Unfortunately, that didn’t do him any good. He’d expected to see Usan characters or maybe a language from one of the other widely traveled species, but he didn’t recognize this. At first, he thought it might just be a logo or maybe some abstract, artistic scribbles, but then he noticed the even, distinct lines of characters, the way those characters grouped together, likely forming words.
“Great.”
And he didn’t recognize the operating system either. If it had been a translation of a common piloting software, he could have probably figured it out, but not this.
Zee leaned back in his seat, scratching his neck. Now what?
If he couldn’t use the operating system, he had no choice but to bypass it. He examined the console, looking for an access panel. He had to get on the floor, laying on his back, to find it. The panel was small, its width and breadth less than the length of his arm.
Zee frowned. The fasteners were different from any he’d seen before as well. Reaching in one of his many pockets, he pulled out his multi-tool, flipping through the attachments, looking for something that might work. The surface had a cutout for a tool head with six sides. Nothing he had would fit that.
He stood. “Where would tools be?” The ship should contain all the tools necessary to perform repairs, including opening this panel. Zee left the control room, returning to the hallway he’d searched before. On each side, doors still stood open from his earlier perusal.
This time, he scoured each room more thoroughly, opening every cabinet, searching under every surface. He had nearly reached the cargo bay once more when he encountered a promising room. The room was small, though not the smallest, and cabinets and workstations covered almost every surface. On one side, a console with a glass partition took up a significant part of the wall. He didn’t know what it did, but the room felt like a machine shop.
Zee started looking through the cabinets and drawers, immediately feeling vindicated when the first drawer revealed sealed subdividers filled with fasteners similar to the ones on the access panel.
In a cabinet close to the entrance, he found what he was looking for—a series of panels on casters with tools attached to them. The cabinet door kept the items secured while in motion, and the casters allowed the panels to be pulled out for easy access while working. He removed one tool after the next, looking at the end to find one that would fit his needs.
Zee found several with the same geometry. Not knowing the size required, he grabbed them all and returned to the control room. He kneeled down in front of the panel, placing the tools next to him, and checked them one at a time against the fasteners.
When he found the right one, he removed the panel, a sense of calm settling over him as he spied the inner workings. Finally, something was going right. Using his multi-tool, he traced the circuitry, learning how it connected to the main computer systems.
Confident he’d figured it out, he activated the cutting attachment and reached in to cut the first wire.
A loud, angry male voice yelled at him over the speaker system, startling him so badly he slammed his head on the underside of the console.
“Hacht!” he cried out, holding his head until the throbbing dimmed to nothing. “Who’s there?” he asked as he straightened.
No one answered.
He reached his hand in again as if to cut wires.
Again, the same voice spouted off at him. Two words.
Zee frowned. He didn’t know the language, but he suspected he knew the meaning. He sounded out the words, “Stahpuh thahtuh?”
The voice started up again, speaking what sounded like several sentences this time.
“I don’t understand you. Speak Uso!”
Silence.
Zee held still, wondering if he would luck out or if the voice would start the moment he tried to bypass the computer again.
Then the same voice spoke in answer. This time, thickly accented Usan words spilled out. “You are not an authorized user.”
Zee froze, recognizing the phraseology. That wasn’t another person hiding somewhere on the ship watching him. That was a computer, an AI. “You’re the ship’s AI?”
“I am Angus.”
“That didn’t answer my question.”
“You are not authorized to access that panel.”
“You still didn’t answer my question.”
“It is my prerogative not to answer your question.”
Zee frowned. Was it being intentionally obtuse? He decided to simply ignore it and ducked his head back down, reaching for the wires.
“You have been warned,” Angus said, a smug air to his voice this time.
Zee touched the first wire and an electrical arc jumped to his hand, sending pain up his arm. “Hacht!” he yelled, slamming his elbow and head this time as he jumped back. He glared up at the ceiling. “Asshole.”
Ellie ran, heading in the general direction she’d gone before, toward the water. She didn’t know anywhere else to go. Her surroundings blurred together in a sea of blue, green, and white as her mind ran in chaotic circles. She needed a plan, but what could she do? An alien in body armor had taken over her ship. Angus had reassured her that no unauthorized user could pilot it, but she wasn’t sure how much she believed that. Angus had a tendency to be overconfident in his abilities. If Ellie had to bet, there was a way to bypass the security.
And with her luck, that bastard would figure out how.
She needed to get him off her ship and get mobile again. But how the hell would she get him off the ship? She couldn’t force him, and she couldn’t imagine outsmarting him. She was smart, but she’d never been that good at chess. Ellie could anticipate moves, but she’d never been any good with the endgame. She always stalemated.
Like now. He couldn’t fly the ship, and she couldn’t get him off her ship.
Stalemate.
Her watch chirped, and she stopped, her muscles twingeing from running flat out. “Yes?”
“He’s trying to bypass my systems,” Angus whined.
“Can he do that?” Her breath rushed in and out, making her voice thin.
Angus scoffed. “Of course not.”
“Then why are you bothering me?” she grumbled as she tried to get her breathing under control.
“I don’t like it. Make him stop.”
Ellie frowned. What was he, a child? “And how do you propose I do that?” She waited as silence greeted her, the rustling of leaves the only noise. “Well, let me know when you have a plan, okay?”
“Fine,” he pouted, but the connection cut off.
Men.
Chapter Six
Zee pulled back his hand for the fifth time, shaking out the shock he’d received yet again. He’d tried a variety of methods of grounding, tried covering his hand in non-conductive materials, but Angus managed to shock him every time.
Sitting back, he crossed his arms. He needed a new strategy. Bypassing the computers wasn’t working. Anything he did here would be intercepted by the ship’s AI. He needed the woman. He needed her to cooperate.
But how?
He stood and turned back to the rest of the ship. If he could learn more about her, recon, maybe he could find an angle to use to manipulate her.
But again, how? He was a soldier. He wasn’t even an officer. What did he know about getting people to do what he wanted? He used commands and physical force. If that didn’t do the job, he didn’t know what would.
He stood at the entrance of the control room, looking out on the hallway that connected each room in the ship. The doors still stood open, leaving dark spaces along the otherwise uninterrupted sheet-metal-gray walls. Could he find something there? In one of those rooms?
Be methodical.
If he were still with his unit, their leader would tell them to check every surface and cubby.
Be thorough.
He stepped forward, needing to act. This ship was his best shot at finding his unit. If he could access its controls, he could run scans to sea
rch for them or even fly patrols looking for signs from above.
He just needed to find a way.
Ellie stopped at the waterline and hunched over, drawing in deep breaths that still felt too shallow. “Damn.” She never ran like that, never needed to. Sure, she was in good shape. She had a gym on the ship, took her vacations anywhere she could hike and enjoy a view without metal anywhere, but running was another beast entirely.
“Who would do this on purpose?” she said, thinking of the people who did marathons and ran for exercise back on Earth. “Nuts.”
After taking one final deep breath, she sat down at the water’s edge, taking off her shoes and dipping her toes in the water. The liquid was cool, slick, and smooth against her skin, like a gentle caress. Leaning back on her hands, she stared up at the sky, just letting her mind go blank for a moment.
God, this place is beautiful.
Thick clouds sped past, masking the color of the sky, framed by the tops of the trees behind her. The rushing of the water played soundtrack, relaxing her, allowing her to unwind.
What am I going to do?
Her watch chirped again.
“Yes, Angus?”
“He’s left the ship.”
Ellie jerked upright. “What? Is he ‘gone’ gone?”
“I doubt it. Before leaving, he searched most of the ship, though what he was looking for, I don’t know.”
“What was his trajectory when he left?”
“He was outside the scope of my sensors.”
Damn. Angus could sense a great deal, but a person was below the cross-section threshold of most of the exterior sensors except those directly in front of and behind the ship.
“Did you overhear anything he said, anything that might help?”
“I will provide a summary of our discourse. He requested I speak Uso, asked if I was the ship’s AI, and called me an arsehole.”
Hmm, apparently Ellie wasn’t the only one who found Angus difficult. Cass always insisted she needed to adapt.
Ellie rubbed her chin and frowned out at the hills rising up into the beginning of a mountain range just beyond the water. Could she get back to the ship without bumping into the bastard? She didn’t know what direction he’d gone, didn’t have any data whatsoever. Any path she chose could have her falling right into his arms. And even if she didn’t bumble right into him, she doubted she could be stealthy enough to slip by him. Any noise she made or vegetation she disturbed could give her away.
She had to try, though.
What choice did she have?
Zee stepped off the ship with barely more information about its owner than when he’d started. The cargo bay remained locked, and with the belligerent AI, he decided not to force it. The woman had little in the way of personal items, and since he didn’t recognize any of the foods in the galley, he couldn’t even say anything about her tastes.
How could someone live on a ship and leave almost no traces behind? He’d seen military quarters with more personal items than that.
Exiting at the ramp on the side of the ship, he moved toward the back, pulling out a scanner from one of his pockets. He pressed a button, and the display lit up, beginning a surveillance scan. After a few moments, the screen popped up with the ship’s outline along with all the camera and sensor placements.
Zee wasn’t worried about the sensors as most were designed for sensing a ship, not a person. He wanted to avoid the cameras as much as possible in case the ornery AI was feeding information back to the ship’s owner.
He squinted, his eyes hurting in the daylight as he peered around the back corner of the ship, a spot with no direct line of sight to the nearest camera. Blinking constantly, his eyes watered at the abuse, but he spotted where the cargo bay door had opened, the door having displaced the dirt in a straight, deep groove. Beyond that, he made out footsteps where someone had run from the ship to the trees without care for leaving a trail.
Pocketing his scanner, he jogged into the trees just far enough to obscure his form from video surveillance and circled back to the area where the woman had entered the trees. He kneeled down, looking for signs, which proved easy to spot.
She wasn’t trying to hide.
He followed scuff marks in the dirt and broken branches from the underbrush, the easy tracks giving him no reason to go slow. His legs ate up the distance, branches brushing his legs and arms as he jogged along, making his own trail.
After a while, the sound of running water reached his ears. “Hacht!” If she’d crossed the water, his chances of following her dropped drastically. He picked up speed, hoping he wasn’t that unlucky. He had to find his unit.
Zee shuddered, forcing his mind to the present.
Focus on the task at hand. Don’t think about it.
But his mind wouldn’t let up. Were they okay? Why weren’t they at the battle site when he woke? Why weren’t they responding on comms? Was he alone?
Ellie took her time heading back to the ship. She wasn’t a commando, but she wasn’t ignorant either. She knew a person could track her by her impact on her surroundings. And that mad dash through the forest had probably left a neon sign of markers telling where she’d gone.
Stupid.
She sighed. Oh well. This time she would be more careful. She’d broken off a branch, one that had looked pretty close to falling off itself, and tried to either walk on rocks, hard-packed earth, or brush the ground behind her to mask her footprints. Looking back, she frowned, not sure her efforts were worth it. The soft soil looked like it had been swept with a palm frond.
Ellie frowned. Maybe he wouldn’t notice.
And maybe I can return to the ship and lock it before he catches up to me.
She picked up her pace, mindful of the branches on each side, trying not to disturb anything. For all she knew, he had super hearing and could trace her by sound alone.
Or maybe he could pick up on her body heat. She was probably the biggest source of heat anywhere near the ship. Probably yet another neon sign pointing right at her.
Stop borrowing trouble.
Each neurotic thought drove her farther, faster, propelling her to the ship with frenetic energy. She had to get back before he did. She had to put an end to this game of cat and mouse.
Ellie almost laughed, realizing she’d been running in circles all day, back and forth between the waterfront and the Independence. But if it got her away from him, she would do figure eights and handstands. Her heart hammered away in her chest, her adrenaline spiking with the threat he represented, but she didn’t care. She just wanted him gone. She wanted to go back to worrying about fixing her ship. Why couldn’t he just leave her alone? Why did he think he had a right to her time and her ship? It was hers, damn it! She just wanted to be left alone!
Zee stumbled upon the river, checking in both directions. The water gurgled and rushed over rocks while, in front of him, he found an indentation in the sand that looked to perfectly match her butt. Handprints dug in around it, then footprints moved off to the right. He followed, easily tracking her by the clean imprints she left in the sand.
The prints disappeared, but squinting, he caught sight of them again another twenty feet ahead. She must have walked on the rocks for a spell. He jogged ahead, continuing to follow the small indents her feet made in the sand, but then the footprints abruptly stopped. “What?”
Zee spun around, checking the distance, searching for where the tracks resumed, but found nothing obvious. He knelt down, looking closer, and almost laughed. To the right, leading into the trees, the sand had been disturbed, brushed over in a consistent pattern just as easy to follow as her footprints.
How precious. She’d tried to cover her tracks.
He stood and followed, the darker territory under the shaded trees soothing his aching eyes and head. His eyes adjusted quickly to the lower light, revealing her trail like a flashing sign pointing him in the right direction.
Chapter Seven
Ellie slowed as she spill
ed out into the clearing where she’d landed the ship, a smile stretching her face.
Home free.
She didn’t know why she did it. Maybe it was all those horror videos she’d watched over the years, dumb films with even dumber characters, but she looked behind herself.
“Shit!”
He was right behind her. How did he catch up to her?
She put on some speed, pushing herself to her limits, muscles churning, lungs burning. Her feet hit the ramp, clanging against the metal, competing with her heartbeat pounding in her ears. Then, a shot rang out behind her and, much to her chagrin, she squealed, jumping off the ramp and covering her head as if that would stop a bullet.
She hid behind the ramp, peeking out at her opponent, but he wasn’t looking at her. No, he stood in the middle of the clearing, shouldering his rifle as he calmly backed up to the ship’s opening.
Ellie stayed put, not knowing what game he was playing, but then another shot rang through the air, and this time, she knew it wasn’t him. He spun like a gun on a turret mount and aimed the barrel at the trees, opening fire with a series of focused shots.
Pop, pop, pop.
“Get behind me. Get in the ship,” he said as he knelt down, giving himself a more stable stance and a smaller target area.
Ellie heaved herself onto the ramp behind him, the textured metal digging into her palms as she crawled up the incline and through the door. “What’s going on?” She pressed against the wall, trying to hide behind the short lip around the door, but she felt huge in the space, too big to not become a target.
I’m gonna die.
He didn’t respond to her question, though, his body tense and waiting.
Ellie bit her lip, not wanting to disturb him, but also not wanting to admit she might have misjudged the whole situation.
Unless this was some elaborate plot to convince her to help him… She wouldn’t put it past him. She wasn’t an idiot, and she didn’t know him. Not at all.
Shifting Cargo (A Shift in Space Book 1) Page 3
