Velocity

Discharged

“Oh Lord, that nursebot is coming for me again. Is that a needle?”

“Nope, she’s headed for the captain’s pod.”

“There may be a moment of discomfort,” said the nursebot in a soft, soothing, feminine voice. It approached the captain in Pod Four. Its plastic feet moved with the measured, confident stride they all had. He tried to squirm, but servos whined, cinching his straps. Our movements within the locked healing pods were tightly restricted, anyway.

“Nooo, hold on. Ow,” complained Captain Jeff Tumas. The dripping stainless steel needle plunged into his immobilized thigh. “Dammit. They don’t listen at all.”

Lounging next to him in Pod Three, I chuckled at him. I could afford to chuckle, of course, I was past the need for shots now. My arms in their regrow bags were doing quite well. Soon I would be able to flex my new fingers and a few days after that, maybe I would get rid of the bags entirely.

“Laugh it up, Ensign,” said Captain Tumas in his best officer’s rumble. He had no original limbs left except for the one leg they kept jabbing needles into, but he still sounded tough.

When the nursebot had gone, we all looked to Ruth in Pod One for another activity report. She was the only one who could see outside. All the other viewports were shuttered by heavy blast shields of molecular-bonded tritanium alloy, but not hers. Her pod’s viewport had jammed and been left partly open after the battle. Her four-inch slit was our only connection to the outside world. By twisting and straining against our straps, we could all see the sky outside through her window. The sky was blue with a twinge of lavender and usually cloud-free. But only Ruth in Pod One could crane her neck enough to see the ground.

“Looks like another warm morning out there,” she told us, flashing everyone a smile. “I should warn you, the nursebots are out there in force. Looks like they might even chase us down with needles at the picnic tables.”

Captain Tumas grunted.

The figure in Pod Two was a kid. He never spoke, I don’t think his larynx had healed enough yet. But he listened to us closely and rolled his eyes around alertly to whoever was talking. I dreaded when he became Pod One’s occupant, the next up for discharge. He was only a kid with no voice, how was he supposed to keep everyone in the ward apprised of outside events?

“Aren’t there any visitors? There should be visitors,” came a call from way down the line, it was from Pod Seventeen, I think. I didn’t know the guy. It was too hard to have a shouted conversation with someone that far down in a crowded ward. Even further back down the line they relayed Ruth’s comments, I knew. The intercom system was out of course, as all communications had been since the battle, and the ship was running in full-auto mode.

“No visitors,” shouted Ruth down to the guy in Seventeen.

“We are at war, ya know, son,” said Captain Tumas. “Not everything is about our individual comfort.”

“No shit,” said someone from down in the direction of Pod Nine. Tumas’ brows beetled ferociously and he craned his neck to see who it was, but gave up after a while, fuming. Discipline was very hard to keep when you were all strapped into medical pods on full lock-down.

Since the battle, we had been without communications. Not even the nursebots responded to us, perhaps the ship’s whole network was down. The ship had gone into emergency mode and landed us here, somewhere in the Cygnus cluster. At least the klaxons had mercifully stopped after a few hours. We had all thought we were going to go mad with the wailing and flashing.

“Tell us something, Ruth,” I said quietly. Being in Pod Three, there was only the mute boy between us. The kid, I didn’t even know his name, swiveled his eyes from me to Ruth expectantly.

She looked at me and the kid, then gave a slow smile. She turned back to the viewport and gazed outside.

“It’s a warm day. I can see the lake out through the trees. There’s no haze,” she began.

I smiled and closed my eyes. The beeping equipment and the gurgling bodymats that took our waste away in tubes receded. I visualized the world outside. It was an alien world, but it wasn’t without beauty. There were pod-like creatures that looked like mushrooms or perhaps smooth rocks, but which occasionally picked themselves up and moved. There was the tent city, of course, where all the discharged people had set up camp. And there were the picnic tables set up right below the viewport so all our old friends could wave up at us. Well, at Ruth at least.

I opened my eyes as Ruth finished her story. Ten or twenty pods down, I could hear them relaying it to everyone. The whole ward fell silent, as it always did when Ruth described the outside world to us.

The next morning, Ruth was discharged. The nursebot came in and simply began disconnecting her, without preamble. She winced as the tubes and needles and glued-on monitor probes came out and off one at a time. Inside, I was saddened. I looked at the kid. It would be his turn next, I supposed, and we would get no reports from him. Everyone, in a way, had been dreading this day. I felt bad for the kid, because I think he knew we didn’t want him to be at the window.

The chute beneath Ruth opened and she held on for a second, chewing her lip and staring at us. I thought I saw a tear on her face.

“Don’t be sad, soldier! You’re getting out of this hell-hole!” I told her.

She nodded and gave me a smile. Then she was gone down the chute.

It came as a great surprise to me when my Pod came alive and started to move forward, instead of shunting down the line into the kid’s spot. Instead, my pod came out of line, slid sideways past the kid and then backed up and locked into place. I was now Pod One. I looked at the kid. He looked both disappointed, but also relieved. Obviously, the system had judged he was healing too slowly, and I had moved up in priority. Down the line, all the other pods were shifting on their rails, as the diagnostic computers sorted them out.

I turned my head then for my first look outside. Behind me, I could feel everyone’s eager eyes on my back.

“What’s it like?”

“Can you see Ruth out there?”

“Is my Johnny waiting out there for me? He’s tall and blond, at least he was before they shaved it all. He should have come for me by now.”

I stared. Outside there was no forest, no lake, no trees or tent city. There was only a desolate scene of reddish rocks and barren, volcanic-looking sands. Here and there were bubbling pools of a dark viscous substance. Liquid methane, most likely.

There were indeed people out there, nude, frozen, suffocated people in various poses of death. Their corpses showed that none of them had made it more than a dozen yards from the ship’s discharge port. I picked out Ruth’s frosted face. She had managed to make it out far enough to be in my range of vision and to lift a hand to whoever next took her station. Her fingers had twisted into a claw, but I recognized the gesture. It was a salute, such as one comrade might give another.

I wondered numbly how long I would be staring at her before it was my turn to be discharged.

“Well? Come on, tell us something!”

I didn’t look back at them. I knew I would not be able to keep the truth from my face.

After a few quiet moments, which I’m sure they chalked up to being overwhelmed, I began speaking. I recalled all the things Ruth had told us of, and I added in the things my mind had conjured up over the days.

There were a few playful children in my version from the local farming colony. And there were flowers. Flowers with swollen red petals and bright yellow balls of pollen in the center.