“Fine!” he said as he walked toward the Stacy simulation, but then he stopped abruptly. Something in the back of his mind told him to turn around. Don’t do this. Don’t look her in the eyes. The nightmares of seeing her falling, her face pressed against the Jumper viewport, mouthing the words, I forgive you, came flooding back to him. Would those dreams stop if he simply faced her? If he looked her in the eyes, would she truly forgive him? He decided it was worth a chance because he was tired of it all. Maybe even too tired to live anymore.
He took a deep breath and stepped in front of her, then quickly turned and looked into the beautiful blue eyes of the girl he loved, the girl he’d intended to marry, the girl who had brought so much joy to his life, and the girl he had killed to save his own worthless life.
Suddenly, he was up on the bridge, standing by the helm, watching Captain Coal turn and walk toward the rear stairwell. Jake turned to yell at Jane, but she was no longer there. Instead, he saw Coal’s entire bridge crew get up from their stations and follow their captain down the stairs. Some were crying, but most sounded as though they were just praying or whispering goodbye to one another.
Jake was standing in the exact position he’d stood on that fateful night, which meant that the ship was near crush depth, and Stacy was still alive. He turned and rushed to the command station, pressing his face against the glass for a better view, but there was nothing but blackness out there. “She’s below me,” he said aloud, as he stepped back and activated the exterior bow camera. In his dreams, he assumed she was right outside the forward viewport, but now he realized that was impossible. When the bow camera feed was projected onto the viewport, he saw the familiar image of her Jumper hanging by the safety cable. The image was almost serene until the sounds of that night came back to him full force.
Klaxons and bells were going off as the ship tried desperately to warn its human occupants that it was about to be crushed by the rapidly increasing water pressure. He stepped forward and turned up the low-light filter on the camera. Stacy’s face appeared in the Jumper cockpit, just as it did in his nightmares. He remembered her lips moving, saying, “I forgive you, Jake.” Now they were saying something else.
He turned up the volume on the ship’s speakers, and he heard her beautiful voice one last time. “Forgive me, Jake,” she said as she reached for something inside the cockpit. He saw the line separate from the Jumper, and then the bridge lurched, knocking him backward. He hit his head on the navigation console, and the room went black.
When he opened his eyes, he was sitting on the floor of the empty white rec room. Jane was kneeling in front of him with her hands on his shoulder. He looked at her and said, “She cut the line, not me.” Jane nodded. “She cut the line to save her father. To save the crew. To save me.” Jane nodded again. “How did you know?” he asked.
Jane sat on the floor in front of him and held both of his hands. “We were inside the mind ship together,” she said. “Remember?”
The pieces of the puzzle fell into place. “The mind ship read my thoughts,” he said. “That’s how it knew I wanted the Grange brothers dead.” She nodded. “It also read this?” he asked, waving at the bridge that was no longer there.
“That night was central to your thoughts,” she said. “I saw it displayed on the screen when your eyes were closed.”
He dropped her hands and stood up. “But the simulation of the bridge that night. You got that from the security cameras, right? That night was recorded, and no one knew about it. Now I can show everyone what happened!”
She put a finger to his lips. “No,” she said. “All recordings of her were deleted long ago.”
“But...” He looked into her green eyes, realizing that her similarity to Stacy was only superficial. “You’re saying all of that—what I saw—was a hallucination?”
“No,” she said. “It was a memory.”
She then stood up, took him by the hand, and led him toward the exit.
Genesis 10
When they reached the stairs to the B-deck, Jake could hear the voices of his shipmates coming down from the galley.
“We could try sneaking back into Capitol City,” Ash was saying. “One of the unused docks.”
“They’ll be waiting for us,” AJ said. “Jake wasn’t the only one threatened with payback for our little stunt.”
“What about the border towns?” a girl’s voice said. It took a moment to realize that it was Jessie. She was out of med bay.
“She’s right,” Vee said. “Maybe we could find work in another city, on another ship.”
“What about this ship?” Raines said. “There’s plenty of work for a small hauler in the border towns. Most folks wouldn’t even ask for credentials.” Several voices chimed in agreement.
“You are all forgetting something crucial,” AJ said. “This isn’t our ship. It’s for sale. Remember? It has absolutely no value to us.”
In the silence that followed, Jake walked up the stairs, with Jane close behind. When he reached the top, he stopped and looked around the galley at the faces of the people surrounding him. He then faced AJ. “I overheard you saying something about my ship having no value.”
She faced him squarely. “Didn’t mean to be derogatory,” she said, “Just stating the facts for the crew. In the Shippers Guild, we have a saying. ‘A ship is just a worthless hunk of metal without a captain.’ The Rogue Wave doesn’t have a captain anymore.”
Jake took a slow, deep breath before responding because he knew his words would change his life and maybe the lives of everyone aboard this ship. His reply was simple and directed at the entire crew.
“Yes, it does.”
AJ wrinkled her face. “That’s very dramatic and heroic and all, but don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
Jake turned back to her. “What do you mean?”
She glanced at her crew before responding, “If you want any of us to crew with you, you have to prove yourself to us.”
That made him smile a bit more than he wanted to. “So you’re saying I’m on probation?”
She shrugged. “It works both ways. Being a captain is more than just making decisions and giving orders. You have to trust your crew to follow those orders, and your crew has to trust you enough to follow them without question.”
Jake nodded. “I know all of that, and I’m not saying that I will be a great captain or even a good one. However, the way I see it, we don’t have many options right now. Because of decisions we’ve all made, none of us can go back to Capitol City, and we can’t just sit out here waiting for our batteries to drain and our air supply to run out. We need credits to keep this ship running, and this ship needs a captain and crew to earn those credits.”
He faced the rest of the crew before adding, “I think we also need each other right now. I also know from experience that a crew can become a second family if you give it a chance. And a ship...” he paused to look directly at Jessie, “…can become your home.”
Jessie winked. “Didn’t I say that you would fit right in with us?”
Raines stepped up and faced AJ. “I’m willing to give it a shot.” He then turned to Jake and added, “Captain.”
“Me too,” Vee said.
“What have we got to lose?” Ash said.
Jake looked them over and then turned back to AJ. “This has to be unanimous. Captain Coal used to tell me that a captain is only as good as the first mate.”
She narrowed her eyes. “That’s a Guild expression.” She turned to the crew. “If you all are willing to stay, then I guess I will, too.” She looked back at Jake and added, “For now.”
Jake nodded. “I’ve lived most of my life one day at a time, so I accept your offer—for now.”
AJ straightened her back and addressed the crew. “All right, people. Let’s not stand around waiting for the Guards to change their minds. Ash and Vee, find us an outpost that’s as far as possible from Colonial patrol routes. We’ll start looking for transport work there.
The rest of you know your jobs. Let’s get this ship ready to move cargo.”
“Before you all go,” Raines began, “I’d like to take a moment to pay respects to Nia.” Everyone stopped what they were doing and bowed their heads. The old man had tears in his eyes as he began. “To my dear friend, Nia Moon. You gave us direction when we were lost. You gave us hope when we had despair. You gave us a family when we were alone.” He raised his coffee cup in the air. “You will not be forgotten.”
The entire crew repeated his toast, “You will not be forgotten.”
As everyone quietly left the mess hall and fanned out to various parts of the ship, Jake felt a sudden chill on the back of his neck. He turned to see Jane standing in the corner, staring at him intently but saying nothing.
He walked over to her. “Are you okay?”
“Are you okay?” she mirrored back.
He smiled. “Well...thanks to you, I think I will be.”
“Are you prepared for what is coming?” she asked.
“I hope so,” he replied, and he meant it. He then turned and walked to the bridge staircase, feeling a noticeable spring in his step.
Behind him, Jane slid into one of the chairs and silently watched him ascend the staircase. “I hope so, too,” she whispered.
Book 2:
Exile
Exile 01
A man and woman ran single-file through the darkened cornfield, their faces concealed by black, hooded overcoats. They had been changing direction every few minutes and were beginning to think they had thrown off any pursuers. Then an ear of corn exploded right in front of the man, forcing him to stop in his tracks. The woman following tried to swerve around him but tripped, taking out several stalks before sprawling face-first into the moist dirt.
The man dropped to his hands and knees and crawled over to her, trying to stay as low as possible. “Got to keep moving,” he whispered, out of breath. He was in decent shape for forty-five, but three hours at a constant run had worn him out. His poor wife was far less prepared for this kind of activity, so he let her rest a moment while he caught his breath. “It’s getting dark, and I think they’re just firing randomly into the...” Even in the faint evening light, he could see that something was wrong. “Are you hurt, sweetheart?” he asked as he gently turned her over. Blood covered her face, or what was left of it.
He put his head back and screamed at the top of his lungs. A moment passed, then he heard a bullet whiz past him, and then a dozen more in rapid succession, but he didn’t care. He was ready to give up, just fall down next to his beautiful wife, and let his blood mingle with hers in the soil, fertilizing the plants around them. However, something made him stand up and start running again. It felt like her hand on his wrist, pulling him forward.
Blinded by sweat and tears, he ran on for uncounted minutes, stopping only when the field ended abruptly, and he was face-to-face with the curved wall of the dome. He almost panicked, but then he saw it in the dirt off to his left: the maintenance hatch he and his wife had been trying to locate. How he had managed to reach it while running aimlessly through the cornfield could only be explained as sheer luck. On the other hand, perhaps he had been guided there. He looked down at his arm and felt her invisible hand let go.
“Time to leave,” he whispered just before a bullet struck him in the back.
“To the Rogue Wave,” AJ said, then tossed back her drink, and reached for another. A dozen small glasses were lined up on the rough-hewn metal table between them like two rows of ships waiting to dock. The odd part was that they hadn’t paid for even one; people kept stopping by and dropping them off.
“Slow down,” Jake said. It was her fourth drink, and he hadn’t even touched his yet. “I want to get an early start tomorrow, and I don’t want my first mate guiding my boat out of the dock with a hangover.”
“Yes Sir, Captain Stone, Sir,” she said, making an exaggerated salute with her free hand. She swallowed another drink and put the empty shot glass down. “You need to learn to relax,” she added. “This is a Guild bar. We’re safe here.”
He picked up one of the glasses and stared at her distorted image in the brown liquid inside. Andrea Juno was smart, strong, and tough as deck plating. The columns of small tattoos on her temples, he had learned, were the Shippers Guild’s way of showing rank, in or out of uniform. They gave her otherwise attractive face a harsh edge, which fit her personality. He had known her for about three months, but had never seen this side of her. Drunk, she was almost friendly.
“You seem to have a lot of acquaintances here,” he said, glancing at the glasses between them.
She shook her head, making her black ponytail whip behind her. “The drinks aren’t for me.”
He looked at her. “Then who are they for?”
She sat her empty glass on the table. “You.” Before he could ask why, she added, “You’re not a Guild member, Jake, so I had to vouch for you in order for them to let you in.”
Just then, an older man with a nearly white beard walked over and placed two more filled glasses on the table. “Good to see you again, Alex,” he said to his first mate, then nodded to Jake before walking back to his table.
“Alex?” he asked. “How come everyone here calls you something different? I thought your name was Andrea Juno. I get ‘AJ’ as a nickname, but where does ‘Alex’ come from?”
She tossed back another drink. “Can we drop it?”
“All right, Alex, but you must have vouched really well, considering I’ve only been a captain for three months. What the bilge kind of lie did you make up to get these people to buy me so many drinks?”
She turned and stared at him, her face becoming more serious. “I told them the truth. I told them that you disobeyed a direct order from your former captain and sacrificed his daughter—your girlfriend—to save your ship and its crew.” She raised her next glass to him. “That makes you a heck of a sailor in their eyes.” She downed the drink and then turned back to face the room.
He just sat there, unable to breathe, let alone speak. Everything she told them, the same story he once believed, was a complete lie. Stacy killed herself to save her father’s ship and crew. She was the one everyone should be toasting.
He picked up his glass and swallowed the contents, then tried to control his grimace as the alcohol burned a slow path down to his stomach. “What the bilge is this?” he asked when his voice returned.
“Corn mash whiskey,” she replied, before downing another.
Of course, it would be corn, he thought to himself. They were in New Braska after all, the biggest corn producer in the colony. In the three days he had been stuck there looking for cargo to haul, he had been subjected to meals of corn on the cob, fried corn, boiled corn, roasted corn, corn salad, corn fritters, corn flakes, corn tortillas, corn chips, corn muffins, corn bread, and who knew what else?
She picked up another glass. “To things made out of corn.”
“Oh, please,” he groaned. “I can go the rest of my life and never see another ear of corn.”
“What’d you eat in Capitol City? Seaweed?”
“It’s called algae, and you can make a lot more things out of algae than corn. My parents were growers, so I ought to know.”
She sneered. “Upper class, huh?”
“No. The hydroponics levels in Capitol City are actually down near the bottom of the dome, not that far from sewage treatment. It was a crappy job for my parents, but it meant we got some privileges.”
“To privileges,” she said, picking up her glass again.
Jake grabbed her arm before she could drink. “By ‘privileges,’ I mean getting to breathe clean air in the upper dome for an extra hour every couple of days.”
She pulled her arm away from his grip and glared at him. “Are you ever not serious?”
“You think I’m the one who’s too serious? At least you know the chip I carry on my shoulder. I don’t know a damn thing about yours.”
She looked away qui
ckly but then tried to cover it with a smile. “Who says I have a chip on my shoulder?”
He shook his head. Pulling information from her was like trying to open a hatch under pressure—a waste of effort. He surveyed the bar. “Tell me something, AJ. Do you ever feel like just giving all of this up?”
She stared at him. “What? Drinking in outpost bars like this, or sailing in general?”
“Sailing. Being a Shipper. Living your life inside a metal box.”
“Everyone lives in a metal box,” she said. “Some are just bigger than others and don’t move around as much.”
“Capitol City was big,” he said, remembering his life growing up in Civica Colony’s largest dome—the one place that was now off limits to him. “I never appreciated it until I left.”
“Most people don’t,” she said as she reached for another glass. She held it there until Jake picked one up too. Apparently, the small talk was over. “To good cargo!” she said.
“Now that’s one thing I definitely won’t drink to,” he said, sitting his glass back down on the table. “You promised me that we could get the best cargo by hanging out in this dive.” He glanced around cautiously before continuing in a more subdued tone. “What you got us is not exactly what I’d call a gem of a job.”
“Gem?” she asked, then downed the drink. “Hazardous cargo pay, plus all the fuel we can carry is guaranteed.”
“Don’t forget provisions,” he said with a mocking seriousness. “All the corn we can carry too.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Full batteries,” she repeated. “When was the last time you heard those words? That much power will take us anywhere in the colony, if we don’t burn it up trying to get there fast.”
The thought of leaving and not coming back was suddenly appealing. “So, I guess I’ll drink to our cargo after all, just as long as it doesn’t blow up before we can unload it.” He reached for his drink, but someone bumped into the table, knocking all of the remaining glasses over.
Novum Chronicles: A Dystopian Undersea Saga Page 8
