Sheryl hated hospitals. From the vague memories of the days after Grace found her wallowing in poverty to her frequent trips for treatment for exhaustion and later the terminal stages of the V-type infection, she loathed every minute wasted in a hospital. Now, she found she had another reason to despise them, for as much as she hated being in a hospital, she hated being a visitor to a patient in one even more.
The steady tone of the monitors let her know that Alto was alright, his pulse was strong, his breathing fine. He had a severe concussion but it was under control and his unconsciousness was due to the body trying to heal itself. Knowing that made seeing him lay there no easier, nor did it erase the terrible image of his bloody body being rushed to the medics. And to think that he had been lucky, that if he hadn't turned right when he did the sniper's round would have cored the pilot's compartment and he would be gone…like his flight mate, Kakizaki.
The thought of Alto being gone was horrible to contemplate, and the suddenness of the new attacks, after the brief peace following the war, showed Sheryl just how tenuous their lives were. She could still lose Alto at any time; he did a dangerous job, and although he did it well, the risks were high. New feelings were filling Sheryl, those of wanting a family. She had thought that Ranka and Alto would be enough, that she was happy that she was no longer alone, but now she wanted more. She wanted a piece of Alto, a child of his, and although these feelings were new, they were almost overwhelming in their intensity. Alto did a dangerous job, one that he did well, but the incident three days ago had proven how vulnerable he still was. She didn't want to lose everything of him; she didn't want to lose anything at all, but the impact of this on her was strong, and she knew she wanted a child by Saotome Alto.
This made her think of the arrangement between the three of them, and the games they were forced to play. She was tired of the games, she wanted the law announced and she wanted to be married. She wanted to shout out in public, she wanted to sing out that she was in love with and married to Saotome Alto and Ranka Lee, that she was theirs and they were hers and damn what anyone thought.
As hard as this was for Sheryl, she thought that Ranka had it worse. The people she loved were always ending up in the hospital. Ozma, Alto – even her brother had ended up here shortly after that last battle, with neural damage from implant burnout that the doctors had struggled to treat, keeping the pilot in the hospital for a week as the doctors fought and learned as they went. Although Brera had recovered, Sheryl thought it was a closer thing than anyone had said. Ranka had been in a panic when Alto was brought in, and Kanaria had ended up giving her a mild sedative to calm her down. When she fell asleep they moved her to a room for observation, and so that she could be close to Alto when she awoke. Since then the poor girl had been alternating between Alto's bedside and the school, having only gone in to the government building once for a short meeting. Sheryl had been impressed as the vernette shouted down several ministers and directors, telling them in no uncertain terms that if they could not control the planet, then the Vajra would declare the planet a no-flight zone, and shoot down anything that moved outside the colonies, and incidentally cutting off all interplanetary trade, and access to any more fold quartz. With that she had turned and left the government council stunned and scrambling to regain control over their airspace. The loss of the fold quartz, the colony's sole current trade resource (as all other production was devoted to getting the colony to its break-even point in regards to survival) had dire financial and strategic implications for the colony, and being trapped inside Island-1, for there were still very few land routes, would bring construction and colonization to a screaming halt. Something had to be done.
A day after that, with still no action forthcoming, Captain Wilder had declared his intention to run for Colonial President. In a grand and sweeping announcement, he had boldly stated that he was running, his track record as a commander defending Frontier, his willingness to take on corruption, and his vision as a member of the colony. Monica came forward and spoke for her fiancé, detailing his love for her and their commitment to the future of the colony in the form of their unborn child. He had cajoled Minister Ebata into in role of running mate, and paraded him to the media as the man who had kept Frontier fed and breathing during the last desperate weeks before planetfall. He challenged any other contenders to show that they had done more for the Frontier colony than he and his vice-presidential candidate.
So far, his opposition had failed to do so.
With such a bold opening move (which Sheryl had been brought in to advise on, given her vast experience with public performance) Wilder had short-circuited some of the character-based attacks the NUNS candidate could make. By portraying himself as a family man who was interested in the future of the colony, he refused to allow anyone to use his relationship with Monica as a weapon against him. That the operator was smart, bold, and pretty was icing on the cake, and the first poll that evening showed that she had a higher approval rating than Wilder did. The Captain ran as an independent, forgoing any existing political ties and clearly stating his views on the issues. The only real issue that the colonists cared about right now was the immediate future, and Wilder not being a part of the system that had spawned collaborators and traitors made people believe that he was looking out for their future, not just his.
Overall, Sheryl thought that his campaign would go well. Another part of his pitch had been to appeal to reservists, recently-released members of SMS, and officers who had resigned from NUNS to come join SMS, the strongest arm of the colony. Despite the loss of Kakizaki and Alto's hospitalization, SMS had crushed the attacking force, with Klan counter-sniping Alto's attacker and Ozma's flight scrambling and descending upon the intruders like furies born. The squad of eight VF-22s had been pared down to two, and only luck and damage to both RVF fighters had prevented them from being tracked back to their carrier. The real reason for the Vajra threat was due to Ranka's distress, as the Vajra felt the loss of each unit, but it did not ultimately affect the hive except as minor loss of resources. No, the Vajra cared more that their Queen was upset, and Sheryl wondered how much of the threat was theirs and how much of it was Ranka's idea. She thought her love was tired of always giving, always being used. Ranka was growing some teeth, and although she was glad to see the vernette stand up for herself, she was sad at the loss of innocence. She wanted Ranka unspoiled. Well, except for any despoiling that she or Alto did to the girl.
She looked to Alto once more. No change. How much longer would he sleep, she wondered.
Sheryl really hated hospitals.
FTPFTPFTPFTP
Ranka floated in the ether of the fold-mind, not focusing on anything, listening to the thoughts of the hive mind as it directed the many Vajra that lived on the planet. She could 'feel' Ai-kun in the mind, as he had a slightly different 'flavor' than that of the other Vajra. She wasn't sure if it was because of his exposure to her, or that she was familiar enough with him to be able to pick him out as opposed to the rest of the Vajra, but she could tell him apart, and that was what mattered to her. Ai-kun might be just a node of the grand hive fold-mind, but he had been her friend at a time when she had had few real friends, and she would always cherish him for that.
Floating with the fold-mind and trying to listen to it was easier than thinking about Alto. Ranka had come to cherish the ability to get away from everyone, no matter where she might be, simply by falling into the gestalt of the Vajra. As the pressures on her continued to grow, she had come to use the fold-mind more and more, and she was learning about the Vajra, coming to understand them and learning how to direct the hive mind, to make suggestions, to understand the thoughts without the medium of the queens to explain matters to her.
She 'felt' for Ai-kun once more, finding him and his place in the fold-mind, and out of curiosity, 'looked' more deeply, using techniques the queens had been trying to teach her, and suddenly, she was in one of the fields across the bay from the Quarter and Island-1, but the view was distorted, and she realized she was seeing through Ai-kun's eyes. She backed away and came back to herself in the web. It was an odd, yet amazing experience, and she wanted, needed to know if she could do it again. But Ai-kun was familiar. She looked across the hive mind, finding the most unfamiliar feeling Vajra she could, and applied her mind once more, twisting her thoughts to enter the senses of the Vajra. She opened her eyes, and saw light streaming all around her; she saw shapes, those that had to be other Vajra, moving around her, and she realized after a minute or two that she was underwater. She knew there were aquatic Vajra, but she had never seen one before, and looking around she thought that they were beautiful. Sleek and powerful, yet unlike the whales or dolphins she saw in books, they were Vajra idealized for oceanic life. The Vajra she was sharing senses with cried out, and moments later she felt the echoes returning, and she was amazed as she realized that they saw with sound as much as they did with their eyes. She broke contact once more and floated through the web, losing focus and drifting through the psychic ether. This was amazing. She needed to show this to Sheryl.
She turned and looked for her fellow queen and singer, and quickly found her, a bright, dense node surrounded by the nodes of the junior queens. She was still learning the how to knock without pulling Sheryl directly into the fold mind, and she really needed to figure the trick out before she ended up interrupting something important, like kissing time. Maybe if she used the mental twist while she knocked…
FTPFTPFTPFTP
Nene was bored. When Klan had woken up, she had added three weeks confined to quarters when not on duty to Nene's punishment. Except for meals and one trip to the ship's store a week, Nene's whole world had been the four walls of her compartment on the Quarter. She was lucky that she didn't have to share quarters right now, which would only have made her even more miserable, as she felt stifled and cramped as it was. Being one of the largest meltran ever, she didn't fit into most spaces very well. She was limited in her exercise, didn't care for most television, didn't play any computer games, and had seen most of the movies currently available on the network. She was already down to her last two books, she still had one more week to go, and the ship's store didn't have any others that interested her. She was really, really bored. She wished something would happen.
She regretted that thought a moment later when a high-pitched feminine scream sounded outside her room. The scream continued, growing in volume and intensity, and Nene was out the door before she consciously thought about it. She ran down the corridor and came to the source of the sound, the shared quarters of Alto, Ranka, and Sheryl. Nene hit the open button, but the door didn't move, and for a moment, she almost panicked. Looking around, she spotted the ship's call terminal and keyed the preset button for sickbay. Ten agonizing seconds later, Kanaria answered the call.
"Sickbay, Lieutenant Berstien…what is that sound?"
"I think it's Ranka, Kanaria!" Nene replied in a quavering voice. "She just started screaming all of a sudden, and the door to her quarters is locked and I don't know what to do…" The terminal was already blank, and Nene waited another agonizing thirty seconds, which she later thought was the longest thirty seconds of her life, before Kanaria practically exploded out of the lift, slapping her phone against the keyplate. The door and the phone did their virtual handshake and Kanaria's medical override code popped the door open a second later.
The source of the screaming was indeed Ranka, who was thrashing on the floor, her eyes wide and unfocused, blood streaming from her nose. Kanaria bolted across the room, dragging Nene with.
"Hold her head steady, keep her from hitting it on anything. How long has she been like this?"
"At least a minute, minute and a half?" Nene approximated.
"Damn." Kanaria muttered. "I think something must be causing it, but I don't know what it could be or how to treat…"
Ranka suddenly collapsed and went silent. Nene went through a moment of atavistic panic before Kanaria finished checking her vitals and said, "She's still breathing, but her heartbeat's a bit erratic. I have two corpsmen coming, we need to get her down to sickbay immediately. I don't know what caused this, but I'm just thankful that you were nearby. If this had gone on she might have hurt herself badly before it stopped."
Nene watched as the two corpsmen (one of those anachronistic naval terms, she thought in a detached corner of her mind, considering that one was, in fact, a woman) carefully load Ranka on to a gurney and then move as fast as possible after Kanaria. Nene decided right then and there that she would never, ever again complain about being bored.
FTPFTPFTPFTP
"Damn it!"
Ozma Lee was mad. He tended to joke with Cathy that, as CAG for SMS and squadron leader for Skull squadron, it was his job to be unhappy, irritable, and angry – at least on the outside. He was quick to tell someone when they made a mistake, and only praised someone when they did something exceptionally well. When Alto killed a Vajra with a millennia-old zentran weapon during his final readiness test, Ozma had been quietly impressed, but he hadn't been about to let the headstrong and cocky rookie know that. And knowing Klan's meltran pride, a quick insult about the zentran weapon and she was more that ready to play 'good cop' to his 'bad' without him even asking. He believed firmly in pushing his pilots to be the best and to work together, and by giving them someone to hate more than any of their fellow pilots, he gave them a common bond that helped bring them together despite any differences.
This mad, though, was not a professional mad. This was a deep, fierce, gut-clenching anger that had him ready to shoot the next person to ask one more ridiculous question. He had lost one pilot, and had almost lost another, one of his best and most trusted pilots, and the fact that NUNS continued to fail to get any kind of response together ate at him. That their best pilots were defecting to SMS in droves now was a factor, but they seemed to continue to be playing the political games that worked well while the colony was in transit, but no longer applied now that an active colony was trying to build itself from the ground up. He didn't think that NUNS would ever get their act together, planet-side, and that the force would soon be relegated to extra-atmospheric traffic-control, customs inspections, and asteroid interception duties, leaving the policing of the planet solely to SMS. While this would be a good thing, it sat wrong with Ozma that the military he once served could sink so low.
On top of the pilots, now his sister and her best friend/co-fiance/fellow queen were in the hospital as well. Ranka had been rushed to the ICU after Kanaria stabilized her on the Quarter. Upon arrival at the hospital it had quickly been discovered that Sheryl had gone into a screaming seizure at the same time that Ranka had. This led Kanaria and the doctors treating Sheryl to surmise that the matter was somehow Vajra related, but it was, of course, only supposition. But with both links to the Vajra unconscious and likely to be so for some time, the government had gone into a panic. Already upset with Wilder's campaign, and lacking any real direction, the leading committee had become increasingly agitated and representatives were calling the hospital every half an hour for updates on the status of Ranka and Sheryl. Three delegations had already been turned away by the hospital staff, and Luca and Klan were currently stationed at the entrance to the hospital to repel the next deputation, which Ozma was expecting some time in the next hour. He almost wished he could watch, as pint-sized Klan in her highly customized X-Gear bodily removed the government representatives.
Either that, or he wanted to remove them himself.
FTPFTPFTPFTP
His fighter bucked as he pushed it faster, power-systems taxed by the extended series of long-distance folds he had put it through. Brera had heard an awful psychic shriek echo across the plane of the fold-mind, and though it was far, he knew it was Ranka the moment he heard it. He had argued with his commander for an hour before convincing him that he had to leave, that he had to return to the colony. He had tried to find Ranka, or Sheryl, but something had happened and the junior queens were protecting them fiercely. The still were less than accepting of him, as he had the same 'flavor' in the fold-mind as the conspirators that had made him, and although Ranka had vouched for him, without her influence the juniors had closed ranks and shut him out. So now he had to get to the one other person that could enter the fold-mind and be trusted, even if he needed a bit of help (and a special earring) to get there.
Brera wasn't sure why he couldn't reach Alto, whether the idiot had taken off the earring or if something was wrong with him, but he felt that there was no time to lose, before the Vajra hive-mind became truly agitated. He wondered if anyone back on the colony had truly figured out the role that Ranka and Sheryl held within the hive, and why the queens that remained continued to be referred to as 'junior queens'.
They were junior queens because they were subordinate to Ranka and Sheryl. And with their queens unresponsive, it would only be a matter of time before someone provoked the Vajra, and without the calming effect the two had on the hive-mind, anything might happen. He needed to reach them before it did.
FTPFTPFTPFTP
Author's Notes:
Okay, yeah, this took a long time to get out. There were circumstances with work which put writing on a hiatus until June, and then my children arrived two weeks earlier than was planned, which shot most of the summer. I needed a couple of weeks to recover from that, and here I am. I want to get some more of this written and posted before I dive deep into comic book publication, because I honestly won't have any time once I do.
The chapter was short, but in this case needs to stop there, as I already have a good portion of the next chapter in my head, and the flow will work better if it stops right there.
Thanks to Panaka and Andy Wong Fey Hong for writing and making me get off my ass and get this done, and for all the people who have added me as a favorite. I'm writing this for fun, but I'm glad that other people like the story too.
And I'm thinking that I really need to get the story wrapped up before the Frontier movie ends up coming out.