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Voice

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voice

Cole sat in near darkness with a military blanket made of scratchy wool wrapped around her. Pre-dawn light spilled through the viewport at the head of the craft through walls of mist that parted like ocean waves as Corporal Jones piloted the transport over open swamp terrain. The air looked cold and moist, but once the sun was up the glittering marsh waters would be almost blinding on account of the rays that pierced the humid air like falling knives.

“Your eyes seem fine now,” Goss said. He was the mission’s medic as well as its commanding officer -- they all had to pull multiple duties on account of being restricted to just seven of them, especially the four soldiers, who were expected to protect the “civvies” at all costs -- but his bedside manner left much to be desired. Handsome though he was, his eyes were stern and his jaw always seemed to jut out in a scowl, and the way he looked at her made her feel small.

“What happened to me?” she asked.

“Probably just a dream,” he said, and his tone indicated he was positive it was a dream, and that she’d best know better than to ask again.

“A dream?” she said. “I was blind.”

“And you also felt and smelled things that weren’t there,” Goss said sternly. “So either you were dreaming or else you’re having some sort of relapse, in which case I’d have to relieve you of duty and lock you in what passes for a brig back on the Iliad so you can be evaluated.” He stood and looked down at her, seeming very much like her father. “I saw you take your medication, so we both know that couldn’t be the case. Right?”

Cole bit back a remark. He might not have been her father, but she knew she’d have to deal with him the same way even though it chafed like hell to do so.

“Yes, Sir,” she said. She felt the eyes of Rawlins and Lee on her: they didn’t have an actual medical bay, or really even anything separate from the main hold apart from a lavatory and the storage. “Like you said, I’m sure it was a nightmare. It’s just the stress. This is all new to me.” That wasn’t entirely true, and Goss knew it: this was her third survey mission, and not even her furthest out from New Texas, but he feigned satisfaction and nodded.

“Get some rest,” he said, suddenly kind again, but that stony face and cold grey eyes never seemed entirely friendly. “We’re still a few hours out. I know it’s rough with the turbulence, but I want everyone fresh when we get to Zone 66.”

Cole nodded, and Goss turned and exited the craft to go and check up on Diaz, Jones and Black, all of who were performing rudimentary ship maintenance during their brief stop. The storm had abated and the muggy glow of a mist-shrouded wilderness yawned beyond the open door on the side of the small vessel, through which Cole noted dozens of buzzing insect clouds and the damp and fetid stench of swamp air. Goss donned his breathing filter before passing through the open door (the GX50’s atmospheric processor kept minor toxins at bay, but once you stepped out of the craft you were on your own) and left her alone with Tina Lee and Mark Rawlins, the other two specialists brought to ensure Zone 66 would be suitable for colonization.

“I hate nightmares,” Rawlins said. He adjusted his priest’s collar as he stood. He was the oldest among them, and his leathery skin and trim beard were glazed with sweat. Cole thought it odd that the mission’s geologist and meteorologist was also an ordained priest of the Order of the Second Christ, but it was getting to the point where religion took such a hold in the private sector it was getting harder to find government agencies that weren’t run by the church. “Ungodly stuff. They test your resolve, prey on your fears and play the most horrible tricks on the mind.” Cole nodded. Rawlins was a bit severe, like most men of the cloth, but she’d not yet heard him offer anything but encouraging words, even to Corporal Abby Black, who’d made her lack of faith quite clear. “If you need to talk, I’m always available,” he said, almost apologetically, then nervously walked away towards the cockpit, where he stood behind the vacant pilot’s seat and looked out at the mist-laden swamp.

Tina, the one person on the trip Cole felt she might have formed something of a connection with, waited a moment while she shook her head at Rawlins’ awkwardness, then came and sat down on the bench next to Cole.

“Are you okay?” she asked earnestly.

“Yeah,” Cole said. “I just...it didn’t feel like a nightmare, is all.”

Tina pushed a strand of Cole’s red hair away from her face. “Well...what did it feel like?”

Cole’s heart chilled. She remembered the voice, so cold, so present. She was willing to believe the rest of what had happened -- the blindness, the foul substance and smells, and the pale woman she’d witnessed when her sight returned, a gory being in transition, not fully formed -- had been in her mind. In her time she’d certainly imagined worse, especially when she was without her medication.

But she’d heard the voice, and knew it. Because she’d heard it before.

But she couldn’t tell Tina that. She’d just think Cole had lost her mind like Goss suggested. She didn’t want that.

“It just felt...real,” she said, and put her hands over her face. “But it was just a dream.”

In the back of her mind, she heard the echo of the voice again. She tried to contain her shudder so Tina wouldn’t see how terrified she was.

***

Their maintenance stop didn’t last long. They had just enough time for Diaz to make sure there was no damage to the engine on account of flying through so much swamp muck and ionized water and for Black to verify their position and proximity to Zone 66 by way of old-fashioned cartography and navigation methods, and then they were off again. The grey sun hung low in the sky and the world was already full with steam and mist which curled off the dark treetops and skimmed the miles of marsh waters. By the time they sealed up the doors Cole’s skin beneath her jumpsuit was soaked with sweat in spite of her having unzipped to cool off, and for a time she’d sat in her black tee and stared out at the soiled morning.

Lee had sensed she wanted to be left alone and left Cole be, and for nearly half-an-hour she was able to sit and think, but her mind didn’t take her anywhere she wanted to go. She’d felt stable and adjusted for a long time leading up to her being recruited for this mission, and while Dr. Rauch had warned her that exposure to such a highly stressful environment would undoubtedly trigger some sort of relapse, he had complete faith in her ability to cope with said circumstances. The two of them had worked to build up her ability to deal with trauma for years, after all, and with her medication he saw no reason to recommend she try to avoid recruitment on psychological grounds, which she’d made clear she absolutely did not want to do. She was tired of letting fear dominate her life.

I don’t know what in the hell I was thinking.

She spent the half hour with hard rock music from her favorite bands Vampire Down, The Fallen and Bloodhoney pounding at her eardrums, not music most found conducive to relaxation, though for Cole it was precisely what she needed. Croaking Gothic voices and blistering guitar riffs seemed to lift her out of herself so she floated above the frightened shell of her own body, separated from her fears long enough for them to fade like smoke from a cold fire. It was as close to meditation as her often frantic mind would allow her to get, at least not without the use of drugs most doctors weren’t comfortable prescribing, but it had worked for the better part of a decade, and it worked now.

But we’re still a long way from finished.

She still recalled with stark clarity the day the communication had come from the Republic Headquarters of New Texas, just downtown from her tiny apartment flat, a building so massive that all she had to do was walk up to the sliding glass door that led to her narrow balcony and she could see the blue steel behemoth, a structure she often thought resembled the fabled blue whale, a mythical monster from a bygone age.

Miss Rianne Cole,” the voice on the other end said. Cold, female, direct to the point of sounding aggressive.

“This is she.” It was early afternoon but Cole had yet to dress, and she lounged in yoga pants and a tank top that would have been immodest had she actually thought anyone would see her that day. The lights were low, the air was cool and the old carpet soft where she’d spent the past hour pacing over it, knowing long before the call came that something life-changing was going to occur.

My name is Elisabet Marx of the Department of Colonization and Urban Renewal,” Marx said. “And your Republic needs you.

The tirade of information to follow was both overwhelming and vague, and of such gravity and importance she kept meaning to ask Miss Marx if the phone call was some elaborate prank, but any doubts she had were buried beneath the sense of absolute unease which crept through her belly as the woman revealed more and more. That New Texas and the rest of the colonies were terribly overpopulated was of no surprise -- some days the news networks seemed capable of reporting on little else, especially when there wasn’t some anti-expansionist terrorist organization threatening to blow up a city with a chemical bomb or some other idiot scandal the seemingly ageless President managed to get himself into -- but it was difficult to separate the truth from lies when it came to understanding just how serious the problem truly was. Cole had guessed it was bad, but Miss Marx strongly implied it was far, far worse.

New Texas resources are running out,” she said in a ferociously no nonsense tone. “By the end of next year the number of homeless will be twice what it was at the end of 2283 and with only half the resources available for the government to help them. And we’re not alone -- New California is drowning in new colonists, and New Arizona, as I’m sure you’ve heard, have had to turn new arrivals away due to a major food shortage.”

“What does this have to do with me?” Cole asked, but she already knew the answer.

There is a deficit of experienced Engineers with your talents,” Marx said, “as I’m sure you are well aware.

You bet your ass I’m well aware, Cole thought. Because whenever we go on Republic sponsored jobs we’re always the ones the anti-expansionist fanatics target first. It’s hard to colonize poisonous wastes without the Bridges, and without the Engineers there are no Bridges.

“I haven’t heard of any major colonization missions in a long time,” she told the woman on the phone. “Every time one is sent out, terrorists make short work of it, or blow a city up in retaliation.”

That’s why we intend for this mission to be quite small, and quite secret,” Marx said. “But I need an answer now. I wish you had more time to mull things over, but we’re getting desperate, and New Texas is willing to pay you handsomely for your time.”

“Aren’t you afraid a fundamentalist is listening in?” Rianne asked. “I heard on the news that they do that: keep tabs on the known Engineers.” She knew Marx’s answer even before it came.

You were discharged for psychological purposes several years ago, Miss Cole. Trust me, you’re not on anyone’s radar.” Which explained the phone call. Overt efforts were being met with failure because for the first time in history the fundamentalist terrorists were better organized and perhaps even better funded than the Republic they sought to topple, but where large expeditionary forces drew huge amounts of attention a smaller group with an Engineer who had no business being in the field might escape notice.

She didn’t remember saying yes, but she must have, because the next day she was being briefed in an abandoned warehouse in no way connected to the Republic government, where she was informed that it was her duty to save New Texas from overpopulation by helping to establish a colony on the one world that had been left ignored for over a century.

They were going to try and re-colonize Earth.

***

The respite from the storm didn’t last long, and the sky’s brief glow was soon smothered by charcoal clouds and rain. Even with the transport doors closed the air smelled of chlorine. The transport rocked with the wind current, not as violent as before but still enough to make finding peace of mind difficult. The pulse of heavy engines rattled beneath the seats along the wall and the seat straps pulled hard against her chest. Unlike before, when the chill had been deep enough to make her bones ache, now the air was warm and heavy around her face.

The GX50 flew further inland, over what used to be northern Portland. No one had set foot back on Earth since the Exodus a century before, but the notion that she would be among the returning party did little to excite her. Blasted atmosphere filled with putrefaction and poison clouds rendered the so-called Motherworld unliveable. Humans had made it that way, first with its industry and then with the brief succession of brutal late 22nd century wars.

And here we are to make it all better again. The process would take years, at least so far as she knew, but Cole was the first to admit she hadn’t exactly kept current with scientific advancements outside of her own field. All her job was, or had ever been, was to lay the foundation for the Bridge, to determine if the very specific atmospheric and geologic conditions were capable of sustaining the enormous strain placed on the environment by the ending junction of a wormhole, and the construction of the superluminal abutment, which normally was performed with an entire legion of skilled laborers but that Cole would essentially be doing on her own, at least to a certain extent.

Even with the worst of the storm passed the air ahead was choked by slate clouds and rolling columns of mist. What little they saw of the ground below was blasted and lifeless, forests of match-thin ebony stumps and razor sharp hilltops.

“Jesus Fuck, why do they want to recolonize this shithole?” Diaz asked with his usual tact.

“Beats the hell out of me,” Black answered. “But I’m not here to think, and neither are you. That’s their job,” she said with an accusing nod towards Cole, Lee and Rawlins.

“It can be made livable again,” Lee said. “But we have to get the resources here, and that’s the problem.” It had taken their small group months to make the journey to Earth, but with a Bridge it could be done instantly, whole workforces and transports full with equipment moved from one end of the Milky Way to the other in the same amount of time it took Cole to walk to the corner grocer.

“Whatever you say,” Diaz grumbled. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Me, too, Cole wanted to say, but Rawlins spoke first.

“The good Lord will see it done,” he said. “We were meant to leave this place, just as we are now meant to return.”

“All part of his divine plan, eh?” Diaz asked with a smirk.

“Indeed,” Rawlins said with absolute conviction.

The sharp and icy fear was back in Cole’s gut. The echo of the voice from her dream -- the same voice that had haunted her most of her life, that had nearly driven her to the madness of suidice -- still sounded through the walls of her skull. And when she looked out the viewport at the poison dawn she couldn’t help but wonder when she would come for her again.

I’ll pull you under.

Next Chapter: Fear Never Dies