23 (Memory Block, pt. 1)

Lieutenant Griselda Gagnant lay on the bunk of her cell, her right index finger absently tracing a circular scar on her left palm. Her name was stenciled over her heart on the orange jumpsuit she wore as though she had forgotten that, too. They’d stolen her uniform and her rank as if she’d forgotten years, not just one day.

She knew it was only a matter of time before they came for her again. This time, Major Zielinski would be desperate. Tears of frustration welled up just thinking about another interrogation. The past and the present had begun to blur. Some moments, she couldn’t tell which was which. Each interrogation edged her closer to breaking the tenuous barrier that separated the two. Each interlude became an echo chamber filled with doubts bouncing back and forth across her mind where a full day’s memories should have been. Memories that would answer their unending questions, memories of the fate of her men. Memories of what exactly she had done. She felt she knew the answers, or at least should know them. They tickled her tongue but she could never give them voice no matter how much she wanted to.

She pulled the Pocket Jesus from the shelf above her bunk, the only personal possession Zielinski had let her to keep. Absently, she turned palm-sized book in her hands. A sliver of sunlight from a high, barred window flashed across its gold embossed cover. She riffled the gilt-edged pages until her finger pulled them open to a dog-eared page among the Psalms. Had she folded that corner or had someone else? She couldn’t remember. But she had an unnatural attachment to the marked passage as if it held the key that might unlock her missing day. The rest of the book meant nothing to her and never had.

She skimmed the 23^rd Psalm again. Fragments of each line resonated like the echo of gunshots in her head. Green pastures… still waters… valley of the shadow… a table before me… anoints my head… cup runs over…. Each phrase lingered tantalizingly close to a memory. Memories that refused to surface. No matter how hard she tried, that day remained foggy and indistinct.

She stowed the book back on its shelf when she heard booted feet running in the corridor outside driven by a booming shout that could only be from Sergeant Evans. “Get ‘em up and out. The prison transports leave in twenty. Let’s move, people.”

A stun-baton banged against the reinforced door of her cell “On the line and on your knees,” a guard called through the serving slot. “You know the drill, Half-Rack.”

She rolled off the bunk and knelt on the red line three feet from the door. A week ago, no noncom would have dared use that epithet to her face. She was Lt. Gagnant to them, Gigi to her friends, friends who had all but disappeared. How quickly her situation had turned contagious.

Two guards entered with stun-batons drawn and holstered side arms waiting. One guard snapped the electromagnetic restraints on her wrists, then instructed her to rise and clamped her ankles while the other guard stood ready. Like she had anywhere else to go.

Outside, the corridor was organized chaos. Guards quick-marched a line of black-hooded prisoners in full restraints past her cell. “Get them to the transports. Today, people!” Evans yelled.

As Gigi turned to follow, one of the guards blocked her with a sparking stun-baton. “Not you, Half-Rack. Major Zielinski’s waiting in Interrogation.”

---

The guards manhandled Gigi through the armored door into the interrogation room. She didn’t resist, only tried to maintain her balance. They pushed her toward a straight-backed chair crafted from real wood of all things. The table in front of her was just as rustic and utilitarian. The only light came from a solar-tube recessed into the ceiling. It spilled over the surface of rough-cut planks. Welcome to The Farm.

Dr. Aveline Sibaya faced her across the table in a tailored pearl grey skirt with a matching jacket, diplomatically immaculate even in the primitive surroundings. An unexpected ally Gigi hadn’t seen since her time on Grey. What the hell was she doing here? Last she’d heard, Sibaya was an attaché to the Grey ambassador.

Behind Sibaya, a nondescript man Gigi didn’t recognize stood slouching in an ill-fitting Marine captain’s uniform, watching her impassively with a datapad in his hand. Michaels was the name stenciled above his pocket but with his rumpled nature and relaxed posture, she doubted he was a Marine let alone an officer. If he was, he’d be the oldest captain she’d ever met. She was dubious he could even pass the physical. A spook more likely. His detached manner and emotionless eyes didn’t belie that assessment.

Major Zielinski paced along the back of the room, issuing orders into a hand-comm, “… Lock down 1-8-bravo through 3-2-charlie. And me round up another recon squad... Then use MPs. If we lose this sector, half the district will collapse…”

“Get these restraints off her,” Sibaya commanded as the guards forced Gigi into the chair. “She’s not a dog.”

The guards exchanged glances with each other then looked to Captain Michaels, uncertain. He nodded. The corporal keyed a remote. With a snick Gigi’s shackles popped opened and her chains fell to the floor. The captain flicked two fingers at the guards who then retreated beside the door.

Turning to Gigi, Sibaya said. “They told me about your hand. Let me see.” Gigi placed both hands palm up on the table, revealing the reddened, ring-like scar on the left. Sibaya lifted that wrist gently. “It’s almost healed. You’re very lucky.”

Zielinski snapped his hand-comm shut. “Luckier than the Peacekeepers in her company. Twenty-three confirmed dead. Now half my battalion’s out of action and I still don’t know why.”

Michaels retreated to the shadows in one corner of the room, a finger playing across his datapad.

Zielinski leaned on the table, looming over Gigi. “If I had time, I’d court-martial you, Lieutenant.”

“That’s insane, Major,” Sibaya protested. “MedTech says she was full of psychotropic drugs when you found her.”

Zielinski ignored her, maintaining eye contact with Gigi. “This is a combat-zone. It would be a summary judgment. In this chaos, no one would question it.”

“I’ve told you everything I remember, Major,” Gigi insisted.

“That’s insufficient, Lieutenant,” Zielinski countered. “I’ve got people higher up the food chain chewing on my ass and they want answers. Now you get to deal with their methods.” He nodded toward Michaels.

Michaels stepped back into the light, his gaze fixed on his datapad, almost as if he were reluctant to confront Gigi directly. “Lieutenant, your last orders had you assigned to company HQ, yet Recon found you wandering in the adjacent sector a full day later. Why is that?”

“I don’t remember.” Gigi straightened to attention and turned her gaze forward. She knew the questions by heart.

Michaels’ brow furrowed as he studied the screen. “And why didn’t they find any enemy bodies, only your soldiers?”

“I don’t remember,” Gigi repeated, focusing on the wall.

“Someone painted numbers on their foreheads in their own blood?” Michaels sounded perplexed. “Was it you?”

A white-hot pain crawled from her chest to just behind her eyes. She squeezed them shut trying to will it away. “I told you. I don’t remember.”

“Finally, Lieutenant, I’m curious. How is it that of your entire company HQ, you were the only one who survived?” Gigi’s eyes sprang back open to find Michaels staring at her now. His eyes were somehow changeable, adjusting to the light like a chameleon’s.

“Because I’m Marine, not a Peacekeeper,” Gigi shot back, fixing him with an icy glare. “You’d know that if you were really one of us.”

“Enough!” Zielinski slapped the table with his palm. Sibaya jumped. Gigi blinked. Michaels only stared. “This is getting nowhere. We tried the easy way with you, Gagnant. Now we try something different. Michaels,” he nodded toward the captain.

“I don’t recommend this, Major,” Sibaya said. “This could still be focal retrograde amnesia rather than a memory block.”

“So noted, doctor,” the Major snapped. “But unless you have some answers, this interrogation proceeds. This is still a war-zone under my command.”

“Then let me speak with her privately, Major,” Sibaya implored, “Five minutes.”

“I allowed you to observe this interview on sufferance, Dr. Sibaya,” Zielinski replied.

“I could lodge a formal protest,” Sibaya countered. “After her actions on Grey, the Ambassador took a personal interest in Lt. Gagnant.”

“Respectfully, Doctor,” Michaels interjected casually, “The Ambassador was fully briefed on my orders. But if you would like to take it up with him…”  He shrugged as his voice trailed off.

“Then I want it on the record that you both understand by injecting her, she will never be able to forget. The memories you release will remain as fresh as if they happened a few minutes ago for the rest of her life. Are you willing to accept responsibility for that?” Sibaya stared at the Major then the Captain and back again.

“In 48 hours,” Zielinski replied, “ten thousand colonist-refugees drop into orbit with nowhere to go but this sector and I still don’t know whether this is a Green probe or a major uprising. One individual doesn’t figure into that equation. Especially if she’s been turned.”

“Inject me with what?” Gigi asked, turning to Sibaya. She searched her friend’s face but found only a professional mask.

“A rhinal cortex stimulator, Oxytocin and SP-117.” Sibaya answered before Zielinski could order her silence.

Zielinski added, “So you will remember, trust us, and finally tell the truth.” He motioned to the guards who restrained Gigi. She didn’t struggle. “Do it, Michaels.”

The captain removed an auto-injector from his pocket and circled the table toward her.

“You can’t do this without consent,” Sibaya insisted. “I won’t allow it. It violates every LOW OrbIT covenant and the UCMJ.”

“It’s ok, Aveline,” Gigi said, lifting her hands as far as the guards allowed. “I need to know what happened just like they do.”

“At least let me do it,” Sibaya said. Michaels paused, raising an eyebrow at Zielinski. The Major nodded tersely.

Michaels handed the auto-injector to Sibaya who rose and skirted the table. Once she stood beside Gigi, Sibaya whispered, “It’ll be better if you relax. If I miss and have to reapply, the side-effects will be worse.”

Gigi took a deep breath and let it sigh out, then nodded. She felt a burning sting followed by a wave of cold as Sibaya injected her carotid. As her world faded to black, Gigi saw Sibaya mouth, “I’m sorry.”

---

Gigi re-emerged to hear a voice in the darkness. Michaels’ voice, calm and patient yet somehow short of reassuring. “I want you to walk through what happened that day, Lt. Gagnant. Describe to me what you see.”

The darkness lifted and the veil of fog began to part.

---

In the dim light of her quarters, Gigi stared down at the book in her hand. A pocket-sized New Testament complete with Psalms and Proverbs. A real book with real paper pages and a real leather cover embossed and gilded like she hadn’t seen since she was a girl on Lode. Compact enough to fit snuggly in a fatigue pocket. Like a legacy from a different time and a different war. Only on The Farm. It had to be local. Imported pulp and genuine leather would have cost a fortune, a fortune none of the Peacekeepers in her company had to waste on delivering a message.

A dog-eared corner formed a gap in the gilt-edged pages. She hooked it with a fingernail and flipped the book open. Psalm 23. An old Peacekeeper tradition. Someone’s way of telling her that she didn’t have a prayer of ever being accepted. And next time, it might be a grenade.

She wondered who in the company had left the book atop her pillow. Her money was on Nguyen. But it could have been any of them, including Captain Vallejos. She’d already heard Half-Rack whispered behind the hands of snickering soldiers while she was just within earshot of deniability.

Like she hadn’t heard worse in her time as a Marine. She didn’t know why she’d never had the operation reversed. The one-breasted recruiter had told her going Amazon was the only way she’d ever gain respect in the testosterone-laden Corps. As a seventeen-year-old runaway with forged parental consents fresh out of the contract mines, Gigi had been just young and naive enough to believe her. So she’d paid a black-market cutter her last credits to lop off her right breast just like the ancient legend said. She now knew those chop-shop clinics gave a sizeable kickback to the local recruiters. And real Marines didn’t care what she looked like. Respect was earned through actions not appearance. She’d garnered a measure of that respect after her actions on Grey though she knew her superiors could never acknowledge the incident more than indirectly.

The Farm was supposed to be her reward, easy duty guarding the Consulate to ride out her commitment. That was until the Greens had picked off Ben Hirano, The Farm’s senior corporate executive and lifelong President. Now the situation had reverted to every Marine an infantryman as LOW OrbIT started chasing a phantom insurrection across the countryside. Until reinforcements arrived, they had rounded up everyone who’d ever seen Basic and formed them into light recon companies, standard procedure after Darwin.

In her company, Gigi was the only soldier who’d ever seen the business end of combat. Nguyen was a clerk. Captain Vallejos was a supply officer. Kringen and Diatta were dirtside Navy logistics. Most of the others had been scrounged up from administrative or adjunct duties, and rounded out with a handful from starport security or military attachés like her. But unlike her, none of the others had qualified with a gauss rifle since training.

The regular recon units had their hands full rooting out the usual suspects: suspected Green insurgents, militias, and lone wolf anarchists. The freshly formed light recon companies were hunting snipes. This operation defined cluster fuck. But her superiors could not afford to have The Farm to go the way of Darwin. With that sword of Damocles hanging over everyone’s career, tensions were running high. No one figured to come out of this as an unmitigated hero like Lt. Freeman at Darwin Station. Most of them just wanted see their way clear without a reprimand. Typical Peacekeeper thinking.

Gigi thumbed through the rest of the book. Nearly every contract miner on Lode had one variety or another. A Pocket Jesus, Mini-Mohammad, Barroom Buddha, Crapper Krishna, Desperation Dianetics, all handed out by corporate-sponsored missionaries whose return tickets depended on how many they could unload. Most miners took one just to clear the missionaries out. But in some weird twist of human nature, they then carried their personal favorite like a talisman. A few had collections lining a shelf in their quarters as if they were comparison shopping. If nothing else, the arguments they spawned provided entertainment that didn’t require credits in the company store. As an added perk, the books operated with no additional equipment required.

Farmers were cut from the same cloth, but instead of mining, they specialized in agriculture. The Farm was an earth-like agricultural planet almost completely under corporate cultivation, the for-profit breadbasket of human space. Only here, the population ran into a couple million instead of a couple thousand like on Lode. Its strategic importance and proximity to Darwin had held it firmly in both the Green’s and LOW OrbIT’s sights for more than a decade. Technically, United Space Biotics ran the planet but even an interstellar corporation with their deep pockets didn’t have the margins to provide security in a war-zone. Thus Ben Hirano’s eleven years and counting of martial law, odds on favorite for his ultimate cause of death.

A shadow moving down the valley flickered across the corner of Gigi’s eye. She doused the light and scanned the scene beyond the window. Dawn had just begun to brighten the eastern sky. The genetically modified Sheeple were on the move across the hillsides, grazing unperturbed. They were much smarter than their Terran counterparts, bordering on the intelligence of children. They were trained to understand and obey the commands of their human creators. They required almost no tending when set out to pasture. Not that they knew much for threats. The only predation they encountered on The Farm was well-disguised and pre-planned. Pastoral didn’t even begin to describe the place. Complacency oozed from the countryside by design.

Gigi had signed off her watch an hour ago but planned to do a spot check to make sure the sentries were on their toes. Snipe hunt or not, this was a field mission. They might not be relieved for months. She’d be damned if this company wasn’t going to make it through that time unscathed, whether they liked her or not.

She slipped the book into a pocket before heading out into the barracks common. She considered loading back up into full combat gear but opted to travel with a light, tactical load. She was anxious to get back and get some much needed rack time. Since the assassination, she always felt tired. But she couldn’t afford to turn lax.

In the commons, nearly a third of the company was assembled eating breakfast. First and third platoons were bivouacked in the adjoining valleys holding down the flanks. The Peacekeepers were young, many almost as young as she’d been when she’d signed on with the Marines. They looked younger every year. They all needed discipline before they’d ever be forged into a unit. Like the spoiled children they weren’t far from being, they craved it as much as they rebelled against it. As XO, it was her job to instill it like a father figure. In that, she channeled her own father. Nearly eight years on she finally recognized the irony. She’d run away from Lode to escape that strict and uncompromising man. Wouldn’t he laugh now? Though unlike his discipline, hers established limits and order. She now found comfort in the boundaries and routine of military life. Spare the rod and spoil the Marine.

Gigi skirted the improvised tables that dominated the central floor of the converted winter Sheeple barn that served as company HQ. The off-white walls were corporate, clean, well-lighted and well-insulated. Soldiers packed the benches arrayed around the trestles that served as the company mess. She slipped toward the door hoping to go unnoticed.

“Where are you sneaking off to, Lieutenant?” Vallejos asked, a steaming mug in hand. The smell of fresh coffee permeated the barn, organic and locally grown. Gigi had to give Vallejos credit. With his background, the company was never short of quality rations. The trestles were heaped with Farm-fresh bounty like a holo-vid impression of a Thanksgiving feast.

Gigi squared her shoulders and turned to face him. “I was going to walk the perimeter and check dispositions before I turn in.”

“Don’t ride them too hard, Lieutenant. This is secure territory. No one’s seen a Green out here in years.”

Gigi bit back a sour expression. That kind of thinking got Marines killed in the field. But that’s why Command had garrisoned Vallejos’ Peacekeepers to secure the next colonist LZ rather than in any of the hot sectors.

“And make sure all the sentries rotate back,” he continued around a mouthful of food. “I want them all to get a shot at some of these provisions while they last.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Gigi replied instinctively, cringing inside when she realized she’d responded as a Marine. Kringen and Diatta snickered behind their hands but Vallejos didn’t seem to notice. “Anything else, Captain?”

He shook his head and waved his fork, casually dismissing her. She snapped a quick salute before she hit the door.

In the semi-darkness outside, she adjusted her nightshade googles and keyed her smart camo. She hadn’t reprogrammed her body armor from the Marine default, much better than the Peacekeeper standard used throughout the company. Peacekeepers were all about hearts and minds which usually meant a visible presence; LOW OrbIT Marines were only unleashed as lethal weapons. Her gauss rifle hung loose but ready in her hands, not slung over a shoulder like a Peacekeeper. Though even she found it hard to remain vigilant in such idyllic surroundings. But it always paid to be prepared as you never knew when trouble might jump off. When you least expected was almost a guarantee.

She picked her way along one of the web of trails that ran up the hills above the barn. Her boots crunched softly on the bare, well-trodden dirt of the path. Like their human counterparts, Sheeple favored routine. The damned things set off the perimeter sensors all the time making them almost useless. The fleecy livestock dotted the lush, green pastures rising above the valley like puffy white clouds, grazing placidly, unaffected by the chaos their presence caused. Several congregated by the mirror-still waters of the loch that dominated the shadowed valley floor. Scattered throughout the fields, a few were lying down. Did that mean rain? Gigi couldn’t remember. She scanned the sky but saw only the deepening flush of dawn. Soon the red sky of morning would stain the eastern horizon.

Gigi drew comfort from the cool, crisp air. The valley was quiet, the shepherdless hills serene. She maintained radio silence as she climbed so as not to alert the sentries of her survey. The twilight between night and dawn was the hardest time to stay alert. Sentries tended to relax as soon as the sun kissed the horizon, thinking the worst of night was behind them. An easy temptation in this magnificent landscape. God’s Country the locals called it. Had she been inclined to such beliefs, this verdant scenery might just have tipped the balance in divine favor. She wondered if the field biologists with the first planetary survey had recognized The Farm as humanity’s Promised Land, not of milk and honey, but of tobacco, coffee and a cornucopia of food.

As she neared the top of the line of hills that defined one side of the valley, Gigi approached Nguyen’s position among a tumbledown pile of boulders that reminded her of a pagan cairn. The rising sun behind the hillsides cast long shadows down the valley. Nguyen didn’t stir from his position in the rocks. Maybe he hadn’t heard her approach though she wasn’t trying to be overly stealthy. If he’d fallen asleep, there’d be hell to pay.

Cradling her weapon, Gigi stooped down, scooped up a small stone and skipped it toward Nguyen’s hide. It clattered through the cracks in the rock formation. Nothing stirred within.

The hair rose on the back of Gigi’s neck. She clutched her weapon at the ready as she slowly squatted. Her eyes darted around the landscape for threats. She found none, which gave her no real comfort. Isolated Sheeple grazed their way down the valley. She opened up a comm channel and was greeted by only static. A spot jammer. Shit!

She rolled into cover among the boulders. When she glanced deeper inside to make sure her hide was secure, Nguyen’s sightless eyes stared back at her. Blood dripped down the front of his body armor from a gaping slash across his neck. It stained the nearby rock face red in an improvised Rorschach test. He hadn’t been dead long.

She didn’t have time to think about what that meant. She searched the hidey hole for Nguyen’s electronic field glasses which detected a better range of EM than her nightshades. Gone, as were his weapon and the monitor for the sensors. Something big was going down. This wasn’t a simple hit-and-run attack. She had to warn the rest of the company before their entire position was compromised. With no comms, she knew only one way to do that: the universal warning of weapons’ fire directed toward a threat. Since she didn’t know where the threat originated, she only had one other choice.

From the cover of the rocks, Gigi braced her gauss rifle and took aim on one of the Sheeple in the valley. Even in the half-light of morning, its pure white fleece made an easy target against the shaded green pasture. As much as she hated to do it, she knew she needed to sacrifice one of the semi-intelligent creatures to save Vallejos and the others. The demands of an angry military god.

Gigi sighted in on the defenseless creature and with one squeeze of the firing nub sent a burst of three supersonic flechettes its way. As she was trained, she hit what she aimed at and the creature fell. She thought she caught a flicker of movement behind it. Then, as if it were a pre-arranged signal, all hell broke loose throughout the valley.

Shards of rock slashed across Gigi’s helmet and skittered around the enclosure. She ducked deeper within the stonework hide, desperately seeking cover from incoming fire at multiple angles. The invisible enemy must have had her position sighted in. The echo of weapons’ fire ricocheted up from the barn. She could only hope someone down there had heard her warning shots in time.

She squeezed back through the jumble of boulders, and slithered through a crack to a new position. She popped up and sent a fresh burst toward a low-tech muzzle flash across the valley. She didn’t linger to confirm a hit or miss. Fire and move.

In a disengaged portion of her mind, she knew the enemy would eventually catch up with her. There were only so many crevices that commanded any view. It wouldn’t matter. Ammunition would become an issue first. She wished she had Nguyen’s spare clip but that had been pilfered, too. She just hoped the Greens hadn’t improvised a mortar.

As she retreated to a new position, the steady firing down the valley trailed to sporadic then single-shot before it finally petered out. She peered through a crevice toward the barn. Yellow-green smoke wafted from its now open doors and windows. Her nightshades detected small shadows moving in and out of the dissipating mist. Once clear of the cloud, they all but disappeared. Smart camo, just like hers. How had the Greens gotten a hold of that?

She opened her comm again. Still jammed. With HQ all but lost, she needed to withdraw so she could rally the rest of the company. If they weren’t already under attack. This had all the earmarks of a major operation.

That was it, time to fold up her position and go before the enemy concentrated return fire. As she slipped back through the rocks, something metallic clattered down beside her then rattled to rest in the sand, hissing at her feet. A yellow-green cloud filled the chamber with a sickly sweet scent. Gas grenade. Yet another new tactic for the Greens.

Instinct from Basic took over. Gigi stopped breathing. She didn’t take a breath and hold it, she simply stopped mid-inhale. Her filter mask lay among the rest of her heavy combat gear in the barn, a costly lapse in discipline. At least her nightshades would protect her eyes. But she knew she didn’t have long. Peering through the yellow-green shroud until she found the hotspot, she picked it up. The emerging stream of gas quickly burned her tactical glove and singed her hand. She cast the cylinder from her den.

She slithered out the other way, hoping to put rocks and the crest of the hill between her and her attackers. Her lungs ached. Her nostrils burned. Some of the gas must have gotten through.

Dizzy, Gigi paused a moment before Nguyen. Her hand strayed to the Bible in her pocket. She remembered how it had probably been his. In that moment, she wondered if it had been an honest gift, a little book of hope to fight back the persistent fear of death. The unspoken evil all soldiers shared.

She noticed someone had painted a bright red “1” on Nguyen’s forehead in his own blood. She stared at it in confusion. Had it been there before? She couldn’t remember. One last trace of clear thought whispered for her to snap a picture with her nightshades. Casualty confirmation.

Scenes became disjointed, her memories unrecoverable, corrupted by the gas. Suddenly, she was outside. The air seemed mostly clear. She risked a tentative breath. The ammo counter on her gauss rifle was lower. She knew she had killed someone but her psyche would not yet allow her remember who.

The thought of retreat niggled at the back of her mind like the distant voice of conscience during an all-night drinking binge. Repressed fear inflated into an all-consuming white-hot balloon of anger that burst into cold, soundless rage. Driven by it, she turned toward the valley instead, giddy and lightheaded, burning like the morning sun that had just overtopped the hills.

She remembered sighting in on any flicker of motion her nightshades detected. Sheeple or insurgents, she no longer cared. Their actions could not stand unanswered. Someone had to pay for Nguyen and the others. A new voice in her head shouted that the Sheeple were complicit by allowing the Greens to use them as cover. The voice of her father. His had displaced the whisper of rationality, screaming it to silence. One form dropped. Then another. And another. And another, each spinning and pirouetting in a choreographed ballet of death, simple yet brutally elegant as she descended the valley like an avenging angel.

Now, the valley lay devoid of any motion. All the remaining shadows had fled. Gigi stood in the open doorway of the Sheeple barn. Inside, a fresh scene of violence greeted her, imprinting like a baby’s first vision of its mother. Tendrils of yellow-green gas swirled around her boots, its sickly sweet scent occasionally burning her nose. Shattered plates and chunks of breakfast lay strewn amongst the corpses, indistinguishable from broken bodies and shards of bone. Overturned cups spilled across the tables, juice and coffee dripping onto the floor where they commingled with the company’s blood.

Tesse, Kringen, Camara, Diatta, Chilavert, Tan, West, Vallejos, they were dead. All of HQ, dead. Barely moved from the tables where they’d been eating. Numbers painted on their foreheads in their own bright blood, just like Nguyen. Her nightshades snapped picture after picture of their faces. 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23. Like an ungodly tally or an inhuman desecration. What kind of monsters was she dealing with? The only thing that keeps us human, she thought, is the way we treat the dead, ours and theirs.

That thought sparked an anamnesis. The palm of her left hand burned and itched as the skein of her memory finally untangled. She turned away, still unwilling to face the missing puzzle piece of what she’d done. Sunlight sparkled off individual blades of grass as the cool morning breeze undulated up and down the valley. The rippling waves were mesmerizing as they ebbed and flowed knee-deep around her. Then suddenly, she was drowning as another memory pulled her down.

The scene shifted as she was displaced back to Nguyen’s barrow. She stared down at his killers. The trio she herself had killed. She remembered watching as each of their final breaths had slowly leaked to air. More bodies of their compatriots littered the valley in the wake of her descent. They were all young. They were all children. Breastless girls playing soldier for someone else’s cause. Twice the Amazons she’d tried to be. They would’ve grown to twice the women, too, but she’d denied them that opportunity. What did that make her now?

As darkness closed back around her, Gigi began dragging their small, light bodies toward the loch one by one to hide the shame of what she’d done.

---

Gigi sat on the flat metal foundation of the bunk in her former cell, this time dressed in combat fatigues, her rank restored. The mattress was folded over, the sheets and blanket neatly stacked on top. The door beyond was open. No chaos rumbled through the complex now, no shouts or booted feet echoed in the halls.

She stared absently at her left palm, tracing the ring upon it with her right index finger. Aveline Sibaya sat in a chair across from her. “You’ll be evaced in an hour,” Sibaya said. “Your discharge orders are being cut now.”

Gigi said nothing, just continued circling the scar on her palm.

“You’ve been cleared of any wrongdoing,” Sibaya continued. “The entire incident has been stricken from your record. Recon found your nightshades with the bodies in the lake. The tech guys did an autopsy. They recovered your casualty confirmations. Zielinski even put you in for a commendation, a Platinum Star.”

Gigi looked up. “And that’s how he’ll cover this up, Aveline, by making me a hero?”

“Come on, Gigi,” Sibaya almost sounded sympathetic. “No one knew it would turn out this way. We had to know which side you were on.”

“That shouldn’t have been a question after Grey,” Gigi retorted. “I covered for you during the inquiry. I had your back that day.”

Anger tinged Sibaya’s voice. “Are you saying I didn’t deserve it?”

“I’m saying that when the time came,” Gigi replied, “I thought that you’d have mine.”

Silence hung between them a moment. Sibaya stood, suddenly more formal. “Command says because of your sacrifice, the Greens are being countered. Now they know who to look for.”

“But I won’t get to finish the fight,” Gigi spat. “You sold me out to Michaels.”

Sibaya’s face became impassive. “You’re too valuable because you’re receptive to a memory block and to the rhinal cortex stimulator. LOW OrbIT needs you in a different capacity now. The Ambassador agrees.”

“You played me, didn’t you?” Gigi eyed her friend’s professional mask for cracks. None appeared. “Thanks to you these memories will follow me for the rest of my life. A small price to pay for the Ambassador’s ambitions, right?”

Sibaya straightened her jacket and smoothed her skirt. “MedTech tells me they’re working on a dampener, something experimental they think might help your memories fade.”

Gigi said nothing, just sent a smoldering glare her way.

Sibaya turned to go. At the door she paused, looking back. In a lower voice bordering on empathy, she said. “There was nothing I could do, Gigi. Getting your consent was the Ambassador’s only instruction. Michaels, Zielinski, those children. We all had our orders. No one had a choice in what they did. Not even you.”

Gigi stared back at her, knowing for the first time since Lode she was truly friendless and alone. “That, Doctor, is something I’m unlikely to forget.”


Read Mindwipe (Memory Block, pt. 2)

© 2013 Edward P. Morgan III