Wild Space Pt. 04

"Going to be hot down there, so let's start getting our liquids in," Alla said. She was wearing a lightweight, summery version of the Navy working uniform, the same camouflage pattern with cut off sleeves.

Sita had been given the same clothing but without a rank jewel or her name on it. She asked Ensign Alla why they weren't wearing full survival suits with sensors, armor and power paks to attach weapons to. And maybe an entire squad of EDG troopers as back up.

"With the kind of vegetation we're going to run into down there bulky armor and so forth would only trip us up," She replied. "Chief Berg here is EDG."

Sita stared at the pilot, whom she had spent days travelling with and had just made love to last night. The big man nodded at her, acknowledging his officer's words, but that was it. There had been no indication from him the entire trip that they were hunting down a former member of his unit. Berg finally spoke.

"Three will be enough. We've got to be able to move fast, strike hard and get out."

"What's the plan?" Sita asked. She cracked open a silver and blue canister of Rehydrator, the military's ubiquitous brand of allegedly nutritious, energizing drink and slugged it down. The chemicals and nutrients in it were meant to perk her up, stimulate a soldier for combat and to guarantee hydration so that peak performance levels could be maintained over long missions. Or at least that was the official byline of the product. Sita accepted another can when Berg offered it, and studied him. So he was also EDG. That made sense, but it didn't make her feel any better, somehow. The unfamiliar clothing and equipment and weapons didn't reassure her, even though compared to her Ranger "gear", such as it was, she was armed to the teeth, with a long rifle and a commando dagger. It all made her feel off balance, uncertain.

"Check your scrolls," Alla said. "Let's pull up the map."

Sita found the unfamiliar clamp-like device on her left forearm. She managed to yank the paper thin sheet free of its roll and with a great deal of difficulty pinned it to the clasp on her left hip so she could look down and study it. Both its touch interface and the sheathe on her forearm had a great deal of buttons and covers to protect them, but Alla had only told her a handful of its functions so she wouldn't break it.

"The only source of technology on the planet is the old research facility," Alla said, pointing to the map.

"What kind of intel do we have on this?" Berg wanted to know. A rifle, the standard issue X1, was across his knees, muzzle pointed safely towards the deck. He was methodically cleaning the rifle's open back up slug throwing action. The electronic components, of course, were never exposed by a user, even to the sterile interior of space ships. From the drilled, automatic way he handled the weapon Sita could tell he had spent many hours with it.

"Not as much as I'd like," Alla replied in a glum voice. "Which is nothing new, but this is very bare bones. We know they were doing some kind of genetic research. If SOP is any guide-"

"SOP?" Sita asked blankly.

"Standard operating procedure," The political officer said patiently. "Every action in the Capital Systems military has an SOP. Including stripping down and abandoning a base like the one below. They'll have sealed up everything they can't take with them, but that won't stop her."

"Won't stop her from what? What's her mission?" Sita said.

Alla gave Berg a look, who shrugged with his eyebrows. Finally, the other woman said, "We don't know, really, but it has to do with genetics. Vinjula's crimes over the last few months have set a pattern pointed squarely at Mapili, her past. Her final deployment. She was on thin ice with her outfit. She had taken to fucking another soldier."

"That...happens all the time," Sita said, trying to keep her expression blank.

"Not among EDG troopers and certainly not on campaign it doesn't," Alla said with the same infinite patience she had been displaying since Sita had come onboard. It was both unsettling and belittling. "She was unhinged, from what I can tell. Vibrants. Lots of sex. PTSD. She was a mess. They were on the verge of kicking her out. But she left quietly and they let her, offered her a veteran's compensation and some land but she didn't take any of it. We've been trying to keep track of her ever since, but without much luck. Until she stole that drinking horn on Kekal."

"And the Natal ship, and she murdered that professor, Kello, on Ajax's Scourge." Not to mention killed Yomp, Sita thought.

"We've put the pieces together for you, Ranger," Ensign Alla said grimly. "The moment we knew this was a former EDG operative we were investigating alongside you. That wasn't a run of the mill freighter you and your partner pulled over. It was a prototype, one that utilized a special long lasting fuel she needed for the old equipment on the base. Very rare, she wouldn't have been able to obtain it otherwise. She even killed the Natal heiress to get it."

"How about the professor, Kello?"

"He kept genetic material in his home, very rare, though he didn't know it. It was from an ancient fossil of a human, or at least someone who looked human. I'm no scientist but it could have been from a proto-human."

"Really?"

"Yes. Poor old lech thought it was an heirloom, something for his desk. It was another part she needed, organic. Same with the horn, by the way. The animal it came from could replace its own body parts, but its extinct. Vinjula needed that, too."

A jangling klaxon sounded through the gunboat, but neither sailor seemed alarmed. Berg finished cleaning his rifle, snapped it shut with a chunky, wooden and metal sound.

"We're on approach. Tell her the last of it, ma'am," He said as he stepped into the cockpit.

"Ten days ago the foremost doctor of genetics in the galaxy was kidnapped," Alla said quietly. "He was formerly one of ours. Colonel Doctor Drobe. He was an unspeakable criminal, an extremist, a humans first and only type. Completely unlike the respect we have always shown the alien community."

Sita remembered Yomp and his constant reluctance to speak with Alla, or the difficulties even he, as someone who had been a law enforcement officer with decades of seniority, had always experienced with the Capital military. To hear her sit here and deny it was an everyday prejudice in her society, even though Yomp was dead, made her sick to her stomach. Or it could have been the way the gunboat was now moving, sharply downward.

"If she's got Crobe with her we can put two and two together and find out what she's up to, more or less. Trust me, you don't want to know," Alla said, seeing the look in Sita's eyes. "Just stick with us and you'll stay alive. Check and recheck your gear, Ranger. This is it."

**

Edge hadn't been into the subterranean laboratory since they had arrived. Her and Crobe hadn't much spoken or seen one another in a few days. In between bouts of nodding off on her vibrants, as they had now wormed their way into her daily life, in full view of her captive geneticist and war criminal, she thought that she should check in, get a progress update.

I am taking too much, too much, she thought, as once again felt the need to slip the pinkie sized tube into her nose and huff like a farm animal clearing out its sinuses. She felt the tearing ache of limitless desire. I've lost control. I never had control. But it's almost over. I am almost back with her again. And then we can fade away, no more jobs, no more drugs, no more death. We will find a little homestead on Hevik's planetoid and work the land if we want. If we don't we can just hike up and down the trails and mountains all day. We can eat the food the Capitals send in for the vets, its better than the chow we survived on for two months in this godawful jungle, or we can hunt and gather and make our own. Hevik will visit and he'll forget his sadness when he sees us being so happy together, he won't need to drink just like I won't need vibrants and he'll be whole and at peace. And so will we. Just a little longer. It's almost over. I promise. I love you.

She decided to work out, get all the negativity and emotions out of her system. It was hot, so much so that she made sure she had plenty of water at hand for herself. Edge had thrown up a piece of exercise equipment, such as it was, against the central building of the old base. All it had taken was a few swipes with an autowelder and she had a bar to dangle and pull herself up on. She could easily do around 20 pull-ups and had been since she got into the service. Even holding something heavy between her ankles didn't phase her. Edge's big shoulders and back and arms could handle anything she threw at them. So nowadays she liked to mix up her grips or do them behind her neck. Squats, planks and push ups were easy as sneezing to her as well. An old instructor of hers back in the unit had once told her that all she needed to do to stay fit on campaign was to do pull ups, planks, push ups, squats and to run or even take a long walk. It was a lesson Edge had taken to heart. Crobe then came upon her wearing only her sweated through skivvies as she was finishing up.

"I have a development for you." He told her. Crobe looked tired. He had been working most of the long, hot Mapili day, at her behest. He looked at her body, at her undergarments hugging it, the way the sweat outlined all the muscles and curves of her body, and averted his eyes, looking uncomfortable.

Edge didn't get dressed, not yet. If her powerful and proud femininity made him uncomfortable it was all for the better. Had she asked him here today? She was shoving so much stuff up her nose that the memory was hazy. She studied Crobe before her, squinting at every square inch of his emaciated, pale face. "You read my mind. Good news, Doctor?"

"Come and see." The sharp faced doctor said, unsmiling. Crobe hadn't smiled the entire time she had spent with him. It would have been a foreign emotion on his face, unfamiliar and unwelcome to him.

"You're done?" Edge asked him, trying to hide the eagerness in her voice. She threw on her clothing as quickly as she could.

"I will be very soon, but we are now able to communicate with her. I thought you may appreciate doing so."

For once, she didn't feel like she needed a whack from a vibrant. Instead she went to her other addiction, weapons. Edge threw open a case she had close at hand, made sure he could see it. She pulled out a cylinder with a fan shaped muzzle on the end of it, and then a short, ugly looking knife.

"You know what these will do?" Edge asked him.

"Spare me," Crobe said, sounding annoyed and exhausted.

"I'll spare you if you're lucky, Doctor," She said with a great deal more pleasantness than she felt. She showed him the fan-rod. "This will cut you into chunks big enough to serve by just waving it at you. And this knife isn't special. It isn't even powered. It's just got a triangular blade. You should know why that's significant."

"The wound won't heal on its own," Crobe said. "I understand. Shall we?"

"First things first. Got the remote?" Edge asked him. Everything in the lab except for the entrance was controlled by a handheld remote that Crobe had left down there. Now that the lab was active she didn't trust him with it.

He held out a small, palm sized piece of metal to her, covered with tiny buttons. She accepted it and jammed it into the weapons case where the fan-rod had been.

"Now turn out your pockets," She told him.

"Surely, you can't be serious. We are wasting time." He told her stiffly. "And it's sweltering out here."

"All the more reason to get naked," Edge said with a devilish grin. She drank some water. "Ever been to the stockade, Doc? Squat and cough for me."

Crobe was wearing short pants, a threadbare shirt, boots. He patted himself down, reversed his pockets. He had nothing on him.

"Lead on, Colonel." Edge pointed with the knife.

"Really, no need for your suspicion." He said as they walked through the deserted, overgrown base. "I have no way off the planet without you."

"And don't you forget it." They were approaching the sunken steps to the lab. "Now, tell me what progress you have made."

"I must commend you on your resourcefulness," Crobe said in his detached, dryly academic manner. "We've performed a true scientific miracle with a smattering of artifacts and some genetic material you've collected, along with the original preserved corpse, and if you hadn't acquired the fuel for the machines none of it would be possible. Not to mention what we've been able to harvest here."

Harvest. Like he was chopping down stalks of wheat on the farm or something. Edge's fist tightened around the no slip, pebbly handle of the knife.

"Thank you." She said tightly. "Now, specifics."

"There is still more work to be done," Crobe went on in the same didactic tone. "But the subject is now conscious, able to communicate, but she cannot move or stay awake for very long. She's quite weak."

"But you can bring her back?" Edge narrowed her eyes at his back. "You said you could bring her back."

"I can," He allowed. He started down the seemingly endless flight of stairs to the laboratory. Its doors smoothly opened at his presence, the tiny device he had in his skin doing the trick as if by magic. "But she will never be as she was, even you must surely realize that."

"Even me?" Edge wasn't offended by his righteous words. She expected it from the likes of him.

"Death has changed her, as it does for any of us, since time began. There is no going back, not now, so long after. Being born, dying. Both are complex processes to undergo, genetically and biologically speaking, and always quite final, as nature intended."

"So it's even harder to reverse," She piped up. They stepped into the lab. Unlike their first visit it now seemed antiseptic and barren. Edge was glad. The smell of the place had been abominable when they had first entered it.

"No," Crobe said immediately. "We haven't reversed it. We have merely changed again. She was changed when she was born, she was changed when she died, and so forth. And now...her preserved body as the base, with genetic material supplementing it, but an entirely different state of being. The finer points of it would be lost on you, but suffice to say that we are well underway and this will all be over soon. But she won't ever be as she was. That's simply not possible. Not even a god could do it."

The laboratory looked more like a holding pen for livestock. Long term, cheap confinement, even here in a state of the art Capital scientific facility, still utilized old fashioned bars. There were a half dozen great cages, each enough to fit fifty people uncomfortably. There was no need for anything too flashy. There was simple razor wire at the top of each cage, and a tall mechanical robotic arm, controlled by the chief medical officer's remote, had been used to scoop test subjects in and out of the cages. Anyone attempting to grab hold onto someone else being torn out of the cage to free themselves could be shocked mildly or to death by the conductive material of the arm's claws. It had been a simple, elegant operation, Edge recalled. The lab had only required a half dozen or so soldiers to guard it and assist in the experiments. The arm, which the soldiers had all called the Claw, did the rest. The Claw slumped over now, unactivated without the lab's remote.

But there wasn't any medical horror going on that she could see. It only smelled of the stone surrounding them, a bit of the jungle and cleaning solvents. She raised a black eyebrow at Crobe.

"I run the cleaning cycle after every shift, and did so twice before asking you down here." He said, guessing at the question on her face.

"I appreciate it. Where are all the bodies?" Her stomach seized up on her. Edge suppressed the feelings.

"Recycled, but very little doesn't get used. Follow me." Crobe was dwarfed by the immense scale of the cages and the Claw.

At the far end of the laboratory was a covered, powered medical slab, like the kind used in research hospitals. There was the sound of medical equipment behind it, a hissing, a buzzing, a power source. And breathing.

Forgetting herself, Edge ran past Crobe to the slab, crying out. Her hands flailed at the curtain, her eyes searching.

Gara had lost all of her hair, and every bit of the muscle and fat that Edge could see looked swollen, misshapen, but it was clearly her. Her breathing was assisted by tubes, and her eyes were closed as she napped and labored. Her face looked distorted, almost smashed, but that could have been all the surgeries. Edge found she was holding her breath. She exhaled as she turned back to Crobe.

"Did you remember what I asked you to do?" She said. "What I wanted you to change?"

"Yes. She has been altered in the way she always wanted. I was happy to do it." Crobe told her, and to Edge's disbelief he sounded quite sincere. "She will suffer no longer in that regard."

At the sound of voices the bruised eyelids of the woman on the slab fluttered weakly open. Gara had once had eyes as bright blue as the same skies they had fought under, but now they were black, just like the eyes of the Mapili's special variety of humans.

"Gara? My love?" Edge resisted an urge to gather up the other woman in her arms, touch her face, hold her hand, anything to unsettle or injure her.

"...V-Vinjula?" The voice was like nothing human, croaking from a cobbled together linkage of different vocal chords, a new esophagus and diaphragm.

"Yes, yes," Edge said in a quiet and impassioned voice. "It's me, it's Vinjula!"

"Vinjula," Gara said on her slab, smiling a strange, sputtering grin, as if the muscles didn't quite work. The eyes drifted closed.

Edge found herself gently weeping in a dignified, quiet way. It was as if every emotion she had repressed since she had left her lover's side became unimpacted from a reservoir of tears and feelings somewhere in her solar plexus. The tiny sobs felt cathartic, relieving, immensely satisfying and much needed. She wiped them away, not in shame, but in practicality, so she could lean down and brush her lips against the swollen, outsized lips of the long lost love of her life.

"Take care not to overstimulate her." Crobe advised over her shoulder. "She still needs a lot of work."

"She is not a sputtering fusion generator," Edge said through her tears over her shoulder. "She is a woman."

"A woman. You did all this for a woman, or rather, for pussy, as you foot soldiers like to say. You're all the same."

She had half turned around, fist clenched to bash Crobe with the blunt end of one of the weapons filling her hands, but he gestured at her in a grandiose manner, like a stage magician.

There was a low pitched whirring noise and Edge was seized from underneath, spilled onto her head. She blinked away stars. The fan-rod flew off into the distance as the lab's gargantuan mechanical Claw lifted her from the stone floor, curling its three blunt, segmented fingers around her, pinning her inside.

When Edge regained control of her voice she found enough angry words to shriek down at Crobe that indicated her overwhelming desire to be let down and precisely what she would do to him once she was down there. He only waved off her curses, her rage.

"It's a fail safe in case the remote is taken away from the chief medical officer," He explained, holding out his right forearm to her, his left hand pressing into its flesh. "It's a combination of remote control and neurogenics. It mimics my movements exactly. If the test subjects ever got free and overwhelmed the guards here they could be subdued using the robotic arm. Watch."

Crobe tightened his fist, and Edge felt the Claw's immense fingers closing in around her. Her left shoulder was pushed inexorably into her ear. Another finger was raising her right knee almost to her chest. Edge was flexible, but no one could withstand this. She wailed in agony.