“The problem has nothing to do with those wires, you’re going to have to push them apart until you can see behind them.”
She wrapped her legs around the ladder and put her hands inside one of the gaps. She pushed them apart and the plethora of wires shifted, creating a gap in front of her.
“Okay, I see a thick grey wire a few inches away from the cluster.”
“Good, that’s the wire that regulates information to the engine. The biggest block is somewhere on that wire.”
“Wait, you don’t know the exact point?”
“I’d figure it out if I were there, but since I’m not, you’re going to have to give me some visuals.”
“It’s gray.”
“Okay.”
“And thick.”
“Not very helpful.”
“Oh wait, there’s a tiny, tiny point that looks pretty black.”
“That’s your blockage.”
“That was easy.”
“Now comes the hard part. We’re going to have to bypass the blockage, which means we’ll have to cut the wire off and use another piece of wiring to create an alternate route for the engine to be powered.”
“Where am I supposed to get the wire from?”
“Remember the cluster you saw? Cut off five or six wires. They’re pretty thin so your suit is sharp enough to cut them. The toolkit is a little too strong to cut just one wire.”
“Fine, I won’t use the toolkit. You need five wires?”
“Five is good.”
She grabbed onto a clump and made a fist around them.
One, two, three, four and five, she counted and slashed at them with the sharper points on her wrists. A large section of the wire cut of and rested in her palm like a handful of noodles.
“Got it.”
“Great, now twist them together and use them as a bypass for the main engine circuitry.”
“That sounds way easier than it actually is, doesn’t it?”
“Umm…yeah it does.”
She loosened her grip on the ladder just a bit, and got closer to the opening. “Okay I’m in position. What do I do?”
“First twist the wiring around and connect it to the regions on either side of the blockage.”
She gave the clump a few quick turns. “Wait, how am I supposed to secure it?”
“You need to use the toolkit. Place the wire on the securing point and hover the toolkit above it. I’ll take care of the rest.”
“Okay then.”
She placed the clumped wires on one end of the black region and used her other hand to hold the toolkit right above it.
“I’ve got the wires in place.”
“Activating the laser. Hold on.”
The same thing happened again, a section opened up and a blue light hit the wires, only this time it seemed much dimmer.
The wires heated up a bit but they cooled down just as fast, and when they did, they were completely adhered to the main wire.
“And now the other side,” Kai said.
In quick time she had both ends connected to the main wire, and that meant the hardest part of the job was over.
“All you have left to do is cut the original wire. But make the cut at the blocked out region.”
She didn’t bother replying and cut the thick wire in one fell swoop.
“All done.”
“You probably don’t want to be close by when the engine turns back on.”
“Thanks for the tip. What am I supposed to do now?”
“Get back in here.”
Finally, she thought.
She crawled up the ladder and back onto the top of the ship. Once she was there it was easy to climb down to the door on the side and get back on board.
“Ethosien.” she said, and her suit started glowing. It broke off from her in a few million pieces and attached to her wrist in the form of a black bracelet.
“Great job,” Kai threw her a bottle of water.
“Let’s hope I don’t have to do that again.”
Kai chuckled, “Don’t worry, I checked the ship’s readings.”
“And?”
He grinned, “Engine is ready for action.”
***
Q had been waiting in the pit for a while now, waiting for Carlos or Kai to come by.
“Where in the world have you been?” Carlos charged in.
“Hi,” he said.
“Yes. Hi. What are you doing here in the pit?”
“Looks like those ‘lucky’ thrusts helped you out big time didn’t they?”
“What?” his eyes widened.
Q smiled.
“You? What? How?”
“Elementary my dear Carlos,” Q paused and then laughed. “I can’t believe how much I’ve wanted to say that.”
“What happened here?”
“Well. It started with the first initial blockage. I figured the thrusters could be activated involuntarily because of the blockage. So at first I got here to only to try and see if I could use the frontal thrusters in case something went wrong. Turns out the circuits to that were jammed as well, which meant the only way anything would fire is by misfiring at totally random times. I tried to find a way to get some solid control over the thruster, even if it was for just a short period of time.”
He took a pause for breath.
“I had no clue what to do, then I started thinking about what Kai said, that the electricity would cause a magnetic field that’d pull Taylor in. The opposite was possible too, right? All I had to do was create a magnetic field and if I did it fast I’d generate just enough electricity to get a full second of thrust. So I got these from the passengers,” he held up two pieces of black metal.
“Those are…”
“Micromagnets. Yeah. Far too advanced for Earth to even know they exist. One of the passengers told me about them.”
“But then how did you even figure out how they work?”
“Aw, c’mon. It isn’t that different really. Regular magnets produce magnetic fields all the time, these produce magnetic fields only when they’re next to metal right?”
“Yeah but which passenger did you take it from?”
“I know what you’re worried about, and yes it’s true, these were for his medical condition. He’s supposed to have a shard of the magnet implanted in his arm.”
“Implanted?!”
“He’s apparently got cancer down there. So when he gets treated by the radiation machine which is made of metal, the micromagnet activates and its magnetic field helps guide the radiation only into his arm.”
“Oh, that kind of implant.”
“What did you think?”
“Genetic manipulation?”
“You’re being silly you know.”
“So the thrusters were fired when you generated the magnetic field?”
“Yeah. The moment I felt the first jerk I knew Taylor was in trouble, and I used the magnets right after.”
“You mean you did all this on a hunch?”
“Well, I was about to, but then the screens were all on, and one of them showed me that Taylor was floating away. I got the magnets out and rammed them against wall,” he pointed to a small dent in the metal wall to his left. “The field was strong enough to give us thrust to help her get back on.”
“And the second time?”
Q pointed to the other side of the wall that has a similar dent.
“Whatever crazy stunt you pulled, you just saved Taylor’s life,” Carlos chuckled. “And this time she’ll remember everything.”
“Yeah,” he smiled. “I hope she does.”
“The mind can only forget things for so long. Everything is still in there. It just doesn’t know how to get out. Give her time, she’ll get back to throwing guys over her head in no time.”
Q laughed, “I’m looking forward to it.”
***
“That is soooo coool!” Kai bear hugged Q. “You are a worthy pupil, my boy.”
“Could you set us
on course first?” he broke from his hold “Those thrusters probably changed our position a little bit.”
Kai let him go and sat down at his seat. The screens shifted and all sorts of readings and dials came up. His hands danced around the screens for a bit, as though he were virtually moving objects.
“We’re on course,” he said and pressed a button. The ship jerked forwards.
“And the engine is in prime condition.”
“I have to ask you though,” Taylor said. “We only fixed one blockage. You said there were plenty of them.”
“The other blockages are still there. The only reason we were affected was because the engine shut down. Those other blockages won’t go away, but they’re only affecting trivial systems like headlights, so we shouldn’t worry.”
“We’ll be fine,” Carlos assured them.
The screens emanated some interference noise and Kai turned his chair back around.
“Whoa,” he brought up some other screens which had tons of code written on them.
“What’s going on?”
“We’re getting mixed signals from somewhere close by.”
“Are you sure it isn’t the enemy?”
“If it is the enemy they’d have to be amazing at creating this sort of signal. This is so broken down that there is no way it’s been done on purpose.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. I don’t know if it’s an S.O.S, but the communication machinery has certainly been torn to bits.”
“What’s the ship’s position?”
“One second,” Kai brought up a few more readings on his screen. “They’re actually really close to Kryptos. We’ll probably meet them in the next twenty minutes.”
“Alright,” Carlos said. “Kai, you focus on guiding the ship, Taylor, get the passengers updated on the new situation, and Q….just stay away from the micromagnets.”
Q smiled, “I’ll try.”
“Buckle up people,” Kai grinned. “It’s-”
“Time to party?” Q asked innocently.
“No. That was definitely not what I was going to say.”
“Sure.”
“Spoilsport,” Kai grumbled.
Q couldn’t help but smile. It’d been a little more than a day since he stepped into that portal.
And things were starting to settle down.
He found it all quite….normal.
And honestly, that’s what scared him the most.
***
Fifteen minutes had passed since the signal had been picked up, and Kai seemed to be getting more and more tense. Q really didn’t get why, but then things started to fall into place.
“I’m getting more signals from the area,” Kai said. “They’re all coming from one specific point.”
“Location?” Carlos asked.
“I can’t find it. The signals are interfering too much for me to do anything else,” he bit his lip.
“Well, all we can do for now is head to the first signal’s location and figure things out from there. How much longer till we get there?”
“ETA in sixty seconds.”
“We’ve got no weaponry which means we’ll have to rely on Taylor and myself to do any fighting that comes along.”
“Guys?” Kai pointed at one of his screens.
A huge sphere of red lit up on the image, its bright light almost too blinding to look at. Q could make out faint outlines of flames and blasts that were going on inside.
“Seems like something big is going on there. Skip the signal. Head straight for the shuttle station. We need to get back up.”
Kai kept quiet and pointed to the flaming object, his face cold and emotionless. “That’s the shuttle station.”
***
3-1
The flaming shuttle station glared on the screen. Carlos clenched his palm into a tight fist, trying hard not to bang it against the wall.
“Can we do anything at all?”
“The whole place is going down.” Kai said.
“Any survivors?”
He zoomed into the image, “No one is going to survive that.”
Carlos peeked at the feed. Godzilla-sized men stomped around the place, their arms slapping anything that was in their vicinity.
Oh god, Carlos thought.
“What are those things?” Q asked.
“They’re the indiff giants aren’t they?” Taylor said.
Carlos nodded. “They’re from the same planet as the Corein giants. They’re larger and way stronger than the Coreins. They’re not intelligent though. No form of language or speech.”
Brutal idiots, he thought.
“Does this mean the attack on S.P.A.C.E was connected to this one?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But the indiff giants’ presence rules out any rescue missions. No way would survivors last against those things.”
“That’s it then? We leave them alone?” Q asked.
“Look closer,” he pointed to the remnants of the station. “There’s nothing left for us to leave.”
Everyone remained subdued.
“Get us out of here,” Carlos sighed. “I don’t want to risk hanging around in the blast radius.”
“We could try to help other ships,” Kai said.
“The shuttle station has a nuclear core that fuels it. When that thing blows it’ll pretty much block out all communication systems. If we don’t get away from it we risk getting our circuitry absolutely fried.”
“I understand.”
“Q and Taylor, the two of you go back to the passenger hold. Tell them we picked up a false signal, and that we’re back on track. They don’t need to know we’re near an attack site.”
Both of them nodded and walked away.
“Do you really think the shuttle station was a lost cause?” Kai asked.
“Kryptos is right next to the station. If they haven’t gone to help them you can be sure it’s a lost cause. And trust me I’d be the last person to abandon anyone.”
“And why might that be?”
Carlos stayed silent.
“People like you, who risk their lives just for the hope of saving someone else, usually have a personal reason for all that. Everyone has a reason for who they are. What’s yours?”
“You’re a nosy little guy aren’t you?”
“Hey, I just like knowing things, man,” Kai laughed.
“And speaking of reasons, why exactly were you at S.P.A.C.E? I know you’re not an employee, so you were being treated. But for what?”
Kai paused a bit, completely thrown off by that question.
“I’m part of Area 51 in the US. I needed my yearly full-body checkup, and the day I land in S.P.A.C.E this happens,” he chuckled. “Just my luck huh?”
“Just your luck.”
“You’re not going to ask me about Area 51?”
“I know enough already. I think you guys are doing the right thing. Not letting anyone know,” he sighed. “Remember when the world was told about global warming? Now Earth has politicians saying all that ice isn’t melting and that all those scientists were wrong. Imagine what they’d do if they knew about Area 51.”
“I find it super funny that even though Area 51 is a government thing, no government official knows about it.”
“That makes sense. I mean what government official would be okay with accepting help from a galactic alien organization?”
“Which government would acknowledge that their entire planet is being safeguarded by twenty people from Area 51?”
“They’ll have to know sometime.”
“We have this policy in Area 51, that the day humans get past racism and discrimination will be the day they can accept they are not alone in the universe.”
“We’ll worry about that later. Let’s focus on the problem at hand,” he said. “We need a new course don’t we?”
“I’m just heading away as fast as possible, but if you have some place specific then, let me know.”
“Do
you know of Zygrade?”
“Aw cmon. Zygrade is like the Area 51 on the galaxy. Only it actually doesn’t exist.”
Carlos entered some coordinates into a screen, “We’ll see.”
“You’re just toying with me aren’t you?”
He smiled.
“Ugh. Fine,” he set the ship to head to the exact coordinates.
“So what’s your job at Area 51?”
“Test pilot for all alien spacecraft.”
“Fighter crafts?”
“No, we don’t want military ones. That’s a bad idea. If we gave early man a gun he’d probably have shot every human alive including himself. Don’t need the same sort of thing happening now.”
“So what do you test pilot?”
“We get high-class, passenger cruise ships, and try to replicate their engine design using materials from Earth. It’s like an organic way of evolving as a species. We take ideas from other alien cultures and try to replicate them with materials from the Earth.”
“Isn’t that being kind of arrogant? Like an ‘I don’t need your stuff’ kind of thing?”
“Nah. We don’t want to depend on some other culture for parts. God knows what the galactic currency exchange rates are.”
“Pretty high I can assure you.”
“We should stop talking about Zyxians politics.”
“Yeah.”
“Seriously now, is Zygrade real?”
“Maybe,” Carlos grinned, “Maybe not.”
***
Q really didn’t know what to talk to Taylor about.
He’d been feeling pretty nervous around her lately. First, he was afraid of saying something and finding out she didn’t remember that event and second, he was afraid he might trigger her mind and cause her to lose even more memories.
“You know, I wonder what really happened down there,” she told him.
He panicked for a bit because they weren’t really supposed to be talking about this in front of the passengers. Then he realized the passengers were all asleep.
After he told them they were back on course they’d all let go a collective sigh of relief. He felt a little sorry for them. They had no control over what was going on, no decisions they could make to change their fate. He was intrigued at how they must feel. Their life was in someone else’s hands.
The Quest Saga Collection: Books 1 - 5 Page 11
