crashing into the wall and the divider.
“This...of course, is why...my parents named me...Grace.”
“What are we doing here?” Josh stopped swinging abruptly at the sound of Maeve's question. Everyone looked at each other and remembered why they had stayed with her in the first place. “Other than a few scattered memories, I have no idea how or why we got here.” A few memories? What did that mean? She'd just let that slip before even thinking about it, and now they were all looking at her expectantly. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. But she wasn't ready to share her odd visions yet.
Antonio was the first one to notice that Maeve had suddenly lapsed into a state of silent confusion. He quickly cleared his throat, and interrupted.
“Well, I don't know about anybody else, but I think we’re all feeling a bit dislocated and unclear.” Jemila raised her eyebrows, marveling at the ease of deception. She was about to put forth her opinion of the whole thing when the screen on the wall flickered and put into view the face of Colonel Tarkington. In the background, the container was visible, as well as about ten crewpersons milling about.
۞
“I hope I'm not bothering you, but I thought you’d...ah, I see you have company.”
“You're not bothering anyone. Leif, Josh, Jemi, Grace, Antonio and I were just trying to figure out how to kill some time.” Tark’s mouth twisted slightly; he understood her motive in pointing all of them out, but spoke calmly, no trace of any embarrassment in his voice or demeanor. He had never visited them as a group, and had kept his private visits with the rest of them tacitly quiet. They all seemed to understand, and played dumb accordingly.
“I'm sorry I haven’t had a chance to meet all of you formally. We’ll have to remedy that soon. We have some news, though.” He paused, letting that take hold, and then smiled slightly before continuing. “That's why I’ve called, Ms. Howard. We’ve gotten access to the entirety of your files.” Maeve blinked.
“Come again?”
“Sorry, the computer that was onboard your, er, ship, it took them a while to recover all the information. It was badly degraded, I believe was the word used.” He did not mention that O’Leary and Shirk had also been working feverishly to locate any information about the container. What they had found had proven to be a bit troubling. Even more troubling was how much appeared to have been excised from what information there was. He was a heartbeat away from telling them to use whatever means necessary. His hole was getting deeper by the moment.
“Anything of note?” Leif’s presence loomed up just behind her, as protective as ever. Looking back over her shoulder, she wasn’t sure how she felt about being hovered over by him…like that. She looked back up at the screen. The colonel seemed to be thinking things over.
“Why don’t you come to my office and look things over? I would say that you all should come, but we might not want to attract too much attention. A lot of personnel are returning from leave; I’d prefer to keep things as quiet as possible. Ms. Howard can bring it all back to you, if that’s okay.”
“It’s alright, she can go on her own. We ought to get settled in our rooms, anyway.” Leif walked around to face Maeve. “Go ahead. We’ll try to rustle up some lunch in the meantime.” Maeve studied her friend’s face for a moment or two. What was he up to?
“Okay. I’ll go.” Not that she wasn’t interested to hear what Tark had to say, but there was some weird current carrying through that she couldn’t figure out. Leif had been treating her like a piece of fragile china for the past few weeks. Antonio would constantly sigh and shake his head when he thought she wasn’t looking. Jemi and Grace were solicitous to the point of annoyance. Josh just kept trying to get her into a meditative state. It was as though they were sitting around waiting for her to do something. What, she didn’t know. Maybe they thought she’d crack up completely.
Maeve walked down the corridor, feeling self-conscious. The colonel had assured them that most personnel on board had no idea she and her friends existed. This had been a good reason for placing them in otherwise empty temporary housing. Hidden in plain sight.
This didn’t stop her from feeling as though everyone was staring at her. She wished she had a mirror to check and make certain her hair wasn’t standing on end. She was utterly and catastrophically self-effacing, though she had long been at war with this tendency.
It was a benefit when facing into actual mistakes; otherwise it was a terrible habit. Yet, Colonel Tarkington seemed pretty convinced that she was the person who had been picked to be at the forefront of whatever happy little mission this was supposed to have been. And he based that on a few flighty details that almost anyone could poke holes in, given a reasonable debate.
Her head was aching again. She’d grown used to the pain, but not what came with it.
…There was water again, but this time there was a distinctly different feel to its presence. Its ripples were unfriendly, sending warning in their movements, while shouting echoed around her, seemingly emanating from the ground beneath her feet. The smell of blood hunted air currents to steal a ride on, reaching her nostrils, turning the sand ever darker before her eyes. A few steps took her over a rise, and she saw again the source of the shouting, the fires burning on the horizon, soggy forms crawling from inky seas.
These visions, or whatever one might call them, that was the hard part to handle. She knew it wasn’t a genuine memory, either, a nightmarish amalgam of her past…. Frustration and terror boiled up, bringing the pain in her head to a peak of intensity like she had not yet experienced.
Maeve leaned against a wall, gasping for air. The smell of burning flesh hung round her; a specter of some forgotten evil. The image was there and gone, more quickly than she could try to remember where it had come from. It was a fragment of a fragment, too brief to discern what was reality or falsehood. She walked into the cargo hold, feeling like a fraction of herself. She tried to stow her unhappiness. There was no point in telling anyone about these visions she had been having. Not just yet, anyway.
“So, Colonel, what do we have?” He looked over her way, from his doubled over position next to Dick’s inherited workstation, and as some form of answer, tapped the monitor.
“Come and see.” His finger held steady on the screen, drawing her closer. She walked toward the container, toward the nameless beast of burden that had been her home of late, and stepped into uncertainty. Or maybe she was just being melodramatic.
“Interesting.” The monitor displayed what evidently was her file. Maeve Brighid Howard, date of birth..., place of birth..., schooling, and then, below all the harmlessness, her military duty record. There was no gasp of surprise on her part as she swiftly pretended to scan the data, merely moving on to find the next person. Tark glanced her way to gauge a reaction, but found only an expression of displeasure shadowing her face.
“What’s wrong?” Not for the first time, he wished he could read her mind.
“Let’s see the rest. Then I’ll discuss.” She delivered those few words with a degree of terseness Tark had heard before. Maeve looked impatient and unhappy. Dick read the cue. He flew through his tasking to retrieve first the rest of the files, as well as other information that had been recovered.
They seemed to have been selected for some sort of experiment funded by their defense department, to be beginning test subjects for long-term space flight. Maeve remained unconvinced. It was tidy enough, to be sure, but it didn’t sit right with her. The untouchable place in her memories sat back and smiled. It watched, waited, and knew. Maeve could only make conjectures, still looking through their files, thinking her thoughts in silence.
۞
Back on Earth during the storms, vacationers swarmed through plentiful biological preserves, beaches, and resorts. It was a comfortable and pleasant illusion. Holidaying military personnel could be expected to spend a great deal of money.
Families entertaining their bored children were similarly counted on to mindlessly part with cash. Soci
ety’s ills were carefully hidden and scrupulously forgotten. The poor and homeless were pushed into tent camps, always just out of sight. Filth and decay, closeted and painted over. It was a world that Maeve and her friends would still recognize whenever the chance to reacquaint themselves came.
In fact, the only people on the planet who didn’t really enjoy the lengthy holiday were high-level politicians, their aides, and that unpleasantly sizeable number of impoverished persons. Somewhere in the bowels of a four-star hotel, a certain group of individuals met. These were concerned with the former group. It was a small though powerful gathering of men and women.
Commander Hawke had sent her message to them, and they were not well-pleased. At that moment, they weren’t even lamenting their lack of holidaying, much less quality family time. An air of grimness permeated the room, and no measure of gourmet food and drink plied on them would appease them. A terrible clamor had erupted within moments of their gathering.
“I thought we had been assured that this problem was long ago resolved.” One woman spoke around an uncommon cigarette; she was supported by more shouting from the other thirty-odd gathered there.
“You said it had been destroyed. You showed us evidence.”
“What about your other promises, Robert? Are they all worthless as well?”
“We’re at considerable risk here. We need assurances!”
“Who did we send to take care of it?” A voice broke into the chaos.
“This is what I had always been told about the vessel: that it had been destroyed, nearly after its inception. Of course, there had been rumors, but nothing substantiative.” The person speaking at that moment managed to silence everyone with a wave of his hand, and spoke on, “However, as we all know now, this situation that our forbears worked to suppress, simply has…arisen.”
Robert Warden held off a new surge of voices, and looked around him carefully, and with a deadly calm in his voice, finished, “It, of course, means that we will have to eliminate the situation, with minimal risk to ourselves. I have taken the initial action of meting punishment to Commander Hawke. I think you’ll all agree that the doctor’s usefulness has long since passed. Boko?” Silent accord washed over the tense environment, as the person who had been called upon stood and began to speak. He read from a communiqué before proceeding.
“Well, sir, apparently your request regarding the commander was approved by the uh, JCS, and they have forwarded it through the chain of command. It should reach Colonel Tarkington’s desk in a few days.”
“That’s what I hate about bureaucracy. It lacks decisiveness, and the ability to destroy your enemies quickly when you really need to.” Knowing smiles were exchanged, and Boko spoke up again.
“Is it really true that these people were programmed with the expectation that they could destroy us? I find that a bit hard to swallow.” Robert looked at the younger man, with only a hint of fear clouding his eyes.
“Trust me Boko, that’s a myth. However, they were chosen to participate in an experiment because of certain strengths they each possess.” Not to mention a few weaknesses, he thought with satisfaction. “We will survive, of course, there is no other possible outcome.”
Boko shifted in his seat. The intensity of his employer always put him on edge. He’d already begun to think that his time in service had reached its end. A flight to Peru, paid for in cash, reminded him that safety was only an hour away. That reassuring thought did nothing to keep doubt from rising up in Boko’s mind. Like bile, it would eat away at his confidence until whatever was left peeked through.
۞
At the same time, on the other side of the planet, two other people were readying to begin a journey for which they had been preparing over the course of two years. They, like the recently awakened men and women back on the Nimitz, had started off shakily, unsure of their future. They had grown into their roles as well as their mentor had known they would. He surveyed them now with no little amount of pride, thinking of the risk he had taken to locate them, to retrieve them, and now, to send them out alone. For their part, the two looked forward to the mission that lay ahead.
Watching them from a distance, observing their interactions, Kun stayed well clear of an argument that was brewing between them. Though these two young people worked fairly well together, their personalities and sensibilities were quite opposite. After several minutes of listening to them squabble, he rapped his long walking stick on the stones underfoot. He motioned for them to follow him from the cave outside into the compound that they all lived in. Embarrassed, they quietly moved to their feet.
In the depths of a valley, set in the midst of Peruvian peaks, was their temporary home. It was quiet and remote, peaceful; an illusion of beautiful life. It had been tempting to forget the outside world on many occasions. Fergus Wallace looked out over the expanse of their adopted home. Their grass-covered huts were dug down into the soil, hidden in plain sight. They could move freely before sunrise, and after sunset. The rest of the time, they had to keep under the camouflage netting that obscured them from aerial view. They grew most of their food, but had to keep it scattered and removed from the camp. In spite of this, Wallace had come to love the place. He had been able to start over, leave the past behind. That would all come to an end now.
This was the crux of the argument between him and Julieta Ramirez, his companion. Well, not like that, good grief. She was like a brother to him. A mean older brother. He was trying to construct as many objections and obstacles to their departure as possible. Jules just wanted to get going. Creeping around in the dark was beginning to get to her. Wallace felt compelled to remind her that outer space was just as dark. That was the point when Master Kun had interrupted.
“You both know that the day has finally come, as we knew it would, when your comrades would be revived. Your mission is therefore initiated, and the end of our enemies is at hand.” Julieta looked over at Wallace, eyebrow raised. This was an unspoken dare for him to continue his opposition to the idea with Kun. He rolled his eyes over to the horizon high above them. Sunset was only a few minutes off. He said nothing.
The next morning came early, unmoved by Wallace’s prayerful pleas to keep it at bay. The two travelers looked up onto the path by which they would travel out of the valley. Their escort was comprised of a few goats and another of their companions. These waited patiently, in spite of the goats’ desire to get to the sweet grasses along the trailside.
They were as ready as they could be for what lay ahead, and yet they both felt a nagging apprehension floating nearby. It was nothing readily identifiable. Julieta had felt this vague thing for some time. It was like an aching joint before a storm. She set aside any worry, however, with the anticipation of finally getting to be up amongst the stars. Sort of. She was almost giddy with anticipation.
Wallace was not. He was trying to avoid calculating all the G-forces and microgravity, and certainly avoided thought of how precisely anyone had sorted artificial gravity. He sidestepped these questions because he knew he was completely unqualified to answer them. His fears and nagging worries kept trying to talk him back into it, though.
“Jules, can I tell you something? I mean, besides that I neglected to put on underwear today.” Julieta sighed and rubbed her temples. These had begun to ache more and more frequently of late, and she knew exactly who to blame.
“Yes, Wallace, you can tell me almost everything. We settled that after the last underwear incident, remember?” He grinned at her in that manner of his that made it impossible to be in any way serious with him. Even Master Kun couldn’t keep a straight face when Wallace began to pontificate.
“I was just checking. Anyway, remember when I was telling you about those dreams I was having, and then you said you didn’t want to hear about that kind of....”
“Yeah, I remember. Get on with the point of the matter would you?”
“Okay, take it easy. Well, since we’re on our way, I thought we’d better discuss the
whole situation.” Julieta started to protest. “Not the dreams. Not exactly anyway. Just the main character. The girl I used to…well you know…Howard.”
“Is that like ‘A Boy Named Sue’?” Never let it be said I had no sense of humor, she thought. Wallace was grimacing. She had underestimated once again, his propensity to have his feelings hurt at the drop of a hat. He had his sad puppy face on. “All right, I’m sorry. Tell me.”
“That’s her last name, genius. Remember?”
”Her being who, then?”
“Maeve.”
“You don’t think that it’s finally time to let go of this? We don’t even know what kind of shape she’s in. And I’d appreciate it if you could try to…”
“I know. You never really met her though, see, since you got there after the fact, but….” She looked at him sharply.
“I remember who she is. The question is, how well do you? Don’t you think it’s possible you’ve idealized her just a tiny bit?” He shifted uncomfortably under her glare. She wondered idly, as she watched him squirm, whether he was aware of just how much she knew. Maeve had been long gone by the time she got to the facility, it was true. But there had been plenty of other people to talk to and hear all the stories from.
“It doesn’t matter. You’re right, I don’t even know what we’ll find when we get there.” He couldn’t look at Julieta. She’d see straight through him. Instead, he fiddled with some loose threads on his trousers, hoping that he wouldn’t walk off the edge of the trail, for lack of concentration.
Or that he wouldn’t burst into flames for being the big fat liar that he was. He tried hard to forget his past, and sometimes he pulled it off, until night came, inevitably, and held him prisoner. He couldn’t recall a full night of sleep in the past two years. The ever-distant Maeve had haunted him for almost as long, always running away, never granting him absolution.
Night was on its way again to where he was, on heavy wings, hunting him with oppressive abandon. He’d used to love darkness once, before he’d sold his soul away, before he realized that she’d never forgive him for it. She was then kept away from him, and asleep by the time he found her again. He’d paid dearly to be included. The hardness of the others, who would have liked it better were he not there at all, stayed with him as well.
“Rumor volat.” He said to himself, with just a hint of the turmoil within.
۞ –Two weeks later – aboard The Nimitz –
“Dude, you know we could spend a year here and still never see everything on this base.” Josh and Maeve were finishing a slow run along a trail through the extensive arboretum, staring off into the innumerable species of flora and fauna. Birds chirped and squabbled, frogs sang, and insects frustratedly tried to fly or crawl past the invisible barriers keeping them in their habitats.
“Yeah, you know, of all the places we could have been stuck, this isn’t too bad.”
“No argument there. I wonder what we’ll do in the long term, though. It would be weird to just be here indefinitely, mooching off of whomever we’re…mooching.”
“I know what you mean. Nobody seems to realize that, to us, we all had a purpose only a few days ago. Though I’ll be damned if I can think of what mine was.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. We’re all suffering from a post-modern culture shock here. But we could all decide to become celebrities, or eccentrics….”
“Or carnies. ‘A buck a look! See the three hundred year old kooks!’ We just need a bearded lady.”
“I’m not sure about that. Shall we move on to the next evolution of this workout?”
“You’re killing me.”
“Hey, you’re the one who asked to get ‘whipped’ back into shape.”
“I know.” She made a dour face as she he directed her to do burpees.
“So what are you doing tonight? Gracie and I got invited to have dinner with some monks. You could come if you wanted.” Next was crunch reps, as he pushed on her shoulders every time she got too high off the ground.
“Actually, tonight is the night that the Colonel’s XO gets back, and I’m supposed to have dinner with them.”
“Well, ain’t you something? Colonel Tarkington seems a bit taken with you.”
“Don’t get any ideas. The man has a serious girlfriend, and he treats me like a kid sister. No, I think that he wants to discuss the future a bit, at least as it pertains to us. For some reason, he seems to think that I’m the chairman of this crazy coo-coo board.”
“That’s because you are. All the way to the ground, no cheating. That’s it. We’ll have you doing weights in no time.” He watched to make sure she was hitting her pushups before continuing. “Nobody has a problem with it, if that’s what’s worrying you. More burpees!”
“I hate you.” But she complied. “Yes, maybe it was a little. I don’t want to make anyone upset, since we’re all in this together. But I guess we do need someone to be at the forefront, if I’ve been volunteered, I guess I’m the donkey for the trail.”
“It’s fine with all of us.”
“Not really.”
“Antonio will come around. He’s just a technical weenie who’s really ticked off that his 4.5 GPA doesn’t mean shit anymore.”
“Hmmm. What’s everybody else doing tonight, then?”
“I think that they’re gonna hang with some of the officers we’ve met. Libbo and all, the weekend, party time, you dig?”
“Awesome. Hunky and or dory. Well, I better shower up before this evening. I don’t want to gross out everyone in the restaurant.”
“Nice try. You still have metcons to do. Get some!”
“I don’t wanna.”
“Tough luck. Go!”
“Damn you.”
۞
The Nimitz shifted once again into evening. Maeve picked her way through what she thought were large crowds, though Tark had told her that there was barely half the normal numbers present on board. Alien species milled about, amply mingling amongst the humans, interacting with ease.
This would take getting used to. Not really the foreign species part, but that the residents of Earth seemed to have redeemed themselves from being such...slow learners. It gave her hope. She’d also discovered that war had been relatively absent in the last hundred or so years. And now she was on her way to be feted, apparently.
Leif and Jemi went out, as Josh had mentioned, with several of the other officers on board. The latter group had promised to show the former around and keep them out of trouble. Maeve had her doubts about that promise, knowing what she did about the military, at least how it had been back in their day. She found her way easily to the restaurant that the colonel had told her about. He stood just inside, along with another man.
This was his XO, introduced as Major Dmitry Petrovich. This man stood nearly as an equal to Tark’s six foot four inch frame, an edgy hardness distinguishing him from his Tark’s lean pliancy. His chestnut hair was freshly cut back into regulation, but she had the feeling he’d let it grow while on leave. Piercing blue eyes returned her stare with sardonic good humor.
She knew his type, to say nothing of what his off-duty pursuits were likely to be. Nonetheless, Maeve continued to look him over, assessing him as if dictated by instinct alone. He was good-looking, athletic. She found it a bit of a challenge to look