TWENTY-EIGHT

The medcenter took up six bottom floors in the same building they’d been held in. Hal and everyone else followed Patrin into the lift. As it sped down, Hal looked over at Vivi and the fingers of his good hand brushed the palm of hers. She took hold gratefully.

The doors slid open and they walked out onto a hospital floor. Patrin went to the desk and spoke with a woman who looked something up on a handheld.

“This way,” Patrin directed them.

They made their way down several hallways to patient rooms. A tall brown-haired man was standing sentinel near one, with only one guard as company. Vivi didn’t recognize the big man, but Hal and Beryl stepped forward when he offered his hand.

“Hal. Beryl. It’s good to see you, but not under these conditions.”

“Vivi, this is Captain Seren,” Beryl said.

“Vivi.” Seren took her offered hand and shook it. “There is a waiting room here.” He led them two doors down to a small area with couches and chairs. He started to say something, but instead began coughing immediately.

Vivi’s eyes went wide as she saw the familiar lines and squares of a tattoo on his wrist. “I am sorry you’re not well,” she said softly, realizing that he was at least thirty-five, if not older.

“It’s nothing. My time is simply running short,” he managed, taking a labored breath. When he had recovered, he began speaking again. “Your captain suffered great damage. Our medical team worked on him as soon as you arrived. They have repaired the damage as much as they could, and they believe he’ll survive, but that’s all they’re sure of right now. I’m sorry.”

“Where’s his room?” Hal asked.

“Two doors up the hallway.” Seren gestured in the direction.

Hal squeezed Vivi’s hand and said, “I’ll be back.”

She moved to follow, but Seren caught her arm. “Give him a minute,” he said gently.

“May I speak with his physician?” Beryl asked.

“Come on, we’ll find him,” Patrin said.

Vivi sat back down next to the big man. “Hal was hurt in the attack, too,” she said softly.

“We will make sure a doctor looks Hal over,” Seren said.

“Thank you,” Vivi said gratefully.

“You are fond of him.”

She nodded.

“Good. They say that when a vat has connections to others, he may outlive even biology for a time.”

“Has it… helped you?”

Seren smiled. “I am thirty-seven, so I suppose so.”

“It’s… it’s just not fair. What they did to you and the other vats wasn’t right. Most of those on the Inner Spiral… they have no idea. I had no idea…” Vivi thought again about how naive she’d been, about almost everything.

“One day, they will,” Seren said, before changing the subject. “Vivi… It’s very hard for someone like Hal to lose a commander. For now, you have to keep your focus on him while Tyce is down.” Seren looked toward the door. “He’s going to need your help to keep him on the right path, so he doesn’t self-destruct.”

“Do you… um… know that from experience?”

He nodded. “When my first commander was killed, I struggled with it. He was a good man, too. Like your Captain Bernon.”

“Oh,” she nodded.

“Go on,” Seren gestured toward the door. “He will need you now.”

* * *

People always looked frail in medbeds, Hal thought, as he stood at the door a moment before going in.

Ty’s dark hair was inky against the white sheets of the bed. He was strapped down securely. The neckbrace they’d had him in on the Loshad had been replaced by something even more confining that kept his head completely immobile.

Hal walked across the room and pulled up a chair beside his captain. He sat down, refusing to groan as his bruised muscles and lacerations complained. “Everyone made it OK,” he said softly. “I know you’d want to know that.” He reached out and laid a hand on Tyce’s forearm. “We came to Al-Kimia. I hope that was right. We thought the ACAS would be after us, but they’re not. I can’t explain it.”

He looked down at Ty’s hand. An IV line was funneling a light blue substance into his blood. A sedative, or an antibiotic. How many times had he sat at Ty’s medbed, watching the struggle between life and death? Five? Ten? He’d lost count. How many times had Ty been at his own bedside when he’d woken up from some injury or other? Definitely more than ten. But he was there. Every time.

Hal could think of so many times that Ty had done things unconventionally, bent the rules so that the men under his command could make it out OK. Tyce had always tried to adjust strategy to limit the number of casualties his unit would have, when other commanders would just send vats in to be slaughtered without a care at all. Don’t worry so much about casualties. They’ll send you twenty more that look just like them, he’d heard them say to Ty.

Ty was different. He cared. There were many times that Hal had sat with him by the bedside of another vat so that the injured man didn’t have to wake up alone and in pain in an unfamiliar medbay.

That was Ty. Always making sure everyone made it out OK.

Hal didn’t know what to call the feeling that swept over him. It was like the waves the first time he’d seen an ocean on Dalamar, pushing and pulling him in opposite directions. Was it loyalty, he wondered as he bowed his head. They talked a lot about that in the training he’d received as a vat – of how loyalty and obedience to the ACAS came first, so much so that Hal had always linked the two in his mind. But he was beginning to think that maybe loyalty was very different than obedience. Obedience meant you did what they told you because they made you, but loyalty couldn’t be demanded. It was given. Given to someone like Tyce.

“You wouldn’t believe it, Cap, but Vivi saved both of us. She shot the vat with a blasrifle. A freakin’ blasrifle, Ty. That Veevs… she’s a keeper.”

Ty’s face showed no reaction. His eye and cheek were bruised a dark purple. One hand and almost his entire stomach was bandaged.

“Tyce, I just… I want you to know that whatever happens, I’ll be here for you. You just… you gotta make it.”

Hal looked up to see Vivi in the doorway. “He’s asleep,” she noted softly.

“Yeah. Don’t even know why I’m talking. He can’t hear me.”

Vivi nodded. “He can. My mother… She was in a coma after her shuttle crashed on Batleek. She was a teacher of literature at a university on Carathas, the next planet over, and she used to commute back and forth each week. But anyway, while she was unconscious, we stayed by her bedside and read chapters of her favorite book to her, to keep her company. When she woke, she said she heard us. The whole time.”

He was looking at her strangely. “Your mom. She came through OK?”

Vivi nodded. “Yeah.” She moved to pull a chair by his side.

They sat quietly for a moment.

“What’s it like?” Hal asked.

“What?”

“Having a mother?”

“Oh…”

The only people Hal had had in his life as a rook were training officers, teachers, scientists, and one psychologist from time to time. After four years, they’d put him into a boot camp, where he’d gotten his first taste of being in the ACAS. A year of training in different areas, and he had become a full-fledged soldier, the only thing he’d ever wanted to be. He wondered fleetingly if that had been programmed into him as well. Would he always be limited by what they’d put in his head?

“It was good, I guess. She and my father were always there, guiding me and supporting me until… well, until I met a guy they didn’t approve of. Then, things kind of broke down between us. But they were right. He was a bad person.”

“This guy, he’s the one who hurt you?” Hal asked softly. “The one who made those bruises?”

“Yeah.” Her eyes darted to his. “I was stupid.”

“You’re not stupid, Veevs.”

“I was.” She looked down at her feet, then sighed heavily. “But my mom and dad. They’re good people. They watched out for me when I needed it.”

“Like Ty,” Hal said to himself.

“Yeah,” she nodded. “A lot like that.”

As they sat, he glanced down at his hands, which in turn drew her attention there. He’d hurt his hand again.

“You’re hurt. You need to be seen by a doctor.”

“No, I’m good.” He looked at Ty. “Gotta be here when he wakes up.”

“Hal, what would Ty tell you to do if he was awake?”

Hal looked up at her, weighing her words. He sighed and got to his feet. “He would say to get checked out.”

“Good, then. Come on,” she said simply.

Knowing they didn’t want to be far away from Tyce, Patrin arranged for the Loshad crew to have the room across the hall. Hal almost fell asleep during the medical exam, so when Beryl told him to stay in the bed in the room they’d been given, he didn’t fight her. She left to stay with Tyce, leaving Vivi and Hal alone.

Vivi sat back in the chair beside the medbed. The exam had revealed that in addition to bruising and lacerations, Hal was dehydrated, with two broken knuckles and a broken metacarpal on his left hand. They’d used a bone knitter on him, and after giving IV fluids, they’d sent him back to rest.

He was looking at her now, in that dazed way that said that unconsciousness was not far off.

“You can sleep up here,” Hal said.

“You won’t rest as well,” she replied. “I’m all good right here. You need me, just call.”

“Did you change your mind, then? About us?” he asked softly.

“No.” She shook her head, leaning forward to take his hand. “Not in the least, Hal.”

He sighed with relief. “C’mon then.” He moved over in the bed. “I won’t sleep well unless I know where you are.”

She watched him for a long moment, then smiled and crawled up onto the bed with him. “You’re so tired you’d sleep anywhere.” She faced him and took his uninjured hand in her own.

“Just as long as it’s where you are,” he said with a smile, eyes finally slipping closed.

“I’m here,” she said, smoothing a hand over his hair.

After Patrin got the Loshad crew settled, he made his way back to the joint headquarters, shared by both vats and Al-Kimians. It was cold and he detected a hint of snow in the air as he made his way across the breezeway. The vat facility he’d come from on Haleia-6 was situated in a desert. It never saw snow, so any time Patrin got to see a snowfall he was happy about it. The way the snow fell soundlessly, turning the world from its normal drab colors into something frosted and wonderous never failed to amaze him.

He knew that the natural born children liked snow, as well, but most of the nat soldiers on Al-Kimia just grumbled about it.

When he reached the headquarters, he was waved through by the guards. Patrin was well-known among both vats and Al-Kimians. When he and Seren had begun their “harassment” of ACAS ships past the Border, they’d caught the attention of the Al-Kimians who had extended an offer to supply them. Over a period of two years, Seren’s crew had run covert missions and sold intelligence for rations, air, and fuel.

It had taken time, but after a meeting with First Minister Amias Adara, Seren had made the decision to join them. They had been promised citizenship and a place in society if they would ally themselves with the Al-Kimians against the Coalition if and when war came.

And so they’d become recruiters, finding released vats that were searching for a place to be and persuading them to join Al-Kimia in order to strengthen their military.

The Al-Kimians had kept their word so far. Even though hostilities with the ACAS had not risen to the point of open war, the First Minister knew it was coming; it was just a matter of time. And so, Al-Kimia had begun to welcome more and more vats from the Edge. Over time, their warships began to take on a mixture of vat and natural-born soldiers. Many vats had been promoted to officer positions. Some of the Al-Kimians had even begun calling vats “brothers” and “sisters.” It was almost like being in the ACAS again, feeling that sense of belonging. Except this time, Patrin had made the choice to serve, in order for vats to always have somewhere to belong.

He found Seren in a conference room with one of the Al-Kimian captains named Jacobs, and he waited for acknowledgement. Eventually, Seren gestured for him to speak.

“Yes, Patrin,” he said.

“Captain Seren, the crew of the Loshad is settled for the night.”

“Very good. Have a seat.”

“Yes, sir. Good evening, Captain Jacobs.” The older man nodded in response as Patrin took a seat beside him.

Seren turned to his protégé. “You remember when we evacuated the two ACAS doctors a few months ago? Well, one of the doctors got a message from a friend of theirs who works in biotech at the vat facility on Chamn-Alpha.”

Captain Jacobs threw the message up as a hologram. It read:

It’s your friend from the university. Need to take you up on your offer. Have information about terminal potential that will greatly interest your new partners but need immediate transportation off C-A. Contact at this number.

“So, we have a vat researcher who wants to turn over information to us?”

“Yes,” Jacobs said. Patrin trusted the old captain. He had been a smuggler a long time, and he’d been invaluable at helping their vat fleet stay incognito while converting civilian spacecraft to gunships. “We just have to find someone to pick him up.”

“The Hesperus is out of commission right now. We took damage in the last fight and won’t be ready for a while. All our other frigates are out on resupply missions or undercover,” Seren mused.

“My ship’s hot right now. We need a repaint and repair of external damage,” Jacobs said. “What about that J-class that pulled in? The Loshad? Put a couple of vats on there, get a few Al-Kimians to fly to Chamn-Alpha as a supply ship. Vats could get off, get into the facility or his quarters with some false identification, and pick up this guy. Be back before dinner.”

“Nothing’s ever that easy,” Patrin scoffed.

“You just have no faith, son,” Jacobs said with a grin, giving him a shove. “Hell, I’ll even fly it.”

Seren coughed a little before he spoke. “No. The Loshad has not joined the cause yet. Their captain is in critical condition in the medcenter next door.”

“Commandeer the thing,” Jacobs shrugged.

Seren shook his head. “No, I will not commandeer their ship.”

“Then ask them nicely,” Jacobs offered.

“That, I can do, my friend, but it can wait until tomorrow. If you can get in touch with this researcher, tell him to sit tight. Someone will be coming, even if I have to hold the Hesperus together with my bare hands to fly it there.”

Hal woke up and looked around. There was a small light on above him and another one on in what he assumed to be the bathroom. The window revealed the darkness outside, as swirls of white snowflakes played around the frame.

He sat up and rubbed at his face. He was hungry again; a sign that his body was working overtime to heal the damage he’d suffered. “Veevs?” he called as he swung his legs over the side of the bed.

There was no answer. He stood up, then glanced around and into the bathroom. No one. He stepped outside the door, and saw Vivi standing near Ty’s room, talking with Beryl. When she saw him holding onto the door for support, she came over. “Hal? How are you feeling?”

“OK. I’m up and around,” he said, looking her up and down with clear eyes. She’d changed her clothes, and he needed to do the same. “Gonna grab a shower.”

The water was hot and he let it massage away the knots in his back for longer than he realized. When he cut the water and began to towel off, he heard a noise at the door. “You good?” Vivi called.

“Yeah, getting out now.” Hal pulled on the clean clothes he’d found in the bag and made his way out.

She was sitting on the bed, smiling at him. “You clean up well.”

“Nah, I look like someone ran me down with a heavy lifter,” he grinned, “But thanks.”

There was a knock at the door as Hal sat on the bed, trying to lace his boots. With his braced hand there was no way he could do it alone.

“Come in,” Vivi said, kneeling down to help Hal.

“There’s food for us in a room down the hall. Captain Seren would like to see us,” Beryl said.

“I need to see Ty first,” Hal said. When Vivi finished, he got up, walked to the open doorway and stood there watching Ty’s room in silence. “He’s still the same, Beryl?”

“Yeah, Hal. He’s still the same,” Beryl said. “But right now, that’s a good thing.”

Max finished up his work for the day, sealing the last embryo in the final exowomb. These bags were small, about the size of a one year-old. In a couple of months, someone else would use special tools to implant the interface into their brains. Then they would be rebagged and grown until they were ready to be “born” into a life of servitude.

The whole process, with the growth accelerator, took about four years, but these would be ready in two. When “born,” all vats were effectively twelve years-old physically and developmentally. For simplicity’s sake, the ACAS calculated a vat’s age from twelve whether it had taken them four years or two years to grow. How many thousands of vats had he been in contact with over the years? He looked down at the tiny lives in the artificial wombs in the incubators in front of him and spoke softly. “Good luck.”

He’d given them a good chance. Against his orders, he’d activated not only the personality genes, but genes that influenced leadership ability and intelligence. He’d even activated the genes that influenced independence, which upstairs regularly wanted suppressed. It was not a guarantee that all these qualities would manifest themselves, of course, but it would give them a better than normal chance to survive and realize what was being done to them. And then fight back.

It was the best he could do.

As he cleaned up the workstation, he hoped that he would hear something back from his contact. He’d been waiting for two days and was finding it hard to wait longer. If there was nothing on the shredder handheld when he got home, he would try to reach them one more time. If not, he’d have to find his own way off this rock.

“The target is one of the senior scientists that work on vat DNA at the Chamn-Alpha facility,” Captain Seren said. “He’s been there a number of years.”

Beryl glanced over at Hal. They’d been listening to Seren while they ate, but when he mentioned Chamn-Alpha, Hal tensed and put down his fork.

“And why do we need to save this guy’s ass again?” Hal asked. “Just because he asked us to?”

“He’s sent two messages to us. He claims there is some sort of superweapon being developed at C-A designed to work specifically against vats, and he wants out. He will bring us what he knows.”

“Superweapon?” Hal asked.

“That’s all we know,” Seren said. “But almost all of our ships are out on patrol. A J-class cargo ship like the Loshad would be perfect for this mission.” He held Hal’s gaze. “I’m asking if you will help us evacuate this researcher. He holds information that could be vital to all released vats.”

Hal glanced to Beryl. She gave him a subtle nod, and he shifted his gaze to Vivi.

“It’s your decision, Hal,” Vivi said. “Whatever you choose to do, I’ll back your play.”

“You helped us with Ty, so I owe you,” Hal said, shifting his focus back to Seren.

“No, brother,” Seren said. “We would have helped your captain regardless, after what your crew did for us. If you agree to this, we will be the ones in your debt.”

“Beryl, you have to stay with Ty, so someone’s there when he wakes up,” Hal told her.

She nodded, “I will.”

“Veevs… you can… I mean, you can sit this one out if…” Hal began.

“Just try to make me stay back,” she said.

He gave a small smile and nodded. “Alright, Seren. We’ll do it.”

“I will send Lane and Orin with you,” Seren said. At Hal’s nod, he went on. “It’s your ship, so you’re in charge of the mission. I will set up a meet time and location and resupply the Loshad. Give us a couple of days to set everything up.”

“Perfect. Hal can use the time to heal up,” Beryl said.

“Good, then.” Seren stood up heavily and swayed a little.

“You alright there?” Hal asked.

“I will be. It has been a very long day. Thank you… all of you.”