by Joseph Rhea
“If nothing changed since we came in, we should be fine,” she said.
“The Wave’s got a pretty good brain,” he said, patting the edge of the console. “She doesn’t get asked to use it much, but she should be able to handle anything that comes up.”
“She?” Vee asked. “I thought only my grandfather’s generation still referred to their ships as females.”
He smiled. “I guess I got that from my former captain. He used to—”
“Everything under control?” Nia asked as she rose out the stairwell.
“Jake loaded Ash’s return course into the auto-helm, and we’re on our way out of here,” Vee said. “So far, so good.”
Juno came up the stairs. “They could use you in med bay, Vee,” she said. “I can take the helm now.”
Vee headed toward the stairs, but stopped Juno halfway there. “How is she?”
Juno frowned. “Her cuts were pretty deep. The cat’s teeth…” She looked at Nia. “She lost a lot of blood, and she’s on full life support, but the med bay is top-notch. I think she’ll make it.” Her eyes turned to Jake. “Thanks.”
Jake shrugged. “I had nothing to do with the quality of the medical bay.”
Juno walked up to him and placed her palm against his chest. “I’m not talking about that. You got us all back here safe and you got us back here fast. Not many people know how to make a jumper run like that, especially on unfamiliar ground.”
He felt uncomfortable with her hand on his chest. The last time Juno was this close to him, she was trying to deck him. Before he could think of what to say, she removed her hand and sat down at the helm console.
“Speaking of saving lives,” he said, trying to fill the awkward silence, “what’s the status of the girl who apparently saved all of ours?”
Vee was heading toward the stairs, but she stopped and looked back. “I didn’t really see what happened. Did she really kill that cat thing?”
“She did,” Nia replied, “with her bare hands, from what I saw. Although I’m still not sure I believe what I saw.” She looked at Jake. “Did you actually see her do it?”
He nodded. “I did, and I’m having difficulty believing it, as well. It looked to me like she used her right hand like a spear and somehow pierced that thing’s heart.” He made his hand into a flat knife shape. “Although I don’t know if that’s even possible.”
“It’s possible,” Juno said. Everyone turned to look at her. “Part of becoming an officer in the Shippers Guild is learning advanced hand-to-hand combat. With training, and if you’re fast enough, you can pierce skin with a bare hand, though I’ve never actually seen it done quite like that.”
“You really are in the Guild?” he asked. “I assumed that was just…” He let the subject drop. Remembering the fellow she’d left lying back in the alley told him all he needed to know.
He turned back to address Nia. “So what are you—” he started to say, but she was gone. He heard footsteps echoing down the stairwell. He glanced back at Vee and Juno. “You have the bridge,” he said, before realizing that was what Captain Coal said whenever he left the bridge. Since no one responded, he headed for the stairs.
Chapter 07
Jake found Nia down in the cargo bay, standing next to Raines and the thing they had brought back. The engineer was waving a hand-held device near one of the antennas—or whatever they were—protruding from the object and was writing notes in a small slate.
“I hope it’s worth a lot of credits, considering what we just went through,” he said, “and considering you almost lost one of your crew members.”
Nia was staring at the object and didn’t respond. He was about to repeat himself when she replied, “Its value cannot be accurately measured, Mr. Stone, but I can assure you that it was definitely worth risking our lives to retrieve.”
Jake looked at the object and then at Raines. “So what the hell is it?”
Raines looked up at Nia. “I think you can tell him, Norman,” she said.
“Based on what I know of the symbols on the surface,” he said, “It’s called a mine ship, and it was a weapon used long before the Fall.”
“Based on what you know?” Jake asked. “I thought you were an engineer and a cook.”
Raines smiled but said nothing. “Norman Raines is a man of numerous talents,” Nia said. “We’ve been together quite a few years, looking for artifacts like this. Haven’t we, Norman?”
“Many years,” he agreed. “And this,” he said, pointing to the object, “this could be our most important discovery.”
Juno called down from the bridge to inform Nia that they had exited the dome without incident and were setting a course to the drop-off point.
“What do you plan to do with this thing?” Jake asked. “Where are you taking it? I assume the coordinates you gave for the drop were as bogus as the pick-up point.”
Nia gently took him by the arm and guided him back to the side door. Apparently, she wanted to give Raines space to finish whatever he was doing with the object. “There is a small and well-hidden research facility two days south of here. We plan to take the device there for additional study.”
He glanced back at the object just before they went through the exit door. “He said it was a weapon,” Jake said. “A Pre-Fall weapon to be precise.”
“Yes,” she said, “although, we don’t yet know exactly what it does or what it was originally used for. What I do know is that we need to keep it out of the government’s hands at all costs.”
He stopped her in the corridor and pointed at the object through the observation viewports. “You’re telling me that you don’t know what that thing is? What if it’s just an old bomb waiting to go off? I hear they had a lot of bombs back before the Fall.”
“To be honest with you, Mr. Stone, I know very little about what the world was like before the Fall, and frankly, I don’t really care. I do, however, have faith in Norman’s expertise in these matters, and I can assure you that he does know quite a bit about that period in our history. I trust him, and I think you should, too.” She continued down the corridor.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked.
She stopped and turned to face him. “I used to be an administrator in the second tier of the government, answering only to members of the Council. While that might sound important, what it meant is that I spent my days reading numbers off charts and keeping careful tallies of imports and exports for each of the major cities.” Her face made a sort of half-smile, half-grimace. “It was really quite a boring existence, when I think back on it. Sometimes, I wonder how I could have performed that job, day after day, for so many years without going mad. I guess you could say I was a true believer in the system, in what the Council was doing for the people of our colony.” Her half-smile disappeared. “Then one day, I came across something that made me question my blind loyalty to our leaders.”
“What was that?”
“What do you know of the Alpha-Beta conflict?”
“Do you always answer questions with questions?” he asked. She just stared at him. “Okay,” he said, “Supposedly, our distant ancestors created a race of artificial people called Betas who helped them run and maintain the machines that built their cities. After the Fall, the Betas rebelled and pretty much tried to kill all the remaining humans. Luckily, our ancestors won, and they lost. End of story.”
Nia frowned. “It might be the end of the story if any of that were true.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard all the old fables, too. The Betas were actually used as slave labor and sex surrogates, and they were never treated as equals. Then our ancestors tried to eradicate them after the Fall when food sources became scarce.”
“And almost succeeded,” she added.
“Almost?” he asked. “Please don’t tell me you believe in ghost stories. You think there are living Betas walking among us today? Seeking revenge and plotting our downfall?”
“It’s not important what I believe,” she
said. “What matters is what the Council believes.”
“You’re telling me that’s what you found out about the Council? That they think Betas still exist?”
“The Council not only believes that Beta descendants are currently living inside the colony, they are hoping to use Pre-Fall technology to find and eliminate them.” She pointed at the mine ship through the observation port. “That’s why I’m doing this.”
“But why stop them?” he asked. “I mean, if Beta descendants somehow survived from those days, they would be pretty dangerous, wouldn’t they?”
“Does that give our government the right to kill them on sight?”
“Like I said, maybe if they were dangerous. Besides, they weren’t like us, were they? They were artificial, and they had collective brains or whatever. Like ants, they couldn’t think for themselves.”
“Actually, Norman believes they were physically and mentally identical to us,” she said. “What if they were like us in other ways, too? What if they just wanted to live their lives and have families and be productive members of society?”
“Betas? You think they would just forget the past and coexist with us peacefully?”
Nia shrugged. “Perhaps. Or an even worse scenario, what if they don’t exist, but the Council just thinks they do.”
“How would that be worse?”
“What if next week someone accuses you of being a Beta, simply as retaliation for not paying your bills on time? If Betas really were physically identical to us, how could you prove you’re not one of them, especially if they were shooting Betas on sight? Do you see where this could lead?”
“You mean there’s something worse than being killed for not paying your bills?”
Nia took a step closer and lowered her voice. “It could lead to civil war.”
“I honestly can’t see that happening,” he said, “and besides, we can’t change the government.”
“Perhaps not, but we can change our response to what they tell us to do. If enough of us resist the impulse to blindly follow their orders, we can change the future.”
He looked nervously around the corridor. Were these people trying to set him up? Was Nia trying to make him say something negative about the Council so she could arrest him for it? Did he really know any of these people? Suddenly, he began to question their motives for coming aboard. “The only future I care about changing is my own,” he said carefully. “I don’t mean that in a cruel or selfish way, but I’ve got my own problems to deal with. I’m sure you understand.” He headed past her toward the main part of C-deck.
“I do understand, Mr. Stone,” she said behind him. “I’m afraid I understand far too well.”
Chapter 08
A few hours later, Jake came up to the mess hall and found most of the crew sitting at the big table. In fact, it was everyone except Juno, who was on the bridge; Jessie, who was in med bay; and Raines, who was still down in the cargo bay, studying the object. He started to turn away when Vee noticed him and called him into the galley. She handed him a plate filled with several types of food. He took a deep whiff, and those childhood memories came flooding back again.
“My grandfather isn’t the only cook in the family,” she said to his unspoken praise.
Her smile was so genuine that it almost hurt. It had been a long time since he had felt such warmth from a woman, or anyone for that matter. “It looks really good,” he managed to get out. “So, how are the two in med bay doing?” he asked, changing the subject.
She put down a ladle and came closer. “Well, Jessie is doing great,” she whispered, “but the more amazing news is the new girl, Jane.”
“Her name is Jane?”
“No, but, well that’s what we’re calling her, Jane Doe. It’s what they used to call people who—”
“I know,” he interrupted. “I’ve read a book or two.”
“Okay, well, anyway, after Nia and Juno cleaned all the blood off, they said they discovered that she didn’t have a single cut on her. All of that blood was from the cat.”
“We were talking about that on the bridge, remember?” he whispered back. He wasn’t sure why they were whispering, but it gave him an excuse to be close to her, and he wasn’t complaining. “Juno thought she might have had some combat training.”
Vee shook her head. “I remember, but I don’t think that’s possible. I went down later and ran a full diagnostic scan on her and found some really odd things.”
“Odd as in…”
“Odd as in the fact that not only did she have no visible cuts on her body, her skin was perfect, as in a newborn-baby kind of perfect. Any sort of combat training would have left bruises, scars, things like that. From what the scanner said, she has never had so much as a stubbed toe in her entire life.”
Remembering his plate of food, he started to turn away, but she grabbed his arm and pulled him back into the galley, away from earshot of the others in the room. “That’s not even the interesting part,” she said. “Her brain scan came back just as perfect, which means that unless your scanner is broken, she has what could only be described as a newborn brain in her head.”
He looked at her. “You’re saying she has a baby’s brain? Is that some kind of birth defect?”
“No,” she replied, looking suddenly irritated at his lack of understanding. “Jane doesn’t have a baby’s brain. She has a full-size brain, but it looks like it has never been used before. If that’s the case, then her ability to learn should be off the charts. For instance, I think she’s starting to understand everything we are saying to her, as if she’s learning our language on the fly, but she’s not quite ready to respond to us just yet. She might be the most intelligent person on this ship, while at the same time know less than any of us. It’s exciting and pretty humbling.”
“Well,” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything to say to all of that. “What do you think that means? How did she get in that dome?”
“AJ’s theory is that she was abandoned there as an infant, like maybe her parents were killed there or something a long time ago, and then she was somehow raised by wild animals. That might explain why her brain is basically like a baby’s and maybe even her ability to kill that big cat with her bare hands.”
He pondered that a moment and then added his own, more logical theory. “Either that, or the scanner really is just broken.”
“Oh,” she said, and then her face turned red. “I guess I’m sort of an idiot, aren’t I? I got so excited by the results; I didn’t stop to think that it could simply be an equipment error.” She sighed. “Please don’t mention this to my grandfather. He is such a good researcher. He tried to teach me the scientific method, but sometimes, I just get so excited when I think I’ve uncovered something new.” She looked up at him and suddenly started to laugh. “I also think I’ve had way too much coffee. Sorry!” She gave him a quick hug and turned back to her pots.
He just stood there and then realized the plate of food in his hands had grown cold. He thought about asking Vee to heat it up for him, but then he realized it might ignite another twenty-minute, caffeine-induced monologue from her. Instead, he turned to leave, hoping to sneak away for a quiet dinner alone in his room, when Nia called him over to the table.
“There he is,” Ash said as he stood and reached out to Jake with his right hand. “I didn’t get a chance to thank you earlier for helping to save my sister.”
Jake put down his cold plate of food and reluctantly put out his hand. “I didn’t really do that much,” he said.
Ash shook his hand hard and smiled. “You did enough.” He then picked up his cup and addressed the rest of the crew. “In fact, I owe everybody here a debt for helping her.”
As everyone raised their drinking cups in an old ritual Jake had read about but never witnessed, Nia said, “Yes, everyone helped, except maybe the two men who could have actually prevented her attack if they had simply followed orders.”
Jake almost spit out his drink and sa
w everyone staring nervously at the Range brothers. They were sitting together at the far end of the table, staring at their plates while they ate. After a few seconds of silence, they both looked up. “Sorry, did I miss something?” the older one asked, apparently unaware of what had just been said.
“How about that mine ship,” Ash said as he sat back down, breaking the silence. “What do you suppose it was used for?”
“Its use has to be tied up in its name,” Vee said as she brought her own plate to the table and sat down next to Jake.
Jake glanced at Nia, who was drilling holes in the oldest Range brother with her eyes. “I think you heard me,” she said.
Ash continued his obvious attempt to change the subject. “So, ‘mine’ could mean ‘mining,’ as in digging for precious metals.”
Vee was in on the game, Jake could see. “However, it doesn’t look like a digger, does it?”
The oldest Range brother sucked air through his teeth and gave Nia a bored stare. “Maybe you need to repeat yourself.”
Even Jake was beginning to feel the tension between Nia and the men rising to a feverish level. He had been in the middle of enough bar fights to know what was coming next if things kept building. He looked at Ash. “Maybe it’s a sensor of some kind,” he said, joining the game. “Something to detect mineral deposits under the surface. With the antenna things covering it, that would make sense.”
“Where were you two when the cat attacked us?” Nia asked point-blank. So, Jake thought, we’ve just crossed the line. That was fast.
“Gold is still worth something,” Vee said. “Maybe it can detect gold deposits.”
Ash shook his head. “As much as I’d love it to be a gold-sensing device, Raines said it was a weapon of some sort, from before the Fall.”
