Concussion

((Co-Authored with Ciarente))

"Commander Invelen. Commander Invelen, sitrep, please."

The voice faded in and out, or maybe that was her.

Amieta tried to wipe the blood from her eyes but the servos in her arm just keened and squealed uselessly. Shit. She blinked, blinked again, and her vision cleared enough to show a shattered flight console, tilted at a strange angle. All the angles she could see looked wrong. Twisted. Jarred.

I'm in a shuttle. The shuttle's broken. I'm hurt.

I guess we crashed.

We?

She could still hear the voice that had woken her through her earpiece. Male. Ishukone accent. "Commander Invelen. Commander Invelen, sitrep, please."

Invelen. That's me, right? Commander - guess I'm in charge.


She turned her head painfully to look around the rest of the cockpit. Most of the pilot was slumped over the controls. Another body against the wall, eyes open and blank.

Guess I fucked up, too.

Or somebody did.

A wave of dizziness, then, black dots dancing before her eyes. The voice was still talking. "Commander Invelen. Commander Invelen. Amieta."

Then it went dark.

"Amieta," Val said.

She glanced over. Like her Val was... eight? Nine? It didn't matter, he was always so serious. "Tell Supervisor we all had the idea. It wasn't just Jan."

Jan

The stocky boy was standing just past Val, with that stubborn expression he got sometimes. Of course it had been his idea. Jan had found them a place, a new place to explore.... somewhere. Somewhere they weren't supposed to go, and the three of them had been caught.

Amieta opened her mouth to explain, of course they had all thought of it, it hadn't been Jan's idea. Val interrupted her though, "Amieta."

She winced and blinked, something in her eyes.

"Amieta, please respond," Val said. No, not Val. Val was the past. She groped for the name that went with the voice she could hear and found it. Captain Night. The shuttle. The crash.

"Captain." A dry whisper. She put more effort into it, "Captain Night. I'm here."

"Do you remember what happened?"

I think... the shuttle crashed?"

"Can you tell me what year it is?"

It took Amieta a moment to remember, "106. It's 106."

"Situation? Injuries?"

"I'm ..." Amieta tilted her head, fighting a wave of nausea, trying to see what was keeping her from sitting up, "Left arm and left leg are pinned. Some kind of structural support. The pilot and copilot are dead. My leg - I'm bleeding. A lot. I think I hit my head too. Feel sick."

Captain Night's voice was calm. "Can you reach the first aid kit?"

She tried, couldn't suppress a groan at the movement, her right arm moving in jerks and starts as it recovered function.

She tried again, felt the prosthetic respond, and got a fingertip on the strap. "Yes. Hold on."

The mini-AIMED that came with the kit was no substitute for the real deal, but the info it could give was bad enough.

"Commander?"

"Gonna need evac pretty soon, sir," she said, fumbling one-handed with the kit. "Trying to get a tourniquet on ... I'm not in real good shape, here."

"The storm that brought your shuttle down is peaking," Captain Night said. "We'll have a medivac team down there as soon as they can get through the front."

Amieta grunted acknowledgement, tightening the bandage as hard as she could. The blood seeping from her thigh slowed.

"The storm, I remember. I came up to the cockpit to ask... to ask about the storm. Our flight status." Came up to the cockpit from the passenger compartment where the rest of the team ...

Amieta held still, held her breath, listened. Silence. "Sir, the others, Sarakai ... "

She tried to turn enough to see through the cockpit door and lost his next words to a stab of pain. Spirits fuck my ancestors.

"Commander? Amieta?"

"Fine," she gasped. "I'm fine."

"Are you sure?"

Are you sure?

She stood in front of his desk, shoulders square, hands clasped behind her back and eyes fixed on the wall above his head, absolutely regulation. "Yes, sir, I'm sure."

"Ms Voutelen's employment history is a little ... irregular," Captain Night said, browsing through the red-flag-riddled file in front of him before looking back up at her.

"So is mine, sir," Amieta pointed out.

"Not for the same reasons."

"No sir. But Sara is loyal, she's experienced, and she's damn good at what she does. Those are all things you need in a CTO, especially when your XO is still learning her job."

He studied her for a moment, as hard to read as always, and then held out the file. "Very well. I'll trust your judgment on this, Amieta."

"Yes sir, thank you sir," she said, not following his lead into informality. Hecould risk forming bad habits. For Amieta, there was more at stake. There's already scuttlebutt that I got this job for being the 'Captain's woman.' One careless word in public from her and the rumor-mill would explode.

She took the file. "Permission to call Ms Voutelen, sir?"

Captain Night nodded. "Of course. You're dismissed, Commander."

Amieta saluted, turned precisely on her heel, and left. In the privacy of her own office she made the call, getting Sarakai's recorded message. "Good news, Sara. Sara? Sara, you there?"

It hurt to raise her voice. "Sara? Sara, you there?" There was rain coming through the rent in the fuselage, cold droplets splashing off the open eyes of the co-pilot. "Sara!"

Silence.

"Sir, Sara, she's not answering. Sir?"

Silence over the comm line, too.

"Sir? Captain? Captain?"

Nothing. She was the only one left alive, the only one of all her people and there was no-one -

No. That wasn't here. That wasn't now. That was -

She slammed the door on the past and tried again. "Captain?"

This time Captain Night answered and Amieta closed her eyes against a wave of relief. "Captain, Sara, Colonel Voutelen - "

"Is uninjured," Captain Night said quickly. "The cockpit and the crew compartment separated on impact. Most of the fuselage is a few dozen meters above you."

"Is everyone - ?"

"Some serious injuries, but nothing immediately life threatening. The cockpit took most of the impact, broke off and ended up in a ravine."

"Thank the ancestors," Amieta whispered. "I thought - "

"The rest of the team are in no danger," Captain Night said, almost as if he knew what she'd been about to say.

Of course he knows.

She'd told him. She'd been drunk, spirits, he'd been drunk that first night, the one and only time she'd seen it.

The day of her brother's funeral, not that she could tell anyone at the service that it was her brother, standing there in long sleeves and silk gloves, behind the thin protection of forged papers. An old girlfriend, she told anyone who asked. Salt on the wound, not even being able to claim him, the brother she'd waited just too long to visit, and her now a stranger on the Ishukone Station she'd grown up on.

Maybe that was why she'd looked twice and then a third time at the tall man with pilot implants on his neck marking him out as just as much a stranger on the station as she. Up close, he had the bland, interchangeable good looks of a tubey, and he met her gaze with only a hint of surprise.

"I'm Amieta," she said, holding out her hand.

He shook it, and if he felt the steel beneath the silk there was no sign of it in his expression. "Pleased to meet you," he said courteously. "I'm Captain Silver Night."

I'm right, I'm wrong, Amieta thought, and then: He's still holding my hand.

I'm right.

"Do you want to get out of here?" she said. "Maybe get a drink?"

Captain Night released her hand, gaze still steady on her face. "I would like that, yes," he said.

And that'd been that.

Funny the things your life turns on.

That decision to go to a funeral ...

She looked down at the blood still seeping from her leg. Might just lead to mine.

If the Ancestors have a sense of humor, they must be having a good laugh at this one.

Not that she had any ancestors, in the way most people meant them.Tube-bred, guess maybe there's a petrie dish somewhere that might count.

And Jan, of course.

Jan ...

She could feel herself greying out again and fought against it. Focus. Don't let go. "Captain?"

"I'm here." There was a subtle difference on the comm line, a low hum behind his voice. Engines. Spirits, he's on the rescue shuttle.

Probably flying it. Damn unprofessional. What happens if the Captain crashes trying to retrieve the XO?

The thought turned her cold, or maybe it was the rain chilling her. At least it's water. So thirsty. Somewhere at the back of her mind was the vague awareness that she shouldn't be so thirsty. Bad sign. Of something.

She licked raindrops from her lips and fought another surge of dizziness. Fight. Focus. Here and now, Ami.

"Do you remember ... my brother? Jan?" she said, the first words to come to mind. Talk. Keep talking. Stay awake. She couldn't remember what she'd told Captain Night, or what was there in the public files for anyone to read, or which bits of the complicated truth were common knowledge and which not. She played it safe. "Did I tell you? About him? About Jan?"

"You did, yes," Captain Night said. "We are on approach. Help will be there very soon."

"I think ... it better be," Amieta said.

"A little longer, Amieta. That's all."

"Has the storm stopped?" She couldn't hear anything over the roaring in her ears, even Captain Night's voice was soft and faint.

She couldn't be sure, given how far away he sounded, if the tiny hesitation was real or just her imagination. "Enough for a competent pilot to land."

"'kay. 'cause I ... I might be seeing my ancestors soon, otherwise. Or Jan. He's not really an ancestor, I guess. A brother."

"I am sure he watches over you, nonetheless."

"You really believe all that stuff, don't you?" Amieta asked.

"I am quite certain," Captain Night said, "your brother sees and protects you."

Amieta blinked hard until she could focus her eyes enough to check the bandage on her leg. Still bleeding. She didn't need the AIMED in the shuttle's first aid kit to tell her she was losing too much blood. Hang on a little longer. It was so cold, though. A little longer. Val had promised the rescue team would be there soon. No, not Val. Captain Night. Val was a name from her past, not from the here and now. She couldn't afford to loose track of the here and now. Shock. It's shock. Stay focused, come on. Fight the shock. Stay here.

"Stay here, stay with me, Invelen, fight the shock, come on now ..."

What the - how did - why - ?

There'd been light and noise and then nothing, nothing until the medic's low, urgent voice. Amieta tried to ask What happened? but suddenly her mouth was full of blood and the medic was swearing and she was -

Floating in a comfortable haze of bright light, surrounded by machines that whirred quietly. Nothing hurt. That would have been worrying, if she'd been able to worry, but the fuzzy blur that enveloped her didn't let anxiety through.

Drugs. Hospital.

I got hurt? When the shuttle crashed I - no - there was an explosion - but the shuttle ...?

"Hey, Ami, don't know if you can hear me in there." A familiar voice. A familiar face: Jan. Jan, I thought I'd never see you again. "The doctors say you'll be out of here in no time."

Jan. You shouldn't be here. This isn't -

"Out of here in no time, Commander." The lights were blindingly bright, the figures behind them a blur of darkness.

"Jan?"

"I didn't know I'd be seeing you so soon," Jan said.

The light was so bright Amieta could hardly make out his face. They were lifting her up, now, up into the light, to where her brother waited and she had a moment's piercing regret to be going, until that faded out into the light as well and she was -

"She's coming around."

It hurt, again, a lot. Amieta opened her eyes and looked up at the medics bending over her.

"Welcome back, Commander," one of them said. "Gave us a scare, there."

Beyond them she could see the roof of a shuttle. She turned her head a little. Jan was ... right there?Beyond the medics she could see a couple of marines, equipped for rescue rather than combat, and beyond them, standing in the cockpit doorway, Captain Night, with his habitual, hard-to-read expression of polite, if slightly distant, interest. Amieta thought his gaze was a little sharper than usual, though, and when their eyes met she was almost certain the corner of his mouth twitched up in what might, in anyone else, have been a smile.

"You'll feel a sharp pinch, Commander" the medic said, and Amieta did, and was out.

When she woke again, the medics were carrying her from the rescue shuttle. Jan was gone. So was Captain Night - no, there he was, at the bottom of the ramp. As she was carried past him, Amieta reached out and grabbed his hand, "I saw Jan. He was there, with me. Down there. I saw him."

Smooth, uncalloused clone fingers closed around her battered metal ones. "I believe you."

"Captain, we need to be moving," one of the medics said.

His hand tightened briefly on hers, before he released it with a nod to the medics, and stepped back.

Amieta saw the looks that passed between the medics. Gossip incoming.

Fuck it, she thought.

Some days you're entitled not to give a damn what people think.

Birthdays Part 4

((Part 1))

4/10/101

A man stopped in the doorway of hydroponics bay 3a and glanced around the interior. He was perhaps 183cm tall, handsome in an unremarkable, regular way, with gray eyes and short cropped brown hair. His uniform identified him as a Warrant Officer attached to an assault wing in the Watch. He stood apparently lost in thought for several minutes, until the room's other occupant approached him.

"Can I help you with something?" The man who spoke was heavily built, with sad, pale blue eyes. He stripped off a pair of gloves as he approached and crossed his arms across his chest.

"Possibly. I'm looking for Janirinen Matakima? He is a researcher here, I was told he was working in this section? I'm his brother."

"Spirits, Val? Is that you?" The heavier man's eyebrows threatened to reach his receding hairline.

"Jan? Ancestors man, it's been ages. I finally got enough leave to come back for a couple days. This place hasn't changed a bit, you know."

"Really?" Jan chuckled, a sparkle in his eyes, "It has you know. I've managed 1.3% better efficiency, plus I'm working on extracting more nutrients from the ice they process at the refinery so we can expand without having to import so much from off-station. Means we've got more plants, now."

Val held up his hands in mock surrender, "Forgive me for not noticing the difference. Now that you mention it, greenery is practically bursting from the duct work. When I was asking after you, your underling did say that this bay must be a special project of yours. Apparently they think you have some sort of hidden lab in here, because you're always here, and always come out with new and greater ideas."

"No, no secret labs. I just do my best thinking in here. Calms my mind, I guess, I'm so familiar with it now. Some of my happier memories too. When we were..." Jan turned and busied himself organizing a clutter of tubing on a nearby workspace as he trailed off.

Val's smile disappeared, "I went to the memorial, you know. They just had the one, for her whole unit."

Val leaned against the door frame, suddenly looking tired, as Jan turned back to him, eyes red, "All she did, making through the accident, through OCS, her last letter said they might have been considering her for Captain... Do you know what happened to her Val? They wouldn't tell me anything. I'm lucky I even found out, and it was just 'Asset missing, presumed deceased' in some database. I didn't even know there was a memorial."

Val shook his head, "No idea. I tried to find out, but it's classified way, way above my pay grade. It's the Watch though Jan. Whatever it was, if there was anything they could have done-"

Jan interrupted him, "I know, of course. They did whatever they could, even if it wasn't enough. I know, but it doesn't bring her back." Jan rubbed his hand across the back of his neck, "Want to get a drink? I don't know about you, but I could use one."

Val looked like he wanted to respond, but then just nodded with a weak smile, "Yeah, sounds about right."

"Let's go." Jan headed for the door, gesturing for Val to follow him as he walked out of 3a, "You remember Valenin? He runs a bar down in R section now."

Two days later, Val sat aboard the transport that would take him away from the station. Returning, seeing Jan again, and knowing he would never see Ami again made him realize he had been making a mistake. He should have come back sooner, made the time off however he had to. He made a promise to himself to keep in touch with Jan, to make sure it wasn't 17 years next time. Life was too short to only see family at funerals.

Birthdays Part 3

((Part 1))

4/10/94

Jan slipped into the hospital room. Though it was the first time he had left his home station, that wasn't the reason for his hesitance. A cocoon of medical equipment hid the recumbent figure inside the room. As he approached he realized that the shape was wrong, even with all the equipment. Far too narrow, near the top. Fragments of the doctor's explanations came back to him, slipping into his thoughts as he walked further into the room:

Severe burns over most of the torso and...

He came close enough to peer through a transparent window near the head area and smiled with relief when he saw blue eyes only partially dulled drugs. They peered up at him and it was a moment before the brightened with recognition.

It's a miracle she survived more than a few seconds, much less long enough to reach us.

The lower half of her face was entirely occluded by some sort of breathing apparatus. The machinery that kept her alive whirred in the background.

...barely stable...

He cleared his throat, "Hey Ami, don't know if you can hear me in there. The doctors say you'll be out of here in no time. Anyway, it's our birthday sis."

Her arms had to be amputated, and most of the internal structures of the shoulders were removed as well. Virtually all of the tissue near the surface of the upper body will need to be regrown.

"I brought you this." Jan held up a small glass container, perhaps half the volume of an average beverage can, "It's its own ecological system. It just needs a little light now and then."

This accident is really an opportunity...

"It was for next time you visited. I didn't know I'd be seeing you so soon." Was that crinkling around the eyes the top half of a smile?

...opted in for the enhanced capabilities program when she applied to recon...

"Anyway, I thought you might like to have a little piece of home with you. I hope I made it small enough so that you can keep it in your personal effects."

...new program, and she will be one of the final late stage trials.

He turned it so she could see the tiny bits of green that were inside "I designed it to last nearly forever."

...better than new! In fact...

Jan swallowed and set the little glass world down on a nearby table, concentrated on what he knew, "The circulation systems run on heat, so a warm light, or being held once in a while helps."

Further prosthetics will be implanted if she remains, ah, a viable candidate...

"Well, you can tell me if you like it later. In any case, they say you're st... that I can stay for a few hours. I thought you might like some entertainment. I thought I'd read Kirigan's 'In the Wind, Dragons' to you." Jan tapped on a datapad to pull up the collection of traditional stories and poems and began reading in a warm, soothing voice, "First was the Wind..."

Jan had to leave the next day to return to work. He planned on visiting again while Amieta recovered. A string of events conspired to keep him busy until after she was judged sufficiently recovered to be reassigned. By the time he was able to get time off and money enough to travel, she had been promoted and disappeared again into the machine that is Ishukone Watch. One of the occasional letters she was able to send did mention that his gift was a comfort to her.

Birthdays Part 2

((Part 1))

4/10/93

Amieta slipped quietly into the hydroponics bay. The years hadn't seen her frame fill out, but they had given her grace and she moved silently to stand behind the heavily built man bending over one of the planting trays. She spoke from immediately behind him, "Jan!"

Jan quickly turned, with a slow smile of delighted surprise, "Ami!? Ancestors, you nearly scared the life from me. How are you? How have you been? What are you doing here? Let me take a look at you!"

Jan engulfed her shoulders in his hands and gently pushed her back a step, "I see you're still scrawny. Don't they feed you? And whats this?"

He lifted the insignia of rank at her collar with a chemical-stained hand as she responded with studied nonchalance, "Oh, I've made corporal. Sarge says if it keeps on like this, I'm a shoo-in for OCS." With a grin, "Anyway, they feed me plenty, I just can't seem to bulk up. If I play my cards right though they'll wire me, and it won't matter. I'm getting a transfer to recon along with the new stripe, and that's a good first step. What about you? I see you're not scrawny. How do you even fit through doorways?"

Jan, eyes laughing in a mock frown, patted his modest paunch, though he was really just built wider than the tube child standard, "I turn sideways. This is all mine, now." he gestured around the compartment, then threw Ami an apple, "Here. I may not be a hero of the Watch and mother Ishukone, but in Hydroponics Bay 3A, I'm king. Well, at least if anything goes wrong, I'm the one that gets written up."

"You do good work." Ami said through a bite of apple, "Spirits, doesn't seem like so long, does it? Nine years. I wish..."

"He'd be here if he could Ami. Maybe in a year or two when he is done training they'll let him out."

"I know. It'd just be nice, the three of us together again. Maybe get into a little trouble."

Jan chuckled, "Well, we can go to the 'clash tournament tonight, party in his honor. It's inter-corporate. A bunch from KK are here."

Ami smiled predatorily, "Sounds fun."

Birthdays Part 1

((Ami in this story is Amieta Invelen, a character of mine in-game.))

4/10/80

They crept along the corridor with the exaggerated caution of the very young. They - the two of them, and their leader - had created their plan after lights out the night before. They had slipped away from the creche supervisors in the middle of the yearly birthday puppet show. For some reason traditional always seemed to mean boring, and though it was rumored that there was sometimes a dragon in the show, no such creature had been evident this year.

The boy was, in nearly every respect, average. Perhaps slightly tall for his age, which happened to be exactly six that day. Grey eyes, regularly cropped brown hair. Sharing with the girl, and nearly every other person he had ever seen, the pale skin of a station dweller. The girl was also six that day, slightly shorter than the boy, with blue eyes and hair cropped near as short. She was by far the more stealthy of the two.

They huddled behind a crate as a technician strode by, then dashed madly for their destination, the compartment door labeled 'Hydroponics - 3A.' Inside they gave each other a grin of shared conspiracy and were looking around the rows of closely packed plants for the mastermind behind their scheme when a voice from above called down in a stage whisper, "Val! Ami! Up here!"

They looked up to see the third member of their little gang perched in the supports well overhead, and Val (the boy) grimaced, "How'd you get up there? We'll be in enough trouble if we're caught anyway Jan. That is just going to make it worse."

Jan smiled from his spot, cradled in a convergence of conduits, beams, and struts half a dozen meters above the waving tops of the plants and upturned faces of his friends, and with a gesture to the far end of the room, "Ladder's over there. If you aren't too chicken."

Ami raced to the ladder, and Val followed reluctantly. Up the ladder, then the trip through the messy scribbled web of structural elements, assorted conduits, ducts, and tubing that spanned the ceiling. Ami attacked it with enthusiasm, Val with a pinched, slightly worried looking at odds with his youth. It took only a few minutes to get across, and Jan welcomed them to his roost, "It's pretty cool, right? Plus, I bet they'll never look here, we just have to make sure they don't see us coming down."

Jan kept grinning and looked down on the racks of plants in different stages of development with a proprietary air, pale blue eyes sparkling with excitement. He gestured to the other two children to sit, even as Val opened his mouth to voice another objection, "What if we fall? It is pretty-"

Jan interrupted him, "Who cares Val? We won't fall anyway, it's easy staying up here. They won't catch us cause no one will think of looking here. Anyway, I bet this is what it's like on planets. Look at all the plants."

Ami hung upside-down by her legs from a metal conduit, head tilted to look straight down. Val subsided, and even managed to forget to sulk long enough to stare at the floor what seemed like quite some distance below. They did manage to get down without anyone seeing them.

4/10/84

The three preteens slipped into the hydroponics bay. Val was still quite average, while Ami was lean and almost scrawny. Jan, who entered last this year, was of average weight, but gave the impression of roundness. Something subtle but so strong it created the conviction it was physical truth - some gentleness or underlying peace communicated in his every mannerism. Even the strictest diets the supervisors had tried had been ineffective in eliminating the feeling, in any case.

They had been too large to make it through the ceiling gauntlet the last two years, so now they just met on the floor of the bay. They were perhaps closer than any of their many siblings in the creche, and it was at this point a poorly kept but accepted secret that bay 3a was 'their' place. It was where they often had get-togethers, the first place any of them looked for the others, and Jan had even begun helping the hydro technicians, using his free time to nurture the plants that helped support the station.

This gathering was more sober than in years past, because they would find out very soon where they would be sent, and what their future careers would be. Chances were very good that this might be their last birthday together for a long time - possibly ever. They mostly talked softly, all of them acting serious for their age, products of the expectations of their corporate parent.

It was the last time all three of them were together for a birthday. Jan would stay and work on his beloved plants. Val and Ami were both transferred to Ishukone Watch and left the station where they were born not long after that tenth birthday. Neither of them returned for nearly a decade.