Randolph Lalonde
Resurrection
Prologue
It was a rebirth. Under the dim flickering lights of the cold, dark cargo hold two women played the roles of midwives. The tall one with the long brown hair entered the final combination on the small control panel built into the stasis pod. The shorter woman waited, standing close and ready with a breathing device in hand.
The dark stasis pod opened at the bottom. Thick fluid burst forth, carrying an unconscious man out onto the deck. “Hurry, get the pump in,” said the taller of the two.
Just as the man was beginning to gag, emitting only a deep gurgling sound, the older, the shorter of the two women bent down and expertly inserted the breathing apparatus. It turned on and began to extract the liquid in his lungs while she held it to his mouth, keeping him from spitting it out. The contents of his stomach came up as well, the same fluid he was breathing in stasis.
His writhing and retching was an unconscious thing, a primal struggle for life that was so severe that he began to thrash. “Hold his hands Alice, we don't want him hurting himself, poor man.”
At her counterpart's urging she did what was asked, kneeling down and taking firm grip of his wrists. “Good thing he's still sedated. This is no picnic.”
“Was it like this for you?”
“It was, only I was awake the entire time. The system used the emergency pump to help me expel some of the stasis fluid. I didn't understand how my body worked when the ejection system dropped me. He'll be better off.”
“Do you think he'll remember anything from before they put him in?”
“They wiped him, his memories of people and places are gone. His skills and what they programmed into him are all there though.”
“What did they program him with? Did you get a chance to see?”
“Combat skills, survival, medical treatment methods for all races, a huge object and location database, and some kind of persistent service and employment directive. It's like they wanted him to work for them, or anyone really. If it sticks he'll never be able to function unless he has some kind of employer.”
“Doing what?”
“Anything, from waste management to CEO to hit man. He'll go crazy if he's unemployed for long. The only way to break it is serious psychological trauma.”
“He should fit right in then.”
“Until we find a way to get back to him. They even changed his name.”
“To what?”
“Jacob Valance.”
“That's awfully close to his real one.”
“That's the point. He'll accept it more easily if it's near what he grew up with. I wish we had time to find out what they had planned for him, all this preparation had to be for something,” Alice said as she stood up. “He's clear, pull out the pump Bernice.”
The mouthpiece was carefully removed and Alice put a blanket around him with great care. She knelt down and gently wiped the thick stasis fluid off his sleeping face. “I wish I could do more for you father. I wish I could stay and help you make sense of it all, remind you of what you're missing, where you should be but they're after me. They'll be after you too if we don't leave you here,” she whispered. “I promise I'll find a way to come back or find someone who can help you.”
“We have to go dear, I'm so sorry,” Bernice said as she closed the doors to the stasis pod and activated the small anti-gravity drive on the bottom. It hovered up a few centimetres from the deck and she started leading it to the airlock.
“I know,” Alice replied quietly as she stood and wiped away a tear. “God this is wrong, but it's the only way for him to be safe. If they find him with us they'll kill him or worse,” she slid a backpack off her shoulders and dropped it as she looked around the cargo bay, shaking her head.
She followed behind Bernice and a moment later the airlock sealed. A few clicks and a shudder later the smaller ship that had delivered the slumbering man decoupled.
The vessel carrying the two women away jettisoned the empty stasis chamber. It cracked and twisted in the near instant freeze of space before a bolt of plasma blew it into a million pieces. It would transmit the status of its contents no longer, and as the small, mantis like vessel escaped into hyperspace the larger, older ship left behind drifted just on the edge of an asteroid belt, waiting for her new Captain to awaken.
Five Years Later
Lacent III was its usual brooding self. Planets have moods, temperaments, and that one was always dark and cold. With grey black rolling clouds that barely yielded rain and the eleven degree temperature it was anything but comfortable for human habitation in the temperate zone. As the small crew of five made their way up the empty main street of Second Fall, a small port town with nothing but dry, hard packed ground for miles around, they shielded their faces and exposed skin against the fine sand whirling around. The air was grey, the ground was grey. The features of the steel buildings glinted in the minimal light, any paint or decorations had eroded away long ago under the constant abrasion of the coarse airborne particulates.
The day was only a little brighter than night, but it was twenty degrees warmer. In the falling twilight the five crewmembers wanted to be indoors before nightfall. The Gallows Hall was the biggest, the best tavern on the planet, and it was the only place they wanted to be. It was six stories tall and provided lodgings for a price to travellers who wanted a little time away from their ships or were just too intoxicated to remember where they parked.
“I can't wait to get inside and just crawl into a bottle of hot Michnikel,” one of the crew said, he was a shorter fellow who didn't bother with his vacsuit headgear, but tried to shield his face from the sand with his hands instead.
“That stuff'll rot your brain. Besides, I don’t see the point in drinking something that causes memory loss more than seventy percent of the time. I'm here to make good memories, that's what leave's all about,” A young woman walking in front of him replied. She was one of the practical ones in the group who wore her headpiece.
“You think we'll have a good time here? Have you seen where we landed?”
“Now I understand why the Captain stayed aboard ship. There's nothing to get excited about,” said another fellow who shielded his face with his upraised arm.
“He stayed aboard ship to finish the trade. We're lucky we got off, otherwise we'd be transporting pressurized phosphoric acid for a couple hours,” said the one at the rear, the other woman in the group, who wore her vacsuit headpiece as well. It had a transparent face and fit closely to her head.
“Why would anyone want to pressurize that stuff anyway? It's bloody dangerous.”
“They can squeeze a little over two percent more cargo into the space they have, that's why. Amounts to an awful lot when your hold is about three thousand square meters.”
As they came within just a few meters of the paired doors leading into the tavern, a few patrons came stumbling out. They were in vacsuits, some close fitting, others looked more protective and utilitarian. They looked like a mixed bunch, but definitely from the same crew. They were stumbling about, a few of them leaning against each other. “Oh God, I hate this planet,” said one.
“Is it supposed ta burn?” Said another gruff fellow with a thick accent as he stumbled a few steps, bottle in hand.
“Let's get back to the ship.”
The five on their way inside hesitated for a moment, waiting for the nine patrons to get out of the way. Without warning the stumbling, bottle toting patron staggered right towards them. “Hey, Captain doesn't let booze on board, want the rest o' this?” He asked, holding out the half full bottle as he fell into one of the approaching crew.
Two of them caught him and a third took the bottle. “Judging from what it's done to you, I think I'll pass,” she said, handling it by the neck with two fingers.