Ghost of the Argus

by E. R. Torre

I don’t expect you to.

  “She… she knew you were coming. She timed this…”

  “Timed my arrival?” Inquisitor Cer said. Recognition dawned on her. Latitia and Sergeant Delmont were working together. One gave her the memory chip that began this series of events. The other probably placed the nano-probes on the Xendos.

  The nano-probes timed your trip to Pomos. They made sure your arrival was at precisely the moment you needed to be here!

  “We… we have to leave.”

  Inquisitor Cer switched to the Xendos’ rear cameras. She focused the images on the Type 6 Displacer. Waves of drones circled her.

  “We can’t use the Displacer,” Inquisitor Cer said.

  “There’s another one,” B’taav said.

  36

  The cloaked Xendos moved through the rocky debris of Solyanna while the defensive probes around the Platform spread out and aggressively searched for those responsible for its destruction. Some drew very close to the fleeing ship.

  B’taav watched their movements on the monitors. As much as he wanted to go back and search for Latitia, he didn’t think there was any way she could survive.

  We’ll see each other again. Soon.

  Her last words to B’taav were a promise, spoken as if she knew what was coming.

  Inquisitor Cer kept her focus on the Xendos’ controls. The ship flew around chunks of moon rock while approaching the hidden Type 2 Displacer. After they made enough distance between their ship and the Platform’s remains, Cer said:

  “Why are you here?”

  B’taav’s told Inquisitor Cer about his trip with Latitia from Onia to Pomos and what they found there.

  “Was it Merrick on the Orbital Platform?” Cer asked.

  “I don’t know.” B’taav said.

  The Independent gave Inquisitor Cer Latitia’s memory chip. She loaded it into the Xendos’ computer. Now, as they approached the Type 2 Displacer, the ship made contact with their means of escape.

  “Incredible,” Inquisitor Cer said.

  Floating before them and hidden between several large Solyanna rocks was the Type 2 Displacer. Cer positioned the Xendos before her mouth and prepared to send out the initiation signal.

  She eyed the monitors and noted the proximity of a group of defensive probes.

  “They know about the Type 2,” Cer said. “The moment we activate the Displacer, they’ll know exactly where we are and it’ll take a few seconds for her core to fully charge. We may not have enough time to enter her slipstream.”

  “We have no choice.”

  Inquisitor Cer nodded.

  “Hold tight.”

  Inquisitor Cer pressed several buttons. She waited with a mix of impatience and anxiety for the reply. It came.

  “The Displacer accepted the codes,” Inquisitor Cer said. “Where to?”

  “Onia,” B’taav said.

  It was the most logical place to go. Lying between the Phaecian and Epsillon Empires, it allowed them the most options to disappear and re-group.

  Inquisitor Cer relayed the information. She frowned.

  “…what…?” B’taav asked.

  Inquisitor Cer shook her head.

  “The program on that memory chip lets me activate the Displacer but it won’t let me set a destination. It already has one cho—”

  Suddenly, the center of the Displacer lit up. Red alert signals blared.

  “They’ve spotted us!” Inquisitor Cer yelled.

  A monitor displayed at least a dozen defensive probes headed their way. Even more altered their course.

  “Latitia did this,” Inquisitor Cer said. “She got us together, and now she’s set us up to go… to go where?”

  The Xendos moved toward the Displacer’s hollow center. It shimmered with powerful electric arcs. Unlike past Displacer jumps, the energy arcs were crimson red.

  “What is this?” Inquisitor Cer said. “It looks like its overloading!”

  “We have to… use it.”

  Inquisitor Cer clenched her teeth. Even as they closed in on the Displacer’s energized center, Inquisitor Cer’s kept a watch on the converging defensive probes. They were coming in so very fast…

  There was another alarm.

  A defensive probe appeared from behind a rocky mass opposite the Displacer. It ignored the Xendos and moved at high speed toward the Displacer’s control room.

  “If they take out the controls, we’re trapped.”

  “Not if I can help it,” Inquisitor Cer said.

  She pushed the Xendos’ engines.

  “Going into the… the Displacer at full speed is dangerous,” B’taav said.

  “Not as dangerous as getting stuck here.”

  Inquisitor Cer adjusted the Xendos’ path. The energy reading from within the Displacer fluctuated.

  “Now what?”

  The readings changed. The crimson arcs turned blood red.

  “Readings are way past normal,” Cer said. “Energy spiking.”

  The defensive probe sped up.

  “The probe’s over… overloading,” B’taav said. “She’s going to detonate!”

  “Hades,” Inquisitor Cer said.

  The readings on the Displacer also spiked. Wherever it was Latitia was sending them, it was very, very far away.

  “Damn it all,” Cer muttered.

  The Xendos moved into the center of the Displacer. The energy arcs were no longer confined to that center. They jumped across the transporter’s body and threatened to tear the structure apart before the defensive probe did the same.

  “Your girlfriend did a hell of a job,” Inquisitor Cer said.

  “Latitia’s n… not… girlfriend,” B’taav muttered.

  Inquisitor Cer barely heard him.

  An energy arc flew out of the Displacer’s core and singed the defensive probe, knocking it off course. It corrected its flight path.

  “Hang on,” Inquisitor Cer said.

  The Xendos closed in. The navigational computer erupted and the view screen went black.

  The cockpit of the Xendos filled with smoke just as the ship lost all power.

  37

  Inquisitor Cer fought desperately to reactivate the ship’s controls.

  “Are… are we in…?”

  “I can’t tell,” Inquisitor Cer said.

  The smoke inside the cockpit was thick.

  “Come on,” she said.

  One of the monitors came to life. Inquisitor Cer slid before it. She let out a relieved breath.

  “Outer radiation climbing,” she said. “We’re in the slipstream.”

  She pressed more buttons. The radiation ticker continued its climb, a normal indication of their progression through the Displacer’s slipstream.

  “That’s the good news,” Inquisitor Cer continued. “Three of our four engines and most other systems are offline. I’ve got ruptures on our port side. We were caught in the drone’s explosion.”

  The ship rocked as more smoke poured from the corridor beyond.

  “I can’t leave the controls,” Cer said. “Can you do something about that smoke?”

  B’taav used all the strength he had to get to his feet. He stumbled to the door. One of the central panel boxes outside the cockpit was on fire. B’taav pulled at the door, inching it closed.

  “By… bypass external panels,” B’taav said. “They’re… they’re sparking.”

  Inquisitor Cer pressed a couple of buttons. She heard a thump and turned. B’taav was on the floor. He coughed.

  “Shut… shut it…”

  Inquisitor Cer’s attention returned to the controls. She pressed still more buttons.

  The fiery panel beyond the cockpit door let out one last wave of sparks. The fire was out. Almost instantly, other lights came on.

  “That did it!” Inquisitor Cer said.

  The Xendos rocked some more. The central view screen came to life. Inquisitor Cer tightened her grip of the ship’s controls and aligned the craft with the Displacer’s event
horizon.

  “Radiation readings reaching their peak,” Cer said.

  The ride remained chaotic and Inquisitor Cer fought against veering too far off their path and straying from the Displacer’s slipstream.

  Inquisitor Cer took a second to display the ship’s rear cameras, to see if any of the defensive drones made it into the Displacer and might be following them. None had.

  B’taav lifted himself up and, despite the ship’s heavy vibrations, made his way back to his seat. That short walk was agony. When he reached his seat, his face was pale and he was out of breath.

  “Just like… just like old times,” he said.

  If Inquisitor Cer heard him, she didn’t react. More time passed. Too much.

  “Why haven’t… haven’t we reached the end?” B’taav asked.

  Trips through a Displacer took between a few seconds to no more than two minutes of real time. In the early days of Displacer research, scientists theorized a ship could travel the entire length of the galaxy through a pair of Displacers. Those estimates proved wildly optimistic.

  The maximum one could travel through a Displacer was approximately five hundred light years, but the tremendous energies expended for these journeys and intense radiation vessels were exposed to meant there were limits. Traveling beyond those limits increased the danger of a ship being torn apart and lost in the slipstream.

  Once lost, there was no coming back.

  After recognizing the Displacer’s limits, there were few brave –or stupid– enough to push them. It was the reason distant trips involved the use of several Displacers.

  “How… how long have we been…?” B’taav asked.

  “Three and a half minutes,” Inquisitor Cer said.

  Chills passed through B’taav’s body. He leaned forward and examined the Xendos’ control panel.

  “Rest,” Inquisitor Cer said.

  Despite the agonizing pain, B’taav focused on the readouts. Something wet fell over his lips. His nose was bleeding.

  The Xendos shook, almost sending the Independent back to the floor.

  “Buckle up,” Cer barked.

  B’taav ignored the nose bleed and reached for the seat belt. He put it on.

  “How long?” he asked.

  “Coming on five minutes.”

  The energy field around them, red and so very bright, turned blue. Mysterious arcs neither had witnessed before lashed at the ship.

  “We might be lost,” Inquisitor Cer said.

  Her thought was interrupted by another circuit failure. Sparks flew across the cockpit’s controls and one of the monitors cracked. Smoke bellowed from the destroyed screen and Inquisitor Cer initiated fire controls. The smell of burnt circuits filled the cabin and was quickly sucked out by the craft’s emergency fans.

  The outside radiation gauge reading remained dangerously high.

  “There’s no ship in the fleet that can take this much radiation,” Inquisitor Cer said. “We should be—“

  B’taav grabbed Inquisitor Cer’s arm.

  “We’ll make it,” he said.

  Inquisitor Cer looked away.

  “Seven minutes,” she said.

  The energy arcs abruptly disappeared, buried under a blinding white light.

  “Radiation is dropping!” B’taav said.

  Inquisitor Cer checked the gauge. Just as B’taav said, the outer readings were falling.

  “We’re exiting!”

  Then, just as soon as it began, the white light was gone.

  The energy field around the Xendos grew dull. The outer radiation gauge’s readings dropped some more.

  “Nearly there!”

  The ship shook as if it was about to be torn apart. Bolts of energy arced through the cockpit panels, sending fresh waves of sparks. All at once the panels died and the monitors went black.

  The emergency systems activated and the cockpit was bathed in a red glow. Inquisitor Cer was back at the controls. Three of the monitors came to life.

  “Radiation is nominal,” Cer said. She activated the ship’s starboard camera. On the monitor was a view of darkness and stars. “We’re… we’re out.”

  “W… where exactly are we?”

  Inquisitor Cer had the computer create a map of the stars around them and analyze their position based on it.

  “We’ll know soon enough,” she said.

  While the computers did their work, Inquisitor Cer checked the controls and accessed the Xendos’ status. The results surprised her.

  “Plenty of fried circuits, but they’re repairable,” Inquisitor Cer said. “I should be able to get things operational in—”

  “Inquisitor…?”

  She looked at B’taav and then followed his gaze. He was staring out the ship’s front window.

  At first she couldn’t tell what it was that had his attention. There was darkness and a field of stars before them. Then she noticed. The star field abruptly ended three quarters of the way to the ship’s port side, as if the stars on that side were sliced out of the galaxy.

  “Impossible,” Inquisitor Cer said.

  She turned the ship until it faced that darkness. There were absolutely no stars to be seen. All was pitch black.

  “Something is blocking the view,” B’taav said.

  “How is that possible?” Inquisitor Cer muttered. “It has to be enormous.”

  It was as if the Xendos were parked in front of a black wall. From behind it came a dull, red light.

  “Whatever it is, it’s orbiting a planet,” Inquisitor Cer said. She ran a sensor scan. “A giant. Equatorial diameter is 143,000 kilometers. Composition is hydrogen and helium. The structure between us and that planet is blocking any other scans. Behind us… I’m not detecting much. Plasma rays… we’re… we’re in a solar system.”

  “Where?”

  Inquisitor Cer returned to the star map. An error message appeared. The computer could not find their location.

  “That’s impossible,” Inquisitor Cer said.

  “Either that or we’re in unexplored territory,” B’taav said. “Way... way out.”

  “Let’s get a better look at this thing we’re parked beside.”

  Inquisitor Cer focused the ship’s cameras on the object. She used enhanced image and light filters to peer through the darkness. At the same time, mapping software developed a three dimensional picture of the vessel. After the computer finished its work, Cer fell back in her chair. Her face was pale.

  “It can’t be. It just can’t—”

  The object’s shape was familiar to both B’taav and Inquisitor Cer. It was a starship, one whose likes they recently encountered and thought they would never –ever– see again.

  “It can’t be,” Inquisitor Cer repeated.

  Yet its shape was the same.

  “It’s the Argus,” Inquisitor Cer said.

  38

  A stunned silence filled the Xendos’ cockpit.

  Inquisitor Cer pressed more buttons and the computer produced an even higher resolution map of the vessel before them.

  She let out a relieved breath.

  “We’re not going crazy after all,” she said. “The ship’s shape and dimensions are almost identical to the Argus, but there are differences.”

  “Like?”

  “For one thing, this ship is in pristine shape. She has roughly a half of the Argus’ defensive and offensive weaponry systems.”

  “She’s a… a stripped down model?” B’taav said.

  “Yeah,” Inquisitor Cer said. “Could be a prototype. But if what she’s got inside her is anything like the Argus, then she’s also a solar system killer. One we’re parked right next to.”

  “We need to leave.”

  “As quickly as possible,” Inquisitor Cer said.

  She worked the controls of the Xendos and brought power to the engines. The ship remained in place.

  “What’s wrong?” B’taav asked.

  “We’ve got power, but the damn thing won’t move.”<
br />
  “The nano-probes?”

  Inquisitor Cer slammed her fist against the panel.

  “They won’t let us go.”

  Inquisitor Cer grabbed the yoke and tried to spin the Xendos away from the Argus prototype and back to the Displacer they emerged from.

  “Come on,” she muttered. “Let me—”

  Abruptly, the ship turned.

  “Ok,” Inquisitor Cer said.

  She continued the ship’s turn until the Xendos faced a very small Displacer. It was similar to Pomos’ Type 2 but less than a third its size. It was designed to transport ships not much larger than shuttle crafts.

  Inquisitor Cer’s fingers glided along the instrument panel.

  “Let’s see if we can contact her.”

  She sent commands to the Displacer. After a while, she shook her head.

  “The Displacer’s onboard computer is locked. I can’t get in.”

  “So… now what?” B’taav wondered.

  As if to answer her question, a small, distant light appeared on the far side of enormous vessel. Inquisitor Cer and B’taav recognized the location. It came from one of the ship’s many Docking Ports, in this case the same one they used to enter the Argus.

  “Looks like they want… they want us aboard,” B’taav said.

  The Xendos approached the docking port’s doors and slowed.

  The ship was on autopilot and Inquisitor Cer’s focus was on B’taav. She used the Medi-Cart’s gear to draw his blood and analyze it. While she waited for the results, she offered B’taav three liquid packs. They were heavy in protein, nutrients, and medication.

  “Filet mignon,” B’taav said. The orange liquid splashed in its packet. “My favorite.”

  B’taav took down his meal. It was bland yet sated his appetite. He grabbed the second tube, this one a near fluorescent green, and took a smaller sip. It vaguely tasted of mangos.

  “Complements… to the chef,” B’taav said.

  Inquisitor Cer’s attention was on the medi-scanners yet her expression remained distant, troubled.

  “You’ve been… been through a lot,” B’taav said.

  “Rest,” Inquisitor Cer said.

  Her eyes drifted to the monitor on the side of the Medi-Cart. The Independent’s vitals were dangerously low. B’taav felt it. Ever since confronting Jonah Merrick on the Orbital Platform, he felt his body was shutting down. At this point, he was burning with fever and could barely move.