The Star Agency (The Star Agency Chronicles)

by R. E. Weber

  Surface damage to observation port window.

  Cause: Damage by unknown implement.

  Unknown implement? Even his companion couldn’t identify it. Theo stood up and walked slowly across the room, carefully examining the window and the area around it. But apart from a few more of the pinpricks, there didn’t seem to be anything else. He walked back over to the marks on the glass and focussed on them again. Then he switched on Record.

  ‘Some sort of scratch marks or scoring,’ he said out loud, trying to sound as technical as possible. ‘No obvious cause.’ Record Off.

  He stared at the marks on the glass for a moment. Were they relevant to what had happened? Or was it just accidental damage? Then he looked around the room. What next? He had to gather more evidence so that the Star Agency could work out how the intruders, or whoever they were, had gained access to the station. But how? Then, as he stared at the platform suspended above him, he noticed the column to which he’d connected his headset. The Node. That had to be a good place to start.

  He selected Uplink, Establish then Athonesis Alpha Primary:

  Athonesis Alpha Primary Node access granted to Pre-Operative Logan, Theopolis James. Star Agency Authority Level Four, temporary step applied.

  Select:

  Control Access

  Review Logs

  Status

  Inventory

  Drop

  He selected Status:

  Station status: Nominal

  Nominal? That wasn’t much help. That could mean anything. He flicked back to the main menu screen and looked at the other options. Perhaps Review Logs might give him a bit more information. He selected the option and a further menu appeared:

  Personnel

  Security

  Environmental

  As the station’s security had been compromised, Security seemed like a good place to start, so he selected it. A long list of events appeared. Quickly, Theo scanned the list, but not many of the events made much sense to him. And the ones that did seemed pretty mundane:

  Airlock access to designate 50032889.

  Reason: Zero point energy supply maintenance.

  Stores access to designate 50113276.

  Reason: Check out inductor.

  There were hundreds of events in the list, all seemingly dated and timed, albeit in a format he didn’t recognise. But he couldn’t read through them all. And in any case, did he need to? All the Star Agency wanted was evidence. He didn’t need to interpret it here for himself, right now. He just needed to collect the evidence and present it to the mission commander. He selected Record, On and scanned the list again.

  After he’d scrolled through the entire log, he was about to close it down when he noticed, right at the end of the list, a tiny red pulsing dot. Suddenly, his heart skipped a beat. He recognised it instantly. He’d seen it before when he’d unexpectedly accessed the level two sensitive data. But why was it here again now when he already had level four access? What use was it? Should he select it and see? Or should he do what he ought to have done the first time round and report it to First Mentor? If he ignored it, he might miss out on some crucial information that could help with his mission. On the other hand, if he did select it and he wasn’t supposed to, then he might ruin his chances of ever becoming a fully trained Operative.

  Then another thought occurred to him. Perhaps this was all deliberate. Perhaps he was being tested to see if he had the initiative to use all the resources available to give him the best chance of success. Of course, if that was the case, then it probably meant that they had been planning to send him on this mission ever since he had first been given the level two privileges several weeks earlier. Indeed, it could have meant that they’d been planning it from the moment he had first arrived on Polisium Prime.

  Theo stared at the dot. If he did select it, it would have to be ‘off the record’ so he didn’t incriminate himself. But then if he did that, wouldn’t that look suspicious? Wouldn’t they notice a strange gap in his recording just after the dot had appeared?

  Theo held his head in his hands and moaned in exasperation. Then he took a deep breath, paused and turned Record Off.

  ‘Here goes your future Logan,’ he said out loud. Then, with his heart beating fast, he selected the dot and held his breath.

  As before, the screen became scrambled and unreadable. Then, after a minute or so, it went blank and a new status message appeared:

  Security Enhancement Granted.

  Level Five – Prime Secrecy status applied.

  Previous

  Close

  Theo stared at the message as his stomach did several somersaults. Level Five? That was the highest level of clearance in the Affinity. Then he realised what was happening. Every time he selected the dot, it wasn’t taking him to a specific security level. It was stepping him up a level. But up to level five? That was ridiculous. That was the same level as Governor Tallus or First Mentor. It had to be a mistake. As Theo stared at the message, he felt sick. He had to be in trouble now. There was surely no reason to be at level five; at least not a legitimate reason.

  Thinking that perhaps he shouldn’t read any further, he selected Close and fully intended to exit the security logs until he noticed that the first entry in the log wasn’t the same as the one he’d seen moments ago:

  Manual Lockdown initiated by designate 40092783.

  Reason: Subject designate: 60000454, Logan, Theopolis James - Human. Training and evaluation mission, initialisation and setup.

  So it was a training mission after all. He had asked First Mentor specifically if it was a training mission and the reply had been ‘the situation presented to you is genuine. It is not a fabrication.’ He looked back at the list and read the entry below, which was also new:

  Lockdown cleared by designate 40092783

  Reason: Investigate code 2.3 alert and file report with Star Agency Command.

  Then the truth slammed home. Of course, the situation had been genuine. There had been a lockdown and another operative had arrived to clear it. Then they’d reset everything and sent Theo to repeat the same mission. They had obviously wanted to see if he could come up with the correct answer, or indeed the same answer. But clearly they weren’t expecting him to see this log entry. They couldn’t have known he would have level five access.

  He was just about to continue reading down the list, when suddenly it disappeared. Then a new message appeared:

  Uplink Terminated. Power fluctuations detected.

  Theo’s heart sank. That was it. The game was up. They’d detected his unauthorised security access and dropped his connection. Now he was in trouble.

  From under the floor, he heard a faint rumble and felt the ground shake for a few seconds. Then his companion screen flickered and disappeared and all the lights went out.

  Chapter 17 – First Mentor

  Theo wasn’t sure whether it was the cold, which had closed in around him now all the power had gone offline, or whether it was the fear that somehow he’d caused the power failure by gaining unauthorised access to the station’s node. But either way, as he stood alone in the dark control room, he began to shiver.

  Quickly, he pulled up the hood of his suit around his head. Then he tried to focus on the problem at hand. He had to stay calm. He had to think logically.

  First of all, could it really be his fault that the station’s power had dropped out? Surely if he’d been doing something unauthorised, he would have simply been disconnected from the node rather than having triggered a shutdown of the station’s entire power grid. What had happened just before the power had gone off? He had heard a distant rumble, then felt the ground shake. Had there been an Earthquake perhaps? And if so, had it affected the station’s power generator? But then there was his companion. There should at least be something visible on it, even if his connection to the node had been dropped. But it wasn’t even showing in standby. That could only mean that its power had failed as well. Was it coincidence that both
the station’s and his companion’s power had failed at the same time? It was highly unlikely – the power supplies were, after all, completely separate. But if it wasn’t coincidence, then that could only mean that they had both somehow been disrupted at the same time. But how had that happened? What could have done that?

  *

  Floating several hundred kilometres above the surface of the planet, the Ghost Wing drifted silently in its orbit, helplessly adrift after its power had also inexplicably failed. It was a mystery to First Mentor and the first of many, but for now the cause didn’t matter. What mattered was that the ship’s sensors were down. And those sensors were the eyes and ears that it used to help it see and feel things in the same way as the biological species of the universe – or physicals as it preferred to call them – felt them. And for a moment it felt alone and blind, floating in a dark void.

  Then, like an ancient instinctive memory, it all came flooding back, and slowly First Mentor reached out into the currents and energies of the universe itself. Then sensations, which were far beyond the understanding of any physical, flooded into its mind and for a moment it felt unimaginable joy.

  Then it forced itself to focus on what had happened: the Ship and its loss of power. And so it moved slowly through the vessel, gently caressing the cold power circuits and systems, looking for signs of life. But it found none. The vessel was cold and lifeless.

  Then it began to yearn. And it was a yearning almost as ancient as the universe itself: a powerful desire to reach for open space and bask in the life giving energy radiating from the distant and all-powerful star. After all, the energy vortexes of open space had once been its natural habitat, even if it had spent so long amongst the physicals that it had almost forgotten. And so it slid through the ship’s structure and out into space, hoping to bathe in the glow of the Star and feed. But once there, all it felt was darkness and cold.

  Its instinct was to detach itself from the vessel completely and drift out of the shadow of the planet into the sunlight. But it didn’t. It felt protective, not only to fragile creature which lay within the ship – no doubt succumbing to the cold of deep space – but also the vessel itself, which in a sense also lived but was now deprived of power. So it retreated back inside the ship and surrounded the poor shivering Polisian, swirling around and around it to warm the icy air and keep it from freezing and losing consciousness.

  Of course, First Mentor knew that it had nowhere near enough energy within itself to wake the vessel out of its hibernation, but that was OK because the vessel could wait. It would survive for the moment in deep freeze until its orbit took it out of the shadow of the planet and into the glow of the distant star. Then First Mentor might just be able to feed the ship by funnelling the energy of sunlight into its heart to give it just enough power to control its movements. Then it might be able to descend to the research station on the planet’s surface below, which, moments before the ship’s power had failed, had also lost power: a fact that First Mentor strongly believed was related. Then it could rescue the poor freezing human from the station – a physical to which it felt protective and also, inexplicably, a sense of familiarity.

  *

  With power to the station’s systems still offline, it had taken just minutes for the temperature in the control room to begin to drop rapidly, and even with his environmental suit on, which covered him from head to toe, Theo could feel the intense cold around him, penetrating deep into his bones and making his entire body ache. It seemed that even his suit’s power had failed.

  Then, as he stared out through the observation window at the dull, salmon pink sky outside, he noticed a tiny, pulsing, green dot out of the corner of his eye. And when he turned his head, the dot moved with it. His Companion! Quickly, Theo focussed on the dot and selected it, and a short message appeared:

  Low-level power mode initiated from ambient body heat.

  The Companion was drawing power from the warmth of his own body. Then, after a few seconds, another message appeared:

  Power up complete. 11% functionality restored.

  As Theo looked at the message and shivered, he wondered whether, with the room getting colder, his body heat would power his Companion for much longer. But what was it his grandfather would have said at a time like this? Don’t look a gift horse in the face, or something like that. It was, after all, working for now. And if he got so cold that his companion powered itself down, then he probably wouldn’t be conscious to use it anyway.

  Now he could try and get some answers. And the first place to start had to be the Ghost Wing in Orbit. After all, First Mentor had surely been monitoring what was happening and be on its way to rescue him. Or so he hoped.

  Theo looked back at his companion. The status message had disappeared and the screen was now blank again, save for the tiny dot. Were his usual companion options still available? Carefully, he focussed at the top of his vision where the options normally appeared, and suddenly he could see them – glowing faintly when he focussed on them, but hidden when he didn’t. Clearly, his companion was attempting to conserve power.

  It didn’t take long to find the Communicate menu and initiate a voice communication with the ghost wing. But after several seconds of silence, the response came back:

  Power Level insufficient for continuous voice communication.

  Power level suitable for text mode entry only. Do you wish to attempt?

  Yes

  No

  Previous

  Close

  He selected Yes and then a familiar keyboard template appeared. Slowly and laboriously, he tapped out a message on the virtual keyboard:

  Theo calling First Mentor, requesting help. Station power failed, companion 11% functional. Please respond.

  He selected Send and waited for a few seconds:

  No acknowledgment from recipient.

  Retry

  Close

  Mist wasn’t answering him. Or maybe couldn’t answer him. He tried again, but the same response came back. And he tried one final time, without success. It was almost like First Mentor wasn’t even there.

  Then there was a succession of faint clicks and the control room became bathed in a dull red light. The power was back online, at least partially. Hoping that the station’s node had also restarted, he selected Uplink, Establish and Athonesis Alpha Primary. After several seconds, the tiny pulsing green dot re-appeared and he selected it:

  Low-level power mode initiated from Geo-Thermal backup Source.

  Theo let out an audible sigh of relief. The Polisians clearly had a backup for everything.

  *

  Over the curved edge of the planet’s horizon, an arc of pink light appeared, and then the distant sun burst over the horizon. Immediately, First Mentor felt the familiar glow of the sun’s radiation, and instinctively fanned itself out as wide as it could to absorb as much energy as possible, while remaining tethered to the ship. As the sun rose higher and higher, ribbons of energy began to pulse through First Mentor towards the ship’s energy cells. It looked for all the world like a huge, shimmering, golden sunflower, and had anybody been able to see it, they would have experienced one of the rarest and most wonderful sights in the universe.

  It only took a few minutes for the ship’s systems to begin to power up again. The central computer node came on first in low power mode, followed quickly by the life support systems, again at a minimal level. And it had been just in time too. Orientator had already lapsed into unconsciousness due to the low oxygen levels and extreme cold.

  Once all the essential systems were operating at minimal power, the ship’s energy stores began to refill slowly. And as the ship drifted out of sunlight and back into the shadow of the planet, its energy stores had absorbed just enough power for minimal life support and low-level navigational thruster control. There were no inertial suppressors available, so Orientator would feel every jerk of acceleration and deceleration. But it was enough to reach the planet’s surface. Just about.

&n
bsp; Once back in the shadow of the planet, knowing that it would be sometime before its orbit brought it back into the glare of the distant sun, First Mentor folded down its huge energy sail and slipped back inside the ship. Then it reached out with its delicate fingers of energy and gently touched the communication relays of the ship, reaching deep into the heart of the node, first establishing an uplink and then taking complete control of the ship. First Mentor communicated with the ship quicker than any human could possibly imagine, and within microseconds had taken control of the navigational thrusters. Then, slowly and precisely, it began to nudge the ship out of its orbit and aim it carefully onto a path that would take it into the planet’s atmosphere and down to the surface. It was only a slight nudge and First Mentor knew it would take almost another orbit of the planet before it would hit the upper reaches of the atmosphere. There wasn’t enough energy for a more direct route. First Mentor also knew that it would be a little over an hour before it could land the vessel and rescue the stranded physical from the research station. That was, indeed, if it was still alive.

  *

  Theo walked quickly back down the corridor to the small utility room where he had landed, hoping that somehow the pod too had managed to find a backup power supply and would still work well enough to return him to the ship in orbit. But as he entered the small room and looked at the pod, his heart sank. Although to the untrained eye, the pod might have looked normal enough, there was something about it that told Theo that its power still hadn’t come back on line. Its surface was somehow dull and lifeless, where before it had seemed smooth, pliable and almost alive, like the skin of a living creature. And as he stepped towards it, his worst fears were confirmed. No magic doorway zipped itself open and there was no way of getting into the pod. Theo was beginning to think that his day couldn’t get any worse.