Chapter 12
Chapter 12
February – 3,390 BC
Earth: Crash site
Colonel Mikhail Mannuki’ili
MIKHAIL
A small, dark-winged Angelic stares across the chess board, his blue eyes sullen because he doesn't understand the game. An anxious tick counts out the seconds. He doesn't speak. But then, he never does.
"Tá sé do bhogadh,
[39]
Gabriel," I say.
The boy picks up his black bishop and makes an L-shaped move to capture my white queen.
"Ní sin an dóigh go bhfuil píosa ceaptha a bhogadh!" I chide him. That's not the proper move!
The boy stands up, his expression dark. With a chubby arm, he sweeps the chess pieces off the board. The pieces tinkle onto the floor, the seconds counted out by the too-slow clock.
A knock interrupts my rebuke. The door explodes inward. Backlit by the sun stands the largest lizard I have ever seen.
He raises his arm and points at the chess board.
In his hand, he carries a sword…
Mikhail bolted upright and swung at the phantasm, but already the dream had faded, leaving him with nothing but the sword in his hand and the memory of a pair of sullen blue eyes staring across the chess board, gripping his white queen. His chest heaved as he fought a sense of rage and loss.
"Not real, not real, not real, not real…" he gasped.
Pain stabbed into his lung, reminding him he was supposed to be dead.
He took long, deep, shuddering breaths, fighting the urge to kill someone, to hunt them down and destroy them. The emotion sat like rotted meat, screaming at him to
do something.
But the memory had already sunk back into his subconscious, a foul creature lurking beneath rancid, swampy water.
He glanced at the fair creature which lay, asleep, in the bunk across from him. Wingless. Female. Swarthy complexion. Lush, pink lips. And a matching pink nipple which had escaped from the blanket she'd slid beneath last night, utterly naked except for a loincloth, leaving him gaping like an idiot.
Her chest rose and fell in a peaceful sleep, oblivious to his distress.
Oblivious to the tightening in his loins.
"Not real," he whispered.
He wasn't sure whether he meant the nightmare, or the sleeping woman.
He stared at the weapon which had found its way into his hand. Long and slender, it had materialized right out of the nightmare, a primitive weapon on a modern spaceship. He had no memory of it, other than the hilt felt familiar, but he knew it was his. It felt
good
there. Powerful. Insurance against the boogieman.
Ninsianna murmured something in her sleep. He closed his eyes and tried to remember a life before her, but his memory started, and ended, with his first image of her, a benevolent spirit stepping out of a golden ray of sunlight.
He sheathed the sword before he terrorized her more than he already had by firing his pulse pistol at her boyfriend.
He
might not have a past, but she obviously did. It was angry, and jealous, and he was certain they hadn't heard the last of the black-eyed man she called Jamin.
The room spun as he kicked off the blanket and slid to the edge of his bed, wincing when his broken wing banged against the empty upper bunk. The splint forced his wing into an awkward angle, making it difficult to maneuver in the tight confines of his ship. When she'd re-splinted it last night, he'd almost passed out from the pain.
Ninsianna rolled towards him, causing the blanket to slide completely off her breast. His crotch tightened.
She
didn't have inhibitions against nudity, but
he
obviously did, because every time she came near him, it felt as though a thousand bells and alarms all went off at once.
"You'd think I've never seen a naked woman before?"
Not that he could remember. He couldn't remember anything. Not even his own name. For all he knew, he'd stolen the dog tags from some poor, slain soldier's body and was nothing but a thief?
"No," he whispered. In his gut, he knew that wasn't true.
He took shallow breaths until the sense of vertigo subsided, unable to fully inflate his lung. The only reason he hadn't bled out was because the accursed ceiling strut had stemmed the flow of blood until she'd pulled it out, and then she'd had the wherewithal to stitch him back together, quick.
Across the aisle, Ninsianna's pink lips curved up into a smile. His
own
lip twitched upward, an awkward gesture, unfamiliar, as though he'd never done it before. He suppressed the emotion. There. That felt more natural. Watch. Don't react. Observe without making it obvious he studied her.
Who was she? Why had she saved him? And why did it feel like he'd just won the mother of all galactic wagers?
Every ounce of training, and he knew he must have training by virtue of the
Colonel
stamped onto his dog tags, warned him to exercise caution in the face of the unknown.
That tightening in his crotch grew more urgent, almost frantic. Maybe it
wasn't
arousal? When was the last time he'd visited the latrine, anyways?
He glanced at his wrist-computer, partially buried beneath the sleek, composite splint he'd found in his first responder kit.
Two days?
He'd been asleep for two whole days since Ninsianna had half-carried him back into his ship? No wonder it felt like his bladder might explode.
He heaved himself up, careful not to knock into Ninsianna with his splinted wing. A sense of vertigo threatened to topple him, but he gripped the edge of the bunk and ordered his feet to carry him forward.
Move, soldier! Onward, march! That's an order Colonel Nobody!
The amount of effort necessary to keep one foot moving in front of the other shoved all thought of memory loss out of his under-oxygenated brain. He stumbled into the galley kitchen, dimly lit by a couple of tiny LED lights, and navigated through debris cast out during the crash. Deep within his bones he
knew
he would never tolerate anything this disorganized. While he couldn't
remember
his ship, his body
knew
exactly where everything should be, especially the latrine.
He urinated in the hopper without thinking about it or even wondering where, in the room, it would be. When he touched the handle, the substance disappeared, but the biomatter recycling system failed to give a reassuring hum.
He stared into the mirror.
The face which stared back at him was neither familiar, nor unfamiliar. It didn't feel alien, but it didn't feel like anything which belonged to him, either. Only his eyes. Those were similar to the boy in the nightmare.
"Who are you?" he asked.
The man in the mirror's lips moved at the same time that his did.
He reached out and traced his features. Dark brown hair, cropped into a short cut. Chalk white skin, mostly due to blood loss. High cheekbones. A straight nose. No beard, not even a shadow of one, unlike the men who'd attacked Ninsianna.
Dried blood clung to his skin despite Ninsianna's attempts to wash it off. More blood seeped into the clean shirt he'd changed into last night—no—three nights ago. His broken wing had solidified into an ugly, brown clump that smelled like a slaughterhouse.
"You're out of uniform, soldier," he told the man in the mirror.
"Yes, Sir," the man in the mirror answered back. "I'll get cleaned up, Sir. Just as soon as I remember where my uniforms are stored."
His hands found the faucet without any thought or fumbling, but when he turned the handle, nothing happened.
He stared down at the sink with dismay. Hadn't it worked last night?
Three nights ago
, he corrected himself.
Had it really been that long?
He stared mournfully at the sonic shower. For all he knew, his species never took a bath, but from the way he cringed every time the stiff, bloody fabric brushed against his leg, he suspected he tended to be fastidious in his grooming. He could almost
feel
the water biting into his skin, soothing away his pain.
"No problem—" said the man in the mirror. "As soon as you can walk without stumbling face-first into the dirt, go outside and bathe in that stream."
In the cupboard he found a spare uniform. Olive drab cargo pants. A matching shirt. Clean underwear. Socks. All impeccably clean and folded to fit in a compact space.
He took it out and placed it on the sink.
"So what else can you tell me, soldier?" he asked the man in the mirror.
The man in the mirror stared back, his blue eyes worried.
He stripped off his shirt and stared at the gaping hole in his chest. Red and angry, it sank past two shattered ribs which would probably never heal. Primitive black thread pulled the hole together like the mouth of a purse. The skin had begun to fuse at a rate he suspected was far faster than normal.
At least he'd stopped coughing up blood.
He pressed his fingers against the savaged flesh, past the ribcage, into parts of his body no mortal creature was meant to touch. The flesh pulsated rhythmically against his fingertips. It was a good heart. Strong, despite its brush with death. Whatever the reason, he'd been given a second chance.
A chance to
do something.
It screamed at him with every heartbeat.
Complete the mission. Complete the mission. Complete the mission…
It might help if he could remember what the mission had been?
One by one he transferred the rank pins over to his clean shirt. A pair of silver wings which said
'Protect and Serve.'
A golden leaf which he
knew
meant
'Colonel'
even though he had no memory of ever leading men. And the final pin, a circle around a tree which said
'Second Galactic Alliance,'
along with the inscription,
'In light, there is order, and in order there is life
.'
He fondled the tree. It
meant
something. He knew it. While he couldn't
remember
it, deep within his gut an emotion whispered
'this is something you will serve with your dying breath.'
Gingerly, he undid the modern wrist brace he'd used to replace the splint. While less swollen than three days ago, the flesh had turned an ominous shade of black and purple. He pressed against the bone and was rewarded with a mind-shattering stab of pain.
"Yup. It's broken."
He pulled his clean shirt over the broken arm, rolled up the sleeve, and then slid the composite brace back over his wrist. A scar testified he'd broken that wrist before.
He pulled tight the straps, and then fished out some analgesics out of the medical kit. He swallowed them without water since the faucet wasn't working.
If only he had a proper brace for his broken wing?
The limb reared up behind him as far as the knee-joint, and then it stuck out stiffly to his wingtip, five meters of feathers trapped uselessly in a primitive brace. His long, brown primary feathers jutted helter-skelter. Yeah, they'd grow back
.
But in the meantime, the broken feathers would destabilize him.
He picked up a feather-brush and preened each feather, straightening the vanes which weren't outright broken, and picked out the dried blood. A sensation of dread settled into his gut. Did Ninsianna know what she was doing? To splint a limb which she, herself, did not possess? What if he wasn't able to fly again? He had no way to ask her. Right now, their vocabulary was limited to perhaps three dozen words.
"Computer?" he asked. "Analyze her language?"
The AI remained silent.
Did the ship even
have
an AI?
Of course it did. One didn't fly across the heavens without some form of advanced computing.
He set a goal.
Fix the computer.
It would tell him who he was, and in the meantime, it would keep his mind occupied with something other than his distressing
lack
of thought.
The dried, bloody cargo pants scraped against his lower body like a harsh, iron suit. The new pair felt soft and crisp, worn before, but not too often. He finished transferring over the rest of his equipment: gun belt, survival knife, pulse pistol.
He held up the weapon he'd fired, purely by instinct, at Ninsianna's unwelcome 'friends.' The power indicator light blinked like an angry red eye.
He was low on ammunition…
He felt for a spare power cartridge, but his side pouch was empty.
"Computer," he said. "Inventory the ship."
The computer's silence was almost as terrifying as the gaping emptiness within his own mind. He'd been shot down on this planet and had no idea who his enemy was. Had he sent a distress beacon? How would he defend himself if that Jamin fellow came back?
Without his memory, how long could he survive?
He finished buttoning up his uniform and stared at the stranger in the mirror. There was something missing. While he couldn't remember it, he
knew
by the way his hand kept creeping up to touch his chest. Something which belonged inside his pocket wasn't there.
What?
His mind remained frustratingly, maddeningly blank.
He fished through the bloody shirt he'd just pulled off his body, but the pockets were empty, as were his pants. Nor had it fallen upon the floor, whatever
it
was.
"Maybe it's not important?"
His empty hand said otherwise.
He stared at his reflection, making faces, until the man in the mirror settled into an unreadable expression he knew, deep down in his gut, was his natural way of relating to the world.
His wrist computer beeped. He stared at the display screen.
.
GST - 152,323.02 - 05:00 - Light Emerging
.
Oh-five-hundred? Time for a soldier to get up. Light emerging? Wherever he had come from, it must now be sunrise.
The digital display changed from 05:00 to 05:01. That small change of time, only a single minute, instilled terror in a way his injuries had failed to do.
Three days since he'd crashed? And nobody had come looking for him?
Did anybody even care that he was gone?