Echo- First Pulse

by C Scott Frank

  For a long moment, Lincoln simply stared at the black screen. He hated the man in the black suit. Trying to blame this whole war on Lincoln. The more he thought about it, the angrier he became.

  He finally stood and threw the black box under his bed. He didn’t care if he broke it. He and his team would make this happen. They could turn the tide of this war. He needed to blow off some steam, he figured he had better hit the gym after all. He stormed out of his room and down the hall toward the weight room with a new sense of resolve in his step.

  Day 347 - 09:38

  Lincoln crashed into his chair in the control room. He was still frustrated, but an intense workout and a cold shower had served to take the edge off. “Edward, how do we look?”

  “We’re looking good,” the reply came from Receiving. “Hearse coming in at ten meters per second. Five. One meter per second now. Fifteen meters and closing.”

  Lincoln grimaced at the callsign. Hearse was what Gibbs had dubbed the incoming shuttles, and it was in poor taste, but Lincoln had to choose his battles. The team had a grim job description, and there were worse ways to introduce a lighter atmosphere.

  “Ten meters now,” Edward came back on the comm.

  “Wait a second,” Lincoln replied. “I’m showing something weird here. They’re rotating slightly on the Z. They’re out of sync from the coupler.”

  “Five meters. Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Son of a—at that—” Lincoln keyed the comm to the shuttle. “Shuttle, this is Ceres, back up, now!”

  He was too late.

  As soon as Lincoln pulled his finger off the comm, he felt the vibration. The impact was slow and nonviolent, but could still wreak havoc on the airlock. The shuttle had missed the angle and was now grinding at the connectors, threatening to shear the aluminum-alloy from the stress.

  “Lock that down!” Lincoln shouted through his personal comm as he ran down the long hall toward the west airlock as fast as he could in the low gravity. “They’re going to stress the connection. If a weld bursts, the decompression could sever our connection to the surface, and we’d get to have a nice long chat about what went wrong on the way down.”

  “It can’t be that bad, right?” Edward’s tinny voice came through Lincoln’s earpiece. “The tether is rated for what, eight, maybe nine G’s? Those nano-carbons can take some force.”

  “We’re talking closer to thirty G’s, Ed. Think car crash. Remember those?”

  An expletive barked in Lincoln’s ear, immediately followed by the station alarm. Lincoln turned a corner and nearly ran into Damien Fuller, his friend and the team’s neurologist, in front of the airlock control room.

  “Damien, we have to seal off that airlock. If they—”

  “Got it.” Damien rushed to the control panel. Lincoln moved to the closest window to look out at the shuttle as it continued its slow roll against the side of the station. He reached for his comm and hailed the shuttle’s frequency.

  “Shuttle, you’ve been quiet over there, care to fill us in?” Lincoln waited. No response.

  “Alright Lincoln, I’ve closed this bugger off. Now what?” Damien asked from the console.

  “We’ll need to slowly vent the room. The shuttle is unresponsive; I don’t think they’re stopping.” He moved over to the console and entered a few commands. “That should do it.” He keyed his comm. “Gibbs, the shuttle isn’t responding to the comms, can you tell if they’re having technical problems?”

  “Nah, I don’t think so, boss. Everything looks good. What should we do?”

  “Can you remote in? I think we can slave their guidance to our computer and have it navigate to the east airlock and dock safely.”

  “Yea, that shouldn’t take more than a minute or two, hang on.”

  The communicator went silent. After a few minutes, Damien and Lincoln watched as the shuttle reversed from the station and slowly orbited overhead toward the other airlock.

  “Damien, come with me to the other airlock please. Let’s go see what on Earth is going on.”

  He and Damien made it around to the other side of the station as the shuttle locked into the airlock. Just what he needed. Black Suit would tear him a new one when he found out.

  Lincoln entered a few commands into the console, and a panel next to the entrance opened, revealing a pair of sidearms. He took one and checked the granpack: full. He racked the slide, priming the barrage of micro-projectiles and held it out to the doctor.

  Damien’s face was incredulous. “Surely not? Are you mental?” He pushed his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose. “I’m not taking that. You know I’m a pacifist.”

  “Tell that to whoever, or whatever comes out of that shuttle,” Lincoln said sardonically. He didn’t want another one of his friend’s humanitarian speeches. Not now.

  Damien held his ground. “Besides, we’ll punch a hole right out to space with that thing.”

  “You know that’s not how these work.” Lincoln glared at his friend. “But whatever. At least stay out of the way. Gibbs?”

  “Yea, boss, what’s up?”

  “Open her up. Let’s see what kinds of presents they sent us.”

  “You got it.”

  Lincoln tensed as the airlock lights flicked to green and the aperture began to open. A dull thump came from the darkness on the other side of the portal as it slid open. Out of the gloom, a man in a navy jumpsuit plodded toward Lincoln and Damien. Lincoln steadied himself and raised his pistol, tightening his grip. He felt a hand on his own as Damien pushed the weapon down. Lincoln primed himself to rebuke him, but Damien was already running toward the shuttle door.

  Lincoln started to call after the doctor, but cut himself short. Dark purple blood stained the man's jumpsuit, and a pilot's insignia marked his shoulder. Lincoln swore, holstered his weapon, and followed Damien up the ramp as the injured pilot fell hard onto the metal floor.

  Lincoln thumbed his communicator. “Keri, get down here. And bring a stretcher.”

  Day 347 - 11:42

  “How do the rest of the specimens look?” Gibbs asked.

  “Specimens? Bloody cripes mate, they’re people,” Damien Fuller replied sharply. He steeled himself for yet another battle with Gibbs. The two had butted heads over nearly everything since the project started. “What’s your interest, anyway? You’re a programmer. You don’t spend any time with them.”

  “Whatever you say, doc.” Gibbs waved a hand dismissively.

  “All subjects look good. We can start our next round tomorrow,” Emily Shepherd interjected with a soothing tone. She tucked her blonde hair behind her ear and tapped a few buttons on her datapad.

  Damien sighed as he scanned his teammates scattered around the mess hall, debriefing from the drama of the morning. They’d experienced mishaps before, but nothing quite like this. He picked at his ration pack in a daze, like much of the other team members. Except Zachary Gibbs. The man always had something to go on about.

  He’d had grown tired of this room over the last year. Windows. It needed windows, he decided. Not that the view would be great: an endless expanse punctuated by prickles of distant fire. He hated the idea of living in a box in space, at the whimsy of a few parts waiting to break down. He preferred natural things, not the cold sterility of manufacturing. After being out on this station for so long, he had almost forgotten what it was like to feel the sun’s warmth or breathe fresh air.

  “Okay, so what exactly happened in there, again?” Gibbs changed the subject, eyeing Damien.

  Damien set his teeth. He and Gibbs had never gotten along, but in a team this size, one could hardly expect everyone to be fast friends. Granted, even slow friends looked out of the question at this point, but they would have to make it work. Damien secretly wished Lincoln would find a different programmer for the team. If Gibbs kept antagonizing Damien, it wouldn’t be a secret for much longer. He opened his mouth to lay into the man, but Lincoln answered first.

  “Best we can figure, one of the
clones broke out of stasis and—”

  “Specimens,” Gibbs cut Lincoln off. The bulbous man smirked at Damien, which set his blood on fire. Edward chuckled a little but Lincoln simply continued, annoyed.

  “One of the clones broke out of stasis and tried to take over the shuttle as they were making their final approach. In the fight, their communications were damaged: they could receive but they couldn’t send.”

  “And how do we know our little friend in the infirmary isn’t an echo?” Gibbs asked. Damien frowned at the term, one more in a long list of dehumanizing nicknames that Gibbs loved to use. “I mean, how can we be sure that he won’t try the same thing with us when he wakes up?”

  Damien couldn’t help but groan every time Gibbs opened his mouth to speak. The man had little social decorum and even less general morality, as far as Damien was concerned. For the past year, he had been tolerating the programmer, but his patience was wearing thin. He had joined the team partially as a favor to Lincoln, but mainly because he was excited about the prospect of working hands-on with clones.

  There were so many questions about clones, from the biological and medical side to be sure, but also from the humanist standpoint. What were these mysterious human copies, and how did they fit into the natural order? The short answer, of course, was that they didn’t. Since mankind had been attacked by the Sardaan, many had questions about the nature of the clones.

  The aliens had attacked humans nearly eight years ago, when Damien was finishing grad school. He couldn’t believe what had happened. Aliens? That seemed too far outside the rational. But when the news broke that the aliens were using clones—human clones—as soldiers, Damien couldn’t sate his intrigue. After the discovery that all clones had implants and were programmed to believe they were natural humans, clone rights activist groups emerged in full force.

  Damien sympathized with the efforts. He didn’t want to believe that the clones didn’t matter. Whether natural-born or created, they were biologically human, and that was enough for him. Besides, the clones believed that what they were doing was right. They needed help, not extermination.

  So, when Lincoln began putting together a team, Damien knew he wanted to be a part of it. He had hoped the team would be like-minded humanists like himself, but he was glad he hadn’t held his breath. He looked at the man standing across from him and couldn’t help but feel repulsed by the bigotry.

  “For one, most clones don’t even know that they’re clones. Even if he is a clone, he wouldn’t care about being here, because he’d think he’s one of us. Second, the pilot isn’t going anywhere any time soon. His trachea is half crushed, he has internal bleeding throughout his abdomen, and at least three broken ribs.” Damien smiled grimly. “The man took a beating, that’s for sure.”

  “Head trauma?” Lincoln asked, looking over the X-Rays of the man’s abdomen.

  “No, doesn’t look like it. No bruising or swelling anyway. I could run an X-Ray just to be sure.”

  “No, we’ll just let him wake up and we’ll see what he has to say.”

  “Okay, so this echo gets loose, kills one of the pilots, and the second pilot manages to barely escape with his life, after killing the clone? That’s the story we’re sticking with?” Gibbs paced with a dour expression and hands tucked into his pockets. “Are we willing to stake our lives on that?”

  “We’ll keep the pilot secure if that makes you feel better,” Lincoln said. Damien sensed his friend’s patience wearing thin. “Besides, we won’t be able to know more until he wakes up, anyway. In the meantime, we all have work to do. Keri, will you make sure and file a report? I know we may not have much to tell at the moment, but some guidance might be helpful here.”

  “You bet.” She headed out toward the control center.

  “Alright folks, the key to being a good team is not letting the unexpected get in the way of our progress. You’ve all had a chance to look over the doctor’s latest report, yes? I have to believe we’re closer than we’ve ever been. Let’s figure this thing out and we’ll all get to go home heroes.”

  Day 351 - 06:22

  Damien cursed as someone shook him violently. Adrenaline rushed through his veins as a hand gripped his shoulder. Someone was trying to wake him up.

  He’d never been a morning person.

  “Doctor, he’s waking up,” came an infuriatingly chipper voice. “You should probably be there for this.”

  “Alright now, don’t throw a paddy. I’m up, I’m up.” Damien rubbed his eyes and looked up at the girl. Her blonde hair fell in lazy strands over her young face. Emily Shepherd was a linguistic savant—in fact, she was a prodigy. That’s why Lincoln had recruited her. But for everything she excelled at when it came to speech recognition, she utterly lacked in social understanding. She also served as the station’s nurse and his own aide, which was why Damien found himself being woken up by the girl in the wee hours of the morning.

  Damien had taken the pilot off sedation the previous day, hoping to be able to speak to the man. The team was curious about what had transpired on the shuttle, and couldn’t wait to put the pieces together. In the four days since the event, as they had been calling it, their productivity had slowed to a near standstill. Lincoln had finally ordered Damien to wake the pilot up, but Damien had resisted. After more than a few heated discussions, they’d settled on weaning him off sedation and letting him wake naturally. Now, it seemed that time had come.

  “Dr. Harris is already waiting there for you,” Emily said in her bright voice. Damien tried not to grimace as she looked around his bunk room. Though he was something of a perfectionist in the lab, his room wallowed in an absolute mess.

  “Yea, yea. Give me a second, will ya?”

  The young nurse hurried out of the room as if it pained her to be among the rubbish. Damien absently wondered what it was like to be so uptight all the time, but dismissed the thought as he forced himself out of bed. He stalked over to the mirror in the corner of the cramped quarters and looked at himself. A weary face with a day-old beard looked back at him through heavy eyelids, confirming how he felt. Between his research and his patient, it had been a rough few days. He stroked the wild landscape of his unshaven chin and resigned himself. He wouldn’t be shaving today either.

  He donned his standard issue blue coveralls and mustered what energy he could. He left his room, ready as he’d ever be to start the day. He liked to keep something of a persona when he was around others, which is why he didn’t appreciate visitors to his bunk room. In public, he was together. Bloody well perfect, in his mind anyway. But behind closed doors, he could be careless. Just the way he liked it.

  As he rounded the final bulkhead before arriving at the lab, he transformed into Dr. Fuller. He straightened his spine, threw his shoulders back, and lifted his chin, striking a broad smile as he strode into the room where most of the team stood already assembled.

  “Well, well, how’s our patient?” He donned his best American Soap Opera doctor impersonation with a flashy smile. He grabbed a needle playfully and held it toward Gibbs who stood in the doorway.

  “Yeah, hilarious,” the larger man said, and shifted his weight.

  “The pilot started stirring about twenty minutes ago,” Lincoln said. “He hasn’t spoken yet.”

  “Yea, hard cheese there. His throat has to be absolutely killing him. He took quite a blow to the neck.”

  “Anything you can do to help him? I’d like to know what happened back there.”

  “I can try a cortisone shot to the affected area, see if I can’t bring down some of the swelling.” Damien searched through a cabinet and retrieved a small, clear vial. He withdrew some of the fluid with the syringe in his hand and tapped the air bubbles out. “This is something of a steroid as well, so it might help wake him up a bit.”

  From the corner of his eye, Damien could see Gibbs turn away as he injected the syringe directly into the injured man’s neck.

  “It’ll take half an hour or so before we see
anything.” He eyed Gibbs with a sinister smirk. “Who’s hungry?”

  Day 351 - 06:58

  The team had a somber breakfast in the small dining hall. The gray walls and spartan accommodations of the nearly featureless room contributed to the gray mood of the occupants, including Lincoln. In lieu of windows, a single picture of a nebula graced the wall opposite the entrance, but this desultory touch of civilization did little to add warmth to the space. Lincoln didn’t mind spartan accommodations, but even he wished for a splash of color in the station after nearly a year.

  Besides the cold inhumanness of the room, the content of the meals served to, ironically, suck the life out of the team. Protein packs and nutrient shakes for about one thousand consecutive meals meant nobody was excited about mealtime anymore. Lincoln sat with Keri in one corner discussing some of the previous day’s briefs. Looking around the room, he couldn’t help but let a grin slip as Gibbs told an inappropriate joke to an unresponsive Emily and Edward. Damien studied a CT scan while lazily stirring his coffee.

  His friend looked rough. He decided he should probably check on him.

  He rose to speak to Damien and—

  A sickening scream tore down the hall. He jumped involuntarily and nearly lost his footing.

  “Oh bloody—” Damien threw his datapad on the table and ran from the room. By the time Lincoln met him in infirmary, Damien had injected the man with an anesthetic.

  “What is going on here?” Lincoln asked.

  “The man is still in shock,” Damien said soberly. “I’m going to keep him sedated until his body heals more. Even then, well, we’ll have to see.”

  “Nothing you can do then?” Lincoln prodded. Black Suit would want some answers. “I need to ask him some questions. We’ll have to send a follow up report soon.”

  “I think we should toss him out of the airlock and move on with our lives.” Gibbs cocked an eyebrow as he and the rest of the team filed in.