James Wittenbach - Worlds Apart 01

by Meridian

  “The auto-fertilizer,” answered Driver with some alarm.

  “That shouldn’t be activating now. Not with people in the bay.” Neg, it shouldn’t. Alkema knew about the chemicals used to promote the rapid life-cycle of ultra-wheat.

  Caustic to the skin, they caused hemorrhaging in the lungs if inhaled. He shined his light toward the sound. The auto-robotic fertilizers had deployed from the ceiling and were spraying the wheat crop from two and a half meters overhead, about two hundred meters away. They were also moving in his direction at a speed a little faster than a man could run.

  He grabbed Kayliegh by the arm and began running. There was a control column midway between them and the far bulkhead. It took only a few seconds to reach it. By then, they could smell the acidic, burning odor of the chemicals. Kayliegh ripped open an interface panel and tried to shut down the fertilizers, but to no effect. “Try an emergency override,” Alkema told her. “Cut power to the whole bay.” She input her override code and flipped the master-command switch. They waited a second… two seconds… but the gray cloud continued to advance. “It’s not working.”

  “Kumba Yah!” Alkema looked toward the exit hatch. It was still 70 meters away, and to reach it would require a diagonal run across a field of waist-high ultra-wheat. No way could they make it. The wheat would slow them down, trip them up. But a straight run up the pathway that divided the field…

  “Run,” Alkema commanded. He grabbed Kayliegh, then dashed down the pathway.

  “We’ll never make it,” she cried. Alkema ignored her and hoped that one emergency system in the bay still worked. The distance closed in front of him with terrifying slowness. Five meters out from the bulkhead, he launched himself at the wall, slamming his fist against the Fire Emergency switch. He landed hard and heard, or felt, his knee shatter against the deck. A second later, Kayliegh collapsed on the deck beside him, and water poured down on them.

  Commanding Officer’s Study

  The ancient, wizened visage of Dr. Daisy Reagan from Pegasus’s Medical Core scowled out from the comlink in Keeler’s Study. “Spcialist Alkema has a shattered patella, several pulled muscles, bruises, and a laceration on his left hand. He’ll remain unconscious while we rebuild the broken tissue, but should be back to normal in five to seven days. I released Specialist Driver. Her injuries were minor, and if she showed me a better way to stow my instruments one more time, I was going to strap her to a tranquilizer bed.”

  “Thanks, Keeler out.” He turned back to Lear seated across from him. “Well, that’s one piece of good news. Technical tells me that what happened in the Botany Bay was a system glitch that activated the fertilizer units and shut down all the control columns in that bay. Like every other malfunction to date, they can’t isolate the source.”

  “I am very concerned about these glitches,” Keeler continued. “I know most of them have been minor so far, but there have been two fatalities, and now two near fatalities. What if there is a major failure when we’re a few hundred light years from the nearest assistance?” Lear was the picture of calm reassurance. “Commander, almost every anomaly to date has occurred in a peripheral system. There have been no system problems at all in the core systems of life support, propulsion, integrity, or master control.”

  “Yet!” Keeler interjected.

  “We haven’t encountered any problems we can’t deal with on our own. This ship has been effectively self-sustaining for over a year. Some enhanced safety protocols to protect the crew are in order, I agree.

  But, I see no reason to delay launch.”

  “If you’ve been dealing with these problems for a year, why haven’t you isolated them?”

  “We have, in fact, traced almost all of them to programming errors. In fact, compared with a year ago, or two years ago when the system was first brought on-line, we’ve reduced the number of glitches to almost none. It doesn’t seem that way to you because you’ve just come in at the end of a long process.

  Compared to where we were, we’ve come a long way.”

  “Not far enough, apparently. What if a glitch in hyperspace destroys the insularity fields, or causes us to lose navigation?”

  “We’ve done thirty-six transitions during space trials with no failures whatsoever. None!” She was so intense, Keeler could almost see heat wavering in the air around her. “Commander, I have a family on board. A husband and two children. I would sooner cut my own throat than put them in danger, and I say we launch as planned. We can handle these glitches.”

  Keeler sighed. “We will proceed toward launch for now, but I’m one glitch away from cancellation, is that clear? Even if I flush the euphemism in my quarters and it plays the University of Corvallis fight song, we’re not moving, am I clear?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Dismissed.”

  When she, reluctantly, left, he rose and looked over the rear of his ship, where an Aves was approaching the landing bay, graceful as a Carpentarian Tiger Hawk gliding over a mountain lake.

  He was not ready to entertain Redfire’s thesis that the glitches were deliberate, and that his tactical officer had even made the suggestion still offended him, but, he sensed he could not completely dismiss it, for some reason he could not name.

  He decided to go to his quarters and sleep. Things might seem different in the afterdawn.

  Amenities Nexus – Deck 23

  Eliza Jane Change was crossing the overwalk, a kind of broad sky-bridge that overlooked Pegasus’s Amenities Nexus, a range of food courts, recreational areas, and small shops set between the Command Tower where the crew worked and the Habitation Areas where they lived. The Nexus bustled with personnel as duty shifts changed, and personnel coming off paused to grab a meal, or pick up a personal item. She had agreed to meet Eddie Roebuck here after his duty shift in the hangar bay.

  Eliza had met Eddie in the first period of Odyssey Project Training, when she had been ready to walk out, consequences be damned, and he had been much the same. Their training teams had been tasked to scale a mountain, erect a campsite, and survive for ten days without support. She found the exercise thoroughly asinine and pointless. He found it ‘a fragging frag in the fraghole.’ She thought it amusing that he was only in the Project to impress a woman who had dumped him. He was impressed that she was there under the heavy hand of the Mining Guild. “Kumba yah!” he had said. “The Guild is practically Organized Crime!”

  In Eddie’s mind, the Guild represented an en escape from the clean, wholesome family-friendly world that was Sapphire, and nothing she ever said dissuaded him of that perversely romantic image.

  Sapphireans may have celebrated personal liberty, but they revered personal responsibility. It was Eddie’s theory that The Guild was created explicitly as a dumping ground for Sapphire’s “loser-class,” and he was ready to enroll.

  Surrounded by the most ambitious children of Republic, and the luckiest and most talented sons and daughters of Sapphire, the two people who most would have preferred to have nothing to do with the Odyssey Project had found each other. The ironic part was, without the other to lean on, each would have washed out. Their friendship had sustained them in an endeavor neither of them really wanted to participate in.

  She found him already waiting for her, leaning over the rail, staring out across the Nexus, his expression scowling, but amused.

  “Did you get off early?” she asked.

  “In a manner of speaking. There was some unpleasantness.” Before she could inquire further, he took off on another tangent. “Look at ‘em,” Eddie said, a wave of his hand sweeping over the scene below him.

  “It looks like a fragging shopping mall.”

  “I know,” Eliza agreed. In her opinion, A true ship ought to surround its occupants with the sound of throbbing engines, the respiration of ventilators, the pulse of cooling systems, and the metallic creak of deck plating. Its trusses and beams should be exposed and give the appearance of sturdy hardware. The corridors ought to be lit with strips of i
ncandescent tubing and glow-spheres. Ideally, there should be occasional reactor leaks and radiation surges, as well as the occasional hull breach and emergency decompression. These kept the crew on their toes. The fussiness of this Pegasus offended her , with its food courts, and plant life, open spaces, and elaborate internal framework of supports designed to look like statues and arches, all of it nothing more than wasteful, unnecessary mass. If these people were so eager to leave their worlds behind, why did they bring so much of them along?

  Eddie looked at her and smiled, bright as solar flare. “I think I found a place more for people like us.

  It’s…”

  “You!” someone interrupted. They turned as one to see a furious young man in a Flight Core jacket bearing down on them. He was lean, with wiry light brown hair beady brown eyes. His hands balled into fists as he charged across the overwalk.

  Eddie held up his hands. “Yo, Beauty, pacify yourself.”

  The pilot closed in, and stopped just outside arm’s length, curling his arms as though restraining them from wrapping around Eddie Roebuck’s throat and squeezing. “I just came from the landing bay.

  My ship’s starboard underblade is scorched, and the crew chief says that you’re the one responsible.”

  “Beauty, it was only a small fire.”

  “Only a small fire?” the pilot gasped.

  “Za, and not really my fault. See, when you flew through that methane storm, you picked up a methane pocket in your inboard landing pod. All I did was…”

  “All I know,” shrieked the pilot, “is that my ship was not on fire when I turned it over to you.” He lunged toward Eddie, and Eliza put herself between them.

  “Flight Lieutenant… Eureka, is it?”

  “Aye,” he answered, drawing back.

  “Were you scheduled for any additional flight time between now and Launch?”

  “Negative… but my ship…”

  “Won’t be needed for the next thirty-seven days, minimum,” she said. “In that time, the damage will be repaired and Mr. Roebuck will be disciplined, and I can assure you, it will be unpleasant.”

  “Not as unpleasant as what I have in mind.”

  “Whereas a reprimand for violence could keep you grounded for sixty days,” Change finished.

  This sunk in. The pilot’s shoulders slumped. He looked a little beaten as he backed away, but paused for a parting shot before slinking across the overbridge. “Everybody knows you’re dys-functional, Roebuck.”

  “Pilots,” Eddie huffed.

  “They’re not all bad,” said Eliza Jane Change. “You just have to know how to handle them.” Prime Commander’s Quarters

  Keeler woke to the sound of glass shattering. He opened his eyes to see bits of his skylight raining down into his bedroom like dust and snowflakes. He shielded his eyes, and watched a shadowy form, feminine, and almost feline in the grace of its movement, fall through the empty frame and alight in the center of his sleep chamber.

  For the first time, he heard the voice of his ship; reassuring and urgent, androgynous but leaning to feminine. “Intruder Alert! An unauthorized person has been detected in this area. Ship’s Watch is responding.”

  She moved onto the pad beside him. Thin as a pipe, dressed in a tight black jumpsuit. She held a finger to her mouth as she approached. “They are going to throw me off this ship, but I have to warn you. You are the only one who can stop them.”

  Keeler maintained his calm, faced her directly, and softly but firmly demanded. “Who are you?”

  “That isn’t important…”

  “When a woman breaks into my quarters and threatens me, I want to know who she is. Call me old-fashioned, if you want…”

  She rolled her eyes, and they took a bit longer than usual to settle back. “You may call me Rhyme.

  And I came to warn you, not to threaten you. Turn back. Do not launch this ship.”

  “Are you an Isolationist?”

  She quivered and spoke in one long breathless sentence. “Some there are on this ship who believe that all the worlds outside were eaten by dragons some there are who hunt them some there are who wear this ship’s colors but turn black down below I am not of their number I only wanted to see the worlds without end.”

  “Slow down,” Keeler said, knowing that if she could stop talking like that then at least he would know he was not dreaming.

  “But she is awakening, Commander,” the woman crossed over the verge of tears and great wet streaks streamed from her eyes. “She is awakening, and she will not rest again.”

  “Who is awakening?” Keeler asked.

  The woman began to give him an answer, “She… the mind…” but it dissolved into incoherent sobs.

  Just at that time, two sturdy men and a bullish looking woman entered, dressed in the heavy black and orange of the Ship’s Watch.

  “Move away from the Commander,” the woman barked.

  The woman turned to Watchmen and shouted. “He was selected by the hands of the dead. They counsel him, now.”

  Her words sent shivers up Keeler’s back held up his hand. “Wait! Who is she? Who is waking up?” Rhyme opened her mouth as though trying to scream something… a name? In the same gesture, she raised her arms, as though to pull out the words from underneath her fear. A Watchman, perhaps mistaking this for a lunge, fired a shot from his pulse weapon that caught her in the center of her chest, sent a shock of white light through her body and dropped her on the bed.

  “Are you all right, Commander Keeler?” the Watchman asked.

  “Who is she, and how did she get in here?” Keeler demanded.

  “Sir, those are the same questions we will want answered.”

  The commander watched as the two Watchmen gently lifted the small, unconscious form, and laid her on a couch. “What will happen to her?”

  “She’ll be taken to the nearest Mediplex and guarded until she regains consciousness. After an interrogation, she’ll be sent back to her planet of origin.” Keeler began to rise from his sleep unit.

  “There’s no point in that, sir,” the Watchman continued. “She will be unconscious for several hours.

  You can interview her in the morning, if you like. We will post a Watchmen outside your quarters until this incident has been investigated.”

  Reluctantly, the commander nodded. Even with the ministrations of his sleeper, he doubted slumber would come easily now.

  chapter three

  Pegasus – Keeler’s Quarters

  Tyro Commander Redfire, dressed in the black meditation robe of the Warrior Monks of Sapphire’s Arcadian Hinterlands approached the guard at the entrance to Keeler’s Quarters. “I received an intruder alert. Is the commander all right?”

  The Watchman paused, as though considering whether the commander’s condition was privileged information. He was a Republicker. “The commander is all right.”

  “I should check in with him,” Redfire persisted. He waved at the ‘someone’s-at-the-door’ pad, which was programmed to activate only if the occupant was awake and receptive to company.

  Keeler appeared on the pad. “Who is it?”

  “Redfire. I heard a commotion – when your chosen art is breaking things, you develop an ear – and I thought I’d check in on you.”

  “Come on in, door’s open, or ‘hatch’ or whatever spaceship-specific nomenclature is appropriate.” The hatch slid open and Redfire entered. The interior decor had been greatly enhanced since Redfire’s last visit. Personal effects from the Keeler Estate had replaced the O-P issue furnishings. Redfire made his way toward the terra-cotta fireplace and the red, blue, and yellow tiles that surrounded it. The objets-d’art Keeler had chosen to bring were all very old; his furnishings were new, but just as expensive; tables and cabinets of Arcadian hardwood, seats and couches covered in rich, Borealan suede.

  Keeler settled onto a couch. “While you’re scoping my digs, why don’t you pour us some of that brown liquid from the pretty crystal bottles?”


  “Spirits?”

  “Is that what that is?” Keeler chuckled at his own joke.

  Za, it is, Redfire thought. Also, there was quite a lot of it, and an even larger quantity stored in a cargo bay, if the technicians who had unloaded the Prime Commander’s Aves were reliable. As he poured the drink, a sensor in his left eye provided a schematic of the quarters. As he had expected, the scan indicated one of the rooms had been sealed off and insulated against scans of any kind. Interesting, what was he hiding?

  “So, what did I miss?” Redfire asked.

  “Oh, just a crazy woman breaking into my bedroom. Nothing unusual except this one was going on about people on his ship who thought the other colonies had been eaten by dragons.”

  “Really? What else did she say?”

  “Something about someone waking up, perhaps, a saboteur within the crew awaiting activation, in other words, a sleeper? What do you know about stowaways on my ship, saboteurs in the crew?” Keeler accepted the glass of Jutland firewater Redfire offered him.

  Redfire poured himself a glass of Old Matthias. “Not much. I’m a tactical officer… ship’s weapons, Aves, Accipiters, Warfighters. Internal ship’s security is Ex-Commander Lear’s area.” “Ex-Commander” was a kind of in-joke among certain of the crew, a reminder that she had twice lost a chance to command.

  “What can you tell me about the Isolationists?”

  “Probably little you don’t already know. There are sixteen distinct Isolationist phalanges, all of whom oppose Odyssey, and nine of whom even oppose contact between our two planets. Most groups are motivated by a belief that our exceptional cultures would be contaminated by contact with other colonies. The most dangerous groups believe that we will bring back to our worlds whatever destroyed the Galactic Commonwealth.”

  “Have you explored the possibility of an Isolationist connection to the system glitches we have been experiencing? Possibly a saboteur?”