Activated

by Ell Leigh Clarke

  The image clicked out and the holo frame, now blank, faded.

  Looks like he got everything he wanted.

  Seems so.

  Keep an eye on what you can, Oz. I know he’s still in danger, and anything we can see coming - shifts in political landscape, news on the wire, chatter, whatever - might give us an edge to help him stay safe. And let’s get that message over to Joel. He has a sixth sense about people’s emotions.

  Roger that, boss.

  Okay, let’s look at a couple of the headlines then.

  Gaiman-67, Safe house, Common Area

  Two news bulletins later, Joel wandered into the conference room. Closing the door behind him, he watched the tail end of the last report.

  “All okay down in the Central Systems?” he asked.

  Molly leaned back in her chair and turned to look at him. “Violence, corruption, and general fuckery. Yep, all seems to be business as usual.”

  Joel rolled his eyes. “Oh, I got your Garet message, by the way, through Oz.” He looked around the conference room but kept talking. “I agree. Something’s going down, but it looks like he can’t discuss it.”

  Molly nodded. “Yeah, I thought as much. Oz is keeping an eye out for anything we should be aware of. Patterns. Related incidents. Yadda yadda.”

  Joel pulled up a seat. He was about to sit, when he took a look around Molly, checking behind her… on her back for something.

  “Oi! What you doing, fuck wit?” she asked playfully, swinging round in her chair to try and see what he was looking for.

  Joel’s face was straight. “Just checking your chair.” He paused, and sat on the one he’d pulled up. “I think you’ve got my favorite one.”

  Molly frowned with one eye. “Dude, they’re all the same.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said.

  Molly waited for an explanation. Joel crossed an ankle over his leg and leaned back into the chair, his expression still neutral.

  No explanation came.

  “So what’s up?” she asked, trying to get back to business.

  Joel did a tiny shake of his head, as if remembering why he was here. “Well,” he started, “I was just talking with Crash and Brock. They think we need to name the ship.”

  Molly blinked, then blinked again. “Okay.”

  Joel continued. “They want you to choose something so they don’t have to keep calling it XC-whatever whatever.”

  Molly shrugged. “So name it.”

  Joel looked at her, a little frustrated that she wasn’t understanding the enormity of naming a vehicle. “You should be the one to name it,” he explained to her.

  Molly blinked again, completely confused by her involvement in the conversation. “Okay,” she said slowly. “I hereby name it ‘XC-094B’.”

  Joel exhaled with a chuckle. “You… you really don’t get it do you? This should be something with some meaning. Where’s your sense of… Ugh.”

  Molly looked confused for a second. “Hang on. Is this a dick thing?”

  “A what what?” Joel’s eyes flew wide open and his head recoiled back in shock.

  “You know. How boys treat their ships like penis extensions and give them pet names like…” she started to ask, oblivious to Joel making a face.

  Joel waved both hands out in front of him. “No. No. Ancestors, no.” He tried desperately to compose himself. “Why would you think such a thing?” he asked in horror.

  “Boys. Toys… Not a massive leap.” Molly said flatly. Then she smiled, and her eyes showed signs of recognition. “Ah, is this one of those human things you want me to emotionally engage with?”

  Joel nodded, pointing to her. “Yes! Correct!” He breathed a sigh of relief, off the hook for the cock naming.

  Molly giggled, her inner teenager coming out to play. “Ahhhh, well why didn’t you say so?” She slapped at her leg. “Okay, let’s call it the Tardis.”

  “The what now?” he asked, confused.

  “The T.A.R.D.I.S. Time And Relative Dimension In Space,” she explained, as it was clearly something any self-respecting space cadet should know.

  Joel’s brow wrinkled a little in confusion. “You’re referencing one of those TV shows from the old world, aren’t you?”

  “Technically, the Pan Galaxy is waaay newer than the loop, but the chronology of the relative civilizations would suggest ‘old’ is an appropriate adjective here.” Molly paused. “You’re not into sci-fi are you?”

  Joel’s eyes fixed on her in disbelief. He shook his head. “Try something else. This isn’t a time machine.”

  “Oo,” her eyes lit up. “If it were, we could name it the H.G. Wells!”

  Joel lowered his head into one hand, one elbow on the desk. As he looked up again, he wiped his face with his palm. When his face reappeared, he looked a little… broken.

  “Something else?” he prompted her.

  “Firefly?” she suggested.

  Joel shook his head. “They’ve already been through that.”

  “Millennium Falcon?” she tried again.

  “Nope. Just nope,” he said.

  “You know… from that Star Wars stuff. You know… the long episodes, set in space.”

  “Cuz that narrows it down,” he said with barely the will left to raise his eyes to the heavens.

  Molly sat like stone for a moment.

  Joel slowly shook his head. “Has anyone ever suggested to you the words ‘misspent youth’?”

  She smiled a broad smile. “Often. You know, if Brock has time on his hands, maybe we should get him to see if he can reverse engineer that antigrav mug of his, and create conference room chairs that don’t need contact with the floor.”

  She swiveled her chair back to her screen.

  Joel tried not to smile at her dismissal of the naming task. “How about I bounce this naming thing back to the boys and let them decide? Then you can okay it.”

  Molly was already swiping through other reports in the data package. “Sure.” She smiled mischievously, without looking away from her screens. “Or we could just go with the Tardis.”

  Joel realized the conversation had reached its climax. With the look of a defeated man, he rose from his non-favorite chair, and ambled back out of the room again.

  Thank to fokk my ancestors she’s not my girlfriend, he thought, as he released himself to go deal with more pressing matters.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Gaiman-67, Safe house, Workshop

  Brock and Crash were sitting at the bench, holos active and mochas in hand. In front of them, they had synched their holos to play a game of psychic chess in three dimensions.

  “Well, chap, quantum teleportation is theoretically one way forward.” Crash peered over his antigrav mug as he took a swig of life-sustaining mocha. He changed a thought and moved a pawn down a level.

  “But…” Brock pressed.

  “Well, there have been strides in the lab, but there is something about destroying the original only to replicate it elsewhere, which just gives me the willies.” He shuddered for effect.

  It was Brock’s move, and he was fixated on a cluster of mid-value pieces that Crash had surrounded. He paused, thinking through a couple of scenarios as Crash lilted on about teleportation.

  Crash had placed his antigrav mug on the table, but it was oscillating around its center of mass and slowly ebbing towards the edge of the table. Crash let it, curious to see what it would do. “Yeah, plus the science is barely there. I don’t think it’s at engineering stage yet. Certainly not for us to just dip in and build it.”

  Brock sighed as a distant look appeared in his eye. “True, but a brother can dream…”

  Crash wrinkled his nose a little. “You know, we should probably be looking at the fastest transportation in the system. Right now, that’s fusion powered hyper drive.”

  Alertness returned to Brock’s eyes. “Yeah. That’s probably the most sensible idea.” He seemed to have made up his mind for his move and was trying to hit the right thoug
ht to move the correct piece. “Might take a bit of research, though.”

  “Yes, and it can be something we work on in the background.” Crash looked back down at the holo list he had made from the meeting earlier that day before continuing. “Okay, let’s look at that later. I think we need to put together a realistic list of the weaponry we can fit this bird with. That’ll be what Molly will be checking up on first.”

  Brock’s knight hopped two spaces forward and up one level. A look of mild relief spread across his face. “Well, it would have had blasters on the sides originally, but they’ve been removed.”

  Crash nodded. “Right. I think that was something to do with Central System regs about 20 years ago. The military didn’t want private ships to have weaponry in case they were somehow used against them.” He moved his queen from the top tier all the way down to the bottom on the other side of the board.

  Brock cringed.

  Returning his attention to the conversation, “How do you know all this shit?”

  Crash blushed a little. “Ah, you know… It’s… it’s my job to know…”

  “Nah uh,” Brock told him, wagging his finger from side to side. “Not many pilots I know keep tabs on all this kinda thing. And the history stuff. Like with the insignia Paige found. No one else had any idea about that… but you did.” He moved another piece.

  Crash pretended to be suddenly absorbed in his next move. “Well, you know. Military history and stuff runs in the family. It was just something my grandfather would use to keep me from spending too much time on the holo.”

  He got up from his seat, as if needing to change position. “So, getting hold of the original weapons might be a bitch. Especially if those regs are still active.”

  Brock allowed him to change the subject. “Yeah. I wonder what might be happening in other systems. You know, if they don’t have the same regs, I’m sure we could adapt something.”

  Crash’s voice became more excited, as his eyes lit up and he found a page in his holo that had specs. “Yeah, those Yollins are pretty together when it comes to space tech. I wonder if there is a way we can get Oz to patch in and help us locate something useful.”

  Brock lit up too, the chess game forgotten. “You mean just order them up on the Zon?”

  The two looked at each other. “Time to talk to Molly,” they said in unison.

  “What about Molly?” Joel asked, stomping down the last step.

  As he stepped into the workshop the chess set collapsed in a cascade of pixels and disappeared, leaving Crash and Brock looking exactly like they’d been caught red-handed playing games on the job.

  “We need her to ask Oz to run some research for us,” Crash replied, cool as anything, turning to look at Joel as he approached the workbench.

  Joel nodded. “Ah, yes. That’ll be no problem. But regarding the naming… I have bad news.” He stopped in the middle of the floor, as if he wasn’t staying.

  Brock braced himself. Crash didn’t flinch.

  Joel paused for effect, before telling them, “You’re on your own. She was about as useful as a chocolate fireguard.”

  Brock sniggered.

  Crash smiled, mostly at Brock’s snigger. “So what does this mean?” he asked. “We just pick something?”

  Joel nodded again. “Yup. Pick something appropriate, and then run it by her.”

  “Well, okay, then.” Crash nodded in acceptance of the mission.

  Joel nodded abruptly once, as he might have done to an officer in the space marines, and then turned on his heels and left.

  Brock was still chuckling to himself. “Looks like we’re on our own on that one, then!”

  “Looks like,” Crash agreed.

  Brock picked up his antigrav mug to take another swig of mocha. “I still think there’s something going on with those two…” He pointed his forefinger in the direction of the door as he drank from the mug, his eyes dancing with glee at the prospect of people falling in love and getting bow-chica-wow-wow on base.

  Crash smiled, but his voice was firm. “Don’t you go stirring anything up. There’s a reason the military forbids that kinda thing between teammates.”

  “Yeah, but we ain’t in the military now…” Brock’s eyes were still smiling, as he returned to his holo to work.

  “I’m just sayin’,” Crash told him. “There’s a reason for it.”

  Joel had stopped on the stairs, listening to the banter between the pair in the workshop. Damn, he thought. He was going to have to be more careful. Brock must have picked up on something.

  Quietly, he continued his way up the stairs so as not to draw their attention.

  Ventus Research Facility, downtown Spire

  “We’re going to have to call her.”

  Managing Director Dr. Carl Knotts swiped holo screens across the table to his colleague: some detailed reports their street team had gathered. The situation had worsened in the last few hours.

  He rubbed his eyes, and pushed back his chair from the conference table.

  His colleague was unmoved. “Not yet,” Piles insisted. “Simons says he’s probably just 16 hours away from an antidote.”

  “He’s been saying that and similar for months. Before this was even a… situation.” Knotts chose his words carefully, even though his body language was weighted with guilt. He stood up and stretched his back out. His Estarian skin was graying from the stress, and from being cooped up for hours at a stretch trying to solve the growing crisis.

  He looked over at his partner who, though tired, was maintaining his posture, eyes staring into the table.

  “It was a side project then,” Piles reasoned. “Now he’s got the whole team on it - and nothing else.”

  They were the only ones in the meeting area. Everyone else had either gone home, or was working overtime in the labs.

  Dr. Knotts shook his head again. “I don’t know. I think we need to consider bringing the Bates girl in now.”

  Piles banged his hand on the table, causing Knotts to jump out of his skin. “We’ve talked about this,” Piles reiterated, the frustration seeping into his voice. “That in itself has a downside. We’ll all be leaving ourselves vulnerable for prosecution.”

  Dr. Knotts protested, emotion welling in his voice. “Yes, but if that is the cost of getting this under control and saving hundreds of thousands of lives, then-”

  His voice trailed off as his eye caught the holo screen with the live news reports. The media was now noting the escalated levels of violence in areas that were affected.

  He sighed the sigh of a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. After a moment he turned back to his partner.

  Knotts had to do something now. Managing Director or no, he was an Estarian and a scientist. “Okay. Make the call,” he told Piles. His shoulders slumped a little as he relented. “But if we can keep some of the details from her, then we should. Just bring her in for the antidote, and tell her as little as possible about everything else.”