Omega Protocol

The comm behind my ear trills as I pass through the shipyard gates.

“Go for Major Jasper,” I say.

“Private Cecily Renfrow, requesting assistance on a mission of vital military importance,” comes the reply, laced with giggling.

“Hi, Cess. What mission?”

“Wing-woman. Don’t argue, you’re coming to—”

“Don’t say Darkside’s.”

“Darkside’s,” she says with me.

“I’ll never understand what you see in that place.”

“No ranks,” she says. “No rules—”

“No cleaning."

“And, tonight, my very sexy flight strategist. Who’s bringing a friend for you,” Cecily says, as if I haven’t spoken.

“I don’t need some flyboy you’ve dredged out of Airborne.”

“You’re such a snob. He’s not a flyboy. He’s an engineer like you; some computer genius,” she says. “You might build alone, but that’s no reason to die alone. Consider it an order if it helps.”

It smells like dry lightning in the airlock. I imagine the play of sensors over my skin. Checking for unsanctioned upgrades, assessing for signs of stress.

“Major Haze Jasper, Warfront Corps of Engineers. Clearance alpha seven.” The pattern of the words and my voice is verified, and a panel slides back to reveal a keypad.

I punch in my code, lingering over the final digit until the micro needle stabs up through the button and tastes my blood.

Accepting I am who I claim, the doors whisper open.

Dozing in standby, limbs catching the low blue light of the dormant shipyard bay, my fabricators look impatient.

“Soon,” I promise.

I suck my bloodied fingertip as I turn to a comms unit already throbbing with light. Warfront knows me for a loyal soldier, but I don’t begrudge them double-checking. Our enemy are well practiced at turning traitors, and trust is harder to come by than natural water.

The moment I touch my palm to the sensor, a hologram steps into the unit’s glowing circle.

“General,” I nod. “Your orders?”

“Secured; Omega level.” The words stop my breath but if he notices, he doesn’t react. “You understand?” he asks.

“Affirmative, Sir. I’m ready.” The General gives me a last, penetrating look, and vanishes. I cross to the dispensary and set one eye to the iris scanner. Recognising me, it brings the 3D printer online. I watch the flit of the injector along the x-axis, a silvery pill taking shape under the passing beams of light.

I swallow it dry with practiced ease. Closing my eyes, I wait.

New knowledge unfolds like a buried memory coming into focus. Every line and curve of a warship. Her engine specs, the materials required to make her. Her weight and speed, her weapons.

She’s unlike anything Warfront has dared to build before.

Omega. The moment this data syncs with my modifications, I become the only place in the galaxy a copy of these blueprints is stored. All other copies, all records of research and development, every passing mention of her. Erased from reality the second the pill touches my tongue.

Now I alone know how to build this ship.

The waking fabricators unfurl for me like nested silver snakes, and I climb to the gantry at their heart. My mind on the blueprints, I let muscle memory guide me into the seat and harness. Cables seek me out, darting home into ports that rise to the skin at my neck and wrists

My heartbeat steadies, knotted muscles in my jaw and shoulders flex and relax.

It’s here I find my place in the universe. The hum of power all around, the eager sing of shifting metal.

It’s here I feel most alive.

——

The Darkside of the Moon is, as always, loud and stinking of beer and long-day bodies in under-washed uniforms.

Cecily’s grip locks on my wrist as she drags me deeper into the bar. Two men sit shoulder to shoulder, backs against the wall. The fair-haired one stands and Cecily cannons at him. Lifting her off the ground, he carries her away to the bar, shouting over his shoulder they’re getting in the drinks.

Alone with the dark-haired of the pair, I despair of my friend and her distracted, romantic heart.

“Haze,” I say, holding out my fist. He bumps my knuckles.

“Milo,” he says. “Sorry about this.” He grins, sweet and sheepish, and I can’t help smiling.

“Cecily’s unstoppable.”

“If that ain’t the truest thing in the galaxy.”

The others return from the bar with a fresh round and Cecily grabs me by the waist to press me onto my barstool.

“Relax.” She slides me a beer and clinks it with her glass, mock frowning at me.

Sighing, I drink.

——

Agony, my skull full of shattered glass, and a taste in my mouth like cinnamon and jet fuel.

Memories wriggle up like maggots from a grave. Being carried like a drunk out of Darkside’s. The crowd barely noticing.

Cecily, following behind.

A fast shuttle without lights. Hands on me, and the instinct to fight buried under layers of sedative.

Sedative that had been in the drink Cecily gave me.

My stomach churns. Partly from the drugs, but mostly from the truth.

Betrayed.

I try to move but I can’t. Panic surges, and I force my breathing to slow. Opening my eyes, I find myself hanging by shackled wrists from a bar suspended in a white-tiled room. My toes brush a drain set into the floor.

“All you need to do,” Cecily’s flight strategist steps into sight, “is tell me what I want to know.”

“For a quick death?” My voice is rust and acid. “Not for all the water in the worlds will you let me go. Not now I can tell them what you look like, Oren Wolf.”

“So you’ve figured out who I am.” He mocks me.

“Commander, Garrison Black Ops. And Warfront’s highest profile target.”

“Pity they never thought to look under their nose.”

“Do your worst to me. Evil like Garrison can’t be allowed to win.”

“You think you know what Garrison is?”

“Private militia of the Martian Water Barons; corrupt corporations and their mercenary soldiers intent on private, Martian ownership of the galaxy’s water.”

“The best and strongest should survive.” Rage glints between his bared teeth. “We seize what’s ours and prove in the seizing we’re the ones who deserved it all along.”

“While Earth withers to nothing? Choked off at the tap by greed and insecurity. Warfront will stop you, I swear on my life.”

“That’s not much of a promise.” He cups my cheek in his palm. My skin crawls, my whole body aching to pull away, but I’m paralysed.

He drinks in my discomfort, then turns his head to call over his shoulder, “Break her open.”

Milo approaches and silently cuts away my jumpsuit. I know what he wants even before he draws a shock baton from his coat.

He examines me with minute care, so close I can smell the sweat clinging to him. He runs his eyes over every inch of me, studying the skin. I see him choose. A spot near the inside of my elbow. I’m braced for it but the pain still wrenches me out of myself.

Gritting my teeth, I wait for my vision to clear.

And notice Cecily standing behind Oren. I stare at her as Milo applies the baton to my skin again, this time at the small of my back. She watches passively as the current wracks me.

I’m still looking at her when Milo tries the baton at my neck. Fire blooms in my head and I feel the moment my access port short-circuits, breaching the skin. The last thing I see before pain drags me into darkness is Milo’s triumphant smile.

——

An echoing boom of fists on glass rattles my aching head. Residual current shivers through me, scorching my nerve endings.

I open my eyes.

A glass cage, and Oren on the outside. I stand to face him, and feel a tug my neck. My hand goes to it.

“Don’t bother, it’s soldered in place. Couldn’t have you pulling it out.”

“Connecting isn’t the victory. I have defences.”

“Oh, we know about Omega protocol.” He shakes his head, disgusted. “Unnatural, using people as lockboxes. Although, I guess you’re not all that human are you. I took a closer look while you were out. So many modifications.”

“A bigot as well as a terrorist,” I force as much dark humour as I can, “how original.”

“That lovely defiance won’t last.” He raises a tablet computer and taps the screen. A motor in the top of the cage rushes to life.

My head spins. I try to breathe.

I collapse, nauseous and dizzy. My chest aches. My ears pop and my vision turns grey.

Oren, black-eyed and smiling, taps his screen again. Hair whips into my eyes as the cage refills with air. I gasp a deep breath, then another, lungs burning at the rush of cold oxygen.

He squats to watch me gasp.

“Didn’t they warn you, when they made you what you are? That we’d shatter your mind to get at your secrets?”

——

I surface to raised voices.

Oren and Milo are squaring off. Cecily sits nearby, watchful.

“The encryption should be dust by now. She’s in pieces.” Fury twists Oren’s face.

I hear myself laughing. A dead-hearted sound.

“I told you. You won’t get what you want. You’ll kill me before you break me. Then your precious blueprints will be gone.”

“And Warfront’s hail-mary ship goes to the grave with you,” Oren says.

“They designed it once. They’ll do it again.”

Oren lets out a growl of frustration, slamming the tablet into Milo’s chest, “Fix it.”

Milo watches him storm away, and after a moment hands the tablet to Cecily.

“Watch her,” he says, disappearing after Oren.

Cecily approaches the cage.

“What happened to you, Cess?” I ask. “You’re Earther. Now you’re turning your back on everything?” She says nothing at first, only studies me like a bug under glass, and I think maybe she won’t answer. Until she sneers, and speaks.

“You were so superior. Classified assignments. Modifications pulling you up the ranks. As if letting them make you a freak truly made you a Major.”

“Gosh, Cess.” My voice is raw. “Tell me what you really think.” Cecily’s mouth twists. She waves her hand tauntingly over the tablet. I shut up.

“Admit it, you thought you were better than me. A better soldier. Better person.”

“As it happens, no. But in light of you sleeping with the enemy, I’m seeing things differently”

Cecily’s eyes flash.

“You’ll regret that.”

Her laughter drowns in the roar of the motor overhead.

——

I come to with her face close to mine. Only the cage glass between us where she kneels on the ground.

“How the mighty have fallen. Oren’s right, only the best and strongest deserve to survive. And I beat you. I captured you. I’m better than you.”

In the dimming recess of my mind, I hear the sound I’ve been holding out for.

“Data received,” the General’s voice echoes in my head. “In position. Move on your signal.”

“What are you grinning at?” Cecily asks.

“Did you never think? Why Warfront would allow rumours of the ship to spread through the ranks?” I sit up, startling her. “Garrison could never break me. The blueprints were not at risk. But you are.”

In one, swift motion, and with all the force of my altered body, I smash my fist through the wall of my cage. Shattered glass explodes around us, but Cecily doesn’t have time to scream before my hand closes on her throat. Ignoring the sting of glass underfoot, I stand, dragging her with me.

“You should be more careful who you connect to your network. Your boyfriend thought he was torturing me. He opened the door to Garrison’s secrets.”

I shape a command in my mind and the port in my neck emits a burst of heat, melting the solder. I pull the cable free with a vicious yank.

Stepping through the ruined wall of my cage, I toss Cecily aside. She slides across the tile and slams into a wall.

I activate a modification in my arm, firing the holographic flare straight up through the ceiling.

I turn to Cecily, lying winded on the floor.

“So, do I seem captured to you?”

——

The General’s men detain Milo and Oren. Cecily, handcuffed on the floor, hears my footsteps and looks up. She snarls. Dressed in a clean uniform, I’m every inch the Major she claims to have hated all along.

“Liar,” she spits.

I almost let it go. Almost.

“That’s a little rich coming from you.”

“You pretended to be my friend to get to Oren, and Garrison. You used me. Our friendship was a sick lie.”

“Again.” I squat in front of her, “a little rich.” She glares. Defeated, bleeding from a split lip. Furious.

“We knew there was a mole. It was obvious they’d go for the blueprints.” But even I can hear the sadness in my voice when I add, “I didn’t know it was you.”

Something cracks behind Cecily’s eyes. It’s harder for her to cling to her hate, hearing that, but she gives it all she has.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Yes, you do,” I say. Because it’s the truth and she knows it. I stand and move away, but hesitate, more truth rising in me like lava. Burning my throat

“I forgive you.”

As I leave, I can hear her crying.