Jude hesitated for a moment, wondering what was going on, but slowly lowered her visor and then tried looking around the room once again. And right there, next to her, was a woman wearing casual wear from a bygone era, with a streak of red down the right side of her short blonde hair and the most intense blue eyes that Jude had ever seen.
The woman didn’t say anything, she just gave Jude a gentle reassuring smile.
“Who…” Jude started to say as she raised her visor, seeing that there was no-one actually in front of her. “How?” She asked, lowering her visor again.
“You have some interesting toys,” the woman said as she pointed at Jude’s system breakers that were still anchored to the floor on the far side of the room.
“You’re projecting your image through my breakers?” Jude asked in disbelief. “I didn’t know they could do that… and I built the things,” she said, dumbfounded.
“Like I said… nice toys.” The woman smiled.
Jude shook her head, trying to clear it of excessive questions and calm herself and then looked at the woman with renewed focus.
“Where’s our ship? Who are you?” Jude asked.
“I’m moving it to docking bay one, it was not safe to leave it outside. And my name is Nexus.”
Jude was in shock, her mouth stuck open as all the pieces of the puzzle slammed into place inside her mind. There had been something familiar about this ship, but it was only now that she realised what ‘it’ was. This was the ship from the stories which had captured her imagination and fuelled her obsession with technology. And standing in front of her was the very essence of her lifelong obsession.
“Nexus? The AI!” Jude asked, almost giddy. “Is this what my sister’s been searching for all this time? Grandpas stories… they were true!”
“I didn’t realise I was famous and I want to hear how it is you know about me, but first let me put your mind at ease,” Nexus said reassuringly.
A large virtual display suddenly appeared in mid-air next to Nexus, showing an image of the Icarus as it was being towed through space.
Jude watched quietly as she saw two extremely large doors in the forward section of the Zenith open, revealing a large internal docking bay that was ready to receive the Icarus.
“As you can see, your ship is safe and sound. You can find it in docking bay one once you’re ready to depart,” Nexus said.
“What? Oh… sure,” Jude said a bit absent minded. She was still in shock at seeing Nexus.
“Wait. My sister! Why can’t I get in contact with her?” Jude asked.
“According to internal sensors she’s in deck 10. That entire section is heavily shielded. Normal communications equipment doesn’t work in there. I can connect you if you wish, but there are a few things we should talk about first.”
Elsewhere on the ship…
Kade and Nick were standing before a set of heavily reinforced double doors, the first sign of serious security they had come across since boarding the Zenith. It was true that every single door they had seen could be locked, but they hadn’t come across one that could stand up to a determined boarding party, until now. Kade had actually started to wonder if this ship had any internal security at all, though she couldn’t rule out the possibility that the bulk of the Zenith’s security systems were hidden from view.
As Nick examined the door, Kade couldn’t help but wonder just what was so important about this room, compared to all the others they had walked past so far, that would warrant such reinforcements.
Nick was hovering his right hand over different sections of the door while staring at the Echo unit on his left forearm. The display showing the results of the scan he was conducting with the sensors embedded in his space suit.
The reinforced double doors were solid, so much in fact that whatever was on the other side would probably survive should the rest of the section suffer from explosive decompression. It was a shelter.
There was a small display by the doors, embedded in the corridor wall. It was another old fashioned physical display interface, one of the older models which had been very popular several centuries ago. You didn’t see many of them around anymore but some niche manufacturers still swore by them to this day.
“A key-code lock? How quaint.” Kade smiled as Nick finished up his scan of the doors.
“It may be old fashioned, but it’s certainly effective. I can’t see a way to override it,” Nick said as he looked over the scan results again.
“It was worth a shot, I suppose it wouldn’t be much of a security door if it could be easily opened,” Kade said, not really surprised at the outcome.
“True, but now what? You think that code you used before would work here?”
“Worth a try,” Kade said as she tried typing the code into the interface, but no letters or numbers were being accepted. The interface was completely unresponsive to her touch.
“So… a broken security door?” Nick asked.
“Maybe,” Kade said as she removed her space suit gloves, putting them in her utility pouch, and then she tried entering the code again.
This time around the code appeared on the display as she typed, but the green interface turned red as soon as she finished. The code hadn’t worked.
“Well, the good news is that it’s not broken. The bad news is that the code doesn’t work,” Kade said with a disheartened look as she reached into her utility pouch, to get her system breaker, accidentally touching her grandfather’s sphere in the process.
Kade felt disoriented. Her vision had gone dark. It was like all her senses had been turned off at the same time. Before her was a wall of impenetrable darkness, all-encompassing and absolute.
Just as she was starting to wonder what had happened, she suddenly found herself walking down a corridor, but she had no control over her actions.
She recognised the hallway, she was on the Zenith, deck ten, heading towards section two. And as she reached the door she instinctively typed in the access code, but her hands were not her own, they were bulky and unrefined; they were the hands of a man.
The door opened and she stepped inside. A man in a white lab coat was waiting for her across the room, standing by a large cylindrical glass chamber.
In her mind she knew him, and yet she didn’t. His name, his purpose, his character, all these things she felt she knew, and yet she could recall none of it. It was as if her mind was not her own. She felt confused as events played out around her.
“Are you ready Toby?” The unknown man asked.
“As I’ll ever be,” she heard herself answer with a voice not her own and then realised she recognised it. He sounded younger, but it was her grandfather!
“No heroics, understand? Get in, scout out the area and report back. This is our last trip into that accursed system. Once we link up with the remaining survivors we’ll escort them safely back to Lux. Leave any fighting to us, understand?” The man asked in a friendly tone.
“Don’t worry about me, I can handle it,” she said instinctively, in a calm and collected male voice, but inside she felt anxious. Afraid of what was to come, but not knowing what it was.
“OK, step inside the chamber and…”
Kade felt as if she was blacking out again, all her senses going dark once more, causing a momentary sense of disorientation.
She was back, unharmed but utterly confused.
Her mind was her own again, and she was in full control of her body. But the experience of feeling trapped in someone else’s body, unable to act, had left her a little shaken. She had never experienced anything like it before. And she wondered just what was she, or he, so anxious about anyway? Was the stress finally getting to her?
Whatever she had experienced didn’t feel like a dream, it seemed closer to a long lost memory, and she could still clearly recall the door code.
She paused for a moment as her finger approached the control interface, wondering if the code would actually work. Having experienced such a realistic hallucina
tion was cause enough for concern but what would it actually mean if what she saw turned out to be real and the code worked, she wondered.
One way or another she had to know, so she typed the code into the door control, the double doors sliding open, revealing the sleeper room beyond.
“Well, that was weird. First you space out and ignore me, and then you just open the door. Not that I’m complaining, but how did you know the code?” Nick asked.
“I spaced out? For how long?” Kade asked, clearly concerned at having experienced a loss of time.
“Don’t know for sure, a few seconds maybe? I was asking you if we should call Jude up here to hack the door but you weren’t paying any attention. You just kept staring at the door controls. Why?”
“No… no reason,” Kade replied. Concerned about what had just happened.
“So… how did you know the code?” Nick asked again.
“Lucky guess?” Kade replied, not knowing exactly how to explain it, or even if she should.
“An alpha numeric, ten digit long, lucky guess?” Nick asked, not looking particularly amused at the joke.
“It could happen,” Kade said sheepishly. “It’s just highly unlikely,” she said without conviction.
“You seriously expect me to believe that?” Nick asked as they stepped into the darkened room.
“How about… I saw it in a vision?” Kade asked.
“Fine! Don’t tell me,” Nick said dismissively.
Kade couldn’t help but smile slightly at Nick’s reaction, she wouldn’t have believed it either.
She was instinctively heading towards the chamber she had seen in her vision, just before she returned to reality, when the lights in the room came on.
Kade froze. The room looked just like in her vision. She was happy that she hadn’t gone completely insane yet, but on the other hand the question remained. What, exactly, had she just experienced?
“Are these sleeper pods?” Nick asked, breaking Kade out of her pensive state.
Nick was standing next to a row of pods, looking around at their status displays. The walls of the room were lined with them, but they were all empty.
“Looks like this pod was the only one that was active up until a while ago,” he said as he tried to operate the pod’s touch controls, to no effect.
Remembering what Kade had done just moments before, Nick took off his gloves and tried again, but the controls still didn’t react to his touch.
Frustrated, he put his gloves back on and resumed searching the room.
“I found him!” Kade said while standing by the controls of the chamber.
The chamber walls seemed to be made of glass, but it was completely opaque, changing to a semi-transparent surface as Kade touched the controls.
They could see the general outline of a shape inside the chamber, but not much more.
Kade fiddled with the controls, trying to call up useful information, but the system was refusing all attempts at access so all she had to go on was the basic information on the display.
“Is he alive?” Nick asked as he moved closer.
“Yes… If I’m reading this right,” Kade replied.
“Safe to assume this is the guy that was inside the sleeper pod, but what’s he doing in there?” Nick asked.
“Hmm… the interface says this is a maintenance chamber, and if I remember right Aurora said we couldn’t contact him because of ‘core maintenance’. So is this what Aurora meant?” Kade asked, looking confused.
“Might explain why Aurora didn’t want to answer when Jude asked about it, but what does it mean? Is he a cyborg or something?” Nick asked while staring at the outline of the floating figure.
“This readout doesn’t show anything that looks even remotely cybernetic,” Kade said, examining the body scan results displayed on the console again. “The only thing that stands out is this reading… ‘Core charge 42.35%’… whatever that means.”
Kade continued with her attempts to find a way to get access to the chamber. And Nick, having seemingly lost interest, resumed his exploration of the room, focusing on the sleeper pods.
“What are you up to?” Kade asked as she saw Nick looking over the controls of a nearby pod.
“I’m waiting. For you to open up the chamber, or the local military forces to find this ship, whichever happens first,” Nick replied with his back turned towards Kade while fiddling with the pod’s controls.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. The last thing we need is to have to deal with those cretins,” Kade said, making no effort to hide her dislike for the Sol Union.
“What’s up between you and the Union anyway? You clearly don’t like them, but is there a particular reason why?” Nick asked.
“There are several reasons,” Kade started to explain. “They have little tolerance for smugglers, even though they often contract them. More often than not they end up confiscating the goods afterwards and fining or arresting the smuggler… or worse. So they’re not exactly good for business.”
“From what I hear, working for them pays well,” Nick pointed out.
“As long as they keep their end of the bargain, sure. But even the legal trade runs can backfire in a hurry if you come across the wrong customs officer,” Kade said.
“You make it sound like they’re all corrupt, I’m sure they aren’t all like that,” Nick said encouragingly.
“You sound like an advertisement vid…” Kade said and then turned away from the console, towards Nick, as she started play acting.
“Come trade with the Sol Union today!
The Union! Working hard to improve customer relations for more than two thousand years.
We may still shaft you, but we aren’t all bad.”
“OK, OK, point taken,” Nick said as he tried to keep himself from laughing. “But getting shafted in a trade is hardly exclusive to deals with the Sol Union.”
“True, but few others can match their ‘holier than thou’ attitude. The sheer arrogance some of them have borders on the insane. Which makes them even worse to deal with, they are way too much hassle.”
“I think I’m starting to see a pattern. So your issue is purely professional then?” Nick asked sceptically.
“No. There are a few personal reasons too, but I’d rather not talk about them,” Kade said as she turned back towards the chamber’s console.
“Oh come on!” Nick said in frustration. “You can’t leave it there! It was just getting good. And here I was hoping to get a glimpse of your epically mysterious past, and how your psychological scars shaped your ultimate destiny… or something.”
“You what?” Kade chuckled.
“Bah! Never mind. Subject change. These pods haven’t been used in a very long time,” Nick said as he finished going over the data on the nearby pod.
“Define ‘long’.”
“Very long, well over a hundred years. In fact I don’t think any of the pods in this room have been used recently, except for your friend’s over there,” Nick said as he looked carefully around the room.
Nick had just looked past the open doorway when something caught his attention. He had seen someone standing by the edge of the doorway out of the corner of his eye.
The hallway beyond the room was dark, the lights having turned themselves off when they had first entered the room, so Nick couldn’t make out who was by the door.
“Jude?” Nick asked through squinting eyes as he approached the doorway, but the small figure quickly turned and ran away.
Nick raced to the entrance, the lights in the hallway activating as he walked into the corridor. But as he looked down the long pathway, he could see no sign of whoever had just been standing there. And he could swear he had heard a girl’s giggling voice.
“What are you doing?” Kade asked, scaring the living daylights out of Nick, who hadn’t noticed her moving up behind him.
“Don’t do that! You trying to give me a heart attack?” Nick asked, out of breath.
&n
bsp; “You’re way too jumpy,” Kade said, oblivious to what Nick had just experienced.
“Did you just…” he started to ask but then realised he was about to make himself sound crazy. “No. Never mind. My mind’s just playing tricks on me.”
And just as Nick was calming down he noticed Kade’s attention shift. Nick heard the sound of doors opening behind him, probably the nearby elevator, and Kade was looking directly at it.
Due to his recent experience he was still a bit shaken, and just before he could turn around…
“Hey!” The cheerful female voice said, causing Nick to almost jump out of his skin.
Nick grabbed his chest, breathing heavily, and realised it was just Jude.
“What’s wrong with you?” Jude asked.
“You two are gonna be the death of me!”
“What?” Jude asked.
“Ignore him,” Kade said, happy to see her sister.
“OK,” Jude replied as she walked past Nick and all three of them headed back inside the room, the lights in the corridor automatically turning off again.
Nick was still jumpy, but he put the experience down to stress and moved on.
Kade and Jude, in the meantime, were walking back towards the chamber.
“Excellent timing. This console is driving me insane, could you give me a hand with it?” Kade asked with renewed vigour.
“Sure, but first things first,” Jude said ominously as she slowed down slightly, letting her sister move ahead. And then, suddenly and without warning, slapped her in the back of the head.
“Hey! What was that for!” Kade asked as she turned around, startled at her sister’s actions.
“That was for not telling me what you’ve been looking for all these years.” Jude scowled.
“Oh, that,” Kade said holding the back of her head.
“Yes, that… but I forgive you.” Jude smiled.
“Wait…” Kade said as she let go of her head and looked at Jude with a confused expression. “If you hadn’t figured it out until now, what gave it away?”
“You’ll see.” Jude grinned mischievously.
“Am I missing something?” Nick asked, wondering what that little display had been all about.
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