“So they're smart, heavily armoured and most likely in force at the bunker.” Ayan concluded. “We're not going to be able to hold it once we've taken it, so we'll send a message through that wormhole generator in orbit and kill the systems inside with a zero rad micro-nuke.”
“I'll leave you four to plan it then,” Roman said with raised eyebrows.
The tone in the room had changed. Any joviality had gone, replaced with a heavy, deadly seriousness. Ayan caught the Sargent's arm as he turned from the table and looked him in the eye coldly. “Once we finish hitting this bunker and securing some method of viable longer term communications we probably won't be back. We'll have to take cover somewhere else or find our way off the planet from the spaceport to go in search of help. Returning to the mountain between strikes is a pointless risk.”
Roman's eyes went wide as he glanced at the map then back to the much smaller woman, who suddenly had the bearing of an eight foot tall battle commander. “What do you need?” he asked quietly.
“We'll have a list for you by morning,” she replied as she turned back to the table.
Roman and Alaka left the room so the old friends could plan a desperate mission to save the mountain rebels and everyone else fighting for survival on Pandem.
Mirrors
The training shifts on the bridge were more and more intense as Alice and Jake raised the difficulties. Between simulations she had started reviewing the results alone, she loved the night bridge staff but it always went faster if she could sync her mechanical eye up to a computer system and review the data over a digital interface without being interrupted.
When she entered the Ready Office attached to the bridge she stopped dead in her tracks and hurriedly slapped the button to close the hatch behind her. Captain Valance was sitting on the desk in his undershorts, his vacsuit was draped over one hand while the other gently ran his fingers over it. “She's really gone, isn't she?” he asked so quietly she almost didn't hear.
Alice hesitated a moment and asked; “what's that you have there Captain?”
“Just a scarf. Ayan made it for me out of a shawl that was ruined on the First Light. ”
She glanced at it again, just to be sure he was actually holding his vacsuit in the dim light, not the scarf that had been tied around Ayan's body before she was given a space farer's burial. Her cybernetic eye compensated for the low light and focused in on his face. His glazed eyes and openly mournful expression told her one thing; he's sleep walking, or whatever counts as sleep walking where Jake is concerned. He doesn't do anything small.
“Ayan, Minh, my parents, even Alice is gone,”
She was about to contradict him then a thought occurred to her; “Jonas?”
He looked up at her, his eyes focused on her only for a moment then glazed over once more. “Who else would I be? Then again, I don't know who you are, but you're familiar. Like everything here; strange ship, strange constellations when I look outside, even the operating system for the comm is different but all somehow familiar.”
“You should get back to bed sir,” she directed quietly.
“Why? Even my ship's gone, I don't even know what happened to the First Light after it escaped.”
“She made it back, they've rebuilt her as a carrier and now you're running a new ship. You should get your rest, you don't want to be tired for your duty shift on the bridge.”
“A new ship?” he stared at her dumbly, for a moment she thought he was coming out of it, then he looked away, to something in the distance. “Doesn't matter, there's not much time left.”
Alice walked across the room to him gently and took his arm. He was larger than Jonas was, but his bearing, his manner was every bit the Jonas she remembered. Urging him to his feet was easier than expected.
“It took him a while to stop resisting the integration process, but now that he's accepted that it's the way it should be my individual imprint is integrating. We'll be inseparable soon, the same person, and I can't let him take all this grief, all this anger,” he went on. “None of this is happening the way it was supposed to, he should have woken up, seen Alice and the imprint was supposed to take over, he was supposed to remember.”
“Who was supposed to remember?” she asked, placating him more than anything. I just need to get him back to bed, he'll probably just roll over and mumble his way back to sleep.
“The copy, he was supposed to remember me then learn to use the framework technology but the trigger went off too late and he had time to become something more, someone all his own.”
She stopped half way to the small shaft that would lead him back to bed. “You mean he became Jake.”
“That's what you call him,” he looked straight into her eyes and was suddenly astonished. “ You were the trigger, but you left before he woke up.”
“So he doesn't know how to use the framework technology? How does he learn?” she asked, not knowing whether what she was hearing was real or some rant born in a dream.
“By using it, it's a natural function like breathing, only the first time it happens it might be unconscious, maybe dangerous,” he said as his manner changed completely. His vision focused in on her and he dropped his vacsuit. Automatically he stooped to pick it up then realized where he was. “How did I get here?” He was awake.
Alice hesitated for a moment, watching him to make sure that he was actually awake. “You were sleep walking,” she replied simply as she stepped away.
“Sleep walking? What was I doing? Did I leave the ready quarters?”
“Thankfully no. When I came in you were holding that as though it was the scarf Ayan made for you. You thought you were Jonas.”
The memory of a dream returned to him vaguely as he put his vacsuit on. But that's not my memory. It's one of my recollections from Jonas' past. “What did he-” he paused for a moment then corrected himself; “-I say?”
“You'd better watch the security footage,” Alice queued up the last ten minutes using her command unit and instructed the room's main player to display the time period in question. “Do you want me to leave?”
“No, stay.”
They watched it together and when it finished Jake Valance sat in silence in one of the chairs in front of the sturdy captain's desk.
Alice braced herself. She hoped she handled the situation the way he would have liked and she hadn't overstepped her bounds.
“It explains a lot, but what did he mean by using the framework technology? I've already come back from beyond the brink at least once, survived radiation poisoning, what else is there and why don't I remember it like everything else Jonas experienced?”
“I have no idea, I'm sorry,” Alice said quietly.
Jake turned to her, sitting in the seat beside him, and put his hand on her shoulder. “You shouldn't be, why would you have the answers?”
“I should have found my way back to you sooner after drawing Vindyne away from you and the Samson. The only reason why I didn't go back sooner was because I was afraid. I had a price on my head for three sectors and I didn't want to get caught. I should have waited for you to wake up, made sure you were all right before I moved on.”
“It's all right. One way or another we both came out fine. Jonas, or whoever that was talking in my sleep has another thing wrong. He wants to protect me from his pain but that's just part of who he is, without it nothing would be the same. The worst bit is that there's something in here,” he said, pointing to his temple. “telling me to do something and I have no idea how.”
Alice was relieved that he didn't blame her for leaving him alone on the Samson years ago, it was something she worried about often. “Maybe we should think about heading to Zingara station after we've met up with Oz and Jason. I know it's a couple sectors away, but there might be answers there. Until then, it's just a matter of waiting I guess. I'll tell you if you start growing extra components or giving off radio signals.”