Equilibrium of Terror: Part 2

by Eddie R. Hicks

  Too bad Miles had sat next to Destiny.

  “Well, well, well if it isn’t mister ‘I don’t have the balls to assassinate the president,’” Miles said to Jazz.

  “Oh look, it’s a habs fan,” Jazz said.

  “Are we seriously sitting with the Hashmedai and HLF terrorists?” Petropoulos asked her superior.

  “No other chairs ‘vailable,” Miles said. “It’s ribs night what da ye expect?”

  “I expected to be not sitting with riffraff,” Petropoulos said, giving Jazz a smug grin.

  “You sound like my ex when I first met her,” Jazz said to her. “And I went balls deep with her on the first date.”

  “Sorry, I don’t know how to fuck guys.”

  “Well girl, you gonna learn today!”

  “Jazz switch seats with me,” Destiny said.

  “What’s up?”

  Destiny looked at Miles and gave Jazz her reply. “I need a reason to not stab this asshole.”

  “Feisty one eh?” Miles said to her.

  “Aren’t you the marine that ordered EVE to attack us in Vancouver?”

  “Aye that was me.”

  Jazz quickly stood to carry out Destiny’s request having realized that her husband was dead because of the order Miles gave during their battle in Vancouver. Talking shit was one thing, an all-out fight was going to jeopardize the alliance he and Chloe managed to broker with the Silver Raven’s crew.

  “You sad ‘cause your friends died?” Miles said.

  “One of them was my husband.”

  Jazz tried to get them to change the subject by shouting “Okay so—”

  “Stay right there,” Miles said to Destiny. “Rina West, notorious commander of the HLF. The weapons and armor you use were looted from dead UNE soldiers you killed. You want me to feel sorry for yer arse because my order led to the death of ya man?” Destiny stood, not to change seats, but in preparation for a fight. Miles acknowledged her and did the same. Everyone in the mess shifted their focus toward the two as their voices got loud. “What about all the blood on yer hands?”

  “It was war!”

  “What war? You folks used violence rather than diplomacy to get what you wanted! Your husband was a casualty of war, get over it. Just like how I got over meh daddies death when the Hashmedai killed 'em and much of my family.”

  “There a problem?” It was Chloe. She stood next to their table with her sister, both of them were holding a tray of food, and looking to take a seat at the last two remaining chairs.

  Jazz was glad she arrived, her authority helped put both Destiny and Miles in their place and ended conflict, for now. It was now Jazz’s turn to ensure it didn’t flare back up. “Naw, we were just getting ready to leave,” he said. “Yo can I get a doggie bag for this grub?”

  Vaish’s sedated body along with the Aryile corpse from the Silver Raven’s cryo chamber was wheeled into the lab. Chloe eyed Vaish's body and her mind-blowing exact looks. It was hard to imagine all that time she was once in control of Vaish’s body, a Linl, while the rest of the world knew nothing of it. Especially Chris, the crazy sex they had, physically was with this woman not her. Chris was cheating and neither of them had known any better!

  Eupiar entered behind as the two stretchers were placed in by Avearan and EVE. The teenaged Hashmedai human hybrid sat at a nearby table with her laptop, ignoring everything else around her as Avearan looked at the body of the Aryile.

  “Well that’s disgusting.” Avearan said as she ran her medial scanner up and down Aryile’s body. The results of the scan appeared in a hologram above it.

  “Well?” Chloe asked her after the scanning finished.

  “Just like the other,” Avearan said. “Aryile DNA spliced with genes from an unknown source.”

  “According to Jazz this guy was a shape shifter too.”

  “Fascinating,” EVE said, while her android eyes looked at the holographic display. “We will have to preserve this cadaver for future study.”

  “What can you tell me about her?” Chloe said, cocking her index finger to Vaish. “Why does she look like me?”

  Avearan performed a scan of her body and the results populated the holographic window. The flashing red lights that indicated the discovery of the unknown genes found in the Aryile did not appear on the scans done on Vaish.

  “I don’t see anything unusual,” Avearan reported. “She is Linl a hundred percent, no spliced genes and therefore not a shape shifter.”

  “Still doesn’t explain why she looks like me, this can't just be coincidence.”

  EVE chimed in. “Please Keep in mind Major, Radiance has access to advanced genetic enchantments via their hatcheries. It is possible her parents sequenced her genes so that she would look exactly like you.”

  Chloe winced at the thought. “That’s fucked up.”

  “And highly improbable, for it would require her parents to know exactly how you looked during her conception. Given the fact that swap of your memories happened after your arrival at the Alpha Centauri system, she would have had to have been born years before the invasion,” EVE said.

  “That and she’s an exile, she would have been born the natural way.” Chloe said. “Put her back in cryo for now, the only way we’re going to get our answers is to find the data crystal with her memories.”

  “You will be happy to know it was discovered in the halls of the habitat ring of the John F. Kennedy shortly after the UNE regained control of it,” EVE said.

  “Finally some good news, where is it now?”

  “Unknown,” EVE said with her hands behind her back. “UNE network connectivity is currently offline due to the Hashmedai malware that was infected us. Once connection to the network has been restored I can run a search through the UNE network and find out what became of it. It was most likely however sent to EISS headquarters for further analysis and decryption.”

  “And that’s why I brought you up here,” Chloe said to Eupiar. “EVE give the kid access to everything you got on that malware, she’ll assist you in dealing with it.”

  “I’m helping UNE now?” Eupiar asked as she slowly tilted her head away from her laptop’s holographic screen. “What’s the galaxy come to?”

  “We had a deal remember? Silver Raven people help us, and we don’t keep you locked up.”

  EVE walked over to Eupiar and lifted her arm. A tiny cable ejected from a hidden compartment on her arm, it allowed the android to plug into the laptop and start a data transfer. The two began to speak to each other about the malware; it was a whole lot of technobabble Chloe couldn’t make head or tails of as Avearan took both Vaish's body and the Aryile and placed them inside a cryopod attached to the wall.

  “I’ll let you two do your thing,” Chloe said as she moved toward the exit. “No funny stuff, kid.”

  “I’ve already gained access to life support systems,” Eupiar said. Chloe stopped instantly and faced Eupiar with an angry look. “Relax, I’m just fucking with you.”

  “Like I said, no funny stuff of any kind understood?”

  Eupiar kept her face glued to her laptop, as she replied to Chloe with her middle finger.

  Chloe returned the gesture as well as she exited the labs. Fuck you too, she thought. And good luck.

  Nice, very nice. Eupiar thought as she analyzed the code of the malware. But there are flaws, flaws I’m going to exploit. Should have gotten me to program this shit.

  Eupiar’s fingers typed quickly as she began to lay down the ground work on making a program that would purge the malware the ship’s system, EVE, as well as a fix that would prevent such threats from taking control of the ship again. She was bored forty-five minutes into her work, a break was needed, something fun, something exciting and adrenaline pumping, what could that be.

  As she sat in her chair, it had dawned upon her, she had access to not just any ship, but a UNE battleship. Hacking into one of these was damn near impossible during her time in the HLF, but there she was plugged into its networ
k, the hard part was already taken care of. EVE had long turned her back on her as she returned to analyzing the Aryile that was brought aboard. EVE was also still partially infected by the malware, and from what Eupiar gathered couldn’t track her movements throughout the Winston Churchill’s internal network. Let’s have a look-see, Eupiar thought as she cracked her fingers.

  Eupiar stated to shift through various files and reports, boring stuff. There must have been something here worth the effort. A few recently saved files caught her attention, uploaded by an EDF solider named Sarah Vaughan. The file contained information taken from a secret testing base on Titan in regard to human psionic power and secret lab that was discovered in LA set up by the Celestial Order.

  Download selected file(s) Y/N?

  Download in progress.

  Yoink.

  So fucking tired. Chloe stumbled back into her quarters, Sarah wasn’t there. Most likely in the lounge she figured. She rested her tired body on her bunk. It felt like ages since her or anyone else for that matter slept on it. Sleeping aboard the Silver Raven didn’t work out well for her, she figured it was due to the lack of gravity combined with the fact it was a Hashmedai made vessel. She shut her eyes to rest, she couldn’t have been bothered to change that would have to happen in the morning when she woke up.

  Her eyes opened two hours later. She was unaware of it however.

  Vaishea awoke inside a room she didn’t recognize. The layout and design was one she never saw, and there was gravity, this was not the Silver Raven. Another planet perhaps? She got up from where she was resting, a bunk bed of some sort. The wall, floors around her, the make of it was . . . strange almost alien.

  She left the room she was in and entered a hallway. There were several doors all around, all shaped like the one she just left, some sort of residential area perhaps maybe a hotel. She mulled around the hallways hoping to run into Jazz or the others, as none of them left her a note or an indication where they went. Various uniformed people nodded and referred to her as Major. Most of them spoke English and had human writing on their uniforms, which narrowed down where she was. The Silver Raven must have made it to the human home world and everyone around her thought she was Chloe. She’d have to play the part or risk being exposed.

  An observation window off to the side revealed that she wasn’t on a planet, but in space. There were signs the section of the ship she was on was rotating as the stars and the dwarf planet in the distance were moving. The movement of the rings must be generating the artificial gravity. In that case they didn’t make it to the human home world, but rather one of their ships. Either way Jazz had to be found, she became increasingly worried about him as none of these humans looked like him or Destiny.

  She needed answers and directions, two things that weren’t going to show up just like that. She had to seek them out. She had to make people think she was Major Vaughan at the same time, acted how the Major would around her own kind. A male human stood in the halls reading information off a data pad that used holograms rather than a touch screen to display its information, Vaishea approached him.

  “Good to have you back, Major,” the uniformed human male said.

  “Ah yes,” Vaishea said, in an attempt to sound like Chloe.

  “What was it like being stuck aboard a Hashmedai ship like the Silver Raven?”

  “Confusing,” she said. “Where is it?”

  “The Silver Raven?”

  “Yes.”

  “On the flight deck. Don’t you remember?”

  “Ah, of course,” she nodded to him, “thank you.”

  Vaishea proceeded further into the halls, she didn’t bother to ask how to get to the flight deck, she couldn’t, someone like the Major should know that. She ventured through the halls falling back to her knowledge of the inside Radiance cruisers. Since Radiance helped humans build their ships she hoped that the interiors were the same.

  They weren’t.

  Vaishea ended up walking in circles encountering the same halls repeatedly. Doors she thought would be an elevator turned out to be doors leading into other sections. The damage done to the ship didn’t help, as several sections were blocked off, there were several signs that a battle took place days ago.

  After fifteen more minutes of aimless walking she found the elevator, or at least something that looked like one. Someone from behind called out her name, she spun and saw a dark skinned human male, it wasn’t Jazz however. The name ‘Boyd’ was written on his uniform.

  “Hey,” Boyd said to her as he approached.

  “Mmm?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I feel great.”

  “Stroll throughout the habitat ring eh?”

  “Yeah uh, I felt the need to take walk.”

  “You know there’s the treadmill in the gym, right?”

  “Oh, yeah. Of course I forgot I’ll do that later.”

  The elevator doors opened and she got on. She refrained from referring to him by his name, unsure if he was a superior or a lower ranked person. Smile and nod will have to do; people on the Abyssal Explorer were fine with that should be fine here.

  She saw the floors from the rotating ring move away as the elevator lowered. All what she could see afterward was space and the central section of the ship as the elevator got closer to it. She felt her hair start to float along with the rest of her body, the gravity was gone, a much more familiar feeling when one was on a section of a ship that wasn’t the bridge.

  The elevator stopped and its sliding doors slithered open. She was confused, everything and everyone was upside down as she exited. Why would humans operate in this manner when there is no gravity? She kicked off the side of the elevator and entered the corridor before her. It took her some time and several odd stares to realize she was the one upside down, not the humans. She’d have to remember that the next time she travels back up to the ring, flip your body around before it arrives and the ceiling of the elevator becomes the floor when the gravity kicks in.

  She sighed upon realizing the size of this section of the ship, and that she’d probably be lost again as she aimlessly wandered around trying to find the location of the flight deck.

  Human ships make no sense at all, she thought as she finally arrived at the flight deck. The Silver Raven was inside, parked next to several human transport ships. Humans like Hashmedai used fighter ships in combat, she had hoped to see what the human equivalent looked like inside the flight deck but saw nothing. Perhaps they’re out on patrol, she thought as she approached a group of human soldiers standing watch next to the Silver Raven while others, wearing bright orange jumpsuits made repairs to its exterior.

  “Jazz is inside, correct?” she asked them.

  “Johnson? Yes ma’am he is.”

  He called me ma’am, so Chloe must be of a high rank, good I can use this. Before she could say anything else the doors to the Silver Raven dropped open. Jazz stood with a worried look on his face.

  “I’ll take it from here,” she said to the soldiers and entered while the doors rose then shut. She took a deep breath in relief, never in her life would she be thankful and feel safe aboard a Hashmedai ship.

  “You gotta be Vaishea,” Jazz said to her. “‘cause Vaughan sure as fuck wouldn’t swing by for a visit.”

  Then there was Jazz, the real reason why she felt safe. She quickly gave him a hug, one she wasn’t ready to release him from just as their two embracing bodies floated. “Yep, Vaishea,” he said. “What is going on?”

  Their embrace ended as he led her up to the upper decks of the ship. “When the Major goes to sleep, I come out,” she said.

  “And when you go to sleep she comes back.”

  She saw two Hashmedai hover in the lounge, a female guardian, and a male warrior. They both looked at her, but did nothing, thankfully. Just like the female assassin that piloted the Silver Raven, these two Hashmedai didn’t move to attack as she expected. Jazz began to introduce the two Hashmedai to her, Onatiasha and Zhinbr
yo. She learnt their story and how they became friends with Jazz, to Vaishea’s surprise Onatiasha spoke English very well.

  “So why are you here?” Jazz asked her as the story exchange died down.

  “I don’t belong up there, felt out of place, lost.”

  “You know from their point of view you’re still Chloe, right? They don’t know about this other side of you.”

  “I know. All the more reason to stay here, hidden away.”

  “We can’t keep doing this, they’ll find out.”

  “Then what do we do? Every time she sleeps I awaken.”

  “Come with me,” Jazz said as he led her back down to the lower decks and into the cryostasis chamber. A small handheld kit floated next to a recently opened cryo tube, he grabbed and offered it to her. “These are the sedatives we used to keep Vaish out cold. If you going to sleep wakes up Chloe, then you should hit yourself up with one of these.”

  “So I just keep making myself sleep?”

  “Until we get this sorted out,” he said. “Every time you come out will put your existence at risk.”

  Jazz handed her the kit as she reached out to grab it out of his hands. She looked at it and its cylindrical devices within, and wondered how long would it be before they could talk, listen to Earth music. There was so much more about human culture she wanted to learn. Worst part was, they were officially no closer to finding a solution that would allow her to live freely. She reached out and hugged him once again, he returned her embrace, unlike the last.

  As their bodies pulled away, direct eye contact was made. It felt as though time had stopped as she couldn’t hear the humming of the ship’s air vents. Her eyes shut and she leaned forward and directed her lips to kiss him. If he rejected it, so be it however, she wanted to experience this for a while. The warmth of his body, his strong hands as they held onto her waist as the two floated. He didn’t pull away he clearly enjoyed it for what it was worth.