On Silver Wings (3 page)

Her blood pressure was up, she didn’t need the medical display on her left eye HUD to tell her that, which would have been a good thing except for the bruising on the inside of her skull. That was setting things ablaze inside her head, and screwing up her voluntary control over her implants and armor systems.

She’d had to power down the armor anyway, so that wasn’t too bad. At least she wasn’t a danger to anyone else from the muscle twitches setting off a power amped response. There wasn’t much she could do about the implant controls, however.

In the middle of the night, when the twitches first hit, she just tried to close her eyes and ignore them. Mixed signals sent information flashing across the OLED screens embedded in her eyes, filling her world with a hallucinogenic morass, turning her feverish dreams into unending nightmares as the neural misfires rolled uncontrollable images across the inside of her eyelids.

By morning the local medic woman found her rolling in her bunk, feverish from both her injuries and the heat being poured into her body by the lifesaving systems in her suit, and the bacteria in her body.

“God... she’s burning up,” Tara whispered, pushing a lock of dark hair from the soldier’s eyes, her hand coming back slick with sweat.

“Can you do anything?”

“I don’t know,” She replied, not looking up as the voice of Samuel Becker sounded from behind her. “She shouldn’t be this feverish.”

“Is it an infection?”

“No. I think it’s the concussion... but there hasn’t been time for an infection to set in...”

“She’s equipped with portable infrareds and nanite cell regen.”

Tara looked over her shoulder, eyes wide. “In this suit? But the power drain...”

“Is probably quite high,” Samuel replied, cutting her off, “but I imagine that her gear is a few generations ahead of what colonists get.”

“It might be killing her,” the medic frowned, “I... I just can’t tell.”

“She didn’t sleep last night...” Samuel replied, “the sentries said she tossed and turned all night. They’re spooked.”

“By what? She’s just one woman.”

Samuel’s lips twitched, “Well, they said her eyes glowed.”

The medic frowned, then leaned forward and pushed the soldier’s eyelids open. A moment later she hissed, leaning back, and sat stock still for a moment.

“What is it?”

“She has ocular implants... They’re active.” Tara replied, thinking furiously, “probably have been all night... She’s been seeing god knows what the entire night, no wonder she hasn’t gotten any sleep.”

“Is that causing her fever?”

“It’s not helping.” the medic replied, shaking her head. “I... I don’t know what to do.”

“Can’t she shut them off??” Becker asked, his voice becoming more concerned.

“If she could, she would have. Implants this advanced, they’re controlled by mapping unique neural responses...” Tara said softly, still thinking, “Oh lord... The concussion. It’s got to have skewed her responses. No... she can’t turn it off.”

“What do we do?”

“Send some men down to the stream for water... we’ll have to cool her down. Her own medical systems are killing her now.”

Hell is a state of being, not a physical place.

In all of the universe there are many places that fit the human definition of hell. Worlds filled with molten rivers and sulfur air, ice planets where the oxygen condenses into liquid and freezes like water, and barren moons with no air to regulate the environment and the temperature fluxes from zero to fifteen hundred degrees kelvin in a matter of moments.

But for all that, hell is not a physical place. Those places will kill you far quicker than a bullet from a gun, and with more mercy. Hell is being caught in a nightmare, out of control, and out of your mind.

Sorilla Aida knew Hell all too well, she was a frequent visitor.

This time, it was filled with numbers. Statistics, heartbeats, footfalls, voices, inventory reciepts, and casualties.

The heat was there this time too, burning from the inside.

Last time it had been cold, she remembered in a moment of lucidity. She hadn’t been able to stop shivering then. Not this time; she was slick with sweat, and the numbers of her own personal hell reported that most of it was being recycled back into the liquid pouch that lined the back of her armor.

The numbers just wouldn’t go away, no matter how much she tried.

‘
Proc, sleep mode
.’ She mouthed in her feverish dream, again demanding that the system shut down.

It did, flickering away in an instant, only to light back up a few seconds later when her face muscles jumped involuntarily.

She wanted to scream, a desire that built up deep down inside her, but she kept silent. Always stay quiet. Someone had told her that, a long time ago, but the name escaped her for the moment. The name did, but not the lesson. She let the urge to scream bubble and well deep down inside her, but only moaned slightly as she twisted her head and felt the pain rush through it.

Hell was so hot this time.

She wished she was back in the cold hell, just for a little while.

Sergeant Sorilla Aida knew hell, though, and knew that wishes were worthless there. Hell fed on wishes, turning their false hope into new torture.

She knew that, but couldn’t help making them anyway. That was the hell of it, after all.

*****

Water flowed from the stream to buckets to be poured on the feverish woman’s face and head every few minutes, a steady stream of people bringing the water in from the mountain stream to where the young woman in charge of the group’s medical ‘facility’ poured and dabbed the cool liquid on her patient.

As she did, the redheaded nurse puzzled over the situation. The woman’s implants had obviously gone haywire, their control inputs skewed by the concussion. The ocular implants were constantly firing, and Tara could only imagine the horror that would be.

It had been twenty hours now, at least, since the ocular displays had shorted. Twenty hours in which her patient’s body hadn’t been able to get any real rest in order to help its own healing.

Surprisingly she was healing well other than the head injury and fever. Her ribs seemed to have firmed up, and the few cuts she’d had were already pink with healed. The infrareds she had were well tuned, Tara could tell, and were considerably better than anything she’d had even when she had an actual hospital.

Unfortunately, infrareds were not intended for feverish patients.

“More water,” She ordered, “And bring me her equipment case... maybe I’ll be able to find a way into it this time.”

That was a forlorn hope, unfortunately. She’d already checked the case, but there wasn’t any way she could find to get into it. She had the wrong biometrics, couldn’t get a clear scan of her patient’s iris through the clutter of the implants, and it wouldn’t take a palm scan either for some reason.

She’d try again, though.

And, in the meantime, more water was the best she could do.

*****

The fever broke on the third day, after constant around the clock treatment from the people in the camp. It had happened suddenly, and Tara almost missed it because she was worn out herself. One moment her patient was wet and sweating, the next she was wet and shivering. Not uncommon in some cases, but it was the first time in this case. After that she checked the temperature and slumped in relief when it came back several degrees below the last check she'd made, almost down to normal.

The flow of water stopped, and within the hour the soldier stirred.

“Are you feeling better?” Tara asked her softly.

The Soldier nodded slowly, her voice halting. “Guess I’m back... again.”

Tara frowned, “What?”

She smiled tiredly, “Nothing.”

“Can you shut down your implants now?”

The Soldier blinked, her jaw moving, and then the glow in her eyes faded. Tara watched intently, and the soldier looked back at her with an intense gaze that she found discomforting. Long seconds passed, and when the glow didn’t return the soldier slumped back and closed her eyes.

“Thank god...”

Her whispered words were almost inaudible, but Tara heard them well enough. She let out a breath of relief herself as her soldier patient slipped into a sleep after more than thirty hours, and didn’t move again.

“Thank God,” the Nurse agreed, closing her own eyes as she rubbed them tiredly.

She got up and grabbed the closest person, “Watch her. Come get me when she wakes up. I need about a week’s sleep, and she probably needs two.”

*****

She didn’t take two weeks, not even two days, not quite anyway. Sergeant Aida awoke after thirty two hours, her fever well and truly broken, and her body healed and regenerated by the mechanical and biological systems she had been assigned. The light was streaming in through the walls and ceiling, as well as under the door frame and between the windows. The shades had been pulled on the windows, so they were about the only squares of black against the streaming light.

She flipped the toggle for her heads up displays, navigating the neurological interface with practiced ease, and closed her eyes again as a systems status glowed under the thin stretch of skin.

Damn it
. She thought grimly.

Suit power was all but shot, barely three percent above the minimum unlock state. She killed the extraneous systems, and toggled the suit lock to unseal the armor. The magnetic seals broke silently, but she left them as they were for the moment while she took stock of her surroundings.

There was a man in the room, snoring softly as he leaned against the far wall. His rifle leaning about eight feet from where he’d settled in for the night. She twitched slightly at that, sighing silently. Chances were the weapon didn’t have a round chambered either, and she wouldn’t have been completely shocked to find that the magazine wasn’t in the receiver, though she couldn’t see from where she lay.

It was a hunting weapon, used for food or protection, not war. So the man was a hunter, not a soldier. First rule of weapons for a hunter, she reminded herself, was safety. Don’t keep your weapon loaded, don’t store ammunition in the same place as the weapon, and keep trigger locks on it until it was ready for use.

Good rules for a hunter who may have children in the home, bad rules for a warzone.

She broke the seal on her armor, the chest flap making a sucking sound as it pulled away from her flesh. The oxygenated gel that both connected her body to the suit’s internal sensors and provided her with another line of defense against injury and infection clung to her skin as the armor pulled away, giving Sorilla that familiar sensation of being skinned as she peeled the segments back.

The noise should have woken the ‘guard’ posted to the hut, but he didn’t do more than snort and shift as she sat up, her nude form glistening in the streaming light as globules of suit gel slid off her skin.

Her head hurt when she moved, but it wasn’t unendurable. She lifted herself out of the armor and planted her feet on the packed dirt floor, where they instantly picked up a coating of earth and pebbles that clung to the remaining gel, piling up clumps of grains between her toes. She ignored it, wiping her skin clear of the majority of the gel with the ridge of her hand before clearing her throat.

The guard started slightly, then just stared as his eyes came into focus and he found himself looking at a nude woman just a few feet away. His stare intensified, eyes widening, slowly climbing her form while taking long ‘rest’ breaks at her hips and breasts, and then finally made it all the way up to her head.

Sorilla cocked her head to the left, her expression far from amused, “Get me my gear case.”

He nodded slowly, not moving.

“Now.”

He moved. Scrambling for the door. Sorilla sighed, shaking her head as he left, and walked over to the rifle he’d left behind. She picked it up and quietly checked the breech. Empty, as she’d guessed. The Magazine was locked, however, which was almost better than she’d expected.

Of course, that meant he’d just left a loaded weapon with the person he was apparently guarding.

Oy
. She rubbed the bridge of her nose tiredly.
Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed
.

*****

Tara rushed into the humble hut a few minutes after the man had come running out of it, dragging a towel and a small medical bag along with her. She found the soldier in the process of calmly wiping a blue-green gel from her skin, using the ridge of her hand as a scraping tool with methodical motions.

The Sergeant was a tall woman, slim but noticeably muscled. Her hair was cut shorter than was fashionable, though not to the shaven extreme that was often implied by entertainment dramas. Her body was probably fitter than would be considered attractive, the tough musculature development of her upper torso tightening and flattening her breasts, for example. While not bulging to the extent of professional bodybuilders, she was hard cut and more solidly blocky than most female fashions idealized.

She also had absolutely no concern for her nudity, Tara noticed idly. As a nurse nudity didn’t have much effect for her either, so she merely set her medical kit down and handed the towel across.

“Your supplies are being brought,” She said softly, opening the medical bag. “How are you feeling?”

“Better.” Sorilla replied, taking the towel and wiping herself down with hard scrubbing motions. “Good to be out of the mummy case, and a lot better to be in control of my implants again.”

“Does that happen often?” Tara asked softly, “The loss of control?”

“Never before, to me at least.” Sorilla said, not looking up. The rough towel was taking almost as much skin off her body as it was gel residue, but that was what she wanted. The dead skin cells had built up over the past several days, and she was in dire need of a thorough cleansing.

Any further questions were interrupted by the arrival of two men carrying the coffin sized case that Sorilla had jumped in with. She ignored their stares as she tossed the towel aside and palmed the biometric identification on the case to open it. It queried her Near Field Communications (NFC) implant, got the answer it wanted, and then slid open on compressed air pistons, hissing even as she reached in a drew out a pair of dark pants.