure, candid like an albino, which is gliding more than walking, crossing the hall wrapped in an unreal aura, untarnished by the clumsy jogging of Eonid Genos at his side.
Sight sees a man – the mind records something deeply alien.
“Oh, him.”
Marcus answered without surprise, yet noting the presence of the bizarre figure.
“That is ambassador Ion. A Jovian.”
The Secretary preceded their flabbergasted questions.
“They have incredible mimetic skills. They take a semi-human shape out of courtesy. Potentially it’s an extremely dangerous skill, but Jovians have always been completely peaceful and friendly, and the Emperor considers our relationship with them extremely important.”
Marcus paused for a moment.
“Thanks to them, we have learned how to travel in other stellar systems.”
Cleo and Julia remained silence, paralyzed by the number of questions crowding their minds. In a couple of seconds the world had become an incredibly larger place.
And, before she could completely recover from the cultural shock to further interrogate Marcus, Julia scouted another danger approaching. She walked towards it before the situation had a chance to escalate to uncontrollable levels, leaving Cleo and the Secretary behind.
“Commander Rossis, were you looking for me?”
The Commander’s eyes flashed in his broad face.