There were no secrets in the squad. There wasn’t enough room for secrets. If someone had a problem with someone else, everyone knew about and it was dealt with by the group as a whole. If they needed to fight it out, everyone cleared some space, and they fought it out and shook hands afterward. Rayne still had raging nightmares, and everyone knew it, and got to experience them with her as she screamed and thrashed in her sleep. Ear plugs had been handed out after the first night.
Despite the friction, the group was as close as any family, and had made Rayne part of it. They tried to include her in everything they did and encouraged her at every opportunity. Only one reminder needed to be made about the “no contact” rule, and of course it had been Taft to illustrate it when he’d tried to wrap a brotherly arm around her shoulders and been nearly knocked unconscious for his trouble.
“My bad.” He’d said as he picked himself up from the ground. After that, neither Taft nor anyone else had made the mistake. Instead, if Rayne needed to be touched, they left it to Lena. The hand-to-hand drills they worked through several times a week were one of those times.
Rayne had been sitting on the sidelines watching the group for several days, when Lena finally decided it was time for her to play a more active role. Very carefully, and very slowly they had worked their way into it. Lena monitored her condition very carefully and stopped whenever it even looked like Rayne was starting to lose it. At the start, this happened frequently, but after a week and half her brain was beginning to understand that the sparring didn’t mean she was required to fly in to a murderous rage to protect herself.
What Rayne learned was a formalized approach to what she had been doing instinctively. But there were also times Lena would stop her and ask her to walk through what Rayne had just done. She would then turn and teach it to the rest of the group. Rayne felt a certain amount of pride that she could add, or give back, to the group that was going to such great pains to help her. She knew she wasn’t one of them. Not really. But it was nice of them to try and she felt the need to return the favor.
“Somebody say something about a latte? “ Abena stumbled into the bathroom. “I’m up for one of those.” Lena and Rayne made room as she pulled up to the adjacent sink.
“Late night, Abena?”
“Yeah. Me and Henderson went out to that tavern on level six.” She yawned and ran her hand under the cool water. “Hooked up with some guys from station engineering and had a few too many.”
“You look like hell,” Lena observed as she brushed her teeth.
“I feel like hell. Remind me to never do that again.”
“PT should be a real pleasure today, then. I think Sarge was planning something with lots of running, jumping and yelling.” She grinned at Rayne.
Abena rested her head on the cool metal of the sink.
“Kill me now.”
Sgt. Weber’s voice boomed through the barracks.
“PT everyone! You’ve got five minutes to get yourself out there and ready to go.” He stuck his head in the restroom. “That means you, too, Rayne. No slacking.” He turned back and started trading banter with the rest of the squad.
Abena moaned in pain as they turned to go.
“Come on. Let’s get you both something for your pain, so Sarge can yell at us for the rest of the morning without your eyes falling out your head.”
Lena grabbed Abena and Rayne both by the arm and they made their way through the barracks and down to med tech.
“Good morning, ladies. Here for your morning dose?”
Dr. Little asked cheerfully as he looked up from his data screen.
“I keep telling you, I’m no lady.”
“Hope springs eternal.” Dr. Little walked to the cabinet and grabbed the pain killers, while Lena peaked at the contents of his data screen.
“What you workin’ on doc?”
“I was looking over some of Rayne’s recent scans, looking for an explanation for her headaches.” Rayne hadn’t told them about the muscle pain she’d been experiencing or the gibberish that constantly whispered in her ear. What was the point? If he couldn’t find the source of the headaches, how was he going to find the source of the muscle pain? She certainly didn’t need them knowing she was hearing voices on top of it all.
“Any luck?”
“Nothing certain.” He handed Rayne two tablets, which she promptly popped into her mouth. Abena made her own request, downed them and then left to join the rest of the squad lining up.
“But, there are a couple of things on the older scans I didn’t see before, and when compared with the new scans, there are some other things I don’t have an explanation for.” He walked over to the data screen and swiped it to a larger screen for them both to see.
“I’m no neurologist, but…”
“A neurolowhatsit?” Lena’s face creased in confusion.
“Brain surgeon.” The doctor clarified.
“Got it.” Lena scrutinized the scans, looking for something out of place.
“These dark spots here, here…well, there’s a bunch of them.” He pointed to the screen indicating each of the areas. “I’m pretty sure they’re not supposed to be there and I have no idea what they are.” Dr. Little reached down and grabbed his portable data pad. “I can tell you what they aren’t. They aren’t cancerous or tumors of any type.” He scanned through his notes. “I’ve analyzed the composition and its coming back as organic, with her DNA signature, but the reading’s off.” He massaged the back of his neck. “I’ve not seen anything like it and don’t have the expertise for it, but I’d say it’s likely the cause of the headaches. I’m not sure how to treat it.”
“Okay, so what’s on the new scans?” Lena peered at them, pretending she knew what she was looking at. It was a brain, that was obvious, but unless someone had left a pair of bolt cutters inside, she’d have no idea whether it was supposed to be there or not.
Dr. Little swiped a set of newer scans and placed them next to the older ones for comparison.
“Here is the old scan and you can see the same dark spots. What’s new is these very faint lines you see here, starting to run out.” He highlighted a small area of the scan and enlarged it. “Like this one here looks to be wrapping around the optic nerve and this one over here looks to be making multiple contacts through to the top of the head.”
“Is it like a parasite or something?” Lena asked with a look of concern on her face. Rayne sat passively back and listened to the conversation. She’d listened to several similar conversations during the last two weeks. Lots of guessing and hypothesizing, but no real answers. Rayne just wanted the pain to go away. After two weeks, she was ready for it to stop.
“I don’t think so. I mean the analysis shows her own DNA. It’s just off. My guess on these little runners is that it’s just a discoloration from the bio gel like with what happened to her skin, and that’s what’s returning the odd readings on the DNA. Three years is a long time to be encased in that stuff and I’m guessing it has just seeped into her system and is staining some of her body’s interior structures. She has the same things running throughout her body. I can’t see that they are doing her any harm, but I don’t know that they are serving any purpose either.” Sgt. Weber’s voice boomed from the weapons bay for Lena and Rayne to get their asses in formation, if it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience.
“Gotta run, Doc. We’ll talk to you later.” They joined the rest of the squad for PT, which did in fact, involve a great deal of running, jumping and yelling.
***
Captain Gault stood at the bridge of his ship. The ship’s crew moved about the deck preparing for departure checking and re-checking everything to make sure it would meet the captain’s exacting standards. He was anxious to get under way, but this was not a process that could be rushed. Like many things, attention to detail was needed and failure at any key point could end in disastrous results. Still
, the time being spent to do it right was like waiting for the other shoe to drop. He had gotten the best of the station medical so far, but he did not count on that to hold for very much longer. What he needed to do was to get off this station and to some other planet-side port, where he could find a suitable place for Rayne. He couldn’t keep her aboard his ship, he knew that. A fleet vessel was no place for a seventeen-year-old, psychologically damaged young girl. And while the station had plenty of tech on hand to deal with the problems the fleet typically provided, he felt they were ill-equipped to deal with Rayne, at least not in the way she needed to be dealt with.
Reading through Sgt. Weber’s daily reports, he’d found the marines were doing an admirable job, considering the unorthodox task he’d given them. In particular, Lena’s performance and dedication to the task had been exceptional, and he intended on rewarding her for her efforts. She’d been an unlikely choice in his opinion, but he was not one to micro manage. Sgt. Weber knew his people and the captain let him make the call, and had been pleasantly surprised by the results. But Rayne needed more than what the marines were capable of giving her, or that was the captain’s opinion anyway. Rayne needed a gentle family environment, if one could be found. And while the marine squad dynamics mimicked family life in some ways, gentle it was not.
And maybe that was why things had gone so smoothly for the last two weeks. Since the marines had taken Rayne in, she’d not had any psychological episodes. He didn’t count Private Taft being knocked unconscious. He placed that particular episode in the same category as the one a month prior when Private Taft had received nearly the same treatment for propositioning one of the women in engineering. He shook his head. That kid needed to be tied up when he wasn’t fighting.
The plan now was to get away from this station and out into open space before Rayne could be taken from them, or their orders otherwise changed. From there, their normal patrol route would take them to within several habitable systems, two of which he felt would be likely candidates for getting the right treatment for Rayne. The two systems he was thinking of both had sizeable populations with the right tech and other social services to handle the girl. He had a few civilian contacts on each that he felt confident would help him out. Rayne wasn’t military, so he was under no obligation to drop her off at a military installation. In fact, the same reason he’d taken her from Procyon station’s medical team was the same reason he’d do his best to keep any other military medical team away from her. He did not want her to be their little lab rat. Once they got their hands on you, getting away was near impossible. They would clog the process with so much red tape, you’d be old and gray before you walked out their front door, and by that time they’d have already taken everything and anything they could.
He was not about to let that happen to this young girl. She’d already been through too much; the loss of her parents, three years alone and fighting for her life, and now dealing with extreme psychological issues. The last thing she needed was to be stuck in a cage and poked with a stick for the rest of her life. And that’s exactly what they would do, especially if they saw the information in Dr. Little’s reports. There was no doubt about it, there was something going on inside that young girl. The good doctor didn’t have the expertise to say what, but the military had a fleet of scientists and technicians at their disposal who would love to get their hands on her. The industrial military complex was still alive and well, and had never been bigger. They’d take some poor marine or navy sailor who had no choice but to follow orders and poke, prod, inject, and test them until there was very little left. If they were lucky, they got to scrape by on the fleet’s disability payments. All in the name of science. They didn’t see them as people or fellow human beings. They saw them as “test subjects” and were so wrapped up in their science, they forgot their own humanity, or rather, the humanity of the people they used to test their little pet projects. No, that would not happen to Rayne.
They were nearly finished with the system checks. Just a few more minutes and they’d release the electromagnetic locks that held the ship in place. Then they’d be headed for open space.
“All right people, it’s time we got out of here. Sound the launch warning and contact station comms and give them our vector out of this dump.” Sailors snapped to and moved with ordered efficiency. The ship shuddered as the locks released and thrusters pushed them away from the station. They slowly moved forward and into dark, open space. Captain Gault paced back and forth, anxious to be out of communication range. He’d chosen a vector that would take them parallel with the orbital plane and past the system’s two suns. If he could get the suns between him and the station, that would kill comms until they were out of range for any short range vessels. While it was no longer practical to have the ship return to dock to off load one person, nothing was stopping them from ordering the vessel to hold while a shuttle made the trip. He wanted to be far outside shuttle range before that happened.
Things were going well so far, but he still felt a sense of unease, and the feeling that he needed to do more snuck into his mind and tickled the back of his brain. He wasn’t generally one to believe in hunches, or follow them for that matter. What had been his guiding light throughout his career was procedure and protocol, but after ten minutes the feeling persisted and he felt he could no longer ignore it.
“Mr. Tanaka. Are your comms working?”
The ensign turned with a questioning look. “Yes, captain.”
“When’s the last time you ran a diagnostic on them?”
“Yesterday, when I was doing system checks.” He looked at the captain nervously, wondering if he had done something wrong.
“Do it again.” Not wanting to draw the captain’s ire, the ensign hurriedly tapped his data console.
Running a diagnostic on the communications system, would put it down and unable to send or receive for about fifteen minutes. By that time, they would be close enough to the sun to interfere with any communications the station wanted to send. That would normally be a risky move, since they relied on the station to coordinate their in-system movement and prevent collisions with other incoming vessels. However, the unorthodox vector he’d chosen practically eliminated that possibility and they could use their own more limited ship scans to perform the same function. Captain Gault eased himself into his chair and let out a slow breath to release some of the pent up tension.
Fifteen minutes later found them cruising past one of the Procyon system suns. Their close proximity filled the comms with static as they continued into the open blackness of space. They picked up speed as they used the sun’s gravity to sling-shot themselves into the outer part of the system. The sun no longer blocked communications from the station any longer, but they were well outside shuttle range. The captain breathed easy and set his mind to the next part of his plan. But, like all good plans, there was always a monkey wrench to go with it.
“Captain, we’re getting a message from Procyon.”
Captain Gault smiled. They were too late. He was not about to turn around now. They’d have to catch him at the end of his patrol in six months, and by that time Rayne would be well- placed with someone who cared.
“What’s their message?”
“They’re forwarding a general order from fleet command.” He raised his head from his console with a look of dismay. “We’re being re-assigned. To Alpha Centauri.”
All heads on the deck turned, but no one dared speak a word. The look on the captain’s face was a thundercloud waiting to burst. He’d planned for a lot of things, but not this. How could she have known? So far distant, yet from half way across human-occupied space, and she still managed to reach out and stab him in the guts. Damn that woman! How had she even found out? The woman had tentacles everywhere, without a doubt, but how or why would she even take an interest in Rayne?
Some might think he was jumping to conclusions, but he knew better. T
here was no way in the world fleet would reassign a recon vessel to an area over ten light years away from its home port. There was no other explanation. It had to be her, the former Mrs. Gault. That conniving, manipulative, devil of a woman had somehow gotten wind of Rayne and decided to take a personal interest. Of all the people Rayne should be kept away from, it was her. She represented the worst of what a scientist was capable of.
He tapped his finger on his arm rest as the crew waited for his orders. He pulled the message to his own data console and read through the orders. There was no mention of Rayne. Good, that meant he could off-load her any time and any place he chose. The problem was, there wasn’t anything within easy reach. He couldn’t take her back to the station, and the closest habitable system even remotely close to the route they would have to take was Sirius. But it was too far out of the way to be feasible, even if he did have contacts in the system with which to place Rayne.
Into the lion’s den they would go then, or, in this particular case, the spider’s web. His ex-wife was very well connected to all the right people. If she wanted something, she generally got it. If he tried to fight her on her level she would win. If you got in her way she could crush you and then suck out your juices until there was nothing left but a dried empty husk.
He would fight, though, and while not pleased that Rayne and his crew were being caught in the middle, he was warming to the challenge. He liked a good fight, and this one would bring great personal satisfaction if he won. He’d been itching for a re-match anyway. Their marriage had ended, and he was glad of that, but she had definitely won the war while he retreated to the far reaches of space to lick his wounds. He learned a few things since then, about himself mostly, and he felt he had a much better handle on how to approach this kind of fight. He’d come at her all right, but he’d come at her sideways, not straight on like he’d always done before. That’s what the strict adherence to regulations and procedure had always forced him into, the straight-on fight, and there was no way to win against a superior force that way. No, he wouldn’t play by the rules this time. This time, he intended to win, and would be waging guerilla warfare to do it. He’d be flexible and unpredictable while at the same time hiding the true nature of his attack. He’d follow procedure. To the letter, in fact. But under the cover of rules and regulation, he’d pull the rug right out from under her feet. Something of a plan began to form in his mind and he gave the command to change course.