Traitor Read online

Hoepe’s blade cut through the skin easily, a drop of blood oozing out of the small incision. He pushed the soft tissues out of the way with a pair of blunt scissors, exposing the shining white cranium. The bone saw made him grimace as it whirred against the bone — forever reminding him of Evangecore, of emergency surgeries and resuscitations — but the craniotomy was quick.

  Hoepe glanced at Grant’s monitor readings — steady. The chip was visible, resting prominently on top of the grey matter. He blew out another breath.

  The laparoscope camera slipped easily into the opening, resting on the edge. Slowly, Hoepe fed the forceps and grasped the chip. The chip would slide out easily, the same as all the others. He prepared himself, and gave it one, steady tug.

  An alarm went off with a shrill beep. In an instant, Grant’s body danced, and the sickly limpet flesh exploded from between his shoulder blades, wrapping around him, pulling the camera and tools from Hoepe’s hands. The body stood for a minute, and then crashed to the floor.

  Hoepe stood for a second, too shocked to move, his hands still held up, poised for surgery. “Grant!” He darted around the table, kneeling beside his friend. Alive or dead? With the ugly suit, there was no way to tell. Only one eye was exposed, rolled backwards in his head. Hoepe fumbled for a light, tugging at the eyelids until he could see a fragment of the cornea, and shone the light in. The pupil contracted: alive.

  “What’s happening?” Leove appeared in the door, dropping to his knees beside them. “I was walking by and heard the monitors and then you shouting.”

  In the doorway, Isuma stood watching, holding back. The bottom of Hoepe’s stomach fell out from under him, his diaphragm spasming so badly he couldn’t breathe. They had been on a social call.

  Leove rolled Grant over. “Help me get him onto the table.”

  Dumbly, Hoepe lifted. Isuma came forward to help, and the three of them put Grant back onto the procedural bed.

  “What were you thinking?” Leove connected probes to Grant’s skin suit, pushing angrily. “I thought we agreed it was too dangerous.”

  “You don’t understand,” said Hoepe.

  “I don’t understand?” Leove shouted — it was strange seeing such an outburst of emotion, a myriad of expressions Hoepe had never showed in his life. “He has a chip that we know is tied into the depths of his consciousness, that’s tied into an implant we know literally nothing about.”

  Hoepe’s chest jerked, drawing a short gasp. “We had to try,” he growled. “There wasn’t any other option.”

  “What? Because of Rami? Because you’re worried about your common friends?” Leove gripped the edge of the table. “You cracked fool. Grant was the only one who Rami might have listened to.”

  The monitors beeped, cold and steady. Hoepe stared down at Grant, unconscious, the suit wrapped around the laparoscope that jutted form his head. “He wouldn’t have listened to Grant with the chip in his head. He wouldn’t have listened to Sarrin. He wouldn’t have listened to anyone.”

  Leove took a deep breath. “I see that this is difficult for you. But have you considered Rami is right?”

  “You can’t tell me you agree with him,” Hoepe snapped. His hands slammed on the table, and he instantly regretted himself as Grant’s body rocked from the force, the limpet suit drawing tighter around him.

  Leove rocked back on his heels. “I respected that you have known these people longer, and you have your crew of trusted men. But they’re UEC soldiers. We have always fought to be out from under UEC control, and yet we were happy to subjugate ourselves to it here.” He rubbed his hand over several days worth of stubble he had allowed to grow — another foreign entity. “I know you have your reasons, but perhaps it is time to let them go. Look at the evidence we’re faced with.”

  “What evidence?”

  “The captain was found hallucinating in the engine room. The first officer is a devout follower of the Speakers. The engineer has been setting bombs. A shuttle was tampered with and nearly tore the ship apart.”

  “You don’t know he was building a bomb,” Hoepe said through gritted teeth. “I don’t understand why you’re being so difficult. You are supposed to be my bother. Identical.”

  “We have identical genetics, Hoepe. But we were raised very differently.”

  “Thank you for the reminder. It seems you have to remind me of a great many things since you remember it all, and I was made to forget. You had a family at least, someone to teach you how to love. Kieran was one of the only friends I had, and you want to space him. And now Grant’s… like this.” He gestured to the grey-brown, unconscious form.

  “You did this to Grant. And I never wanted to space Kieran, but it’s hard for me to trust him,” Leove said, voice tight. “Don’t think your life was so much more difficult than mine. You got to forget. I remember every day. Did you know they survived for a time — with the hideous and painful boils, disfiguring tumours, all of it. They were my patients, Hoepe. For five years, I watched them suffer, trying to save them from a disease for which there is no cure. Father went first. I still hear mother’s pain, see the scars. I can’t get the sound of her voice out of my head as she told me to stop. To stop trying to save her. To let her go.” He seethed, breathing heavily, eyes dark with pupillary dilation. “It was the UECs that did that. Forgive me for not trying harder to embrace them.”

  Hoepe’s mouth worked to find the words.

  “It’s not my fault you feel alone. It’s you, you’ve decided you’re alone, you’re hurt, you’re wounded. But you forget, I am your family. No matter how we disagree, I am your family. I’m sorry we’re not the same, Hoepe. I truly am. I’m sorry that our lives were different. But it doesn’t mean we have to hide things, it doesn’t mean we can’t talk about our disagreements.”

  “How was I supposed to make you understand?”

  Leove threw his hands up in the air. “If I knew taking out Grant’s chip was this important to you, I would have helped. I would have. But you never told me.”

  “You always said it was a bad idea.” And in hindsight, it really was, but Hoepe was too worked up to admit it now.

  “I wanted to take his chip out, I did. But there were too many unknowns. It likely threads into his amygdala, into his hypothalamus. You might have killed him.”

  “So what do we do?” he growled.

  “I don’t know.” Leove reached a hand towards Grant’s head and the laparoscope that jutted out the side, but he stopped himself. “Gods, of all the horrors I’ve seen from Evangecore, this is the worst.”

  Hoepe’s jaw clenched, the fear taking hold of his gut and twisting it in a knot.

  “We need to tackle this fresh in the morning, I think. Everyone’s cortisol levels are dangerously high, not just the engineer. We need to pause, cool down. There’s no more room for rash decisions or errors.”

  “It wasn’t a rash decision.”

  “Promise me you won’t do anything more to him before morning,” Leove said. He glanced at the monitors, eyes darting rapidly as he took in the steady if not slow heart rate, the adequate blood pressure and blood oxygenation, then he turned and left the infirmary.

  Isuma glanced up at Hoepe, turning her lips up into a sad smile. She touched his arm quickly before following Leove. “Everything looks brighter in the morning,” she said.

  And Hoepe was alone with the grey-brown mess of limpet suit and medical paraphernalia who used to be his friend. Not a little alone. Truly alone.

  * * *

  Rayne swallowed as she walked into the engineering bay, data tablet under her arm. Engineering had a different sort of feel to it, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on but that made her breath come in little forced gasps all the same. The engine room was mess, more so than before, the engine in a complete state of disarray. “Hello?” she called.

  An annoyed grunt met her first, before a red faced Augment stuck his head out the engine block itself: Rami. “What do you want?”

  She held the data table
t like a shield. “Where’s Kieran?”

  Rami pushed himself out of the open access tube and was across the floor standing in front of her in an instant. “Why are you looking for him?”

  “Um.” She glanced at the tablet, reminding herself. “I’m the First Officer, I’m in charge of work schedule and ship resource allocation. I came to see if there was anything that he needed.”

  “Yeah, there is something we need,” he said. “I need for that crackpot everyone believed was an engineer to not have done this to the poor engine.”

  The tablet slipped in her arms from the shock of it. “Sorry?”

  “We found the bomb Kieran was setting. He’s not in Engineering anymore, and neither should you be.”

  Her pulse raced erratically — a bomb? Kieran?

  Rami pushed into her. “We don’t need you in here,” he said. “Now go.”

  All her instincts told her to flee, but she held her ground. “I’m a soldier of the United Earth Central Army, and this is a Central Army ship. I’m here to help.”

  “Oh, like when you locked us all in Evangecore, to help?”

  “I—. We didn’t know.” Rayne pressed her lips together.

  “You’re lucky I don’t lock you away like I did him.” Rami turned away, grabbing a piece of the engine block. With a roar, he ripped it from its mooring and sent it bouncing across the floor. “The engine has to be completely stripped. I don’t even know if it’s fixable.” He stormed across the room, with his arm draped dramatically across his head. “It’s completely insane that he was allowed to even be in here. These circuits are all wrong, the connections totally botched.”

  “I-I’ve always though Kieran was a very good engineer,” she managed.

  “No,” he shook his head, still pacing. “That’s what he wanted us all to think. But he was a traitor, a saboteur.”

  Rayne bit her tongue. In the Gods we Trust. “Central Army officers have the necessary training to run the ship.”

  “This is an Augment ship now. God back to your quarters, lieutenant.”

  “I’ve been aboard this ship for years. I can help you.”

  “Get out,” Rami snarled.

  A firm hand gripped her arm, tugging her backwards. “I’m sorry for what happened before. We didn’t know,” she said.

  Rami stepped up to her, even as the hand pulled her away. “Don’t for a second think we believe you didn’t know what was going on. You UECs are all the same, with your cracked little Speakers. Who tortures children? Who holds them captive for decades and pits them against each other? Get out!” he snapped. “We Augments have been working together a long time. We take care of ourselves.”

  The hand dragged her from the engine room, Rami’s angry, red face left behind a wall of grey. “It’s not safe for you here,” said the Augment when he finally let her go, his blue eyes darting warily back to the engine room. “You need to go.”

  Her breath caught, and she turned to run reflexively. Any bravado long since used up in front of Rami. She pressed her data tablet into the Augment’s chest, trusting him to catch it before it fell. Her hands dropped into her pockets as she ducked her head, quickly walking across the bay. Her fingers caught on a data card, small and tucked away, nearly forgotten.

  Gal’s chip.

  In the time she’d had to know the Augments, she realized the UECs had been wrong — none of them were cold-hearted killing machines. But Rami was different. He could not be predicted, and he had taken control of the ship.

  It couldn’t hurt to have an extra layer of protection. Just in case. It was still their ship. Gal was still the captain and she was still his first officer. Regardless of how complicated the mess became, she still served the Gods and the Central Army.

  Carefully, so no one would see, she stepped to an open console right beside the exit doors. She tapped into the system and plugged the chip into a data receptacle. An icon appeared, the program uploading rapidly, then it flashed to tell her the transfer was complete.

  She pulled the card from the console and left quietly, crushing the data chip between her thumb and forefinger. Gal had always been trustworthy, a good man to his very core. It was something she’d known about him from the very first moment they’d met, and never doubted. This was the same.

  TWELVE

  THE RECEPTIONIST, JOYCE, NODDED WITH a serene smile as Halud passed her desk. “Be strong,” she muttered to him.

  He gripped the handrail of the staircase. The summons had come not five minutes ago, and Halud had already delayed too long. It was an honour to serve the Speakers and they demanded immediate response.

  He knocked once and pushed open the door to Hap Lansford’s ornate office. His feet made soft thumps as he walked across the room to the desk.

  The Speaker watched him the entire way. “I heard there was almost a problem with the report on the Xenoralia vaccine, Halud.”

  Halud clenched his hands on the arms of his chair. “I was surprised, was all.”

  Hap swirled a large cup of brandy in his hand as he sat behind his massive desk. “Why? The Red Fever was devastating.”

  Halud fought to keep his tongue in check.

  “Speak up.”

  He pursed his lips, choosing his words. “It was such a long time ago, I suppose I hadn’t thought there was a vaccine in development.”

  Hap frowned. He leaned forward, arching over his girth with great difficulty, and started a queued recording. On the vid, Halud asked the question about vaccine reversion.

  “I thought I had shown you that lying does not work. You’re scared about the vaccine causing the disease.”

  Swallowing heavily, Halud’s cracked voice came out as less than whisper: “Yes.”

  Hap stood, a smile bloating his once handsome face. “The Gods are good, Halud. This vaccine is a wondrous gift.”

  His mouth too dry to swallow, Halud could only blink.

  “Do you have so little faith?” Massive hands reached out and shook Halud’s chair. “Do you believe us only to be creations of evil? Look at all of the things the Gods have achieved.”

  Hap turned away, moving to a particular segment of the floor-to-ceiling mural that covered the entirety of one wall. He beckoned for Halud to join him.

  The mural depicted the Rock of Antiche, the Five Gods standing around it. It was the story of the beginning, and Halud knew it well.

  “When our ancestors first came to Earth, it was a terrible, barren place. Most of the world was dust and stone. Beyond the mountains lay the seas, the only water too sulphuric to drink. There were no grasses, no grains, no plants of any kind. Human beings emerged, cold and thirsty and hungry, but there was nothing to satiate their needs. They lay dying.

  “Then, the Gods came to them. Faith lifted them up and turned them to work, even when they could barely stand. Knowledge showed them the way to plant the crops that would feed them. Strength dug the well that would water them. Prudence built the shelters that protected them from the heat and the cold and the storms and the light. Fortitude healed them of their wounds, and showed them all they could achieve despite the many hardships.”

  The words were as familiar to Halud as his own breath.

  Hap moved to the next depiction, a baby surrounded by shining light. “The Gods departed, but they left a piece of themselves for us, so that we could always be guided. For generations, this has been passed down, the gift passing from father to son, mother to daughter.” The next image was of a battle, one of Hap’s ancestors holding a bloody spear. “Through the ages, the Gods have always prevailed.” The rest of the painting was dedicated to Strength, his, and sometimes her, muscular body on full display, tearing and lifting and shredding and stabbing.

  Physically, it was a far cry from the man Halud saw before him.

  “What are you going to do with the vaccine?” Halud asked.

  “It is the Will of the Gods, Halud. We will do what they ask of us.”

  Halud frowned.

  “You will do i
t too.” Hap turned on him, his face darker than any night or warped vaccine Halud had ever seen. “Need I remind you the Comrade is on her way to Junk as we speak?”

  Halud pressed his fists to his sides to keep the from shaking, mustering as much bravado into his voice as he could. “My sister is not a thing for you to play with. She isn’t a tool to make me do exactly as you say. Tell me what you plan to do with the vaccine.”

  “Oh, Halud.” Hap chuckled and returned to his chair. “The infection that changed your sister was not my fault. But what happens to her next will rest squarely with you.”

  THIRTEEN

  THE UECAS COMRADE TORE INTO space, shot out of its gravity hole on the far side of Junk. Commandant Amelia Mallor stood at the central control hub, her hands tensed on the metal railing.

  There was something here that unsettled her. It was not simply the shame of having a job completed haphazardly, the certain death of the fallen freightship not confirmed. Nor was it enduring the surreptitious stare from her first officer. It was a quiet and unnatural thing in the back of her mind.

  The ship glided soundlessly through space, the small magnetic moon rotating rapidly on the large view screen that surrounded the front wall of the ship. There was a disturbance on the surface, a long crack that was a darker colour than the rest of the moon, but the rotation made it impossible to see more clearly from this distance.

  Amelia caught herself drumming her fingers on the edge of her console, and quickly suppressed the nervous movement.

  The pilot shifted the steering sphere, the thrusters adjusting their course slightly. The view screen changed from the magnified image to a clear window, showing them actual space.

  “Scan the moon,” she ordered. She kept her expression stony, but her hand opened and squeezed closed repeatedly.

  The Operations officer replied: “There is too much magnetic activity, Ma’am. I’m not getting a clear reading.”

  She glared at the man. She considered ripping out his trachea, but the magnetic field of the moon was not his fault.