place would be a balm to her battered sensibilities. She shivered with tension and fear, and suddenly wondered why three people were missing.
“Doc?” Maeve raised her voice as loudly as she could muster. Hawke couldn't hear her. Everything came to a dead halt when a piercing whistle screamed above the rest of the noise. “Sorry. Where are the other three? I thought there were nine of us.” Maeve felt the startlement of realization that they had said six, but that she had somehow felt a different number surface in her mind. The doctor looked momentarily sheepish, then stiffened.
“There were nine; one compartment was breached, its occupant, expired. Two other bod…persons were missing.” One dead, two vanished. She felt that there was a specific someone she should be looking for, someone very important to her, context or significance was out of place. Or time. She had a sudden urge to jump up and scream, though it would be less than helpful. Hell, it might even make everyone in charge here think she was in need of psychiatric help. The overhead lights flickered in front of her eyes, and she saw a movie-like scene playing out behind her eyes.
…Water casually washed the shoreline of the Gulf coast, eerily placid after the late summer tropical storm that had sulked a mile offshore, never touching land. It was still rising swells the size of baby elephants in some places. Here, on this night, it was calm and smiled the thumbnail moon back at Maeve and....
“Are you alright?” Tark grasped her shoulder lightly and looked at her with furrowed brow.
“This is just a huge shock to the system.” That was it, beginning, middle…end. She wasn’t giving him anything else, if she remembered anything else at all. She was still a little groggy. Her speech slurred now and again, giving away as they talked how far she had yet to go.
۞
Hawke looked around her hospital with an emotion she rarely felt. Satisfaction. Now, five other cryogenic patients stared suspiciously at their new surroundings, while personnel took their names, dates of birth. But no matter how you looked at it, this could be hers alone.
This significant little piece of scientific accomplishment belonged to her. In spite of the reprimands she’d gotten, she knew she had to do this. There was no way she was going to keep it a secret like the Colonel thought they should. He'd see, when she got a nice citation. Maybe the wheels would get greased a little and some of her other requests would get paid attention to finally. Smiling most peculiarly (at least that's what her nurses whispered to each other), she made her way into her office and composed a message to send back to Earth. Things would begin to change here and now.
۞
"Dammit!" Rikert Shirk, second lieutenant, (young and pretty much freshly pressed) whacked a panel inside the cryogenics container. He cursed a few more times for good measure. His Chief Warrant Officer, 2nd grade, popped his head around a corner, and grinned when he saw the look of consternation on his lieutenant's face. The warrant officer was called Patrick, but he preferred Paddy when he was three pints down. He’d been working on the lad, but those shiny butter bars had given the kid a touch of gold fever. It was a common affliction; it was a warrant officer’s purview to cure him of it.
"Whatsa matter, sir?” He tried to slip in a tiny bit of sarcastic inflection on the ‘sir’, knowing how it gave the lieutenant the twitches. “This old beast giving you problems with which you cannot cope?" Rikert did not prefer his own nickname, but everyone called him by it anyway. It was a joke from the locker rooms, taken on a life of its own. Dick glared at the mirthful CWO, who had a wicked gleam in his eye.
"I'm giving you fair warning, Chief, you start harassing me, and I won’t go so easy on the pitch during our football match this week." Patrick wheeled back in mock horror.
“If you go and break my legs, who will keep my wife in the manner to which she’s accustomed? Just tell me what the problem is, sir.” He grinned at himself.
“I can handle it. You have better things to do than mollycoddle me.” Patrick sighed at the stubbornness of the man, tossed his hands up, and shook his head mournfully.
“Aren’t you a bit old, sir, to be acting like a greenstick? In Donegal," He glared as Dick choked back a snort of derision, “there are bloody sheep with more bloody sense. Bleeding Irish sheep, they are.” That made the lieutenant crack a tiny smile, and he sucked in his pride to ask for help.
“Oh all right. I would have had this behemoth up and running an hour ago, but every time I try to access it, it goes crazy and shuts down. I just don't get it.” Patrick closed his eyes and muttered softly in Gaelic, leaving Dick to chew his lip unassuredly for a brief agonizing time.
“Begging your pardon sir, but I might point out something that may have not occurred to you yet? Technologists were just beginning to piece together the first infant artificial intelligence systems at the point this hunk of metal was cobbled together. You’re dealing with an antique. Don’t get caught up in trying to make it do what you think it ought.” Patrick knew that he could be perceived as overstepping the boundaries between the two men, or possibly even insulting the lad. He figured that his twenty-three years in service could justify a little scolding, at the very least.
He watched with a careless peripheral interest as Dick worked around the new limitations set upon him, gently nudging wires and boards. This continued on for a quarter of an hour. Out of the blue, the aged screens winked a sleepy eye, and burst into a scene of animated waves crashing.
Patrick leaned forward with interest, repressing the urge to touch the keypads. Dick was surprised enough that he jumped up out of his seat, banging his head on the bulkhead above. He shot Patrick a filthy look when the older man could be heard stifling a laugh. Then he looked back to the monitor, realizing that Patrick was pointing to it insistently.
The computer was alive, and now waiting to be commanded.
Hokusai's waves moved around imperial Japan in a repetitive cycle. It was what Dick did not recognize immediately to be a screensaver, although he was familiar with the artwork. The thing ran its diagnostics, computed the date (a few hundred years short, which might mean something, though Dick wasn't sure what), and immediately blipped into a program that functioned with a number of options for input.
"I hate dinosaurs..." Dick started muttering technological jargon under his breath, running through systems tables and variances. He had a talent and a habit for doing that, because of a photographic memory, and an underactive social life. Patrick shook his head at the young man for about the hundredth time today alone and walked off to investigate the individual chamber controls. "Come on, passenger manifest, puh-leezz, I want pictures, dates, favorite colors, anything!"
"Find anything?" The sudden noise snapped whiplike through Dick, causing him to rocket to his feet, and smash his knees into the control panel. Cursing mentally at the throbbing, now through his head and thighs, all while fighting the urge to fall over in pain; he turned to face the source of the voice, and stopped dead his planned tirade.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you, but I'm curious as to how well the retrieval process is coming.” Colonel Tarkington stood immediately to their rear.
"Sorry, sir....”
"Shirk, is it?"
"Right, yes." He thought for a moment. “How are they adjusting?”
“Bit early to tell for sure, but they all seem well enough.” Tark peered at the computer monitor, and then over at the diagnostics array.
“We’ve got access, still looking for any files that might give us…you the information you asked for, sir.”
Lieutenant Shirk twitched uncomfortably under the steady scrutiny of his commanding officer. Tark smiled inwardly and shared a knowing look with the chief. Shirk could be no more than eighteen. His billet must have been won through sheer brilliance….
“Lay it on me, Lieutenant.”
۞
So-called Lieutenant Dick had piled the technical trash high, explaining with elaborate intensity the problems he was having trying to reconstruct the recalcitrant hunk of s
ilicate and metals known as their onboard computer. Not that it was broken, at least not physically, but after nearly three hundred years, even having been kept in optimal conditions, it had geriatric problems. It was damned lucky that they’d found those people when they had.
Shirk had said the onboard systems were at failure point before he’d worked on them. Tark noticed Sa'andy gazing at him peripherally, and he rolled his eyes gently, while hers snapped back into place. She smiled like a guileless schoolchild, though he suspected the affectation was designed purely for his benefit. He already knew she was secretly so pleased with herself she couldn’t stand it. No sense in encouraging her, but he was strangely pleased as well.
۞
She wanted to be stronger than she was, but weakness was stalking her like a tiger. Three weeks had gone by in a blurry haze. She still felt exhausted and queasy. It had been difficult to stand unassisted, let alone walk. Maeve looked down at her body for the millionth time, willing there to be a visible change. There’d been an infusion of some sort every few hours for the first few days, with promises of smoothies once her body could tolerate it. The thought of ingesting anything had not been terribly appealing, but the sooner she improved, the better.
Sitting in bed was approximate to losing her mind, if there was anything left at all to lose. She felt the prickling of an active intellect protesting all the sitting still, and went back to the only exercise she’d been able to do. One by one, she contracted muscles, holding each one for a count of ten, over and over. That done, she moved on to jiggling her legs as they were, stretched out in front of her. Physical therapy was scheduled to start soon, but she preferred to try and be ahead of expectations.
A nurse came in, smiling at her in the way nurses do when they’re about to tell a patient something not fun for anyone. Indeed. It was time for a wheelchair ride, wasn’t that a nice step forward? No. Not really. Not unless it was a ride back home, back in time. The nurse kept up a smile, ignoring the acerbity of her patient. Maeve sullenly allowed herself to be manhandled into a sitting position. Then into the chair. Then the bombshell. It was social hour. Everyone was doing well enough to come out and say hello. Maeve wondered how many people would be witnessing this supposed reunion.
She’d been trying to get her brain back in working order over those three weeks, without a great deal of success. There was still a blank hole, blocking any progress. It was beginning to be a tiresome theme. Maybe seeing some faces would spark a memory. This realization gave her a tiny bit of hope. There had to be forward motion in this mess somewhere, right? She sighed and allowed the nurse to roll her out into a common room. Five other people sat around in roughly the same state that she was. Well, at least there was that.
They were all wearing what she was wearing. Standard issue shorts and tees in a lovely shade of olive green that was familiar if nothing else. They chatted quietly as she was wheeled in, falling silent once she was in their midst. Looks were exchanged, and Maeve found herself thinking that this didn’t appear to be the first time they’d been together. She was trying to think of something to say when a lanky, unbelievably blonde man saved them all from the awkward silence.
“Do you remember any of us?” Us, she thought. Confirmation of some sort. Nonetheless, she looked at each of them carefully. There were no bells, no moments of unadulterated lucidity. Just one face in the crowd stuck with her. She couldn’t have forgotten him even if she’d tried. He saw something in her eye, a spark, and grinned.
“Well,” They exchanged glances laced with