“I will come back to that. Our original avatars were exact replicas of us. We could use them like our actual bodies. They could feel love, joy … but also pain, anger, and hatred.”
The screen on the wall in front of Jeff lit up again. The characters disappeared and the body of an alien being appeared against a blue background. It had a leathery brown skin, two thin legs, two skinny arms with thin fingers, and a plump body with a big, lumpy brown head resting on a long neck with large, human-like eyes. Jeff was reminded of an old movie he’d seen as a kid, about an alien who kept trying to “phone home.”
“That’s you,” Jeff said.
“Yes, that is correct. That was my body.”
Something about the choice of words bothered Jeff. It took him a moment to realize what: “You said was. I thought your body is still somewhere on the ship in a cryogenic pod.”
“It is, but millions of years have passed. There are limits to our cryotechnology. My body is mostly decomposed and will no longer be viable outside the pod. I can feel it, I am dying. And it is the same for my companions.”
“But I still don’t understand why you didn’t reach your target world.”
“I’m coming to that. The spaceship was flown and operated by a crew of about a thousand individuals. I myself was part of the unit that took care of the reactors. Many of us are still doing so today.”
Jeff said nothing but his mind was racing. He was talking to a being that had been spooking around this ship for millions of years. The extraterrestrials were immortal because of their cryotechnology combined with their avatars. Or if not immortal, they at least led impossibly long lives. Jeff was sure there were many people—especially those getting on in years—who would happily be put in a cryopod and spend their days as an avatar, if it meant they could carry on their lives with a substitute body and never get old. But he didn’t understand where the alien was heading with its story. Only one thing was clear: something about the aliens’ plan had gone terribly wrong. “Please continue.”
“We set off. At the central core of the spaceship was the command center. This is where the commander—you would say captain—lay in a cryopod next to eleven of his closest staff.”
“And their avatars?” Jeff asked. “Were they also in this command center controlling the ship?”
“No,” the alien replied. “The ship itself was their avatar.”
Jeff tried to process what he was hearing. “The ship?”
“Correct. They merged their consciousnesses together and controlled the ship with their minds. The ship is their substitute body.”
It was beyond belief. After hearing about their slow hyperdrive, Jeff had assumed these aliens weren’t as advanced as humans, but in some aspects, they were clearly far ahead. “What happened then?”
“The twelve controllers were the best, brightest, most dedicated, and cleverest of our species.”
The alien paused a moment. Jeff was about to ask something when the creature continued. “But one of them was evil. Evil through and through—a psychopath, you would say in your language—and clever enough to hide it until after our departure. He was also telepathic; able to read and manipulate other people’s minds. We call him the demon.”
Jeff felt a chill go down his spine.
“After traveling through space for several years, it happened. Without warning, from one moment to the next. The demon took over control of the ship. He drove the other commanders, including the captain, mad. He managed to make them turn off their own cryopods, and they suffocated to death. Now he had sole control of the ship. Of all of its systems. The engines and the computers, but also the cryopods, the avatar generators, and the environmental simulation systems in the cavitys. With his telepathic powers, he was even able to override the security mechanisms and steer the avatars himself, while the spirits of the passengers were trapped in their substitute bodies.”
Jeff swallowed.
“The crew members, including myself, were robbed of their avatars and instead provided with emergency avatars with limited freedom of movement. He forced them to continue their work on the ship.”
“But not you?”
“No. My superior was one of the commanders in the center of the ship. While he was dying, he disconnected some of the cryogenic pods from the main system and isolated them with a protective shield. Including mine. I and around fifty other maintenance workers are the only free beings aboard this ship. We are condemned to walk through the bowels of the ship as ghosts, waiting for our bodies in the cryopods to decompose enough that we can die.
Jesus Christ! This creature had been transformed into a ghost by the demon ship when men on Earth still resembled monkeys.
“It’s a miracle you haven’t lost your mind,” Jeff whispered.
“Those of us who are left support each other and help one another stay sane. But little by little, my companions are dying off.”
“Has the … demon never tried to hunt you?”
“He cannot control us and he has no access to our cryopods. Which makes him powerless against us.”
“Have you never tried to kill him?”
“It would be pointless. He blocked all access to the center of the ship and closed himself off. We have no way of reaching him.”
Jeff remembered the gigantic hovering sphere. So there really was no way of reaching it.
“And what happened to the rest of you? To the passengers in the cavitys.”
“We cannot enter the cavitys with our emergency avatars, so we have never been able to see it with our own eyes. But traces in the ship’s surveillance computers indicate that the demon forced the avatars to hurt and kill each other. He is a sadist who takes pleasure from inflicting the greatest possible suffering on others. Because the avatars cannot die—or at least are recreated as soon as they are destroyed—he has a god-like power over all the beings in the cavitys. He forced our people to torture, mutilate, injure, and kill each other. And every day afresh, until their spirits could no longer bear it and their souls were extinguished.
Jeff could feel the tears running down his cheeks. The horror, the suffering, the pain. It was simply inconceivable to think about what so many living beings had endured in those cavitys. And these tortured souls now also included humans. Among them his father.
Could he trust this alien being? Was it telling the truth? At least what it was saying made sense. It seemed logical. That’s why his father had burned when he left the cavity only to be resurrected. It wasn’t really the body of Frank Austin, but an artificially created substitute body, a copy of the original. His father’s real body must be in a cryogenic pod somewhere on the ship. Practically immortal—exposed to new, unspeakable torments every day. No wonder the people believed they were in hell. But how had they gotten onto the ship in the first place?
“We came across humans in the cavity,” Jeff said. “From worlds destroyed by rebel bombers. How can that be?”
“My people, the original passengers, all died long ago. My companions and I believe that the demon, as he travels through the universe, seeks out intelligent life to bring to the ship so that he has new victims. It is possible he discovered inhabited worlds in this galaxy of humans.”
“Is there a way of finding out how the ship got here?” Jeff asked.
“Yes, I have limited access to some computer systems. One moment, please. It will take a little time. I need to redirect the data so that the demon does not suspect anything.”
Minutes passed that seemed like hours to Jeff. “How did you learn our language?” Even if the computer did the work of translating, it must have its knowledge of the language from somewhere.
“The sensors of the ship pick up radio signals by default. Subsystems with artificial intelligence extract translation routines out of these. That had already been planned before the ship was built.”
Jeff wanted to nod, but couldn’t because of the metal cap around his head.
“May I ask you a question?” the alien ask
ed.
“Of course.”
“How did you come on board the ship?” It is the first time that strangers have entered the ship without being transferred immediately to cryopods.”
Jeff took a deep breath. Then he told the creature about their war, the attack on Acheron-4, how the antimatter chambers had failed, and how at the last moment they’d spotted this ship, which had taken them on board. He also told the alien about their journey through the interior to here, the edge of the core area. As he recalled their adventure, it seemed to him as if they had been on this spooky ship for years. If it was really controlled by this demon, why had it taken them on board in the first place? He presented this question to the alien.
“I do not understand it, either. But he seems to be allowing you to penetrate to the core of the ship unscathed. Either he is playing an extremely perfidious game for his own amusement, or you have something he wants.”
Jeff snorted. “I wouldn’t say he let us through unscathed! My crew are being killed off one by one. At first we thought you light aliens—I mean avatars—were responsible.”
“We are not responsible. No emergency avatar can harm a living being.”
“But I am being followed by emergency avatars.” Jeff thought of the incident a few days ago, when he’d believed he had only just escaped with his life.
“Yes, that was me,” the alien said. “I tried to contact you in the transit hub before your companion arrived. Then the situation became too confusing for me. Later, we wanted to stop you from going into the cavity and exposing yourselves to the dangers there. But we did not reach you in time. In fact, we have been watching you since your arrival.”
Jeff was about to interject with a question, but the alien continued. “I have the data you wanted.”
White dots, distributed in a bluish grid, appeared on the black screen. Then a red line zigzagged across the map.
“This is the course the ship has taken in this region of your galaxy.”
Jeff pulled his handheld out of his pocket and held it in front of his face, as he couldn’t bend his head to look at it. He called up the navigation screen and rotated his own star chart until it matched the projection. He traced the course of the alien ship with his forefinger. Then he pressed a button and a list of the star systems that the ship had passed through popped up.
Holy shit!
“Grimaldi-2, Alderon-8, and Deneb-6. Those are all systems that were attacked by the rebels.” The alien ship must have followed the rebels and then taken the humans who were doomed to perish.
But immediately Jeff realized that something was wrong with this theory. He had misunderstood the situation completely. And even worse: all of humanity had made a terrible mistake. The rebels weren’t responsible for the downfall of those worlds. Those who had doggedly claimed that humans would never be so malevolent as to destroy inhabited worlds had been right all along. The rebels hadn’t been responsible. It had been this ship, controlled by the demon! He must have somehow gotten hold of Quagma bombs and destroyed those worlds after bringing parts of the population onto his ship and putting them into cryopods.
“What have we done?” Jeff whispered under his breath. They had taken revenge on behalf of the Empire. He himself had wanted to avenge the murder of his father by destroying rebel bases on which civilians also worked. If they now also attacked an inhabited planet, as some hardliners had been demanding for months, then this orchestrated mass murder would be carried off to perfection.
And the demon at the heart of this ship probably followed the radio communications and reveled in the misery he had inflicted, while at the same time abducting people to his hellish cavitys where they were forced to torture one another.
He had to stop this. Somehow. He had to do something. Or at least inform the fleet, so that no more fatal errors were committed.
“What can we do?” Jeff asked quietly.
“There may be a way out,” the creature’s voice replied. “If the demon really wants you in the center of the ship, then you must try to get into the control room.”
“And then? Should we try and destroy his cryopod?”
“You would not succeed. The cryogenic pods in the control center are hermetically sealed and cannot be reached without detailed knowledge of the systems. But there is an emergency mechanism that can override the system. A console with a switch with this symbol.”
An image appeared on the screen. It resembled a company logo: a yellow circle surrounding a smaller black circle with eight rays. Like a black sun in front of a yellow background.
“If you find this, press it.”
Jeff wasn’t very hopeful about making it to the control room, and yet he was curious about this switch. “What happens if we do?”
“It is an emergency device that only the captain knew about. It was a safeguard, in case a foreign power invaded the ship. Not even the demon knows how important it is.”
“How do you know about it?”
“I installed parts of the system while building the ship, including the switch, and was sworn to secrecy.”
“And what happens when it’s activated?”
“Several things,” the alien replied evasively, which bothered Jeff. “But it will give us back some control. And it will give you a chance of escaping this ship.”
“How?”
“That is more than I can explain right now.”
“All right.” Jeff imprinted the logo in his memory before the screen darkened again.
“You should return to your fellow crew members now,” the alien said. “Otherwise the demon will become suspicious.”
“If he’s surveying the ship, he’s probably aware of our conversation,” Jeff said.
“I hope not. There are several areas of this ship that cannot be monitored due to technical defects. Don’t forget, he is controlling the ship as an avatar, by controlling most of its computers.”
“And the part we are in now …”
“… is not under his surveillance. Incidentally, it would be better if you didn’t mention our meeting to your shipmates for the time being.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t rule out that the demon is controlling one of you.”
Joanne! So that was it. The demon had taken control of her and that’s why she had killed Castle. And Owl? Had he also been controlled by the demon when he slashed his stomach? Had one of them perhaps also killed Fields and Irons? And all this time they had assumed the light aliens were responsible.
“OK, I won’t say anything. And you’re right. I know who has been taken over.”
“Then be careful. I wish you well.”
“Thank you, I have no idea if …”
With a loud hissing noise, the metal hood retracted back into the chair.
Rubbing his head, Jeff leaned forward and got up just in time to see the light alien darting out the door.
Jeff felt dizzy and slumped back down in the chair again. What he had just learned was almost too much to process.
After a few minutes, he was finally able to get back on his feet. Did they really stand a chance of getting to the center of the ship? There were only three of them left—or two, really, assuming Joanne was under the control of the demon. And if they did, was there really a way out of this ship? Perhaps even a way of saving his father? He was annoyed with himself that he hadn’t asked the alien about this. More and more questions flooded his mind which would now remain unanswered.
Jeff felt sick just thinking of the burden of responsibility if he failed, and what would happen to the prisoners, whose avatars were still torturing each other in the cavitys.
Slowly, he made his way back to the main corridor, and back to Green and Joanne.
When Jeff entered the room, Green looked up. He was sitting next to Joanne, who was still tied to the floor, asleep. Green looked tired, but that was hardly surprising.
“Where are Mac and Shorty?” Green asked.
“Dead,” Jeff answered, pi
cking up Castle’s weapon.
He sat down next to Green and stared down at the ground.
“Oh god … what happened?” the engineer wanted to know.
“Don’t ask,” Jeff mumbled.
“But …”
“Not now,” Jeff said. “Please.”
“All right.” There was resignation in Green’s voice. “So the mission failed.”
In response, Jeff threw down the bag with the levitation belts.
“You got them?” Green was amazed. He took one of them out of the bag, turned it around slowly in his hand, and put it back. Then he pointed at Joanne. “What do we do with her?”
“Has she said anything?”
“No,” Green answered. “I gave her a sedative. I reckon she’ll sleep for a while. Shall we leave her here or take her with us?”
Jeff didn’t need to consider long. “We’ll take her with us. I don’t want to leave her here alone.” Even if she was under the control of the demon, he couldn’t desert her. Maybe there was a way of freeing her from the devil’s influence.
“OK,” Green said. “So are we leaving?”
We ought to get going right away, Jeff thought. But he was so exhausted, he knew he wouldn’t manage it. He had to sleep—just a few hours. And Green looked pretty exhausted, too.
“We’ll rest for four hours, then we’ll go.”
“Who’ll keep watch first?”
Jeff wanted to laugh out loud, but stopped himself. What was the use of keeping guard? Joanne was tied up. And if he or Green were taken over by the demon in their sleep, they were doomed in any case. Their only chance was to get into the ship’s control room as quickly as possible and find that switch. But he didn’t tell Green this. Nor did he say anything about his encounter with the light alien. Perhaps Joanne was only pretending to be asleep in order to follow their conversation. Which meant the demon would be listening, too.
“Forget it,” Jeff said shortly. “We’ll risk it without keeping watch.”
“OK,” Green said. He yawned and curled up on the bare floor. After just a few seconds, he started to snore.
It took Jeff longer to fall asleep. He couldn’t stop going over and over his encounter with the alien. Too many questions were still unanswered. And he was terrified of failing.
The Dark Ship Page 29
