by M J Gauntlet
Pilar stopped walking as they reached the end of the passageway and turned to face Zax. “Well, here we are, the nerve center of the entire ship.”
Trying to keep the excitement out of his voice, Zax said, “You mean this where the engine room is located?”
“No silly! This is where the cargo bays are located,” she answered, with a teasing chuckle. “Who cares about the noisy old engine room? It’s just a couple of ion drives, contragrav generators and bunch of mainframes that tells the Windjammer how fast she is going, fuel consumption, when to activate the subspace fold, and a lot of boring stuff like that. No, this is what a tradership is really all about…cargo!”
For the next hour, Zax was forced to listen to Pilar’s enthusiastic description of her shipboard duties and her job as ship’s supercargo. Held captive by his inability to navigate his way back to his stateroom, along the labyrinth of transverse corridors they had come through, he was forced to be attentive. But after a while, he found her lecture quite enlightening, although he found his mind wandering as he worried about his future. After another half an hour had passed, it looked as though Pilar would never tire of her topic, but she cocked her head slightly to the right and stopped her monolog, as though she was listening to something.
“Sorry, I have to cut this short Zax. It has been fun talking to you, but Windy informs me, that I must finish organizing the cargo manifest for offloading on the Krillian rookery, T’kkrill. You have been a great sport listening to me ramble on like that, most people find an excuse to flee once I get going talking about my duties,” she said lightheartedly, as she ushered him through the hatchway and back into the corridor. Zax didn’t have the heart to tell her, he was too lost to be able to ‘flee’. “To get back to your cabin, simply ask Windjammer for directions. There are speakers throughout all the passageways. I’ll see you later.” With that farewell, she disappeared back through the hatchway, closing the hatch door behind her with a loud clang.
Standing outside in the passageway, Zax was feeling a little self-conscious. Looking up at the ceiling, he addressed the ship’s A.I.
“Windjammer, would you direct me back to my cabin?” There was no reply. After waiting for a few more seconds, he tried again, still no answer. Frowning, he repeated his question louder. Still, no response. His frown deepened. Was the ship snubbing him because he called her an ‘it’? He was just about to reopen the cargo hatch to hunt down Pilar when a thought occurred to him.
“Windjammer A.I., would you direct me back to my stateroom, please?”
“Follow the passageway to the second intersection and then turn right, continue until the third intersection, turn left and then follow that passageway. Your stateroom is the fourth door on the right,” a voice instructed, coming from the ceiling a little ahead of him. The voice’s tone sounded somewhat cold to Zax’s ears (a function of the speakers, he hoped).
“Thank you,” Zax replied absently.
“You are welcome,” came the curt reply. Zax smiled to himself. It seemed that not every statement the ship’s A.I. would respond to had to be preceded by the words ‘Windjammer A.I.’!
Following the ship’s directions, he found his quarters rather quickly, which made him somewhat suspicious of the circuitous route that Pilar had taken earlier.
Most likely she didn’t want a ‘dirtsider’ feeling so secure aboard ship that they would wander around on their own (or maybe she just liked my company), he thought idly.
As he walked along the corridors, he did not encounter another of Windjammer’s crew. As a matter of fact, Zax had seen very little of the crew since he boarded, and that was three days ago. He imagined that a ship this size had dozens of crewpersons, but aside from the captain, he knew of only two other crew members besides Pilar: Santo and Brax, who he met back at the terminal on Bright.
Once in his cabin, Zax went over to the food dispenser and punched up a light snack. The quality of food aboard the trader was the one thing that had surprised him the most over the past couple of days. Despite Pilar’s warning about not expecting any frills and having to settle for the food that the crew ate, it was quite good. When he mentioned it to her, she said, the one thing that spacers liked most was varied and tasty cuisine. Since traderships were seldom in one place for any length of time, and visited so many ports of call, they were able to bring aboard and sample a wide variety of foods and spices. Each crewmember had their own specialties that they programmed into the autochef and would often take turns presenting new dishes to the rest of the crew. There were contests with prizes awarded for the best dishes and the worst. Even the captain took turns in presenting dishes to the entire crew.
Zax ordered a plate of steaming spiced Yami eggs with a side order of Jung cheese with dark Thistle bread, and to wash it down, a pint of Krillian bitter ale. He waited for his meal to be created by the food sequencer, which was a molecular version of the old Terran technology called a 3D Printer, where raw materials can be added and recipes programed into the sequencer to create unique dishes. While waiting, Zax stretched out on the couch, closed his eyes, and tried to think about what he should do next.
On an impulse, he reached beneath his right underarm and used his thumb and index finger to squeeze the slight lump located just beneath his skin. Zax began moving it up through his flesh, until the spheroid object emerged from the pocket of flesh. The small smooth object popped out and landed in his open palm. Zax lifted it to his eyes and once again closely scrutinized it. It had changed from the smooth silvery sphere he had seen back at Ava’s boarding house. It was now an egg-shaped oval. Its silvery surface now seemed to move with the kaleidoscopic iridescent look of oil spilled on water. Obviously, it was none the worse for traveling all this time beneath his skin, it was still silky smooth to the touch. Picking it up, Zax placed it on top of the small desk and strained as he tried to tilt its surface, then smiled in chagrin. Every surface in the stateroom was either bolted down or attached to a bulkhead, to prevent them from becoming flying missiles during sudden shifts in gravity or acceleration.
Lifting the orb off the tabletop, Zax placed it on an empty food tray and tilted that…the oval did not move. Walking around the cabin, he began experimenting with the ovoid by placing it on various surfaces. No matter what the surface, or even if the object was over or under the surface, once placed, it stuck there like it was glued. The moment he grasped it in his fingers, it came away without a hint of adhesion. If he put it on his arm or any exposed skin, it simply rolled off. It seems that it would only do its unique trick with inanimate objects.
How could such a beautiful looking bauble, be the cause of so much tragedy? Was it truly worth all the misery it had produced? Zax thought sadly, as he remembered his father and Lauria.
Zax wasn’t naïve enough to believe that his departure from Bright marked the end of the pursuit by others. He believed it was quite possible, word had gotten out as to where he was heading and that even now, the mysterious ‘they’ might even be waiting for him when he disembarked. But what could he do? Unfortunately, he was committed to a course of action of which he had no idea of the outcome. Traderships were notorious for their unpredictable schedules.
Would Murphy Ito’s tradership the Rapture even be in port when he arrived at Plato? From what Pilar had told him about how traderships often operated, it was quite possible that the Rapture had been diverted to another planet by some promise of a more lucrative cargo. Or maybe, the Rapture had arrived on Plato ahead of schedule and was already lifting off for its next destination. If that were the case, then he was really in trouble. Plato was a scholarship world and had very stringent laws about illegal immigration. It was possible he could find himself working on a veggie farm in the outback if he missed his connection with the Rapture.
No…there was another alternative. I could simply wait for whomever it was that was after the artifact and offer it to them for a price. Who knows, maybe it was worth a king’s ransom. Zax contemplated to himself. A chill sudde
nly came over his body and he sat up on the sofa. Never! I will never give in to the people who had killed Lauria and likely my father also. I will turn it over to the Unity Special Branch or the military or even destroy it myself, before capitulating to those who would hire assassins and thugs.
A soft ding from the autochef interrupted Zax’s train of thought. His meal had been created. Getting up from the couch, Zax picked up the artifact and placed it back in its hiding place beneath the skin flap as he retrieved his food.
Up in the captain’s quarters, a soft chiming in her head had wakened Captain Ahosi from a deep and comfortable sleep. Squeezing her eyes open and shut a couple of times, she swore under her breath.
“Ok Windy, what is it? You wouldn’t have woken me up out of my sleep without a good reason.”
“Captain, I have just been made aware of a shipboard anomaly, and I felt that it warranted my interruption of your sleep cycle to inform you of it.”
“Anomaly? What kind of anomaly? Where is it located?” Ahosi said, suddenly wide awake. The one thing any captain hated was the word ‘anomaly’, especially when it was used by a ship’s A.I. The Windjammer’s A.I., like all ship computers, was one of the most advanced artificial intelligences in the Unity. It had been programmed to identify a multitude of conditions both in space and aboard ship. It controlled or was tied into almost every system on the ship and that included her crew. If there was something that she called an anomaly, then it was something that had to be investigated and identified without a nanoseconds delay!
“I am sorry, but I cannot at this time answer as to the specific type of incongruity this is. It registers as a very small distortion field as well as a pulsed, non-organic, data stream like mine, but paradoxically it appears to be bioelectrical in nature. Quite unique really. It has caused a time discrepancy of .00012 nanoseconds in my core processors. At present this has caused no perceptible affect to my processing or logic circuits, but I cannot estimate what might happen if the discrepancy increases.”
“Damn its uniqueness, where the hell is it located?” Ahosi demanded in frustration.
“It has vanished at the present, but it seems to have originated in or about, what is currently configured in the lower decks, near the passenger quarters on deck seven. I am sorry that I cannot give you a more precise location, but the nature of the anomaly is such that it confuses my sensors. If I were to venture a guess, I would say that it is associated with our passenger.”
“Humm…near the passenger quarters did you say?” Ahosi gave a hurried glance in her quarter’s mirror, as she rapidly tossed on some clothes and made her way to the bridge. Rapidly punching in data on her command tablet as she ran to the bridge, she grunted at the readouts. Settling down into the captain’s chair, she scanned the bridge readouts and compared them with those on her tablet. “Windy, when did you first become aware of this anomaly?”
“The first indication was at 1809:03 hours. The anomaly vanished at 1813:01 hours.”
“Humm…that was a little less than three minutes in duration. Tell me, where was our passenger Messer Grayson at that time?”
“Zaxxion Grayson was in his stateroom at the specified time interval, and all indications are that he is currently still there. I would like to point out that because of the nature of this anomaly, it is possible that it was due to a malfunction on my part.”
“Not bloody likely,” Ahosi snorted, “You have, I take it, run a level three self-diagnostic?
“Of course, I completed that before I wakened you. Results were: ‘negative malfunction, all systems running well within acceptable parameters.’”
“Very well then in ten minutes, have young Messer Zaxxion report to me in my wardroom.”
“Aye captain.”
“Maybeourpassengerisnotasinnocentand harmless as he appears,” she voiced out loud.
At the specified time, Zaxxion found himself in the captain’s wardroom just off the bridge. This time it was the captain who was standing. Captain Ahosi stood behind her desk, hands clasped behind her back, as he was ushered in by Brax. She pointed to the chair floating in front of her desk.
“Take as seat, young man,” she said softly.
As Zax sat down, he became acutely aware of the change in the captain’s manner. There was an almost palatable tension in the wardroom, aided by the presence of an armed Brax standing at rigid attention.
“Messer Grayson,” Captain Ahosi began, as she tapped the back of one hand into the palm of the other. “First, I would like to say that all in all, you have been a good passenger as passengers go. You have stayed out of the crew’s way and have not pestered them with a lot of fool questions. Nor have you made any silly requests of the Windjammer’s A.I. for more comp time to alleviate, what frankly, must be a somewhat boring trip for you. You have accepted the food that has been offered, without so much as a suggestion as to its preparation.” Zax nodded his appreciation at her words and started to speak, but she raised her hand forestalling him. “But unfortunately, something has come up that requires me to ask you to tell me a little more about yourself and the circumstances that brought you aboard my ship.“I am sorry if you consider this an invasion of your privacy but believe me, I would not be asking you this if it wasn’t important. Now…how exactly did you come by such a good fake planetary ID? And before you answer, I know the version of the story about what happened at the docks, and your relationship between the Marcosian was intentionally vague and peppered with untruths. I want you to tell me now, the whole truth if you would.”
Zax stared at the captain, saw the deadly seriousness in her eyes and slumped his shoulders in capitulation. Using as few words as possible, he explained that a friend on the planetary police force procured the ID to help him out of a jam of which the policeman knew he was innocent. Then he related he entire incident back at the Bright spaceport, his confrontation with the two men, how one of them became injured, and how he came to meet the Marcosian named M’Lak van Drayton. When he had finished, he sat back up in his chair and waited for the captain to respond.
Captain Ahosi halted her pacing, stood still for a moment, then abruptly collapsed into her chair. She took in a lungful of air, then slowly blew it out, puffing up her cheeks and smiled for the first time since Zax had known her.
“Well, that explains a lot young man. Although, I can see why you didn’t tell me the entire story at the beginning. I wish you had. It would have answered a lot of questions.
“In all likelihood, it was the Marcosian who killed the two men. It is hard to say why though. Marcosians are very touchy about matters of honor and offense. It is quite possible that they had insulted him in some way prior to your confrontation and he followed them to you. Why he would later trail them back out of the terminal, kill them, then return to give you back your possessions is beyond me. They tend to keep strictly to themselves, especially the ones that are tattooed, like Brax here described, for fear of becoming entrapped in a debt of honor to an outsider.”
Zax let out a sigh of relief at the changed timber of her voice. He had visions of spending the rest of his voyage locked up in the ship’s brig.
Seeing his relief, Ahosi continued speaking. “I’m not done with you yet, Zaxxion Grayson,” she snapped, as she dropped her smile and glared, but it had a softer look to it. “I still have a few important questions I need answered. Just what is it you are going to give Murphy Ito? And how do you know him?
“What I said earlier was the truth, Ma’am. I’ve never actually met Captain Ito, but my father had. Either was a shipmate, colleague, or crew he shipped out with the Rapture a long time ago, before he was kil…er…died.” Ahosi’s eyes went up, as she noticed the slip. “Anyway, it was the last request of my father that I contact him and give him a personal item, a data cube, if you must know.” The captain’s eyebrows went up again, but before she could speak, Zax continued speaking. “Please don’t ask me to hand it over, what’s on that cube is private and for Captain Ito’s eyes only. It
is a matter of honor that I give it to only him. I am prepared to spend the rest of the trip in your brig, rather than break that promise,” Zax said firmly. Ahosi’s eyes flashed, but he couldn’t tell if it was out of anger or respect, but she didn’t ask for the cube, then she took another track.
“From what I know about the conditions on Bright,” she began, noticing the tattoo on the back of his hand, “this trip must have cost you a pretty eunit. Now, if you were rich it wouldn’t matter, but since you arrived onboard with just one small rucksack of clothes, a used floater, a few miscellaneous things and some tools, and chose a tradership for transport when there were midliners docked at the spaceport that were also headed to Plato the next day, I conclude that you are not wealthy. Therefore, this data cube must be very, very important to Captain Ito, or, you must have respected you father a great deal. Which is it?”
“I don’t know how important the data cube is to Captain Ito, but I respected and loved my father very much.”
Especially now that I’ve seen the real man and heard part of the story of his life. Who knew that the things he said, that I thought were Blitzo delusions, were real experiences? Zax thought to himself, then focused on the conversation at hand.
“May I ask a question Ma’am? I take it by your reactions that you know the captain of the Rapture, what is he like?” Zax said, hoping to get a hint of what he was headed into on Plato. He heard a small chuckle issue from behind him, but it was quickly stifled by a hard glare aimed over his shoulder at Brax.
