by Luigi Robles
“That’s good to know. Thank you, Eora,” Fain said as he rubbed his chin, feeling his newfound stress mounting.
“Have you met the council on board the ship yet?” Eora asked.
“No, not at all,” Fain said. “Up until now, I’ve just heard of them. This is my first time on board the ship.”
“Fain Jegga,” said Kya, the disembodied voice on board the ship. “You are requested to report to council chambers immediately.”
“Oh, well, there they go,” Eora said. “Don’t worry, they are just a bunch of grumpy old people. You’ll be fine.”
“Thank you, Kya. Can you show me the way?”
“Please follow the orange lights on the floor,” said Kya. “They will light up a few steps ahead of you all the way to your destination.”
“Eora?” Fain called out her name.
“Yes, Captain?” Eora replied.
“Thank you for what you said,” Fain said as he left the room. “It really made a difference. You should study up on the material Colonel Green gave us. I’ll see you in a little while.”
“Will do, Captain,” Eora said right before Fain disappeared into the hallway.
Fain walked the long hallways, going deeper into the belly of the giant ship. Even though all the hallways were moving walkways going in both directions at a high speed, Fain felt as if he was getting nowhere within the ship.
Just how massive is this thing? Fain thought. This could be a potential problem. What if I need to get from one place to another much faster than this? The hallways look big enough to handle a cart of some sort.
“Kya, is there any way to move around the ship in a faster manner?” Fain asked.
“There are many ways to get from one point to another within the ship faster than your current speed.”
“And why wasn’t one of these ways suggested to me before?” Fain asked. “Is it within your programming to make suggestions that will make things easier for me?”
“I did not suggest alternate transportation because it was not asked,” Kya said. “And yes, I am to make suggestions at your request.”
“OK, from here on out, please do that,” Fain said. “Make smart and relevant suggestion unless I tell you otherwise.”
“I understand,” Kya said. “Would you like to continue to your destination on a corridor pod?”
“If it will get me to my destination faster, then yes,” Fain said. “I would like that.”
“Please stand by for a corridor pod,” Kya said.
Seconds later, Fain heard a faint whistling coming from one end of the hallway. He turned around to see two blue turning lights getting closer to him. When the pod got there, Fain was surprised at the simplicity of the apparatus; there was nothing special to it. It looked like half an egg with two seats on each side. Perhaps it could fit four to six people, but six would be a tight squeeze.
“Please board the pod,” Kya said as one side of the pod slid down.
Fain entered the pod, and seconds later, everything around him became a blur of movement. He was used to sudden acceleration, so he felt right at home. But he saw how someone else might be taken aback by the fast movement. He reached his destination only two minutes later.
“You’ve arrived at your destination,” Kya said. “The council room is just beyond that door. I will not be able to guide you any farther.”
There was only one door in sight, so Fain knew what door Kya was talking about. He was still curious as to why Kya couldn’t guide him all the way to the council room, but he thought it best to leave that question for another time.
“Thank you. You know, Kya,” Fain said as he got out of the pod, “we really need to work on the pod’s acceleration and deceleration. Perhaps a warning would be nice. At least for other users.”
“I am available to work on my programming twenty-four hours a day,” Kya said.
“Alright,” Fain said as he walked towards the door. “I will be availing myself of that soon.”
There was no further response from Kya; it was as if she was not allowed to talk or be near the council’s door. The door was plain, to say the least, but it looked solid, and engraved across the center of it were five stars.
Are these people generals of the ESAF? Fain wondered as the door opened before him.
“Please enter and be quick about it,” a commanding voice said from inside the room. “You have already wasted enough of our time.”
As soon as Fain stepped into the room, the door behind him closed. But he couldn’t help but notice just how thick the door and walls were. It took him several steps just to cross them. The room was circular. The walls were high and had nothing on them apart from the same five stars, engraved in a similar style to the ones on the door.
“Fain Jegga.” A voice filled the room, this time a woman’s voice. “You are the newly appointed captain of Sodenia, and as such you will receive your orders directly from the council.”
“You will discard any orders previously given to you.” A different voice spoke this time, not the voice from the door; nor was it the woman’s voice. “You will follow any new orders given to you by the council to the letter. If you do not comply, you will immediately be removed from your position and met with capital punishment.”
“Do bear in mind that the orders given by the council are in the best interest of humanity,” a fourth voice said.
“You will receive your new set of orders when and how we deem it necessary,” a fifth voice said. “That is all.”
What? I came all the way here so they could tell me who is in charge? Fain thought. This is not a good start to any relationship.
“Council, if I may?” Fain asked.
“You may not,” the fifth voice said. “You will only speak if asked to speak. You will not address the council unless asked to. That is all.”
Shit! This is going to make things a whole lot more complicated. This is going to suck big time, Fain thought as he left the room. What have I gotten myself into?
3
Unworthy
After trying to assimilate the report Colonel Green had left for them, Pycca found herself in the same place she always went to clear her mind. The levitation machine room near the helm of the ship was her favorite place to go. But this time, things were especially difficult on her. There was a lot happening around her that she didn’t understand, but what bothered her most was the sudden promotion of Fain Jegga. She hated the thought.
The levitation machine room was like all the other machine rooms on board the ship: grandiose. The whole thing seemed impossible at first glance, but once you looked at it for a while, it became clear that everything in the room had a purpose. Apparatus turned, others moved slowly, and others moved so fast that they were hard to see with the naked eye. But what made this room stand out from the rest was two things. The first was that this room was the only room in the whole ship with more than one levitation machine; it had three. And second, Pycca had helped rebuild the room and put the new levitation machines together. To her, it was more than just a room; it was her entire career’s work.
Sodenia was equipped with a total of twenty-eight levitation machines. They were all distributed equally across the ship for optimum levitation. Even fully loaded, weighing in at nineteen million tons, the engineering corps calculated that the levitation machines would have an easy time lifting the weight. Said machines were giant cylinders, thirty feet tall, and ran from floor to ceiling in each room. But the extent of the machines did not end in the room; rather, the supporting pillars and branch-like structures ran throughout the whole of the ship. Together, apart from the main cannons, they were the largest things on the ship.
But the levitation machines weren’t the only thing that Pycca knew how to work on board the ship. She took pride in knowing more than most; she was one of the few persons that knew all the vital machinery on the ship. From the artificial gravity machine to the air filtration units to the recycling plants, Pycca was on top of it all.
/> I really can’t believe Colonel Green, Pycca thought as she worked on one of the levitation machines. What the heck is he doing? I mean, I think I would understand if the new captain of the ship had been someone who was here from day one… But no! It had to be someone totally new to the program. I’ve spent years of my life working on this, staying up late and trying to understand the technology just so that someone can come and call it theirs? How can I possibly be good with that? Ugh, I hate this situation.
Just when I thought that things would finally go my way, bam! There’s life to remind me that there are a lot of stupid people in the world that will do stupid things to prevent that from happening. What the heck is the battle simulator anyway? It’s Fain’s only qualification on his profile card, literally. It could be that he hasn’t updated himself, but still, by the looks of him, he isn’t much good for anything else.
Pycca couldn’t help but feel betrayed by her higher-ups. Many times during the rebirth of Sodenia, she had pushed her mind and her body to the point of collapsing from exhaustion. And she did so for many years. Few had worked on the massive ship as long or as much as she had.
Across the way from where Pycca was working, she heard two thumps on the wall. Someone was knocking. Pycca got out of the levitation machine and grabbed a nearby towel to wipe her hands with.
“Oh, it’s just you, August,” Pycca said as she cleaned her hands thoroughly.
Pycca’s way of working had always been neat and well organized; she didn’t like mess.
“Did you come to tell me how excited you are to finally have a captain,” Pycca said bitterly.
“Woah, slow down there, super psychic,” August said, holding his hands halfway up. “You are always so quick to judge. Maybe if you had aimed a little to the left you would have nailed it.”
“Well, what is it then? I really don’t have time for this, August. I have to get the ship ready and we don’t have a lot of time.”
“That’s for sure. Have you seen how busy the docks have been since Green told us we were on our own? I feel bad for Larissa. I feel like she has the hardest task of us all. I’m going to help her after I’m done talking to you.”
“Ugh. Why don’t you just go help her now? There’s nothing we need to talk about. Nothing you can say can change my mind.”
“Well, we’ll just have to see about that.”
Pycca rolled her eyes and let out a large sigh of annoyance.
“Look, I know you don’t like him, and probably none of us do yet,” August said. “But you have to give him a chance, at least until you know for sure. He doesn’t look very happy to be captain either.”
“Give him a chance?” Pycca asked as she crossed her arms. “And why would I do that? If I don’t like someone then I don’t like them, and that’s the end of it.”
“Aww, come on, Pycca, don’t give me that BS,” August said. “We all know that you don’t like Jegga because you think he doesn’t deserve to be captain.”
“August, are you really going to just stand here and tell me who and who not to like?” Pycca said as she felt her blood get hot.
“No, that’s for you to decide, once you have all the facts straight,” August said as his frustration became audible.
“And what are those facts?” Pycca said.
“There are two things, and you and I both know one of them,” August said, putting up two fingers on his right hand.
Is he really using the peace sign right now? The thought made Pycca smile the faintest bit, and her nerves also began to calm once again.
“And what’s the one thing that we both know?” Pycca asked.
“That Colonel Green knows exactly what he is doing,” August said as he put his hand down. “If you know Green as well as I think you do, you’ll know that he is always ten, maybe twenty steps ahead of us. Do you really think that there could have been anyone, and I mean any-freaking-one, better than you to be head of engineering?”
Pycca let out another large sigh. What August was saying to her was finally beginning to make sense.
“And what’s the second one?” Pycca asked.
“I’ve done a little research on the battle simulator myself,” August said. “And to get to where Jegga got wasn’t easy at all.”
“Nothing on board Sodenia is ever easy,” Pycca said stubbornly.
“You are not understanding,” August said. “The records show that 22,000 people were tested for the Battle Game, and from those, only 2,000 were selected, and after that 300 remained. And from those 300, just take a guess how many finished the battle simulator?”
“Only Jegga did,” Pycca said, trying to imitate August’s voice. “So what! If people could program it, people can beat it.”
“First of all, listen to listen, not to reply,” August said, clearly unfazed by Pycca. “The simulator has its own set of rules and the AI does the rest. It’s like a game of chess, where no two scenarios are the same, and yet Jegga finished it. But that’s not the impressive part. Out of those 300 highly qualified candidates, none of them came close to completing even half the simulator. In fact, most of them thought it was impossible to finish.”
Pycca said nothing. Although she did not want to admit it, she knew that deep down, August was right. Fain Jegga could very well be the best candidate the ESAF had to offer as the captain of Sodenia.
“There’s no better person,” August reiterated. “You know Colonel Green doesn’t make decisions lightly.”
“Ugh. I know,” Pycca said, finally caving in to August’s argument.
“So, can you give him a chance?” August asked.
“In hell,” Pycca said.
“You don’t stand down, do you?” August asked.
“Why am I supposed to do what you are telling me to do?” Pycca asked, looking away.
“What I am asking you to do is not for his sake,” August said. “What I am asking you to do is for the sake of the ship, but most importantly for the sake of humanity. The last thing that our new captain needs is insubordination. Pycca, there’s no doubt you are the best at what you do. And if we are to survive what’s coming for us, we will need you at your best. You get that?”
“I am following orders,” Pycca said.
“I hope I was able to knock some sense into you,” August said. “Because, at the end of the day, the enemy isn’t going to care who we are. They are going to come at us with everything they’ve got, and I guarantee you that if they see weakness in our crew, they will exploit that, and it will all be over.”
“Are you done?” Pycca asked.
“Yeah, I’ve said what was on my mind; the rest is up to you,” August said. “Larissa is probably neck deep in work by now. I’ll get going.” August exited the room without looking at Pycca or saying anything else.
With her mind lost in thought, Pycca went on to do what she did best: disassemble a machine and put it back together again. She did so, trying to relax, thinking about the moments in her life that truly made her happy. Like the time when she was just a little girl and Mom pushed her back and forth on a thing called a swing. Or when Dad got her a puppy for her ninth birthday.
But the happy thoughts began to wash away when she thought about the Acram. She remembered why she had enlisted in the ESAF in the first place. Society had become a weary place. The news never stopped talking about the next invasion, about how humans stood very little chance against the Acram. The world had lost its color, its spark. Pycca’s parents had stopped smiling, had stopped enjoying life along with the rest of the world.
When the ESAF offered hope to Pycca, hope in the way that she would be able to make a difference in the world, she took it. She so desperately wanted her parents to enjoy life again, the way they used to enjoy it when she was a little girl.
He’s right… I just can’t help it, Pycca thought as she finished putting the small machine back together. I’ve worked so hard to get to this point.
There was a light knock at the door.
�
��You are already done with Larissa?” Pycca asked, without looking towards the door. “I’m surprised. I didn’t think she would let you off the hook that easily.”
“I’m not sure I’m aware of what you are talking about,” a not so familiar voice said. “May I come in?”
Pycca turned almost immediately, and by reflex, her right hand went up to salute; she hated it. “Captain, yes, please come in.”
“At ease,” Fain said. “I’ll tell you what, from here on out, you don’t have to be so formal with me. Truth is that, like you, I don’t think I deserve to be captain.”
Was I that obvious? Pycca thought as she put her hand down.
“I wanted to talk with you for a little bit, and I have a few questions that I am sure only you can answer,” Fain said. “Just to make sure we are on the same page. Would that be OK with you?”
“That’s fine,” Pycca said as she cleaned her work area. “I am just wrapping things up here. I’m getting ready to go check on the main thrusters. You don’t mind talking while I wrap things up?”
“Not at all,” Fain said. “As long as you can follow what I am saying.”
“I promise, I won’t miss a beat,” Pycca said as she began to put away the tools she had used. She slid some of the smaller ones into the pouch she always carried around her waist.
“Very well, then I’ll start,” Fain said as he got nearer. “What you heard just now is true. I don’t think I deserve to be captain, and I came to you first because you didn’t bother to mask your feelings about the matter like the others.”
“I’m sorry,” Pycca said. “I can be quite transparent sometimes and unaware of the things I am doing.”
“Don’t apologize,” Fain said. “In many ways, your heart is in the right place, and I’m glad you did what you did.”
“How so?” Pycca asked, feeling a bit embarrassed.
“Without you to confirm what I already suspected about myself, I might have believed it,” Fain said. “I might have believed that I was the best Earth had to offer. And if that was the case, then all hope would be lost.”
