“Whooping cough,” said Lily, more to herself. “I had those shots when I was five and fifteen.” The doctor had given her lollipops both times because she cried.
“You also had your appendix removed. The unit picked that up.” He caught her glare and held up his hands in mock surrender. “I can’t control what shows up in a general scan, Miss Stewart.”
“What else?” she asked.
“You’re a female humanoid, late twenties to early thirties, no chronic diseases, but it detected early-life respiratory issues. No one touched you, I promise.”
Ordinarily, Lily would be pissed that someone had conducted a medical exam without her consent, while she was barely coherent, but these weren’t ordinary circumstances. Besides, the scanner was pretty cool and she couldn’t help but ask about it. “I had asthma when I was little and an emergency appendectomy when I was twenty-two,” she said. “My appendix ruptured.” She caught the collective wince of the men around her and added with a touch of pride, “Hurt like hell. How do you deal with them?”
“Laser surgery,” Ashford said. “No sutures or pain, the wound healed with a tissue regenerator patch.” More cringing from Marska and Steg. “The entire procedure would take about twenty minutes.” Then he added, “And there are the dental extractions I told you I picked up.”
“Yeah, my wisdom teeth. You probably don’t even evolve with them anymore.”
“Only humanoids with Milky Way ancestry do, but when they show up, they’re removed as soon as they start forming,” Ashford replied smoothly. “The gum tissue is regenerated in a matter of hours.”
“I had holes in my gums for a few weeks. I spit out a lot of blood the first couple of days, too.” Lily said this to gauge their reactions, and was pleased to see Steg blanch. “Oh, come on. It wasn’t a big deal.”
“You still have scar tissue. You’ve also had a couple of broken ribs,” the doctor continued. “They healed naturally, but the breaks are still detectable.”
Just how much could that thing tell them about her? She thought about the flower tattoo on her hip, a remnant from her university days.
“I fell out of a tree both times,” she admitted. “I’m a bit of a slow learner.”
Steg was still unconvinced. “That happens in the Fringes, too,” he pointed out. “Not everyone utilizes bone regenerators.”
Even Ashford’s patience with the security chief was at its limit. “I’m a doctor,” he said evenly. “And it’s my medical opinion that she is who she says she is. You’re the soldiers. It’s your job to figure out how the Nym made their way to the twenty-first century and kidnapped her.”
“Gods,” said Marska. He pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “I’ve heard rumors like everyone else, but no one really thought this could happen.” He shook his head and turned to Lily. “It would have been much easier if you had turned out to be a spy.”
“Why? What did these Nym people do?”
Captain Marska looked away. Lily straightened in her chair and tried to sound authoritative. “Whatever they’re doing, I think I have a right to know.”
Marska exhaled. “Time travel.”
The last day had been lifted straight from a sci-fi flick, so the idea of time travel didn’t perturb Lily as much as it did the men in the room. “You sound surprised that it exists,” she said acidly. “It’s not like I’m sitting right here or anything.”
Steg muttered something under his breath in an unfamiliar language. Marska shot him an irritated look before speaking.
“Time travel has been theoretically possible for decades now, but the Commons has outlawed any research in that area, and most of the Fringes follow that directive.” He spoke calmly, but Lily could see the tension in his jaw. “Doctor, may she be discharged? I’ve arranged a cabin for her.”
“Wait,” said Lily. “If they can figure out a way to get me here, you can figure out a way to get me back. I want to go home.”
“We can’t,” said Marska simply.
A new kind of fear streaked through her at the finality in his words. This Commons Space Fleet, the closest thing to an ally, refused to help her get home. She may be well and truly stuck in this strange time.
Marska reached over and touched her hand. The small contact sent a frisson of heat through her body. Maybe he sensed it, because he quickly pulled away. “We have accommodations and the means to care for you,” he said. “You won’t be left to fend for yourself.”
As if she had even the faintest idea how to survive here. She still got nervous driving on the Don Valley Parkway during rush hour. She caught his eyes with her own and nodded, desperately hoping he was telling the truth.
Chapter 4
Rian argued briefly with Lieutenant Steg when it came time for Lily’s discharge from the infirmary. She was engaged with the doctor, trying to secure the bag she had been brought in with but Ashford insisted it be kept in a decontamination unit for the time being. Steg wanted her cabin to be guarded at all times, and from his choice of words, Rian knew the security detail wouldn’t be posted to protect her.
He had to remind Steg of who was in charge of the Defiant and repeatedly pointed out that she was incapable of being a threat. In the end, he brooked no argument and escorted her out of sick bay.
Crew quarters were located on decks fifteen through eighteen, although fifteen’s weren’t in use at the present due to intermittent gravity malfunctions. Rian sincerely hoped that when they reached Rubidge Station the Defiant would be put back together or even retired. And while he was hoping, he also wanted a permanent captaincy, preferably on a battleship with a crew consisting of members who weren’t goof-offs fresh out of the academy or banished from other ships for being difficult, like Shraft and Steg.
They stepped in the lift and Rian ordered it to deck sixteen.
“So you guys don’t do time travel,” she said.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“The theories out there are very risky, and we consider it immoral. Just because something is scientifically possible doesn’t mean it should be explored. Potential incidents like this are why we never looked at that possibility.”
“Like cryonics,” Lily commented dryly.
“Like cryonics, yes.”
“That was the argument opponents made when the regulations went into effect in Canada,” she continued. “Some people were worried about reanimated bodies bringing back old diseases or now knowing who they were.”
“That never happened,” Rian said. “Cryonically preserved remains didn’t rise again, either.”
“Just me.”
“You were in stasis,” he corrected. “That’s very different. Dead is still dead, Miss Stewart.”
The lift pinged and the door opened. She followed him down a long corridor. There were a few sad, wilting palm trees with orange leaves every few feet, bolted to a grimy blue carpet runner. She had to jog to keep up with him. “Lily,” she said.
He stopped and faced her. “Beg your pardon?”
“You can call me Lily,” she repeated. “Captain.”
He thought about asking her to call him by his first name, but not in the corridor. There were crew members around, the shifts changing in engineering and communications, and many of them couldn’t say “Captain Marska” without a few degrees of disrespect in their voices.
He stopped in front of a cabin and gestured to a pad next to the door. “Put your hand on it,” he instructed. “We already programmed it to your DNA.” She shrugged a little but obeyed. The door slid open. She jumped back a few inches, startled.
“Convenient,” she said.
The one good thing about being on a rust bucket like the Defiant was that most of its crew quarters still had galleys with modest cooking space and water showers in the bathroom. Newer patrol ships boasted only replicators and particle light stalls, something that would have thrown her world further into a tailspin. It looked almost like a regular apartment on any Commons planet,
except for the sight offered through the viewports. It was the first thing Lily noticed.
“Wow,” she said. She touched the viewport’s plastiglas. “I never thought…well, space tourism was just picking up when I was kidnapped. Only billionaires could afford it.” She looked at him, a small smile forming on her lips, the first she’d made since she woke up.
She had a lovely smile.
He looked away, feeling ashamed. He didn’t have the right to notice things like that, nor could he afford to with his career on the line and a Nym threat to contend with. He had too much to lose. Instead he looked out at the starfield, at the asteroid belt beyond. “It’s the most common means of transport,” he finally said.
“You’ve been to a lot of places, then,” she deduced. “Where are you from?”
He paused, unused to personal questions. “Repub-2,” he replied. “A small planet just outside the galaxy where Earth is, and one of the oldest settlements.” He turned away. “Let me show you how things work.”
First he demonstrated the galley panels and replicator. “You can cook, but the unit here dispenses only beverages and soup,” he explained apologetically. “Most of the crew take their meals in the mess.”
“Replicators? You can actually tell a machine what you want and it’ll make it for you? I can’t believe they exist.” Her eyes lit up as she took in the wall unit. A small set of dishes was strapped down in a cabinet next to the unit, and on the other side was the menu screen. She flicked her fingertips across it curiously, squinting at the choices.
“It’s not quite that easy, but yes.” If all he had to do to make her smile was tell her about the not-so-modern technology on the ship, he could comfortably talk to her for hours— maybe give her a tour of engineering. As if she’ll be this fascinated by navigation consoles and the finer points of transport units, he thought. But he had been wrong before. Maybe she would want the details on life support systems. “I can increase the size of the text,” he offered.
“It’s not that. I’m trying to read it. You may speak something like English, but this looks like it’s phonetic.” She stepped back. “Oh, now I get it. This says ‘coffee.’”
“It does.”
“That K should be a C, and it’s missing an F.” She tabbed through the screen again, translating items, before going back to the viewport to gaze at the starfield beyond. “You know, the one decent thing Zadbac and Pitro did when they sent me out of 2017 was bring me to a time like this. I could be stuck in the Middle Ages.”
“Middle Ages?”
“Medieval times,” she tried to explain. “Dungeons and knights. You know. Ancient history.”
“I don’t.”
“Not a good time to be alive,” she summarized.
Rian thought about her healed ribs and ruptured appendix. Her time didn’t sound like a good one to be alive in, either.
“We kind of consider your time a middle ages of sorts,” he said.
“It wasn’t. I have a degree in history. Believe me.” She sighed. She froze for a moment, fear in her eyes again. “Wait,” she said. “You guys aren’t into dungeons and torture, are you? You don’t slaughter what you think are undesirables or practice cannibalism?”
“No,” he assured her, and her face relaxed. “The Commons Fleet doesn’t even impose capital punishment.”
“I’m not going to press the wrong button in here and end up sucked into space?”
Rian shook his head. She turned back to the viewport.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked finally.
“We’re not going to jettison you or leave you stranded, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said. “I was up most of the night in conference with my superiors at Fleet. We’re not changing course, and you’re staying here for the time being. We don’t know what the Nym know, and we want to find out what they’re up to. You’re being treated as top-secret.” He led her to the bathroom and demonstrated how the shower unit worked. “Fresh water is a luxury in space,” he warned. “The shower gets shut off automatically after seven minutes. Crew members can take longer ones if they want, but the water consumption is docked from their pay.” He pointed to a button inset in the wall. “That’s the dryer unit.” He pointed to the vacuums built into the unit’s walls that sucked off every last droplet of water from a body in a minute.
“No towels?”
“No need for them, but some crew members have their own.” Leading her back to the lounge area, he showed her how to operate the computer.
She nodded perfunctorily as he demonstrated the unit. He could tell she wasn’t thinking about her new home. “Tell me about the Nym,” she finally said.
He tensed. Talking about Fleet’s theories on their activity could be a security risk, but who could she talk to? “They’re intergalactic scum,” he said, and mentally kicked himself. Very good, Rian, tell her right away how prejudiced you are. But he was. Nothing good had ever come off that planet. “They’re from a small planet of the same name, outside the Fringes.”
He decided to sidestep Fleet’s concerns and just give her their history. “They’re terrorists,” he said. “They invade other worlds and stations and take whatever they want and murder the inhabitants. They’re a small race of people, praise the gods for that, but they’re bloodthirsty and violent. Fleet and all of civilized space, including the Fringes, ostracize them.” That was the one thing similar between the Commons and the Fringes. “We have trouble keeping up with them,” he admitted. “Their technology is often much more advanced than ours, and it looks like that now includes time travel.”
“What would they want with twenty-first century humans?” she demanded. She took her eyes off the starfield and faced him. “You don’t know what it was like to see Andrew Claybourne with his face smashed in.”
“No, but I have seen what the Nym can do,” he countered. “And I’m not trying to trivialize your situation. But I’ve led rescue missions in the Fringes and seen what they inflict on a large scale. As far as we know, history hasn’t been rewritten yet, so no damage has occurred to Earth.”
“How would you know if history had been rewritten?”
The conversation was turning philosophical, something Rian had never excelled at. “Good point,” he admitted.
“What happened to Earth, then? Besides these shipyards you keep talking about?”
He shrugged, but at least he knew this much about Commons history. “Individual colonies, the original republics, were slowly established independently of Earth and its governments, and they joined together and formed the Commonwealth in 2120. Earth’s natural resources were depleted long before then, and synthetic resources were developed. The Kurran Empire initiated contact a hundred years later, an alliance that still continues. Eventually, most civilians left for other stations and worlds, and Earth turned to manufacturing and shipbuilding. The Defiant’s sensor panels were built there.”
“So Earth didn’t explode, global warming didn’t fry people? No zombie plagues or atomic bombs?”
“No explosions, there has been climate change but Earthlings have adapted, zombies have never been a problem there, and I don’t know what an atomic bomb is,” he replied. “The only residents there are shipbuilders and their families. Most of Earth is too humid to live comfortably. It’s an acquired taste.”
“So we weren’t as stupid as the hippies predicted,” she said, relief in her voice. She gestured to the galley and changed the subject. “How do I use those things again?”
He demonstrated how to activate the cooking panel and replicator. She generated some coffee, dispensing it in one of the cups from the cabinet. “Want some?” she asked, holding out the cup. He declined politely.
The look on her face as she inhaled the aroma was blissful. “At least some things haven’t changed,” she said. She tasted it. “It’s really bitter, though. But coffee makes this whole ordeal a little more bearable.”
Rian spoke honestly. “You’re holding up really well.
”
She looked in her cup. “Well, ask me how I’m doing when I’m having a meltdown in a couple of hours. I’ve had a lot of upheaval in the last couple of years, and that’s how I usually react to disasters. I’m fine at first, then it sinks in.”
“What’s happened?” Rian asked, surprising himself. He, like all good captains, stayed out of crew members’ lives. But Lily wasn’t one of the crew, he reminded himself.
“My father died just over a year ago,” she began. “We were really close, and his heart attack came out of nowhere. One day he was there, the next day he wasn’t.” Sadness crossed her face, and in Rian’s chest, a corresponding ache for her. “I tried running the family business by myself for a few months, but it was too much for me handle. I sold our property and moved to Toronto to start over.” She looked around the cabin, but he knew that wasn’t what she was really seeing. “I didn’t think it would be here, instead. I’d been thinking about going into teaching, and I’m qualified to do something other than answer phones, but I needed something...easier to do, I guess. I had some money from selling our property and royalties from my dad’s books—he was a sci-fi and horror novelist on the side—but I couldn’t mope around my apartment forever. Being a receptionist was easy. All I had to do was tweak spreadsheets and play Undead Uprising.”
“Simulator?” Rian guessed.
“Computer game, yeah.” She sighed. “I’m sorry, Captain, I don’t mean to unload on you like this. You probably have stuff to do.”
Rian always did, but the Defiant wasn’t much more than a glorified trawler at this point, hauling crap across the galaxy and patrolling a peaceful quadrant.
“I don’t mind,” he assured her. “Most of the things on my to-do list involve breaking up crew squabbles and hauling them out of poker games to do their work. I’m hoping for some crew changes when we get to Rubidge Station.”
“What’s at Rubidge Station?”
“The museum where you were supposed to go, the largest commercial presence in Commons space, and a Fleet military outpost where we’ll be reporting everything we know of the Nym. And the Defiant will be receiving some much-needed repairs. It’s the oldest ship in Fleet.”
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