by Joseph Rhea
Jake opened his eyes and saw Stacy’s face staring back at him. “What the hell?” he gasped but then realized that it was just Jane. Dim interior lighting had apparently turned on while his eyes were closed, and now they were playing tricks on him. As he adjusted to the light, he realized that it wasn’t his imagination after all; Jane really did look like Stacy, only with a slightly younger, perhaps more innocent face, and red hair and green eyes instead of Stacy’s blonde hair and blue eyes. He felt suddenly overcome with emotion. “Who are you?” he whispered.
She didn’t answer but instead turned back to the view screen. It was now showing a rainbow-colored view of the main stairwell from B-deck to C-deck, just outside the medical bay. As brightly colored bodies moved down the stairwell, he realized that the security cameras had switched to infrared and were now showing body heat. That meant that the screen had gone dark because the Wave’s interior lights had turned off. Something was seriously wrong on his ship.
“Jane, you have to open the door,” he nearly yelled. “I need to get out. Right now!”
“Save you,” Jane repeated, but this time much more clearly.
“I’m not kidding around,” he said, struggling to push her off his lap. What thirty seconds before had been a cozy, almost romantic setting had now turned into a sudden need for escape. “Open the door, Jane!”
Chapter 11
Jane touched the view screen one more time, and the view switched back to the cargo bay. Jake watched as what looked like the entire crew filed in through the portside door and approached his position.
“Can anyone hear me?” he yelled. He tried to hit the sides with his fist, but every surface was padded.
An overhead speaker clicked on, and he heard the conversation inside the bay. “Everyone stay right where you are,” a man’s voice said. Jake couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like the younger of the two Range brothers.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Nia’s voice demanded. The cargo bay lights came back on just then and Jake’s eyes took a moment to adjust. The screen showed Nia, Juno, and the rest standing together on one side of the bay and the Range brothers on the other. Both men had their rifles pointed at the crew. “I said, what is the meaning of this?” Nia repeated.
“The meaning should be obvious,” the older Range said. “You took something that didn’t belong to you.”
“And now you have to pay for it,” the younger one added with a smirk.
“You’re part of our crew,” Vee said. “We trusted you.”
The older brother went to a wall panel and turned on the ship-wide speaker. “Jake Stone, please report to the cargo bay at once.”
As Jake watched from the relative safety of his hiding place, it dawned on him that maybe this was what Jane had meant when she said she wanted to save him. But how could she have known what these men were planning? Was she on their side, or had she simply overheard their conversation at some point?
“Part of your crew?” the younger man said, walking up to Vee. “Am I part of your crew, little girl?” He brushed the tip of his rifle against her breasts. “They call you Vee, but your name is Vienna, named after some ancient and long-forgotten city. Tell me, Vienna, what is my first name?”
Vee just stood there, not answering the man. He backed up and addressed the rest of the crew. “I’ll let you all go, right now, if even one of you fine people can tell me either of our first names.”
“What the hell are you doing?” the older brother demanded.
“Just a game, dear brother,” he replied.
Jake was really feeling the effects of the confined space now, but he knew it was far more dangerous on the outside. In his frustration, he looked at the two men on the screen and yelled, “Get the hell off my ship!”
“I don’t like your childish games,” the older brother grumbled. “Get out of here and find Stone. He must be hiding.”
The younger man turned his gun toward his brother. “Well, I don’t like the way you always order me around.”
“Point that thing elsewhere,” the older man ordered, turning his own gun on his younger brother. “I order you around because you are a fool. Like Papa always said.”
“Shut up!” the younger man yelled. “Shut up or I will shut you up.”
“Just shoot each other already,” Jake whispered.
Gunshots echoed in his ears, and both men dropped to the floor. Jake sat with his mouth open. Was someone else armed? Had one of the crew used their argument to get off a shot?
Jane pressed something behind him, and the side of the mine ship began to open up. She climbed off his lap, but he was reluctant to step out just yet. Until he learned who had shot the two men, maybe he was safer inside.
“Jake? Is that you?” Raines said as he stepped cautiously up to the side of the ship. “How did you open that?”
Jake climbed out of the chair and stood up. “Ask her,” he said, pointing to Jane.
Raines crawled into the open ship as Jake walked over to join the others who were gathering around the two bodies.
Ash was squatting next to them, checking for a pulse. Then he stood up and addressed Nia. “They’re dead. Both of them. Shot through the heart.”
“Who shot them?” Jake asked.
“They shot each other,” Nia said, “although I couldn’t tell you why.”
“I think I can,” Raines said from behind them. Everyone turned in unison to stare at the older man.
“Grandfather, how could you possibly know?” Vee asked.
Raines walked toward Jake. “I think you’re responsible for this.”
“Me?” Jake asked as he looked down at the two dead men. “How exactly am I responsible? I was trapped inside your mine ship when they shot each other.”
Raines looked at Nia. “I’m afraid it’s also partly my fault,” he said then walked back to the ship. “I misread one of these symbols. The hull is scratched in several places, and I guess I just didn’t double-check my notes well enough.”
“Norman, what are you talking about?” Nia asked as she walked up and placed her hand on his shoulder.
Raines seemed to slump in on himself. To Jake, he suddenly looked like Captain Coal on the last night of his command. “This isn’t called a mine ship,” Raines finally said. “It’s a mind ship.”
“You mean ‘mind,’ as in human mind?” Jake asked. Raines nodded, but that still didn’t clear anything up. “What would a mind ship do?” he asked, but then a possible answer came to him. “Oh no…”
“You were watching us on the view screen inside, weren’t you?” Raines asked. Jake nodded, still refusing to believe the truth he had just guessed.
Raines looked over at the dead bodies. “What were you doing just before they shot each other? What were you thinking?”
Jake shook his head. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“What were you thinking, Jake?” Nia asked.
“I just thought that they should go ahead and shoot each other.”
Everyone looked at him and then at Raines. “You’re telling us that this ship of yours reads minds?” Ash asked.
“And then acts on those thoughts,” Juno concluded. “But how?”
“I have no idea,” Raines said, “but if this object can truly read a person’s thoughts, then is it a huge leap to believe that it could alter another person’s thoughts, as well?” He looked at Jake. “You wanted them to kill each other. The mind ship transferred that thought directly to them, and they carried it out.”
“Is it active now?” Vee asked. “Are we in danger?”
Raines looked at the ship. “I think it has been active since we brought it aboard. I detected a low-level carrier wave emanating from it, but I had no idea what it was.”
“That might explain why I have felt so irritable since we brought it on board,” Nia said.
“Yes,” Raines said, “but to answer Vee’s question, I don’t think we are currently in any danger. I think you need to be seated inside th
e ship to operate it like Jake did.”
Juno looked at Raines and then at Nia. “Did either of you know about this before you brought it on board?”
Nia shook her head. “We honestly had no idea. I knew they had some potential Pre-Fall weapons stored in that dome, but…” She looked at the ship and then back at the Range brothers. “If the Council knew what they had in their possession, how dangerous it was, why would they leave it where it could be stolen so easily?”
“Council?” Jake asked, suddenly aware that his life was becoming more complicated by the moment. “You didn’t tell me you were stealing from the Council.”
“Maybe they left it there for us on purpose,” Vee said, ignoring Jake’s protest. “Maybe they actually wanted us to take it, so that we could figure it out for them. Figure out how it works with no risk to any of them.”
“Which is exactly what we just did,” Ash said. He looked at Nia. “So what do we do now?”
The proximity alarm went off just then, and the floor began to tilt, a sign that the ship was changing course on its own to avoid hitting something. They were in deep water. The only thing they could be avoiding was another ship.
“Going to the bridge,” Juno yelled as she tried to make her way to the lift.
The sloping deck was now becoming pronounced. The Wave was in a hard left turn, which only made sense if they were being corralled by several ships. Jake looked at Nia. “We’re in trouble, aren’t we?” he asked.
“I’m afraid we are,” she said.
Chapter 12
“Get her back to medical,” Nia said to Raines as she tried to guide Jane toward her old friend. “Please make sure Jessie is stable, as well.”
“I’ll take care of them both,” Raines replied as he took hold of Jane’s hand. Nia then tried to follow Jake toward the lift door, but the deck was sloping so badly it was difficult to walk upright.
“Not working,” Juno said. She had reached the lift first and was pounding on the call button.
“The Range brothers must have locked it out,” Jake replied. “Guess they planned to keep us down here.”
Ash and Vee had gone in the opposite direction and had just reached the two exit doors. After struggling with them, they confirmed that they were both locked, as well.
“We’re trapped in here,” Nia said as she, Raines, and Jane Doe reached Jake’s position.
“Not necessarily,” Jake said as he moved over to a small door on the opposite side of the bulkhead. He opened it, revealing a small storage room filled with tools and spare parts for the jumper.
“If you’ve got a welding torch in there, maybe we can cut our way through the door,” Nia said.
“Hopefully, we won’t have to do that,” he said as he stepped inside the room and pulled a panel off the back wall. Underneath was a small access hatch.
“Where does that lead?” Nia asked.
“D-deck,” he replied as he turned the center wheel to disengage the locking pins. “One of the advantages of being a wog who hates small places is that I know where every single door is located on this ship, even well-hidden ones like this.”
The door opened into a cramped space with a low ceiling. The back half of the room was filled by nearly a dozen meter-wide cylinders lying on their sides and stacked two high. This was the ship’s compressed oxygen and nitrogen storage, which supplied their breathing mixture as well as the air needed for pressurizing lockouts and creating bubbles for supercavitation travel.
Jake crawled through the small hatch first and then helped the others through. Raines was the last to enter. “I like this space,” he said. “I may have to move my bunk down here.” Jane started to walk toward a small opening on the starboard side of the room, but Raines stopped her. “That’s dangerous, Jane,” he said. “See that yellow striped tape? That means danger. Do you understand?”
Jane nodded. “Battery sleds,” she said. “They move forward and back to adjust the ship’s pitch.”
“That’s right, dear,” Raines said, then looked at Nia. “How does she know that?”
Nia was busy helping Jake open the ceiling hatch. “Ask Vee about it later,” Jake said as he finished turning the hatch wheel. He then lifted the door and used the wall-mounted ladder to climb up to C-deck. This time, he didn’t wait for the others and ran up the stairs to B-deck and the bridge.
Just as he suspected, four Colonial Guard ships surrounded the Rogue Wave. They were an unmistakable design, with their cylindrical hulls and formidable weapons cluster mounted on the bow. From what he could see out of the viewports, they were circling the Wave, allowing no opening for the autopilot to lock on to. A flashing yellow light on the helm console said his ship was being hailed. “What do we do now?” he asked Nia as she and the others came up the stairwell.
“We talk to them, of course,” she said then looked directly at Jake. “Remember, we have done nothing wrong.”
“Nothing wrong?” he asked. “We have an incredibly dangerous weapon in my cargo bay, which by the way, we stole from them. And, oh, let’s not forget, there are two dead bodies down there as well. Two people who were most likely working for them.”
She put a hand on his shoulder. “Calm down, Jake. While everything you said is technically true, the people out there know none of that. One thing I learned from working for the government is that the Council doesn’t trust anyone outside of the Council, and so the Colonial Guards are told very little when they are sent out on missions. To compensate for this, they have become good at tricking people into telling them what they need to know.”
“So we say nothing?”
“On the contrary,” she said. “You should speak freely, because you have done nothing wrong. If you are clever, you might even be able to make them tell us a thing or two about what they know about all of this.”
“Me?” Jake said. “You expect me to talk to them?”
“You are the owner of the Rogue Wave,” Juno interjected. “The Law of the Sea states that the authority of the ship owner, if he or she is on board, supersedes that of the captain, especially a temporary captain like Nia.”
“Even if I wanted to speak with them,” Nia said, “they will demand to speak to whoever is in charge, and that’s you.”
“What do I say?”
“Whatever you have to,” Nia replied, “but remember to hold your ground and keep them off balance, if you can.”
“Can you stay nearby to help me if I get stuck?” he asked.
“They might recognize my face,” she said. “I’ll be downstairs, monitoring your conversation.”
“Fine,” he said, as if he had a choice.
Juno, Ash, and Vee assumed their stations as Nia went down to the galley. When Juno turned off the autopilot and brought the Rogue Wave to a full stop, Vee sent a hail to the Guard ships. While they waited for a reply, Jake walked up to the command station at the bow and looked out the viewport. The running lights of two of the four ships were just barely visible from his position. He turned up the low-light filter in order to see the ships more clearly. When the filters kicked in, he noticed there was nothing but water below him.
He turned to Ash. “Where are we?”
Ash checked his console. “We seem to be over the Rift,” he said, looking as surprised as Jake was. “We were skirting the western edge on our way south to the drop-off point. They must have pushed us out here when they were corralling us before.”
“Why would they do that?” Vee asked.
“If I wanted to get rid of someone,” Juno said, “this is the place I would do it. No witnesses and no evidence left behind.”
“Great,” Jake said as he stared out at the darkness.
Chapter 13
“They are responding,” Vee said. “I’ll put it on the forward—”
“Actually,” Jake interrupted, “put it on the chart table. I want to get a good look at who I’m dealing with.”
The room crackled with static, and then the upper torso of a man appe
ared on the chart table. The rendering was so good, it looked as though the man were actually standing inside the table.
He glanced around the room before speaking. “Cargo vessel Rogue Wave. This is the Colonial Guard Vessel Scimitar. Prepare to be boarded.”
“Scimitar,” he heard Nia mumble down in the galley. “Like that is supposed to scare us.”
“On whose authority?” Jake asked the man. He looked young, which was a good thing.
“To whom am I speaking?” the man asked as he turned and looked up at Jake.
Jake stood tall, realizing that his image would be projected as looking down on the man from his point of view. “I am Jacob Stone, the owner of this ship.” Then he remembered Nia’s advice about holding his ground. “To whom am I speaking, and what is the meaning of this attack?”
The man looked off to the side before responding. “I am Lieutenant Winnick, and there has been no attack. I have been instructed to search your vessel for possible stolen cargo.”
Instructed, he thought. So, someone else is in charge. “Tell your captain that it is a waste of my time speaking to his lieutenant, and that he should address me directly if he wants my cooperation.”
The young man looked stunned, and then he was suddenly gone from the table projection. He was replaced by a woman with a face aged by decades in command—a face he recognized. “Jacob Stone. Didn’t expect to see you out here.”
“You know her?” Juno whispered.
“Captain Steele,” Jake said. He felt sweat building on his forehead, but he knew he had to remain calm, despite the fact that their situation had suddenly become much, much worse. “I didn’t expect to see you, either. What can I do for you, ma’am?”
“We are investigating a possible theft from one of our storage facilities,” she relayed calmly. “Your ship is on a direct course away from that location. May I ask what you are doing out here?” She glanced at a small slate in her projected hand. “Looks like you are far off your flight plan. That, in itself, is a violation of the law.”
