“You heard me, coward,” sneered his doppelganger.
Cal could not form any words, nor could he even scoff in response. A lump rose in his throat and tightened it so hard he felt as if he was being strangled.
His clone began to circle to his left. “No wonder Dad said you’re a loser. Look at you.”
No…
“A little trouble comes up and you run away,” it continued. “You know you’re taking the easy way out. Just admit it.”
“NO!”
“No? Funny, because it seems to me that you could have worked it all out if you had just tried.”
“I’m losing my mind, you should know that,” Cal retorted.
“Could be losing your mind,” it corrected as it walked behind him. Cal could feel the weight of its stare as the hairs on his neck rose. “Or you could just be stressed out, ever thought of that?”
“No, not at all. Life on this bucket is a peach.” He managed to force a spate of sarcasm from his tightened throat.
The doppelganger ignored him. “You were learning a skill. No, make that two skills. But hey, you’ve thrown that away too just to go hide in a hole.”
“That wasn’t a skill. Doctor Taylor was just using me to make her job easier. Any monkey could learn to do that. As for the book, I just got bored.”
“Bull,” it spat as it crossed back into Cal’s line of vision. “Nobody has ever read a chemistry book because they were bored. The only thing worse than a coward is a lying coward.”
Cal closed his eyes and tried to shake off the sting of that slight.
“What the hell were you hoping to learn, anyway?”
“Something I could do to help on the planet,” he replied as he opened his eyes. The apparition had stopped in front of him and was glaring daggers.
“There you go. You had to go and read a book because you knew somewhere inside that thick skull of yours that you were a waste of space on this mission.” It tapped on its temple in a dramatic manner. “And guess what? You were right.”
Cal clenched his jaw, barely missing his tongue as he bit down. He balled his left hand into a fist.
It looked down at his hand for a moment, and then back to his eyes and laughed. “You’re going to hit me? I think that’s the dumbest in a long line of dumb decisions you’ve made.”
Cal narrowed his eyes and stared into its piercing blue eyes. It seemed as if it could peer through him and read him like a book.
Of course it can, it’s me.
He straightened up and relaxed his hand as he tried to regain composure. “I’m not perfect, but I’m trying.”
“You were trying.” It seemed to fashion each correction into its own insult. “You just ended up doing what you always do; giving up and running away.”
Cal could feel his temper rise. “Just how am I running away this time?”
“Duh, by going into stasis for the rest of the trip. You’ve stopped your studies, you’ve shown Colonel Dayton and the crew that you can’t handle life…” It trailed off and then grinned evilly. “Did I forget to mention how you gave up on Alexis?”
“I did not give up on her. She wanted to go into…”
“She was testing you, jackass,” his double interrupted. It cupped its hands to its mouth. “News flash: you failed.”
Cal spun quickly around so he could not see his own face judging him. His arms went rigid and he curled both hands into fists, despite the protests from his broken finger. His gaze peered deep into the darkness.
“No,” Cal said sternly.
“Yes, you failed.”
“No I didn’t.” He wheeled around to face his assailant once more. “She wanted to be put in stasis. Knowing what I know now, I still would have put her in stasis. Do you think that either one of us would have enjoyed watching me spin out of control and go insane?” Cal waited for a response that never came. “How much more damage would that have caused? No thank you, I’d rather fail the test.”
“She’s still going to think you’re weak when she wakes up.”
“She’ll get over it.”
“Will she?”
Cal wished that he could wipe the smirk off of the apparition’s face. It does have a point. Will she get over it?
“That’s not the worst that she’ll think, and you know it,” it continued.
Cal tried to force the lump from his throat. “I know it. That’s something I just have to face.”
“How?”
“I don’t have to explain it to you. You already know how.”
Cal could see his double’s jaw clench. He recognized the look of frustration on his own face. “I hope you know what you’re doing, then. Remember, your plan hinges on technical prowess that you don’t actually have thanks to slacking off in school.”
“Again, leave that to me,” he said as he stood his ground.
The doppelganger sized him up and nodded. “Good luck with that. Oh and tell Dad hi next time you see him.” It turned and walked quickly back into the darkness.
A chill went down Cal’s spine. The words of his double struck a chord with him.
I’m not going to wake up any time soon. There are more nightmares to come.
Cal took a deep breath and screwed up his courage. He walked into the darkness beyond the shadowy fangs.
Brev Capt Haruka Kimura
24 September 2029, 18:06
Raphael
The course projections on Haruka’s screen blurred into a thick, white mass. She blinked and rubbed her eyes, but it did nothing to clarify her vision. Her back ached and her stomach growled like an upset lap dog.
It’s no good. I can’t get it any closer, she thought. If I stare at this screen any longer today, my head will pop.
Yesterday she stayed at her terminal for twelve straight hours running nav simulations. She was aware that she was well over ten hours today. Once again, Nova was ahead of schedule with her propulsion maintenance. Ops was running on a light schedule this cycle. Everything seemed to be pushing Haruka into a position where she had less and less time to solve the course correction problem.
Haruka did not seem to be nearing a solution, either. She had been taking an approach of testing one variable set at a time to isolate its effect on the ship’s trajectory. In her latest calculations, she was able to get Raphael as far as the planet, but the massive sleeper ship was still carrying too much speed, and skipped right through the atmosphere.
She had even tried a slow burn of the braking drive during the final maintenance cycle, but the results of those simulations were even more horrifying; Raphael became unpredictable and would veer wildly off course. Some predictions even showed the ship crashing into one of Demeter’s projected moons, or the massive gas giant that circled both stars.
If I don’t find the solution, we’re as good as dead. I have to keep going. She was caught by surprise by a massive yawn. Ugh. Okay, maybe just one more simulation tonight.
Haruka rubbed her eyes again and reset the parameters for the simulation. The computer populated all known variables based on the ship’s present course. She read each individual field carefully, desperate to find a clue hidden within that she had overlooked before. Nothing stood out, every reading from ship speed to roll rate and thrust power remained exactly the same as every other time she had tried to analyze the data.
She sighed and smashed the palms of her hands into the terminal in frustration. There’s not enough time. Not enough time to figure out this problem, not enough time to turn the ship, not enough time to slow the ship down.
She looked at the time clock on her screen as it flipped over a minute mark. One would think that with twenty five years left, I’d be able to figure this…
Her head snapped up and she looked directly in front of her at an orange dot far in the distance, larger than any of the other stars in the field.
“That’s it,” she yelled excitedly. “Time!”
Haruka scrolled her finger over the parameters until she found the start
time for the braking maneuver. I don’t need to brake three years early, that’s why the ship kept going too far off course. She laughed at herself and shook her head as she plugged a new number in for the braking start. If I can get an extra week on approach, that should give us enough time. Maybe even some room for error.
She started the simulation one more time. As she watched the final approach of Raphael, she drew in a deep breath and held it. Seconds ticked by and the tiny white dot neared the planet. Haruka had not realized that she still held her breath until she nearly passed out. The air rushed from her lungs and she panted as her lungs forced her to breathe.
Damn it, Haruka, breathe. You can run the sim again if it doesn’t work.
Raphael approached the orbital path of Demeter. A smile crept across Haruka’s face as the ship appeared to be dead on course for the entry plane. A movement from the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she glanced at the side of the screen. Demeter’s closer moon bore down on Raphael. The tiny ship disappeared from view as it appeared to get sucked into the gravity well of the satellite.
The words she had come to dread flashed across the screen in bold, red letters: SIMULATION TERMINATED. SURVIVAL CHANCE: 0%
Haruka slammed her fist on the terminal again. Damn it. Damn you, Fox. Damn you, Bartrand. You’ve killed us all. She grabbed her long, black hair in her hands and screamed. Damn your arrogance! She found herself growling as a way to keep from screaming her lungs inside out. Her hands shook furiously, and she thought at any minute that she might tear clumps of her hair from her skull.
“Bad day, Captain?” Major Emberley snuck up from behind her; not a difficult task given how much of a ruckus she had made.
“Sir,” she straightened herself up and saluted, “apologies for my poor behavior. It won’t happen again.”
Emberley hoisted himself gently over the railing and into the seat next to Haruka. He looked at the slash of red across her terminal. “Still no luck with the course corrections?” His voice was calm, almost to the point of being unsettling.
“Very close, sir. This is the closest sim I’ve run yet, but we cross the inner moon’s orbit at the wrong time.”
“I see. So why the outburst? I’m sure that a minor tweak of what you’re working on here will get us there.” He smiled softly at Haruka. “You’ve almost got us there already.”
Haruka closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. He’s right. God, how could I have been so childish? I can fix this. I just need… uhh…
“Captain?”
“Sorry, sir. Just thinking.” She opened her eyes to see her commanding officer looking at her with apparent concern.
“Well, you look like hell. Go to sleep, Kimura.”
“I can do this, sir,” she protested.
“That’s right, you can. Just not tonight. Go to sleep, that’s an order,” Emberley said, his voice firm.
She sighed and stretched her legs one at a time. “Yes sir.” Haruka loosened her harness and pulled herself over the bar, down the length of the bridge. She spiraled down the staircase and into the crew pod, where she bumped into Mancini.
“Hey, watch it,” he grumbled.
Haruka flailed her arm out and steadied against the wall. “Sorry, Marco.”
He squinted at her. “Jesus, you look like someone gave you a bunch of sugared up kids to watch.”
Haruka realized how sapped she was. “Kinda feel like it too. It’s been a really long day. How’re things going for you?”
A slight frown drooped across Mancini’s face. “Lonely. It’s really great that you found your way back to the bridge, but I really miss talking with you. Nova hasn’t been around again.”
Haruka paused for a moment in thought. “Has she been reporting for duty?”
“Yeah, the girl’s a real hard worker. She’s got all the thrusters inspected, and is almost done with the plasma drive. But it’s almost like she’s avoiding me.”
No wonders there, not after she made up that shit about Marco.
“Sorry to hear that.” She put her hand on his shoulder and grinned. “But I might just have some good news for you.”
His eyes perked up. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’m going to ask the major if I can borrow you from propulsion for a bit. I might need you to tweak something in the computer core for me as part of my course corrections.”
Just as quickly, his expression became deflated. “Yeah, I guess that’s better than sitting alone in propulsion.”
He really does just want some company, doesn’t he? Haruka felt sorry for Mancini; she was so absorbed in her work that she didn’t consider what her absence meant to him.
She smiled and feigned a cheerful voice. “Hey, I need to tell you what to fix, right? I’m coming into the core with you to hammer this out.”
Again Mancini’s face lit up. “Oh yeah, I suppose that makes more sense, huh?”
“I just have to get one more thing done on the bridge, so we’ll probably do this tomorrow after lunch. Thirteen hundred hours?”
“You got it, Captain.”
“Good night, Lieutenant,” she said as she opened her sleeper berth and pulled her body inside. Haruka buckled her restraint and closed the hatch.
Having Marco give me the extra time I need will be a snap. Figuring out how to get around that damned moon, on the other hand… just how the hell am I going to do that?
1st Lt Darius Owens
25 September 2029, 08:44
Gabriel
Darius and Captain Quinn waited on the bridge, facing each other across the empty command chair. Each man grasped the railing behind him and avoided eye contact with the other. The silence was awkward, but they had nothing to talk about; conversation on Gabriel had long turned stale. Though each crew member spent only a few days awake each cycle, the long hibernations were taking their toll on morale.
The fact that Colonel Eriksen seemed to be increasingly late for his duty or to meetings was also starting to wear on Darius. While he was by no means punctual as a youth, Darius had come to appreciate both structure and punctuality after he joined the service.
He drummed his fingers impatiently on the metal railing. Quinn glanced up at him, a bored look on his face. “Give him a minute, Lieutenant.”
Darius just shrugged and rolled his head toward the rear of the bridge. I’ve already given him fifteen. Besides, it’s not like I have any choice but to wait. The mouth of the bridge remained a dark hole; Darius watched for Eriksen to emerge as a child might watch a pot on the stove in anticipation of when it would boil.
Several minutes later, Colonel Eriksen emerged from the darkness and made his way to the command chair. Darius watched as he secured his broad frame to the chair and cleared his throat.
“Sorry for the delay, gentlemen,” he said, his voice devoid of all emotion. “Let’s get started. I would like an update from each of you regarding the investigation. Lieutenant Owens, any progress in identifying who wrote the assassination program?”
Darius did his best to straighten his posture. “I’ve analyzed the code from end to end, Colonel. Whoever wrote it was extremely thorough. Beyond the knowledge of which ship it came from, all I have been able to find out is that it had to be sent from Raphael’s computer core. None of the terminal workstations could have sent this due to a specific exploit that the program uses.”
Eriksen scratched his beard and frowned. “So nothing that would shed any light on who might have done it, then?”
Darius thought for a moment. “I’m not sure if it helps, but they may have intimate knowledge of the Oort and approach probes. The exploit is the same one those probes use to feed data to the nav system.”
“Hmm. Alright.” Colonel Eriksen turned to face Captain Quinn. “Captain, have you made any progress in identifying a suspect?”
“I have reviewed the files of every crew member and passenger on Raphael,” Quinn replied quickly. “I think we can conclusively rule out any civilian in this matter b
ased on what Owens just said, Colonel. There doesn’t appear to be a civilian in the file who has any connection to Project Columbus, except for the ship’s doctor.”
“What about the crew?”
“Only the thinnest of anomalies, sir. I’ve got a lieutenant who has significant computer experience who was originally assigned to Michael, and an airman whose enlistment date and basic training camp were in different years. Even thinner threads still are those of the only Canadian and Mexican citizens on board the ship. One is a major we received in an officer exchange from the RCAF, and the other enlisted in our service, possibly to gain citizenship.”
He didn’t bring up Singh, Darius thought. Maybe he thinks I’m right about the terrorism idea.
Eriksen appeared to yawn as he scratched his beard again. “We can probably ignore those last two.” He paused for a second. “Scratch that, the last three. The only thing that sounds plausible so far is that crewman assigned originally to Michael. What do we know about him, Quinn?”
“Just a moment, sir.” Quinn did a neat back flip over the bar and landed in his workstation chair. His fingers flew across the screen in precise motion as he recalled a file from the computer. “First Lieutenant Marco Mancini. Born March 9th, 1989 in Brooklyn, New York. He got his computer science degree from NYU and joined the service through AFROTC. There are a couple marks on his disciplinary record. They look like minor incidents, but two of them refer to a…” his voice trailed off as he peered at the screen. “Lieutenant Haruka Kimura.”
“Kimura,” Eriksen repeated. “Any relationship to Doctor Kimura?”
“Yes sir. She’s his daughter.”
“These incidents you speak of, what are they?”
Quinn tapped his screen a few times. “Looks like they were bar fights, sir.” He cocked his head to the side and whistled. “This guy is a bit out of control, if you ask me. I wonder why he’s even assigned to this mission.”
Eriksen waved dismissively at Quinn, a gesture that Darius found odd since the engineer could not see it from where he sat. “We can’t question that part right now. What did Lieutenant Kimura have to do with them?”
Project Columbus: Omnibus Page 24
