The Light Blue Jumper Page 21

  “It may not have happened at all. It was just a theory,” I said hurriedly, “But I did some work on an upgrade for the machine, an experiment to implant memories in subjects rather than just extract them.”

  “Let me guess, it was at the prototype stage.” Madam sighed.

  “So either Anya was turned into the General by supressing her own memories which have now resurfaced, or the General has just been turned into Anya by implanting Anya’s memories into her,” The Good Doctor said.

  “Either way, what difference does it make?” Dinaara asked.

  “Well, one way she’s still alive, the other she’s dead,” I informed her.

  86. Lieutenant Salaar

  Once the hysterics stopped, the General was taken to the medical bay to rest. I felt compelled to follow her there.

  I knocked on the door, but there was no answer, so I opened it slightly and peered in. Just the sight of her lying there on the hospital bed was enough to make me want to kill her in her sleep. That could have been Anya, alive and recuperating if it hadn’t been for the IPF bomb and whatever awful experimentation they had done on her afterwards, obviously on the General’s orders. The nurse inside saw me and whispered, “We’ve sedated her, Lieutenant, she’ll be asleep for a few hours.”

  “Good. I just wanted to see if she needed anything. Actually, could you let me know when she wakes, before you inform anyone else?” I would kill her when she was lucid.

  In the corridor, I bumped into Dinaara, followed by Lethal, Zaaro, The Good Doctor, Madam, and Colonel Bob, all trooping out of what appeared to be a storage closet. “Let me guess, you had an emergency meeting.” I rolled my eyes.

  “No need to concern yourself, just a routine matter. I’ll have the minutes sent out to you later in the day,” The Good Doctor patted my arm awkwardly, and then signalled me to follow him into his quarters.

  “Are you all right?” he asked with concern.

  “Yes, of course. My sister’s murderer is pretending to be my murdered sister. Other than that everything is just perfect.”

  “I’m so glad you’re all right. I was worried.” He turned to leave and then sat back down, “We’re in my quarters,” he said. “There is something more though, I have to warn you. I know the others mean for this to remain a secret, to save you from further pain, but if you don’t know this you may suffer far more than you have already done at the hands of the IPF,” he continued.

  “Go on,” I urged, dreading what I would hear.

  “I think that Anya’s memories may have been implanted into the General as part of an experiment.”

  I felt sick to my stomach. “In that case, excuse me for a moment while I shoot the General and bring my sister peace.” The Good Doctor stopped me.

  “There is more. I didn’t tell the others, but I don’t think the machine malfunctioned. Zaaro was working on an upgrade that would allow memories to be implanted as well as extracted, and I think that is exactly what it did. It has implanted Anya’s memories into the General, but where do you think the General’s memory bank has gone? The IPF would never allow everything the General knows to be lost. Just think. Who else was there when this event occurred? Who led the General here? Who wants us to believe that the General is really Anya? Who is short and round?”

  “Zaaro?” I asked in disbelief.

  “No, but you’re getting close. Who else is short and round?”

  “Madam,” I squeaked in horror. “She hasn’t been acting any differently though,” I countered to quell the bile rising in my throat.

  “The memories may be suppressed until they are triggered, so she may not know what she is carrying in her head, or she could just be play-acting for now,” he concluded ominously.

  “Have you discussed this with anyone else?” I asked him.

  “No and I would like to keep it that way. Speak of it only in code. I don’t want to create panic. Let’s just keep an eye on them. I’ll watch the General and you can monitor Madam,” he said.

  “Yes. Absolutely, or, how about we swap? I’ll monitor the General and you can watch Madam?” I suggested.

  87. Commander Lethalwulf

  “Madam, we need to discuss the next stage of our mission. We have managed to lock the IPF out of Zaaron’s weapons, but what are we going to do about the Zaaronians themselves? If we don’t foment an uprising, they will simply develop more and worse weapons for their IPF masters.”

  “I agree with you, Lethal, but we need a strategy. It’s not easy making a docile, suppressed people stand up for themselves,” she said.

  “But that’s why we have Zaaro. He can lead them, he is our weapon,” I told her.

  “I am a weapons developer, Lethal, not a weapon.” Zaaro had finally mastered the doors and developed a bad habit of moving very quietly through them. “Though I have now seen the atrocities that the IPF commit on a regular basis behind the guise of being a civilised liberating force.”

  “Will you help us then?” I asked eagerly.

  “I want to help, but I think I will need a long, long time to convince my people to see the ugly face of the IPF.”

  Madam waited for Zaaro to leave and then turned to me and asked, “What would be the quickest way to expose the IPF in front of the Zaaronians?”

  “Well, the simplest would be if they did something truly terrible for the whole planet to see,” I theorised.

  “That’s what I thought. Thank you Lethal,” Madam agreed wholeheartedly.

  88. Madam X

  I was thinking more clearly than I had in years. I recalled the storage dump Zaaro had seen on Dephron and the strange-smelling packets of medicine being handed out to interplanetary delegates to mix with their local water supplies as an antidote to the madness, and it struck me. I rushed over to The Good Doctor to discuss my plan with him.

  “Let’s steal the toxic gas and mix all of it into the Zaaronian water supply,” I said without preamble.

  “That would wipe out the Zaaronian population!” Zaaro exclaimed in horror. I hadn’t heard him come in. Who taught him about the doors?

  “Exactly. Who develops weapons for the IPF? The Zaaronians. So, if they are out of the picture, we could smash the IPF into smithereens,” I said in excitement. “We could even turn the bombs they develop for the IPF on them!”

  “Whatever happened to leading a non-violent uprising that accomplishes change through dialogue and peaceful resistance?” Zaaro was shaking his head in disbelief.

  “Well, after we poison them or fire the weapons into the population, we could gather the survivors against the IPF easily. They would surely see the IPF for the villains they are,” I tried to convince him.

  “Maybe Zaaro has a point, Madam. What if, instead of poisoning the water supply or bombing them, we try and talk to them,” The Good Doctor mused.

  “Or we could expose them to biological weapons?” I suggested hopefully.

  “They would all go mad,” Zaaro sat down with a thump.

  “Then we could recruit them and create our own mad army. We could take hold of Zaaron and use that as our base for further expansion. I envision a rebel stronghold, a state, an empire!” I looked into the distance, my eyes brimming with eagerness and anticipation.

  “I have a theory regarding the madness vaccine. I believe it’s the same substance we found on Dephron.” The Good Doctor’s theories were getting more absurd by the minute.

  “Oh no, it’s not. I’m quite sure that nasty stuff was made in the weapons labs. Overexposure to it caused all of you to almost lose the will to live,” Zaaro said.

  “That was the effect of tons of it. Imagine a little bit being consumed slowly over the years.” The Good Doctor looked at me expectantly.

  “Well, yes, I’m sure that’s fascinating, Good Doctor, but hadn’t we best deal with the problem at hand,” I snapped.

  “It didn’t affect me like it did the rest of you,” Zaaro said. “I had already inhaled it for so many years.” He paused. “But what’s the point
if it doesn’t do anything to Zaaronians?”

  The Good Doctor was at a loss for words, a situation that did not often arise. He opened his mouth a few times, “It makes people complacent, accepting, and docile.”

  Zaaro beamed at the Doctor. “It’s nice of you to notice but I assure you these are inherent qualities of the Zaaronian race, of which we are very proud. That is precisely why the IPF trust us to be their weapons developers, at the cutting edge of their technology, keepers of their secrets,” he said.

  “What happened, Zaaro, when they took over Zaaron and pushed you out to the G-Sectors?” The Good Doctor asked.

  “We moved,” Zaaro said matter-of-factly.

  “What about when they bombed the G-Sectors, wiping out hundreds of Zaaronians and reducing entire blocks to rubble? How did you react?” The Good Doctor was hopefully going to make some sort of point soon otherwise I would have him locked up for a bit. He was really beginning to bore me.

  “Personally? Oh, I see where you are going with this. Bombing never happened to me, except for that once, when I met Madam and Salaar. I simply kept my head down and got on with my day’s work, which is what I was trying to do that day as well. You have to understand, we were all quite sure the actions were necessary and unavoidable, otherwise the IPF would not have acted so,” Zaaro explained.

  “The madness vaccine is simply the stinking gas in small doses. It induces apathy, Zaaro, and my guess is that the natural immunity of the Zaaronian population to the madness may have inspired the vaccine. The disappearances after the bombings may have been in order to conduct experiments during the developmental stages of the vaccine. I suspect an extraction procedure was employed which may have stripped the Zaaronians of their natural defences, hence the rumoured sightings of barbaric Zaaronian troops,” with that The Good Doctor concluded his rather long, rambling monologue.

  “You could have just led with that Doctor and saved us all a lot of time,” I clucked in irritation.

  89. Anya

  Salaar was the only one I could trust. I wished I had the time to take him into confidence. I had sneaked out of the medical bay and stolen a peek at Madam’s diary, which she still kept in the same secret drawer next to her seat in the control room, and discovered, among other things, that Madam was by far the worst planner I had ever come across. No wonder she had almost run the Rebel Movement into the ground. A surreptitious peek at the notes in his faux-leather volume of recollections established that The Good Doctor was no better. He wished to experiment with the Zaaronian psyche to lead an indigenous uprising, which could take more or less a thousand years, while Madam hoped to destroy most of the planet and its population in a bid to gain immediate control. I still had time to avert both disasters. How fortunate that everyone thought I was so heavily sedated they hadn’t bothered posting a guard outside my room in the medical bay. I would just have to explain everything to Salaar later, I thought as I sneaked into a shuttle in the hold.

  “Wait!” Lethal yelled, barging in just as I was punching in the launch code.

  “It’s generally considered polite to knock.”

  “I apologise for my rudeness. It’s also considered good manners not to steal.”

  “I would have returned it eventually.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “That is none of your business.”

  “I need to know where you are taking this shuttle, Anya, or I will be compelled to report you to Central Command,” he threatened.

  “Go ahead, report me,” I said.

  He sighed with frustration and told Central Command, “Unauthorised launch, close exit doors.”

  “Keep exit doors open,” I cut in, “authorization code dumb blonde.”

  “Exit doors open, bon voyage, Lethal.” I could have sworn Central Command was smiling, we always got along well.

  Lethal hooted with laughter. “How did you get my exit code?” he asked.

  “The same way I found out what Madam was planning; by being a better spy than you,” I told him.

  “I know what Madam is planning. She happened to tell me in great detail.” He was just as smug as I remembered. “She is hoping for the IPF to do something terrible to expose them in front of the Zaaronians. Although let’s face it, if taking over their planet, destroying their homes, and reducing them to slavery is not enough, I don’t know what is,” he said.

  “She might have told you that, but her actual plan is to use the weapons on Zaaron in order to takeover,” I said.

  “What you’re saying would kill half the population.”

  “Precisely; unless we get there first.”

  “Even if I believed you were right, the IPF military presence is still there in full force. We would never be able to get through to Weapons Control. Our best chance would be to simply use the codes as leverage and make a deal getting them to leave.”

  “All right, we’ll talk to them, but then they might trick us like they usually do. You’re a double, perhaps even a triple agent; you of all people should know that words mean nothing.”

  The sudden anguish in his eyes reminded me of the day of the ambush. He had been desperate to talk to me before I walked into the IPF building, begging me to wait a few moments and hear him out. I hadn’t stopped. How could I have? The success of the mission depended on our timing. The last thing I remember before going in was turning towards him to signal for everyone to lie low and seeing him barking furiously into his comms, back towards me.

  “Stop glaring at me, Anya. You look just like the General when you do that.”

  I hadn’t realised I was still looking at him.

  90. Commander Lethalwulf

  As we drew nearer to Zaaron, I told Anya again we couldn’t just march into Weapons Control. After our last visit, the IPF would just blow us to bits at the first checkpoint.

  “Just trust me Lethal, I know what I’m doing,” she insisted.

  “Lovely to see that you’re full of confidence, Anya, but we can’t win this with bravado alone. If we all discuss what you told me, we can come up with a better plan together. I’m going to inform the others of our location.” I moved towards the shuttle’s console.

  “You will do nothing of the sort.” Her tone had changed sharply. I looked up to see her pointing her gun at me. I seem to have no recollection of what happened after that, but it ended with me being gagged and handcuffed to my station. She must have drugged me at some point during the flight so I was too weak to disarm her; otherwise there was absolutely no chance of that ever happening.

  She switched off stealth mode as we approached the security checkpoint, totally against my advice, conveyed by frantic blinking and eye popping.

  “Identify yourself, vessel,” the security checkpoint directed.

  She flicked on the transmission switch and calmly and purposefully began to speak, “This is the General. Open all security barriers.” It was a valiant attempt, but they would never let us through without the clearance codes.

  “Please provide security clearance codes, General.” I looked at Anya with I told you so emanating from every bone of my body.

  “0800 The General,” she said. They would recognise a fake code immediately and fire, I thought, bracing myself for imminent impact as best I could by closing my eyes and wincing.

  “Welcome back, General. I was starting to worry,” a worried-sounding voice said through the comms. “You will be pleased to know that no one knows that you were on a break. Things are exactly as you left them, General.”

  “Do you expect accolades, Major?” Her tone made me afraid. I looked at her and instantly looked away. I mustn’t let her know that I know, I thought, frantically trying to regulate my breathing. I was the General’s hostage in my own shuttle. Maybe she was planning to use me as leverage to get the password out of Salaar.

  “Lethal, see, I told you to trust me,” she said gently as she turned off the transmitter, removed the gag from my mouth and untied me.

  “Don’t touch me, G
eneral! I know who you are!” I said, jumping backwards. I remembered my plan of feigning ignorance a few seconds too late.

  “Allow me to explain, please,” she said plaintively. “I’ve been having some random flashbacks, and this number, the code, kept popping up in my head. I figured it must be important so I took a chance on it.”

  “I would like to believe you, but you were too frightening not to be real,” I told her.

  “I imagined that the General would be stern and unrelenting, I have to convince the IPF officers of my authenticity if my plan is to work.”

  “What plan?”

  “You will see as it unfolds.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of. I don’t want any more surprises,” I warned.

  “Where’s the fun in that, Lethal?” she laughed, becoming the woman I had known again. Anya had always thought the best plan was to have no plan, to improvise. That is what she had been doing the day of the ambush. I had been trying to get an emergency exit route set up when she had charged in, ignoring my pleas. I had run after her at the sound of the explosion, but it was too late, the building was a smouldering ruin before I could even get inside.

  We landed and she transformed effortlessly into her alter ego again.

  “Leave the hostage where he is!” she commanded the security team that appeared as she exited, leaving me trapped inside the shuttle.

  “Switch off power supply, General?”

  “Is it standard procedure?”

  “Yes, General.”

  “Then why are you asking me? Do it!” she ordered, temper suddenly flaring.

  “Yes, General!”

  Cut off from all communications and temperature control. I was effectively imprisoned in the shuttle. In my sweaty solitude, I marvelled at her acting prowess, the way she had envisioned the character of the General with such breathtaking accuracy.