Nova (20 page)

26
“. . . TAKEN WHEN AURORA COLONY FELL, I
lived in an internment camp for two years along with ten thousand other civilian blah blah blahs.” I roll my eyes at Doc Niven. “Come on, do I really have to do this
again?
I know it, I swear.”

The doc just raises an expectant eyebrow. With a sigh, I start again.

“My name is Lia Johansen, and I was a prisoner of war
.
Taken when Aurora Colony fell, I lived in an internment camp for two years along with ten thousand other civilian colonists. My parents died in front of me from starvation and sickness. Oh, and I wept for them. There, see?”

“Good,” Niven says. “Now remember, this will be your core memory once we activate the biochip. You’ll probably be able to access a scattering of other memories from your past, but the biochip will block anything recent.”

“What will happen if I try to access anything off-limits?”

“The biochip will automatically reroute your mind back to your cover story.”

Doc Niven grabs the tool he used to insert the chip and puts it in the sterilizer. I can’t help raising a hand to my eyes as I remember how he inserted the biochip behind my left eye, the clock behind my right. He used a local anesthetic, so it didn’t hurt, but the way he popped out each eyeball and put it back in will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. At least, it would if I remembered it for the rest of my life. Once the biochip is activated, I won’t remember any of this.

I shiver at the thought. Somehow out of everything that’s going to happen, it’s losing my memory that scares me the most. Not going Nova, not dying, but forgetting who I am. Forgetting why I’m doing this.

“We won’t actually activate it unless it’s really necessary, right?” I ask the doc, though I already know what he’ll say.

“Wherever we end up deploying you, it will most likely be necessary. The enemy knows of our resistance; they’re watching for us to make a move. They’ll have their psychics out in force, looking for anything out of the ordinary. We can’t chance them finding out what you are before you can complete your mission. Suppressing your memories is the only way we can make sure they won’t discover your mission if they force you to undergo a psychic check.”

I sigh and look down at my hands. “I know.”

Water runs in the sink. “How’s your nose? Does it still hurt?”

Still looking down, I shake my head. “No, it doesn’t hurt, but I can’t smell anything anymore.”

“That’s normal.”

“I can’t taste anything, either.”

A towel swishes through the air. “I’m not surprised. A large part of taste is smell. It’s not uncommon for people losing their sense of smell to lose all or some of their abilities to taste as well. It may pass, or it may be permanent. Even if it comes back, your sense of taste will probably be weak. I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

I hear his footsteps come back and then his large hands take mine and squeeze. He gently turns my arms over and runs a finger over each forearm. “They’ve healed well. No one should be able to tell what’s underneath the skin.”

Raising my head, I look at the doc. The skin of his face is sagging, and his hair has gone almost completely white. The look in his eyes is ineffably sad. He manages a small smile when he sees me watching him.

“So many expectations, and on such young shoulders! You’ve lived so much life in your two years here. We have no right to ask more of you, but we do anyway. Not for our sakes, but for humanity’s sake, for the Celestians’ sake. You may be their only hope. And they don’t even know it.”

I look away. “What if something goes wrong?”

“Then all you can do is die knowing you did your best. We all did our best. If there truly is a higher power up there, may He look down and protect us all.”

“That’s
it?
Trust to a higher power?”

The doc chuckles at my incredulity. “Well, I could go into a long lecture on the workings of the clock and biochip if you want, but you won’t remember it anyway.” Niven releases my hands and chucks me lightly on the chin. “Have faith that it will all work out, and it will.”

My thoughts turn to my parents. “I’m not sure I have any faith left.”

As if reading my mind, the doc asks, “Have you visited them lately?” I shrug, and he shakes his head, chiding me. “Go see your parents. They don’t have much longer. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

I give him a look
.
“
They
don’t have much longer, or
I
don’t?”

“Unfortunately, both.”

My parents are in a building on the other side of the compound. I wander slowly across the deserted grounds. The place is far from impressive—a few buildings, a ruined lookout tower, and a force fence stuck on a plot of dull dirt adorned with clumps of yellowed grass.

When Tiersten Colony was first settled, this place was constructed as one of a few dozen weather control stations to guard against the lightning storms and dust devils. Continued terraforming over the years eliminated the worst of the storms and made most of the control stations unnecessary. Ironically, this one was abandoned altogether a couple hundred years ago when the tower took a stray lightning strike. Now it’s the final retreat of our resistance cell, for however long we can hold out. Once this place falls, there is nowhere else to go.

Not that I’ll still be here by the time that happens.

I look around me and grimace for about the thousandth time since coming here. It’s an ugly place—both the weather station and the land around it—all brown and yellow and brown. I heard a scientist once say that we could terraform Tiersten for a million years and it would never look any better than this. Tiersten is just one of those planets. Probably why the Tellurians ended up turning it into a penal planet instead of a real colony. Internment camps full of Celestian POWs, broken weather stations, and one misbegotten resistance cell—that’s all that can be found here now.

A movement on the far side of the tower snags my attention. I squint, catching a glimpse of dark hair and olive skin. Storm, just a few years younger than me and the only other child left in the resistance. Not that Storm is his real name. No one knows his name, for he never speaks. The kids at the internment camp all said he was brain-damaged. They all said he had been struck by lightning. Stormbrain, they called him, Lightning Rod. I asked him once if what they said about the lightning was true. He just looked at me with those strange brown eyes of his—intelligent eyes that seemed to belie the rumors.

“I drowned once,” I’d finally offered when he didn’t answer. “Back on Aurora, when I was really little. They say I actually died for a minute, before the rescue workers brought me back.”

He only shook his head at me, though what he was saying “no” to, I had no idea. But the terrible scars on his right hand, burned into the fleshy ball of his thumb and radiating up through his palm into his fingers, told me
something
had happened to him.

Someone calls my name and I turn. Captain Jao, the commander of our dying resistance, is hailing me from the back corner of the fence. I stiffen momentarily; then with a final glance at Storm, I reroute my steps. One can’t ignore the resistance commander, no matter how much one might want to. He nods at my perfunctory greeting. His sleeves are rolled up, and he’s tinkering with the control box on the corner post.

“How is the work on the force fence coming?” I ask, noting the red light on the post is unlit.

“I’m trying a new frequency, but I’m not optimistic,” he admits, adjusting one of the nodes. “For all our hopes, the force fence certainly didn’t protect us at the internment camp. The most it will probably do is warn us the enemy’s here, and by the time that happens . . .”

“It will be too late,” I finish. It’s exactly what happened at the main internment camp where we were previously headquartered. By the time we knew they were there, the enemy was already in the camp. No one within half a mile of the main fence escaped—not the thousands of Celestian POWs or the resistance members hiding in plain sight among them. Only a handful of us managed to flee through the back. A resistance cell of over a thousand reduced to thirty-eight in the span of an hour.

No, I correct myself as I think of my parents. Thirty-six.

“There’s a scientist on Aganir who’s supposedly had more success using the fence to keep them out. No one else has had any luck replicating his success, though. Maybe we should have settled the resistance on Aganir instead of Tiersten. Not that I’d want to live there—nasty place, it’s like breathing underwater in a garbage dump.” Jao flips a switch and the red light goes on. “There! That’ll have to do. Days like this, I really miss your mother. She was a genius with this sort of thing. Well, even if we had her help, it would still only be a matter of time.”

I shy away from the mention of my mom and concentrate on his last comment. “Surely the resistance lives in other places besides Tiersten and Aganir.”

Jao shrugs and shuts the control panel. “Scattered pockets here and there, maybe, and we still have a few ships out there that remain ours. They’ll do their best to slow the advance of the invasion, to try and hold the quarantine and keep anyone from leaving Tellurian space. If they can find a way to violate the ceasefire and sabotage any peace talks with the Celestians they will, but . . .” He spreads his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

He doesn’t have to finish. I know as well as Jao that Tiersten was the main home of the resistance, and with the internment camp fallen, it’s only a matter of days, weeks at most, before the last of the resistance falls. Jao doesn’t have to tell me that. Despite the fact that I’m only a teenager, the captain has never tried to sugarcoat the truth for me. It’s one of the things I like about him.

Used
to like about him. It’s one of the things I
used
to like about him, when I still liked him. Today, though, with my stomach roiling in dread at seeing my parents, I can’t help wishing he’d lied just a little.

“That’s actually what I wanted to speak with you about,” Jao continues. “The ceasefire has been made official.”

I swear softly. “When?”

“We picked it up on the coms this morning.”

“It won’t be long before the enemy tries to push into the Celestial Expanse, then.”

“No.” He takes a breath. “It gets worse. The first official act by the ‘Tellurians’ now that the ceasefire is official will be the return of five hundred ‘prisoners of war’ from Tiersten Internment Colony. A gesture of
goodwill
, you see.” Jao’s lips twist at the irony.

My heart sinks as I realize what’s coming. “Can’t we find some way to tell the Celestians? To warn them about the invasion?”

“The Celestians will never believe us. You know that. How many times have we tried to tell them over the past two years? How do you make someone believe in something you can’t see, hear, touch, smell?”

“But the psychics could show them the enemy. If we sent in a member of TelPsy—”

“We sent in a list of psychics as long as my arm! Dozens of good people, to planets and stations across the Celestial Expanse, all sent to spread the word in the only way we could.” Jao’s voice lowers. “And do you know how many came back? Do you know how many were ever heard from again?”

I lower my head, already knowing the answer. “None.”

Jao sighs. “And the few times we managed to bring a Celestian official here, someone important, they disappeared off the face of the galaxy before they ever made it home again. The enemy was always one step ahead of us.”

“You think they’ve already infiltrated the Celestial Expanse.”

“Yes, but not in force, not beyond the point of no return. They’re going to use the internees to start their real invasion. How many prisoners of war are on Tiersten alone? Thirty thousand? Forty? That doesn’t even count the internees on the main prison worlds. We can’t let those prisoners reach New Sol. We can’t let the ceasefire hold.”

“I’m going to be on that initial list of five hundred prisoners being sent into the expanse, aren’t I?”

“We always knew that you would be our last resort. One final hope when all else failed.” Jao looks away. “With our inside knowledge of the main internment camp, it shouldn’t be that hard to get you in. A little hacking into their records, and no one will even know you’re not supposed to be there.”

I briefly close my eyes. I always knew I would be deployed at some point, that I would be responsible for the deaths of hundreds, maybe even thousands of people. It’s just they weren’t supposed to be people I
knew
. Tiersten prisoners I’d lived with and worked with, hung out with and hoped with. Maybe they’ve been suborned by the enemy, but how can I complete my mission knowing that I’ll be ending any hope of freeing them one day?

“Is this going to be a problem?”

My eyes open. “No.”

“Because if it is, Doc can probably—”

“I said it’s
fine
,” I answer a little too sharply. I strive for a more reasonable tone. “You know this is likely to be a trap, right? Sending out the five hundred prisoners from Tiersten? The enemy is trying to draw us out.”