“That sounds like perfect timing to me. I'm going to head back out there and see if I can help Gheno and then make a move to the bridge or whatever might be the main hub on this station and try to find out what happened here. At the very least, we bring back our employers some information.”
“And find my data,” Karai said, spinning around quickly to meet the Captain’s rolling eyes.
“Yup, that too.”
He turned to walk out of the cabin when Ayia reached out and took his hand. He held it for a brief moment before bringing his eyes up to hers.
“Be...” Ayia began, “just be careful, ok?”
“I always am,” he replied.
“That’s what worries me,” she said, letting go of his hand.
“Cove. Tap into my helmet. You're coming with me,” Kale said out loud.
“Very well, Kale,” the feminine voice replied.
“Captain, I can assist you,” Sentinel’s voice suddenly replied.
“It’s ok. You're busy. I’ll take Cove. I'm sure she can map in 3d,” Kale said, looking at the Ayia and smiling.
“I can do both, Captain,” Sentinel pointed out.
“Do I sense a hint of jealousy, Sentinel?” Ayia asked.
“I was just pointing out that…” the AI began, but Kale interrupted him. “I know you can, pal. Let’s see what our new friend can do.”
“It would be my pleasure,” Cove said.
“If I don’t come back, blame the lady AI,” Kale said as he left the cabin.
Ayia turned and sat back down on the Captain’s chair. She sat there, thoughtful for nearly a minute before reaching out to the chair’s console. She logged in with her username and accessed her data. She was still researching ship information. She had seen the look of excitement on Kale’s face when the idea to build a custom ship was brought up and she was actually looking forward to it as well. She was browsing through some ship information when she glanced up and saw Karai looking at her. She stopped scanning the data.
“What?”
Karai thought carefully about what she was going to ask.
“You and Kale…?”
Ayia pursed her lips.
“It’s…” she began then stopped.
“Complicated?” Karai finished.
Ayia nodded. “Everything is complicated.”
“How long have you two known each other?”
“That is a long story.”
Karai sat down and looked back at the timer she set for the drones.
“We have about three hours until the first drone reaches its destination. I have to admit, I'm curious. Anything that will explain your bunch.”
“Well... It began when he rescued me from a criminal.”
Karai’s head dropped forward in disbelief as Ayia began to relay the past four years of her life.
Gheno had routed energy to the console and with Sentinel’s help, had begun mapping some of the power back onto the station. From their initial readings, the station was still mostly intact, with very little damage. They didn’t have nearly enough power to light up the whole station, but they could power up small sections, certainly all the way up to the command hub deep inside. That was Kale’s destination, while Gheno would head down to the living quarters. Sentinel would go along virtually with Gheno while Cove would guide Kale to the command hub. It took Kale just ten minutes of walking to reach the outside of the command room, but it took Cove almost ten more minutes to break into the commands that allowed them to open the door. Cove explained that she was limited in what she could do until she learned it. Her basic software package had been one of exploration and data collection, not subterfuge and hacking. Thankfully, it didn’t take her long to learn.
Kale’s true intention of bringing her along without Sentinel, although he was sure they could both easily see each other, was to test her against Sentinel. He could already sense that this new AI was actually an entirely new being. She was as equally blunt and direct as Sentinel, but was quicker to learn how not to be. Just the fact that she had accepted to use his name instead of insisting on Captain was a stark difference. She didn’t ask nearly as many questions as Sentinel did and when she explained things to him, she always asked in the end if he had understood her. Sentinel never asked that. How much of those differences were programing and code and how many were their own rewrites, Kale didn’t know, but he would ask Gheno about it later.
Gheno thought that Kale didn’t know, but he was aware just how much research he was doing into the AI. He was also aware that the genius boy was likely years ahead of any AI research out there. It was partly due to the fact that he had a live specimen to work with, but Kale easily admitted to himself that Gheno was a prodigy. The teenager liked to goof around and pretend he was aloof, but he had caught glimpses of Gheno's work, and of him at work. It was a level of application and seriousness that Kale knew was way above his own head.
Kale had approached him about the possibility of going to find work with a real research group. He was sure Oganno would have contacts. But every time he brought it up, Gheno insisted on remaining with them and said that he was happiest here. Kale couldn’t deny that the boy was certainly happy on the ship. It was also clear to him he was no longer the fourteen year-old kid he had picked up on Alioth. Gheno pulled his own weight, and more.
The door to the command hub finally unlocked and slid open. Just like every other room or hallway he had entered, this one was completely empty. There were no hints of human life anywhere on the station. Everything was clean and organized. If they had left, they had done so in an orderly manner and without chaos.
As he walked in, Cove powered up the room and a few screens came to life.
“Ok, Cove, find me some data. Logs, video…anything.”
***
Kale glanced up from the console and asked Cove how long they had been sitting there. She answered that it had been just over two hours and Kale joked that time flies when you’re checking logs for fun. Cove had immediately replied that it was better than checking dead bodies. Her attempt at humor was already far better than Sentinel’s ever had been.
All of the data he had been going through had yet to reveal what it was that had happened to the scientists at the station. There were no corruptions in the data and everything seemed to be intact. Cove found no alterations or deletions. The last log was a morning nearly a month ago and it revealed nothing. Kale had gone back nearly three weeks earlier than that, looking and listening to logs recorded by the station’s manager to see if there were any hints, but all he heard were boring meeting reviews. Cove had reviewed and diagnosed all of the hub’s systems and found no damage or alteration. There were no damage reports from engineering and no hints of an attack. Their only clue was the hangar doors they had forced opened. Kale was getting very close to calling it quits. He wanted to start salvaging what he could.
He had followed up with Gheno multiple times. Gheno had been down through the living quarters and found everything in good condition. There was no chaotic mess. Clothes were folded and put away and even the food was still consumable. The boy had thought he might find food and plates out on tables, but the mess hall was clean. The rooms were organized, the beds were made and everything was in its place. Gheno commented that everything was too neat.
“It’s almost as if they cleaned up the place before they left.”
After clearing the living quarters and the mess hall, Gheno walked a few levels down into the long stem of the station and entered the engineering room where the main Hausen reactor was located. The entire room was cold and quiet; the reactor itself was completely powered down. Sentinel had explained to them that this in itself was unusual. The black hole generator, a Hausen reactor, was a device that never had to be powered down. It was much safer for it to remain active even if there were other electrical or general power emergencies. The act of shutting down a Hausen reactor was very complicated and extremely dangerous if not done by professionals. A quick review of
the station’s directory showed that there was no one qualified to shut a Hausen reactor down.
Just like all the other rooms, the engineering deck was clean and completely organized.
“Ayia,” Kale called over the com. “You there?”
She replied via a chirp in the communicator. Kale asked her to deploy one of their drones to the outside of the station to scan the strange bumps all over the hull to see if they could determine what it was. It was clear that this mission had changed course and the best Kale hoped for was enough information to explain what happened. It would be up to their employers to do with that information as they felt. Kale instructed Cove to begin transferring all the log data back to the Lion. He also asked the AI to try to find as much of the research data as she could. This would also be transferred to their employers, but only after Karai had her look. He felt a little cheap allowing her to basically steal the information, but no one would know any better.
Twenty minutes later, Cove replied back to Kale that the drone was scanning the small bumps all along the hull. They were, as he had suspected, completely foreign to the station itself. The bumps were actually complete spheres that had dug into the hull. They were coming up simply as solid slugs. There were no power sources on any of the bumps the drone was scanning. The drone was scooping up some samples of the material and these would be sent back as well.
“Gheno. What do you think?” Kale asked over the com.
Gheno had been making his way back up to the hangar deck.
“Creepy?” he said.
“Anything more substantial?”
“They got up and left. I don’t know, Kale. Do scientists defect?”
“It’s possible, I suppose. The thing is, this station can technically fly. So if they did defect to say, another corporation, why not take the station too?”
“Maybe they need the station here? They’re coming back maybe? Or maybe they’re still sending signals from here.”
“This system is way too far away from anywhere. It would take the signals years to reach any system. Decades likely. Besides, didn’t Sentinel say that he wasn’t picking up any signals at all?”
“That is correct,” the AI said, jumping into the conversation.
Gheno stopped walking for a moment. He was just outside of one of the main doors that led out to the hangar deck.
“Nothing?” Gheno asked.
Kale ignored him for a moment. “Is there anything we can salvage here for our own use?”
“No, not really,” Gheno answered. “Sentinel, you said no radio signals, no waves, nothing?”
“I have not picked up any signals at all since we entered the system.”
“What about just cosmic noise?” Gheno asked.
There was a brief pause as Sentinel went over his data.
“Gheno, what are you getting at?” Kale said over the com, but Sentinel was already answering.
“Gheno. I hadn’t even calculated to approach that data. You are correct, there are no waves or signals; no noise at all. I am running more scans right now.”
“Ok, gentlemen, someone want to clue me in? What's going on?” Kale said, getting a bit nervous. The boy and AI were usually way ahead of him when it came to deducing what was going on.
“Gheno, all data reading blank. I’m trying to calculate how that is possible,” Sentinel displayed on Gheno’s heads up display in his helmet.
“Kale. You need to move your butt and we need to leave now,” Gheno said over the com. He reached forward and tapped the power to the hangar door and walked in.
“What? Why?” Kale asked. He immediately got up and began walking rapidly towards the exit of the command hub.
“We’re either being jammed or we just came into a new universe with different laws of physics.”
Kale was running full speed down the hallway out of the hub. “But isn’t this one of those weird systems? The two suns and all of that?”
“Gravity anomalies, sure. But Kale, Sentinel should be picking up all sorts of cosmic radiation and radio waves. He’s getting nothing. That,” Gheno explained, “is not natural.”
Gheno walked into the hangar horseshoe deck. The Lion was to his left at the far end of the deck. Directly in front of him the hangar doors were still wide open. He began walking towards the large box-like transport when something flew across the hangar door on the outside. It was brief and the object was gone in nearly a blink of an eye, but Gheno knew he had seen something. So had the two women in the ship.
“Um, Kale,” Ayia’s voice crackled over the com. “I think I just saw something out there.”
“Gheno?” Kale shouted into his helm, breathing heavily.
“Yeah. I’m here. I saw something too,” Gheno answered into the helmet. “Sentinel. Power the Lion down! Get a bubble over the reactor.”
Immediately, the few lights on the outside of the transport shut down and Gheno could see the lights in the pilot’s cabin go black. Gheno reached the console where they had plugged in the power and data cables and reached out to grab them.
“Kale?” he asked. He wanted to pull the power cords out but had to wait until the Captain made it back or he wouldn’t be able to get through any doors.
“Here,” the Captain answered, out of breath. Gheno turned to see him coming through the last door onto the hangar deck. His helmet was sitting oddly to the side on his head.
“Running in magnet boots isn’t easy. I smacked my head on the ceiling just down that hallway,” Kale said when he caught Gheno pointing at his helmet.
Gheno took hold of the cables and pulled them out, cutting the power to the station.
“Sentinel, can our little drone out there pick anything up?” Gheno asked.
“No.”
“Put it down against the hull. Hide it,” Gheno ordered. “We can’t let them, whoever, know we’re here. We’re in a bad spot.”
“Sentinel, can we use our gun in here?” Kale asked, referring to their gravity gauss weapon Sentinel had designed.
“If we fire it, we will likely crush the entire station in over us,” the AI explained.
“I was afraid of that.”
Kale reached Gheno and pointed at the open cargo hold on the Lion. Gheno reached the edge of the deck and jumped into the space between the deck and the ship. Kale followed right after him and they both floated over slowly. They reached the cargo door at nearly the same time and they pulled themselves inside. Without power, Gheno had to hand crank the cargo doors shut. That had to be done before they could take the suits off. Kale paced the floor of the cargo hold as Gheno worked the gears in order to close it. When the door was nearly closed, Kale walked over by the manual pressure release and waited. The moment the door closed, Gheno checked it to make sure the seal was good, and then gave Kale the thumbs up. Kale spun the equalizer and atmosphere rushed back into the room. Kale read the digital gauges on his wrist band until it showed equal, then began stripping out of the suit as quickly as possible. He was about to set the helmet down, when he heard Ayia’s voice come in over the helmet. He picked it up and put it close to his ear.
“Kale, get up here,” she said urgently.
Kale and Gheno dashed up the ship and into the pilot’s cabin just in time to see the tail end of something big go across the hangar door. Gheno walked up to the window, pointing out of it.
“That’s much bigger than what I caught a glimpse of the first time,” he said.
Kale turned to look at Ayia.
“There’s a much bigger ship out there. It just flew in front of the hangar door,” she said.
Ayia got up off the Captain’s chair and Kale sat down. He strapped himself in and everyone got the hint. Gheno sat down in the navigator’s chair, and Ayia took Karai over to the left side of the cabin where she showed the red-head how to pull down one of the side seats and strap in.
“Sentinel?” Kale asked. There was still no power to the ship.
“I can’t get any readings. We are being jammed.”
>
“So we need to hit that ship to be unjammed?”
“I don’t think the ship is the source of the jamming,” the AI replied.
“Um…” Kale stammered. “Ok, can you unclamp us from the deck? How long until we’d get full power? And how long after that till we can fire a shot from the gun?”
“Done,” the AI answered. “Thirteen seconds and two minutes.”
Kale scratched his beard. “Can we outrun them for two minutes?”
“I don’t know who they are, so I cannot answer that.”
“Well, if they aren’t the ones jamming, are they being jammed too?” Gheno asked.
“Possibly,” Kale answered and Sentinel confirmed that.
“They might not know we’re in here,” Gheno said.
“A huge ship just showed up outside a research station out in the middle of nowhere. I doubt it’s a coincidence,” Kale said. “We stay in here, we’re gonna be found out sooner or later. I’d rather have the element of surprise and make a run for it.”
“What about my research?” Karai asked.
“Your research isn’t going to matter much if we’re dead, caught or whatever else that might be worse than those two options,” Kale said. “Besides, we have a load of the station’s research for you to peruse over.”
“Ok, Sentinel. Get ready to do this. And when we fly out, turn around over the station and get it between us and whatever or whomever they are.”
The AI used a minor gravity field in order to push the Lion just slightly to the middle of the hangar to have a clear shot.
“Now.” Kale gave the order and power surged through the ship. Consoles began lighting up and the air vents began pumping air again. Tension was high in the small cabin as they waited the thirteen seconds for the ship’s systems to be fully operational. The way was clear directly in front of them. Gheno, who was sitting the closest to the windshield, started to squint. Something else was out there.
“Is it…” he started, trying hard to focus on the blackness just outside of the station. “Is it raining?”
The Lost Tribe (Sentinel Series Book 2) Page 13
