Ghost of Mind Episode One

by Odette C. Bell

  Chapter 37

  John Doe

  ‘She’s headed for the central engine core,’ Parka said, her voice being picked up by John’s earpiece. ‘Don’t worry, though, we have increased the security field, and I don’t care who she is, she won’t be able to get through it to touch those engines.’

  Before John had a chance to get nervous at the prospect that that woman might sabotage the very devices keeping this city aloft, Parka had already assured him it couldn’t happen.

  ‘We’re directing forces to intercept, moving to phase two of the plan,’ Parka snapped in his ear.

  John nodded his head. It didn’t matter that Parka wasn’t there to see his movement; all of the information from his armor was being relayed up to the Pegasus, and no doubt Parka was now standing in Central Engineering staring at a hologram of John and everything happening around him.

  ‘The Admiral has given you the go ahead to do whatever it takes to bring her into custody. If it doesn’t work,’ Parka left the rest of her sentence floating.

  John knew exactly what she meant.

  If it didn’t work, John had orders to kill the woman. Plain and simple. She had already proved herself to be an enemy of the State, or at least in the eyes of the Union. She had resisted arrest, she had deliberately hidden herself from a Union Forces’ officer, and right now she was headed towards a highly restricted area of the docking ring.

  He really, really hoped it didn’t come to that. And if it did, hell, he had no idea how he would do it. Somehow he doubted he could take her down with a few blasts from his gun. Not only would she fight him every step of the way, that woman seemed to bounce back from everything.

  ‘Turn left, Commander, take the blue elevator in front of you,’ Parka snapped.

  John did exactly what she said. As he rounded the corner sharply, moving so fast that his footfall was a constant drone, he saw the correct elevator. He opened it before he reached it, sending an imperative message through his armor, and overriding every system around as he did.

  That way he didn’t have to stop; he slammed right into the back of the elevator as the doors opened, then told the thing to head straight to the engine core.

  Ordinarily an elevator would never do that on the docking ring; only specific people aboard would have access to that system. For a good bloody reason. It was exactly what kept this floating chunk of metal in the air. Without the astoundingly powerful anti-gravitational field drives, it would sink like a stone, slam into the ocean, and disappear under the waves.

  ‘Local security forces are waiting there for you, and so is the Admiral,’ Parka said just as the doors of the elevator opened.

  John ran out.

  The room around him was enormous. It had no divisions, no walls, no pylons holding the roof in place. Just the floor and ceiling.

  Oh, and a lot of energy.

  John’s armor was picking up the magnetic field being generated by the engine cores. It left a distinct shifting blue glow in the air, and even though his body was completely enclosed underneath his armor, John fancied he tasted it too.

  A tinge of metal, somewhat like blood, filtered through his mouth.

  Though he fancied this room, dotted with panels, was usually empty save for the occasional maintenance crew, now it was a hive of activity. Security robots, security officers of various races, and members of his own crew raced around.

  For a moment they all seemed to part, and in the distance John locked eyes on the Admiral.

  He was standing right beside the enormous bank of windows that offered an unrivaled view of the sky and ocean beyond.

  His lips were drawn into an enormous, pronounced frown, and that beard of his kept on shifting up and down as he tapped his foot repeatedly and shook his head.

  He looked angry. John had gone through enough years of military academy to appreciate that.

  But that did not mean that John hesitated; he rushed right over to the man, dodging around the various security forces as he did.

  There was a low and constant pulse in the air, a hum that filtered through everything, reverberating through the floor and ceiling, shaking up through John’s boots and even setting his teeth on edge inside his armor.

  The cores themselves were at the end of the room, shielded by several meters of solid and reinforced wall. There was a massive bank of consoles just before those walls, and John could see out of the corner of his eye the distinct flicker of layers upon layers of security fields, no doubt shielding the rest of this room from the lethal radiation and magnetic pull that would be generated within.

  ‘Where is she?’ John snapped out.

  Yes, he had just snapped at an admiral, but who cared, considering the situation? They were all stressed and on their toes, it was not the time for niceties.

  ‘Up top near the spire. For now she is holding position. Now that we have blocked off this room and can ensure that she can’t come in to destroy the engine cores, we are going to send up troops to engage her,’ the Admiral snapped back.

  ‘I really don’t suggest that, sir,’ John said through a quick breath, one of his hands curling into a fist by his side of its own accord, ‘she has an Old Tech cloak and I can now confirm from analysis of the scans of my armor that she is also in possession of a hacker ball.’

  The Admiral’s expression soured even further.’ I know.’

  ‘We have no idea if she has more Old Tech with her. Plus, I have seen her in action,’ John began.

  ‘We have to do something. And nobody, no matter how well-equipped, is going to get past me. It doesn’t matter that she has Old Technology,’ the Admiral suddenly turned, his eyes darting through the crowd around them until they settled on someone near the far wall.

  John half turned until he found were the Admiral was staring at. Evelyn.

  ‘If we can get her close enough, she will be able to disengage the Old Tech,’ the Admiral turned back to John.

  John stopped himself from laughing, from making any kind of derisive noise at all.

  That sounded frankly fantastic. He understood that the Admiral had a lot of faith in the Aurora Project, being the head of it and all, but this was a critical situation. And bluster would get them nowhere.

  ‘You have not seen her in the field, and maybe this is the perfect opportunity,’ the Admiral fixed John with a strict and steady look. ‘Evelyn is a good soldier, Commander.’

  John’s teeth ground together. She was not a soldier. She was, as bad as it sounded, an experiment. She was a woman that had been allocated to the project, someone that had lived her whole life under its sway.

  No doubt she had never been in a combat situation, no doubt she had never been forced to put her life on the line, and no doubt she shouldn’t have too.

  But these were sentiments John could not share with the Admiral.

  ‘Still, Admiral, I don’t think it’s safe to send anyone up there but me; that woman turned off the localized weather field for a 20 meter radius,’ he said, voice ringing with surprise. ‘And now I think of it, that’s what she must have done back on Orion Minor too. Those systems are impossible to hack,’ John didn’t try to control his voice at all, and it wobbled and waivered the more he thought about how impossible it should be to interfere with a system as complicated and well-secured as the weather fields of the Orion system.

  ‘The hacker ball would have done it,’ the Admiral snapped immediately. ‘Not the woman. And if Evelyn gets close enough, she will turn the hacker ball off. In fact, she will be able to interact directly with its systems, and utilize it to trap the woman. Commander, there will be no discussion of this plan; I have decided what we’re going to do.’

  John forced himself to snap a salute. Even though that was absolutely the last thing he wanted to do at that point. He was ready to fight the Admiral toe-to-toe on this one. Because it was suicide.

  Yet John had no evidence to support his claims. Of course it made sense to think that the hacker ball had been the one to infil
trate and shut down the weather systems. But still, John just didn’t seem to be able to get across his full suspicions about this woman.

  ‘Your orders are to protect Evelyn,’ the Admiral snapped.

  It was as simple as that, was it?

  Well John had been in combat long enough to know that nothing ever ran that easy. And he had seen that mysterious woman enough times to realize that where she was involved, only the incredible would occur.