by G J Ogden
SEVENTEEN
Sonner operated the recovery crane system in the hangar control room while Taylor peered out through the thick window that overlooked the landing deck outside. He was lost in his own thoughts, trying to process everything he’d been told and everything he’d experienced since waking up from the Hedalt programming. He and his crew had entered the lava tube expecting to find yet another ghost base, but the only ghost he had discovered was the pale reflection that had stared back at him in the mirror. It was the face of a man who had lived and died over three centuries earlier. So what the hell does that make me now? Taylor wondered.
He considered that everything he had ever believed in was a lie, fabricated by the Hedalt to induce him into doing their dirty work. But they hadn’t invented everything, Taylor told himself. His brain was still human, which meant that his emotions and feelings were real, as were those of his crew. In amongst the lies there must also have been truth, he asserted – and he had to find it before he could truly understand who he was.
Suddenly the exterior of the base was bathed in a bright white light, which startled Taylor out of his daydreaming. He glanced across to see that Sonner had turned on the external floodlights and was maneuvering the powerful cranes towards Taylor’s ship with the intention of bringing it inside the hangar for repair. The ship stood on the same landing pad, precisely where Casey had so skillfully landed it, but the vessel he was staring at was no longer a Nimrod-class cruiser, but a Hedalt Corvette-class cruiser. It was another of the many unbelievable changes that his now conscious mind had to accept, and as he watched the ship begin to slide into the giant hangar airlock, he wondered if it would still feel like the home he’d known for close to four years. Has it even really been four years? he wondered. He could take nothing for granted now.
How long he’d been in space was just another one of the many questions that dominated his thoughts, most of which terrified him, but of all the questions he sought answers to, the one that preoccupied his mind the most was what to do next. In a remarkable leap of faith, Sonner had chosen to trust him and to treat him as another human – despite the only biological element of his body being the brain inside his simulant skull. But although he felt human, he no longer knew what being human meant.
Sonner had given Taylor a datapad, with access to records of the Earth-Hedalt war, and he’d spent some time anxiously skimming through its contents while the Commander worked to recover his ship. There was far too much information to assimilate, but he had managed to gain a condensed history of the conflict, and it made for harrowing reading. Earth as he remembered it was no more. Based on the final scans of the planet by the Earth Fleet ships that had fled to the Contingency base, every major city and built-up area had been annihilated. The Hedalt had been merciless, levelling the planet to such a degree that it was almost like sending it back to primordial times.
He thought about the apartment he’d intended to buy in Astoria and how he recalled being there in one of the strange visions he’d had after falling; visions he’d still not discussed with Sonner. Had I already owned the apartment? Taylor mused. Or were the Hedalt just using an earlier memory, before it was mine? A way to give me something to look forward to, and strive towards? He didn’t know and perhaps would never know, not that any of it mattered, because everything that the original Taylor Ray had known was gone. He found it curious that he still possessed the jumbled mash-up of the real Taylor’s memories combined with the memories of his ‘life’ with Satomi, Casey and Blake, but they all seemed superfluous in light of Sonner’s disclosures. For all intents and purposes he had died on the floor of the hangar deck, and this was the first day of his actual life. His will to survive was strong, as strong as any real human’s, and his need to do something positive was undiminished; he just didn’t know what.
The airlock cycle completed and Sonner switched to the hangar’s internal cranes in order to set the damaged Hedalt Corvette down in the primary maintenance bay, where a small army of worker bots and drones set to the task of repairing it. He watched the automated robots for a time, noting that the damage to ship was clearly as a result of conventional Earth Fleet ordnance, rather than Hedalt plasma weapons, which his datapad had mentioned only came into use later in the war. The Corvette-class cruisers had pre-dated such technology; in effect, his ship was no more advanced than the Earth Fleet Nimrods, which made it three centuries out-of-date compared to whatever the Hedalt Empire had in their armada now. How they were going to succeed with just the two of them and one ancient ship was a question he didn’t want to think about at that moment.
He tried to distract himself from this and the other bigger questions by focusing on the immediate ones, and strolled up beside Sonner, who acknowledged his arrival with a warm smile.
“I don’t know why you’re making such an effort to recover that alien monstrosity,” said Taylor, peering down at the angular black ship, which lacked the elegant lines and curves of the Nimrod. “Why not just take out one of these brand-new Nimrod-class cruisers?”
Sonner shut off the controls and turned to face him, resting back against the console. She still looked exhausted and on the verge of collapse. “We’d attract way too much attention in a Nimrod; the Hedalt believed they destroyed our entire fleet, remember?”
Taylor hadn’t considered that, but after three hundred and twenty-five years, the appearance of an Earth Fleet ship would cause something of a stir. “Fair point; I guess that if we did pleasure-cruise around the galaxy in a Nimrod, it would sort of give the game away.”
“That would be an understatement,” Sonner answered, smiling at him, “and we need to stay hidden for as long as possible.”
“Well, at least with it inside the hangar it means I don’t need to recover my environment suit,” said Taylor. But then he had a realization; he tapped his synthetic chest and added, “though I guess I don’t really need to worry about toxic atmospheres anymore.”
“Your brain is still human and organic,” said Sonner, mimicking his gesture by tapping a finger to the side of her head. “Your body may be synthetic, but your brain still needs oxygen. So those environment suits weren’t only there to maintain the illusion.”
Taylor nodded, appreciating that it was going to take some time to get used to his new reality. In many ways his body was tougher than an old tractor, but he was far from indestructible. Blake, Casey and Satomi were evidence enough that he was just as mortal as any human.
“Do you even know how to fly a Hedalt ship?” asked Taylor, turning from the morbid and upsetting thoughts of death and his crew to the practicalities of what they should do next.
“No, but that’s not your run-of-the-mill Hedalt Corvette,” Sonner answered, after a long breathy yawn. “Inside, the main bridge and some other sections are configured to look the same as a Nimrod,” Sonner continued, while stepping down the metal staircase to the main deck and inviting Taylor to follow. “It’s all part of the ruse. They can trick your mind into seeing and feeling things that are not real, but in many cases simply changing the environment to match what your brain expects to see is easier than changing your brain’s perception of it. Besides, from what little we did learn about the Hunter ships, we got the impression that it was important to include real objects too. Maybe it helped to maintain the fiction somehow.”
Taylor nodded; re-engineering the ship would be a lot simpler than re-engineering a brain, he assumed. But this made him wonder what else the Hedalt had made him perceive differently.
“Before I was... woken, or whatever you call this, I saw you as a...” he hesitated, trying to find the right word, and settled on the crudest and most obvious one, “a monster. Actually, a monster with a plasma rifle… Is that really what the Hedalt are, or was that a lie too?”
Sonner raised an eyebrow. “A monster? Like with three heads and a spiky tail?”
Taylor laughed, “Not quite that monstrous, but certainly frightening enough to give a child nightmares.”
&
nbsp; “I don’t know how you saw me, but monsters would be a good way to describe the Hedalt, at least in terms of their actions.”
“But they don’t look like monsters?”
Sonner glanced sideways at him, but continued walking, “No, not at all. They don’t actually look all that different to us, really. Two legs, two arms, one head… no spiky tail.”
Taylor laughed again, “I think you read too many stories about dragons or demons as a girl.”
“They were fairy tales compared to the reality, I’m afraid,” said Sonner, darkly. “They do have plasma weapons, though. They were introduced later in the war, along with the newer, more powerful ships of their expanded, simulant-crewed armada. It was at that point we realized we had no hope of winning.”
“But I saw you shooting plasma shards at us,” said Taylor, still struggling to get his new simulant head around the complexities.
“I wish I had a plasma rifle, but sadly not,” replied Sonner. “Just another deception. If you check out the damage to the base now, you’ll see bullet holes and marks from ricochets, not plasma burns and scorches. Though the explosive-tipped rounds did make a bit of a mess.”
Taylor shook his head, “It’s hard to believe they look like us, though. I mean you. Humans, I mean,” babbled Taylor, until he got the right words out. “The chances of that are…” he threw up his hands, unable to put a number on the impossibly small odds.
“The science boffins at Earth Fleet Command said that their remarkably humanoid appearance was an ‘implausible coincidence’.”
“It sounds like those science boffins had a talent for understatement.”
Sonner laughed, but it was a tired, drowsy laugh done out of politeness.
“I suppose it’s easier to hunt and kill monsters than people that look like you,” said Taylor, who was beginning to understand the intricacies of the deception that the Hedalt had created.
“People are easier to manipulate than you’d think,” Sonner answered, “At first, they ‘came in peace’; it was all very sci-fi and exciting. But sadly our blinkered romanticism made us foolish and careless. No-one comes in peace, Captain Taylor Ray; every living creature in the universe wants something and is willing to take it by force.”
“I don’t believe that.”
Sonner smiled, “Well, you are only a couple of hours old; you’ll learn.”
Taylor laughed. Sonner wasn’t wrong; everything he thought he knew about the universe he’d have to re-learn, like a child taking their first steps, but he wasn’t a child, nor was he naive. The memories, skills and experiences that the Hedalt had transferred from the original Taylor Ray were alive inside him, and he could still draw from them, and build on them with the new knowledge he now had access to.
“Where do you intend to go?” asked Taylor, focusing back in on their current objective, which was to fix up the battered Corvette. “A single human, one traumatized simulant and a beat-up old Hedalt Corvette won’t be much use against the combined might of an entire empire.”
Sonner stopped and frowned at him. “No, it won’t, but it’s a start.” She then gestured to the long row of Nimrod-class cruisers, with the black Hedalt cruiser parked in front of them, slightly smaller and meaner-looking in comparison, like a scorpion in the middle of a line of songbirds. “The Contingency included plans for three bases, with this as the main combat base and shipyard. We built it the furthest distance away from Earth that we could find a suitable location for. The fact that no-one from any of the other bases came here in over three hundred years means there’s a chance they’re still out there, still in stasis, like I was.”
“Or it could mean that they’re already dead...” Taylor stopped himself; he sounded more like Blake than his usual optimistic self. Thinking about his grumpy TacSpec officer reminded him of the fateful firefight on the balcony around the command center. He remembered how Blake had fallen and was crushed, and recalled how Casey had rushed to his aid and managed to lift the metal girder off his body. The reason for this mammoth feat of strength was obvious to him now, given how much strength his own simulant body possessed since its awakening, but Casey hadn’t been awake, Taylor realized. What does that mean? Taylor asked himself. Deep down, did her fear of losing Blake temporarily wake a part of her up?
Sonner studied Taylor’s pensive expression, “What’s going on in that brain of yours?”
“Oh, nothing...” lied Taylor. He wasn’t really sure what he was thinking, and he didn’t want to talk to Sonner until he’d straightened things out in his own head. “At least, I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”
Sonner nodded, “I can’t imagine how this must feel for you; but, I’m afraid I can’t give you much more time to reflect on your options, such as they are. I need to get back out there and find the others. Too much time has been lost already.”
Taylor studied the Hedalt Corvette; with an entire hangar’s worth of maintenance equipment focused solely on it, the repairs were progressing rapidly and were almost done.
“I wish I had more time to digest all of this,” said Taylor. “This day hasn’t really gone the way I imagined it would.”
Sonner sighed and rubbed her face; she still felt like death warmed up as a result of her extended hibernation. “Look, Captain, things haven’t turned out as expected for either of us,” she began. “I don’t know why I alone survived, and I don’t know how you’re able to understand what you are. All I know is that I’m alive and so are you, and that the Hedalt are still out there. So long as I’m still breathing, the Contingency has a chance, and that means I have a job to do.”
The repair drones peeled away from the Hedalt Corvette and the hubbub of noise slowly died down. The calm that replaced it was deafening.
“Decision time, Captain, what’s it to be?”
Taylor again thought about Casey’s feat of strength – a blip in an otherwise unbroken fantasy – and how he had broken free of his own mental prison. And then he thought about Satomi’s broken simulant body, and how it contained an organic brain. It wasn’t the real Satomi Rose; from what Sonner had said, she had existed centuries earlier, like the real Taylor Ray, but to him she was real. His feelings for her were still real. And perhaps she wasn’t the only Satomi Rose out there in the galaxy, and the others weren’t the only Casey or Blake. Suddenly, he knew what he had to do. Fighting the Hedalt wasn’t enough for him; it was an enemy he’d never truly known, and one that had destroyed a planet and a civilization that was never really his. He wanted to fight the aliens that had manipulated him and used him like a weapon, but in truth his connection to Earth was not nearly as strong as his connection to his crew, and to Satomi in particular. It had taken her to die for him to realize that, but what he also realized was that maybe there was something he could still do about it.
“I’ll come with you,” said Taylor, sounding resolute. “I’ll help you find these other bases and, if there’s any chance at all to put the Contingency into action, I’ll help you to fight and destroy the Hedalt too.”
Sonner nodded, but then her eyes narrowed. “So, what’s the catch?”
“I need your help to find something too.”
“Name it,” said Sonner.
“I want to find the other simulants; the other reproductions of my crew,” said Taylor, with a sudden determination. “I want to find Blake Meade, Casey Valera and Satomi Rose, and I want to wake them.”
Sonner’s eyes widened. “Wow, for a moment there, I was worried you were going to ask for something impossibly difficult...”
“I mean it, Commander,” said Taylor, firmly. “If you consider me to be human, or at least a real person, then there’s a chance I can offer the same to my crew. I owe it to them to try, and frankly, so do you.” Taylor didn’t want to hit her too hard, but the inference was not lost on Sonner.
“I did what I had to, Captain,” Sonner hit back, and Taylor could see that he’d both offended and hurt her, “If I’d have known…”<
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Taylor held up a hand and bowed his head slightly, “Hey, I’m sorry, that was unfair,” he cut in. “They were trying to kill you. I was trying to kill you… It wasn’t your fault.”
Sonner sighed and nodded, but Taylor knew he’d opened up a wound. “They won’t be the people you remember,” Sonner cautioned, but there was a warmth and softness in place of her usual prickliness. “Your interactions as a crew were unique, and can’t be replicated. If there are any other simulant versions of them still out there, they will know a different version of you.”
“Maybe they won’t be the same,” Taylor replied, then he shrugged. “Maybe it can never be like it was, I don’t care. All I know is I have to try.”
Sonner considered Taylor’s words, chewing the inside of her mouth as if she was chewing gum, and then she stretched out a hand, “It’s a deal, Captain Ray.”
“You can me Taylor,” he said, taking Sonner’s hand and shaking it, mindful of not adding too much pressure to his grip.
“Okay, Taylor,” said Sonner, and then her lips curled into a wicked smile. “You can call me... Commander Sonner. We have to maintain a rank structure, after all, and I do outrank you.”
Taylor laughed and found that he was actually getting used to the alien sound. Certainly every time he laughed, he felt a little more human. But after four years, or at least the memory of four years, as the ranking officer on his ship, he wasn’t used to being subordinate to anyone. He thought of how Casey used to react to his orders and smiled, before lazily saluting his new superior and responding breezily with, “Aye, aye, Commander Sarah Sonner.”
EIGHTEEN
Taylor stood at the door to his quarters, too afraid to step inside. Sonner had been mostly right about the internal layout of the ship being changed to match that of a Nimrod-class cruiser, but what she hadn’t mentioned was just how little of it had been modified. Beyond the bridge and the four different crew quarters, along with the corridors and communal spaces that connected them, the rest of the ship was empty, dark and cold. But, as he had feared, there were also other things about these spaces that he saw differently now that the shroud had been lifted from his silver simulant eyes.