Captain Valance was looking out the window at the orange and yellow nebula in the distance. It was lit from the inside by a cluster of stars. On his desk was a holoprojection of Ayan. It was how Alice remembered her, in her grey engineering vacsuit working the central control panels for the First Light. Her curly red hair was a shocking contrast to the plain uniform she wore. “That's a really good recording of her,” Alice said.
“It was sent along with Lieutenant Everin's transmission. It says it's from the First Light and comes with an advisory that she's been ill for several years.”
Alice sat down, Jake's mood was dark. “Did they send you an image of what she looks like now?” she asked quietly.
“You don't want to see it, she's obviously suffered over the years.”
“I'm so sorry.”
“So am I,” he said simply.
She sat back and let him stare out the transparesteel hull for a minute. “I wish you had known her,” she said quietly.
“I do. I remember her,” he replied as he turned around and looked at the projection on his desk. “Last night I was sitting on the edge of my bunk on the First Light. She told me how she was having difficulty with fine tuning the energy shields. I started telling her all about my day on the bridge and watched her slowly nod off. I touched her face and she opened her eyes, looked at me, smiled and then I woke up.” His hands went up to his head as he sucked in a deep breath of air.
She could see the frustration in him, he was shaking. His hands came down in fists, pounding against the desk. “None of this is mine! They're not my memories, I was never on the First Light but I remember her like she was just here, like she'll be back any minute with two mugs of coffee, one for her, one for me. You know I've never actually tried coffee? I remember what it tasted like though, that I like two sugar two cream. What's more I remember talking to you on my wrist, releasing you as I was captured with my best friends,” he stopped himself and dropped into his chair. “You hear that? My best friends? As much as I wish I had been there with Oz and Minh and Jason and Ayen I wasn't! It's just like Wheeler said. Some lab tech flipped a switch and I was built thanks to the miracle of energy to organic matter conversion.”
Alice stared at him for a moment. She had only known him a short time but was certain this was uncharacteristic. Making the decision to snap him out of it, she took a deep breath before letting him know what she was thinking. “How do you think I feel sometimes? Jonas bought me, programmed me, then broke galactic law to set me loose as a weapon. Then I stole a body and found my way into the galaxy.”
“You don't have to deal with someone else's memories filling in gaps you never knew you had with experiences that don't belong to you.”
“Really? Did you know this body belonged to a woman who killed people? She didn't get that way on her own, either. The first time I was burned I was reminded how her father burned her as a child. One of the first times I got angry I felt the satisfaction of strangling the life out of someone with my bare hands. There were other traumatic things this woman experienced that not even Vindyne could clear out, and it took a long time for me to realize none of it was mine. Fighting off the remaining impulses and accepting that the occupant before was still up here just a little was something I learned to live with. I came to life choking, gagging, fighting to breathe, learning to prop myself up and yell after Jonas as I watched him run by with Ayan and Oz. I didn't realize that there was no way he could recognize me and even though I desperately wanted to stand up and run after him I didn't know how,” she finished flatly.
Jake calmed down and just looked at her, he'd never seen her that serious. “I'm sorry, I had no idea.”
“It's okay, it's really okay. I dealt with it and that's part of who I am,” she replied, lightening up a little. Alice looked at the hologram. “Jonas had some very good friends. Even in the short time I had to share the experience with him, with them they taught him a lot. They experienced good things. If she's the one you remember most, and I know she was very special, very important to him even when they were just meeting, then I could imagine much worse.”
He looked from Alice back to the hologram. Ayan was reading something in front of her, unconsciously tapping her foot. “When I spoke to Liam the other day he said something similar. To accept the memories for what they are, realize they aren't mine but let them enrich my life. Just words at the time. Dealing with the reality is so much harder.”
“Tell me about it. I'm glad I had Bernice with me when the memories started.”
“Bernice?”
“She's one of the women who helped me off the Overlord, that carrier Jonas was taken captive on. We broke you out of the Vindyne Research and Development Facility.”
“Where is she now?”
“Married, happy,” Alice smiled. “She deserves it.”
Jake nodded, his attention on the hologram. “I've never been in love,” he said quietly. “I thought I might have in the past, always sort of hoped to find out what happened to me, if I had a wife somewhere who was wondering where I got off to.”
“You know, chronologically you're pretty young. Anything could happen,” Alice smirked.
He couldn't help but smile back at her. She was trying hard to cheer him up, to draw him back out of self pity. It wasn't fair to her or to the crew for him to be so distracted, so focused on what he couldn't change. Jake turned the projection off. “At least I might have a chance to say goodbye to her for Jonas.”
“Is she really that bad off?”
“They tried everything. Her medical file was attached to the transmission. She even has framework technology installed. She's just too genetically flawed and it's caught up with her,” it hurt to say it aloud, there was an ache in his stomach he'd never felt before, not even after losing crew members. “So I'll give her Jonas' message and be there for her. It's all I can do.”
“A lot of people would run away from that kind of pain,” Alice said plainly. “You're a credit to him for enduring it.”
He sighed, a gesture she hadn't seen from him since she'd met him. Jake was changing, reminding her more and more of Jonas. “I've remembered her just in time to say goodbye. I've seen much worse luck,” he smiled faintly and stood. “Are you ready for the night shift?”
“Aye, Captain,” she said with a salute.
“Well, not much other than training has been going on above deck seven. We have two and a half main hangars clear and a working mass materializer generating parts for reactor six. They found another mass materializer in a sub-hangar under hangar one as well. It was packed with trash and it's already clear, generating a Uriel fighter.”
“That was fast. I've never heard of that fighter though, it's named after an angel?”
“It seems most of the fighters in this ships arsenal are named after the Angelic faith. That fighter in particular has a cockpit for two, a small wormhole drive, six engine pods, internal accommodation for a cargo pod, extra ammunition or rescue seating for four. I've never seen anything like it,” he brought up a holographic representation of the ship.
There were two flat engine pods to the upper rear of the main hull, another pair at the lower front, and a pair of main pods attached directly to the left and right of the fuselage. The engine was in the center of thrust chambers pointing forward and back. Details on the image showed that the main engine could fire forwards or backwards and the other pods could do the same, making the powerful ship incredibly manoeuvrable, capable of landing vertically, upside down, on either side or standing straight up. The pair of cockpits were built as part of the main armoured frame, the pilot sitting in front and below while the copilot sat above and behind. The small cargo hold ran beneath the pilot and copilot seats and the hologram animated the removal and exchange of different task modules. One had four cramped seats, another had racks for dispensing ammunition or holding extra power modules, even a pair of small fusion reactors, there was even a special module for future modification. The weapons load out was completely changeable, and with the copilot's help a ship could run with up to eight guns, two miniature turrets and four tons of missiles. Without the copilot to help manage the weapons systems only a quarter the armaments would be available. If an artificial intelligence was installed the copilot wouldn't be needed, but Alice knew it wouldn't be safe to install one until they figured out how to combat the virus that had killed so many. The sensor and intelligence suite built in would make any one of those fighters a perfect anchor for an all out offensive, it could even hold a wormhole open for dozens of fighters to escape before it followed them all home. With space for redundant energy shielding and emission recyclers it could be a difficult target to kill or near impossible to find unless someone had good scanners and was pointing them right at their area. The shape and design of the craft, with its tapered front and extra mountings for guns or other components to the side and forward of the pilots canopy gave it a predatory look.