by Paul Harm
She fell back in her seat the moment the connection dropped and the screen went black. “You heard that Brian?” Romero asked breathing for the first time what felt like minutes. “Loud and clearly Captain.” Brian answered with a smile on his face but a pale white skin gave his concerns away. “Thoughts?” “Nothing Captain, don’t think it was one of our crewman, they might seem like a bunch of brutes but they are as soft as kittens when you get to know them better.” Brian stated casually. “Agreed, so what happened there?” “Come on Captain there was probably some malfunction, or I don’t know something broke, nothing to worry about. When we turn this monstrosity of a ship around they will have probably already figured it out and let us off the hook.” Brian underlined his words with lots of gestures, as if it would make things clearer. “You know the drill Brian; Commander Cromwell gave an order, there’s nothing to discuss. He probably thinks as well that it has nothing to do with us, but he’s in command and it happened on his watch. If indeed it turns out to be sabotage he can’t let us off the hook, we were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. Let’s bring the old lady around.” “Understood captain. What about the crew?” Brian asked. “They’re sleeping anyway, if they get up a week or two to late, who cares.” “I see, Captain, that’s how it’s going to be.” Brian flew over the instruments like the well-trained pilot he was and after a minute he responded. “Good to go Captain.” “Punch it.” Lucia Romero’s favorite line. The metal pulled for a long moment as the Cetacea did a slow 180-degree turnaround in deep space. “Vectors aligned ready for deceleration thrust.” EVAs voice gently informed them. “You’ve got this one Brian I have to run through our logs, see if I can find something that went missing or could be responsible for that accident.” “Easy peasy lemon squeezy, Captain.” “God, I hate it when you say that.” Brian smiled his most benevolent smile at her.
It was an odd thing when you turn a ship around in deep space, even though you aligned the head of the ship in the other direction, your velocity and direction did not change at all. Basically, the first step in changing course that had been disrupted by unforeseeable events, first turned the ship around. Afterwards you start the breaking thrust and since you had human beings on board you were limited by their resistance to high G forces. Which basically meant you have to decelerate as long as you accelerated in order to keep everyone on board alive, which was something you always wanted to do. The g-forces were not all bad though since you were forced to gain and lose speed that way, you had the constant change in speed on board to make your body feel at home. This basically meant you do not develop any symptoms associated with long time exposure to zero G.
Turned out humans were quite some monkeys, mastering their home planet and starting to dominate the solar system by sheer force of will and that strange human - I can do it, ergo, I should do it - attitude. And last but not least curiosity. But when it came to being in space it turned out the human body could not keep up with the ambitious human mind. No gravity or zero G made you sick, space was hostile when it came to radiation without Earth’s shielding atmosphere. Hell, not to mention the way a body violently dies when exposed to the vacuum of space. Well it does not just die, your first problem becomes the lack of oxygen or gas of any kind to fill your lungs with, due to the lack of pressure you must exhale in order to prohibit your remaining gas inside your lungs from getting released in your circulatory system. On the other side that is the tiny problem. After a couple of seconds your skin and the tissue underneath is going to expand because the water in your body starts to vaporize. It is funny how the absence of atmospheric pressure works on the human body. Oh not to mention the next sensation of a quick and soft death as is delivered from the vacuum, except of course the suffocating but you are probably unconscious long before that becomes a problem.
Every liquid on the surface of your body, and this includes an open mouth, will start to boil. Last but not least the radiation you are exposed to. To sum it up in short: green acres and high trees meant happy monkey. Deep space and zero G, sick and soon to be dead monkeys. But! No problem because humanity’s biggest advantage over all the other animals and plants on Earth was his unwillingness to fit in. So, humans figured out a way. Centuries ago humans travelled the sea with nothing but the stars to guide them over oceans wider than any land. With the computation power of the lowest level computer ever invented - and a lot of help from mathematicians (mainly female) - they calculated a flight to the moon. To be fair humanity never had the biggest trust in its ability to succeed therefore we created this odd situation where two superpowers competed about who flew their favorite pet around the Earth first. Anyhow, it turned out deep space was not the nice and safe place you wanted to hang out in. Even though there was more space in the universe than anything else it is at the same time not very comfortable for life as we know it. That being said it is necessary to travel through it to get all those tasty planets and moons in the solar system. And who knows what wonders we might find there? Who knows what shows up in the deep oceans buried under kilometers of ice on Jupiter’s moon Europa? Maybe we’ll even find Europeans there. Many more questions like that did not only take human kind to the edge of self-destruction but it took humanity to the most hostile place in the known universe; space. Probably not even close to the final frontier. Well anyway, the good thing about constant thrust both when accelerating and decelerating was artificial gravity.
“We’re on our new course, Captain.” Brian stated. “Well done. You have the bridge, this might take some time.” “Copy that, Captain.” The incredibly exciting work of going through list after list of inventory and their logs was the kind of thing they did not tell you when they offered you a command. But Lucia Romero sat in her chamber and worked through every possibility of an explosive chemical or a combination of harmless substances that could be forged into an explosive device. Unfortunately, she found some possibilities. She headed towards the cargo bay and started to search through the eligible container. Container after container she checked the logs with the store. It took her forever to go through the storage, but she found something in the end: a broken seal on four of the containers. She did not see it in the first place since it had been so elegantly fixed afterwards. Bad news was after her discovery she had to go through all of the other containers again. After a couple of days she finally was through with it, her findings where disturbing.
Every one of the carefully opened containers carried chemical compounds for the infrastructure and the laboratories on Sapphire. Nothing harmful on its own but Lucia ran the chemicals through the ship’s military database. “Brian, are you there?” “Yes, Captain.” “Be a good XO and come down to subsection Omicron-seven, I think we might have a problem here.” “On my way.” Brian entered the lift and rushed into subsection Omicron-seven. When he arrived, Captain Romero just stood there and without a word tossed him a file via her communicator. “There have been breaches on four containers of chemicals carefully closed up again but not carefully enough.” Romero told him before he could take a look at the file which was now on his communicator to. “That doesn’t sound very good, Captain.” “No, it doesn’t. The file, Brian, tell me what you see.” She told him while she stood in a corner hand on her forehead rubbing it hard. “Hexamine, ethanoic, polyoxymethylene, Ammonium nitrate. Should that ring a bell?” Brian had no idea what he was actually looking at. “EVA tell him what you told me.” She looked at the ceiling for some reason when she said it and EVA complied instantly.” “Hexamine, ethanoic, polyoxymethylene and Ammonium nitrate are the basic chemical synthesizers needed for a HMX.” “Define HMX, EVA” Brian demanded while looking at Romero. “HMX, also known as Octogen, is particularly known for its High Melting explosiveness. It was last used in the early twenty century. Its blast is capable of melting solid steel.” “Holy shit.” Bursted out of Brian. “My thoughts exactly.” Romero let go of her forehead and looked at Brian who still put the pieces together. - He’s a smart kid he’s going to figure it out him
self - she thought. “You think he’s still here?” Brian asked more to himself than to anyone else. “The bomber? Maybe, chances are he somehow got our cargo list and stole the stuff while we resupplied on Ruby. Chances are he’s sleeping in cryostasis.” Romero’s voice was slow and calm. “So, what do we do, Captain?” “Checking if the stock has been indeed stolen or partly stolen. Fortunately, we have a highly accurate stockpile list.” She pointed out tapping him on the shoulder. “It still going to take another two weeks before we arrive at Ruby.” “I wouldn’t tell Commander Cromwell yet.” “Me neither, Brian. We still need to reopen the container to figure out how much of the stuff, if any, is actually gone. Give me a hand with that will you, the file contains the initial amount we loaded.” “Sure, captain I’ll start right away just point me in the direction.” “You start with this one and the one labelled O7T5 and O7Z0 I’ll start over there.” Brian nodded and so they started their search.
After hours of searching through the one cubic meter container they finally got their results. “Damn it Brian, it looks like my containers are missing a considerable amount of the stuff.” “Confirmed, Captain.” “EVA compare the missing amount with your database and calculate the… wait a moment… delay that order.” “What’s it, Captain?” Brian asked looking at a Captain which froze in the middle of the sentence and just stood there. “We don’t know the specifics of the explosion on Ruby, so we don’t know...” “…if there’s anything still out there.” Brian finished her sentence. “Holy shit Captain, that’s bad. Even if they used up everything, we’re still sitting on a ton of this stuff here.” “Yeah, but they’ve been sloppy enough to let us find their traces. Which either means the bomber blew himself up too, they’re amateurs, or the worst case, they just don’t care being discovered. Not only did whoever this was stealing from the military but used it to blow up parts of a space station.
Why?” Romero seemed to ask the question more to herself than to anyone else. Brian went silent and did some thinking for himself. “Why did they not take more?” she finally asked, a hand still on her chin the other one in front of her chest. Brian looked at her. “Excuse me?” “Why take only so little and why just blow up a hangar, with the stuff we carry around here they could’ve melted the fusion reactor if they wanted to, why just blow up a hangar Brian? Why?” EVA’s voice thundered through the cargo bay. “Incoming high priority transmission.” “Put it through, EVA.” “Captain Romero, I have news.” Cromwell spoke, his voice calm and flavored with some regret. He took a deep breath in and sorrow accompanied his look for a brief moment. “We lost seven crewmen in the incident. Four mechanics, two cargo movers, two engineers and a Lieutenant.” Cromwell took another deep breath. “We ran through the logs and found a malfunctioning hangar door which was ripped out of its socket due to the forces of the pressurization. So, I’ve good news for you. Carry on towards Sapphire.” “My condolences, Sir.” Romero answered with a perfect poker face. “Appreciated, Captain. Cromwell out.”
Romero’s mind was filled with fear and disbelief. Brian stood right behind her with a rather dense look in his eyes. He knew his captain for long now but what he witnessed right now he had never seen it before. “What the fuck, Captain.” Lucia Romero turned towards him staring him straight in the eye. He gulped and took his military stance. “What did you just say?” She whispered at him no more than five centimeters in front of his face. “I said, why are you not telling him about the chemicals?” She was furious, maybe not because of Brian but this whole situation stank of mutiny. “Because we’ve no proof, because we don’t know if it’s safe to tell him. Because, Brian, it could be the person or more likely the people who did this are still on Ruby, or on the Cetacea. If we set Cromwell in alarm mode he locks down the station, our ship and every other ship that sat foot on Ruby within the last weeks.” “But still captain, why not tell him?” Brian’s fury settled into despair. - He got balls you got to give him that. - “Because I don’t trust his bridge crew.” “Excuse me?” “Didn’t you listen to what he told us? He just told us the hangar door had a malfunction. Which basically means it was an insider job. Carefully planted explosives could melt through the securing bolts of the hangar door. If they have an expert they can make it look like the door just opened.” “But they’d see the melted bolts, they’d find them.” “Yes. That’s the problem. Cromwell’s reaction should have been to call us in immediately, now we know there are people on Ruby who aren’t playing by the rules.” She let go of her stare. “But why not tell him that we’re missing explosives?” “I will, but did you not see where he was standing?” Brian could not help but be amazed by his captain’s slyness. “On the bridge, Cromwell he was standing on the bridge surrounded by at least four officers and other staff.” Brian stuttered feeling like someone who just got a masterclass on strategy. “Exactly, it was too risky. We need to find a way to contact him on a secure channel without raising any red flags, I’ll figure something out.” Romero paused for a second and went up and down in the cargo bay one finger tapping her chin. “If I send him a direct message chances are they might read it too and as far as we can tell those people are ruthless.” Another round of walking and finger tipping. “John.” “What?” “That’s it. When I send my next message. I send it to John and let him speak to the Commander alone; he and the other scientists regularly meet, so that’s perfect. I call him on a regular basis that should be just fine.” Brian rose an eyebrow. He might be on a freighter, but that was some high class strategic maneuvering right there. “So, what’s the plan, Captain?” “Find them, all of them and then we take them all in one swift motion.”
Captain Lucia Romero came back to her quarters and took a long hot shower. The hot water revitalized her and with every wave of it she felt more relaxed. She took her time and after almost fifteen minutes of heaven the task at hand threw her back into reality. She got out her communicator and pushed some buttons. “Hey, Lucy.” A rather sleepy Dr. John Silverman replied at the other end after a couple of seconds. “Oh, hey John, I have something I need to talk about.” “Well alright then, what is it?” He lay, his arms over his pillow and he did not wear a shirt, he had definitely been sleeping before she called. “The accident on Ruby.” She took a long breath in. “It was no malfunction.” John’s eyes filled with life as he sat up. “What? How do you... What?” He shook his head in disbelief. “We’re missing some chemical compounds on the Cetacea and the seals have been opened by an amateur.” “Holy shit Lucia, does Cromwell know about this? Why do you tell me?” “Cromwell thinks it’s a malfunction, which means someone changed the logs and it means the investigators on the airlock might be untrustworthy.” She rolled her head around her shoulders and sighed. “So, we need to keep this to ourselves for now. Don’t tell him but maybe figure out if the airlock inspection team is somehow compromised.” “I still don’t get why you won’t tell Cromwell.” “The chemicals they took, they still have enough to nuke half of Ruby into little molten pieces.” “God damn it, are you sure about that?” John rose an alarmed eyebrow. “If EVA’s calculations are accurate, yes.” John was now sitting and ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it back. “Ok, I’ll try to figure something out.” John replied. “Stay safe, my love.”
Now real worry snuck into her voice. It was one thing to be threatened but it was another when your loved one was. It made her feel so powerless, so useless when you were far away and unable to make a difference. But John just sat there totally relaxed and comfortable. He took a look around as if he was putting the information together for the first time by himself. He focused on her with a look made of steel and love. “If what you’re saying is true, they might be on the Cetacea too, and that means you’re in danger as well. Maybe they want to do the same thing on Sapphire?” Lucia was shocked for a moment. -He is right. They or some of them or one of them might be sleeping in cryostasis. Maybe… Brian? No, he is a good kid. - She pushed the thought away. “You take care now, Dr. Silverman.” She kissed two of her fing
ers and pushed them gently towards her communicator’s camera, its surface was cold and smooth. He did the same and for a moment they held their fingers in front of a camera a million of miles away from each other but still it felt a bit closer now. “You take care Lucy, I love you.” “I love you too.” She dropped the connection.
XVII. Journey to the East
The door behind Joseph swung open without him realizing it. “What’re you doing Joseph?” The surprised and alarmed voice of Claire cut the silence of Joseph’s secret departure. “Nothing?” Claire stepped into the room. “What. Are. You. Doing? And don’t you dare say ‘nothing’ to me again.” Claire made every word an accusation. Joseph froze. “Noth-” “Joseph Grey! Don’t you dare to finish that sentence!” Claire thundered through the room. “What’s going on Joseph? I’m your wife, why are you not talking to me?” Her voice sounded desperate and fragile. Joseph looked at her in agony, he did not want her involved but he could not leave things like that either. He could not tell her what was going on or he might as well jump into the arms of the Psycore at once. He was in a pickle. “It’s dangerous, Claire. I don’t want you involved.” Claire sat down next to him. He sat down next to her grabbing her hand. “I don’t care. You’ve to talk to me.” Joseph saw that it was too late already. Even if he got away now Claire would know he was on to something and if Akachi was right, the Psycore would know too, which would result in a manhunt Joseph little chance to win.
Maybe Claire showing up following her sixth sense was a good thing after all. She might have contacted the police anyway over Joseph’s absence. “I’m in trouble, Claire.” “But why? How? What’s going on Joseph?” Tears started to build up in her eyes. “Listen...” And Joseph told her everything. About the strange situation he had when he entered the office today over Akachi’s immediate visit afterwards and at last he told her about Melinda’s letter, after telling Claire. Claire processed it as well as you can expect considering all the craziness this story presented, but it was at least coherent. Claire sighed after a long time of processing the information. “I’ll come with you.” “No!” “It’s the safest thing to do. If it’s true what you told me. If the Psycore is after you, they are going to find out you’re gone soon. If they show up here, I already know too much. You did a bad job of sneaking out of here, I have to tell you that.” Joseph could not believe his wife was giving him attitude for not being discreet enough. “In my defense, it was my first attempt running and hiding.” He slowly reached out for her hand, which lay on the table in front of her - God this is a beautiful woman - he thought. “I don’t know what’s going to happen Claire, I don’t want to endanger you.” Claires eyes returned a stern resolve, and when she squeezed his hands she whispered. “I prefer it happens to both of us, Joseph. We’re in this together now, whatever this turns out to be.” He kissed her forehead softly and pressed her to his chest. Afterwards she laid down her communicator next to Joseph’s and started to pack a second backpack.
