Raiders (2 page)

“Guys, here.”

A
urelia tried to open her eyes but she could not. It felt as if something fluffy kept them closed, soft pads perhaps but that was only a guess. She tried to move her left arm. The result was a sound like the motor of a tiny drill as it spun itself up. A resistance prevented any further movement as what sounded like two pieces of dry metal smacked one against the other reported a sudden terminus of motion. As Aurelia squirmed her body around she heard a voice, female. “She’s awake.”

“Hold still for a second Aurelia.” She sensed a fingertip pushed against her left eyebrowand then on her right. She felt gauze married with tape retreat from her eyes. A woman stood over her. She appeared blurred and heavily back-lit against the room’s brightness. As Aurelia’s eyes adjusted to the light the blurred woman resolved herself froma vague and smudged spirit into a sharp, perklined girl maybe in her mid twenties or so. She wore an all grey uniform, a paper filter face-mask, some kind of a head-net. Aurelia guessed that she perhaps stood about 165 centimeters tall.
It's hard to tell how tall someone is when you are lying down
, Aurelia rationalized. The girl’s hair was all tied up inside the head-net which obscured its color and shape. “Hi. I’m Kiera. I am your nurse-tech,” she announced with a pleasant overture with singsong overtones laced around the edges. “You are in Medical Zone Five.” She placed her right hand on Aurelia's legs. “Don’t move Aurelia, we have you on the Circulator.” As Kiera explained this Aurelia turned her head to observe a large machine. The device whirled away with pumps and sensors and tubes nested on its face, only a meter from Aurelia’s bed. The machine’s faceplate announced its manufacture,
Series Seven, Gambro+Fresenius International
with
letters embossed onto a plain business-like face. “You are still on the machine now. We accessed your femoral arteries so if you bend your leg the whole thing goes all wonky. Okay? Do you understand?”

“Okay.” Aurelia purposely avoided the sight of her left arm. She had already guessed what was there. A bio-prosthetic assist that was nothing like her original arm. “What is this Circulator thing doing to me?” She asked.

Kiera smiled her face forward, genuine. “Just about everything really.”

“What do you mean, everything?”

Kiera said, “The Circulator takes care of everything, all the respiratory functions. It samples all electrolytes continuously and corrects them in your bloodstream. It gives you auto-pressor medications sometimes, if you need it, or dilator medicines or artificial cell packs. Cleans your blood of waste products too but way faster than the old dialysis. Hydrostatically induced high-spin reverse osmosis, that's the technical yip for how it does that.”

Aurelia crumpled her eyebrows as if Kiera explained the Circulator' purpose in eleventh century Malayalam or Mandarin, neither of which she understood at all. “What the hell does all that mean exactly?”

Kiera raised her palms up in an apologetic gesture. “Oh I’m sorry, really. I’ve been working on you for sixteen hours now. I’m a little wiry.” She chuckled nervously. “Basically the Circulator has been your kidneys, your pancreas, your stomach, liver and lungs for the past thirty-one days. Oh, and we had to use perfusion-assist mode so it was kind of your heart, a heart-helper-outter if you will for awhile there, but that’s off now.” She leaned close to Aurelia’s left ear and whispered. “Our nickname for the Circ is the
pump-n-dump
. You didn’t hear me say that though.” She scrunched her nose for a second.

“Thanks. When will I get out of here?”

“I think you’ll be patched up in about three days, maybe four? We’ll get you off the Circulator machine maybe tonite though, that is if you pass the weaning synthesis trial. You went septic in the middle of all this.” Kiera nervously adjusted her head-net and frowned slightly. “It was touch and go for a week but we pulled you out of it. Even so you're gonna need some work, Aurelia. Rehab that is. Your muscles are thin. We’ll worry about that later though.” She smiled with authentic pretension and then raised her eyebrows a half centimeter. She pointed to Aurelia's left arm. “The prosthetic took to your body great though. It innervated right into your brachial plexus. Textbook grafting. You are lucky because that’s a tough one to replace.” Kiera pointed to Aurelia’s new bio-prosthetic. “For most patients the brachial cutaneous nerve is usually never fixed up quite right.”

“I heard you say that I’m lucky but everything else you said before and after meant nothing to me. But again, thanks.” Aurelia lowered her head back onto the bed pillow.

“Okay, just rest up. I will have to do some more things here. Do you want the NoSound Cancellers or no?”

Aurelia considered it for a moment. “No I’m fine. I’ll just zone out if that’s okay with you.”

“Are you sure? The Circulator makes a nerve wracking sound when it spins up. Most patients complain about it. It scares some even.”

“No.” Aurelia closed her eyes.

“Very well. I’ll be right near if you need me. If I am in another pod just focus your eyes at the big red plus sign on the wall over there for four seconds.” Kiera pointed to the far wall. “That’ll activate a call signal and I’ll be here in a hop.”

“Okay.”

“Okay then. Let me know if you need me.” Kiera skirted behind the Circulator machine and then out of sight. Aurelia scrutinized the wall clock. It was ten forty-two in the morning. She closed her eyes. She felt sore and achy all over, even behind her eyes. She scooted her hips about three centimeters off-center which she guessed she wasn’t supposed to do.

“Oh Christ,” Aurelia mumbled as she covered her eyes with her right hand. She thought about the Raiders a little and then wondered where her boyfriend was. She tried to wrap her mind around her new bio-prosthetic. Could ever get used to it? There was no way to tell. Before long, she fell fast asleep.

A brush on her forehead woke her up. “Hey it’s just me,” a man's voice, familiar. Aurelia attempted to refocus on her new visitor, this time a relieving sense of calm blanketed her after she heard a recognizable voice for the first time in what seemed like forever.

It was Julian.

Julian was four years younger than her, twenty-five. They started to go out one night after celebrating their graduation from the Academy, the Polar City’s military training center. Her training was with the Reconnaissance And Securities Division and his specialty was heavy ordnance maintenance. The graduate numbers were so small that each Division only passed four or maybe five students a year, about seventy or thereabouts all told. It seemed kind of silly to have a separate graduation party for each tiny group. So, they celebrated together. The more the merrier.

They arrived at the party separately with their groups of friends in tow. The more Julian drank the more shy and reclusive he became. She remembered watching him almost melt right into the furniture that night. Aurelia visually inspected him in carefully timed half-second glances when Julian was focused elsewhere, as women often do when they see someone they like but she, unlike Julian, was no wallflower. Two drinks and she became some kind of a hellraiser. After five drinks she temporarily transformed herself into a talkative sanguine. But after ten drinks in, all bets were off. After ten, she gets what she wants or somebody somehow gets either screamed at, laughed at or hurt.

Julian parked himself at a vacant table with two of his buddies from the Academy. They said little to each other and observed the goings-on amidst the shuffled and pickled graduates. Aurelia approached him after only six drinks. “So Julian!” She belted out. “You picked maintenance and now you’re going to hide while we...” She stammered slightly but somehow managed to hold her drink perfectly level.

“Yeah, while you what?” Julian rebutted, secretly amused at her display.

“While we go out to the front and knock 'em down!” She laughed uncontrollably and raised her arms high into the air. You be sure and spot us from your safe little office!”

Julian responded, “Yeah well your pea shooter isn’t going to do you a whole lotta good against an enemy roller!”

They spoke to each other as if they were strangers although they were anything but. Aurelia knew Julian for about as long as she could remember. She had always carried a torch for him but never really pursued the thought. She raggedly plopped her drunken self right into his lap and continued to keep her drink from spilling.

Julian froze every muscle and enjoyed the moment but simultaneously he felt paralyzed at the sudden invasion of his personal space. “Yeah, uh Aur..What the hell ?” He asked with a slightly nervous twinge.

Aurelia said, “Ah stop freaking out Julian. No worries now!” Amazingly, not a single word slurried. She snorted and laughed some more while she wrapped her arm around his neck. And then she spilled half her drink right onto Julian’s shirt. “Damn it! Shit I’m sorry! Wait I’ll grab a bar rag.”

Julian lightly reached for her right upper arm, soft so she could go if she wanted but hoping that she wouldn’t. “No it’s just a beer. Relax.”

“Y’sure?” Aurelia asked.

“Yeah, sure.” Julian produced a modest smile and waved his hand down in a dismissive gesture. As he did so Aurelia reflexively reached out and held onto his upper arm. She silently feared that the featherlight connection between them would somehow evaporate. So Aurelia sat there right on his lap side-saddle while their friends shuffled around and experimented with what they believed were new and exciting ways of getting intoxicated.

One of the girls from Julian’s class jumped into the Light Harp box and danced inside. The laser beams crossed themselves against her body. The spectacle looked amusing enough but she could not coordinate her moves to the fast tempo dance song so after thirty seconds she realized her dexterity was a loss. The girl stared at the D.J. and with her hands cupped against her mouth she shouted, “Hey Denel! Switch it to auto sync!! Auto sync!!”

Denel who presently performed the duties of D.J. and bartender nodded back amidst the cacophony of music and light and voices all round. He reached down to his console, threw two switches and then gave the girl an 'okay' signal with his hand. Her poorly timed motions flickered against the lasers with a synthesized alignment that was actually quite beautiful and entrancing for the few people who bothered to even watch her. It was all in good fun and nobody really cared what she was doing, though. Aurelia and Julian simply stared at the possessed young dervish as she glistened in the light, as if Julian and Aurelia had done this kind of thing together a hundred times before. Aurelia took another healthy swig from her beer jar.
Wait no that's not mine
she thought, her drink was all over Julian’s shirt now.

“Hey that’s my beer. Get your own!” Julian threw Aurelia a serious look for a moment and then released it with a friendly hand that waved. “Ah, I’m just kiddin'. Go ahead.” Again he smiled but not overly so, just lightly raised around the edges. Aurelia drank some more of Julian's beer and then let out a subdued burp that went undetected thanks to the gyrating distractions created by Light Harp Girl. The gathering started to feel like something more than a simple graduation party, Aurelia thought. Maybe it was just the alcohol. Perhaps. Aurelia couldn’t be sure but at this point she definitely didn’t care any more.

She pivoted around in Julian’s lap and faced directly at him and straddled his lap. The bar chair rebelled against their abrupt change in in position and loudly creaked. Aurelia’s hair pushed forward, an unruly nest of oversized curls with some teased out waves of gold and dishwater blonde. She had to look slightly down at him as she poised her head just above.

And then she simply kissed him. She did not allow Julian to become accustomed to the kiss but it didn’t matter. They kissed some more. She paused and he offered her gently brushed strokes against her outer arm. They seemed to fit naturally together when they kissed.

The music paused and then D.J. Denel resounded, “Last call, let’s go people!” Aurelia peeled herself from Julian’s lap and said, “Be right back.” Julian nodded and she left with a wave as if she could somehow magically pin him to his chair with a spell.

A girl scuttled by Julian who wore nothing but standard-issue military underwear, a utility bra with one strap not doing its job terribly well and an eleven millimeter rifle that was slung vertically down her back. The weapon's barrel pointed straight down while its forestock rose to just above above her relatively short frame. Julian looked at the rifle’s receiver which made him appear as if he were staring at her ass.
It would take a brave soul to hit on that girl
, he mused to himself. Her rifle’s safety was on but it was still loaded.
Crazy girl, she's lucky if she doesn't hurt herself
, Julian thought.

Julian peeked down to his Personal Assistant armband. Wow, they had made out for forty minutes. He stared around at the ever-thinning crowd. A few buddies from school stumbled by, nodded and smiled at him “Julian hey, you wanna come with us? We’re gonna crash the Night Market,” one person said. But Julian waved them away.

“Maybe next time,” he answered. His friends nodded and then waved back. They herded themselves toward the exit.

Aurelia re-emerged from the smoke and laser filled ether. She had freshened up a little in the bathroom but it was hard to tell. The house lights were illuminated to thirty percent, just enough to be offensive to the intoxicated patrons but not so much that it was painful to them. ! I figured you had crawled out the bathroom window to escape,” he said with a smirk.

Aurelia motioned her palm toward the bathroom door. “Yeah well you know I tried to make a break for it but the window’s barred up pretty good in there.”

Julian smiled at her, grabbed her hand lightly and then looked at the floor.” He reposed and looked at Aurelia. The house lights drew up to about half-full. “So what do you want to do now?”

Aurelia dropped her eyelids low and said, “Seriously, you’re kidding.”