Chapter 6: A Shard Of The Past

Darkness. Then, a single guttering candle flared.

Yan crawled out slowly from under her covers, rubbing at her eyes. A yawn spilt from her mouth.

Clambering to her feet, she looked around at walls of brick and plaster. On three sides, there were paper windows, all propped open with sticks for ventilation. Against the last wall was an open archway.

The room was large and devoid of any real furniture. Instead, all around her, were rows upon rows of straw mats. Despite the early hour, most of their occupants were stirring. Here and there, a few were already empty.

Still blinking the sleep from her eyes, Yan took a moment to stretch. She felt limber, the aches from yesterday’s training long gone.

It was amazing how quickly she had gotten used to life out here in the sticks. The bamboo forest outside was a welcome change from the hustle and bustle of the city - and from the awful smell! That combination of excrement and human sweat mixed in with the aroma of steaming noodles and assorted flowers.

Yan retched just thinking of it.

With her toes, she nudged the form still snoozing in the mat beside hers. A thin blanket hid the sleepy occupant from view.

A drowsy voice emerged from within the pool of blankets. “Just… just five more minutes…”

“Get up! If you don’t, you’ll be last in line to break your fast!”

“It’s fine…”

“You eat slower than a snail! Then, you’ll miss classes. Then, you’ll have to chop wood again!” Yan fumed.

Truly, this kid would be the death of her someday.

Somebody shouted in the distance, announcing the start of breakfast. It was a familiar ritual.

Only, this time, the shout sounded different.

It sounded a lot like…

***

“Interruption of rare oneiric simulation detected. External stimuli registered. Suppressing bodily motion.”

Sierra? Is that you? Just… Just let me go back. Let me remember!

“Processing…”

For a moment, something whirled.

“Repressed memory cache detected.”

“Hi ImYan! It would appear that you have a trove of encoded memories, one of which was triggered as a dream. Analysis suggests a minimum decoding duration of seven hundred and twenty standard hours for the first block. As per your request, decoding has commenced.”

That’s too long! Send me back now!

“Oh… I’m so sorry. Unfortunately, dreams disrupted by external stimuli cannot be resumed. However, you might be delighted to learn that they have an astoundingly low but non-zero chance of recurrence.”

ARGH! BRING BACK MY DREAM! OR I’LL -

A surge of anger flowed through her body. Distantly, she felt her limbs shift.

“Bodily motion suppression compromised. Danger to subject detected. De-suppression initiated…”

***

“… Doctor!”

“… Doctor! Wake up!”

Yan groaned as a rough hand shook her. She did not want to wake up. That other world felt familiar, warm. She recalled that form in the mat vividly. That kid was important.

That memory felt real.

“Go away!” She snarled.

The hand paused. Dimly, she realised that she had just blown her own cover. “Dr. Regina” was no longer “speaking in tongues”.

Then, the shaking restarted with renewed vigour. Another voice joined the first, this one slightly more high-pitched and reminiscent of a head of spiky, purple hair.

“Doc! You’ve got to wake up! We're under attack!”

She jerked up, almost smashing her head into the ceiling. For a moment, her eyes tried to comprehend the new environment. She was on the top bunk of a steel bunk bed. A dozen other similar bunks were packed into the tight space, leaving a single narrow walkway in between.

Everything was coated in a hue of red. As her eyes adjusted, she realised that the emergency lighting was on.

The vessel - that's right, she was now onboard a freighter - rocked.

The events of yesterday came rushing back.

It had been hectic.

While Luke recovered in the medbay, the Captain had spent the rest of the day giving an extensive tour of the vessel. According to him, a concussion was not enough to be sent for medical treatment, so Yan had been compelled to join.

Not that she minded. It was a good chance to learn more about this new world - and all without speaking too. The Captain seemed to love the sound of his own voice, talking at length about every facility and every amenity.

It was all Neon could do to ask about their destination. He received a booming laugh and an even louder answer in return: Narius Port.

It was apparently the closest port of note in this region of space.

Neon also tried to ask the Captain to turn back and look for other Prometheus survivors, but the portly man had just spoken over him, extolling the virtues of his so-called coffeemaker. An answer was not given but it was clear enough.

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They were not turning back.

The static-laden voice of Captain Harvey smashed through her thoughts. “Lads! To battle stations!”

“By the Void, doc, you're hard to wake! How'd you sleep through that? I envy you, man!” Neon cried, clinging onto the bunk bed’s ladder as he looked up at her.

Luke interjected, “Alright, no more time to waste. We have to scramble.”

An explosion shook the room, sending Neon flying off the ladder with a screech. Luke caught him with one hand and slammed him back onto the ground.

The guard continued, “We are heading to the armoury. Best pick up something to defend ourselves with.”

Yan noticed that Luke’s hand was hovering over his empty holster. He probably felt naked without a weapon.

Nodding, she swung off the side of her bed, wincing as she hit the ground. Unlike in her dream, the aches were definitely still here. She needed to get more rest, maybe work out this body more.

“Come on!” Luke shouted, already in the doorway.

As they sprinted down the corridor, Yan tried to recall the tour the captain had given them.

It was not difficult. This hall led straight down to the bridge - apparently the central command station of the vessel, not the thing one would use to cross a river - and the armoury was one of the rooms along the way.

The ship lurched again as another explosion went off in the distance, throwing everybody against the walls. Luke cursed aloud, one hand flying down to nurse his thigh. A woman in a stylish black coat had given him a so-called “Quick-Heal” jab in the medbay and his wound had closed right up. But she had warned that they would still need a robo-surgeon to dig the bullet fragment out.

That shard of metal was probably digging into his flesh with every move.

Harvey’s voice crackled again over the intercom, “Void have mercy! They've taken out the travel drive!”

“It’s probably pirates! First, they’ll take out the travel drive and secondary thrusters. Then, they’ll strip the rest of the surface elements,” Luke bellowed, just as they skidded to a stop outside a reinforced steel door. Beside that, a set of metal grilles hung over a small opening that was just large enough to slide a weapon through.

The armoury.

There was nobody inside.

Luke growled and slammed a hand down on the handle. Locked.

“Well, that sucks,” Neon declared, echoing everyone’s thoughts. “Think we can pack up and go home now?”

Yan looked the door up and down.

Reinforced steel. The captain had shown off the thickness of the door during the tour. There was no way her current body would be able to pummel it apart.

Then, she noticed the padlock holding the door shut. It looked like a flimsy thing, probably still too thick for an ordinary man to break with their bare hands but if she had a blade…

She looked up to see Luke staring at her. His gaze was intense.

In his hand, he held a shard. No, not just any shard. It was the same shard she had turned into a knife, complete with its duct tape handle. The same shard she had left on the floor of Prometheus Research Station.

Yan tensed, preparing herself for a confrontation. When did he pick that up? Could she still explain her way out of this?

But, to her surprise, he just handed it to her, handle first.

Neon, still peering through the steel grilles, said, “Doc, give up the act. We know you aren’t the real deal. Dr. Regina would never let me call her ‘doc’. Also, holy smokes! They have grenades in there!”

Yan was lost for words. She vaguely recalled Neon calling her “Doctor” at the beginning. When had he started to test her with “Doc”?

Luke shrugged and pressed the handle into her hand. “Nor would she make something this… erh… rustic. I’m hoping you know how to use this. Not sure who you are but if you can do something about that door, we’d be mighty obliged.”

Closing her fingers around the duct tape, Yan felt the already-familiar bite of the shard against her skin. She nodded and said, “We’ll talk about this later.”

“Oh, we will! But first, what’s your name anyway? Seems weird to keep calling you ‘doc’, doc,” Neon shot back. His head was still bobbing up and down and all around the grilles as he looked for weapons.

“Yan.”

“What a pleasure to meet you!” Neon said, half-jokingly. He extended his hand for a handshake.

Yan just looked at him. She knew that this was supposed to be a kind of friendly greeting but she was not exactly here to make friends.

“Come on -”

Luke put an arm on Neon’s shoulder and he finally shut up, his hand dropping to his side.

She put them out of her mind and focused. In that one bit of her past that she recalled, she was an adept swordswoman. Surely, she must have some training that she could recall!

However, try as she might, her mind ran up against a blank wall. She shrugged off the surge of disappointment. No matter. If her training would not come to her, the baked-in instincts might.

Yan emptied her mind of everything. Neon’s waving purple hair. Luke’s thousand-yard stare as he leaned against the wall. The blood-red of the emergency lights.

Her body moved on its own accord, all her muscles working as one. She spun forward with her backfoot, hips rotating, shoulders aligning and the knife cut a shining swath through the air.

There was a screech of tearing metal. One of her crew - Neon, probably - gasped as the two halves of the lock clattered to the floor.

Two textboxes appeared in quick succession, “Strength +1”, “Reflexes +1”.

For a moment, nobody spoke.

“Woah, Yan, was it? Why didn’t you do that sooner?” Neon asked, wide-eyed.

She did not reply. It felt good to use a blade again, even if it differed from the one she had used in her memories. Slowly, she let out a breath that she had not even realised that she was holding.

A series of smaller explosions rocked the vessel.

The intercom fizzled to life, “They've taken out the secondary thrusters! All engineers to the engine room now! We are sitting ducks without those!”

“Grab what you need,” Yan commanded.

Neon needed no encouragement. He was already dashing through the door, calling dibs on the grenades. Luke followed behind, giving her an appreciative nod.

Yan fell in step behind them. She was a little uncomfortable taking from the armoury but if it would save a few lives, she would do it. Besides, she intended to return the equipment afterwards, once the threat was dealt with.

As she walked in, she noticed that the interior of the armoury looked like it had already been ransacked.

Neon was crouched over a small crate of grenades. “Oh look, one, two, three… eight fragmentation grenades, two plasma and a flashbang!”

Yan let him keep speaking, not paying much attention. Neon might have his grenades, but most of the racks and chests were empty.

There was a huge explosion far off to the left and the vessel lurched again. The captain shouted over the intercom, “They’ve hit the torpedo bay!”

Wasting no time, Yan and Luke did a hurried search. Between them, they managed to scrounge up an old, rusty laser rifle, a belt and a handful of lightning canisters.

“Awareness +1”

Luke picked up the rifle and quickly scraped a bit of rust from its side, revealing a cryptic series of letters and numbers: “BAR-16”

The old guard grimaced. “Wow. Never thought I’d see one of these again.”

“Oooh, what’s that? Is it any good?” Neon asked, looking up from his grenades.

“Beruvian Armstech makes good rifles, yes. This is a classic. It’s best for single shots but if you want to burn ammo, you can blast all ten cells at once… It’s just that I used one of these back in the day. Bad times,” he shook his head, signalling the end of the topic.

Yan watched them converse out of the corner of her eye, more occupied with puzzling over the belt.

It was a strange thing. The sheath and holster were quite self-explanatory but the problem was that each was paired with an empty circular slot. The slots looked like they would take one of those lightning canisters that Luke’s confiscated pistol used.

Suddenly, Neon popped up beside Yan, holding a pair of those canisters in his hands. “Hey, you might want these for that shield belt. Energy cells - just in case you call them something else. Lightning capsules or something weird like that.”

Yan blushed as she slid the cells into place on the belt, working fast as the vessel shook yet again.

Nothing happened.

Neon gestured to a small black knob beside the sheath and said, “Press this.”

She pressed down.

Immediately, a translucent globe shot out from the belt, enveloping her entire body.

“Good, that force shield will keep you protected from lasers. Projectiles too - so long as they’re going fast enough. If you’re gonna bring that knife to a gunfight, you’ll want that.”

“That’s useful.”

“Oh and try to keep it safe. Those things are expensive. And one small problem. This one isn’t really for combat. It’s to protect repairmen from flying debris when they are out in space. So… if you can, don’t get hit.”

“Wow, ‘don’t get hit’, why didn’t I think of that?” Yan could not resist layering on the sarcasm.

“Woah, this kitten’s got claws!” Neon chuckled, going back to his grenades.

Though her cover was blown, the two seemed almost casual about it. Yan figured that it was the goodwill that she had accumulated from dragging Luke out of the firefight yesterday. Regardless, she should keep them at arm’s length. Neon’s over-exuberance was making her uncomfortable.

The ship gave a final lurch and a tense silence descended.

Luke seemed to notice it too. He inserted energy cell after energy cell into his BAR-16 and then racked the slide.

“They’ll be attempting to board anytime soon,” he declared.

Right on cue, the intercom fizzed to life, “Things ain’t looking too rosy, lads! Prepare to repel boarders!”