“At what point, exactly, did it seem like a good idea to override the safety restrictions on stim dosages?”

Taro had just regained proper consciousness when the question struck him out of the blue. He blinked a few times and tried to move his head. The headache hit him like a hammer blow in the centre of his skull dome. He had to shut his eyes again against the too powerful light above.

“What?” he croaked out. It came out sounding more like a gurgle.

“Yes, you’ll to be feeling the effects for a good long while. Let it be a lesson. We’ve shut down most of your augmentics, so do try and sit still.”

That was doctor Selma’s voice, though she sounded worn and tired. But she always sounded just like that, even on the best of days.

“Did I —“ Taro stopped and tried to moisten his lips. He didn’t dare open his eyes again. Even the inside of his eyelids felt too bright.

“Did I make it back?” he finally asked, forcing the words out. It took him a second more to realize the stupidity of his question.

“Most of you did,” Selma replied, deadpan. “Commander, he’s awake and somewhat lucid. You’re welcome to grill him at your convenience.”

Taro tried to rise again and discovered that all of his muscles — many of which he never even knew he had — screamed. The ache went deep, right into the marrow of his bones, and roared in his nerves. His head threatened to split with the accumulated complaints from every part of him.

Once, years back, he had ejected at a bad angle and hit the cold water of Deana at such speed that he’d shattered nearly half of his bones. He nearly died that day and it took months of augmenting and therapy before he was fit for duty once again.

This, to his mounting horror, felt like the pain of those months compressed into each moment of lucidity.

“I don’t recommend you move,” Selma said, not unkindly. However, Taro felt her hands on his shoulder, helping him get into a sitting position. Finally, he managed to open his eyes. She had mercifully dimmed the lights in the room.

It was sick room 12A. Of course it was that room. He recognized it easily and wished he didn’t.

“How long since I came back?” he asked, trying to fight the spin of his brain. His throat itched, parchment dry and too sensitive.

“Twelve hours, on the dot. I didn’t expect you conscious for another six, at least.”

She was smoking one of her weedy thin cigarettes. The smoke smelled of something fruity, but he couldn’t place it without his augmentics. Citrus? Maybe. It didn’t help with his nausea.

“He’ll be fine, Alice,” doctor Selma said. “You can go about your duties now.”

Taro looked at the doctor and then followed her gaze. In the corner of the room sat a flickering, ghostly blue hologram of a woman with arms wrapped around her knees, looking up at him with an expression of intense relief. Her mouth moved, but Taro couldn’t hear anything.

“We had to deactivate the intercom in here,” Selma said, nodding towards a wall panel. It had been taken out of its socket, and the wires cut. “She’s in one of her moods and wouldn’t let us work. I threatened to cut the cameras too if she didn’t behave. Don’t ask me why she’s acting as if I sent her into a time-out.”

The Alice hologram glared daggers at Selma and then smiled at Taro, her expressions changing with a flicker, from one to the other several times. She winked out of existence soon after. Now that the distraction was over, Alice had returned to overseeing the more complex functions of the Wild Summer.

“I need to go to her,” Taro said and tried to swing his legs over the edge of the bed. They refused to obey him.

Selma raised an eyebrow at him as she shook the ash of her cigarette into what Taro was certain was a bedpan. She sat on a metal chair bolted next to a small table that held a variety of instruments, magnet locked into position.

“Augmentics are off. You’re not going anywhere. I know who I’m dealing with, so sit tight and get better.” She talked as if she were addressing a bothersome child for which she had exhausted her patience. “The commander will be here in a few. After that, you’ll rest some more. Alice is a big girl. She can wait.”

There was blood on her uniform, dark brown, in blotches across her chest.

“I need to go calm her,” Taro protested. “Let me walk.”

Selma gave him a flat look and took another long drag of her cigarette, seeming to consider his request.

“No.”

Taro was ready to rip out the wires and tubes connecting him to the machines, and then crawl out of the room, but dismissed the thought. If Selma wanted it, she could have him completely deactivated from the neck down. She would do it without any hesitation and leave him laying on the floor until someone was finally called in to get him back into bed.

She had done it before.

Also, the aches weren’t lessening. If anything, the more he came back to his senses, the more he felt wrung out and bone weary. It even hurt to sit.

Commander Brachus found him still trying to argue with Selma. Taro saluted crisply when the officer entered, caught mid-plea.

“Sir! My apologies for not standing up. Doctor Selma here refuses to allow me the use of my own legs,” he said, staring straight at his physician. She merely shrugged.

“I’m certain the doctor has her reasons and I wouldn’t dream of countermanding her authority. At ease, captain.”

Selma had the good grace of not looking smug. She crushed out the cigarette and sat up, weary. Taro just now noticed the large bruise on the side of her face, a great black flower that she didn’t even try to conceal.

“I’d tell you not to excite the stubborn patient too much, commander, but I feel I’d be wasting my breath. I will ask you to leave if he gets too excited,” she said to Commander Brachus, looking down into his eyes. She was a full head taller than the commander, but he withstood that stare down with practised ease.

“Your command here is absolute, doctor. You have my word that I will be gentle.”

She scoffed at that and walked out, boots echoing in the corridor outside before the door slid shut. Taro still hadn’t received permission to use his legs. The machines in the room beeped steadily, but told him little about his own condition. More than anything, he wanted his HUD back for diagnostics and reports.

“We’re having the White Rabbit on an advanced schedule for refitting,” the commander said while taking the seat the doctor had just vacated. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days which, given the time elapsed since the start of the mission, didn’t surprise Taro.

“I expect she’ll be ready to fly again in less than three SE days. I’m hoping you’ll be fit as well by that time.”

“Yes, sir,” Taro confirmed, though he wasn’t feeling all that confident.

“We’ve reviewed the black box and the recordings, but I still have some questions, captain.”

“Yes, sir.”

Brachus looked at the cut intercom and raised an eyebrow.

“I believe Alice tried doctor Selma’s patience. I want her to shield the room, but…”

Just as he made to rise and head out into the corridor, the lights around them flickered erratically for a few moments, and then everything went back to normal. Brachus sat back down, heavily, creasing his uniform.

“I believe she reads lips off the cameras,” Taro said. “I don’t think a little thing like a disconnected terminal would stop her from listening in.”

“Were they waiting for you?” Brachus asked, cutting straight to the heart of the issue.

“Yes, sir,” Taro replied with a hiss of anger. “They knew our vector, our payload, our plan of attack, everything. The mission would have been a complete failure if not for the contingency.” He stopped and gritted his teeth, biting back on an accusation that would have been unfair. “We lost five good people, commander. I hope it was worth it.”

Brachus met Taro’s accusing gaze, crystal blue eyes against his red stare.

“It was, captain. It might not seem like it, but confirmation of an information leak may turn the tide of this war for us. This might be the first time we got ahead of the skidrells in such matters.”

Taro wished he would be allowed to walk. Pacing helped him stay calm.

“You said five people are lost. What about the sixth, captain?” the commander asked with a wry smile. “Am I to understand you’ve delivered her? As intended, the black box hadn’t recorded anything about your payload.”

The pilot nodded slowly, his gaze not leaving the commander’s.

“Valerie is aboard the Delirium. It was a bad launch, sir. The storm hit us much harder than we expected, so she went off course. But I saw her pod hit home. The decoy aboard the Red Hawk got shot down. Most anti-air fire was drawn to it. They knew exactly what they were firing at.” Taro spat to the side, feeling bile rising into his throat. “I want a piece of whoever is selling us out,” he went on, barely containing his anger.

Brachus smiled ruefully at his pilot.

“We paid with five lives for this confirmation, captain. You’ll get your pound of flesh. That’s a promise.”

The lights blinked again. Taro understood it as Alice showing her displeasure at the prospect of someone aboard her ship operating without her consent. If she found that person ahead of them, he very much doubted they would ever find even bits of the corpse.

“Starting this moment, all parameters of your mission are completely confidential,” Brachus said, rising from his seat. “You will not discuss these events with anyone outside of myself, doctor Selma, or Alice. We will have you airborne again in a few days and I am tasking you with bringing our agent home. Once you receive access to your feed, you will also receive a cold package of data describing the new mission parameters and resources at your disposal. If we play this right, the skidrells won’t know what hit them.”

Taro saluted on reflex.

“Yes, sir!” he said, feeling a pang of brittle purpose again. Brachus had taken a chance with Taro, based on his relationship with Alice, and he had been the only one that knew of the secret parameters for the mission. It had taken all of Taro’s willpower to not inform his squad that they were probably flying straight into a trap. The guilt festered inside his chest, like a twisting, writhing maggot that struggled to eat through him. He wouldn’t let it.

Brachus shook imaginary dust off his uniform pants and cleared his throat.

“Er, I’ll see what I can do about doctor Selma’s restrictions.”

The door slid open and close with a soft pneumatic hiss.

Taro lay on his bed, listening to the steady beeps of the machines. The ugly thing inside scratched and gnawed at his resolve. It didn’t matter that he was already feeling angry with himself for the part he’d played.

Jake was dead. Tina was dead. Amarana, Vaseel, and Peny were dead.

They were all gone, and he could have prevented it if only he had opened his damn mouth. One of the machines started beeping more urgently, but he barely heard it. His friends were gathered around his bed, red stares driving the guilt into him. There were no words of apology that he could utter to make up for how he had betrayed them with his silence.

“If we wouldn’t have gone, they’d have known. I wanted to tell you, but we needed to confirm the leak without alerting the Delirium. We were chosen because we had the best chance of survival, given the odds,” Taro parroted back the words of the commander from weeks back. His friends still stared, accusingly. “I will make it up to you.”

And he really believed that. He believed it so much that it frightened him. He couldn’t make the ghosts understand his determination, but it steeled him against their wordless contempt.

His HUD came on-line without warning. His augmentics followed momentarily, a message of boot-up appearing in his field of vision.

He immediately understood why Selma had deactivated them in the first place. His nerves were raw from the overdose. It was like being set on fire and dunked in the freezing ocean, burning and freezing to death at the same time. Hot tears filled his eyes as he weathered the moment. He deserved the pain.

“Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

He hadn’t noticed Selma walk back in. She held a slate on which she touched a few commands. Some of the tubes connected to his back and sides came to life and pumped a kind of painkiller into him. The jolt made him woozy, but the pain relented for the moment.

“We don’t design those injectors with a dosage limit because we’re idiots,” Selma said, checking over some readouts on the various machines. “You’re lucky this is your first fugue. I think — “ and she really emphasized the word “— that you won’t feel many long lasting side effects. But do it again, and I can’t guarantee how much of your brain will survive. Am I making myself clear, Taro?”

“Crystal,” he replied as he swung his feet over the side of the bed. “Am I free to go?”

“If you can, sure,” Selma replied as she lit another cigarette. She took a long drag from it and blew the smoke towards the air vents.

“Must you?” Taro admonished her as he tried to get on his feet. The whole Wild Summer lurched sideways when he tried to stand up. He grabbed on to the bed to steady himself, but the bed was trying to throw him off too.

“Your lungs are enhanced, and I can’t smoke anywhere else. So yes, I must.” She didn’t seem to mind the way the ship shook and bounced. By all rights she should have been holding on for dear life. “Having trouble finding your sea legs, pilot?” she asked him, the corners of her mouth creasing just slightly into a mocking simile of a smile.

“I’m fine,” Taro said through gritted teeth.

He wasn’t. He was very far from fine. Jake and Peny barred his way to the door. Amarana and Vaseel flanked him. The ghosts were shaking the whole damn ship.

“What’s Alice doing with the ship?” he asked. It was much too bright in the room again. It stung.

Selma didn’t answer. Hadn’t she heard him?

Taro tried to shoulder his way past Jake and Peny. Only that it wasn’t Peny. Or Jake. It was all of them at once, in one, reaching out to drag him to their side, back into the storm. Ghostly arms grabbed him, much too solid. He tried to fight against them, but his body refused to listen. He leaned heavily into the multi-faced creature and tried to shoulder it aside.

The floor came up to meet him, cold and solid, and Taro slipped back into unconsciousness.