The Defiant

“Uh—One, that’s you.”

“No it’s clearly not,” I snapped impatiently, even as I tried to figure it out myself. “I’m right here. This is either a clone or an identical twin. I’m betting on the twin thing because she’s my age, so they would’ve had to have taken a DNA sample from me as a baby, and unless they had some specific reason for me to be on this mission way back then, no one would’ve gone through the trouble.”

“Well, what are we going to do with her?” Three asked for Six.

We all stood around the girl’s bed, staring down at her unconscious form. She was identical to me, missing only the scar that disfigured my own face. Her hair was shorter also, falling to just above her shoulders in a satiny bob.

“We can’t wake her up, she’d attack us all,” Five pointed out, holding a bag of ice to the lump on the back of his head and wincing. Seven had bandaged his cuts and her own, and was currently trying to put the med bay back in order.

“We also can’t leave her sedated forever,” I said. “What if we tie her down, and I talk to her by myself? Maybe our similarity will disarm her enough for her to hear what we’ve got to say. And if she’s still wild, we can inject her again and we’d be no worse off.”

The others agreed to my plan with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and Two ran down to Deck Six to retrieve some rope they had found earlier.

Three gave a brief report of the cargo holds and engineering, and Four filled everyone in on what we’d discovered up on the top decks.

“There are crew quarters on Deck Three. Eight rooms. Maybe we should have guessed,” Five said, looking down at the sleeping girl, his normally crisp English accent slurred slightly by the pain medication Seven had given him. “Seven could get into hers, and I got into mine. They’re pretty simple, just beds and closets full of clothes. Oh, and we found these.” He held out a small silver device.

“Comms,” Seven said, pointing to her ear. “Once you guys get into your quarters, we can use them to talk to one another.”

“I’ve got the rope!” Two called, reentering the room with a length of black nylon cable looped over his arm.

Six made quick work of securing the girl to the bed. He stepped back and looked at me, making motions with his hands.

“He says that should hold, and that we’ll be right outside, so just yell if she gets free,” Three translated. The two of them walked to the door and out into the hall.

Seven came over to me and pressed another syringe into my hand.

“Give that to her once we’re all gone. It’s a stimulant, should wake her up pretty quick.”

I nodded tightly and watched as she and the others vacated the room, leaving me alone with my double.

I plunged the syringe into her arm and set it on the table next to the bed, waiting for her to wake up.

She really did look exactly like me. The slanted, rounded Asian eyes, fair skin, and deep brown, nearly black hair matched my memory of my reflection in the pod. The hair was shorter, and there was no scar, but otherwise I could have been looking into a mirror.

The girl stirred awake, opening eyes the exact same shade as mine. Immediately she began to struggle against her bonds, but they held. I sent a silent thanks to whoever had taught Six how to tie knots.

“Who are you?” she demanded furiously in my voice. “Let me go!”

I assessed her expression. I saw something flash behind her eyes (anger? fear?), but no recognition. She’d never seen me before. Which meant she’d never seen herself before. Her memory had been erased, too.

“I’m One. You don’t know who you are, do you?” I felt a strange sense of relief. If she was like us, she wasn’t some agent planted here by our captors.

“How did you know that? Where am I? Let me go!” she yelled, writhing on the pallet. I heard a creak from the ropes, and felt a surge of disquiet. This girl was strong.

“No, no. I promise, I mean you no harm. Just calm down so I can talk to you, please?”

“Why should I?”

“Here.” I searched around and picked up a shiny metal tray. I held it above her head and watched her stop moving and gaze up at her reflection.

“Wh—I’m you!” she screeched, looking up over the tray at my face, then back at it.

“No, you’re you. We just look alike. And before you ask—” I said, as she opened her mouth, “no, I don’t know who you are, or even who I am.

“We’re on a Defiant. There are eight of us, including you. We have a mission to complete. We’ve been told that we’ll get our memories back if we succeed. We’ve named ourselves in the order we awoke. So you’re Eight.”

“That’s all you know?”

I shrugged.

“That’s not a lot, is it?”

“Thank you for that astute observation,” I said bitingly, dropping the tray onto the pallet to Eight’s left. She had finally stopped moving, and was regarding me curiously.

“What?”

“Care to untie me?”

“Oh! I’ll call the others in, as long as you don’t attack them.”

“Not likely.” She gestured at her bindings with her chin. “Anyway, I only attacked them before because I woke up in a foreign place, surrounded by strangers. What would you have done?”

“I wouldn’t call it ‘surrounded,’ there were only two of them.”

Eight shot me a look.

“All right, fine.”

I crossed to the door and stepped outside into the hallway, where the other six were waiting tensely.

“You guys can come in now. She won’t attack. She doesn’t remember anything.”

“How can you be sure?” asked Three, hands on hips.

“I can see it in her eyes. I just know, okay?” I added after seeing an exaggerated eye roll from Three. “She’s got my face, I think I know how to read it.”

“Whatever.” She pushed herself off the wall where she’d been leaning and followed me back into the medbay.

“Okay, Eight. You already know I’m One. That’s Two.” Two gave a tiny, awkward wave when introduced. “Three.” Three pursed her lips, but gave no other sign of even hearing me. “Four.” Four crossed her arms. Five smirked sarcastically. Six’s nose twitched. Seven smiled encouragingly, dimpling.

“Everybody, this is Eight.”

“Okay. I think we should stop at our quarters to pick up our comms, then go up to the bridge to see if there are any details about our mission stored in the computer database,” I said.

“Whatever you say, boss.”

I gritted my teeth. I was beginning to really dislike Three.

With an air of great trepidation, Two reached to untie Eight’s wrists. We all watched him struggle for a moment, then Five scoffed and pushed him out of the way, unknotting the ropes himself.

Eight rolled her eyes and sat up.

“I’m not attacking anyone.”

“Wh—Who ever said you were?” Two protested.

We all left the med bay and boarded the lift, riding up to Deck Three. Five and Seven broke off and headed to their respective rooms, on the left side of the hall.

The rest of us looked around, then started laying our hands on doors. The first door on the left opened for Two, and the first on the right opened for me. Three took the room next to mine, and Four the room across from her.

The quarters that had been coded for our DNA were all in the order we had woken up in. Which meant our revival times had been orchestrated by our captors.

I wasn’t sure exactly why this unsettled me so much, maybe just because I didn’t like thinking about how much control they had over me while I’d been in the pod.

The rest went into their rooms, and I shook off the feeling and entered my own quarters.

The bedroom was sparsely decorated, with a bed and a small table on the left wall and two doors on the right. The center wall held a huge window that looked out into space. The first door led into a small bathroom with an air shower and toilet. The second opened into a closet.

The shelf on the bottom held black leather boots of various heights. The second was filled with pairs of black cargo pants. The third was all gun belts and hip holsters and other garments meant to hold weapons. This shelf did not bode well for our mission.

From the top of the closet hung tops, all in dark colors.

I put on a pair of pants and a dark blue tank top. Looking down at my feet, I remembered I’d been barefoot since I’d woken up, and my feet were freezing. I pulled on a pair of combat boots and scooped my comm up off the bedside table, and sticking it in my ear. Then I left my quarters, slapping the lights panel on the wall as I exited.

Everyone else was already gone, so I boarded the lift by myself and rode up to Deck One.

“Nice of you to show up,” Five said from by the pilot’s station. Four was at one of the computer stations at the back, fingers flying across keys. The others milled about aimlessly, wearing expressions ranging from curiosity to boredom.

I ignored him. “Found anything about the mission in there yet, Four?”

“Aye. I’ll pull it up on the view screen. It’s a video file.”

I sank down in the captain’s chair. We all watched as the image of a blank wall appeared on the view screen, replacing the sight of Earth below.

A woman walked into the frame. She had a thin, pinched-looking face and dark eyes with poorly-disguised crows’ feet at the corners. Her brown hair was swept into a tight knot atop her head.

“Hello. My name is Imelda. I am a representative of the Aerzhu, the organization responsible for your assignment.

“You have been selected for this mission because of your unique and varied talents. The success of this operation is paramount. The stakes are high. Wiping your memories was an unfortunate but necessary step. Though you don’t remember, you did agree to this before the procedure.

“In the computer’s database are the coordinates of a planet called Cebos. It is located a month from Earth—”

“A month?!” Three shrieked indignantly. We shushed her.

“—at full speed. It is a mining colony established by mankind half a century ago. Your mission is to infiltrate the prime minister’s home during the third day of the Rest Month, at the Officer’s Ball. An important official is held in his cellar. You must retrieve this man and return him to us safely, without being caught or captured. Failure to fulfill this mission will result in the loss of your memories forever. You will never retrieve them.

“Also in the computer’s database are coordinates of planets at which you may stop for supplies. You will find more detailed information about your mission and the planet of Cebos in the database as well. I wish you the best of luck.”

And with that, the video blinked out and the screen went dark again.