Chapter Text
“A fucking disaster, is what it is, Colonel!”
Quaritch imagined turning General Ardmore’s nose into a disaster and kept his face pleasantly neutral. At least she’d waited with her tirade until they were in private – many of the soldiers regarded him as a war hero of both Earth and Pandora and Ardmore was smart enough not to antagonize them.
“None – I repeat – none of your objectives were achieved! We needed Sully’s death, not the one of his son, making him even more vengeful! And on the way to achieving nothing, you also sunk – completely destroyed! – one of our very expensive whaling ships, complete with most of its crew and three vials of amrita ! And aside from Wainfleet, you also managed to lose all your Recoms!”
Quaritch felt his jaw twitch at the memory of his group being… well, slaughtered, by just two enemies and a godforsaken whale that did not behave as its species was supposed to.
‘Never fight back my ass.’ he thought and hoped Scoresby’s death had been long and painful.
Ardmore, with her eagle-sharp eyes, immediately latched on to his minuscule show of emotion and mercilessly went on.
“Yes, precisely the team that was supposed to be our key into the heart of the enemy, the unnoticeable knife that could cut out their resistance until they were nice and docile and finally accepted our rehoming projects. Maybe I should have known better than to entrust a mission with even the slightest diplomatic tendencies into the hands of muscle-headed soldiers whose MO seems to be to run into everything guns blazing.” She scoffed and turned away to retrieve her ever-present mug from the coffeemaker.
Quaritch took several controlled breaths. He knew that she knew that she was being unfair – but her goal at this moment was not an objective debrief. Right now, she wanted to vent and take him down a notch – or several of them.
He cursed his young-looking face for making him a target for these kinds of dressing-downs again and took a breath from the respirator to mask his lips curling in distaste.
But Ardmore seemed done with her venting – ever efficient in everything she did.
“We need to reconsider the details of our approach. While I would love to put someone not so prone to losing to the Sullys in charge, there is no one else who comes close to your achievements otherwise. But we will mix it up a bit.” She took a sip of her coffee and gave him an assessing look that nearly made him feel like a fresh recruit.
“You and Wainfleet will join the Recoms at sector 3, they are the ones who have shown the most promise and could therefore be the members of your new team. The final decision for our strategy will be made next week. Now get out of my sight.” She tossed him a tablet – probably information on his new subordinates – and all but threw him out of her office.
Wainfleet had waited for him right by the door and immediately fell into step beside him.
“We’re heading to sector three, get to know the potential new teammates there and wait for further instructions.” Wainfleet grinned.
“Oh, fresh meat for the savages to take apart? Avatars? Other Recoms?”
“Let’s see…”
Quaritch activated the tablet and opened the files to give the profiles a cursory look while navigating them out of the command tower. It still felt completely unnatural to step out of the building and have his lungs give him a joyful message of finally fresh air let’s never enter a building again please . It went contrary to all his experiences. Even back in his childhood on earth the air had been so polluted that everyone wore facemasks and the bills for air filters were higher than those for heating or cooling. And Pandora’s air, despite being free of pollution, had been even worse.
And now? His face was uncovered, no oxygen tank was weighing him down, even his skin itched with relief at being out of the wrong air.
He had always prided himself in his control over his body and that included being perceptive to what his senses were telling him. His body might be different now, but he followed the same principles and they had served him well. Even though sometimes -
“What in all devils’ names? This one hasn’t even got a military background!” Wainfleet’s disgusted growl shook him out of his musings. Indeed, the newest profile on the screen was of a woman, a Recom, and according to her biography she had only cursory military training required of all scientists working in war-zones – which she had done. Fatally wounded 6 years ago in during a riot in Brazil, due to her extensive studies in marine biology and Pandoran flora she had been selected for the second batch of Recoms.
Quaritch scowled at a guy in a transporter openly staring at them – well, not anymore – and walked a bit faster.
“The general mentioned a new approach. And that she was not satisfied with the results of our group of only soldiers. I guess, now we have to put up with the intellectuals to make up for it.” He filtered the list by rank and was relieved that at least their temporary leader had been a military guy – Martinez, killed just a few weeks before the Big Battle while accompanying a mining crew. Quaritch remembered him, due to one operation the man had done under his direct command and otherwise as a jovial guy who was well liked by his subordinates.
More interesting was someone else – an Avatar of a scientist, apparently. Human body deceased.
“The hell. Thought Sully was the only one.” Wainfleet mumbled. Also, most of her information was currently restricted. Quaritch flipped through the rest of the profiles so he would at least recognize those he had been saddled with.
“Well then, let’s break the new guys in.” He straightened his posture and strode towards the barracks in sector three. He would be damned if he let himself be stopped by oddities from getting rid of Jake goddamn Sully.
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The sector three crew welcomed them in a weird mixture of apprehension (most of the scientists) and cordiality (most of the soldiers). Martinez seemed to have no problem to step aside and let them take over as soon as he was assured that he would be in command of a stationary unit.
The crew was bigger than he was used to after his special forces team, not just due to the addition of six non-combatants, but the soldiers numbered at 21 as well. Aside from that one scientist, everyone was a Recom.
Yóna Breeland had been a renowned researcher in the fields of neuromedicine and cell-regeneration with ventures into biology and behavioural sciences, that much her file had told him. Among the crew she was somewhat solitary, often engrossed in research, even continuing it verbally during her frequent visits to the gym by talking at her tablet. In conversations she was focused and sometimes weirdly intense if the topic was of particular interest. Among her fellow researchers she seemed to be respected.
“Breeland!”
The woman finished tapping out a note before rising from her desk and turning to him. Her body’s structure was sturdier than that of most females of their new species, her skin a greyish blue with more jagged markings. There was also the issue of her missing queue, making her stand out even more in their ragtag group.
“Yes, sir?”
“Follow me for a moment.”
He led her out of the quarters into the free space at the edge of sector three, mostly used for combat exercises and growing some food as well. He then chucked the tablet at her, her file still open.
“What is going on with your file? The upper rank wants me to form a new unit, I can’t do that if I don’t have the information.” She blinked at him slowly, lowered her gaze to her file and retorted:
“Maybe the upper rank has a reason for the… redactions.”
Quaritch felt fury grow in his lungs and he stepped closer, snarling:
“I am your commanding officer. I know you scientists seem to have a hard time getting that in your nonsense-filled head, so I will make this clear once: I am responsible for this unit, your actions, your tasks, your safety . Petty disobedience and withholding information will get not only yourself, but others killed as well. Am I understood?”
Her eyes had snapped up during his speech and narrowed… on his mouth? He felt himself one second away from kicking her out -
“Understood, sir. Also, you are baring your teeth.”
He took one step back, both due to her sudden acquiescence and that piece of information. For one deep breath he let himself think of the combat on the SeaDragon and the weeks leading up to it – weeks spent searching the Pandoran wilds, learning his new body, seeing the world through new eyes – not just his own, but also a pair of glowing, ever curious, defiant -
Giving in to the urge to hiss at a child. He consciously lowered his lips over his incisors and gave Breeland his most unimpressed stare. She stared back, in a calculating and still way he did not like at all.
“So it’s true that you managed to connect to one of the Mountain Banshees.”
“I believe that is what I informed you of during our first debrief.”
“Yes, but some of us were divided on whether you did it the… Terran or the Pandoran way.” Her posture had loosened again, and she was quickly scrolling through her file. It seemed the hyperfocus was over for now.
“The beast tried to kill me and threw us off a cliff, before I managed to establish the neural connection.”
“Sounds Pandoran to me.” She quirked her lips in a wry smile. “Wish I could do it… but I guess that ship has sailed.” He took that as the offer for information he had demanded and gestured at her to continue walking with him.
“How did you end up in your Avatar when your body died? It’s one of the sure-fire ways to kill both bodies at once.”
“Wrong timeline of events. First, I stayed in this body, then my original one died due to lack of neural stimulation.”
“The only other person known to have achieved the transfer is the traitor, Jake Sully and he did not set a desirable record.”
“Oh fuck that guy!” Well now that was a sentiment he could support. “He managed to achieve a complete transfer of consciousness into a body explicitly designed to not have a consciousness in an indigenous ritual that lasted no longer than an hour! And that’s about all we know because the crew in Hell’s Gate destroyed all the information there before they moved. It’s infuriating!”
Maybe not so similar sentiments after all, but something he could work with.
“Then how did it happen with you?”
“Well, we don’t precisely know, but it probably has something to do with my body being, essentially, a failed project.” Another wry smile. Quaritch grinned internally, like a shark smelling blood. After being reembodied and especially the disaster of the last mission, he needed to gain some leeway again, otherwise he would be dancing to Ardmore’s tune forever and that was just unacceptable. The RDA messing up in one of their precious Avatar projects? That sounded promising.
“Details, Breeland.” She merely smiled, handed back the tablet and walked a bit faster until they reached a shed where the farming-bots rested under the solar panels to recharge. There she turned and gave him a look of that same eerie intensity as before.
“A bit over six years ago, the RDA made it very clear that they would not take responsibility for this whole matter and that I could either end my life on earth and come here as their scientist, or they would end my life permanently. Are you sure you want to know the details?”
“Breeland, I have been part of more barely sanctioned RDA missions than you can imagine. If they would kill me over one Avatar gone wrong, I’d be dead ten times over but instead?” He bared his teeth deliberately. “They like me so much they even gave me a new body.”
“Point taken.” Her grin became a bit more earnest.
“Thing is, I never gave my DNA for the Avatar project. I was involved with research on regenerative properties of cells in the– well, not so important anymore. The RDA had their fingers in it only tangentially, but they stole samples of DNA. Those had been given by the involved researchers for that one project only, but the RDA used it in experiments they did not believe would succeed or were simply not legal. One of them did succeed though and it was just impressive enough that authorities were willing to look the other way. The experiment involved taking the DNA not just from the jungle-dwelling Na’vi but also from the mountain-dwelling ones, an attempt at creating more diverse and adaptable Avatars. The joy was great until, upon arriving here, they discovered that the hybridization ended up also affecting the parts of the brain that were supposed to give me access to the body. Not much, but enough to make the whole ‘create more adaptable Avatars’ purpose moot.”
“You seem to move fine. I know that you exercise at least four hours daily while at the same time continuing scientific discussions with your tablet or even the other researchers. That does not look like control issues.”
“Oh, that’s on me. I’ve always been good at adapting to exoskeletons or artificial limbs and the training is a habit from the days when I had to do it to maintain any compatibility with the Avatar at all. But apparently, I overdid it and the peculiarities of this Hybrid-body ended up with it growing the brain structures necessary to house a consciousness in the Avatar – until one day; a good, human scientist ended up stuck in the body of an alien. Imagine the scandal if news ever got to earth.”
Which it would not, the RDA would make sure of that – but it was still enough of a threat that the information could be of use to him. Speaking of use; Yóna Breeland seemed like a dependable asset for now. Her clear disillusionment and irreverence towards the RDA meant that she should be willing to side with someone who could guarantee her safety from their machinations. Only one question remained.
“What about your queue?”
Quaritch saw the precise moment her defences shuttered, and her relaxed demeanour sunk into itself while her gaze grew cold and distant. It was reminiscent of another pair of eyes going from wide-eyed wonder at the world around him to frustrated contempt at remembering with whom he was seeing-
No. He would not think about that now.
He wasn’t sure if it was deliberate or trauma related, but it was a clear break of the atmosphere.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to ask Dr Shihei. He’s the only one with access to my medical records of that time. As far as I know, directly after the permanent transfer I started disassociating and had… a severe fever. After an accident cost me the queue, it stopped.” She shrugged and raised a hand to fiddle with the circular device fastened to her head where the queue should begin. “I designed this thing to connect to the remains of the nerves and simulate something like a feedback loop, otherwise I’d constantly feel like my brain is on fire. Very uncomfortable.”
“Very well. I will consult with Dr Shihei on this matter to make sure we don’t involve you in situations which might aggravate the injury.” She opened her mouth in protest – good, not someone who feared difficulties – but he cut her off: “This decision has to be made by the medical personnel.”
“Yes sir.”
“One more thing. If, as I expect, you are chosen as part of this team permanently, you will have to submit a report of your current research and quite possibly change it to better suit our needs. Better have it ready soon.” It was amusing to see her face change rapidly from the blankness of supressing trauma to barely concealed horror.
“I’ll have to translate everything into layman’s terms?”
“Yes, and now be on your way before this layman lays you out for disrespect.”
“Yes sir!” He ignored her shoddy salute and leaned against the shed. It was a rather nice place, with good sightlines since the fields weren’t high enough to hide someone and the light whirring of the bots making it impossible to hear any conversation from more than a few meters away. It also provided good visibility on the training field, where Private Vargas was obviously half-assing his drills while Wainfleet was preoccupied with two other soldiers.
Quaritch grinned viciously. Well, that would be a fun way to let off steam before he had to talk with the good Dr Shihei.