Molly rolled her eyes.
He ambled a couple of steps to look out of the window.
“Anything?” Molly asked.
He shrugged. “Just looks like space out there…”
“Hang on.” Molly shuffled past him and through into the lounge. She strode through to the other side, near the front, where she would normally sit.
“What is it?” he called after her.
“I’ve just thought of something.” She stopped dead next to a couple of the chairs, then turned back to him. “It’s not the same ship.”
“How do you know?”
“I would always bring my gear with me and plonk it in this seat next to me…”
“Yeah. I remember. I thought it was a tactic so that no one could sit next to you.”
“It was,” she confessed blankly. “But it made a dent in the seat over time. Stretched the material. This material is new… as if it’s never been used.”
She looked down at the bottoms of the backs of the other chairs. “No one has ever sat in these chairs. If they had, there would be tiny scuff marks everywhere.”
“I think we need to start calling you Sherlock in the future,” Joel chuffed from the other side of the lounge.
“Okay,” Oz announced, interrupting Molly’s investigation. “I’ve got it. Looks like we’ve been gone about eight weeks since the explosion.”
Molly and Joel looked at each other.
Joel raised his eyebrows. “Wow. That’s gonna be some overtime!”
“Eight weeks,” Molly muttered under her breath. “We’ve been gone for eight weeks. And died. And come back.”
Joel pushed his bottom lip out thoughtfully. “Yeah, imagine. At least the world won’t have changed that much in eight weeks. I mean, I’ve read some sci-fi stories where crews have got caught up in gravitational tides and when they managed to get out, hundreds of years had passed in the real world.”
“Good job we’re not in a sci-fi book,” Molly mused dryly.
“Yeah, there is that. But we still need to decide what to do next. I think the only sensible play is to contact the Federation and see what Lance wants us to do.”
Molly scratched at her face as she thought about the conundrum. “Okay. Maybe. But can we just mull it a bit longer. Jack did have a point…”
Joel sighed. “Okay, but not too long. The others will want to be deciding their futures as soon as this sinks in, and we don’t want them dreaming about things that they can’t do: like going home, if they can’t. The disappointment could be… devastating.”
“Okay, I hear you… We should head back in,” she added, turning back towards the cockpit, her mind churning the decisions that they were going to have to make very soon.
***
Inside the cockpit, things were starting to look a little bit more normal.
For a start, no one was sitting on the floor anymore. In fact, Brock, Crash and Pieter had all taken up their usual positions at their consoles and were now poring away over any information they could get from the central computer.
“Nope.” Brock shook his head, responding to something someone else had said. “This is definitely not the same ship. No way. I mean it looks similar. Same interface—kind of… But the processing array is different. Far more efficient in fact. And there are a bunch of directories I have no idea what they are for… It’s going to take me some time to figure this out.”
Molly moved over to his console and peered over his shoulder. “So what are you saying?”
“This ain’t the same ship!”
“But it looks the same,” she argued, despite what she’d already discovered.
“Apart from the new paint job,” Joel commented.
Ben’or joined them at Brock’s console. He squinted and looked at the holoscreen that Brock had pulled up. “My, my, my…” he muttered under his breath. “That structure looks incredibly complex. I wonder how the data is organized.”
Brock shook his head. “I have no clue. It looks way more sophisticated than anything we’d ever had on the Federation ships.”
Joel appeared at Brock’s other elbow. “So what are you saying? That it’s not a Federation ship?”
“Well, it looks like one,” he agreed. “It feels like one. But its systems are just a shit-ton more advanced than anything I’ve ever seen. Even since joining the Federation.”
Molly frowned. “So what we’re saying is that we’ve been brought back to life and our ship has been rebuilt, but it’s been rebuilt better than it was before?”
“Exactly,” Brock confirmed. “Maybe about five generations better than it was before.”
The group looked at each other in astonishment.
“How does that even work?” Molly mumbled, her eyes fixed on the holoscreen of controls Brock was already trying to fathom.
“Yeah,” Sean interjected, “no way can we tell the General that. Apart from anything, he’d take it off us and probably put us all in a hole to make sure no one else gets an inkling of this technology.”
“So…” Molly said slowly, “when we tell the General that we’re alive, we just have to not mention that the ship has been upgraded?”
“Right,” Sean agreed.
“This is going to be a complicated story to spin,” she confessed. “I mean how do we explain that our ship was blown to smithereens and then rebuilt in just eight weeks. By aliens, no less!”
Joel looked at her. “Can’t you just come up with some timey whimey physicsy shit to explain it?”
“I’ll have to think about that,” she responded dryly.
“There’s something else,” Brock added. “I can’t find Emma.”
Molly leaned forward and flicked one of the main console screens open. “She’s not on one of the hard drives needing to be rebooted?”
Brock shook his head. “Negative. I can’t find anything other than a small patch that allows us to do voice interface.”
“Shit.”
“I’m afraid to say Brock is right,” Oz announced over the intercom.
“Oz!” Pieter called out spontaneously, thrilled to hear his old friend.
“Greetings, Pieter, and all,” Oz responded. “I’m sorry I haven’t got better news. It seems that when we were all cloned, they didn’t pick up Emma as a conscious entity. From the looks of the programming, it’s possible that they just thought of her as a computer program, which they have rewritten most efficiently.”
“Well technically,” Sean interjected, “she was entity intelligence, and not fully artificial intelligence.”
Pieter’s eyes started welling with tears. “I think that was an academic distinction,” he retorted. “She was one of us. I’m going to miss her.” His hand fell onto the nearest console, and he caressed it gently with his fingers.
“It’s an interesting point,” Oz continued. “I had a lot of time while you were being rebuilt in the physical, and somehow I was afforded consciousness. I tried querying them—the ARs, that is—as to why I was awake and alert, and yet Molly’s body wasn’t. I think it had something to do with part of my processing being housed on the hardware… But from what I could tell, I was a puzzle even to these godlike ARs that gave you new bodies.”
“Well,” Sean said, ambling back over to the other side of the cockpit where Karina was sitting. “I for one am very grateful that they managed to put us back together the way that they did. Very grateful.”
“Here, here,” Jack added into the mix, smiling for the first time since the new realization had hit her.
“Okay,” Molly said, pulling the conversation back to the practicalities. “At some point we have to tell the General that we’re alive.” She looked pointedly at Sean. “But we’re not to mention the ship.”
Sean and Joel both nodded in agreement.
“I suppose the General will dictate whether we get to tell anyone else that we’re alive. And probably how we go about that.” She looked over at Ben’or. “I’m sorry, Ben’or. I’m sure you’ll
be able to see Arlene soon, but we just have to do this carefully.”
“It’s okay,” he said congenially. “I completely understand. Heck, we all have a lot to process. Consider this… The rest of the world thinks we’re dead. In all probabilities, our affairs have been wrapped up and the world has moved on. We don’t have jobs to go back to. We don’t owe the world anything anymore. And yet we have a new lease on life, as it were. We can do anything we choose. We have a fresh slate, and the rest of our lives ahead of us. I think we need to take some time to consider carefully what we’d really like to do with this gift.”
Molly pressed her lips together. “And something tells me that a conversation with the Federation is going to put some severe security restrictions on that. So how about we slow down and consider all our possibilities.”
She glanced over at Joel to gauge his reaction. “So perhaps talking to the General is a conversation we should have sooner rather than later?”
“I agree,” Joel confirmed.
Sean nodded too. Molly glanced at Jack, who also nodded, and then lowered her eyes to the floor.
“Okay,” Molly confirmed. “I’ll talk to Lance. Oz, set me up in the lounge, would you?”
She shook her head. “Man, this is gonna be a trippy conversation…”
Aboard The Empress, Outer Sark System
The holocall connected, revealing a rather pale-looking Lance Reynolds.
“Surprise!” Molly called quietly and anxiously through the connection.
“H-How?” he stuttered. Molly watched as Lance scrambled to try and comprehend the holo-image of the ghost before him.
Molly shrugged with one shoulder. “It’s a long story, boss. But basically, the alien race that we were protecting… They were able to bring us back.”
“Back from the dead?”
“It would appear so.” She raised one eyebrow comically.
“But how?”
Molly shrugged again. “We’re still unclear of the details, but I think it’s safe to say that they have technology that far exceeds ours. Our best guess at the moment is that they were somehow able to fold the space-time continuum so that they could pluck our entire ship and crew from the explosion before it even happened.”
“But we have eye witness reports saying they saw you explode.”
Molly shook her head casually. “They must have seen an explosion. Probably one of the missiles as it hit our shields. Or as it hit an event horizon as the fabric of reality was folded.”
You do realize that you’re lying to your commanding officer?
No. I’m doing what scientists have a long, exalted history of doing: I’m simplifying the empirical evidence and presenting a model that can be grasped and communicated more efficiently than the nuanced details.
To serve your own ends…
True, but we can continue the ethics discussion later. In fact, if I ever get back to my office on Estaria, I’m sure one of my students has written about this precise scenario.
Now you’re just bullshitting me.
And given the probability of us going back to Estaria, you’ll never know. Besides, one of us here is trying to have a conversation that can potentially save all our arses.
Touche.
Molly noticed Lance rubbing his eyes and then his whole face. He had muted the call and seemed to be having a conversation, perhaps with ADAM.
She waited, watching him going through the motions, processing what must have been complex emotions. She wondered if he was telling anyone else… Like her mom, for instance.
For a moment she felt overcome by an incredible sadness. A loss, at a relationship that didn’t work, but that she mourned nonetheless.
He unmuted his side of the call. “Well, Molly, I think it goes without saying that I’m thrilled that you’re all okay. You must forgive me, this is a lot to take in.”
“Yes, sir. I know that feeling well.”
“Erm, well you should also know that there are considerations that need to be taken into account. For instance, everyone on Estaria knows that you’re dead. Or rather, thinks that you’re dead. Again.”
He tilted his head thoughtfully. “On the plus side, you were pardoned from your fugitive status in your absence.”
Molly smirked. “Thank goodness for small mercies. I should die more often,” she joked.
The General peered at her sternly. “This isn’t a joking matter, Ms. Bates. There are many security concerns that we have. Not least that you have been under alien control for nearly two months. We’ll have to vet you, and there will be a quarantine period, and then we need to decide what to do with you.”
Molly felt palpitations in her chest. “What do you mean ‘what to do with us’?”
“Well, that remains to be seen,” Lance offered, the sternness melting away and giving her a modicum of reassurance, despite his words. “While we figure this out, we should start with the debriefing of each crew member on board. As soon as we get that done, we can decide how to bring you in.”
Molly nodded. “Well okay then. Let me talk to the crew and send the first person in.”
“Good. Thank you,” he responded, a little more officious than his normal manner, now.
Molly got up to leave the lounge.
“And Molly,” he called from the holoscreen, “it really is good to have you back. Even though it’s an administrative and security nightmare.”
Molly smiled before heading out. “Thanks, boss. That means a lot…”
***
Molly arrived back in the cockpit. All the laughing and chatter stopped immediately as every face turned to look at her.
“Okay, folks, there’s good news and bad.”
A groan went up from the crew.
“The good news is that it doesn’t sound like he’s about to put us in a lab for the rest of our lives. The bad news is that, as predicted, we do present a security risk. The General and ADAM will run their protocols in order to determine how and when we can integrate back into the world. Part of this means that we will all have to be interviewed.”
She turned her attention to their mechanic-extraordinaire. “I suggest we start with Brock… put him in a good mood, as it were.” She smiled, winking at Brock.
Brock nodded his head once in dutiful acknowledgment, and then started to get up. The others started to move too.
“One more thing,” she interrupted them. “You’re probably going to want to disregard any theories I’ve been bandying about… And any retelling of what I’ve told you I’ve seen. As far as you know—and this is the truth—we were about to be blown up, and then we woke up on the floor of this cockpit. The same cockpit that we were in before the explosion.”
She glanced at each of them in turn as if trying to make her point with her eyes only, so as not to be telling them to lie.
Pieter started to say something, and then stopped himself, slowly lowering his hand back to a resting position.
“And yes,” Molly continued, “that means not mentioning anything to do with the ship. Emma is offline and may well have been deleted somehow. That’s it. Got it?”
There were mutters and mumbles and everyone agreed to the story that was going to buy them their freedom. And maybe their ship. Even though technically it was never their ship in the first place.
“Okay, Brock, you’re up,” she concluded.
The team started chattering amongst themselves as Brock shuffled out of his console chair and headed out of the cockpit. Sean slapped him on the back as he walked past him.
“Okay,” Molly sighed, sitting down next to Crash, in Brock’s seat. “What’ve we found?”
Crash flicked some switches and then brought up a couple of holoscreens to show Molly. “Well first off,” he explained in his cooler-than-cool monotone voice, “no one seems to be answering calls to Gaitune.”
“We’re not meant to be calling anyone!” Molly exclaimed in horror. “Remember?”
Crash nodded. “Right, but since we knew that th
ere weren’t two fleets at each other’s throats right outside, we figured it would be worth taking a risk. Besides, no matter what the General decides, we know we can trust Paige and Maya, no matter what.”
Molly’s anxiety deflated as she exhaled. “Okay. You may have a point,” she conceded. “But no more going off-book. We’ve got to be super careful.”
Crash nodded once more. “Then there’s this,” he said, sliding a holoscreen over to her. “Oz managed to find it on the Gaitune servers without being detected.”
Molly’s eyes flicked from side to side across the screen.
“As you can see,” Crash continued, “we’ve been declared dead. They’ve had memorials for us and everything. Even the Senate. Although there weren’t big celebrations about our victory. And no one knows our names.”
He sounded almost disappointed.
“That’s probably a good thing,” Molly mumbled as she scanned the rest the document. “Okay, no more antics. We gotta fly below the radar on this… But let me know if you find anything else.”
Crash agreed, and Molly got up and headed outside to the corridor again.
***
Molly leaned against the steely cold wall of the corridor. She closed her eyes for a moment and tipped her head back against it, stretching her neck. She had woken up so blissfully unaware of anything, other than she was alive again. And now the familiar tension had started creeping back into her neck and shoulders, giving her a headache over her crown.
The door to the cockpit opened and boots clomped into her quiet corridor. She opened one eye and turned her head to see Joel standing there.
“Hey,” she whispered, closing her eye again.
Joel didn’t answer. Instead she just heard the steps against the grating of the ship’s flooring. She opened one eye again to see him pacing and wringing his hands.
“You okay?”
“Erm, yes. I think so.”
She started to close her eyes again.
“Only…”
She opened both eyes again, giving him her attention. “Yes?”
“Well, it’s, like Ben’or was saying.”
Molly frowned, listening.
“He said that, you know, we were done with our old lives. With the duties, the jobs. Probably all the missions too... And he was talking about how, you know, we get a do-over. We get to have something that we couldn’t have before. And I was thinking…”
Ascension_Age Of Expansion_A Kurtherian Gambit Series Page 20
