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by [[Tom Verreault]]/jedion357

<span style="font-size:24px; font-weight:bold">N</span>ausea swirled in Groon’s head like a dust vortex till
he was compelled to wretch but nothing would come. A
cold and sandpaper like hand pushed him back into a
reclining position as the gray vortex of confusion began
to pull him under.

Distantly he heard a hissing voice say, “Ssssoon he will
have no memory of the event.”

<span style="font-size:24px; font-weight:bold">L</span>ater Warrant Officer Groon sat patiently through a
Doctor’s discharge exam knowing the medical service
would move at its own speed.

“Hey Doc, what happened to me? My last mission is
pretty foggy in my mind and I have these dreams
about someone saying I wouldn’t remember anything?”

The doctor stiffened then lied, “You’ve sustained
massive head trauma which may have resulted in
memory loss. Wait till your debrief and I’m sure your
questions will be answered.”

Groon knew he was lying. Any dralasite worth his fluids
could plainly read that and Groon had honed his ability
to detect lies as a Sergeant long before going to Officer
Candidate School. Besides the biological nature of a
dralasite made head trauma causing memory loss
about as likely as Groon spacewalking without a
pressure suit.

Trying another tack, “How the rest of my crew?
Lieutenants Tabbe and Klast?”
The doctor shook his head and said, “I’m sorry son, I
cannot answer your questions you’ll be conducted to a
debrief shortly….I’m officially discharging you as fit to
leave the hospital but recommending some time off
from full duties.”

<span style="font-size:24px; font-weight:bold">G</span>roon sat with Ensign Bryson in a hot tub. They were
getting steadily drunk and toasting dead companions.
Groon was imbibing a mild intoxicant in the form of a
weak human style beer as well as absorbing stronger
stuff directly from the water. The beauty of being a
dralasite was the ability to absorb alcohol from any
portion of his skin. So at this point he was considerably
further along than Bryson who was knocking back
whisky and as a human he was immune to the hot
tub’s intoxicants. That was the point though to get
numb enough to sleep through the shock of loosing the
rest of their ships crew.

“So you can’t remember anything either?” ask the
ensign.

“No nothing before closing with the freighter and Lt
Tabbe ordering us to exchange our lasers for stunners.”

“He did?”

“I think so but it seems foggy- something about order
form higher command… but they didn’t go into it during
debrief.”

“Speaking of which, wasn’t that the shortest debrief
you ever had? I mean a Royal Marine ship is stormed
by Sath…”

Groon changed his foot appendage into a hand to grab
the ensign’s leg and pull him under water. The young
human came up sputtering and glowered at Groon,
“Hey!”

“You stow that shit Marine! Getting drunk is no excuse
for violating orders.”

“Yeah but Chief we’re being lied too and you of all
people should know that.”

“You think I don’t? I’m still a Royal Marine.”

“But Klast and Tabbe and the others are dead and we
don’t know what happened... just a statement of, ‘died
in the line of duty?’ And that shit about head trauma? I
thought dralasites kept their brains in the center of
their body? So how does head trauma affect your
memory?”

Groon wanted to shake his head at the naïve ensign
but instead said, “It doesn’t and we are going to find
out what happened or I’m not a Chief engineer!”

“How? Their putting Osprey through and unscheduled
refit and you can bet the computer logs will be wiped.
They won’t even let us aboard with this sick leave crap.
Since when don’t they make a ship’s crew work their
butts off assisting with a refit?”

Groon sighed, “Bryson I have no doubt you’ll make a
fine commanding officer one day but damn if you aint a
bit dense. For whatever reason the fix is in and we’re
not suppose to know what happened.”

“And you’re fine with that?”

“Heck no, but I’m no fool either, which is why I spent a
little time down in robotics today.”

“Huh?”

“If they aint putting us to work on a refit then who’s
helping with the work?”

“Oh…”

“That’s also the reason we’re sitting here getting very
drunk in public,” he said motioning to the rest of the
bar. “I had to program the robot with Klast’s security
code so that it could download the ships logs and that
will create a record of the download and we’ll be
suspected.”

“Klast’s code, how did you get it?”

“She was always a bit of an air head so she wrote it
inside the cover of her personal tool kit.”

<span style="font-size:24px; font-weight:bold">B</span>ryson had sat stone face with a black eye through
the memorial service. The black eye Groon had given
him after they had viewed the logs together. Bryson
had wanted to storm the heights of command with his
new knowledge and get them both before a court
martial and another brain wiped, however that had
been accomplished.

The logs had revealed that Lt. Tabbe had been a traitor
and had shot Klast in the head on the bridge as the
airlock had opened to the freighter. They had been
caught flat footed at the air lock as the alien sathar had
swarmed aboard the Osprey. It had been a desperate
fight from which only Bryson and Groon had emerged
alive. Once the sathar undocked from the Osprey they
had fled the system with all speed. When Tabbe had
shot Bryson from behind it was Groon with his naturally
high reaction speed and martial arts training who
overwhelmed and killed Tabbe. It had been touch and go
for Bryson till another ship could get there.

Now they knew the truth. Lt. Maxwell Tabbe had been
a sathar agent, a traitor and he was receiving a hero’s
burial with full military honors. That was what the
Royal Marines wanted covered up. It was too much of a
scandal to admit that the premier militia of the Frontier
could have a decorated officer turn coat to the sathar.
It was why they had even gone to the extent of a
memory wipe. Neither Bryson nor Groon were native
born citizens of the system and they could ill afford the
truth leaking out if either of them resigned and moved
away. Groon understood the reasoning behind that but
shook his head at the thought; Bryson and Groon
despite their difference in age had taken service in the
Royal Marines to earn citizenship and the benefits of
living in such a prosperous system.

He even suspected that he knew how the memory wipe
was done. There had long been rumors surrounding the
eorna of Volturnus and their advanced medical and
physch technology. Groon had not believed the stories
concerning mind wiping by the eorna but once he
pulled the recording of the eorna ambassador’s voice
he knew that was the voice from his weird dream that
had prophesied his memory loss. Some discrete chit
chat and buying of drinks for hospital staff had
confirmed that the eorna ambassador had come to the
hospital under military escort.

So now they knew the truth and it burned like acid.
Maybe he should finish this tour and resign, taking a
billet with a freight line to get out of Clarrion
altogether. One thing was certain to Groon though,
being a Royal Marine had lost its shine.

Memory - Revision history

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