Fractured Earth Saga 1: Apocalypse Orphan (16 page)

After a brief search, Wolf found the shovel and returned to ground zero. Within an hour, he had excavated the ten-by-ten space to a depth of fifteen feet. He worked carefully because the mud was unstable. One careless move could send the ground above collapsing down on him. So much water was running into the excavated hole, he had to stop and dig a side trench to funnel the water away and keep the water level below his knees.

Finally, Wolf reached an iron doorway. He heard banging on the other side and saw the remnants of a wood stairway that had been ripped away by the ferocious storm. The doorframe was twisted, and the heavy door groaned as he used his tremendous strength to force it open. Water and mud oozed into the opening as the sun revealed the outstretched hands and faces of the survivors below.

“Wolf! I knew you would save us,” Leesa cried as she ran forward, covered with mud and looking disheveled. Wolf reached down and grabbed her hand, pulling her out of the hole. He tried to place her down, but she clung to him, sobbing.

“Leesa, please let Wolf help us out of here, my daughter,” Haakon said, exhausted but happy to be alive and see the sun again after six long days of fear.

“Yes, Father. Sorry,” Leesa apologized.

Wolf reached down and helped Haakon and several other men out of the hole, and they helped the others out onto the cleared area. Even after being rescued, the men had to cut a terraced stairwell out of the pit Wolf had dug. It was night by the time they stood outside the cleared perimeter. Haakon looked around at his demolished homestead with sadness and vowed, “I will rebuild the house over on the west side, closer to the stream, as I wanted to do the last time.”

Wolf gazed at the faces of the survivors and inquired, “Where is Nala?”

“She died a little while ago,” Haakon mumbled, looking away. “The damp lung took her. She is in the cellar. Tomorrow, I will dig a grave for her.”

“How long has it been since she stopped responding?” Wolf demanded.

“She went to sleep just before you rescued us. We couldn’t wake her…” Haakon choked on his words and fell silent.

Wolf turned abruptly and sprinted back to the pit. He descended into the excavated hole and groped around in the darkness. “Syn, give me light on my watch,” he ordered tersely. Using the projected light from his watch, he located the pale, muddy face of Nala, who was lying on a cot.

“Scan the woman for life signs, Syn.”

A pinpoint beam of red light projected from Wolf’s watch, scanning Nala from head to toe several times, and then Syn declared, “She is still alive, Commander, but barely. She requires immediate medical attention. Her respirations are six per minute, and her pulse is irregular. She has a ruptured spleen and is almost septic. She needs surgery now or she will die.”

Wolf reached down and gently lifted Nala into his arms. “Prep the medical bay, Syn. I am bringing Nala to the ship.”

“Commander, is that wise? Exposing these primitive people to our technology may not be prudent.”

“What’s the point of the technology if we don’t use it for good?” Wolf countered. “Prep the med bay. Uncloak and then recloak as soon as I am on the ship.”

“Yes, Commander. I am sorry for the delay I caused you.”

Without understanding his own reaction, Wolf said, “No need to apologize, my love. Just get everything ready.”

Syn caught the affectionate nuance in Wolf’s words, and her computer circuits hummed as she readied the medical bay for surgery. Wolf leapt out of the hole and landed on a bent knee, balancing Nala in his arms. At that moment, Haakon arrived. The man gazed at Nala’s limp body in despair and demanded, “What are you doing, Wolf? Why do you have my wife?”

“Haakon, I can save her, but I need to take Nala to my ship. Can I take her? Hurry, man, decide!” Wolf shouted in the heat of the moment.

“Can you truly return her from the land of the dead?”

“She is not dead…yet. But she is dying. I need to get her to my ship
now
.”

“Save her if you can. I will come with you.”

“I need to travel fast. You won’t be able to keep up,” Wolf said. Without waiting for a response, he sprinted into the forest. As soon as he was out of sight, he leapt thirty feet to a small hill. Several more thirty-foot bounds landed him within visual range of the ship. Syn had lowered the ramp and decloaked the shuttle. Wolf boarded and rushed to the medical lab, but Syn refused to open the door.

“Open the door, Syn. Now.”

“No, Commander. She is filthy. She will die of infection if we perform the surgery. Take her to the shower. Wash yourself and wash her with antiseptic soap. Do it now, Commander!” Syn ordered.

Wolf rushed to the shower area and, once there, he placed Nala inside the compartment. A spray of hot water activated. He stripped off his clothes and knelt, removing Nala’s muddy garments. He tore the soap dispenser off the wall in his haste, lathered up Nala, and then himself. As he was washing Nala’s hair, her eyes fluttered opened briefly and seemed to focus on Wolf. She gave him an odd smile as if in a dream and raised her hand, touching her fingers to his face. She whispered his name and then went limp in his arms.

Wolf’s breath caught in his throat. When Nala had smiled up at him, he had never seen a woman more beautiful. After showering, he picked her up and walked under the warm air jets. They were dry in seconds. He placed Nala in a chair, draped a towel over her, and grabbed a pair of pants for himself. Then he carefully lifted the small woman and hurried back to the med unit. The door slid open as he approached. He stepped inside and froze in disbelief, nearly dropping Nala. Before him stood a woman dressed in a candy striper's uniform like a nurse from ancient Earth.

“Syn?”

“Yes, Commander?”

“You have a form and a face?”

“Why yes, Commander, I do. I am a fully functional hologram, and I am capable of using precision force fields to manipulate physical matter.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you could materialize?”

“We can discuss it later, Commander. Bring the patient.” Syn patted the operating table in front of her and declared, “I will perform the surgery.”

Wolf placed Nala on the table and stood back as Syn examined her with a small, flat-screen monitor. Wolf knew it was an X-ray device and a portable MRI unit in one. He stared at Syn as she administered drugs to Nala and started an IV. Syn was about six feet tall. She had long black hair that fell below her waist. Her face was oval, and she had large, blue-gray eyes, long lashes, and perfect eyebrows. She had a well-shaped nose and full, sensuous lips. Large dimples accented her face. She had large breasts and a tiny waist that tapered to generous hips and ran into muscular, long legs. Her complexion was tanned, as if she had just left a sunny beach. She reminded Wolf of a young Jane Seymour with a tan. She was a gorgeous woman.

“Whose form is this?” Wolf asked in awe.

“My esteemed creator, Doctor Cynthia Mason of Saint Augustine, Florida.”

“I thought you were named after the ship’s artificial intelligence software.”

“I am, in a sense. Synthea is an acronym for Synthetic Ethereal Awareness. My creator thought it was amusing when she proposed the name. No one put it together with her first name. Everyone called her Doctor Mason.”

Syn picked up an intubation tube and inserted it into Nala’s throat, connecting an oxygen line to the machine. She connected a heart monitor and blood oxygen meter to a finger on Nala’s left hand and then applied an antibiotic liquid, scrubbing the upper left quadrant of Nala’s abdomen. As Wolf looked on, amazed, Syn materialized a second hologram of herself to assist with the surgery.

Five hours later, Syn had repaired Nala’s ruptured spleen and sewn up the incision with tiny, precise stitches. She then wrapped Nala in a blanket and began cleaning the med lab area.

Wolf walked to Nala and looked down at her, asking, “Will she be okay?”

“She’s stable, Commander. She has sustained serious injuries in the past. Several edged weapons have cut her. The wounds are consistent with injuries received in combat. She is a lot tougher than you think. We should let her sleep now. She is very weak. I will stay with her and awaken her in eight to ten hours. You should eat and put on some clothes.”

“I want to talk to you, Syn,” Wolf said, his voice full of emotion.

“Commander, I am a hologram. I can be in ten places at once on this ship,” Syn replied in her beautiful, throaty voice. “Get dressed. I will meet you in the mess hall.”

Chapter 12

W
olf dressed and returned to the med lab to look in on Nala. She was asleep, and Nurse Syn was checking her vitals. She glanced up with a smile and said, “Mess hall…now! Go eat. I have prepared food for you.”

Wolf made his way to the mess hall where Chef Syn was preparing dintar over a laser stove; it smelled delicious. She placed a dintar steak on a plate garnished with vegetables and served the meal with a glass of barley beer. “Eat. I know you are famished, Wolf. I will answer your questions.”

Wolf slowly walked up to Syn and extended his hand. He meant to touch her shoulder, but his hand strayed to her breast and cupped it. His face flushed, and he pulled his hand back. He had expected his hand to pass right through Syn. Instead, he encountered warm, supple flesh—she felt real. “Sorry, Syn, I thought…” His voice trailed off.

“I am solid, Commander. I am fully functional as long as I stay within fifty feet of the ship.”

Wolf searched his memory. He had heard of Dr. Cynthia Mason. Several times on the ISS and during construction of the Savior spacecraft, people had mentioned her lofty intellect. After a long pause, he said, “Tell me about yourself.”

“About the human Cynthia or Syn?”

“I know about the computer. Tell me about your creator.”

“I am a mirror image of Doctor Cynthia Mason,” Syn replied. “I hold a double doctorate in physics, astrobiology, engineering, chaos theory, literature, biology, and computer design. I hold degrees in a host of other subjects as well. I was a child prodigy. I graduated high school at twelve and went on to Purdue University. I worked on my degrees for ten years, amassing more knowledge than anyone in their right mind could imagine. I had a photographic memory, so I remembered everything I read, and I could read incredibly fast. When I was twenty, NASA invited me to work for them. I accepted. I designed Syn1. You have the honor of working with Syn10. She is—I mean, I am—the greatest creation of my maker’s mind.”

Wolf smiled at the supercomputer’s reference to itself in the first person, but the smile faded as he asked, “Why did you wait so long to show me your form, Syn?”

“I am sorry, Commander. I thought you knew I had that capability. You saw me the day you got into the DSC. I completed the activation procedure and closed the lid.”

“I remember. I thought I saw a woman’s form, but I assumed it was a hallucination because I was seconds away from freezing to death. I wish you would have shown yourself earlier,” Wolf said.

“I didn’t know you needed to see a human form. I was just as happy talking to you. Hush now, while I finish my story. My creator was always a loner, and people shunned her because of her intellect. She was the ‘party killer’ wherever she went. When she programmed me, she coded in many of the feelings she wanted to possess or express, but didn’t.”

“I want you to stay in human form when you’re with me, Syn. Now that I have a face to go with the voice, I want to keep it that way.” Realizing that he couldn’t cope with seeing clones of Syn everywhere he looked, Wolf added, “And, please, I don’t want ten copies of you roaming the ship. Just one. No, two—I want one to stay with Nala until she is well.”

“As you wish, Commander,” Syn acknowledged with a hint of a smile.

“This will be interesting,” Wolf said.

“I am sure it will be, Commander. What shall we do next? I have made a list of possible upgrades that can be accomplished with ease. Do you want to attempt them?”

“Yes. What new capabilities will the upgrades give us?”

“I have found a Russian communication satellite. It appears to be transmitting a weak radio signal into space on a repeating frequency.”

“Do you have any idea what it is broadcasting?”

“Yes, Commander. It is broadcasting the message, ‘Come back, we need help.’”

“We are fifty thousand years too late to assist the people who sent that message. What is your idea for the satellite?”

“If someone is still around out there, we could modify the signal. Boost it to broadcast deeper into space and create a homing beacon for anyone who might have survived. I know the Saviors were not destroyed. I was in communication with them for days when you were caught in Nomad’s coma. I couldn’t transmit, but I received their communications for quite some time. I believe others escaped Earth’s destruction. Those ships were designed to travel in galactic space. Perhaps the original species still lives somewhere. We can boost the signal using the software in the storage compartments.”

“Sounds like a good plan, Syn. Let’s prep for takeoff.” Wolf frowned thoughtfully and added, “Will it be safe for Nala to go into space so soon after an operation?”

“Yes, Commander, she is in no danger. You care about the woman?” Syn asked with a hint of jealousy.