L-2. After The Surge

I awoke in a bright room. Too bright. I opened my eyes just a crack, and quickly squeezed them shut again.

Where am I? Am I dead? Is this heaven?

A dim buzzing filled my ears. The familiar sound of florescent lights.

Hmm. Probably not heaven then.

I cracked open my eyes again, giving them time to adjust. I found myself lying on my back in an inclined bed. An IV was attached to my left arm, and cold metal sensors were fastened to my chest. There were two blurry figures, one to my left and one to my right, standing over me. They were discussing something in hushed tones.

“Nngh…” I let out a weak moan.

“Ah, she’s coming around.” said one of the figures.

“Stimulants are working. Neural activity returning to normal levels.” said the other.

“Lydia! Are you alright! How do you feel?” A third voice rang out, one not belonging to either one of the people standing over me. It sounded like it was broadcasting through speakers. I knew that voice; hearing it filled me with familiar warmth.

“Kometka?” I murmured.

“Yes, I’m right here!” she answered.

“Where… Where am I?” The last thing I remembered was being eaten alive by Sarcophage tentacles. I had probably passed out from shock.

“You’re aboard the Hypernova, my ship. You’ve been unconscious for fifteen days.” said the first figure. Squinting, I could just barely make out his face.

“Yuri?” My old GRU commander, and the one I had sought out to ensure Kometka’s safety. Had he rescued us?

“In the flesh.” answered Yuri. “The lovely lady standing opposite me is our ship’s chief medical officer, Yayoi Vetrova.”

I looked at the woman. Her black hair was drawn into a ponytail, and wore a blue lab coat. Something about her name stirred a memory. Wasn’t Yuri’s surname Vetrov? A realization slowly crept over me.

“Vetrova? Wait, that means…”

“Yes, she’s my wife.” Yuri smiled warmly.

I guffawed. “So you finally got married, huh? And here I thought no woman would ever take pity on an old wardog like you.”

“It was the beard. I find men with beards incredibly sexy.” Yayoi said dryly.

“HEY!” Yuri protested, before chuckling. “Well, at least you’re feeling well enough to make fun of me. You gave us all quite a scare.”

I wriggled my fingers, confirming they still worked. Then I tried to wriggle my toes, but…

“Huh?” I lifted my head and looked down my chest. My legs were gone. I remembered, with a start, that the Sarcophage tentacles had dissolved them. It was the most pain I had ever felt. “How… how am I alive?”

“That explanation is better left to Kometka.” said Yuri, turning to a screen on the room’s wall, where the AI girl looked at me with fretful eyes.

Kometka fidgeted. “Right. Well, after the Belphegor grabbed hold of us…”

*****

After I lapsed into unconsciousness from shock, Kometka managed to take remote control of an almost-wrecked Gravity Frame near the Belphegor. She had used its plasma blades to cut us free of the tentacles, then kicked herself away from the creature. It had been a temporary reprieve, and we had nearly been captured again, but the two surviving pilots from the Chiroptera had come to her aid afterwards; Kometka had pretended to be me, in order to keep her true nature as an AI a secret. While the two pilots escorted her out of the battle zone, Kometka had used my Inertia Suit’s emergency medical functions to sedate me into a coma and then amputate the remains of my legs.

“Hurk. A field amputation, huh? I’m glad I wasn’t conscious for that.” Inertia Suits had the capability to perform emergency amputations on their wearers if a limb became compromised; I had seen it done a couple of times, and it was always a gruesome sight. The limb would be cut away with servo-controlled micro-filaments, and the damaged parts ejected with small explosive charges. The remaining portions of the Suit would then seal themselves against the environment.

“I didn’t have much choice.” Kometka said apologetically. “Only about ten percent of each leg was remaining, and the wounds were exposed to hard vacuum because of the cockpit breach. Your blood was literally beginning to boil.”

I shook my head. “Yeesh. I’m shocked that I’m alive.”

“Technically,” said Yayoi, “you were clinically dead for nearly twenty minutes. Fortunately, the drug-induced coma protected your higher brain functions, and the cellular necrosis was still mild enough that I was able to repair your body with nanobots.”

“Nanobots?” I had never heard of that sort of medical technology before.

“Let’s just say the GRU has made some advances in triage care since you left.” Yuri said.

After safely escorting us out of the combat zone, the two pilots had returned to the fray. I was picked up by the Hypernova shortly thereafter. Yuri had been monitoring the battle from afar, waiting for a good chance to snatch me and Kometka up.

“If you were so close you should have jumped into help earlier.” I said sourly.

Yuri shook his head sadly. “I would have loved to be part of the battle, but we had been ordered to stay on the Absolute Line and defend OPS-028. Command wanted to make sure the Diamond Protocol went off without a hitch.”

“Diamond Protocol? Wait, does that mean…”

“Yes.” he said grimly. “Two hours after we rescued you, the Diamond Protocol was put into effect. Our remaining forces retreated, and the battlefield was bombarded by the Almaz array.”

I plopped my head back down on the pillow and stared at the ceiling. “So we lost.”

“Technically, according to Command, we won… but yes. We lost, badly.”

I heard a loud smacking sound. Turning my head, I saw Yayoi had slapped Yuri on the cheek. “That’s enough depressing talk, you two. The important thing is all of us are alive.”

“Hey!” Yuri said, rubbing his cheek. “How come only I got smacked?”

Yayoi folded her arms. “Because I have the right, as your wife. Plus, you wouldn’t expect me to hit a patient, now would you?”

“…Yuri, your wife is kind of terrifying.” I said.

He rolled his eyes and grinned. “Tell me about it. We’re a perfect match for each other.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere.” She grabbed his collar and pulled him into a kiss.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Recovering patient over here! Get a room, you weirdos!”

Kometka shook her head. “It’s a lost cause, Lydia. They’re always like that.”

I groaned. “Urgh. Now I want to go back in a coma…”

Am I really going to be alright with this crazy woman as my doctor?!

*****

I was bedridden for another two months thereafter. Kometka was there every waking moment, fretting over me like a mother hen. If I so much as pricked my finger, she would summon nurses; if my food was two minutes late, she’d yell at the stewards. She was such a sweet, sweet girl.

Despite her personality, Yayoi actually had an excellent bedside manner and her medical expertise was unmatched. She fitted me with a pair of prosthetic legs that were wired directly into my nervous system; given time to adjust, I’d eventually be able to manipulate them as if they were my own limbs. They lacked any sense of touch; cold steel doesn’t have nerve endings. Despite that, they still itched. Is it considered phantom limb syndrome if the limbs are robotic?

Yayoi also replaced my missing eye with a cybernetic one. I had been told before that my optic nerves were too damaged for the procedure, but she scoffed at that.

“For an inferior doctor, perhaps. The great Yayoi Vetrova has never met a patient she couldn't heal!” Her boastfulness wasn’t just for show; she had the skill to back it up. She repaired my optic nerve with ease.

The cybernetic ocular implant was actually better than my original eye. Not only could it see the visual light spectrum with perfect acuity, but it could also detect infrared and ultraviolet rays. I felt like I had been upgraded into a powerful cyborg, the kind you’d see in a pre-war cinema.

“You know,” I said to Kometka one day, “I feel like I’m more machine than human now.”

“As a robot myself, I shall relish our newfound kinship.” Kometka said, half-sarcastically.

The two of us smiled at each other.

*****

“Ow!” I shrieked as I tripped and fell. My body was caught by robotic arms, but they did not catch me gently.

“Sorry, sorry. This bulky thing is incapable of being gentle.” Kometka said.

We were in the Hypernova’s hanger bay; the ship was currently underway, and the acceleration provided Earth-normal gravity. I was doing physical therapy, trying to figure out how to walk on my new prosthetic legs; Kometka was remote-controlling a Construction Frame, a hulking machine the size of a steel gorilla, to support me as I took those first faltering steps.

“Would you like to rest for a bit?” Kometka asked with concern.

I shook my head. “No, I’ve almost got it down. A few more attempts, then I’ll rest.”

“Please don’t push yourself.” she said. “You’re still recovering…”

I looked at the Construction Frame and grinned. “Who do you think you’re talking to? I’m Lydia goddamned Tereshkova, a child of Mars. I don’t know how to quit.”

“Yes, yes, I’m in awe of your badassery. You have nothing to prove to me. Now, five minute’s rest.” She gripped my arm firmly and steered me into the open cockpit of the Construction Frame. I settled into the seat and stretched. I looked down at the small screen in the center of the Frame’s control console, where Kometka was projecting her avatar. As always, seeing her filled me with warmth. A strange sentimentality washed over me.

“Kometka… thank you.”

“Hmm? For what?” She tilted her head to the side.

“For always looking after me. You saved my life, stayed by my side though all this, and now you’re helping me with this therapy.” I patted the top of the console gently, as if trying to pat her head. It was a futile gesture since she couldn’t feel it, but I didn’t really care.

Kometka smiled. “Don’t mention it. We made a promise, remember? To survive together.”

“Yeah. You still need to find your sister and introduce me. I can’t rest easy until that happens.”

“Even after that. I’m going to make sure you live to be a happy old lady, peacefully retired in a rustic log cabin in the woods.”

“That almost sounds like a proposal.” I remarked.

“Why not?” Kometka replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “You’re my precious pilot, and I’ll stay by your side until the end.”

It was the kindest thing anyone had ever said to me. My heart did a little backflip, and I couldn’t help but grin. “Till death do us part, huh?”

She nodded. “Till death do us part.”

*****

After a month of therapy, I was finally able to move around freely in both gravity and zero-G. After that, my transfer back into the GRU was made official and I went back onto active duty. Kometka’s computer core was transferred into a brand-new Nighthawk, and we began to fly scouting missions past the Absolute Line.

The scouting missions went without off without a hitch, at first. Little did I know, a certain Belphegor was still taking an unhealthy interest in me, waiting for the chance to finish what it started. And that creature, seeking to understand both me and humanity, put the genetic material it absorbed from my legs to unprecedented use…

That was the birth of my own personal white whale, Moby Dick. That fateful encounter created my greatest rival, and the next step in the Sarcophage’s evolution.

Somehow, I had earned both the love of a robot girl and the hatred of an alien clone. And little old me, the cyborg survivor of Mars and the Third Great Surge, became the apex of this strange triangle.

Even faced with these new challenges, I was extraordinarily glad to be alive.