by Dan Worth
‘Good day Commander, my name is Captain Chen,’ said Michelle briskly. ‘We are currently searching for a ship in this part of space, I was wondering if you could be of assistance?’
‘Certainly Captain,’ said Lyakhov graciously. ‘We have few ships coming through here. It should be easy to find the records of the one you’re after.’
‘Thank you Commander. The ship we are trying to trace is called the Nine Lives, commanded by a man named Minaba. It’s a modified Bison transport. Apparently it docked here around three days ago, and then left for Midgard. It hasn’t been seen since.’
‘I see. One moment, Captain.’ Lyakhov spoke to a subordinate off screen. ‘One of my junior staff is just accessing the details Captain. Tell me, why are you so eager to speak to this Minaba gentleman?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t discuss the details Commander, it’s a matter of some sensitivity.’
Lyakhov grunted derisively. ‘You do of course realise that you showing up like this is hardly the softly-softly approach Captain, everyone in the system will have heard about your presence here by the end of the day. Any ne’er-do-wells will be long gone in a matter of hours.’
‘Well, our primary mission here is a show of force in this system, among others. This manhunt is something of a sideline. Wouldn’t you agree that it might do some good to put the fear of God into your local undesirables and remind them of the power that the Navy wields?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Lyakhov. ‘Though the Navy seldom shows its face around here. Ah, it seems we have found the ship you want. Nine Lives, Captain Hideo Minaba, docked here eighty-one hours ago. Cargo manifest included five tonnes of assorted precious minerals, ten tonnes of deuterium. Destination, Fort Roskilde in the Midgard system. His was the last ship to jump out of the system since then.’
‘No passengers?’
‘None listed, not that that’s any guarantee of course.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Sorry I couldn’t be of more help Captain.’
‘That’s quite alright Commander, thank you for your time. Chen out.’ She closed the channel and stared thoughtfully at the ochre clouds of Petrov.
‘You think Minaba posted a false destination before he left?’ said Ramirez.
‘Possibly,’ she thought for a moment. ‘Lieutenant Singh, would it be possible to detect the jump wake of the Nine Lives after this length of time?’
‘It depends, Captain. Newer drives leave less of a warp wake, but if his drives are old or poorly maintained we might be able to pick it up with our new instrument packages. I’ll conduct a high resolution sweep of the area.’
There was brief pause as Singh activated the Mark Antony’s sensors to pick out the minute ripples in space-time left by the passage of a jumping vessel.
‘I’ve got something!’ he reported excitedly ‘Captain, I have a trail left by a small vessel of some kind. It leads in the direction of Midgard. It has to be the Nine Lives.’
‘Excellent work Lieutenant. This of course leaves us with the question: Why did he not show up in Midgard?’
‘Captain I see two possibilities.’ said Ramirez. ‘Either his engines failed half way between here and Midgard, or he plotted jump co-ordinates mid-way between the two systems and then jumped again to somewhere else. It would look from this end as though he’d jumped for Midgard when in fact he was heading somewhere different entirely.’
‘Well there’s only one way to find out, we’ll have to follow the trail and see where it leads. Our spatial distortion sensors have an effective range of half a light year, is that correct Mr Singh?’
‘Yes Captain, although their effectiveness drops off exponentially after one third.’
‘And I see from my chart that it’s five light years to Midgard from here. Well there’s only one way to do this; Ensign plot a course for Midgard and have us make five jumps of one light year each along the way. I shall speak to Captain Knoxville on the Stillwell and have him make the same number of jumps, but staggered between ours so that we can sweep the entire route. We’ll find Minaba one way or another. I’d like to get started immediately.’
It was some time before they found the Nine Lives. Initially both ships failed to detect the presence of the small craft, but the when the warp wake mysteriously vanished after the destroyer’s third jump, the Mark Antony and the Stillwell retraced their steps, making smaller jumps of a quarter of a light year each until they found the ship.
The Nine Lives was eventually found drifting three point four light years out from Kiev, and she was slightly off course. Its hull was intact and its lights shone brightly in the blackness of interstellar space, but hailing the vessel elicited no response. Closer examination revealed that the reactors were still online. There was something else too; the Stillwell had first picked it up: another jump wake. Someone else had been here in the last twenty four hours.
Singh ran another scan to confirm the Stillwell’s findings. He looked grim.
‘Lieutenant?’ said Chen, noticing his demeanour.
‘Captain, these space time ripples are very difficult to detect. My congratulations to Lieutenant Zemeckis on the Stillwell for finding them, but whoever was here before us has jump drive technology that far exceeds our own. Esacir or Arkari I’d say.’
‘Any signs of life in the vessel?’
‘Impossible to tell, the jump engines have been damaged and there’s too much distortion coming from them to get a clear reading.’
‘Would it be safe to board the vessel?’
‘In suits, yes. They should provide sufficient shielding from any short term exposure.’
‘Very well. Commander Ramirez, assemble a boarding party, take at least one member of our medical staff and someone from engineering. Suit up and take a shuttle over to that ship. Since we don’t fully know what’s inside I’d rather not dock and put the ship at any needless risk.’
Ramirez left the bridge and assembled his team, he took Doctor Anderton, the ship’s Chief Medical Officer, as well as Lieutenant Wolfowicz, a bright young officer from engineering and a small squad consisting of five of the ship’s marine complement.
He wasn’t looking forward to this assignment at all, though he kept that fact to himself. Investigating mysterious ghost ships was not his idea of a fun time. His imagination was populating the drifting craft with all sorts of unmentionable lurking horrors as he sat in the cramped passenger compartment of the small shuttle with five other suited figures. Thankfully the suits were new and their insides smelt only of fresh rubber and plastic instead of the more usual bodily smells sported by well-worn examples. The marines each held a side-arm; laser pistols with enough power to kill, but not puncture a hole in a ship’s hull. Doctor Anderton and Lieutenant Wolfowicz each had small packs of tools and instruments relating to their specific professions clipped to their suit belts.
The marines looked edgy. Anderton looked nonchalant as she checked her medi-packs. Wolfowicz looked nervous and Ramirez wondered if he did too. Thankfully, it was a brief journey from the destroyer to the Nine Lives. The boxy shuttle sped from the docking bay located between the armoured keel plates of the Mark Antony, a fly next to the behemoth vessel. Ramirez could see the lights of smaller Stillwell some distance away against the blackness of interstellar space. It looked like a much smaller, stubbier version of his own ship, studded with a number of gatling-laser defensive turrets. For now it was surveying the second warp wake that they had discovered.
They were coming close to the Nine Lives now. The shuttle’s pilot, one of the marines, docked the tiny craft onto the transport’s dorsal hatch. There was a detectable thud as the rear of the shuttle clamped itself to the transport, followed by the mechanical sounds of the hatches opening.
The airlock was small, only large enough for two people at once, so it took quite a time for everyone to board the vessel and assemble outside the airlock in the cargo bay. The ship was quiet, save for the sounds of their suits and the gentle background hum of idling systems.
Ramirez called out over his suit’s external speakers, there was no reply. He called out again:
‘My name is Commander Ramirez from the Commonwealth Navy vessel Mark Antony; we have come aboard your vessel in order to assist you and to ask you one or two questions. We mean you no harm but I warn you I have a squad of armed marines accompanying me.’ There was still no answer, Ramirez felt slightly ridiculous. He turned to Wolfowicz.
‘Lieutenant, get into the engineering spaces above this cargo bay and have a look at the engines, try and find out what happened to this ship. Take Corporal Archer here with you just in case. The rest of you come with me, we’ll search this ship for any clues, or any fugitives. Starting here and moving forward’
They checked the cargo bay and found nothing amongst the big cargo pods that were clamped to the greasy floor. Next they moved forward into the ship’s accommodation section. Ramirez entered one of the small cabins and noticed a few strands of red hair on the bunk pillow, he puzzled at that. Wolfowicz came over the comm-link.
‘Sir, there’s something strange about these engines.’
‘How so?’
‘It looks like they’ve been tampered with. Some of the safeties have been removed, hence the field overload, but that that isn’t what brought the Nine Lives out of her jump.’
‘So what did?’
‘I’ve pulled the system logs from the jump drive computer, the Nine Lives came out of her jump normally as a result of commands sent to it from the navigational computer. In other words: she jumped here normally and then someone messed with the engines to make it look like an engine failure.’
‘Thanks Lieutenant, good work. Come down here now, we’re going to head up to the cockpit to see if we can coax anything out of the ship’s computers.’
‘Aye, sir. Wolfowicz out.’
Ramirez looked at the pillow again. Rochenko had said Minaba had had a passenger recently. He wondered if this was her or someone else. He picked up the hairs and popped them in a small sealable plastic bag, the thick fingers of his suit made the task fiddly and it took him some time to get the red fibres into the small receptacle. He swore repeatedly.
His task completed, Ramirez exited the cabin, and came face to face with two of the marines, who having searched the opposite cabin had found nothing. Anderton had been investigating the tiny ship’s galley with the squad’s sergeant, but they had found nothing untoward either. Looking up the gangway Ramirez saw one of the marines, Olsen, head for the cockpit and peer round the door. He came running back, yelling over the comm-link and almost deafening the others.
‘Sir, Sir I’ve found the ship’s captain. You ain’t gonna believe this! Shit…’ Ramirez saw the man stifle the urge to vomit inside his suit. Olsen wrenched his helmet off and spewed onto the deck. Coughing, he wiped his mouth and replaced the helm, apologising profusely.
‘Shit, sorry Commander.’
‘That’s alright,’ said Ramirez, grateful that his suit shielded him from the smell of the fresh puddle of puke. ‘Just be thankful we’re not wearing these things in a vacuum.’
‘You’d better come this way, sir,’ said Olsen. ‘I ain’t no detective but I’d say this guy was murdered.’
‘Murdered’ thought Ramirez, was probably an understatement. ‘Butchered’, was more accurate. Minaba was seated in his command couch, with a look a total horror frozen into his dead features. The front of his cranium had burst open. Skull fragments, blood and brain matter had spattered across the control consoles and partially solidified. Ramirez tried not to look too closely at the riven corpse in front of him.
‘This head wound’s unusual,’ Anderton commented as she gestured at the top of Minaba’s skull. ‘It’s an exit wound.’
‘So?’
‘But where is the entry wound? He wasn’t shot. Look at the way the skull has been forced apart. Something was inside his head and dug its way out.’
‘Such as?’
‘I have no idea. But look at the amount of brain matter on this console. There isn’t nearly enough to constitute the brain of an adult human.’
‘Some parasite we’ve never encountered maybe?’
‘Maybe. But then how was he walking around normally with three quarters of his brain missing?’
The Mark Antony was returning to New Colorado, with the Nine Lives in its shuttle bay, and the grisly remains of Captain Minaba in the morgue. Chen sat her in ready-room with Ramirez as they spoke to Agents Rochenko and Pearson over the ship’s hypercom and informed them of their find. The two men looked deeply troubled.
‘Captain, I find this news disturbing,’ said Pearson.
‘Perhaps this Dr O’Reilly might be able to shed some light on this, should you apprehend her.’ said Chen.
‘Perhaps.’
‘What did you say she was accused of?’
‘Stealing top secret documents from the Arkari military.’
‘Says who.’ said Ramirez.
‘Says the Arkari Navy,’ said Rochenko. ‘She and Cor boarded an experimental vessel of theirs that had been lost some days earlier. It had suffered an engine malfunction that had killed all the crew. They took classified technical manuals and logs from the ship and they’ve been giving us the run-around ever since. We suspect they might pass them on to the K’Soth for financial reward. Since they are both Commonwealth citizens the Arkari had to give us jurisdiction over the investigation.’
‘Have you spoken to O’Reilly? Or tried to apprehend her?’
‘We have, believe me. However so far we haven’t been able to make the accusations stick since we haven’t managed to catch her with the documents in her possession. We think Cor has them but we don’t know where he is, apparently an Arkari vessel spotted him at Riianto in Esacir space, but he hasn’t been seen since.’
‘I see.’
‘The thing is - O’Reilly claims that the documents aren’t top secret after all. She says that the ship that they boarded was a million year old antique and that what they took were items of archaeological interest.’
‘A million year old Arkari ship? Please.’
‘I know, preposterous isn’t it?
‘Did the Arkari let you see the ship?’
‘No.’
‘Hmm. Ever considered that they might be lying to you?’
‘The Arkari? Captain if we go making an accusation like that, without proper evidence it could cause all sorts of problems. They are our allies after all. You don’t really think they would do you?’
‘We found jump engine signatures around the Nine Lives that we think indicated that either an Arkari or an Esacir vessel had been in the vicinity following the murder.’
‘Not a K’Soth craft?’
‘Not unless it was K’Soth piloting a stolen vessel.’
‘You can’t steal Arkari or Esacir ships, Captain. They don’t let you.’
‘I know. Anyway, we shall be arriving back at New Colorado in five hours time and you can see for yourself. We’ll turn the ship, the body and all our sensor logs over to you upon our arrival.’
‘Thank you Captain, you’ve been an immense help, though I wish you had found Minaba alive rather than dead,’ said Pearson.
‘No doubt he would share your opinion Agent Pearson, Chen out.’ She sighed and turned to Ramirez. ‘As if we don’t have enough to worry about with the K’Soth. I wonder what the Arkari are up to?’
‘Huh,’ he snorted. ‘They’ve got inscrutable down to a fine art. If our own government doesn’t even know…’
‘Well quite, if it is the Arkari of course. Christ, I hate all this secrecy!’ she said and started clearing some notes from her desk, screwing them up and feeding them into the desk’s disposal slot.
‘Really? Does that include our little secret?’ he said and grinned at her.
‘Well I’m prepared to make exceptions,’ she said. ‘Dinner in my quarters tonight, Al?’
‘Delighted to, I imagine we have lots of important things to talk about, duty rosters, repa
ir schedules…’
‘Do you think the crew know?’ she said.
‘I don’t think so. I thought Singh had found out the other day, but if he does he’s keeping it to himself.’
‘Kind of makes it more exciting, don’t you think?’ she winked at him.
Ramirez could never cease to be amazed at Chen’s ability to suddenly change: minutes earlier she had been the stern, businesslike Captain of a star ship but now she was positively playful. She was right, it was exciting. He went over to her and kissed her hungrily.
Third
Once, we were offered a brief moment of hope. The gateway back to our home re-opened and with joy we sent a ship through, back to prepare the way for others so that we might wreak vengeance on those who had so cruelly exiled us to this frozen hellish place. But we were eager for blood and alas, too hasty. We were beaten back and defeated once again by those who had defeated us before. The gateway was sealed again, trapping our brethren on the other side and us on this. We did not hear from them ever again, we know not their fate.
To have the chance of freedom and rebirth snatched away so cruelly was more than some of our number could bear. Many took it upon themselves to end their tortured immortality and finally gave in to death after so many millennia of suffering in this place.
