It Comes In Threes (Part Two) S/F

[Hare]

“Get that bloody line secured!” The men weren't as hurried as they were six months ago, the wind storms that plagued this place were to be expected. The rise the ship was huddled beneath had been a godsend, although whichever of the faiths had helped them get this far hadn't helped them any further.

The ship was still half deconstructed, parts that were still useful as quarters were being used the rest had been broken down into the things that they needed to get their main mission underway. Even with half of their main cargo lost they'd been able to cobble enough of a refuge on this piece of rock to make their struggles viable. Hell even the loss of the lab had been coped with, in a way that had been hard to decide but their choices hadn't been that easy. Die or become a living test tube, all they needed the scientists said was a large enough sample of the dna to be replicated and they'd built a replicator out of the bits they'd saved.

Thing was the samples they needed meant you were walking around with a pouch of skin tucked somewhere on your body that was holding the future of the entire world. He was carrying something basic, something they'd need soon, algae genes, thing was there were side effects of carrying the little 'pods' as they'd been nicknamed. You couldn't drink for one, you had to make sure you protected it and you ate on time, otherwise....Well he didn't like to think about the consequences of that one, just that the graveyard had been one of the first things to be done when they'd started implantation.

Not that the samples were lost, oh no they went back to the scientists who took the entire mess and re-used what was left of the body, valuable chemicals, salts, trace elements, bacteria, things that had been lost when the cargo had been jettisoned. All was reclaimed, what was left was only the name of the person, and it was that alone that adorned the small plaques that were lodged in the cliff wall. “Sir are you online?” The small buzzer on his comm unit hummed as the wind took the small tinny voice into it's embrace, spreading it thin in the still mixing chemical soup that was becoming their atmosphere. He flicked the comm and pulled it to his mouth, making sure they'd be able to hear him.

“Yeah I'm here, just getting the lines drawn in for the storm. I'll be glad when these are over, what do you want?” He was snappy, annoyed and he knew it wasn't their fault that the steel lines were being corroded by the volatile mixing of the air. “We need your 'pod', the second phase is getting underway, the water table is ready for seeding, we have a window of thirty minutes when the temperature is perfect for extraction. Sir we need you now.” He let his gaze run around the men,every single one of them were tired, cold and feeling the strain of the entire mission. He flicked the comm off and waved to his second and mimed the cutting of his own 'pod', a smile met his eye and he left them to get the small settlement battened down for the night.

 

Inside the makeshift lab things had moved on apace since he'd last been there, lights were brighter here, the constant temperature made his back spasm as he walked into the place. People were hurrying, making ready for the birth of a new world, a last outpost of hope on the edges of known territory. To which he held a vital part of under his skin, an orderly quickly took him and guided him to the steel frame that would be his operating table. Laid forward so his back was revealed to the light several men and women busied over him, a plunger depressed into his spine and the world faded from view. When he woke things would be a lot different.

 

“Ah you're back with us Commander, good, there's a few things I need to discuss with you.” He stretched out on the bed he was in, the rough sheeting rubbing against his skin, thing was he didn't remember being naked when they'd brought him in to remove the 'pod'. He had a quick look at himself and noticed that he now had several 'pods' on his abdomen, and two were moving.

“WHAT THE HELL!!!” He nearly reached out to grab the scientist who was seated on the edge of his bed. His hands never made it, he was strapped to the frame of the bed, his anger quickly rose but the effect of it on his system didn't actually come. The smile from the scientist in front of him told him things had changed and not all for the better.

 

“When you came in for your 'pod' removal, we had a small accident, one of the generators went critical, we lost half of the engineers. Luckily we still have the bio-engineers, but the main team for the power plant have gone. We've got men under speed learning as we speak but as you know it can take a while for the information grafts to take hold. We're having to use lower IQ than recommended but needs must as they say.” The man in front of him looked quite calm but he picked up on the twitching the man was doing as he sat there, whatever had happened things had changed vastly and he needed to be brought upto speed.

 

“Your second did the best he could, he held the men together for a while but he's under at the moment learning the basics of fusion engineering, as well as being a host for three 'pods'. You see when phase two was successful we had to move into phase three, the water table is drinkable now and we have basic foodstuffs. We even have a small layer of scrubland building to the south east....” he didn't hear anything else, the man's lips went on to describe the functioning systems but he didn't take anything in. He was looking at the moving 'pods' on his body, and the scar tissue that covered his torso, he looked like a road map there were so many.

 

Finally the scientist noticed he wasn't listening to him, seeming to come to a conclusion he stood up and began to undo the straps that secured him to the bed. “Perhaps it would be better if you saw it yourself, we've been busy these past five years.”

“I've been out for five years?!” The scientist moved out of his reach as he began to get up, throwing the covers aside to reveal the map of his skin, there wasn't a piece of him that hadn't been marked by a 'pod'. He wanted to rip his head off, he needed to feel the man's throat collapse under his grip but the actual action of raising his hands just wouldn't come but his eyes showed his anger.

“We've had to inhibit the more violent urges with supressors, the field covers the entire camp, we had a few losses early on and it was decided that to benefit all...” The Commander closed his eyes and let his rage flow away from him, he would have probably done the same in the circumstances, a robe was handed to him and he dressed in it, making sure to keep his hands away from the pod's that sat on and in him.

 

He was led through row after row of beds, people moved to beds bringing muscle stimulators to men and women who were under sedation, making sure they didn't lose tone and strength. Finally there were fewer beds and an open space where the new light of their sun streamed through, wincing a little at it's strength he followed the white coated scientist to their goal. Ahead were a few standing beds, these were different and they looked a little 'odd' to his eyes, people were working around them but it was the smile on the faces of those who cared for them that made his stomach turn.

On each bed was a body, well it looked like a body, underneath the skin were ropes of roots, several of these 'upright gardens' moved their heads to track the sun above. The scientist walked toward one and plucked off a small fruit from the 'branch' of an arm, bringing it over he broke it open to reveal the secrets within it.

“Do you see Commander? We've managed to make the dead work for us, using them as a growing station for the plant life. We can make this world green Commander it'll be as if the cargo was never jettesonned! We found a small secondary supply of seeds, after replication all we needed was volunteers, those who were unusable as 'pod' hosts or those who had done too many.” He looked at the Commander and the unspoken comment of how many was too many didn't air itself but he knew he wasn't that far off himself.

Finally he caught his voice, “What happens after they've done too much of this? Is there anything left at all?” The warm smile that covered the scientists face made him want to throw up but he had to give them credit, they'd saved them all by doing what he wouldn't.

“Yes, they do, please follow me and I'll show you, it's just over the ridge I had the terraformers build it nearby.”

 

They were outside in a sunny day, the wind was warm as was the sun on his skin, scent of free running water and the sweet air of flowers was being brought to his nose. Tears filled his eyes as a memory bloomed quietly in his mind, a world long lost, a time where he'd been a child, unknowing of the death that was coming in sleek ships. He squashed it down hard and wiped his eyes clear so he could see what had been done with the bodies of their dead.

 

The small valley had been sculpted, water ran freely across the grassy ground, colours burned into his eyes, leaves rustled and scents filled the air around him. As if paradise had been created in an instant, a true Eden, one where man's own hand had been in it's creation. The group of large plants was the place they were heading to, his feet felt the grass blades bend and shift under his weight, the ground spongy with water and earth.

Silent they both reached the centre of the small valley, grouped together were the specimens of trees, some were nearing full maturity, others still thin and rangy, but they all had one thing in common. They had the bodies of humans, as if their skin had been turned into bark and the Commander reached out toward them, unheeding of the risks.

“I wouldn't Commander, they can be a little 'tempremental'.” His hand halted a few inches from the skin of a 'tree'. “You see the mind of the donor is still alive, we grafted the genes to the dead flesh of the body but we kept the mind alive. Until the vascular system of the plant took over, and we stopped caring for the flesh, the process took a month for each body, we did have to speed up the growth rate to maturity but they'll be fruiting soon and we'll have all the genetic data we'll ever need.”

 

The words kept coming but the price of it was almost enough to break him, that the bodies of the men he'd brought here were being used as so much fertiliser, their minds used to retain data and records that couldn't be stored anywhere else. They'd used what they could to survive, it was what mankind did after all, it was the reason they'd been sent out here in the first place. To make sure mankind didn't end up as a footnote in someone else's history books. Swallowing his distaste he walked out of the leafy grove, feeling the eyes of the dead on his soul, even as the new life he was carrying shifted under his skin.