Nanowrimo 2011 - Day 04

[LI / JAMES - CALL TO ADVENTURE]

James sat up gasping for air in a brightly lit room. His throat and lungs felt violated. Numerous points of his body felt like they’d been impaled but as he took a quick survey he found nothing more than a few patches that looked a healthier shade of pink than usual. He coughed. Rough, he couldnt think of a time when his throat had felt quite so bad without the rest of him running a high fever as well.

A voice behind him spoke slowly, the words oddly accented, “Take it easy, you’ve been through a lot. Here’s some water to help your throat.”

James turned toward the voice. The man who spoke was tall, brown skinned, and looked like a soldier, complete with fatigues and dog tags. His head was shaved smooth. James started when he saw the man’s eyes, or at least the complete lack of eyes. There was smooth brown skin where eyelids, and eyes, ought to have been. James tried to get a sense of the rest of him, he was clearly muscular and moved with an easy grace despite the missing eyes. So, this was his turf, and he knew his way around. In his hand was a small paper cup with water in it. Both signs that James took to heart, he was someone worth listening to and reaching out to for aid. Whatever notes of caution James was feeling, they couldnt cover the thirst though, he accepted the cup and gulped at the water.

“Take it slow…” the soldier said.

James tried to speak but his tongue and vocal chords didnt want to work. He finished the water and handed the cup back to the soldier.

“How do you feel?” the man asked.

James tried to answer, the words coming out as a husky croak, “Like crap. What did you do to me anyhow? Where am I? Who are you?”

A voice interrupted them, female, filtering down from somewhere above them, “On the clock here gentlemen. Eric, can you give James a hand out of there? Thanks!”

James nodded to himself, so the soldier’s name was Eric. Good to know. The soldier was clearly not a nurse. James noted that he was being half-carried like a wounded comrade, after getting off the gleaming metal table he had been laying on. There was a distinct lack of the usual level of compassion he’d expect of a nurse. Nurses! The explosion! Suddenly memories flooded back. Was all that a dream? What did it have to do with this place where he’d woken up. He had no memory of coming here, wherever “here” was, the last thing he remembered was the haunted railyard and seeing ghosts.

The soldier helped him to the door, pressed a blank section of wall and the door slid smoothly of its own accord. More weirdness. Doors dont move of their own accord! As they left the room, and the door was sliding back home he caught a glance of the rest of the room.

“No!” he shouted and fought free of the soldier’s grasp. On an identical slab to the one he’d woken up on was another prone figure - Vincent - with all manner of tubes and metal implements sticking out of him.

“Calm down.” the soldier said to him.

“What the hell? Who are you people?” James demanded.

“You’re angry. I get that. It doesnt help though …” the soldier said, pausing slightly.

James began to turn to see what had caused the soldier to hesitate. The last thing he saw was a tiny Japanese woman with a black rod in her hand. The railyard! The rod touched him and he passed out.

Shawna made good time getting to Li’s lab. More and more evidence seemed to be piling up in this small room and she was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery - not just to clear her name (the synth-flesh isnt mine!) but also to look deeper into what might have shown itself to synthetic human - android - behaviour.

She heard Eric talking to Li around the corner so she waited.

“I hope you know what you’re doing Li. This is all starting to get kinda weird. Test subjects …” Eric said.

Shawna stepped out, using surprise to her advantage, she wanted answers and hoped the two would be unguarded in the moment, “Yes, test subjects? We’ll have to see about that. Have you got buy-off from Genomics for this, whatever it is?” she interrupted, waving a hand at the prone body over Eric’s shoulder.

“Shawna, we have permission for catch and release on this one, ask the Captain. Copious samples were taken and the other test specimen is still in isolation waiting for you.” Li said.

“Heh. Copious? I doubt you even have the slightest idea of the scale I’d need for a full workup would you? Take your little fishy and drop him back into the pond.” Shawna said and stepped out of their way.

“Oh, and Li?”

“What?”

“Remember that under the Protocol Seven lockdown all your results are mine to review. Dont think I wont be giving you a free ride on things this time around.” Shawna sneered.

Li sighed and took a half-step along the corridor. Shawna blocked her. Li stepped to the side and Shawna blocked her again. The pattern repeated itself a few more times.

“Shawna, let me pass. This is infantile.” Li said.

Shawna laughed and stepped to the side. As Li passed Shawna stepped in and deliberately bumped past her, their shoulders colliding with a solid thump as they went their separate ways.

Li mumbled to herself as she marched off down the corridor with Eric in tow. What she failed to notice was a fine metallic layer that had been deposited by Shawna’s shoulder bump. The metallic patch moved, pulled together, drawing into a single spot and then snaked up to the neckline of the Kimono where it spread out and sank into the silk.

Shawna nodded in satisfaction. Her store of nanites was running low but this, of all times, was the perfect time to make use of them. She intended tracking Li’s movements and recording remotely her interactions on the other ship but as she turned and walked into Li’s lab she didnt feel comfortable trusting anyone else to the data collection efforts. She needed to be there in person. Wherever Eric was taking Li and the unconscious man, Shawna needed to be there.

She turned on her heel and jogged down the corridor after the others. She reached the shuttlebay with only moments to spare. With a sprint of inhuman speed, and a jump of over eight metres, she landed with a thump on the retracting landing ramp. It carried her upward and sealed with the hull, dumping her unceremoniously onto the deck plating of the shuttle interior. She she declare herself to the others? After the previous altercations with Li, she didnt think it wise, but that meant finding a suitable location to hide until they had landed at their destination. She turned aft, heading for the small cargo bay, with its many nooks and crannies where she could hide for the duration of the flight.

Eric settled himself into the pilot’s seat with Li in the co-pilot position. The shuttle showed green across the board, although the retraction of the landind ramp did briefly flash a warning. The heads-up display was being projected directly from the computer onto Eric’s visual cortex. In front of his seat was a plain console with two hand-shaped depressions on the surface. He cracked his knuckles, getting a look of reproof from Li, then laid his hands lightly into the depressions.

“All set?” he asked.

“Yes.” Li said.

Behind them there was a wordless groan from James. Li looked back at him, laying on the acceleration couch, then back to Eric, “I think he was answering you…” she said with a slight smile.

He pressed his hands deeper into the depressions and he felt them sink into the surface. Only a fraction of Scout Service personel were ever selected for flight school. It all depended on their adaption to the sensor net technology. Eric’s own investigation into the mysterious database he carried had yielded more information of course but it boiled down to the console making a direct connection into the brain, sending and receiving signals from the visual cortex, motor skills, and a variety of other locations. The software mapped the ship into a new body-image for the pilot and only a select few ever took to the sensation, most rejected it, with the worst cases needing to be treated for a modified “phantom limb” condition afterward.

Eric flew the ship like a natural though. He relished the exposure to space and the way that the software mapped his senses onto ship sensors. For a few moments it felt like he was free of this earthly body, and could fly with the Angels. In those moments he always reminded himself of Icarus though, and never tried to defy the Gods, keeping his shuttle piloting to the safe and secure, pedestrian, end of the scale.

Takeoff and exiting the shuttle bay of the “Purgatory’s Lament” went smoothly. Both Eric and Li gasped at the sheer magnitude of the Generation Ship became visible. It was literally a city in space - carved from an asteroid - engines and other equipment bolted onto the outside with living quarters in the hollow center. As the shuttle accelerated toward the shift they both became aware of the deep scarring of the surface. Hundreds of years of exposure to deep space, micro (and macro) asteroid impacts. As they watched they saw several sets of metallic girders moving, drawing together a series of dishes. The dishes aligned.

“Oh, Shit!” Eric said, “Hold onto something!”

Anyone but a natural would have been caught in the blast of laser energy that the dishes channeled at the shuttle. The “Purgatory’s Lament” was not so lucky. The beam hit broadside, heating one section of hull to brilliant heat which was quickly dissipated across the rest of the ship in an ever decreasingly bright ring of energy. Sparks erupted from power couplings on the hull. Where the laser had hit showed blisters which proceeded to burst, releasing precious atmospheric gasses into space. Automated systems clamped down to save the ship. Under Protocol Seven the data had to be preserved at all costs. The ship’s computer clamped down on damaged sections of ship, sealing decks, and dispatching repair drones.

Eric looked at the enormous lasers. Yes, it made sense. A ship of that size could hardly maneuver around incoming comets and asteroids so they needed to be rendered harmless, small enough to perhaps cause scars on the surface, but that would be all. Their shuttle had triggered the long dormant algorithm … a second volley caught him by surprise. This time hitting the shuttle with mechanical accuracy.

The console lit up red. One engine had failed completely. Long-range communication and sensors had been burned entirely off the hull. Atmosphere was venting from numerous leaks. Crippled, half-blinded and bleeding out he took the only option … let gravity take its course and he headed for the planet below. The generation ship would no-longer see them as an incoming asteroid threat, and they would be free of the massive lasers.

As the shuttle spiralled, only half in control, down to the planet’s surface the ship’s computer on the Scout ship made a decision and initiated Protocol Seven’s most extreme judgement. All occupied cabins were pumped full of acceleration fluid to buffer their occupants against extreme maneuvers and a stasis field erected around all living crew members. The ship plotted a course back into civilized space and leaped into motion running at its theoretical maximum faster-than-light burn to get there. The course plotted the ship to intersect the orbit of a deep space science station, and a colony planet, two months minimum at the present rate of burn.

The generation ship watched both nearby object spiral away and the mainframe retracted the collision avoidance lasers. The smaller object accelerated away into the planetary gravity well, a path indicating it was under no motive power of its own, the other object simply vanished. The mainframe tracked the trajectory of the falling object, content to see it impact the planet a safe distance away from the center of the colony. It tracked the explosion, the fragments of the object that broke off in-flight down to the planet. All fell at acceptably safe rates and in reasonable locations outside the colony’s reach.