Sleeping in the Stars (Marston Chronicles Book 1)

by D Patrick Wagner

  By one hundred-fifty thousand EV’s the smudge began to take form. That was when Sue collapsed and fell off of her chair.

  “What the?” Mack’s speech came out slurred. His movements sluggish as he reached for Sue.

  At one hundred-fifty-five thousand, Keiko collapsed. Krag was able to move faster but not fast enough. Keiko landed on her shoulder and her head bounced off of the decking.

  Krag saw Mack collapse and felt himself blacking out. “Kill it! Kill it!” His final word slurred as he too joined the other three in unconsciousness.

  At one hundred sixty-thousand EV’s Buster sent the kill command to the processor and the experiment stopped. All X-ray generation stopped. The monitor returned to a dark state. Four people remained unconscious on the galley/ward room floor.

  Although people classified Buster as an AI, an artificial intelligence, that didn’t mean that Buster had creative capabilities. The AI didn’t self-learn. It didn’t have an imagination. It could only follow pre-programmed logic paths.

  In this situation Buster’s primary logic path dictated that he utilize his avatar and use it to retrieve the medical diagnostic machine. However, after reviewing the onboard inventory Buster determined that no unit existed. The secondary logic path dictated reviewing all sensor collection and analyze current status of the injured individuals, with the priority on the captain.

  Buster’s analysis did not indicate any major injuries. Nothing directed Buster’s logic cycles to recognize the cause of the unconsciousness. Buster came to the conclusion that there was nothing he could do to promote recovery. The next decision level logic brought Buster to the comfort logic path. With that he activated his avatar, used it to retrieve mattresses, pillows and blankets. Then he proceeded to carefully place Krag, Keiko, Mack and Sue on the makeshift beds and covered them with blankets. Next, he turned up the heat in the galley/ward room a few degrees and waited the wait of a computer.

  * * * * *

  Sometime during the rest of the day and through the night the four passed from unconsciousness to deep slumber. Keiko woke up first. After the moment it took to take in her surroundings and recall the previous day’s end she immediately threw her cover back and crawled the few feet over to Krag. Touching his throat she felt a pulse. Placing her head on his chest she listened to his heartbeat and sighed. Pulling back she looked at a man she knew to be sleeping. Grimacing as she rose, she walked over and checked on the other two. Everyone was the same.

  Keiko limped over to the service station and put on a large pot of coffee. Then she made her dark strong tea and began flexing her damaged leg as she waited.

  Sue woke up next. After a similar disorientation followed by realization, she zeroed in on Mack.

  “He’s alright,” Keiko commented.

  That startled Sue and she looked up at the Asian woman quietly sipping her tea.

  “What have I done?” Sue wailed. I could have killed us all!”

  “Yes. It could have happened. But it didn’t. Your work, Mack’s work and Krag’s overview protected us all. You didn’t do anything. Sometimes bad luck happens.”

  “It wasn’t bad luck,” Sue pouted. It was good luck saving us from our own stupidity.”

  “That too.”

  By this time Mack was sitting, groggily staring at the table, pulling his wits together. Coffee? Is that coffee I smell?”

  “Yes,” Keiko responded. “Sue, why don’t you get him a cup and one for yourself.”

  “Ok.” Sue proceeded to do just that. “Mack, do you know how much trouble we are in?”

  “Ya, Lassie,” Mack responded while reaching for the offered steaming cup. “Cap is going to peal a right large piece of hide off us on this one. But it was my fault. I kind of pushed you into it. And you being new to this whole game, you didn’t know any better. It’s on me, Lassie. Don’t you worry yourself.

  “No, I don’t accept that, you Lug-Nut. We did this together. It’s both our faults. Half mine. I wrote the code. I’m every bit to blame as you. So, don’t you go all Galahad on me. Got it?”

  “You’re not going to win this one, Mack,” Keiko contributed.

  “You’re right on, there, Wee-One.”

  Just as their conversation wound down, Krag shot up like a jack-in-the-box, ending fully upright, frantically scanning for danger, searching for threats. Once he laid eyes on his team, all sipping steaming drinks he relaxed. Then he shot glares at Mack and Sue.

  Trying to defuse the tension, Keiko offered, “Captain, have some coffee. It’s fresh.”

  Still glaring at the others, he relented and headed for the service counter. “Buster?”

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “Ship Status?”

  “No changes since before the test, Sir.”

  “Run complete diagnostics on all systems. Also run a complete visual scan of the entire ship. Create a log of all abnormalities, no matter how insignificant.”

  “Yes, captain.”

  Having finished pouring his cup, Krag Marston, captain of Griffin turned to all present.

  Waving his cup at Mack and Sue, he started, “You put us all in danger. You almost got us killed! You could have wrecked Griffin!”

  “We know, Cap.”

  “I didn’t say you could speak,” Krag targeted Mack.

  “This is my home! This is everything I own! And you put it all at risk. You put all of our lives at risk! That will never happen again.”

  Krag paused, trying to calm down, become more rational. Mack and Sue sat, looking down, spiritually, emotionally, physically sagging. Keiko stood, two hands holding her tea and watched the highly charged interplay.

  “No more tests. No more experiments.” This brought the heads of both Mack and Sue back up.

  “But Cap, something happened.” Mack interjected.

  “I don’t care. That thing is too dangerous. No testing!” Krag again tried to calm down.

  Sue finally spoke. “Can we study the data?”

  Krag almost answered ‘no’. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Everyone watched, waited.

  “Yes. Whatever you collected on your computer, sensors and whatever Buster collected. You can do anything you want with that. But you do not touch the artifact. In fact, power down everything around it. Disconnect all your equipment. I want exactly zero power or interface on or close to that table.”

  “What about the medical diagnostic equipment?”

  “Leave it.” Krag had finally burned off his anger, his panicked fear at everything, everyone that could have been lost.

  “You two did achieve something. We’re going to take this whole rig back to the shipyard. There you can play with it all you want, if your dad will let you. But not on this ship. That’s over. If your dad will let you do crazy things there, blow something up, that’s fine with me.”

  “Oh, and Mack, order another diagnostic unit from Pacifica. And get a top of the line one. Since we need to replace the old one, get the best.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” a chagrinned and contrite Mack responded.

  “Six more weeks. That should be enough time for the heat to die down, at least a little. Keiko, will your leg be healed by then? If we get stopped, I don’t want anyone looking too closely at a weapons wound.”

  “I’m almost there now, Captain.” Keiko continued with her professional presence, recognizing that Krag was in no mood for any personal interaction. “With continued training I should be back to one hundred percent.”

  “Good. I want you to get with Buster and have him set up a simulator mode so that you can continue to learn to pilot the Griffin.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sue, I want you to begin training on navigation.”

  “Ok, sir.” She also radiated chagrin and contrition.

  Everyone continued to walk on egg shells.

  “And, everyone back to physical training.” Krag fell back into his military days. He knew that the only way to get through the next six weeks was to keep everyo
ne busy.

  “Mack, you and I are going to go over every inch of this ship. I want everything in absolutely perfect condition before we lift off.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  “Dismissed.” Krag refilled his cup and headed for the bridge. Mack and Sue let their collective breaths out slowly, relieved to be out from under the emotional onslaught. Keiko just stood, absorbing what just happened, seeing a new side of Krag.

  Chapter 11

  Sanctuary

  Per tradition and decree, day/night cycles, when there are no natural day/night cycles, matched those of Olympia. So it was inside Sanctuary. The overhead lighting grid currently projected high red wavelength lighting, casting an orange/red hue over the landscape and buildings. The sunrise-like colors denoted morning is rising. Lawrence and Gloria, still in their sleep clothes and bathrobes, sat at their breakfast table and absorbed the ambiance of their surroundings.

  “It is nice here, Larry. Peaceful,” Gloria remarked as she nibbled on the final piece of toast from their sumptuous breakfast.

  “Yes, it is. And that does worry me a little, dear.”

  “What’s worrying you? Haven’t you heard from your contacts in Cencore? What about Marston?”

  “After the raid, the Federacy isn’t coming after me. About Marston, Not a peep. My people have been working every source in the Federacy and they can’t find out a thing. The Federacy has been turning over every rock in Cencore, looking for him and his ship. Everyone, my people included, believe that he is still in Cencore, hiding. But no one can come up with even a sniff of where he’s hiding. Somehow he’s found himself a hole and buried himself deep. Him and Keiko. Oh Hank’s son, Mack and some other person, Sue Benton.”

  “Keiko?”

  “Keiko Suzume. The cat burglar. You remember. I told you about her. You met her once.”

  “Oh, yes. The pretty little Japanese woman. Daughter of the Nye-Nippon ambassador. She’s with Marston?”

  “Yup,” Lawrence answered as he sipped his coffee.

  “Well, we know what they’ve been doing for three months.”

  “Get your mind out of the gutter,” Lawrence joked.

  “Just saying. Two good looking people, single, in their thirties, forties. Just saying.”

  “Besides, the last communique, the only communique, that Krag sent me said that she’d been hurt during the retrieval. And that they were going into hiding. He didn’t say where. He probably had made himself a bolt hole a while back and took her there.”

  “And Mack? Hank’s son? Oh, you mean Hank McCauley. The man you have running your ship yard.”

  “Yup. He contacted me, said Krag wanted him to pick up Sue Benton’s boy. Wanted him to get the kid and take him over to the ship yards.”

  “Why would Krag ask Hank to do that? This is a big favor.”

  “No idea. I’ll probably have someone look up who this Sue Benton is and check out her boy.”

  “Are you going to tell Hank to get the boy?”

  “If everything checks out, then yeah, I will. Yeah, I’ll have Hank do it,” Lawrence decided. “If Krag wants it, then he has a reason. Yeah. Hank can get the kid.”

  “On to more pleasant things, the party we threw was a success.”

  “Yes it was. You did a great job.”

  “So, I was thinking.”

  Lawrence gave a loud, fake groan.

  “As I was saying,” Gloria gave her husband a loving, playful glare. “It’s been a month. I think we need another get together.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “I don’t think another party. Something more family. Some kind of day thing with sports, barbeque, maybe a movie on an outdoor screen at sunset.”

  “I’ll leave that up to you, Dear. Just let me know what you need. No, let Harriet know what you need. She’s starting to get cranky, angry. All this time doing nothing is grinding on her.”

  “I will.”

  “In the meantime,” Lawrence started as he rose, took his last swig of coffee and placed his napkin on the table, “I need to meet with the board. We’re going to go over status reports and develop a supplies list. Is there anything you and Harriet need?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  With the morning passing into midmorning, the artificial lighting began its fading of reds and flowing into blues. Life onboard Sanctuary continued on.

  Hotel Neptune

  The morning found the crew of the Griffin ensconced at a table in the bright atrium, finishing a luxurious breakfast, sipping coffees and teas and just sitting, each wandering in their own thoughts. Keiko’s spirits had finally begun to lift. Krag remained in his half command mode, partly withdrawn, professionally invested in the good health of his team. As currently the case, when around Krag, Mack and Sue kept their distance, responding when talked to, offering ideas when asked, reporting on various status points. Krag studied Keiko as she unconsciously scratched at the healed leg wound. He still saw her favoring her leg when she became fatigued but for the most part she seemed well healed.

  “How’s the leg?”

  “It’s almost back, Krag.” Even though she called him ‘Krag’, the emotional wall that Krag had constructed between him and the rest of them still existed. Keiko felt saddened about the fact that the last experiment going wrong had caused Krag to withdraw back into himself, back into the self-reliant loner that he had been when they first had met.

  “That’s good. I’d been worried that you wouldn’t be ready on time.”

  “Nah. She’s a tough one, Cap,” Mack chimed in, careful of his manner.

  “Yeah. And mean. You should see the torture she puts me through,” added Sue, with a half-smile.

  “So, Mack, Sue. Anything?

  Sue looked at Mack. Mack spoke for the two of them. “Not much, Cap. We did find an anomaly. Actually two anomalies. But we don’t know what they mean. And, like you said, we just don’t have the gear to figure them out.” Mack had been working hard to get back into Krag’s good graces. But all he encountered was the distance of professionalism.

  “So, what are this anomalies?”

  “Sue can tell you the first.” Mack nodded at her.

  “From one hundred twenty-five thousand electron volts to the final one hundred sixty-thousand EV’s, an image, or should I say a smudge, showed up on the receiver plate and imaged on the monitor. The smudged registered as dense, really dense. Absolutely no X-rays passed through it.”

  “So we have a really dense area in the artifact. What’s the anomaly?”

  “The artifact is too light. With something that dense, it should weigh something. Even in the moon’s light gravity, it should be heavier. That’s the anomaly. Too dense, not enough weight.”

  “What are your thoughts? Ideas? Conclusions?” Krag approached the problem like any good commander, allowing his specialist to work through the problem.

  “I don’t have any. I need to be able to set up electronic, programmatic monitoring environments to readdress the findings, be able to expand on them. Then I might have an answer. But now, no. I don’t have any ideas.” Sue, not used to the clipped speech of a military environment withdrew back into her own thoughts.

  “You were right, Cap,” Mack offered in defense of Sue. “We shouldn’t have tested it on your ship. We got some results. But we only got a partial look. We didn’t have the equipment for a safe, clean test. And we can’t go any further. We need to go back to the yards. They’ve got a hell of a lot more equipment than we do. And, besides, we have Pa’s lab. He’s got all kinds of stuff that he’s picked up around the galaxy.”

  “So, what’s the other anomaly?”

  “Same as Sue’s, only different.”

  Krag raised an eyebrow.

  “You remember you had Buster running all those sensors and viewers? Well they picked up something.” Mack, getting swept up in his work, continued. “I had been running through the data that Buster compiled during the last thirty seconds of the experiment
. I mean I went over every bit of electronic measurement and visual footage and found something. It took me almost the full six weeks but I found something. I found, on the external cameras, the ones viewing the struts, they, the hydraulic shocks flexed. They lengthened. Not much. Maybe an inch. But they lengthened then settled back down.”

  “They flexed?”

  “Ya, Cap. When you bring the Griffin in to land, the shocks are extended maybe twenty-thirty inches. Then as the ship settles the shocks take the load and settle down. The cameras showed them re-extending, like the Griffin was beginning to take off. Then they settled back down.”

  “And you have no idea how this occurred.”

  “Not an idea. A hunch. A wild hunch. But I don’t want to sound like I got bats in me belfry. So I’m going to keep that particular cat in its bag till we get back home and I can get a look.

  “We’ve got nothing.” Minor disgust crept into Krag’s voice for a moment. Changing subjects, changing back into command mode, he continued, “We’ll take a week, get the ship as good as it can be and get out of here. Also, everyone, we keep training. Keiko, Sue, you two keep practicing in the flight simulations. We need to be at our best. I don’t know what, if anything we will run into. But we need to all be ready.”

  Everyone responded with head nods or approving sounds but not with a lot of enthusiasm.

  “Good. Tomorrow we go to the ship. Full days there, evenings here. A week from today we check out and head back home.”

  The breakfast had evolved from a simple gathering to a command meeting and ended on a formal note.

  Weiskoff’s Home

  The morning sun cast a shower of diamonds sparkling on the wind-capped waves and rolling chops of Olympia’s ocean. Theodore and his wife, Gloria quietly sat, sipping their espressos, simply experiencing the moment. A kitchen servant broke the mood as she removed the remains of breakfast.