Out of the black, p.7
Out of the Black, page 7
"Cybernetics," she said. "My eye. I had a contact node in my right index finger to activate my optics."
The brill doctor nodded and took her right hand in his. She felt the smoothness of the metal exo-suit and the rough edges of the finger joints and it sent a shiver down her spine. She could feel things.
"I took the liberty of transplanting the contact node as well," it said, gently turning her hand over and showing her the barely-visible implantation scar on her fingertip.
"Thank you. Thank you. How long have I been out?"
"Sixteen hours."
She looked down at the brill in surprise.
"That’s it?"
It nodded. Sixteen hours. Sixteen hours and a batshit crazy brill surgeon was all it had taken for her to regain control of her life. It seemed an easy price.
"As I said, remarkable physiology, the icarans – impressive tissue regeneration. Once I bridged the gap between your extant skeletal structure and that of the donor arms with synthetic bone and completed the basic connections between cardiovascular and nervous systems, and of course injected a steroid and tissue-growth enhancer, the icaran biology began to complete the procedure almost on its own. Very fascinating to observe."
"I’m sure it was," she said. "So, uh... how long do I need to rest?"
"You mean to ask when you may return to active duty."
"Yeah, that’s what I mean."
The brill shrugged.
"I would recommend not over-taxing your shoulders for the next few days while the icaran tissue finishes melding with your own, but I am comfortable saying you may return to duty once you are comfortable using your new limbs," it said. "However, I would strongly recommend practicing a multitude of tasks to help in adapting to having two fewer fingers on each hand."
The brill picked up a tablet from a nearby table and brought up the Commonwealth Armed Forces messaging system.
"Please log in to your account and send me a message."
Taking the offered tablet, Sigurdsson frowned as it took her several minutes to manipulate the interface properly to log in and even longer to send the actual message.
She handed the tablet back to the brill.
"There. It took longer than usual, but-."
"And your spelling is atrocious."
It turned the tablet so Sigurdsson could see the message as he’d received it.
OKay doc snedingyou messge. See no problwm.
"Typing was never my strong point anyway," she said with a small chuckle. "In fact, pretty sure I never used more than two fingers to type at the best of times. I’m more worried about whether I’ll be able to use a firearm."
"Understandable. As your physician, I should recommend against any strenuous activity, including any participation in combat. However, as I am not mentally deficient, I know you would ignore said recommendation – in which case I will simply advise against the use of weapons such as assault rifles that require you to brace them against your shoulder, or any weapon with significant recoil. And, it should go without saying, any hand-to-hand combat."
"Okay. That I can probably handle. For how long?"
"Two weeks, at least. I would like to re-examine and re-evaluate in twenty-four hour intervals for the first week and, assuming no issues, forty-eight hour intervals for the second. Is this acceptable?"
"Yes, absolutely."
Under normal circumstances, she would have been annoyed or even downright hostile at the suggestion she would need to check in with medical so frequently, but this monster-maker of a brill had given her a shot at being a soldier again. At being Freya Sigurdsson again. As stubborn as she was, Sigurdsson did not want to jeopardize the opportunity by pushing off her assessments.
"In that case, you may consider yourself discharged. We speak again at this time tomorrow?"
Nodding her agreement, Sigurdsson pulled on her coat, revelling in the feeling of the coarse fabric on her arms, stuffed her hands in her pockets and headed back into the guts of Thor’s Hammer with a single thought on her mind: getting back into the fight.
13
FOR APPEARANCE'S SAKE, Radko had not met with Captain Singh nor set foot aboard the Azrael’s Tear, despite his curiosity regarding both. Cagliari served as an intermediary for coordinating anything that need to be coordinated between Singh’s people and the Vimy Ridge, which, as it turned out, was serving them all in good stead.
"Just a standard patrol, Admiral," said Radko.
On the command deck of the Vimy Ridge, Radko stood by the sand table. In a floating holographic window was Admiral Mahoney, while above the sand table hovered a three-dimensional star map. Thor’s Hammer was marked with a pulsating orange diamond, and a thin dashed line – pulsating in the same orange – traced a long, elliptical route through several sectors of space before looping back to the diamond.
"The Ridge has been docked here for nearly a month," he continued. "I don’t want the crew getting complacent. And to be perfectly blunt, I think we’ve all gotten a little comfortable here. The number of patrols we send out has been dropping off quite a bit lately."
The admiral looked exhausted as he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
"Agreed, Commander. But I don’t want you going out there looking for a fight."
"Of course, Sir."
Inside, Radko sighed. Sooner or later, the Commonwealth was going to have to go out looking for a fight or nothing about this war would ever be resolved. But for the time being, he’d play the good officer and follow orders.
"It looks like your route will take you not far from Muriel’s Moon?"
Radko made a show of double-checking his proposed patrol route.
"That would be correct, Admiral. I’m not really familiar with the location – is there something in the area we should be alert for?"
"No, nothing like that. There’s an old manufacturing plant there – the Azrael’s Tear is planning a salvage operation."
"The pirates," said Radko, throwing a small amount of distaste into the words.
"I know, I know, but they have their uses, Commander. It might be advisable for the Vimy Ridge to escort the pirates to Muriel’s Moon. Safety in numbers and all that."
"We can do that, Sir. Does the Azreal’s Tear have a scheduled departure yet?"
"Tomorrow, oh-eight-hundred hours. Can you be ready by then?"
"Won’t be a problem, Admiral."
Mahoney nodded and terminated the link and Radko sent the holographic window spiralling off into oblivion.
Cagliari would already be aware of the timeline, since she was more or less in control of the pirates for the time being. At least, as in control as one could ever be with pirates. However, Cortez would need to be brought up to speed. She had said that her part in this wouldn’t require more than a couple of hours advance notice, but where hacking of computer systems was involved, the more advance notice that could be given the better. Radko knew little about the actual process, but he’d heard enough stories about encounters with unexpected security software to make him nervous about it.
He made his way to his office, which Cortez had a standing offer to use whenever she happened to be aboard the Vimy Ridge, and was surprised to find not only Cortez there, but also Freyja Sigurdsson. Sigurdsson was for some reason wearing mitts.
"Cold?"
"Something like that," she said with a smile.
She certainly seemed to be in better spirits than she had been the last time they’d spoken and Radko was glad of it. As strong a bond as he’d formed with Anna Cortez over the course of their experiences, he felt a unique kinship with Sigurdsson. The two had faced similar circumstances, each ending up by pure happenstance as the head of a small group of survivors, fighting against the ril-galas and responsible for the lives of those who looked to them for leadership. While she fought on Von Daniken’s Landing and he in space aboard the Vimy Ridge, they’d maintained contact as much as possible, each knowing that the other was perhaps the only human left alive to know – to really know – what they were going through emotionally. When they had finally met in person it had been several weeks after the breaking of the blockade at Thor’s Hammer. Sigurdsson and her group had been evacuated from Fort Hathaway, a new garrison left behind to hold the fort. She’d been in the hospital recovering from the first of her surgeries and only had one cybernetic arm at that point, the other arm still ending in a bandaged stump halfway down her deltoid.
Meeting and speaking together in person had been a surreal experience.
Since that time, the two had kept in touch as much as their respective assignments would allow.
"How are the arms?"
She hesitated slightly.
"Good. They’re good. The doctor that Nasrin recommended... I think everything will be fine now."
"Glad to hear it," he said, then turning to Cortez. "We are scheduled for launch at o-eight-hundred tomorrow for our patrol mission."
The young officer nodded.
"Okay. I was just explaining the situation to Freyja."
The look on Radko’s face clearly conveyed his dismay, because Cortez held up her hands and Sigurdsson shook her head.
"Don’t worry," said Sigurdsson. "I’m not going to tell anyone. I’m... actually not a member of the Commonwealth Armed Forces anymore."
"And since you said you wanted to have people on this mission you knew you could trust," said Cortez. "I’ve asked Freyja to be involved."
"Okay, hold on. Let’s backtrack for a second," he said, frowning in confusion. "Why aren’t you in the armed forces anymore? I thought you were on temporary medical leave."
"I was. Then I got better and the army decided they didn’t like it. So I was given an immediate honourable discharge. About an hour and a half ago," said Sigurdsson. "Pretty good, huh? From Regimental Sergeant-Major winning a key colony to unemployed in under a week."
"How... You got better and...? I feel like I have a concussion – why the hell would the army be upset that one of their best soldiers was getting closer to returning to duty?"
"Because they’re racist," said Cortez.
Radko looked at Cortez, then back to Sigurdsson, the tall, blond-haired and blue-eyed Freyja Sigurdsson. She was the epitome of the old Earth concept of the Aryan Ideal.
With a small, almost resigned smile, Sigurdsson pulled off her mitts, first left then right.
And she waggled her slender blue fingers.
Frowning, Radko opened his mouth, closed it again. Raised a brow and opened his mouth again to speak. Then just shrugged.
"Okay."
"Okay?" repeated Sigurdsson. "That's it?"
"Yeah, I can't think of anything else."
"Maybe," said Cortez, trying very hard not to laugh. "You should explain the discharge?"
"Apparently, back when the Commonwealth thought that AI was going to develop differently than it did, the armed forces wrote in some additional rules about members having to be human," said Sigurdsson. "Seems the brass doesn’t feel I meet that requirement anymore."
"Are you fucking kidding me?" sad Radko.
He seemed to be saying that far more frequently than made him comfortable.
"It really shouldn’t surprise you that much, Finn," said Cortez. "We had the icarans interested in an alliance and the government shot it down because, in their minds, the icarans couldn’t be trusted. Why would they trust a human-icaran hybrid?"
"I don’t know whether I need a pot of tea or a bottle of Scotch."
"We’re out of both," said Cortez.
"I hate everything," he said, rubbing his hands over his face. "Okay, so first question: you now have icaran arms?"
"Yeah."
Taking off her coat and tossing it onto a chair, Sigurdsson rolled up her sleeves to the elbow – which seemed a little more awkward with her new three-fingered hands – to show off her new arms.
"Not that this matters," said Cortez. "But they’re a really pretty colour."
"Thanks, I thought so too," said Sigurdsson, chuckling.
Radko cleared his throat pointedly and Sigurdsson looked back at him with a huff.
"Yes, I have icaran arms. The brill have this branch of medical science called xeno... xeno-something-ology. It’s using genetic material to heal injuries, treat diseases and all that across different species. From what the brill told me, its people have been using icaran tissue for years because they heal so fast. It said it could give me new arms."
"And it worked," said Radko, shaking his head. "I don’t know what’s crazier – that it worked or that you agreed to it in the first place."
"Me either, really."
Silence, longer and more awkward than when Radko and Sigurdsson had first met face to face, and Sigurdsson finally cleared her throat.
"So yeah, icaran arms."
"Sorry, I'm sorry," said Radko, rubbing his face again. "I don't care."
He watched Sigurdsson's eyes narrow and her jaw muscles twitch—a sure sign she was preparing for a fight—and he quickly held up a hand to ward it off.
"I mean that I don't care if you have icaran arms. Or robot arms or human arms. I care that you're back and whole and happy."
Her expression immediately softened, more than he'd ever seen.
"Thank you."
"However, about you joining this mission—if we put you on the Azrael’s Tear with the icarans, will they have an issue?"
"No," said Sigurdsson, shaking her head. "I spoke with Elgrapharr before making my decision."
So that was why Elgrapharr had made the comment about speaking to humans a lot – Sigurdsson had asked for his blessing on her surgery.
"Then a more practical question. Are you medically able to participate in this thing?"
"Doc says stay away from weapons I need to brace against my shoulders or anything with major recoil. Means I can’t use my sniper rifles, but I don’t see that happening in the hallways of an underground research place anyway," she said with a shrug, looking somewhat pleased at the action—probably, Radko figured, glad that she could do it without hearing and feeling the whir of gears in her shoulders. "I’m a good shot with a pistol, too, so I can still help."
"I have no doubt," said Radko. "We’ve been asked to escort the Azrael’s Tear to Muriel’s Moon. You can stay with us and transfer to the pirate ship when we rendezvous with the icarans."
There were nods all around and Cortez excused herself to pass along the revised plan to Cagliari while Radko dropped heavily into one of the two chairs facing his desk and pointed Sigurdsson toward the old-style globe of Earth bolted to the floor.
"It opens."
Frowning, she stepped over and examined it, then flipped it open on its Equator to reveal four glasses and two bottles of amber-coloured liquid nestled in high-density foam. One had been opened, but one remained sealed and Sigurdsson plucked them both from their protective foam recesses with a grin. The grin quickly disappeared when she saw the label on the unopened one.
"Shit, Radko, how can you afford this?"
It was a twenty-five-year-old single malt and would have been painfully expensive even back when Scotch was still being produced.
"That was a gift. Saving it for a special occasion – pour us a couple glasses of the other stuff."
She nodded and gently put the unopened bottle back in its foam, then poured two glasses from the other bottle. She handed one to Radko then settled into the chair next to the Commander. Almost at the same time, they each put their feet up on his desk.
"To your health," he said as they clinked their glasses, then tapped them on the arm of their chairs.
"And my loss of humanity."
Radko winced slightly.
"Yeah," he said. "Are you... okay with that?"
She sighed heavily, then took a sip before answering.
"I’m okay with it in the sense that I don’t give a shit what people think of me. I assumed people would be all shifty or downright disgusted – I knew that shit would happen if I went through with this. What I’m not okay with is them using it as an excuse to take away my job. I’m a soldier, it’s what I am. It’s pretty much all I am."
"That’s not true."
"It is, though. I’ve been in the army since I was seventeen. It’s like waking up one day and having your dad tell you to get out of the house and never come back," she said, taking a very long sip, and staring into her glass for a long moment. "I’ve just been kicked out of a second family."
"Is that why you enlisted? To find a new family?" he said. She’d never spoken much about her past and, Radko realized, he’d never asked her about it.
To his surprise, Sigurdsson laughed.
"I enlisted to avoid prison."
Radko's glass paused at his lips.
"What?"
"My mom died when I was really, really young. Don’t even really remember her that much. And my father was a raging alcoholic. Spent so many days just in a black-out drunk stupor. Couldn’t hold down a job either – as you can imagine – so we weren’t financially stable by any stretch," she said. "I spent a lot of time just out on my own, doing whatever the hell I wanted. Fell in with the wrong people, blah, blah, blah. A little shoplifting led to a little pickpocketing. I was a tough kid, too, so I got some work as a... let’s say a debt collector. Kick some heads, collect overdue drug money, that kind of thing."
She paused, blowing out a breath as she ran a hand through her hair.
"Long story short, I got caught at it red-handed. Literally – guy's blood on my knuckles. Aggravated assault, assault with a deadly weapon, because I was wearing brass knuckles. I think they even tacked on extortion and living off the proceeds of crime. I was looking at a substantial prison term. But then I ended up in front of a judge who believed in rehabilitation. Said I needed structure in my life and it was my choice whether I got that structure in prison or in the army. So here I am," she said, holding up her glass in a mock toast. "Or here I was."
"You know why I joined the navy?"
She looked over at him and shook her head.
"Chicks dig the uniform," he said.
