Gabi loosed another arrow, but this time her shot deflected harmlessly off of the beast’s shoulder. Out of the corner of her eye she caught movement.
“Get out of here,” Marya ordered as she circled to Gabi’s side. “You’re not going hurt it with that thing.”
“But Will’s…” she protested, but was cut off.
“I’ve got Will. Get the kids. Go!”
Gabi broke into a run straight across the campsite. The beast growled, and for a moment she could feel its breath on her skin, its gaze piercing her soul. She put her head down and closed her eyes. Another shot rang out, this time from behind her, from Marya’s position. In an instant the sensation of the animal’s breath was gone, and it bellowed out in pain. Gabi’s eyes snapped open again three strides from the log, and she vaulted over it in one swift motion.
“Aidan, get them out of here!” she snapped at the younger Brennan.
He nodded wordlessly and scooped up Daphne, then grabbed Diego’s hand and started dragging him away. Kristin still stood a few feet away, screaming Will’s name over and over, her weapon still trembling. Gabi dropped her bow and quickly wrested the Beretta from her, then spun around. Marya had circled back a few steps. She fired again, but missed completely. The beast swiped its paw, and Will was flung aside like he was nothing.
“Will!” she shouted.
Gabi aimed and squeezed off a single round. She was taken by surprise by how the weapon kicked her arm back, and the blast made her ears ring. But her shot hit the mark, tearing into the animal’s knee. It howled and wobbled for a second before regaining its footing. But that brief interruption of its rampage was enough. Marya trained the sights of her rifle on the beast’s head and delivered the fatal shot. It collapsed instantly, without another noise.
Gabi slowly crept forward, pistol trained on the creature the whole time. It was probably close to fifteen feet long, and had a body very reminiscent of the bears she used to love watching at the zoo back on Earth. Marya joined at her side, and they circled around to where Will had fallen. He was dazed, but otherwise apparently unharmed. He collected his weapon and approached the beast cautiously. The barrel of his rifle dipped, and he stopped cold when he saw Gina’s body.
An unearthly curse rose from his chest, and he marched purposefully forward, punching round after round from the rifle into the felled bear’s skull until the rifle’s mechanisms just clicked uselessly from the absence of ammunition. He then raised the stock to bash in what was left of its head, but stopped. His grip loosened, and the gun clattered to the ground. Will sunk to his knees and tore at his hair with his bare hands. Gabi approached slowly, and her heart sank and her lips trembled as she heard his anguished sobbing.
She knelt next to him, setting the Beretta down in the dirt. She hesitated a moment before throwing her arms around him from behind, trying in futility to keep her own sorrow in check.
“Will,” she choked.
“It’s not fair,” he sobbed. “We… we were supposed to have a life together. It’s not fair.”
Gabi swallowed back her tears. Nothing about Demeter was fair. No one’s death had ever been fair, except for those executed by James for bringing plague and death to Camp Eight. Her mother’s death hadn’t been fair. Diego’s existence hadn’t been fair. But it had all happened. Gabi knew that leading the last band of survivors taxed every nerve in Will’s body, and he had already experienced his fair share of death and sorrow.
This isn’t fair. To any of us.
“I know,” she soothed.
“I loved her. I loved her and we…” he trailed off for a moment. “We were going to start a little farm together, you know? When we got there.”
If we got there, Gabi corrected mentally, though she made sure not to express her doubts verbally.
“And Daphne,” he added. “She was going to help take care of the chickens.” Will lost what thin control he had left. He tried to suck in air as he cried for his lost love. His cheeks turned red, and he leaned his great weight on Gabi’s shoulder, almost knocking her over. She cradled his head and stroked his hair for a long time. She couldn’t find the words to soothe him. She didn’t see the point; words had failed to help her so many times in the past.
It was after dark before Will cried himself to sleep. The others had come back to the camp, rekindled the fire, prepared their shelter, and dragged Gina’s body out of sight. All of the others, except Karina, that is. When Gabi was finally able to shake herself from Will, she was pulled aside by Marya. Her rival’s face did not bear the usual scorn or arrogance that Gabi was used to seeing. Instead, her head hung low, as if looking Gabi in the eyes was a terrible sin.
“Caleb didn’t make it,” Marya whispered. “He bled out in Karina’s arms.”
Gabi simply nodded, swallowing back the hard knot in her throat. She numbly stumbled her way to the shelter. Once inside she sat down and fixed her gaze on the dying light of the campfire. She couldn’t say how long her stare was fixed like that; contemplating the new form of death that Demeter had brought them. All that she could say with any certainty was that, on this night, she would seek the reassuring comfort of Diego’s presence.
Gov Darius Owens
11 July, 6 yal, 18:05
Michael, North Concordia
Darius stretched and yawned, then rubbed his eyes. His eyelids felt like fine sandpaper; staring at the mainframe terminal for hours had left his eyes as dry as the air inside the computer core. While the strip lighting overhead illuminated the room enough to where he could navigate without running into equipment, the reflection off the terminal’s screen blinded him momentarily when he shifted in the seat.
He sighed and got up. Darius paced down the rows of server racks, only letting his mind take a brief break from the task at hand.
There’s got to be a clue here, he considered. If what Young said is right, there would be evidence.
Darius rubbed his neck as he rolled his head from side to side. His eye caught the manufacture label of the closest server.
March, 2011. They’re new enough, alright. But that’s it. I’ve been over every bit of data on these things. Nothing out of the ordinary. Navigation systems, com routines, emergency reactor monitoring. All of it normal. Without any bugs or…
His attention snapped back to the terminal mid-thought.
“Bugs,” he muttered aloud. “The com system bugs.”
Darius swiftly returned to the seat and brought up his old sandbox program. The corrupted com software files were still in there. He pulled one up and started to page through the garbled data as quickly as his tired eyes would allow.
How could I have forgotten these? These were the only changes from the original program.
The fragments of the assassin’s program were heavily corrupted. Years of disuse had taken their toll; the bulk of the ship’s computer storage was on magnetic media. Old-school hard drives. Not the most advanced technology at the time the ship’s systems were finalized, but they were abundant, cheap, and durable, particularly when systems were built redundantly. But after forty years of use in space and another six on the ground, many of the drive arrays had begun to fail, and the redundancy along with it.
Darius wasn’t sure if he should be thanking the drives that held his sandbox for remaining functional, or cursing them for making his job harder by damaging the files even further. Frustration set in, and his fingers tapped harder on the virtual keyboard with each page of garbage that passed.
“Damn it!” he cursed, swiveling about in his chair and clenching his fists until the nails bit into his palms.
Get a grip, he told himself. Darius cycled two deep breaths, and as his shoulders relaxed, his head dropped. You don’t have to do this all tonight. You’ve got time. He then looked back at the terminal. Five more minutes, then it’s time to crash in a berth. Pick up again tomorrow.
Darius turned back to the terminal and took another deep breath. He was about to cycle to the next page, but something caught hi
s eye, and his finger froze just above the screen. A minute, but mostly intact subroutine. Something he had dismissed before as being a feedback loop.
It’s not a feedback loop. It’s a redirect. A simple cloak.
He brought up a smaller window in the upper right corner of the terminal, which displayed the repaired com system code. Carefully, he matched the expected location of the redirect routine to what he had repaired.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. “I fixed it because I thought it was part of the diagnostic code.”
Darius spent several minutes analyzing the redirect, comparing it to the patch he created to hold the com system together. Bit by bit, he deconstructed both bits of programming. After fifteen minutes, the debugger popped up with a complaint. Darius dismissed the warning, and immediately the schematic of the com system popped up.
That’s weird.
He was about to dismiss that as well when he noticed something out of place. The schematics were something Darius knew well; he could trace them in his sleep if he had to. But a short Ethernet spur that ran from the second server bank indicated the presence of a fourth bank of machines. Darius counted the three rows, just to be sure that his mind hadn’t played tricks on him for the entire journey. He then double-checked his work. There was no mistake. The redirect was designed to mask the presence of a fourth server bank.
That’s insane. Unless…
“Voice interface activate,” he commanded.
“VOICE INTERFACE ACTIVATED. AUTHORIZED USER LIEUTENANT DARIUS OWENS,” the computer replied through a weathered speaker. Darius had never bothered to update the titles of anyone who had security access, so it still referred to him by his military rank. “COMMAND?”
“Integrity check, primary reactor monitoring.”
“STANDBY.” The gap was filled by the soft whirring of server fans. “SOLID STATE SYSTEM INTEGRITY VERIFIED. PRIMARY REACTOR MONITORING SYSTEM ONLINE.”
“Shut down secondary reactor monitoring system.”
The terminal spat back a disapproving bleat. “SHUTDOWN OF REDUNDANT REACTOR SYSTEMS INADVISABLE. PLEASE INPUT OVERRIDE SEQUENCE.”
Darius typed the twenty digit authorization sequence into the terminal screen.
“CONFIRMED. SECONDARY REACTOR MONITORING OFFLINE.”
The background noise softened slightly as server bank three shut down, its fans and drives spinning to a stop in a matter of seconds.
“Transfer emergency controls to bridge engineering stations and shut down remaining server banks.”
Again the computer protested. “SHUTDOWN OF COMPUTER CORE INADVISABLE. COMMAND LEVEL OVERRIDE REQUIRED.”
Good thing Tom gave me his overrides, then.
He quickly input the former colonel’s login and command override into the mainframe.
“CONFIRMED. MAINFRAME RESTORATION MUST OCCUR FROM THE BRIDGE. TRANSFER COMPLETE, SHUTDOWN IMMINENT.”
Five seconds later, the remaining two banks of servers, as well as the mainframe terminal, powered down. Darius was struck by the near utter silence in the core. It felt utterly alien. This was a place he used to come for solitude, and the now silenced white noise was his constant companion during those times. He slumped in his chair, sighing.
Well, that was a waste of time.
He rose from his perch and walked to bank two. He put his hand on one of the blades in the first rack. The aluminum casing was still warm to the touch. A fine coating of dust covered just about everything. Darius rubbed his fingers together, shedding the grit from the tips. The ball of dust slowly floated downward. About six inches from the deck plating, it took a sudden turn, floating nearly horizontal to the deck, as it was carried a few feet away from his feet.
Huh?
Darius got on his knees to check the lower levels of the rack, making sure the mainframe didn’t forget to turn something off. All lights were out, but Darius detected a definite draft when he waved his hand over the deck. He got even closer, lying on his belly. There, right at deck level, he was able to detect the faint sound of drives.
No way.
He retrieved his tool kit and hastily loaded the cordless drill with a screwdriver bit, then threw the drill’s motor into reverse. He traced the plating lines until they flared out, which was where the screws held the plates down to the framing. Underneath the core’s floors were bundles of Ethernet cables, flowing into conduits that ran throughout the ship. Darius never had cause to open the deck plates before, but there was no doubt that something else was hidden down there.
A couple of minutes later he had taken up the first of the deck plates. He shined his flashlight into the cavern, and almost immediately saw the familiar rear end of a server rack. It was small, probably a quarter of the height of the other racks. Darius’s flashlight clattered as it slipped from his fingers into the compartment below.
Damn it. Young was right. Doctor Benedict was hiding something. But what?
He fished the light out from the depths and closed up the plating, sealing the secret servers back under the deck. Whatever secrets it contained would have to wait for the morning, Darius determined. His head was swimming, and exhaustion had driven him to the brink. He was in no condition to pull drives from the machines for analysis.
Darius took a moment to put his tools back in his kit. He stretched and yawned before leaving the core in the direction of pod twelve. Thoughts raced through his tired brain as to the purpose of the servers.
What was it, Doc? What was so important that you had to sell secrets to Young?
Calvin McLaughlin
12 July, 6 yal, 07:40
North Concordia
“She’s doing quite well,” Dr. Taylor smiled softly, stretching her wrinkles on her face. She swaddled Andrea back up in her blanket, then handed her to Cal. “Her development seems completely normal for a baby her age.”
Cal sighed, relieved. “Thanks, Doc.”
So I guess I’m not a complete failure at this fatherhood thing. Not yet, anyway. He thought for a moment as he looked down at his daughter. Still got plenty of time to screw it up. Plenty of ways, too.
“Do you have any questions about care or what to expect developmentally for the next few weeks?”
He tried to stifle a yawn as he nodded, though the effort was futile. Cal was amazed some days that he could stand, let alone function well enough to care for Andrea and interact with others. “Is she going to start sleeping soon? You know, through the night?”
The smile disappeared from the doctor’s face, and she sighed softly. “I can’t really answer that definitively. In the short run? No. She needs to eat every couple hours, so she’s going to keep waking you up. As she grows, she’ll be able to go longer between bottles. But I wouldn’t expect her to start sleeping through the night until she’s at least twelve months…” She trailed off for a second. By the way she was twitching her lips, Cal could tell she was counting. “My apologies, fourteen or fifteen months old.”
“Still having trouble adjusting to time on Demeter, huh Doc?” he poked impishly. “It’s only been six years.”
“Right,” she said flatly. “And I had sixty on Earth before all of this.” She sighed, then sat down on the wooden rocking chair in the corner of the clinic exam room. It squeaked as she lowered herself into it, and more so when she rocked back and forth. “I think I’m too old for big changes like that, Calvin.”
“C’mon, Doc. You’re not that old.”
“I am.” She leaned forward, bringing the chair to a stop. There was sadness in her eyes when she looked up at Cal. “The next time you bring Andrea in, my replacement will be in the room with me. He will be giving Andrea her checkup. I will merely be observing.”
“What?” Cal gasped. “Your replacement? Where are you going?”
“I’m retiring. I should have done it long ago. I was never fit for this journey. It was always the intention of the Project only to send those who were young and healthy enough…”
Cal cut her off. “No, you’re fine.
I mean, look at you! How many people have you patched up over the past six years? Heck, since the earthquake?”
“That’s just it, Cal. I can’t keep up anymore. Without access to the medications back on Earth, my arthritis is getting the best of me. It’s hard for me to get up and walk to the clinic anymore, and my fingers, well...” she laughed nervously. “Look at me, talking to you like you’re my doctor. I think that’s another sign right there.”
“C’mon, it can’t be that bad.”
“I’m afraid it is.” An awkward moment of silence passed between them. “Tadashi was right about one thing.”
“Yeah, what’s that?” Cal asked.
“The pain was worth it. If I had retired before launch, I would have been left behind. Jamie, Beth, all of us. Whatever discomfort I’ve endured these years, it was worth it. To save them.”
Cal squirmed as he nodded in affirmation. He knew all too well the cost of his ticket to Demeter. That ticket was a luxury only a few thousand people had gained, and most of them through an algorithmic lottery of sorts. His passage cost double: his father’s life, and the life of someone who could have been chosen in his place.
I wonder what the cost was for those who came on Mercy. For Brittany, and her friends.
The exam room door groaned open, and the nurse, Sandy, poked her head in. “Doctor, we’ve got a nasty laceration that just came in. Pretty deep, I think you should look at it.”
Dr. Taylor nodded and stood up. “Is the O.R. clear?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Put the patient there. I’ll be back in a second.” Dr. Taylor waited for Sandy to close the door. She smiled faintly. “Duty calls.”
Cal nodded solemnly. “It won’t be the same. Coming back here and having someone other than Doctor Taylor look after us.”
“Well, you won’t have to worry about that. Doctor Taylor will still be your physician. Just a different Doctor Taylor, that’s all.”
Project Columbus: Omnibus Page 115
