Exiles

by Richard Alonzo

  * * * *

  The others were already back in the guest quarters, having survived the ordeal relatively unscathed, apart from a few scratches and bruises. Although naturally concerned about Carol and Anna, eager to learn more from Ford and Vlade when they arrived. Ford thanked them for their concern, assuring them everything that could be done, was being done, back aboard the Themis. Noting, that while Carol wounds were treatable and she would make a full recovery, Anna's fate remained uncertain. Faiz advised him that Governor had rescheduled press conference to resume in a couple of hours, but so far was not taking any calls from their party. They were all anxious that he was going to renege on the deal, now that they had lost the only surviving witness who could verify his role in the meat run. Although they still had the recording.

  Ford placed a friendly hand on Faiz shoulder and looked around at each of them. Their faces etched with concern for the fate of their people, him, his crew, and more. It was at times like this he could feel the weight of the universe pressing down on him, crushing him, demanding answers. He sighed inwardly and tried to raise a smile to reassure them.

  “What doesn’t break us makes us stronger” he said as much to himself as them. “The attack was a message, from someone determined to ensure the truth, behind the meat run, doesn’t come out.”

  “Jasper?” said Tasha.

  “Perhaps, but if Clarkson wants to live, he’s got just under two hours to convince whoever it was he isn’t going to reveal the truth. The best way to do that is to stick to the original deal.”

  Horra smiled, her gills flapping slightly as she spoke. “Because it would send a signal, that he’d done a deal with us, to keep the truth from coming out. If he has any sense, he’s put plans in place to reveal Jaspers roll in all this, should another assassination attempt be made.”

  Viqaas looked doubtful. “But doesn’t that compromise our position? Any exposure would implicate all of us in covering up the truth. Give Clarkson and Jasper a hold over us as well?”

  Tasha put her arm around his shoulder. “Welcome to the world I inherited from my mother, politics. A new start for two war ravaged worlds. A new future, for who knows how many lost souls, exiled from their homes, in the Scorpion Nebula. In return for allowing one horrible man to escape justice.”

  “Let history be the judge of our deeds.” added Admiral Faiz. “Assuming the press conference goes to plan.”

  “Agreed.” said Ford. “We live in an imperfect universe, full of imperfect people, looking for perfect solutions and we all know where that leads...”

  “The Brethren.” muttered Logan under his breath. “But sometimes in the real world you have to cut the best deal you can get. Otherwise you end up sacrificing people on the altar of perfection to prove an ideological point.”

  “That's one way of looking at it. Now if you’d excuse me, I have some things I need to attend to.” said Ford retiring to his cabin.

  Tasha watched him disappear into his room and turned to the Admiral. “Do you think he’ll ever find the peace he’s looking for?”

  The Admiral shook his head. “Some men are destined to pursue a mission, no matter what the cost to them and those around them, but in the final analysis, it’s how they handle the journey and not the destination that counts.”

  Closing his eyes Ford lent back against the door as it slid shut and let out a long deep sigh. He wondered what else the universe had left to throw at him. Startled, he opened his eyes, as a soft female voice snapped him out of himself and back into the room. Which he realised was in darkness. He waved his hand across the sensor next to the door, but nothing happened. He adjusted his eyes to the gloom, dimly aware of a silhouetted figure, sitting in the chair beside the desk off to his right. They’d swung the chair round to face him.

  “I’ve temporarily disabled the lights, internal sensors, security and comms, so we won’t be disturbed.” her voice was flat and even.

  “I take it you’ve got something to hide then.” he said, as instinctively he reached for the pistol under his cloak.

  “That would be a mistake. I believe you’ve already met one of my colleagues, so trust me when I say shooting me would be fatal. I would detonate, killing you, your delegation, and a good many more in this section of the station.” she was cold and totally unemotional as she spoke.

  He released the gun, letting it slip back into the holster, but left the safety off. Showing her the empty palms of his hands as a gesture of compliance with her request. “I assume you’re here to talk, otherwise we’d be dead already. So why don’t you start by telling me who you are and what you want.”

  She dipped her head in acknowledgement and he though he saw the faint beginnings of a smile flicker across her lips. “Who I was is not important, that person has been lost. Now, I’m just a killing machine, engineered in the Fury’s labs to fulfil a single function.”

  Ford interrupted her. “I don’t do loss...”

  She interrupted him. “Yes, your Achilles Heel, your inability to make or accept sacrifices, it’ll be the undoing of you and all around you. We all lose in the in end.”

  “If I though like that Anobar would still be enslaved by Malstrom. Let me take you back to the Themis, perhaps there’s a way to undo this, recover the person you were.”

  She showed her teeth briefly, whether it was a smile or grimace, he couldn’t tell in the dim light of the cabin.

  “No any attempt to interfere with my mission will result in your destruction.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’m not at liberty to disclose that information, but it does not involve this station or your ship. So long as you do not attempt to interfere with my mission you and your friends are safe.”

  “So why are you here then?” he swept his arm around in a broad gesture indicating the confines of his cabin.

  “I’ve been programmed to deliver a message.”

  “A message? Who by?”

  She shook her head softly.

  “Let me guess you’re not at liberty to disclose that information either?”

  “No, any attempt to extract that information from me would, shall we say, have unfortunate consequences. Besides, it’s safer for all concerned, that you don’t know the identity of your informant on the Fury.”

  He raised an eyebrow and stared at her intently. Trying to make out her facial features in the shadows, looking for some flicker of emotion, to gauge the veracity of what she was saying.

  “So what does this ‘informant’ wish me to know?”

  “Jasper is not your enemy.”

  He scoffed at her. “Well I don’t know about you, but recent experience would suggest otherwise, is this pathetic ruse really the best Jasper could come up with?”

  “You should be aware that there are bigger issues at play here than your personal feud with Jasper, you are both being played by forces outside your control.”

  “The Brethren?”

  “The Brethren? Ah yes, those who believe they are the chess masters, moving their pieces around the board, are the most dangerous pawns of all.”

  “Are you just going to sit there and talk in riddles?”

  “I can only tell you what I have been programmed to tell you. What the Brethren unleash they will not be able to control. In the long, dark night, that is coming, both you and Jasper will have a pivotal role to play in determining humanities future.”

  “More Riddles.”

  “You are not the only one with access to ark technology. You should know that, given the artefacts you helped Malstrom recover. Nor should you assume that your link with Gaia gives you privileged access to all she knows. Even AI’s, as well as humans, have agendas.”

  “Paranoia, is that your agenda, to turn me against everyone and everything?”

  She spun the view screen on the desk beside her around to face him, hiding her face in its shadow. Touching the back of the screen with her finger, she brought it to life, pulling up the Nova-7’s classified station logs. <
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  “Well here are some cold hard facts for you. I believe Chancellor Ocoto asked you to look for this woman?”

  Ford was momentarily lost for words. The logs showed that Ocoto’s granddaughter had boarded the station several weeks ago, with a boatload of refugees and asylum seekers. Had been detained by station security, pending deportation. After getting into a fight, with an information brokers guards, in one of the stations less reputable bars. Deportation was of course an euphuism, for shipping undesirables off to Scott, for the meat run. The colour drained momentarily from his face. It was not a message he wanted to give Ocoto.

  She flipped through the station records. “Don’t worry, she’s still alive, or at least she was when she left the station.” the screen stopped at another entry. A warrant for arrest on suspicion of murder and theft. “She broke out, killed a guard, and stole a ship.” The screen flipped to a time and date stamped recording of the stations external cameras. It showed two of the stations fighters pursuing and firing on a fleeing ship, as it opened a wormhole and made the jump to hyperspace. She pulled up some additional classified documents, that didn’t look like station records. “She may be Ocoto’s daughter, but she’s no civilian. She’s a Tantalus agent, last known destination Malshenko, the Malstrom home world. Extraction mission. Target unknown.”

  “How do I know you haven’t just fabricated all of this?”

  She pulled her finger away from the back of the screen and it went blank. “Now you really are being paranoid.” she stood up. “Times up, I have to leave now.”

  “That's it then, that’s your message?”

  She glanced up at the open service hatch in the ceiling above her and nodded. “Afraid so, but just remember everyone has an agenda, you can either be a part of it or serve your own.”

  She tensed her legs and leapt up and out of sight, in one flowing, fluid movement. Closing the hatch behind her, as the power and lights came back on.

  Ford blinked, pulling off his glasses and rubbing his eyes, wondering if he just imagined the strange apparition. He thought about stepping back outside to talk the others and decided against it. Instead he rolled his eyes up into his skull and slipped into the dataverse to commune with Gaia. The vast dark sea of data rolled around him. The brilliant star fields of data nodes, around which it ebbed and flowed, illuminating the darkness, giving it shape and meaning. He honed in on the brightest star, Gaia. They took on the virtual forms of their humanoid avatars as a galaxy of data spilled out around them.

  “So what did you make of my visitor?”

  “Sorry, what visitor? When?”

  Aware of her warnings, Ford wondered if Gaia really was unaware of his visitor or deliberately playing him. Damn her, he thought, if her mission was to make him question and doubt everything and everyone around him, she was succeeding. Subconsciously, he manipulated the data nodes around him, considering and playing out all the various permutations that we’re racing through his mind.

  Gaia noted the changes in the constellations around her, as the consequences of those probabilities rippled out through the dataverse, cocking her virtual head to one side. “You doubt me?”

  He shook his head, cursing his inability to control himself. “No, but it appears my visitor, another of the Fury’s cyborg's. Who was in my cabin, just now, is very good at spreading paranoia and doubt.”

  She smiled softly at him. “Ford you have to trust me, you are my organic interface with the universe. If we can’t trust each other, we will both fail.”

  “Then why does it feel like you're holding out on me?”

  “I am an AI, programmed to work within specific parameters, but rest assured you have already achieved a far higher level of synchronisation, than any other organic I have integrated with before.”

  “I should consider myself privileged then?”

  “Yes. No one has ever been granted access to the knowledge I have shared with you. The ship and the technology I have given you to, to pursue your mission, that may yet just the beginning.” she spun the constellations around them. Rewinding and reviewing the data streams, playing out thousands of possibilities in the blink of an eye. “But you could not have had a visitor, you contacted me within moments of entering your cabin, and neither I nor Alaster's sensors can detect any evidence of a presence.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Wait.”

  She stopping the stars spinning. Rewound and replayed several hundred probabilities over and over again, discarding some, adding others, refining the options until one single probability remained.

  She cocked her head to one side, as if listening to some unseen voice. “Agreed Alaster. It would seem to be a plausible explanation, in light of what evidence there is.” She turned her attention back to Ford, examining him carefully. “Temporal desynchronisation.”

  “What?”

  “You asked how it was possible for no one to have any record of your visitor. That is your answer. At the molecular level you appear to have momentarily slipped out of temporal synchronisation with the current timeframe. The exposure was limited and the effects are barely detectable.”

  And what exactly does that mean?”

  “Your visitor was able to project a temporal bubble around you, effectively freezing time. Sealing you and your cabin, or a portion of it, off from the rest of the universe.”

  “The ultimate privacy mode.”

  “Yes, so perhaps you’re the one holding out on me? What did she tell you?”

  Ford shook his head. “Nothing of consequence, lies and propaganda. A cynical attempt to spread disharmony and doubt, turn us against each other.”

  He rolled his eyes down and came back to the cabin. He slumped into the chair and rolled his head back, studying the service hatch above him, looking for answers and found none. As he wondered how Gaia had known the gender of his visitor.