Mindwipe (Memory Block, pt. 2)

Read 23 (Memory Block, pt. 1)

Gigi Gagnant awoke feeling as though she’d done all this before. She was angry for no reason. Something was wrong.

A young man leaned over her open cryo chamber. Mocha skin, black hair, piercing dark eyes. She had the odd feeling of knowing him without recognizing him. For an instant his eyes flashed red in the artificial light. A Bloodite? How the hell had Greens gotten ahold of her?

Maybe she’d imagined it. Her mind was as fuzzy as the dry, coppery taste that played across her tongue. The last thing she remembered was a picture, a set of coordinates and troops approaching. Not so much a memory as an impression, like waking from a dream. How many times had she done this?

“Rise and shine, Half-rack. Time to earn your pay.”

Gigi didn’t recognize the corpsman’s voice but remembered enough to know that he was being insubordinate. “You will call me Lieutenant, mister. Or Sir. Anything else and I’ll take it out of your hide.”

He sneered back at her as he gave her naked body the full once over, lingering only briefly on her one intact breast before drifting lower. “I’m not in your military, Ms. Marine.”

Something in his words rang true, confirmed by his slack posture and slovenly appearance. Gigi’s smoldering anger flared but she tamped it down.

“Fine.” She sat up, struggling against the urge to shake her head to clear it. She knew that would only bring on a debilitating wave of vertigo so soon after being revived. “Then you will call me Gagnant. I’m still in command of this unit.”

“Your name’s irrelevant,” he shot back. “I’ll just forget it the next time we come up. If you’re even still here.”

Gigi glared back at him, her anger rekindling like a furnace. She rose from the chamber, swinging first one bare leg then another over the side, and stood. She tested her balance just long enough to verify it would hold.

“If you feel dizzy, nauseous, or disoriented, let me know,” he instructed without enthusiasm, as if checking off a box, before he turned to tend another cryo unit. “You could have cryo-sickness.”

“This isn’t my first cold-transport,” Gigi snarled. “I know the drill.”

Before the corpsman could react, she stepped up behind him and swept a leg out from under him while she pinned him against the cryo chamber he now faced with the full weigh of her body. She gripped one of his wrists and splayed him across the top of it, with her other hand pressed firmly against his neck. It was all about leverage.

With her face almost nestled in his hair, his scent rose up to greet her like a knife. He smelled exotic, of sandalwood and spices. It triggered a deep sensation of distrust. With her chest pressed against his back as he struggled futilely against her hold, she growled in his ear, “As long as I’m in charge, corpsman, you’ll remember to use my name. Is that clear?”

“As long as you’re in charge,” he half-mumbled, his face pressed sideways against the cerama-glass of the chamber, belatedly adding, “Gagnant.”

Gigi pushed off of him and bounced back onto the balls of her feet in case he opted for a counter-strike, which he seemed just about stupid enough to try.

When none came, she turned back to her own cryo chamber and keyed the footlocker drawer, carefully watching him from the corner of her eye. Atop a set of pixilated, sand-camo fatigues, she found her nightshades waiting. Setting them aside, she dressed slowly and deliberately, almost mechanically. Quick movements just out of cryo would cost her for some time. She tried not to let it show.

Re-armored now in battle dress and nightshades, Gigi surveyed the Medbay. It contained six full-sized cryo chambers and one miniature as if fitted for an infant or a child. Two stood empty. Her name appeared on one, Patel on the other. That must be the corpsman’s name. The remaining five had eased open, their occupants warmed and slowly rousing. Bryce, Wilmots, Meinert and Baidu were the lighted names on the standard units. Maahes 17 glowed in green on the miniature.

Patel sullenly ignored her to concentrate on reviving the others. She left through the hatch marked “Squadbay.”

The adjacent compartment was dominated by a utilitarian conference table mounted to the floor with eight similarly mounted seats on swing arms allowing them to tuck in under. On the table lay a datapad atop an opaque plasti-sheet document envelope.

After a quick diversion to the head and then to the galley cubicle for a cup of coffee, Gigi retrieved the mission briefing by pressing her thumb against the print reader of the datapad. She collapsed into a swing-arm chair at the head of conference table to review her orders while she waited for the other members of her team.

Briefing was too long a word. The datapad contained almost no information. Under the Personnel heading she found her squad was comprised of seven members including herself. Norene Wilmots and Ghalib Baidu were security. Ranjit Patel was listed as a medic. David Bryce was a heavy grav vehicle driver. Kai Meinert was a driver/cargo master. And Thomas Maahes 17 was a gunner. That answered the question of the smaller cryo unit. Someone had assigned her a CuFF. And that someone must have extensive contacts with the LOW OrbIT Navy which had an almost exclusive lock on the genetically modified combat felines.

The equipment manifest included five standard LOW OrbIT tactical infantry loads, one LOW OrbIT combat med-kit, one MTV-27W Buffalo 6x6 wheeled electric cargo hauler with an engine driven winch/crane, and one RV31-Mk5EG Nyala gravitic reconnaissance vehicle with a dual-10mm turret-mount coilgun (CuFF interfaced). The Mk5 was the armored cargo version of the highly successful 7 Nations original. No special environmental equipment was listed, rebreathers, cold-weather gear, heavy-G harnesses, cool suits, etc. Her only ancillary information was a (separate) holo-pic of their contact and a set of local nav coordinates.

The mission statement was just as terse. She and her team were to deliver an unspecified cargo (pre-loaded in a standard 20-displacement-ton cargo container and strapped onto the Buffalo in the adjacent cargo bay) along with one standard cryo chamber (to be loaded and monitored by Patel) to the designated coordinates where they would meet their contact, one Malick Sennikov (see supplemental photo). They would exchange their container for another. Then they would rendezvous back at their drop point for extraction. Simple.

That was belied by all the details, or lack thereof. First, Gigi tried to pull up planetary information from the datapad and found it locked out. As were all the system details. The only information she could bring up was that the dropship was a converted strategic system recon vessel, probably decommissioned and sold at auction. Two man crew, one bridge, one gunner. Even her orders, which technically conformed to LOW OrbIT formatting, were missing key particulars such as an issuing officer, authority and agency. Still, she didn’t doubt their authenticity. Some deep-seeded instinct whispered they were real. They were standard 5 paragraph orders for detached operations where most of the other information normally supplied was either not applicable or redacted.

That meant covert ops. Combined with her memory loss, it raised a huge red flag. Mindwipes. That was as dark as black ops could get.

She unsealed the document envelope. Inside, she found only a printed, still picture of Malick Sennikov with the same set of coordinates neatly scribed upon the back.

So, she scoured the rest information she’d been given for the details she could find, the ones almost impossible to hide if you knew where to look and how to piece the puzzle together. She didn’t have long before the others would arrive.

First up, the coordinates. Once she was on the ground and had access to a nav system, she could run some basic calculations that might narrow down the system and planet. That would have to wait. But she knew a couple things right away. The coordinates were in LOW OrbIT Strategic System Recon standard format. Which either meant the planet was a LOW OrbIT sanctioned colony, or it was so low-tech that it didn’t have its own GPS. Or maybe it was hostile to the idea of GPS altogether.

The equipment caught her attention next. While the gear looked like LOW OrbIT combat loads, most of it was well-disguised, more readily available substitutes, the kind used by corporate security details, that didn’t attract the same level of scrutiny when the equipment was acquired. None of their uniforms had smart-camo, though the tan and brown pattern meant they’d set down in a desert. The Buffalo and the Nyala were both 7 Nations constructs. Even as Fringer tech, they had garnered a positive reputation with the LOW OrbIT Marines when they’d come up against them during the Green Revolution.

That left the picture. She could tell by the resolution that it was a surveillance image, an old one no less. It had all the telltale sharp edges of being enhanced and aged. Whoever this was, he was hard to capture digitally. That meant he either who knew how to dodge LOW OrbIT’s ubiquitous public surveillance, or was rarely exposed to it. A Fringer or a Green. She studied the hardcopy image more closely. European features not much diluted with the rough chiseled face, gray eyes and dark hair of the Eastern regions. His pupils had a slight cast of red. Either an artifact of reflected light or he’d been exposed to the Blood Eye Virus and survived. Odd as that virus was contracted only on Blood, an Indian national colony. That pointed toward a Green. Probably a Revolutionary.

Gigi loaded the image into the memory of her nightshades just as the hatch to the briefing room opened and the others began to spill in. She quickly slid the photo back into the envelope and blanked the datapad before her.

She looked up to find a subdued, distrustful group of two women, three men, and a CuFF assuming their places around the table. If it weren’t for their pictures on her datapad she would have seen them only as a collection of soldiers. She was surprised that term sprang to mind. But all of them except Patel had an air of experience around them as they dropped into the swing-arm seats.

Patel had chosen the seat opposite her at the far end of the table. The father to her mother? He might need another reminder he had the pecking order backwards. Or maybe he just wanted to remain far beyond her reach.

The feline CuFF settled on the table before an empty chair, just to her right, with his front paws tucked beneath him. His tail dangled over the edge of the table, sheltered by the seatback. She’d have trouble not thinking of him as a cat, though she knew that mistake could prove problematic. CuFFs had a reputation for being temperamental.

The others filled in along the sides, leaving an empty chair to her left like students afraid of sitting too close to an unknown teacher.

Unlike most staff meetings, Gigi didn’t need to wait half a minute for everyone to quiet down before she got started. These soldiers weren’t chatting casually about nothing. Instead, they eyed her like a new commander, their faces masks from birch to mahogany, waiting to see what she would do. The men she know how to handle. The women could be trickier. The CuFF was beyond her experience.

“I assume you all know why you’re here.” Gigi started, uncertain whether she’d delivered this stock motivational speech before. If she had, she didn’t remember. But then, they wouldn’t either. “You screwed up. I don’t know how, or why. Maybe you pissed someone off you shouldn’t have. Maybe, you were just born unlucky. Maybe you just volunteered. Honestly, I don’t care. All I know is that we have a mission, one I mean to succeed. And I need each of you in order to accomplish that.”

She looked them each in the eye as she spoke, left to right, listing off their names and team functions silently as she passed, linking them to a face and distinguishing feature. Norene Wilmots, security, beaded maroon hair. Ghalib Baidu, security, short and muscular. Ranjit Patel, corpsman, piercing black eyes. David Bryce, heavy grav vehicle driver, horseshoe moustache. Kai Meinert, driver/cargo master, rugged. Thomas Maahes 17, gunner, charcoal gray fur.

She held each of their gazes a moment before moving on. Most had open expressions and dropped their eyes when she stared too long. Patel developed a condescending sneer before he finally acceded, rubbing his neck. She came to Maahes last. Unlike the others, he just stared back, undaunted, evaluating her though green cat’s-eye irises. Gigi couldn’t decide whether it was a challenge or just normal CuFF behavior. But she thought she might like him. At the very least, she hoped she could count on him. None of the others looked like Marines. He was Navy so as close as she would get.

“The trick is, while I know what your jobs are,” she weighed the datapad in one hand, “I don’t know the extent of your abilities. I don’t know your strengths or weaknesses. I don’t know your aptitudes or shortfalls. I don’t know how to assign you into cross-supporting teams. And I don’t have time to learn.”

She stood to emphasize that, while admitting weakness, she was still in charge. “That means two things. First, when I give an order, I expect it to be obeyed. Out here results matter. There is no try. Second, communication is paramount. If you see or hear something I or someone else needs to know about, sing out. We are a team, which means our lives depend on each other while we’re here.”

“If I could tell you where here was,” she continued, “I would. Command has deemed that information not relevant. That means from touchdown to dust-off, we treat dirtside as hostile territory.

“We’re here for an escort mission. In brief, we’ve been ordered to exchange a preloaded cargo container and a cryo unit for a second preloaded container at a specified location. We’ve been supplied a Buffalo cargo hauler and a Nyala recon vehicle as well as standard field combat loads. No situational details provided. I’ve forwarded our orders to each of your comms. Review them.

“Assignments: Meinert, you will drive the Buffalo with Baidu as security. Bryce, you take the Nyala with Wilmots riding shotgun, Maahes as gunner and myself as vehicle commander. Patel, you and the cryo unit will ride as cargo with us. Any questions?” She looked around the table. No one spoke up.

“Ok then, Meinert, you and Bryce check the vehicles in the cargo bay and verify our container is properly strapped down. Task Wilmots and Baidu as you need them. Maahes, crosscheck the Nyala’s weapons interface. Patel, confirm the cryo container is properly secured. Each of you will need to familiarize yourself with your own equipment and load it up.”

“Who’s second in command?” Patel asked, adding casually, “You know if something goes wrong.”

A reasonable question, though given his earlier comments Gigi suspected he asked it as a provocation. “Maahes. I’ll brief him in the Nyala.”

“Didn’t you say communication is paramount?” Patel countered. “How’s he going to assume command if he can’t even speak?”

Maahes’ tail swished back and forth once. A sign of annoyance? Gigi had no measure of the feline’s mental state. Without an interface in the briefing room, all he could do was listen.

“There’s a comm interface in the Nyala’s gunnery station. Maahes is the only other one here I know has LOW OrbIT experience.”

Patel opened his mouth to protest. Gigi cut him off. “If you don’t like my decision, Mr. Patel, I suggest you take it up the chain of command.”

Patel snapped his mouth shut.

“Ok, people. Let’s get to it.”

---

Gigi caught up with Maahes in the Nyala. Meinert had commandeered the others to re-strap the cargo container on the Buffalo. Except Patel, who Gigi had last spotted inventorying the med-kit.

Maahes was plugged into the gunnery interface as he ran through the checklist for the weapons station. Gigi dropped into the commander’s seat just below the turret. She noted their nav was an inertial navigation system rather than a GPS. Wherever they were headed, it was either primitive or someone wanted this mission to stay strictly off the books.

“You got a minute?” she called up to the turret.

Maahes popped his furry head out of the custom gunnery compartment. “What’s up, Lieutenant?” The Nyala’s comm interface was primitive so his voice came out sounding eerily artificial and computer constructed, like an ancient text to voice app.

“I wanted to brief you on the rest of the mission details.” Gigi plugged her datapad into the slot by the commander’s chair and transferred their orders to the gunnery station. She watched as he accessed and skimmed the file.

“Seems like a pretty straightforward drop and swap,” he replied though the interface.

“There’s some ancillary information. A picture.” She pulled the hardcopy photo from the file envelope and held it so he could study it. Closer, his fur smelled clean and reliable. She hoped she’d made the right choice.

He stared at the picture moment and then wrinkled his nose and sniffed it. “I’m not really good with faces, Lieutenant. What’s wrong with his eyes? They shine like ours in low light.”

“I think he’s a Bloodite, or at least been exposed to the Blood Eye Virus at some point.”

“Like our medic,” Maahes noted.

Gigi returned the photo to the envelope and then slid it down beside the commander’s seat. “You know where it is if you need it.”

“Why not scan it and upload it?” His whiskers flicked forward then back as if in confusion.

“I figure if the higher-ups wanted it available to everyone, they would have done it themselves.” Gigi eyed him for a moment. “But let me ask you this, Thomas: what’s your evaluation of the rest of the team?”

The CuFF tilted his head sideways “You do understand that calling me ‘Thomas’ is like me calling you ‘girl’ right, Lieutenant?”

Was he making a joke? It was hard to tell with the crude intonation of the comm interface but she thought he was. She suppressed a smile. She definitely liked him. “Sorry. ‘Maahes.’ Call me Gigi.”

“Not much information in the files, Gigi. I get the feeling some of us have worked together before. But our bush medic doesn’t smell quite right.”

So she wasn’t the only one. “Anything specific?”

“Nothing I can hook my claws into.”

The thought they’d worked together resonated with Gigi. Suddenly, she caught a flash of memory: a picture, coordinates and troops approaching across the ice. Then it was gone, as elusive as smoke on a foggy morning.

“You ok, Lieutenant,” Maahes asked. “For a second there, you looked like a kitten about to chase a ghost.”

Gigi shook her head. “Fine. I need to finish up with preparations before the drop. If you think of anything else, let me know.”

He eyed her enigmatically before replying. “Aye, aye.” Then he pulled back into the gunnery station.

---

The drop went smooth and by the numbers. Not that there was anything any of them could do other than ride it out. Whoever was driving didn’t even give them a view. Probably would have revealed too much information. Not that they could do anything with it now.

The Nyala could have made the last of the drop unassisted. Its gravitic drive was designed for high altitude insertion. The Buffalo, on the other hand, was distinctly low-tech. So both vehicles went in by covered cargo pallet with stealth chutes, their crews strapped inside. They were dropped low and fast so atmospheric friction wouldn’t be a problem. Someone had done their dynamics homework. They didn’t quite hit the ground rolling, but they could have. They’d landed less than a hundred meters apart. Anything under a quarter-klick was generally considered spot-on.

The landing zone was a dun, sandy Mars-scape. A flat, hard-packed, rock-strewn plain surrounded by sweeping, rippled dunes that undulated about a klick away, like in an old holo-vid of an ancient Egyptian desert. The air didn’t conform to that image. It was warm, dense and humid but breathable and untainted. Gravity was Earth-normal plus roughly twenty-percent. The sun, a Class M dwarf, hung low to the horizon, casting a deeply shadowed pinkish glow across the landscape. One large and two small crescent moons hung like an uneven string of pearls across the pale blue-violet sky.

Gigi ran that information through her knowledge of human colonized worlds, at least those on record. She hoped they were still in authorized LOW OrbIT space, not on some undocumented Fringe colony. She narrowed it down to a handful of possibilities, none of which gave her a warm fuzzy about their mission. She had a feeling she knew which one it was but didn’t want leap to any conclusions. She hoped she was wrong. 

“Goggles on,” Gigi ordered as she adjusted her nightshades. “These red dwarfs flare without warning.”

The combination of gravity and atmosphere left everyone winded as they policed up the landing site. In a matter of minutes, the chutes and covers had been stowed and buried. After a quick crosscheck to ensure no damage had been sustained, both vehicles eased off their pallets, the Buffalo on oversized tires, the Nyala floating on antigrav plates as if lighter than air.

Gigi dropped a waypoint for their location on the INS interface then issued her deployment orders. “The Nyala will take point. Bryce, use our sensor suite to pick a navigable trail for the Buffalo. Meinert, maintain 50 meter separation in case we have to backtrack. Wilmots, Baidu and Maahes, monitor your assigned sectors for contacts. We’re burning daylight so let’s get underway.”

They picked their way across the barren landscape, the Nyala sniffing out stable ground. They made good progress despite the terrain. Gigi kept an eye on their lat/long coordinates as they progressed. She noted the first time the hundredths clicked over, dropped a waypoint, and then waited for the second. When it came, she dropped another waypoint. From the distance between, she calculated it would take another an hour to reach their destination. She then plugged in the coordinate ratio into an equation that gave her the radius of the planet. Rough numbers came up between ten and eleven thousand klicks. A big planet.

She used that as a final filter against the colonies of human space. She had a nagging feeling that she’d done this set of calculations before, on another planet, for another mission. As troops approached across the ice.

Only the worst possibility remained. Scorn. The birthplace of the Green Revolution. The first colony to fall through a marginally democratic process. Later, the Greens had refined their tactics and parlayed that victory into another on Down 2, and then Blood. When LOW OrbIT had finally taken notice, The Greens had gotten impatient and embarked on a full-scale, multi-system revolt that had taken five years and most of LOW OrbIT’s military energy to counter.

Darwin had seen the bloodiest back and forth fighting. Sympathies on The Farm had spawned an autocratic takeover. Either might have eventually settled into Green hands permanently had they not reached toward the strategic nexus of Renewal which threatened the corporate worlds of Diamond, Bank and Cooperation. With three of their prime colonies under threat, the Interstellars had bankrolled a private counter-revolution, unconstrained by LOW OrbIT’s comparatively civilized rules of war. In short order, a mercenary flotilla of unmarked corporate patrol cruisers loaded with military contractors had winked out from erstwhile neutral Chinese colony of Tao.

The threat to Renewal was quickly relieved. But the human cost of reclaiming Darwin could not be undone. With too many refugees and counter-refugees awash throughout the colonies already, the voting public had no appetite for more. Coming on the heels of the AI War, LOW OrbIT was nearly bankrupt anyway.

So, Scorn, Down 2 and Blood remained in Green hands, though even they didn’t see eye to eye with on forward doctrine. Scorn and Down 2 felt Blood was too liberal in its interpretation of Green dogma. Blood believed that was a deficiency that could be corrected after more systems signed on. Blood had never fully supported the violent policies of the Green Revolution and had thus avoided the worst of the sanctions that followed its failure. Down 2 had sidestepped the most damaging by virtue of being a Russian national colony.

As a LOW OrbIT chartered colony, Scorn had suffered. At least until the government Balkanized once it became apparent that the Interstellars were intent on prosecuting a shadow war using human rights trials, bounties and outright assassinations. While Scorn remained a hotbed of Revolutionary thought, and occasional action, the Greens lacked even a shadow of the long arm they’d once cast. Now, the planet was just another heavily monitored fringe colony brooding on the margins of human space, pining for its days of glory, mostly forgotten.

Except by the bounty hunters, the armchair strategists, and the political refugees who had fled both sides of the conflict. And the LOW OrbIT spy masters who still sought to decode the secret of the Greens’ meteoric rise, and thought they had the leverage to extract it. None of which gave Gigi comfort as to why she and her team might be here under a shroud of secrecy layered down to mindwipes.

Her eyes drifted instinctively back to her monitor, sweeping her quadrant for contacts. With a series of taps, she switched the feed from sensors to enhanced view to raw video. Had it suddenly gotten brighter out there? The dunes had taken on the bleached out color of drifted snow.

Her previous memory returned unbidden. Troops approached across an ice sheet dancing with windblown flurries. Sprinting across it, she urged her team toward the goal of the extraction ship’s cargo ramp buried in a drift, knowing in her heart they would never make it. The enemy was already firing low-percentage shots that sent crystal shards ricocheting across her path. Their vehicle was a slowly burning composite hulk a couple klicks back, an unlucky casualty of a low-probability volley from a pursuing ice-cat. Her team’s comm channels had been compromised and were flooded with Russian alternating between entreaties and outright threats. But Gigi still had their prize slung over one shoulder, the objective of their mission. The limp burden of an underweight body.

She turned her head to see how her passenger was faring, but didn’t have time to focus before a flicker of motion snapped her head back forward. The underslung turret of the extraction ship swiveled her direction. That was it then. Mission failure. She knew the protocol: leave no prisoners. Destroy as much evidence as possible before dust-off. Her heart sank yet she kept running anyway, just as she’d been trained. Never give up or give in unless you received a direct order.

Then an artificial voice cut through cacophony of Russian on the comms. It took a moment for the words to sink in. “Mission team. Get. Down. NOW!”

By force of will, Gigi stopped her legs from catching her on the very next stride. An instant later, she was falling. She twisted to absorb the worst of the impact. As her shoulder hit and snapped her helmet against the ice, her field of vision brightened to white-hot as the ship’s weapon unleashed a narrowly focused fragment of the sun….

“Solar flare,” Gigi called into the comms, firmly back in the commander’s seat of the Nyala. “Make sure those goggles are on and tight.”

The sand-strewn terrain beyond the windows bleached further as though a giant sodium vapor security spotlight panned across the landscape. The red sun brightened to nearly double strength then faded just as quickly.

Gigi surveyed her screen again for contacts, and found none. “Security team, report by sector. Left flank is clear”

“Right flank, clear,” Wilmots reported.

“Aft sector, clear,” Baidu confirmed.

“Forward sector, clear,” the comm interface spoke for Maahes. The same artificial voice and intonation Gigi remembered from the ice. Is that what had earned Maahes a position on her team? Or was her mind just filling in missing time by spinning a convenient story?

She couldn’t focus on that now. They were about two klicks from their destination by her calculations. “Wilmots, float a drone. I want a look at what’s up ahead.”

After a moment, Wilmots’ response came, “No drones loaded, Lieutenant.”

Bad enough Gigi didn’t have real-time satellite coverage but now they were supposed to approach the rendezvous blind? Even on Scorn, she couldn’t assume that enemy observation was limited to line-of-sight. Someone was insisting they do this the hard way.

“Ok, Meinert. Hold position with the Buffalo. The Nyala will scout ahead. I’ll drop waypoints as we go. When I say move up, you move to one waypoint behind us. At the first sign of hostilities, you scoot back to the dust-off site at best speed. Understood?”

“Got it,” was her only reply.

The two vehicles inchwormed their way through the dune complex, never coming within direct line-of-sight. Like a one-man, bounding overwatch where point always remained in the lead. Not ideal but Gigi saw no other way to protect the Buffalo which, while up-armored, was definitely more vulnerable.

A klick and half into the maneuver, the desert gave way to the fringes of civilization. The dunes sloped down to the ragged circle of another hardpan plain, held back by lines of snow fences at the edge of a frontier oasis. Beyond, the grid-work of a settlement awaited, its low, pale buildings constructed from some hidden desert quarry, its sage green gardens overwashed with sand.

Gigi called the Nyala to a halt. She scanned the outpost from her vantage. The main road took a straight shot in toward a central square. The settlement appeared uninhabited. No heat or energy signatures. Walls and roofs partially collapsed. Dying palms and tumbleweed grasses clogging backyard garden plots. Sand drifting along the streets. An abandoned, low-tech ecoforming site.

Gigi shook her head. With so many angles and side alleys, her current approach would be worse than useless. It would actively leave the Buffalo alone and exposed. She toyed with the idea of scouting ahead with the Nyala and calling the Buffalo to follow once they’d made contact but rejected it. Instead, she reverted to convoy tactics.

“Meinert, snug up the Buffalo ten meters behind us. Maahes, eyes front and sing out if you see any contacts. Wilmots, Baidu, prepare to dismount.”

To her surprise no complaints followed. Within minutes the Buffalo rumbled up the swale behind the descending finger of a dune, shielded from the ruins beyond. This obviously wasn’t Meinert’s first hostile action. Baidu trotted up beside the Nyala in full combat gear, assault weapon at the ready. Gigi popped the rear hatch and stepped out. Wilmots followed from the front. They all squatted in the sand, Baidu and Wilmots facing the town, Gigi with it at her back.

“I need you two to perform recon,” Gigi said. “See the main street that leads to the central square?” She didn’t point in case they were being watched but both of them glanced over her shoulders to the town below. “Baidu, I want you to scout one block left of it, Wilmots, one block right. The Nyala will cover your approach. Signal back all clear and we’ll start down. We’ll cross-check at each intersection. Take up concealed covering positions on either side of the square. Radio silence. Hand signals only unless you need cavalry. Got it?”

They both nodded. At least they seemed prepared to do their jobs, if not overly enthusiastic by their expressions.

“Enough of the powwow.” Patel chimed in from the Nyala’s rear hatchway. “We’re late for the rendezvous, Gagnant.”

Gigi flicked her hand for the other two to proceed before turning on Patel, the barrel of her gauss rifle pointed at the dirt just below the threshold at which he crouched.

“Is there a timetable I’m unaware of, Mr. Patel?” she asked. “No? Then get your ass back in that vehicle. They’ll wait until I’m good and ready.”

Patel grumbled as he crawled toward the cargo compartment. Gigi climbed back inside. “Look sharp, Maahes. I want those two fully covered as they make their way down. Bryce, keep us ready. We move on my signal.”

Gigi alternated between watching Baidu and Wilmots pick their way down toward the settlement, and scanning the outer buildings for telltale signatures and movement. The pair took advantage of what scant cover was available on their descent, Wilmots slightly better than Baidu despite her unorthodox appearance. Within minutes they disappeared into the ruins. Gigi continued scanning as she waited. A few minutes later, Wilmots ducked around the back of a building and delivered a series of hand signals. One vehicle, seven hostiles, all in the central square. Main road clear.

“Bryce, take us onto main approach, half road normal. Meinert, snug up tight. We’ll give you what cover we can. Look sharp, people.”

The Nyala eased silently down toward the main road above a meter high buffer of air. The Buffalo followed quietly behind, its electric engine indiscernible above the soft squeech of its balloon tires on the sand. Within two minutes they were proceeding down the central thoroughfare where Gigi slowed them to one tenth road normal. That allowed Baidu and Wilmots kept pace on the parallel roads, alternately signaling it was safe to continue at each intersection.

A few minutes later, the Nyala entered into the central square. Gigi thought about holding the Buffalo back for one final check but opted for the appearance of being slightly incautious. As the Nyala glided past the last of the buildings, she felt her decision was correct. An ancient tech, internal combustion flatbed covered by a camouflage-patterned tarp crouched on weary springs beneath a tattered, sun-bleached awning flapping across the way. Seven individuals, a mix of male and female in civilian dress, clustered around it armed with a mismatched collection of equally ancient reaction mass rifles. Probably local manufacture. Accurate and deadly enough in the right hands if a bullet caught an exposed surface or skipped through the creases of someone’s body armor. But otherwise not overly concerning. A quick scan revealed no support weapons. The encounter appeared as advertised: A simple exchange on equal footing.

Gigi instructed Bryce to swing the Nyala broadside to their position. She ordered Maahes to swivel the gun turret to sight in on the top central quarter of the truck’s cargo, just far enough elevated not to be interpreted as a direct threat but a clear warning she wouldn’t tolerate any nonsense. Meinert parked the Buffalo in their shadow.

Gigi dismounted with her gauss rifle and strode across the sandy pavers. One of the seven detached from the group to meet her. She zoomed in her nightshades on his face. They aligned it to the facial recognition metrics from the stored picture. Malick Sennikov, a little grayer perhaps, slightly fleshier and with a few more weatherworn lines but definitely the man from the photo. Except he had no red cast to his eyes. That froze her heart. Until she remembered her nightshades would filter them out as a reflection.

Gigi raised her left hand to her temple and tapped in an adjustment for a raw feed. And there they were, ruby eyes just like an albino rat. With his genetics, definitely a Green. She closed the filters back down.

Then she heard the scuffle of a footstep behind her. She spun around, gauss rifle leveled, to find Patel scurrying to catch up. She had a spontaneous urge to shoot him right then, just pull the trigger and put him out of her misery. Instead, she turned back and continued walking. Ordering him to return to the Nyala at this point probably wouldn’t do much good. Besides, she wanted to know what he was up to.

Sennikov waited half a dozen paces away. A smile ghosted the corners of his mouth. He couldn’t have helped but see her reaction to Patel. Gigi swore again inside her head.

When Gigi stood before him, Sennikov towered several centimeters over her, but that didn’t faze her. Time to seize the initiative. She shifted her weapon to her left hand and extended her right. To his credit, Sennikov only hesitated an instant before he grasped it. Typical male, he tried to play a little dominance game with his grip and seemed mildly surprised to find hers reacted with equal pressure. But Gigi wasn’t paying attention to him. She was watching Patel out of the corner of her eye, shielded and enhanced by her nightshades as he stepped up beside her. And there it was, a slight chin nod of recognition toward Sennikov. That about tore it. Her eyes flicked back to their contact who made no acknowledgement in return.

After a sufficiently extended handshake that became prolonged into almost embarrassing territory by LOW OrbIT standards, Sennikov released his grip. Gigi concentrated not to flex her hand or shake it out and lose whatever respect she might have gained. Instead, she shifted her gauss rifle back.

“I understand that’s for us,” she pointed to the cargo container on the flatbed. “Any chance your guys can unload that themselves?”  

“The arrangement was you bring the crane,” Sennikov said in an accent that marked him as being out of LOW OrbIT circulation for some time. He looked around behind her at the Nyala. “You also brought a container? And something else, yes?”

She nodded slowly as she looked toward the ground then back up at him with her head cocked as she smiled. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

She was pleased to see that threw Sennikov for a second. But only one as he turned toward the truck, put two fingers to his mouth and whistled then swung an arm over his head and dropped it. Four of his crew got busy with the fasteners for the tarp. A moment later, they slid it off. Incongruously, a standard white starport cargo container lay beneath, an exact duplicate of their own plus or minus a few odd scuffs and scratches. How the old truck’s suspension held up was beyond her.

“We need it out from under that awning to employ the crane,” she commented.

Once again, Sennikov whistled, this time accompanied by the universal hand signal for come here. One the Greens jumped into the cab. A second later the truck roared to life, belching thick, black smoke like a slowly roused dragon. Jerkily, accompanied by a grinding sound that could only be from mechanical gears, it exited its lair and approached, squealing to a stop a dozen meters away. The other Greens trotted over, rifles once again in hand.

Gigi murmured into her mike, “Meinert, bring up the Buffalo.” She wanted to add not to block Maahes line of fire but didn’t dare. Based on Meinert’s previous driving, she hoped that could remain unsaid.

It could. Meinert parked the Buffalo slightly offset and ass-end toward the truck, still able to be covered but out of the direct line of fire of the Nyala. Whoever had put together her team had chosen competent people. Gigi almost felt she could relax a little, but she didn’t. Not until they were all loaded up for dust-off.

Meinert stepped down out of the Buffalo and wandered over. “I’m going to need help to get those containers exchanged.”

“Task their people as necessary,” Gigi said then looked back at Sennikov. “They know what they’re doing, right?”

Sennikov looked at her quizzically. “Where is the rest of your team? We bring seven, you bring seven. That was the arrangement.”

“My people have other duties. None of them can be spared.” Gigi nodded toward the Buffalo. “You want what we brought, you help load it up.”

Sennikov cocked his head, then shrugged. He strode back toward his group, ripping off a quick string of Russian, or some lesser known Slavic language, that sent his people scurrying.

“I’ll go prep the cryo unit for the exchange,” Patel said, heading back to the Nyala.

Gigi considered ordering him to stand fast but thought better of revealing any further dissent. Instead, she called to his retreating back, “Don’t bring it up before my say-so.”

Patel flipped a hand casually as his only acknowledgement that he’d heard.

Sennikov’s men did exactly as Meinert instructed, with one of the men acting as an interpretive foreman. They hooked the winch to it, then inclined the Buffalo’s bed and unspooled the cable slowly, keeping it taut. Once one edge was resting on the pavers, Meinert eased the Buffalo forward while the foreman played out more cable. The container slid slowly to the ground without so much as a thud.

Meinert returned the bed to level and began repositioning the Buffalo beside the Greens’ flatbed. Their container she’d have to crane off directly. That meant extending down the Buffalo’s composite stabilizer legs. This could take a little while yet.

Gigi adjusted her nightshades. She took the opportunity to see if she could spot where Baidu or Wilmots might be hiding, knowing the Greens might be doing the same. Time seemed to have slowed to a near standstill. Since they’d been dirtside, the sun had barely crawled across the sky.

The wind picked up. Dust danced in small dervishes across the pavers as Sennikov’s people harnessed their cargo container for unloading. They wrapped their mouths with bandanas but seemed otherwise unperturbed. The buildings sheltered them from the worst of stinging sand.

After instructing his people, Sennikov had retreated to the shade beneath the awning where the truck had been parked. He sat at battered café table that had been revealed and poured himself a cup of what might have been tea from a pot heated by a low-tech flame unit. He leaned back and sipped his steaming beverage while he watched the activity on the square as if he was on holiday somewhere in Old Europe.

When his eyes drifted across her, Gigi was just another piece of the scenery. Suddenly, she felt extraneous and exposed.

Meinert seemed to have the transfer process under control. So Gigi opted to check on Patel, and maybe see if Maahes had spotted anything she’d missed. After catching Meinert’s eye with a wave, Gigi turned to amble back toward the Nyala.

Maahes synthetic voice in her ear stopped her dead. “Heads up, Lieutenant. I couldn’t stop him.”

Just then Patel appeared from behind the Nyala guiding a grav-sled loaded with the cryo chamber. What the hell did he think he was doing?

Gigi strode to intercept him through the cloud of fine dust now swirling around the square like icy snow. Their paths intersected halfway between. Gigi planted herself directly in the grav-sled’s path and held up her left hand for him to stop, her right clutching her assault weapon tight as it leaned against her shoulder. Patel ignored her, not slowing the sled even a fraction. While the cryo chamber had no real weight suspended on the sled, it still had full momentum. There was no way she could muscle it to a stop.

“Shut it down, Patel.” She dropped the barrel of her weapon, centering it on his chest. “Now.”

He eyed her narrowly for a moment, then keyed the sled to stop. The flapping leg of her fatigues snapped against the front of the cryo unit when it finally slid to a halt. Gigi didn’t flinch. Another inch and her knee would have bent backwards. Now she was pissed.

She skirted the grav sled, her weapon centered on Patel as she moved. When the barrel was almost touching his chest, she channeled the voice of a drill instructor she vividly remembered from basic, “Do you have a hearing problem, or a learning disability I don’t know about, Patel?”

Patel said nothing, just stared at the gauss rifle aimed at him, his dark eyes occasionally flashing red. A Bloodite, definitely. Just like his companion across the square.

“Now that I have your full and undivided attention, I want you to turn this sled around and put it back in the cargo compartment of the Nyala. When I give the order, and only when I give the order, will you bring MY cryo chamber back out.” Gigi rested her left hand atop it as she spoke to emphasize her ownership. “Is that understood?”

Cold from the unit seeped through her tactical gloves as she faced Patel down. The icy-hot sensation triggered another memory. The same memory as before with a picture, coordinates and troops approaching across the ice. Only this time she could see a face. The face of her objective. A dark-haired girl too young to be directly involved in anyone’s power play. A kidnapped pawn in someone else’s game. A girl, just like the ones on The Farm, innocent and prepubescent. With that a flood of memories almost overwhelmed her. The bodies of young girls playing hide and seek through rolling hills in a yellow-green mist that smelled sickly sweet.

Gigi snatched her hand away from the cryo chamber as if it’d been burned. Patel stood wide-eyed. She now remembered the echoes of his panicked voice screaming in her ear as she ran across the ice with her burden. “They’ll never make it. Maahes to take them out!” Instead, Maahes had saved her life, she might never know why. And when she’d next seen Patel inside the extraction ship’s cargo bay, he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

Gigi’s face hardened to a mask.

“Open it,” she commanded.

“What?” Patel stammered, blinking for a second in incomprehension. “If I do, she’ll die.”

Gigi brought her left hand up to support her gauss rifle. She took a step back to make sure Patel didn’t attempt something foolish and get himself killed. Though there still might be time for that later.

“Open the observation port.” She gestured to the cryo unit with her weapon and crouched slightly. “Now!”

Patel did as she asked, slowly and deliberately keying a sequence on the control pad. He looked sick, as if he longed crawl beneath the cryo chamber, or into it. He had to know a memory had broken through, something dangerous. His expression said he knew exactly what she’d see. That meant he’d never been mindwiped like the rest of them. Oh, that was just perfect.

The reinforced cerema-steel cover retracted. Gigi flicked the barrel of her weapon to motion Patel away. He complied without hesitation. Gigi stepped up and peered inside.

The observation port quickly condensated in the warm, dense air. Ice crawled and networked its way inward from the edges like the time-lapse of a spider spinning a crystalline web. But not before Gigi could make out the same pale, gray-eyed angelic face from her newfound memory sleeping peacefully within, haloed by the same dark hair.

Gigi’s eyes closed unbidden. She almost reeled as she understood what she’d been sent to trade.

“You’ve got company, Lieutenant.” Maahes’ voice snapped her eyes back open to the red-tinged reality of Scorn.

Gigi turned, combat crouching further. Sennikov was halfway across the square. His Greens had abandoned Meinert’s ropes to regain their rifles, leaving the cargo container swinging in midair midway beneath the crane between the truck and the Buffalo.

Gigi backed to where she could watch both Patel and Sennikov, then keyed her mike. Which one to choose? She opted for the one her intuition said she could count on. “Wilmots, non-lethal response. Draw a line in front of the armed crew.”

A trail of paver shards sprang up about a meter in front of the closest Green followed an instant later by the staccato crack of a gauss rifle’s flechettes going supersonic. Everyone in the square froze.

Gigi shouted across to Sennikov. “That’s it for warnings. Tell you men to lay down their weapons. Slowly.”

Sennikov said nothing just extended an arm and slowly lowered it until it pointed to the ground. His crew laid their rifles at their feet and stepped away.

“Wilmots, get down here,” Gigi murmured into her mike. “Baidu, stand fast.” Wilmots’ position was compromised anyway. Gigi just hoped Baidu would be as willing to comply if she gave another order to fire.

Now what? Gigi adjusted the weapon in her hands. She was dangerously off script and everyone on both sides knew it. “Ok, Sennikov, get your men back on those ropes. We complete the exchange as agreed. Only we keep the cryo chamber.”

If the Green leader was surprised she knew his name, he didn’t show it. “And if I refuse?”

“Then my gunner will blow both containers and we walk away.”

A slow, sly smile spread across his face without warming it. “Your passengers wouldn’t appreciate that.”

Passengers? What the hell was he talking about? Gigi desperately needed a moment to think.

She didn’t get it. Wilmots came trotting across the square. Gigi kept her weapon trained on the Greens. There were too many moving pieces now and too few people she could count on. She’d have to make do.

“Wilmots, collect their weapons. Maahes, cover her. Bryce, maneuver as necessary. Keep all fire clear of Meinert’s container.” Gigi held her breath until she saw everyone began to comply. They were still with her. So far.

“Patel, join Sennikov,” she ordered.

Patel raised his hands slowly. “I had no choice, Gagnant. Just like you...”

“Shut up and move.” Gigi gestured with her gauss rifle.

“You’ll regret this, Lt. Gagnant.” Sennikov looked at her like a fish he was about to gut with a well-honed filet knife.

“Yeah? Does anyone even know you’re here?” She glared at him behind her nightshades. “And where exactly on Scorn do you report being ripped off as a part of your illegal smuggling deal?”  

Sennikov said nothing though his eyes danced with blood and fire in the low-slung light of Scorn’s seemingly stationary sun.

“That’s what I thought,” Gigi added with disgust. “You Greens have no problem using kids. Just more collateral damage in your political game. Well, some of us won’t be complicit in the underage slave trade.”

“That’s not what this is,” Patel protested.

Gigi turned on him with her gauss rifle. “I don’t know what story someone fed me that convinced me to abduct her, Patel, but I remember enough now that you’d do best to keep your mouth shut.”

Patel’s complexion greened as he looked even sicker than he had before.

Wilmots came trotting back weighed down with six rifles cleared of ammunition. She dropped them in a pile several meters away.

“What’s it going to be, Sennikov?” Gigi asked. “Get your men on those ropes and you still have a chance to walk away with something. Otherwise my gunner starts target practice with the container we brought.”

Sennikov looked like he’d bitten into a lemon but he waved his Greens back to the ropes. Within minutes, Meinert had the container settled on the Buffalo. The cargo master began strapping it down herself.

“Ok, Sennikov, you and your crew move to the center of the square,” Gigi ordered.

The Greens shuffled across the pavers. The wind had died back to a simple breeze, cooler but not refreshing.

“Now on your knees with your fingers interlaced behind your heads and ankles crossed,” Gigi commanded. The dense air and adrenaline suddenly made her giddy. “You, too, Patel”

Slowly, the Greens dropped down and assumed the position she’d ordered. If they were afraid she would execute them, none of Sennikov’s Greens showed it. Instead, Gigi had Wilmots zip-tie them one by one while she kept the others under the watchful eye of her gauss rifle. She saved Patel for last. He shook like a dried leaf in an autumn wind.

With the Greens secured, Gigi issued new orders. “Maahes, Baidu, keep them covered. They so much as breathe rapidly, take them out. Wilmots, you’re with me.”

Gigi strode across the square to where Meinert was waiting.

“What the hell was all that about, Lieutenant?” the cargo master demanded as she ratcheted the last of the cargo straps tight.

Gigi ignored her question. “Is that container secure?”

“It is now,” Meinert snapped. “I almost lost both the container and the Buffalo. The load kept shifting. It was everything I could do to keep it stable. Whatever’s in there isn’t tied down.”

Gigi shot a look toward Sennikov, remembering something he’d said. She headed for the rear of the Buffalo. “Come on, Meinert. I need you.”

Gigi climbed the ladder onto the back bed. The cargo container still towered over her. She waved Meinert up.

“Open it,” Gigi ordered.

Meinert looked uncertain. “You understand if we break the seals, it will be a nightmare for whoever signs off on it in Customs.”

“Like I give a damn,” Gigi shot back. “I need to know what’s so valuable someone’s willing to trade a little girl for it.”

Wilmots and Meinert exchanged a confused look. Wilmots adjusted the grip on her assault weapon. Meinert shook her head and mumbled but started keying in an emergency override sequence into the cargo container’s control pad. She acknowledged and dismissed two red-light warnings. When the third came up, she stepped aside. “It’s all yours, Lieutenant. Place your right hand on the scanner and say ‘accept’ along with your name, rank and agency. It’ll be logged under your authority, classified as military necessity.”

Gigi laid her hand on the datapad without hesitation. “Lieutenant Griselda Gagnant, LOW OrbIT Marines. Accept.”

The control pad went red and the Customs seals fell away. The door sighed open as the airtight integrity was broken. The scent of densely packed humanity stung Gigi like a slap. Meinert shielded her nose and turned away.

Gigi grabbed lip of the cargo unit’s door pulled it open until the interior was fully exposed. Inside, a dozen shabbily dressed men and women clustered as far back from the hatch as they could. Three were standing, peering toward the entrance. The others were on the floor slouched against the walls. Half shielded their eyes against the light. The rest looked too exhausted to bother. All were haggard, gaunt and deathly pale. None looked younger than middle age. Wrappers from ancient League of World’s humanitarian aid ration boxes were strewn between the grungy and stained foam pads that littered the floor. A composting toilet with a makeshift privacy screen squatted in one corner.  An underspeced scrubber unit in desperate need of new filters rattled along the ceiling in a heroic yet futile attempt to cleanse the air.

Wilmots peered over Gigi’s shoulder.

“Fugees,” Gigi whispered, stunned and at a loss as to how all the pieces fit together. She felt dizzy. She had no training to fall back on for this.

“I don’t think so Lieutenant,” Wilmots responded. Gigi shot her a questioning look. Wilmots pointed. “Check out their shoes.”

Then Gigi saw it. In contrast to their dirty, mismatched styles of clothing, all of them, men and women alike, wore nearly identical, unscuffed shoes. Odd, but Gigi still didn’t know what it meant.

“Prisoners,” Wilmots said when Gigi turned back to her with an uncomprehending expression. “Probably politicals. Fugees come as they are. Prisoners get issued shoes on release. We used to see it all the time in Customs Enforcement.”

A hostage exchange. That made sense. Who knew what the other container held. Arms? Parts? Luxury items? Anything Scorn could no longer import. While it disgusted her, it wasn’t her problem. These people were.

“Wilmots, tell Patel he just got a reprieve. Cut him loose and bring him here. Make sure he brings his med-kit.”

Wilmots wasted no time trotting across the square, her beaded hair clicking as she ran.

The comm in Gigi’s ear chattered to life. “Lieutenant, Baidu here. Our friends brought company. I’ve got a dust column rising from the road outside the settlement. Maybe two or three vehicles.” 

This mission couldn’t get much worse. “ETA?” Gigi asked.

“At present speed, fifteen minutes tops,” Baidu replied.

“Acknowledged. Return to the Buffalo at best speed.”

She turned to Meinert. “Get ready to move. We pull up stakes as soon as Baidu hits the square.”

“And the refugees?” Meinert raised an eyebrow.

As heartbreaking as it was, Gigi knew she couldn’t let these people out of the cargo container. She didn’t have time to assess their condition. Prisoners or refugees, it didn’t matter. Isolation made people unpredictable. You never counted on them treating you like a liberator. And she had no idea who she was dealing with. All this was well above her pay grade.

Wilmots returned escorting Patel, med-kit slung across his shoulder. He eyed her as like a dog that had grown accustomed to being hit.

“Here he is, Lieutenant,” Wilmots said, pushing him forward.

“Get up here, Patel,” Gigi ordered. When he hesitated, Wilmots prodded him with her assault rifle. He stared into the cargo container, more dismayed than surprised.

“Wilmots,” Gigi instructed as she watched him. “I want you to get that cryo chamber back onto the Nyala. Tell Bryce to get ready to move.”

“You can’t take her, Gagnant,” Patel protested. “She’s his…”

Gigi cut him off. “Shut up and get inside.”

Patel’s eyes went wide but he didn’t move.

“You heard me, get in there.” She gestured with her gauss rifle.

Reluctantly, he obeyed, skirting as far away from her as he could. “I don’t know what you expect…”

“I expect you will keep all of these refugees alive and healthy until we make dust-off. You will render any aid and comfort they need, even if that means wiping their asses and washing their feet. And should anything happen to any one of them, I will hold you personally responsible, in a very intimate and terminal way.”

“You can’t…” he started.

“Unless you want to be listed as a combat casualty here and now, Patel, you will shut up and obey my orders.” Gigi propped her nightshades onto her forehead and leveled her most intimidating stare. “Am I clear?”

“But you…” Patel shrank farther away.

She shifted her grip on her weapon and intensified her glare. “I said, ‘Am - I - Clear?’”

“Y…yes.” Patel stammered as he swallowed hard. “But my eyes,” he whispered. “They’ll think I’m one of them. They’ll tear me apart.”

“Aren’t you?” Gigi asked, remembering his voice on the comm from the previous mission. Before he could respond, she swung the cargo door shut.

“Seal it up,” Gigi ordered Meinert, resettling her nightshades then jumping down from the bed of the Buffalo.

As she strode across the square to the Nyala, Gigi shot a dark glare at the cargo container resting on the pavers. She’d let the Greens keep their ill-gotten gain, and their lives. That part of this Devil’s bargain didn’t concern her. Her priority now was getting all her people off Scorn intact.

---

Her team’s retreat to the dust-off site sped by. Without having to pick their way through unknown obstacles, the return journey flew in a fraction of the time. Gigi had the Buffalo take point, following their INS trail at best speed while the Nyala hovered above and behind, maintaining rearguard just below the dune line.

At the dust-off site, they found the evac ship waiting. Meinert and Bryce scrambled to get the vehicles loaded while the others secured their gear for departure.

Gigi sent Maahes to scout the ship. She ordered Baidu to gather food, water and all their spare equipment. “Field gear, rations, the emergency kits from the Nyala and the Buffalo. Everything you can round up that isn’t combat-oriented and you think might help the refugees survive. Wilmots, scrounge up something we can use as temporary replacement filters for the scrubbers. You’ve got two minutes.”

Gauss rifle still in hand, Gigi climbed the steps to the bed of the Buffalo and unsealed the cargo container hatch, not knowing quite with to expect. Patel cowered by a bulkhead, mentally battered but physically unbruised. She had no idea what he’d done but all the refugees were out cold. The man was dangerous and clever even if he was a coward.

There was no time to check on the refugees. They would have to take care of themselves when they awoke until they arrived at their destination, whatever it might be. If the Greens had radioed ahead to whatever passed for air defense in this district of Scorn, it could be a rough ride back to orbit.

Baidu and Wilmots returned, their arms laden with supplies. She had Baidu pile everything he’d gathered inside, away from the hatch, while she and Wilmots installed the improvised filters. 

Maahes reported the evac ship was an unmanned cargo drone outfitted with cryo chambers rather than acceleration couches. Someone intended for them all to be out before they made orbit. Gigi ordered Patel to put Wilmots, Baidu and Maahes under while she, Meinert and Bryce finished up. They’d follow as soon as they were done.

The moment the vehicles were secure, Gigi sent Meinert and Bryce after the others. She told them she’d be right behind.

She gave Patel just enough time to get them both into cryo before keying the confirmation that everyone was secure for liftoff. After a moment’s hesitation, she layered in a lockdown of the external hatches which would open them under her authorization only. A delaying tactic she knew would never hold.

As the evac ship accelerated skyward, Gigi returned to the Nyala’s cargo compartment, her gauss rifle still in hand. She knew she didn’t have much time. She should have been in cryo with the others by now. If she wasn’t under by the time they docked, and her weapon wasn’t logged back into the armory, she knew silent alarms would be set off at the drop ship. Security would be waiting at the hatch.

It wouldn’t take long for Patel to come looking. While she waited, Gigi keyed her command override into the cryo chamber’s control panel and reviewed the girl’s initial medical scan. She didn’t know exactly what she was reading, but LOW OrbIT medical flags were exceedingly hard to miss.

“What the hell, Gagnant?” Patel complained as he approached. “We’re not secure, yet. I barely got Meinert and Bryce under.”

As soon as she heard his voice, Gigi keyed a different sequence into the control panel. If she thought she could have left Patel at the square, she would have. But she was glad she didn’t as she needed him now. It would be better if there was a doctor was present but she had to rely on him.

“What are you doing?” Patel demanded.

“Waking her up,” Gigi answered as she engaged the automated warming cycle. LOW OrbIT military tech left as little to human error as possible. Physical crew was just another redundant system in case anything went wrong.

“You can’t.” Patel took a step forward. “She’ll die.”

Gigi leveled her weapon. Patel froze. “You said that before but I don’t believe you. It doesn’t make any sense. I doubt Sennikov had any better medical facilities than we have here, or a much better doctor than you.”

Gigi watched the medical processes kick off one by one. She only needed a few minutes before the warming cycle was irreversible. If there was an issue in bringing the girl back to consciousness, it would be revealed before then.

“You know what I think?” Gigi looked up to see that Patel’s gaze had followed hers. She adjusted her grip on her weapon. He remained unmoving. “I think you’ve got only one shot at waking her. That you detected some genetic predisposition toward cryo-sickness in your initial scan. That if I wake her, she’ll never go under again. Am I close?”

Patel swallowed hard, but didn’t look at her. He just stared the control panel, watching the seconds tick by. “You’ll never get away with this.”

“Probably not.” Gigi shrugged. “But by the time someone sorts it all out, I’ll have bought her enough time to make sure someone doesn’t use her as a bargaining chip again. If I’m lucky, they’ll think she’s just another refugee.”

“You’ve got it wrong, Gagnant,” Patel shook his head, finally looking up at her, fear lingering behind his eyes.

“Do I?” She glanced at the cryo unit readouts. Green lights across the board. “You were the only one of us who wasn’t mindwiped. You knew the details of this mission all along. You recognized Sennikov at the square. He’s a Bloodite, just like you. I think you were his contact. That’s why they needed you here.”

Patel said nothing. He remained frozen, as if some other threat scared him as much as she did. Or someone. But when the threshold for a safe abort slipped by without an alarm sounding, his posture crumpled. It would still be another twenty minutes before the girl awoke but now there was no turning back. After she awoke, she couldn’t be put under again for several hours. By then Scorn would likely be too hot for any covert operations for quite some time.

“Get her into the cargo container with the others,” Gigi ordered.

Patel didn’t move. He just stared at the readouts in disbelief. “They’ll never believe she’s a refuge, not in that chamber.”

“They don’t have to,” Gigi replied, “Just get her in there.” She gestured with her assault weapon for emphasis.

This time, Patel obeyed without comment. The grav sled did all the real work. At the Buffalo, Gigi re-opened the hatch to the cargo container. She had Patel park the grav-sled just inside and secure it, then ordered him out and re-sealed the hatch, this time under her military authority as a LOW OrbIT Marine. That would take someone a little while to circumvent. Even Customs couldn’t override it from the panel. They’d have to cut their way in. With a vacuum rated container, that would be an agonizingly slow process, especially if someone knew there were people inside.

Gigi began to relax. She felt a smile creep across her face. She had saved the girl at least for the moment. She might wake up cold, scared and alone but at least she was out of the hands of the Greens.

The retrieval ship stopped rumbling. They must be approaching the orbital rendezvous. It wouldn’t be long now.

“You really have no idea what you’ve done, do you?” Patel clutched his head in his hands.

“Why don’t you explain it?” Gigi replied, collapsing at the edge of the Buffalo’s bed, exhausted, her feet trailing limply off the bed. “After Security’s done with me, I won’t remember anyway. But don’t think I’ve forgotten that you tried to kill me.”

“You think you’ve pieced it all together.” Patel looked up at her wearily. “I warned them your mindwipe might not stick. But you aren’t remembering the full picture.”

“And what’s that?” Gigi raised an eyebrow.

“We didn’t kidnap the girl on Down 2,” Patel sighed. “We kidnapped her back.”

A new memory unfolded in Gigi’s head, this time the briefing along with the girl’s picture. This is a hostage situation. You are the rescue mission.

Confusion washed over Gigi. That didn’t make any sense. “Then why take a shot at us just when we were almost to the extraction ship?”

A metallic ka-chunk rumbled through the cargo bay. The docking clamps engaging. Security wouldn’t be far behind. It wouldn’t take them long to bypass the hatches.

“We couldn’t risk her falling back into their hands because of what they might do. It was just lucky that Maahes’ stunt didn’t kill you both anyway.”

“I don’t understand,” Gigi stammered, though she had a sinking feeling she did. Her confidence began to slip away. “Why is she so important? Who is this girl?”

The hatch to the cargo compartment blew inward followed by the hollow thump of a grenade launcher. A canister rattled across the deck then tumbled to rest, hissing beneath the Buffalo. Yellow-green gas with a sickly sweet smell began to shroud the hold. Gigi’s world began to spin.

Before he passed out, Patel managed a two-word answer that confirmed her worst fears. “Sennikov’s daughter.”

The words hit Gigi like a blow. Her memory fragmented, no longer intact. Another face with another name resurfaced just as her world started to go dark. Nick Michaels. What exactly had she done?

---

Gigi awoke feeling as though she’d done all this before. Something was wrong.

Read Time-Lock (Memory Block, pt. 3)

© 2014 Edward P. Morgan III