by Kal Spriggs
Eric froze. His gaze snapped over to the main reactor, and he saw a small terminal set into the side. Inset at the center of the terminal sat a large red button inside a clear cover to prevent casual access.
“It’s too late!” Ariadne shouted suddenly. “Pixel says the reactor coils have gone critical, and Ghost must have put some kind of lockouts into the system. We have to try to get to Ghost’s ship-”
“No!” Eric shouted. He vaulted over the railing. The strange gravity of the engine room threw him in a spin. He landed hard on his knee and swore. Eric pushed himself to his feet and limped to the console.
“What are you doing?” Simon shouted. “You heard her, we need to get out of here!”
“The engineer’s override,” Eric shouted back. He reached the terminal and pried at the button’s cover. He saw a pin at the side, just as the terminal lit up with flashing red and purple lights. Eric pulled the pin and the cover snapped back with a sharp crack.
He hoped that he was right. “I really hope he wasn’t joking with me about this…” Eric muttered, even as he mashed the button.
The world went dark.
* * *
Eric hung suspended in the pitch black darkness for what seemed like eternity. He heard no sounds, and at full extension he could find nothing to hold onto.
“Are we still alive?” Simon asked.
Eric answered, “If I have to listen to you in the afterlife, I’d be disappointed.” Come to think of it, he somehow doubted that Simon shared his belief structure and he didn’t know if this counted towards death by combat. Sabotage, that’s a tough one… or would this be considered suicide?
He heard a snick, and a moment later a pinprick of orange fire appeared off to his right. Eric looked over and could barely make out Ariadne as she clung to a railing. She held held up her lighter but the oppressive darkness seemed to swallow the light. “We’re alive. Pixel says you must have scrammed the reactor.”
“Yeah,” Eric nodded.
“He says it was either a totally brilliant move or sheer stupidity,” Ariadne said. “But he won’t be able to say until after he looks the reactor over.”
“We’re still alive, right?” Eric asked. He rolled his eyes, didn’t anyone appreciate what he had accomplished? He gave her the bird too, for good measure. At least I can be as rude as I want when it doesn’t matter, he thought.
“I’ll let him explain,” Ariadne said. “And just because it’s dark, it doesn’t mean I can’t sense what you do.”
Right, he thought, psychic. He cleared his throat, “So…what now?”
“I NEED LIGHT IN ORDER TO OPERATE ON MY SUBJECTS,” Run called out, his shrill voice loud enough to carry down the corridor and into the engine room. The pitch still retained the ability to penetrate straight into Eric’s brain like a drill. “ANUBUS, I DEMAND THAT YOU-” Run’s voice cut off, though Eric thought he heard muffled shouts. He wondered if it made him a bad person that he hoped someone had stapled Run’s lips together with his own stapler.
“Dude, you guys alright in here?” Rastar asked. “Also, I think Annie might be more hurt than he said, he tried to claw Run when he tried to help him.”
“That little moron is lucky you pulled him off me,” Anubus growled. “He comes near me with that staple gun again and I’ll use it to staple his mouth shut.”
“Hey man, that’s not nice, he’s just trying to help,” Rastar said. A moment later, light blossomed in the doorway as he held up a lantern in one hand. “Hey guys, need some help getting out of there?” Eric saw the big alien held Run with his two left hands while he clung to the hatch frame with his lower right hand.
“You look kind of occupied, and you’re wounded, stay there, we’ll get out on our own,” Eric said. Actually, now that he thought about it, he saw that Rastar’s wound did not appear as bad as earlier. Certainly his friend showed no signs of undue pain as he held Run.
“Oh, hey, Pixel’s here, with Crowe,” Rastar said. He moved out the hatchway and a moment later Pixel swam through the hatch.
The engineer had a flashlight out and swept the engine room. Eric noted that the light pointed at his face for longer than strictly necessary. “You’re either smarter than I thought or really lucky,” Pixel said. “I’m betting on the lucky part.”
Eric shook his head, “Why? I saved us all.”
“Do you know what happens when you scram a fusion reactor?” Pixel asked as he pulled himself along a railing towards the main console. Crowe floundered along behind him.
“Uh,” Eric frowned. “I imagine it cuts fuel and stops the reaction?”
“I could have done that from the fuel valves,” Pixel said. “But between Ghost’s program and the damage from before we took the ship, that might have caused the reactor coils to lose containment as they lost power. I didn’t want to risk it, not when it might vent the plasma through the ship and roast us alive.”
“Oh.” Eric said. “So what did I do?”
“That button you pressed vented the plasma and cut fuel to the reactor. It also directed all of our emergency power into the coils, which probably burned some more of them out,” Pixel said. “What we don’t know yet is where that superheated gas vented. Probably vented to the exterior, as we’re still alive. But there’s a good chance it could have struck the ship we’re docked with, which created debris, and possibly damaged Ghost’s ship.”
Eric frowned, “But we survived, so that doesn’t matter. You get the engine back up and—”
“And like I said, the scram process used our emergency power to maintain the coils. Which is why we’re setting in the dark, because there isn’t enough power for the emergency lighting system. Which means we don’t have enough power to start the fusion reactor up again. Especially not this Ghornath style gravity pumped reactor.”
“Oh.” Eric said. “Well, I’m sure you can figure it out.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Pixel said. He swept his flashlight around the engine room. “But everything tied into the grid will be drained.”
“Hey, uh, Pixel,” Rastar said. “I hate to bring this up, I’m not real savvy on engine stuff, and all. But what about the main weapon capacitors? Those were all disconnected already right?”
Pixel froze, “You know that just might work…”
Eric gave a smile, “See, even when I screw up, I still manage to save us all.”
* * *
Mike rubbed at his forehead. “So power’s up, and Rastar and Eric have supervised salvage of the other ship. What else did I miss?” He’d called the meeting ten or twelve hours after they finished salvage operations, and only five hours after Pixel managed to get the reactor up. Ariadne had spent over an hour with him already, and though she hadn’t said anything afterward, Eric could tell that she seemed worried about how Krann’s tampering might have affected Mike.
Even so, Eric thought, he seems back to normal now.
Ariadne cleared her throat, “Whatever ‘lived’ inside of Krann, it mimicked Chxor behavior, even their thought patterns and it possessed significant psychic abilities.”
Eric met Crowe’s eyes across the bridge. The other man had insisted that they still did not know for certain that Ariadne had not been the source of the psychic attacks. Eric disagreed, which was why he had refused to back Crowe’s request that they corner Mike before the meeting. Even so, he wondered how the other man had spent the past two days. Certainly from his scatter of tools and the way he slumped near the communications station, he had stayed occupied somehow.
“I have disposed of the remains so as to prevent the risk of infection. However, I will need to take blood and tissue samples from all personnel who have come into contact with the possible source of infection,” Run said. The little Chxor looked around at the others, and gray skin and oversized hairless head seemed a sinister reminder to Eric of the danger of the Chxor. They had thought they had Krann a prisoner, yet she had still nearly captured the ship.
“That would be
all of us,” Ariadne said.
“More than us,” Pixel said.
“Engineer Pixel is correct. Because we do not know the vector, be it contact, fluid transfer, airborne or some other means, I must inspect all personnel aboard the ship to insure no further contagion has spread,” Run said. “This will require a deep tissue sample, to insure that the contagion—”
“You’re assuming it’s a disease,” Mike said. “What if this was just some lab experiment by the Chxor, or some parasite that Krann picked up in her travels? For that matter, it infected a Chxor, with completely different physiology than Humans, Ghornath and Wrethe. I’m not going to force everyone on the ship to participate. If people are worried about it or if they show signs of infection, then you can test them.”
“Your argument is illogical,” Run said. “We do not know enough as of yet to determine the risk. Should this be a viral outbreak and also species compatible-”
“No,” Eric said, “He’s right. It just infected a Chxor.” He would not let the little bastard get near him with needles. He might learn more than that Eric didn’t carry some strange parasite. He might see some of what they did to me at Blackthorn’s labs.
“As much as I hate to say it,” Anubus growled, “Run is correct. We can’t be certain who is affected. Something like that could control one of you now.” He glanced over at Rastar. “For that matter, weren’t you hurt before?”
“What?” Rastar looked around. He turned a white color, though Eric found it hard to see against the purple and white Hawaiian shirt. Rastar held his hand to his side, “Oh yes, a nasty set of scratches, and some grazing shots from when Mike… was confused. I bandaged them myself. They still pain me, but I cope with it well. And I have a good constitution so I will heal well enough without attention.”
“Really…” Anubus growled. “For all we know, you’re infected and this parasite heals you more rapidly. Perhaps it operates to protect its host somehow?”
Rastar gave a laugh, “Annie, you say the silliest things. I mean, come on, man, Ghornath have a great constitution, we heal pretty quickly.” Rastar raised the bottle of coke he held in one hand, “Especially when we have such excellent brew.”
“That’s what you say, but we can’t know without a test of some kind,” Anubus growled. “And I think we can agree that if you’re—”
“Enough,” Eric snapped. “Rastar is not infected. And Run will not test anyone against their will or without some reasonable suspicion. For that matter, Rastar killed Krann, so I think we can safely say that he’s above suspicion.”
“And he has healed from serious wounds before we ran into Krann,” Pixel said. “So really, I don’t see any case for Rastar getting checked out for that.” He looked at Mike, “I do think that we all need to get checked, though, just in case.”
“Me too,” Ariadne said. “None of you felt the mind of this… thing. It perfectly emulated a Chxor, right up until it acted, and then it was like… like someone pulled off a scary mask and revealed something far worse underneath. Something malevolent. It hated us, it wanted to play with us, which is the only reason I think we survived.”
“It underestimated us?” Eric asked. That bothered him. He didn’t like to be underestimated. He had talents, and while he might not be a psychic, he felt certain enough of his talents that anything which disregarded him as a real threat…
“Yes,” Ariadne said.
“Either way, you killed it,” Mike said. “And that’s what matters.” He rubbed at his head, “So, where does that leave us?”
“We’re down to about thirty percent power output on the reactor,” Pixel said. “Its enough to make the drive function along with secondary systems. Not enough to fight or even defend ourselves really.”
“What do you suggest?” Mike asked.
“Replacement of the coils. They took some additional damage from Ghost’s sabotage, but they already had significant damage. I’ve spent the past week trying to think of a source of conductive material, but there’s only one that will prevent us from having to salvage systems from our ship or remain here in this system longer than we really want.” Pixel shot a glance over at Anubus. “If we utilize a hundred kilograms of the gold-”
“No way,” Anubus growled.
“We’re sitting ducks without full power output,” Pixel said. “No defenses, no weapons, we can run away but we can’t even power up our shadow space drive at the same time as we power our standard drives.”
Everyone on the bridge looked at Anubus. The big Wrethe stood still, but Eric saw his claws extend from his sheaths. “You want to take this away from me?”
“A trade,” Mike said. “I’m sure you have something you’d be willing to accept as equal value-”
“I have Ghost’s ship,” Anubus growled. “What more can I want?”
Eric tensed and his hand went down to the grip for his TEK-15.
“What about Ghost’s armor?” Pixel asked. “It’s damaged, but I could repair it. Also, that ship’s seen some rough use. I bet it needs an overhaul, probably has parts scavenged from a dozen ships, and that kind of thing doesn’t come with a manual. I can figure that out for you.”
Anubus cocked his jackal head, “That… might be acceptable.”
“Think about this,” Mike said. “Ghost’s ship has no shadow drive. Our former friend might have some kind of larger ship in the system, but we’ve no way to find it. You need to get your ship out of the system, and our ship is the only way to do it.”
“You’re charging me docking fees?” Anubus growled.
“No, I’m saying either you’re a part of this team or you’re not, you can’t have it both ways,” Mike said. “And I say that we live by the charter that you all signed.” He swept his gaze around the room, “And while I’m willing to throw a pass on the Red Hunter, that gold is something our entire team worked for, along with the salvage from the Sao Martino. So you can keep your ship and ‘your’ gold and stay here and try to find someone willing to put up with you, or you can come with us and be a part of a team.”
Anubus rolled his shoulders, “You know I could force you to do what I want?”
“You could try,” Mike said.
“Didn’t work out so well for Ghost,” Eric muttered loud enough for everyone to hear. Ariadne and Mike both shot him a glare, and he shrugged. What, like they didn’t think the same thing, he thought.
“You had a well thought out campaign, Mike,” Anubus growled. “Very good preparations, clearly I underestimated your cunning. I will not forget this in the future.” He gave a nod, “I will abide by the terms of our ‘charter.’ However, should anyone else violate it, I will insist they receive the same treatment, agreed?”
“Of course,” Mike said. He looked a bit surprised, Eric thought. Probably at Anubus’ assumption of a cunning plan. Eric kept any comments to himself, in that regard. It made Mike look like a better Captain. Besides, if Anubus thought Mike so calculating, then maybe he would downgrade his suspicion of the others.
One more reason it sucks to be in command, Eric thought, the big scary alien plans to kill you.
“Right,” Mike said. “Crowe pulled the data from the Sao Martino’s logs, as well as the navigation charts for both shadow space and normal space. It doesn’t give us a lot more than we had, the ship ran mostly aid missions to Saragossa. But it does have coordinates for human systems, mostly Nova Roma occupied systems.”
“So we head that way,” Eric shrugged.
“From what we can tell from this ship’s logs,” Crowe said. “The Ghornath aboard acted as privateers against both the Chxor and the Nova Romans.”
“So they might shoot us first and ask questions later,” Pixel said. “I see the problem.”
“I find a course that ends in our demise suboptimal,” Run said.
“Right,” Mike nodded, “Crowe suggested a route back through Chxor space, towards the Centauri Confederation, or possibly Tannis. The thing is, both of those routes will take us rig
ht back through the Logan system, and one will take over ninety days.” Mike brought up the map on a holographic display. A number of the systems had the symbol that noted Chxor occupation. Many of the others plotted the fringe of human space, or simple alphanumeric codes that meant they had nothing worth a name.
“We don’t have that much food,” Eric said. “Even with the ration bars we found aboard the Sao Martino. For that matter, I’m not sure how our environmental systems would hold up.”
“We may find other ships, maybe we could trade,” Ariadne said.
“We may find pirates who will kill us for our ship and supplies,” Eric said.
“The other route will take over eighty days to get to the Vega system,” Pixel said after a moment. “I think there’s some stations there, but we’d be hurting on the environmental side. Tannis we could make too, but that will cut our environmental systems to the bone. The biggest issue will be water, the recyclers work only so well.” The engineer frowned. “Worse, I think we’re too low on spare parts, if we suffer one failure… well, we might have to wait for someone to show up and save us, and there’s not a lot of friendly traffic out on the fringe.”
“Ghost should remind you of that,” Anubus growled. “Anyone we encounter will be a threat.”
Eric glanced at Mike and saw the Captain had nodded, and wore a small smile. “You’ve already thought through all of that. So I’d assume you prefer Nova Roma space. Which leaves us three possible destinations: Tibur, Malta, and Danar. According to the Chxor as well as the Sao Martino’s logs, Danar fell to the Chxor. But the system is vital to the Nova Romans defense, so I think we can safely assume they’ll have forces there to try and recapture the system. We might be able to link up with them, prove our story, and maybe get an escort back.”
“What about Tibur?” Rastar asked. “That is near to Ghornath Prime, we might even stop by, perhaps pick up some of my people?”
“Captain Santiago mentioned heavy military patrols from the Nova Romans at Tibur. I imagine with the Chxor attack on Danar they will stand to high alert. Worse, we could jump right in the middle of a battle,” Mike said.
