Lazarus Rising

1.19 Project Doom

Cheyenne wandered fitfully on the edge of a faraway dream. She felt as if she were floating in a summer breeze, light and free. Balmy streams of hot air flushed over her body producing long flushes of tingling warmth over her exposed skin. Three shapes emerged in the air above her. One looked like the talking cat she'd once read about in a book. Hovering over her, resplendent in a thick wiry coat, its long whiskered face and grainy nose bobbed to and fro as if it were trying to get her attention. Eventually it spoke slowly to her in a language she struggled to comprehend. "She's coming round."

The cat morphed into the grey bearded face of Shelvocke. His eyes twinkled with a flash of good humoured relief. "Cheyenne, can you hear me?"

She tried to sit up but a hand pushed her back down. It was Charisa. "Charisa, it was you. Out there." Cheyenne croaked. "How did we get back?"

"The PolAr, I used it to propel us back to the ship. In truth, it was touch and go. I had to realign your suit's life support systems but it bought us just enough time."

"T'was was a dam foolish thing t'do. To go after her." muttered Shelvocke shaking his suit off his shoulders.

"One for which I'll be eternally grateful." Charisa turned off the medi-centre's hot air vents. "Do you feel able to get up?"

Cheyenne nodded, clutched the silver foil round her naked body and swung her legs off the couch to come face to face with the pale faced Lazarus.

"And so will I. I don't think we've been properly introduced. I'm Lazarus. You know me, I believe but I can't remember you. Things have been rather hazy since..." He stood back and pointed at himself. "Well, since this."

And so Cheyenne finally met Lazarus.

****

Given that neither Charisa nor Lazarus needed to sleep it seemed pointless for Cheyenne to spend the six week trip in a Merck bag. Shelvocke assigned them a small cabin at the end of the passage containing the crews quarters. With two sets of bunk beds and a small table it served the purpose of allowing her to rest whenever she needed. Most of the time was spent with the crew in the galley drinking hot coffee and quizzing Lazarus and Charisa about the things she needed to know for her investigation and much more besides.

Keeping the cowls on when they were with the crew seemed pointless so after a while Shelvocke spoke to the crew about the need for discretion once they arrived on Mars and with little issue they were absorbed into the normal shift cycles that formed part of the daily rhythm of the ship. The crew were thankful for an additional distraction over the long outward trip-the peculiarity of their unexpected guests being an added bonus to a crew expected to carry out six weeks of routinely mundane tasks.

Shelvocke however was somewhat circumspect about letting them know who Lazarus was. Knowing the creator of the Riser technology was on board could be too much for some of the crew who had no doubt had lost family members to the Riser program. The Captain introduced him as Father Mapple, a Corpus Christi Monoist and left it at that. It was a good call, most would not want to get stuck with a devoted Monoist, so for the most part Lazarus was left alone.

But even while Lazarus attracted some attention, it was Charisa that the crew were entranced with. The long limbed, shape shifting, Synthiod enthralled them and whenever she sat in the galley she was quickly surrounded by the off-shift crew and quizzed on Mars and the life in the Bio's there. Questions about what she knew about the best place to settle a Bio, artificial atmospheres, working crops under the surface gradually morphed into questions about her origins, the alien markings on her breastplate, about the Old Martians, the deserted cities and canals and the stories they'd heard about the re-emergence of some of the ancient life forms on Mars that had been bought back to life by the planet's terraforming. So Charisa had to endure an exhaustive litany of questions, a task that she seemed to soak up with endless patience and forbearance.