Novum Chronicles: A Dystopian Undersea Saga

by Joseph Rhea Rhea

  AJ jumped up from her chair, but then sat back down just as quickly and grabbed the sides of the table. “Why the bilge is the room spinning?” she asked with a slur.

  Jake looked up at the man standing next to them. He was wearing a large, hooded overcoat, even though the bar was overly hot, like most of New Braska.

  “Sorry,” the man blurted out. He was unshaven, his eyes were bloodshot, and he was leaning on AJ’s chair, obviously suffering from too much corn mash. “I’m looking for Captain Stone of the Rogue Wave,” he said in a hushed voice. “I...I require passage.”

  “The Wave is not a passenger ship,” AJ said, pushing the man’s hand off her chair, but not bothering to stand up or face him.

  The man almost fell over. “Please, I’ll...I’ll pay you whatever you want. I don’t even care where you’re going. I just need—”

  “Take a walk,” AJ said, her voice growing sterner.

  Jake could see desperation in the man’s eyes, and it reminded him of the time he spent trying to get out of Capitol City without success. It had been three months since his luck had changed, but it felt like just yesterday. He stood up and pulled the man to the side, away from AJ’s earshot. “We’re loading cargo in the morning and aiming for an oh-six-hundred departure,” he whispered. “Dock seventeen. Clean yourself up a bit and have your bags packed and whatever money or barter items you have ready by then, and we’ll talk.”

  The man nodded and then turned and walked away without a word. Jake sat back down. “Where were we?”

  AJ picked up an empty glass and stared at it. “You need to grow up, Jake,” she said, her voice suddenly calm and sober.

  “Excuse me?” he asked, taken back by her brasher-than-usual statement.

  She sat the glass on the table. “I don’t mean to be rude, but...”

  Jake put a hand up. “Stop right there. I’ve found that whenever someone starts a sentence with, ‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ they usually follow it with something that’s pretty damn rude.”

  Her face softened a bit. “Sorry, Captain. It’s just that you asked me to teach you the rules of the Shippers Guild, and one of them is that you never invite a stranger onto your boat without knowing their full history.”

  “So, that rule certainly worked well back when I first met you, didn’t it? The Grange brothers just about killed all of us, remember?”

  She shook her head. “That wasn’t my fault. Nia vouched for them. It was her responsibility as acting captain—”

  “Well, I’m captain now, and I’ll accept responsibility for that guy. He needs help.”

  She looked him squarely in the eyes. “Everybody needs help, remember? We live in a cesspool of a colony that’s running low on power and food, and every day it seems like it’s getting worse. Soon there are going to be riots, and then, as Nia said, maybe civil war. We can’t help everyone.”

  Jake sighed. He hated it when she was right, which was most of the time. “The guy seemed pretty drunk,” he admitted. “He probably won’t show up tomorrow anyway.”

  “I’ll make you a deal,” she said. “If he does show up, I’ll talk to him. When I’m sober, I’m pretty good at reading people. If he passes my scrutiny, we can maybe discuss giving him passage.”

  “Thanks.”

  She shrugged then stood up. “Let’s get back to the ship. I need sleep, and I don’t like leaving Ash in charge for very long.”

  Jake smiled as he stood up. “Worried he’ll take over the ship while we’re gone? Change all the door codes?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You laugh, but it’s happened on other ships. The title, ‘Acting Captain,’ even in port, has a way of going to a person’s head.”

  He nodded. “I’m sure he’s doing fine.”

  On the bridge of the Rogue Wave, Captain Ash Fields stood facing his new crew. At helm, Vienna Raines, or “Vee,” was probably the best-looking woman he had ever worked with. With her dark skin and fit body, only his experience as a command officer kept him from visiting her quarters during off hours. His first mate, Andrea “AJ” Juno, was at navigation. She was no less attractive than Vee, but her hard edge and no-nonsense attitude made her more of a challenge, and therefore, more desirable.

  As usual, his adopted little sister, Jessie, sat at the rear Acoustics station. She was born with a number of mental defects, which was why her original family dumped her, but one of those defects gave her the unique ability to “see” sound Waves in her head, which meant that she could distinguish sonar returns better than most programs. She still needed her big brother’s help to get jobs, of course, which was why she was on his bridge.

  The final crewmember was a fresh-out-of-the-dome recruit named Jacob Stone. His parents were wealthy ship builders, and currently held the paperwork on the Wave, which was the only reason he made the cut. He was sitting across from Jessie, trying to figure out the Engineering console, when the call came through.

  “Mayday! Mayday! This is Aquarius seeking immediate assistance. Mayday! Mayday!”

  Ash turned to his command console. “This is Captain Fields of the Rescue Vessel, Rogue Wave. What is the nature of your emergency?”

  “Thank Goodness, Captain. Our engines are down, and life support is failing. We need—”

  “What can I do?” a woman’s voice said from the back. Ash turned and saw Jane, his new cook, rising up from the rear stairwell, her red hair shimmering in the overhead lights.

  Ash turned back to his station and said, “Freeze it.” Everything around him stopped moving; even the lights on the forward dashboard stopped blinking. “I had a specific schedule set up,” he said as he stared out the forward viewport. “Jane wasn’t supposed to come up until—” A hand on his shoulder made him jump. He turned to see Jane standing right next to him.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked innocently.

  “Computer,” he said more sternly, “I said freeze everything.” When Jane continued to move towards him, he yelled, “End program!”

  As the bridge and everyone else dissolved into a swarm of barely-visible utility-fog particles and began funneling themselves towards the corner storage units, Ash realized that the woman still standing before him was not part of the simulation after all.

  “What are you doing in here, Jane?” he asked. “You know the rec room is off limits when someone else is using it. How do you keep getting past the door lockout?”

  She turned and headed towards the now-visible exit. “I’m sorry,” she whispered over her shoulder as she reached for the door.

  “Jane!” he yelled when he saw what she was doing. “I... Um... I don’t know what to say.” He pointed at the all-white, empty room. “What you saw here was a fantasy. It’s just something from my imagination.”

  “Fantasy?” she repeated. “So you’re saying that you don’t actually want to be the captain of this ship?”

  “No. I mean yes. I mean, it’s sort of like a training program, for when...” He let out a sigh. “Listen, Jane, can you just forget what you saw here? We’re not allowed to simulate crew members, and if the captain found out how I rendered him, he would—”

  “I can’t,” she interrupted, shaking her head. “It’s not possible for me to forget this, or anything else I have learned since you found me. It’s why I’m here.”

  He was about to repeat himself, when it dawned on him that he might have just discovered something important about her. Jane was a mystery, even, supposedly, to herself. They had rescued her from an abandoned dome on the far side of the colony about three months back, and when they brought her on board, they discovered that she could barely speak and had no memory of her past, or even her own name. Someone called her “Jane Doe,” as sort of a joke, but the name stuck.

  Since then, she had not only learned to speak by simply copying everyone around her, she had also mastered most of the ship’s control systems and somehow figured out how to break into every door lock on the ship, including, apparently, the ship’s recreation room.
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  “It’s why you’re here?” he repeated. “What does that mean? Are you remembering something from your past?”

  She stared at him blankly for a moment and then said quite innocently, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Before he could demand an explanation, she turned and left through the door.

  Exile 02

  The dock was bustling with activity when Jake walked down the loading ramp of the Rogue Wave and joined his first mate, who was just finishing with the dockmaster. “Thought you could use this,” he said as he handed her one of the two steaming mugs he carried.

  She nodded, which was as close as she ever got to thanking people. However, the way she wrapped her hands around the warm mug and breathed in the aroma of the coffee before taking a sip told him how much she appreciated the gesture. They stood in silence for a few minutes, watching the ships around them load and unload their freight.

  “Still on for an oh-six-hundred departure?” he finally asked. It was already five-thirty, and there was no sign of their cargo.

  She took another sip before answering. “On its way now. The dockmaster wanted to wait for some of the other ships to depart before bringing it down.”

  He took another sip and glanced back at the nearest vessel, another Proteus-Class hauler, a little smaller than the Wave. Then he noticed that the captain was pushing his crew to finish the load, glancing in Jake’s direction from time to time. “So, we’re sure this cargo is safe, right?”

  AJ laughed. “Safe? No, Jake, it is definitely not safe. It’s hazardous cargo. Remember? That’s why they’re paying us so much to haul it out of here.”

  “I mean, it’s not going to—never mind.” He had agreed to haul the damaged reactor all the way across the colony to the Rift for disposal. Reluctantly agreed, but agreed nonetheless. No use second-guessing that decision now.

  The main pressure door opened on the far end of the dock, and a dozen or so people in yellow HazMat suits walked through. Behind them, a nondescript gray box rolled out on a wheeled cart. He saw the captain of the nearest vessel push his people inside his ship and then quickly closed the hatch. The other captains followed suit, retreating to the relative safety of their pressure hulls. He was more than a little tempted to join them.

  AJ handed him her mug and walked over to the group. He just stood there, holding the mugs and wondering if there was something he should be doing. Captain Coal would have said the sign of a good crew is a bored captain. If that was true, then he had a great crew, because most days he wondered if anyone would miss him if he suddenly jumped ship.

  The rest of the crew emerged from the Wave and walked towards him. Something about liability issues required that all people remain off the ship until the cargo was loaded and secured. Then he, the captain, would officially take possession and assume all responsibility.

  Most of his crew looked like AJ, a bit hung over. They hadn’t spent much time off ship in the past few weeks, and he couldn’t blame them for having a bit of fun. Only Jane looked as she always did: young, healthy, and vibrant.

  When he realized he had just used the word “vibrant” to describe her, it made him blush. She probably wasn’t that much younger than Vee, but her innocence and apparent lack of any form of inhibition made her seem much younger.

  He stood there watching her talking with the rest of the crew for about twenty minutes as the yellow suits walked in and out of the Wave’s cargo bay. She was a bit too far away from him to hear what she was saying, but every so often, she would glance over at him and smile.

  When the people in yellow suits finished, the dockmaster left the safety of his control room and handed him the departure slate to sign. “Good luck, Captain,” he said, and before Jake could respond, he added, “You’ll need it.”

  As the middle-aged man walked away, Jake mumbled, “Funny.”

  The dockmaster stopped and turned back to face him. “Sorry, Captain, but I wasn’t trying to be humorous. You’ve taken on quite a job, and I sincerely wish you the best of luck with it.”

  Jake felt a knot forming in his stomach. “It’s really pretty dangerous, isn’t it?”

  The man shook his head. “You misunderstand me, son. What I meant is that a small reactor like that is worth a lot to some people, even damaged like it is.” He glanced over at the Rogue Wave. “You have far more to fear from pirates than explosions, I’d wager. So, again I say good luck, Captain, and safe voyage.”

  As the dockmaster started to walk back to his control room, a group of men dressed in grey and blue city enforcement uniforms entered the dock. The man in front put a small microphone up to his mouth and spoke, his voice amplified by the overhead speakers in the room. “Attention all captains. Please exit your vessels immediately and stand clear for inspection.”

  “Inspection?” Jake asked aloud.

  “I’ll get to the bottom of this,” the dockmaster grumbled as he headed towards the men who were heading straight for the Rogue Wave.

  “What’s up with that?” Vee, asked as she and the rest of the crew walked up.

  “I don’t know,” Jake replied, and then turned to Ash, who seemed to be hiding behind the others. “Any problems last night?”

  Ash lifted his head but then quickly dropped his gaze to the floor. “Nothing happened. I mean, nothing to report, Sir.”

  Jake glanced over at AJ and frowned. “You know it always worries me when people start calling me ‘Sir’ out of the blue.”

  Ash stood tall then. “Sorry, Captain. I—”

  “Damn rebels,” the dockmaster said as he returned. “Shot one of them in a corn field on the other side of town last night, but one got away. Hope they catch the bastard.”

  As he turned and headed back to his control room, Jake looked at the enforcers moving in and out of the Wave’s cargo bay, then turned to AJ and whispered, “That man in the bar last night.”

  She nodded and whispered back, “I was thinking the same thing.”

  “They’ve finished,” the Wave’s engineer, Norman Raines interrupted.

  Jake glanced back as the last of the men stepped down from his vessel and headed towards the next ship in the dock.

  “Glad that’s over,” AJ said.

  “I was sort of hoping they were going to impound our reactor,” Jake said. When his first mate gave him a dirty look, he added, “Just kidding. Sort of.”

  Jake saw the dock light up, and then he found himself lying face down a few meters away. Explosion, he thought as he tried to pick himself off the floor, but his head was spinning, and his ears were ringing. His first thought was that the reactor had detonated, but then remembered that they would all be dead if that were the case. He rolled over, saw a ball of smoke billowing up from the far side of the dock, and realized it was something else.

  “Get up!” someone yelled. With the ringing in his ears, it was hard to tell where the voice was coming from. He turned his head and saw one of the enforcers running over to him. “Get out of here, Captain,” he yelled. “We’ll try to cover you.”

  AJ was up by then and reached down to help Jake to his feet. “Who’s attacking us?” she asked the enforcer.

  “Other enforcers,” the man said as he took off towards the smoke.

  Jake pulled Raines to his feet and then looked back at AJ. “What did he just say?” Gunfire erupted in the dock, and Jake instinctively ducked. “Let’s get out of here!” he yelled as they all ran for the ship.

  Vee got to the bridge first and ran to her helm console. “We’re not cleared for departure,” she yelled.

  Ash was right behind her and jumped into the navigation chair. “I’ll see if I can override the dock controls.”

  Jake ran past them both to the command position at the front of the bridge, surveying the dock from the large forward viewport. “The whole place is on fire,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  AJ came up the stairs in the rear. “Why aren’t we moving, Helm?”

  “Working on it,” V
ee replied. Jake was about to say something when she yelled, “Ash did it. We’re cleared!”

  “Take us out as fast as you can, Vee,” AJ said.

  Jake turned and watched the scene inside the dock as they began to slide backwards. Only when the lockout door closed in front of him, and he saw the water swirling outside the viewport, did he realize that he had been holding his breath.

  “What the bilge was that all about?” Ash said behind him. “I thought New Braska was a peaceful city. Boring, but peaceful.”

  “There are any number of things that could have caused that fight,” Raines said from the back. “Shortages are everywhere, and people are getting tired of being told to be patient.”

  “One of the men told me that the attackers were enforcers,” Jake said. “They’re fighting each other. Why would they do that?”

  “Do you think anyone else got out?” Vee asked from behind him.

  There was silence in the room before AJ said, “It’s not our problem, Vee. Just concentrate on your station; I want to put some water between us and this place.”

  As they pivoted around and left New Braska behind, Jake turned to his crew. “Speaking of problems, I should let you all know that this could be a more dangerous haul than I originally thought, so I need everyone on their toes.”

  Vee shook her head. “I was told the reactor was stable, at least for the duration of our trip.”

  Raines spoke up. “I believe our captain is referring to the value of that reactor. It makes us a target.”

  “But it’s damaged, isn’t it?” Jessie said. She had taken her earphones off. “Even if it’s technically stable right now, it won’t stay that way. Who would want it?”

  “Criminals,” AJ replied. “Someone who would sell it to one of the more desperate outer cities and lie about its stability. Very few of the border towns have the expertise or equipment to tell a good reactor from a bad one.”