Jupiter's Halo: Unbroken

by A P Heath

  Natasha felt the chill run down her spine.

  The viewing pane filled with static. One moment she was looking at Aitkin and Mylus, eye to eye and the next a wash of white noise over blurred figures.

  This was not something that happened. The link between the Fatherhood and her office was of the highest quality and restriction. It could not be hacked, interrupted or interfered with in any way.

  Yet somehow it was.

  The figures behind the static were still fixed in place.

  She could hear words being spoken, “…something special…”

  Was that Mylus? It couldn’t be Aitkin surely.

  The vital signs shown for the Father’s patient were part of the information stream and as badly distorted as the rest of the pane’s view.

  She could not tell if Aitkin was living or dead, but that question paled against the thought that somehow, someone or something was able to block her communications with the Fatherhood.

  Natasha waved a hand across the desk space before her. It lit up with characters and signs. At her touch a link would open directly to Mylus. She pressed the lit key.

  “Father Mylus do you read?” She spoke out loud.

  “…ant of the Fatherhood.” Came a distorted reply.

  “Father Mylus!” Natasha called out.

  “Father Mylus this is Natasha In’Tuen, personal aide to…”

  She realised the reply had not come through the comms, but instead had been on the viewing pane. And it had not been Mylus speaking but Aitkin. Somehow he was alive.

  She pressed more keys, resetting the viewing pane feed. The static disappeared, replaced with utter blackness. A moment later the pane renewed itself. There was the picture; Aitkin in his chair, Mylus crouching before him, their eyes locked on one another.

  “….shadow is the closest…” She heard through the pane. “…inaccurate des…” The sound faded in and out, still broken up into pieces that made no sense.

  Aitkin was talking, but on the viewing pane he was still. They were both still, she saw. “…a mind such as yours…”

  Aitkin’s voice sounded strange. As if the words were overlapping each other somehow. “…understand.”

  Natasha felt her panic rising. This was not a report she could submit.

  Her role was simple; record everything that happened in that room. If she couldn’t see it, couldn’t hear it then she could not record it. That would not be considered a valid reason however. Her role was to record the happenings and report them back up the chain of command. Failure to do so, irrespective of the reason, would be considered her failure and hers alone to bear.

  “…be afraid…” Aitkin said through the pane. “You…harm…” She thrashed at the panel. Desperate to fix or remove whatever the issue was. She tried the comms again.

  “Father Mylus. Father Mylus respond!”

  Mylus’ voice returned to her, unsure and sounding frightened. “…you?”

  Natasha was lost. He was speaking in the room, she was hearing him through the pane, but she could not reach him. It was infuriating and flustering. She knew this could not be happening and yet it was.

  “…you must be shown…” Came Aitkin’s voice with its odd harmonic.

  She shut down the screen.

  Darkness filled her office. Darkness and silence.

  It was eerie, even more so than the peculiarities of the search for Aitkin Cassini’s Truth.

  Natasha counted under her breath, ….eight…nine….ten and restarted the viewing pane.

  Darkness continued to look back at her. She hit the command again, banging one hand on the hard desk below the illuminated panel. Still the pane was black from edge to edge.

  Had she not undertaken the sequence correctly?

  Had she missed something? She was sure that wasn’t the case.

  No one, perhaps excluding those who’d laboured to build the thing, knew the workings of this viewing pane better than her. She was set to redo the full sequence when she heard the voice again.

  “…understand…”

  Natasha froze. Was that word spoken to her?

  It was Aitkin’s voice, but now it sounded like two voices speaking together. The viewing pane remained inert, but part of it was working.

  “…I wish…” This time it was Mylus. He sounded timid, weak even.

  None of this makes sense! She wanted to scream the words.

  “…wish to learn…” Aitkin said. “…this vessel…”

  ‘Vessel’ what vessel was he talking about?

  She didn’t know for certain the Fatherhood were not aboard a vessel, but she doubted it.

  The Halls of Mercy did not sound like a ship to her. Even if some strange circumstance meant they were, how could Aitkin Cassini know of it?

  All he knew was the shaft of light, the chair, the pain and the unsettling visage of Mylus’ true face. Mylus certainly hadn’t said anything about a vessel.

  “…help us…” He continued. That at least was less surprising to Natasha. Help and mercy were things patients of the Fatherhood asked for often. “…to be Mylus…”

  The words faded again, much to Natasha’s annoyance.

  Why would Aitkin say ‘us’ instead of ‘me’? She wondered. Then she heard Mylus speak; one word, almost a whisper.

  For a moment she thought it sounded as if he was crying.

  “Yes.”

  The pane before her burst into colour. The figures were gone, their grisly spectacle replaced with dancing, swirling lines. Natasha sat back in shock. There was music. Wasn’t there? Faint but beautiful. Or was it only in her head?

  She watched the colours melt and fuse with one another, drawing her eye back and forth across the wide pane. The music seemed to fade as she tried to listen, then burst back into her mind as she let the view take her focus.

  Her head swayed and lulled, her eyes felt heavy and she squeezed them tightly shut and shook her head violently to clear her thoughts.

  Natasha opened her eyes.

  The viewing pane showed Aitkin in his chair. His head lying limp against his chest. Mylus was standing over him, looking down with an almost beatific expression on his face.

  The display of Aitkin Cassini’s vital signs showed he was alive, albeit barely. His heart rate was low, almost stopped.

  Blood was still spilling from him, but the torrent had become a trickle. She heard the click of the surgeon apparatus and watched it ghost over to Aitkin’s still form to begin the gory process of putting him back together.

  She tried the comm link again, “Mylus respond!” she almost shouted the words.

  In the viewing pane she saw his lips move as he replied to her.

  “I am here.” He said slowly.

  “What is happening Father Mylus?” She demanded.

  “There has been interference on comms and view links for over a minute.”

  Mylus’ face creased in consternation. She could see the confusion for a moment, before the placid, almost blissful expression returned.

  “I have seen the Truth in this subject and it is pure,” He spoke quietly, almost reverently.

  As she watched Mylus turned to face the viewing pane.

  It shocked her. The images she saw were constructed from micro cameras all over the cell Mylus stood in.

  At any moment she could look through any one of several thousand. He was looking from light into total darkness, at a lens so small as to be invisible to the naked human eye. And yet he was looking right at her…

  “This session is at an end. The subject has nothing more to give. He will be returned now.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Captain Titus Lanad opened his eyes and groaned as the pain hit him. His head rang like his skull was filled with hammers and his chest was tight. It pulled painfully as he shifted position. His legs were numb, but the glimmer of panic abated when he felt the familiar hot tingle of blood flowing into his limbs.

  He was lying on his back. The lights above him were bright in
a stark bare ceiling. He flexed his fingers, feeling the soft sheet under them. It was warm, the air still.

  As his consciousness surfaced the sounds around him reached his ears. Low volume talking, the sounds of feet slapping against a hard floor, a regular beep and the gurgle of a liquid filling a drain.

  He lifted his head and saw the other beds. The people in and beside them.

  The visage was a wash of white and grey.

  Directly across from him a man was sitting beside another bed, talking quietly with the woman who occupied it. She looked weak, tired. At her neck the collar of her pale grey clothing was open wide and low. Lanad could see the white of medical bandaging wrapped tight to her torso beneath it. Neither looked at him as he stared.

  More voices were speaking.

  Lanad swung his head left, seeing a similar image at another dozen beds that ran the opposite length of the long infirmary room. Medi staff stood at the ends of beds, or walked quickly between patients.

  They were dressed from head to toe in bright white, their shoulders holding a small grey lapel emblazoned with two silver stars, one smaller than the other, set in a red crescent on a background of jet black.

  It was the same emblem he had seen a thousand times on the breast of his own uniform. They were Deorum. He was in the infirmary of the Pride.

  Immediately left of his bed a tall opaque screen blocked his

  view of his closest neighbour.

  He could see the shadows of figures on the other side, could hear their muted voices. Not every patient had a visitor, but every bed held a patient. He turned to his right to see the other end of the infirmary mirrored what he’d already witnessed.

  The screen to the right prevented him from seeing to the far door, but he had a sudden feeling that were he able he would see that every bed in the ward was filled. These were the casualties of his mission to GS-114.

  My failed mission, he thought bitterly.

  Movement caught his eye. To his right, hanging alongside the headrest of his bed was a suspended pump. Thick lines ran into its base from machinery too far back for him to turn and see clearly.

  The tall cylinder was clear. Inside he could see the mechanism lift and fall in rhythm with his breathing. At the top of the pump another pair of tubes ran out and down. He traced their length and found they curved back towards him, under the lip of the bed and then below the sheet that covered him. He lifted its edge gingerly, wincing again as the trauma of his recent injuries reminded him to go slowly.

  The tubes ran directly into his chest, just below the pit of his right arm. The ends were covered by the bandaging that swathed him, but he could see one of the tubes had spots of blood flecked around its inside. He let his eyes follow them back to the pump and saw the discolouring of dried blood running the full length of one. The other was clear.

  “It’s stopping you from drowning in the blood in your lungs.” The voice was female. Not cold or particularly brusque, but matter-of-fact, business-like in its tone.

  Lanad turned his head back to his left, seeing the white vision of a medi-tech standing at the end of his bed. She held a slate in her thin, pale fingers. The angle was tilted away from him, but Lanad could just make out the bright lines that shimmered in the air above its surface. She was looking at it, rather than at him.

  “I guess I should be thankful for it then.” He said forcing a weak smile.

  She didn’t look up at his remark, but bobbed her head fractionally to show her acknowledgement. Her body language spoke volumes. He was just another patient and she had plenty more to see when she was done with him.

  “How long have I been here?” He asked.

  Her fingers moved over the slate, her eyes scanning the information as it flittered before her. A slight scowl creased her eyebrows at his question. She flicked her fingers at the slates display, emphasising the movement to make sure he understood the action was contrary to what she had been doing.

  “You were brought in…” Her fingers continued to move, sifting through his recorded details, “Six hours and eighteen minutes ago.” She finished.

  The direction of her gesture resumed its earlier path.

  “How badly was I injured?” Lanad persisted.

  Her scowl deepened. She raised her eyes to him and fixed him with her stare as her exaggerated gestures changed again.

  “Very badly,” She stated, her tone expressing the utter lack of importance she placed on the state of injuries which had since been remedied.

  He raised his eyebrows and opened his hands, palms up. She looked at him for another moment and then huffed out her breath. Her eyes returned to her slate and she reeled off the details she saw there for him.

  “Eight rib fractures, fractured sternum, multiple fractures to both left and right clavicle, multiple contusions to pectoral and deltoid muscles,” She paused to take a breath, “Collapsed right lung, two depressed skull fractures; occipital and parietal. Internal bleeding in your abdomen, internal bleeding in your right lung, intracerebral and intracranial haemorrhaging.”

  She finished the list with a short exhaled breath and a condescending look.

  Lanad was not a medical man.

  He knew what some of it meant, but she’d rattled the injuries off so quickly he wasn’t even sure he’d heard all the words properly.

  “And that means...?” He said, letting his bewilderment take control of his expression.

  She laid the slate against the high bar at the foot of his bed.

  “It means you’re lucky to be talking to me right now.” She said. “By rights you should be a corpse, but between the surgeon apparatus, the triage you received en route and your own bloody-mindedness you should be looking at a full recovery.”

  There was almost a hint of compassion in her words.

  “Can you tell me..?” Lanad started, but she cut him off.

  “However, as much as chatting over your escape from death thrills me, I have a lot of other patients to attend to.”

  The hint compassion was gone. With a further few taps of her slate’s display and a spin, so was she.

  “Thank you for your kindness.” Lanad called after her.

  He tried to inject sarcasm into his words, but he wasn’t sure he had even the energy to properly mock her.

  “Better not to taunt the medi-techs Captain,” Came a deep voice, “From what they tell me you’re still too weak to put up much of a fight if she suddenly decides you’re in need of a particularly invasive procedure.”

  Lord Admiral DeMarchek followed his words around the edge of the opaque pane to Lanad’s left.

  He was smiling down at his first captain, but Lanad could see the edge of concern in his eyes.

  “Lord Admiral,” He said, trying to push himself into an upright position. DeMarchek stepped forward and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “No need for that Captain,” He looked Lanad up and down in a brief glance, “You’ll likely break something if you’re not careful.”

  Lanad let his body slump back against the support of his bed, grateful.

  “Lord Admiral, I accept full responsibility for…”

  Once again DeMarchek raised his hand. He waved away Lanad’s words and shook his head.

  “No Captain,” He said gently, “I must accept full responsibility for the outcome of your mission to GS-114.” Lanad felt shocked

  by the admission. The Lord Admiral pulled a thin framed chair into Lanad’s view and settled himself upon it, grimacing slightly at the twinges in his knees and back.

  “I delivered you and your faithful marines into a trap made up of an intelligent enemy and a lack of intelligence in our own exalted ranks.”

  The Lord Admiral’s expression was grave, his piercing blue eyes dark with shame and sadness.

  “We suffered terrible losses,” He shook his head, casting his eyes down, “Terrible, terrible losses and all due to my haste.” The grief in the Lord Admiral was apparent.

  “How many?” Lanad asked so
ftly, almost in a whisper.

  DeMarchek raised his head.

  “Twenty-eight killed, a further seven missing presumed dead.” The numbers hit Lanad like a stray asteroid careening into an unprotected station.

  Nearly thirty percent of the Company!

  “Captain Timonny’s amongst the missing, his comms went dead shortly after you ordered him down to the substation.”

  Lanad’s memory threw up flashes; running the length of the curving station corridor, grinding his teeth in anger at Timonny’s stubbornness as he repeated his orders.

  “And the Second?” He asked.

  DeMarchek shook his head again.

  “They fared little better. The squad Timonny took in is down to half strength and that’s only if we include the injured.”

  He glanced away, Lanad saw the Lord Admiral’s hands were wringing unconsciously against the side of his bed.

  “They tell me Lieutenant Bolthosian is going to pull through, but we lost Lieutenant Mentrim, Mathers died during the evac and Sergeants Johs of the First and Riesen of the Second never left the substation.”

  He spoke as if he was relaying a list of unfamiliar words that he’d read and re-read until the memory stuck.

  Lanad let the names fill his mind. It was a monstrous blow for the marines of both First and Second Companies. One had lost officers and marines alike, while the other, although spared

  the same damaging attrition, had lost its Captain.

  He thought about the medi-tech with her stern looks and impatient tones in place of bedside manner and reflected that maybe the First were lucky to still have a captain, albeit he was in no position to lead them right now.

  He said ‘the outcome of your mission’. The thought jumped into his mind amidst the swirling emotions.

  “And the mission objective sir?” He forced himself to ask the question. His memories were a blur.

  The last thing he remembered clearly was leaving the station’s link stair onto the sixth level. He’d been going to support Sergeant Deneminjic as he fought a desperate retreat and something had hit him.

  The force had taken marines and their captain clear off their feet. He’d sailed back through the open doorway, collapsing against the bodies of marines following in his steps. After that it was just flashes. Shouted orders, the buzz of voices in his comm link. Guns barked, bullets ricocheted and his men fell to the deep boom of their enemy’s strange weapons.