Survivor, page 16
Her vision was reduced to nothing but a thin tunnel with pain on every side.
Without knowing quite why, but knowing that she had no choice, she reached her hand inside the helmet. It was filled with bloodied, diseased meat. She grabbed hold of the rotting flesh and scraped some of it into her palm, pulling it free. It came loose with a wet plop.
She pulled back and tossed the flesh at the creature. Agony seared through her chest as she moved.
She didn't have any reason other than that the Ancient was terrified. She expected him to shoot her, or the chunk of flesh, but the weapon remained silent. The Ancient desperately back-pedalled away from the flying hunk of dead meat.
He was too slow. He hadn't gone one step when the flesh landed on his shoulder with a wet splat. Grey-green flesh dripped over his arm and created trails of juice down his armour.
"Do you have any idea what you've done?" the Ancient asked. Its arms fell still by its sides; its shoulders slumped.
"Survived," Nova whispered.
"We are so much more than you."
Nova's eyes dropped closed. A ghostly version of herself was flailing through the air, towards the podium. She watched her body slam into the stone table, smashing it. Just as her body hit the pedestal, the helmet materialised on top. It skittered to the ground along with the pieces of broken stone.
The scene replayed over and over again, a continuous loop in front of her eyes. She lifted her heavy eyelids.
"It begins," the Ancient said.
It took a deep gasping breath and collapsed to its knees. Its whole body was shaking, shivering. He gasped and choked for air.
The creature clawed for the button at its neck but it was a charred ruin, there was no way to get its helmet off now.
The Ancient fought, forcing each breath in and out of its lungs. At the end it lost the strength to stay upright and the armoured body fell forward; face first into the sand. The force of the fall was enough to detach the broken helmet. It rolled across the floor and came to rest against the far wall; ready to be picked up by Nova in the future.
The head beneath was covered in purple bruises and swollen. The flesh ballooned out around the remaining armour. Two more breaths and the gasping stopped.
Nova collapsed.
***
"Nova!"
Nova's eyes flickered open, but as soon as they did, she wished she could fall back into oblivion. Her chest ached with every breath, no matter how shallow, and her head throbbed. Unimaginable agony coursed up her leg. She remembered. She struggled to sit up, to see if she'd imagined it.
"I wouldn't—" Codon said, but it was too late.
Nova's eyes locked on the mess of flesh where her right foot used to be. Nausea rocked through her. She leant to the side and vomited across the sandy floor. The acrid taste burned her throat and tongue, making her eyes water.
"Where are the rest?" she whispered between heaves.
"Dead," Codon said. "It was like a wave spreading out from that one. I don't know what was in that helmet but it hit 'em bad."
Nova nodded, her head hanging low as she spat the last of the bile from her mouth.
"A design flaw," Codon said, shaking his head. "We should get out of here. Your foot needs to be taken care of."
Nova pushed herself up on shaky arms. She used the wall for support and managed to get up on one leg. The pain in her chest hadn't subsided and it was harder than ever to breathe.
"The writing," she gasped.
"What writing?"
She dug into her belt and pulled out her sharp knife. It glinted in the light of the chamber. She reached up as high as she could and began to carve. It was hard to keep balance with just one leg and twice she toppled to the sand where she had to struggle to get upright, but she refused Codon's help.
Her knife made a shallow dent in the sandstone, running over ancient runes. The rock crumbled under her blade and scattered to the floor.
"What are you doing?" Codon said. "That's defacing heritage. I could have you shot for that."
"Trust me, Doc," Nova said. "Without this, we'd both be dead."
"How? That doesn't make any sense."
"No," she said and continued to carve, "It doesn't."
She kept working; she had to go over the letters three times before they were bold enough. She didn't know how long it would be until she arrived, or how time may affect her words. She couldn't take any chances.
As an afterthought, she added the T to her initials. She still couldn't remember what it stood for, but it was a part of who she was.
"Alright, let's get out of here," she said.
She leant over and gathered the helmet up off the floor. She hopped the first few paces, but the effort left her breathless, and her body was already in so much pain that she struggled to stay conscious.
She allowed herself to lean on Codon's shoulder and together they shuffled out of the tunnels. When they reached the top of the chamber, they surveyed the desert beyond. It was scattered with the fallen Ancients. They lay across the sand, mostly with their helmets off. Their skin was purple and bloated like the creature in the chamber. All of them were dead.
"They're gone," Codon said with a sigh.
"Cal," Nova said, her mind straining to keep up with events. "Are there any signs of life on the planet?"
"I detect critical physical injury. Immediate medical attention required."
"Just answer the question."
"Two humans remain," Cal replied.
"Crisis averted," she said.
Her whole body was overcome with relief. A massive weight lifted off of her shoulders and she felt as if she could float away on the desert breeze. It was over; the whole damned ordeal was over.
Except the madness.
The voices hadn't disappeared along with the Ancients. The shadows still moved at the edge of Nova's vision. A part of her had dared to hope that when the Ancients died, so would her insanity. Her insanity appeared to be coping just fine.
She wanted to scream, curse and yell, and stomp on every last Ancient until they were all indistinguishable piles of goo.
"You damned bastards!" she yelled.
She held the helmet in her hand and drew back over her shoulder, ignoring the screaming pain in her chest. She let fly and lobbed the helmet up into the air. It soared across the desert, sparkling.
It was about to hit the sand when it blinked out of existence.
"What?" Codon said.
"It's gone," Nova replied, equally confused.
"Did you do that?"
"I don't know," she said. "Maybe it went back to where it came from?"
"Maybe it did."
"You don't think—" Nova began but cut short, her thoughts working.
"No time to sit and wonder," Codon said, waving his hand. "Let's get back to my ship and hope the damn thing flies."
Nova nodded and let him help her across the sand, blood trailing out behind them.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Codon lowered Nova onto the command pod's swivelling chair, with an audible sigh. Beads of sweat dribbled down from his forehead and collected on the end of his round nose.
Nova squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip as her wounded ankle bounced against the chair. Agony raced up her leg.
"Please tell me you've got Parapem or something stronger," Nova said through clenched teeth.
"The medbot should be able to help you out," Codon said. "Medical unit to command pod."
His ship replied, "Medbot dispatched. Arrival in one minute."
It was the longest sixty seconds of Nova's life. She clutched her leg, just above the knee, in an effort to stop the pain spreading to the rest of her body, and to stop the blood from pouring out of the mangled stump. She kept her eyes closed as Codon moved about the command pod, begging for any kind of relief.
The buzz of a motor entering the room made Nova open her eyes. A square robot hovered across the rubble and came to a stop in front of her. It scanned her body with a red light and its internal mechanisms beeped.
"Multiple injuries and major damage detected."
"I know that!" Nova said. "Give me something for the pain!"
The robot opened a compartment and a tray extended out with a single Parapem strip resting on top. Nova snatched it off the tray and laid it on her tongue. The soothing numbness spread upwards and eased her throbbing headache. The Parapem strip couldn't reach her leg or stop the agony coursing up from her missing foot.
"Missing limb detected. Tissue sample required."
"Do it," Nova said, her voice barely audible.
For the first time since arriving on the planet, she was grateful that Codon's ship was here. The medical technology of the Confederacy ships was far beyond what she'd find in Crusader. A hard weight dropped to the bottom of her stomach as she thought about her foot. With just one leg, she was a cripple. There was no way she'd be able to compete in the lead bounty hunter circles. Her whole livelihood was at stake.
The robot hovered closer and, without warning, jabbed a long needle into Nova's upper arm. The thin point sunk through her skin and into muscle. The area burst with pain and Nova had to bite her lip to stop from crying out.
The robot withdrew the needle and it disappeared into one of the many compartments.
"Will it be able to stop the bleeding?" Nova said, straining to keep her mind off of her future.
"Stop the bleeding?" Codon said. "That's the latest in med-tech, I designed it myself. We'll have a new foot for you in no time."
"It's got tissue printing?" Nova said, her mouth dropping.
"Of course it does. All Confederacy ships have tissue-regen facilities."
Nova shook her head and fell back into pained silence. The outer planets were flat-out getting bandages; meanwhile the Confederacy was overflowing with tissue-regeneration equipment. It was unbelievable and yet completely typical. Nova's emotions battled; at that moment she was filled with equal measures of hatred and love for the Confederacy.
"Tissue analysis complete. Please raise the wounded area," the robot said.
Nova gritted her teeth and forced her wounded leg up so that it was horizontal. Her stomach churned at the sight of the mutilated end. Loose bits of flesh dangled down and dripped blood onto the floor.
The robot positioned itself in front of Nova and encased the end of her leg inside one of its compartments. Its motor whirred louder and Nova's leg tingled. It was as if someone was running a feather up and down her injured leg and was taking the pain away.
As some of the agony lessened, she breathed easier and her shoulders relaxed back into the chair.
"Engines are clear for take-off," said Codon. "Whatever was holding us here is gone."
Nova let out a slow breath; she could leave this hell-hole.
It took ten minutes before the robot spoke. "Regeneration complete."
Nova opened one eye and looked down at her leg with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation. She had no idea what to expect but was sure that anything other than mangled flesh was an improvement.
Instead of blood and shredded tissue, her leg and foot looked just like normal. The skin was lighter than the rest of her leg, as if she'd spent her whole life wearing a thick sock, but apart from that, it was as if the incident had never happened.
She tentatively tried to wiggle her toes. The smallest one jerked out away from the others and then clenched tight into a ball. She tried again and this time her whole foot spasmed up and slammed back to the floor.
"Perfect coordination will take time," said the medbot.
Nova took a deep breath and focused on lifting her foot away from the floor. It jerked up faster than she'd intended but she managed to hold it still for several seconds before it dropped back to the ground.
"Incredible," Nova whispered.
"Old technology," Codon said, waving his hand.
Nova shook her head, speechless. It looked as if she did have a career in bounty hunting after all. A sharp sting in the side of her cheek reminded her that she wasn't back to full-health yet. Her tongue poked around until the jagged tooth popped free. She spat the sharp junk into her waiting palm. A rivulet of blood followed after it, creating a tangy trail across her tongue.
"Are any more repairs required?" the medbot asked.
"No. That will do," Codon said. The medbot turned and hovered out of the room.
"Um—" Nova said, holding her tooth in one hand and her aching side with the other.
Codon whirled away from the controls and stood over her. The calm facade was gone, replaced by a stony mask.
Nova's hand clenched around her tooth and her heart fluttered in her chest. Her eyes flew around the room but she was cornered in the chair with no way out and no room to stand up, if her new foot would hold her weight.
"What—" Nova let the tooth fall off her palm and clatter to the floor, her hand flicking to the gun at her belt.
It felt like an eternity before her hand came to rest on the butt of her plasma pistol and by then Codon already had a gun aimed at her head.
"I can't let you leave," Codon said. "With all of that technology and your powers, it's the greatest discovery since warp-travel. I'll be recognised as the greatest scientist of all time."
Nausea rolled through Nova's stomach. She wanted to kick herself for ever thinking that Codon was anything more than a self-serving, arrogant, pig.
She used the chair to get to her feet and stood as high as she could with her aching side. She hunched over to her left as her ribs spasmed in protest. She sucked in a shallow breath, the room spinning around her as she teetered on the edge of unconsciousness. She rested her right foot lightly on the floor of the ship but it was shaking uncontrollably and couldn't hold her.
"You don't own me and neither does the Confederacy. If I want to leave, then I'll damn well leave." She had to take shallow gasps at the end of each sentence. Her chest felt like it was being ripped open with every word. "You know as well as I do that the Confederacy would turn those weapons into death machines. They'd wipe the whole of humanity out by themselves."
She loosened her gun and pulled it an inch from its holster.
A bright yellow ball of energy screamed past her and slammed into the wall at her side.
"Perhaps I didn't make myself clear," said Codon. "You're required by the Confederacy to better help us understand this technology. Destroying it would be in direct violation of Confederacy law. You're now my property under the cyborg act."
"What?" she said, momentarily stunned. "I'm not a cyborg."
Codon shrugged. "I guess that depends on the definition. We'll just have to agree to disagree. In the meantime, stay right where you are."
Codon reached behind his back and pressed more buttons. The ship beeped twice in response and Codon grinned.
"Prepare engines for warp," he said.
"Preparing engines," the ship replied.
Nova clutched the butt of her gun, calculating. She was fast, but Codon was trained. She'd only get one shot.
"I wouldn't," Codon said. "If you move that gun an inch, I'll blow your hand off. I'm sure you'll be almost as good to us without limbs."
"You fucking bastard," she said.
"For the greater good," Codon said with a shrug. "Your welfare doesn't mean much in the face of the Human Confederacy."
Nova's mind raced. The ship was on autopilot. Codon could stay standing with his gun aimed at her until they landed at Confederacy headquarters. There'd be no chance for escape.
She wiggled the fingers of her left hand back and forth through the air as subtly as she could. She was desperate to brush up against something, anything that could help. She tried to picture a distraction, anything, but if she'd thought she had control of her powers before, she was wrong.
Instead of reaching through time and pulling out a miracle, her fingers wriggled futilely in the air. Her sharp gasps were getting more painful as each breath tore her wounds deeper. Stars flashed at the edges of her vision as she swayed on her feet. Her eyes searched desperately for a way out, surveying the room, chairs, desks, debris. The engines had righted the ship, but there were still things scattered all across the floor.
Nothing useful.
She had to do it.
She let her body collapse behind a nearby desk and whipped out her gun. Her body and head dropped out of Codon's line of sight while her gun flicked up and fired.
Codon grunted.
A yellow blast burned through the air and hit her hand where it clutched her side. The skin seared and blistered. Nova screamed and clutched her hand close to her chest.
Her first shot had gone far wide, taking out a video feed and sending new shards of glass scattering across the room. She drew in a gasping breath from where she lay on the floor and fired through the legs of the desk. All she could see of Codon were his legs and it took three blasts of her pistol before she managed to hit him.
Codon's knee shattered. He cried out as pieces of bone exploded out, along with tendrils of tendon, and specks of blood. He collapsed to the ground, howling. His gun clattered to the floor as he grabbed hold of his knee with both hands.
There were tears in his eyes and his face was bright red. A continuous stream of curses and cries of pain poured out of his mouth, much like the streams of blood between his fingers.
Codon hissed words between clenched teeth. "You bitch! You'll never make it out alive. I'll see to it you're a prisoner for the rest of your life."
Nova was in too much pain to reply. Codon writhed on the floor on the other side of the desk. Through her haze of agony she kept her pistol trained on his body. Her arm shook with the effort.
Codon glared at her for a few seconds before he was forced to squeeze his eyes shut in pain. His jaw clenched.
"Cal, please tell me you're on your way," she said.
"Crusader is touching down now."
"Thank fuck," Nova said through a gasp of pain. She silently thanked whoever had invented the neural linkage chips. Without them she'd be dead a hundred times over.
