I just didn’t get it. Several hours had gone by, and I was poring over the pages of information on cryogenics my PDA had retrieved from the Galactranet, as I monitored the status displayed on the screen next to the sarcophagus.
My mind avoided the obvious explanation. More than avoided: dodged, denied, defied, and decried. But in the end, there, still, it was.
Even the thought of Darvo setting foot in this cryo-chamber filled me with disgust. But the idea that he had removed the regulator, it didn’t make any sense.
Not that he had any qualms about cold-blooded murder, literally. But the Noxgothians had specific injunctions against the execution of someone in cryostasis, dating back from the early days. Problem back then was it subtracted too many from the countless numbers of souls they needed for toil and labor in the fields and diamond mines, and in the dismal trenches of several dozen wars the Imperial Coalition had begun in the name of religious purification.
And if the rules had changed, you can be sure I would have heard about it. A key to survival in these times is keeping up with the bizarre and complex set of technical laws and regulations set forth by the Inquisition.
Whether one agrees or not, by understanding the regulations and the ins and outs of their various arbitrary boundaries and clauses, one can often find a means to avoid some of the less desirable consequences.
And indeed, the Inquisition has regulations against capturing a ship while there is still a live individual on board. That is, an individual who either possibly has been or possibly could be converted. Never mind, whether said individual understands English or not, the question has to be put to them (in the very fashion that it had so recently been put to me) and at the very least the relevant party has to be conscious in order to make the choice. Those are the rules.
No matter the linguistic ability of the recipient of such wondrous grace, given that the Inquisition recognized only English as the Noxgoth-given tongue. But the occupant had to be roused, if dorment, and the question put. Once that had taken place, the ship could be destroyed summarily in the absence of an affirmative answer to “the question.”
I agree, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Pretty bleedin’ ridiculous, in fact. Not that Darvo really followed the rules, but ever since he had had his hand slapped a few times for particularly egregious violations, he had been a tad bit more careful about maintaining plausable deniability. Though (for example) he still refused to maintain a registration with the Inquisition tracking system, meaning that it he could sneak up on an unwary space traveler with much greater ease than an ordinary Inquisition vessel.
As far as this ship went, by eliminating the living individual the ship would default into becoming property of the Imperial Inquisition. Probably the only thing that had saved this ship from a fiery demise was its potential value at an auction, or (more likely) its worth as a status symbol, a gift that would serve effectively a token of political favor for someone of influence within the Inquisition.
Surely, I countered, an autopsy would reveal the cause of death, and point to the obvious suspects.
Unless there were to be no autopsy. Or unless the blame were shifted to the hapless underlings now (most likely) on their way to claim possession of the ship.
No question, Darvo was a madman. Even among members of the inquisition, there was debate whether his strategies were effective, or whether they did more to diminish the credibility of Noxigoth by promoting righteous moral outrage at the intolerance of the church. Not to mention that the inquisition itself was illegal in some places. Syrene, for instance.
Syrene, yes. A starsystem named for its most inhabitable planet, which in turn was named for some beloved person, place or thing back on the planet Earth. The planet Syrene was nearby to here, and there I had several friends who might possibly be willing to assist in such a time of dire need.
Urgency nagged. Time was short, and I had to get out of there, at least in person, but with any luck taking the ship (and with even more luck, its occupant) with me. I had to find a way to repair the Sabre’s propulsion systems, and quickly.
But I couldn’t, in good conscience, abandon the cryogenic thawing to an automated process. Even if it hadn’t been an outrageously beautiful and sexy young girl, it wouldn’t have been right to risk something going wrong. A life was in my very hands.
Again I cursed, profusely, at length, and in a variety of obscene idioms, the events of the day, the inquisition itself, the listless state of the ship I found myself on, the infuriatingly snail-like pace of the thawing process, and various events from the past and future which might have interfered, or might be going to interfere in any way, shape, or form, with my past, present, or future happiness.
Falling silent again, my mind blanked out, so I continued to read up on cryogenics:
Items to check for when the subject awakes:
If the subject fails to perform any of these items with an acceptable level of proficiency, waste no time in seeking professional medical help, immediately.
Remember that the process of awakening can be jarring to the subject, so it’s best to create a soothing and safe environment for the event to take place. Quiet, relaxing music, for example, can go a long ways to contribute to the harmonious sense of well-being, and help to ensure that the re-awakening goes as smoothly as possible.
And here was someone who had been in Rip-Van-Winkle-land for a little over two centuries. I figured the most soothing thing I could find would be something which, to her, would be sufficiently jangling to cause neural overload and permanent mental disorder. Unless I dug through the archives to find something of her era, two hundred years ago.
Did pre-teen girls listen to bubble-gum trash pop music, even way back then? I scratched my head, imagining unrealistically that back in those rustic times they all read poetry in multiple languages and listened to the most erudite of sophisticated music steeped in the classics of all ages of recorded human history.
“Uh-uh,” she began to stir.
She yawned, stretched, and blinked. Then sitting up halfway with a start, she glared angrily at me.
“Jasmin McCloud,” I spoke her name quietly, soothingly.
“Yes,” she replied, and continued to glare. “That’s me. So who the hell are you?” She glanced at the two empty cryo-pods. “And where the fuck are my mom and dad?”
Hmm. A bristlingly unkempt space-wolf like myself was not likely to be a reassuring sight to the reawakening subject, but there was not much to be done about it at the moment.
I went down the checklist. “Hmm. Mental functioning. Jasmin, do you know where you are?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah!” with an inflection that filled out the phrase something like “of course, dork-brain!”
“Can you tell me where you are?”
“No, I asked you first. Who the fuck are you, and what the hell are you doing on my family’s ship?”
Something told me that I would not succeed in convincing her to recite the alphabet.
I sighed. “I wish I could tell you more, love. Your mom and dad must have departed, I don’t know when. The ship was malfunctioning, so they probably left to get help or repairs. You’ve been in cryogenic stasis for two hundred years now.”
“Two hund-” Her mouth worked. “But we were just making a simple flight from Capricorn to Syrene. It shouldn’t have taken more than ten years.”
It was my turn to gasp. “Ten--” I put my head in my hands, feeling the weight of the ancient civilizations.
“What?” she demanded.
“You can make it now in about ten days,” I said.
“No way,” she protested weakly.
“Two hundred years is a long time. The galaxy is a very different place now. Look, I found some of you clothes in the drawers in one of the bedrooms, so I’ll step out for a minute while you get dressed.”
“Pervert. Going through my underwear.”
“Thank you, but this is no time for compliments. We have to get ourselves at least, and preferably this ship as well, out of here before the Inquisition returns.”
“And don’t get any ideas!” she shouted after me. “I’m a lesbian, you know!”
I departed the room, unplugging my PDA and carrying it with me to begin on the next task, namely finding an uncorrupted copy of the corrected Sabre’s operating software to download.
I was flipping through hyper-pages and humming a catchy little melody to myself, when I felt the cold muzzle of a disrupter pistol against the back of my skull.
“Hands up, buster. Move it!”
I complied, casually amused.
“You lied to me. My parents didn’t just leave on their own accord. Otherwise, they would have come back for me.”
“Unless one of the systems that malfunctioned was the ship’s beacon, and they couldn’t find their way back.”
She considered this.
“Look,” I continued. “I guarantee you that the last place I want to be right now is on board this ship. As soon as I get this rattle-trap moving again, I’ll be glad to get off at the nearest planet we can find, leaving you to your own devices. If, that is--” I smirked, “-- you can figure out how to fly this thing.”
“Look, mister --”
“Xithnous,” I filled in.
“OK, Mr. Xithnous,”
“Actually it’s not Mr. Xithnous, it’s just Xithnous. It’s not my last name but my first name. Well, actually it’s both my first and last name, because it’s my only name. My parents were a little strange, see and ...”
“Shut up.”
“Well I was just explaining...”
She angled the disrupter against my skull meaningfully. “Look Mr. Xithnous, or Sithmouse, or whatever you want to be called. I’ve completed five years of training in flight strategy and combat at the Capricorn military school...”
“I see. And while we’re on the subject, I was wondering how you planned to fire the disrupter while the safety latch is still on. And don’t worry, you can’t undo it without knowing the combination. I’ll give you a hint -- it was my last girlfriend’s birthday.”
“You had a girlfriend?”
“Don’t sound so amazed. It may happen to you someday.” Her jaw dropped. “You did say you were a lesbian?”
She stared at me incredulously, and then bless her heart, not trusting me at all, she pointed the gun away from me in order to verify what I had just said, that the gun wouldn’t work. Gingerly she pulled the trigger.
A blinking red holo-projection popped up.
AUTHORIZATION ERROR Please enter combination. |
“Funny thing to do with your girlfriend’s birthday,” she mused.
“Ex-girlfriend,” I corrected. “Well, for the entire time we were going together, I couldn’t for the life of me remember her birthday. Then, by the time I had finally memorized it, we broke up. So I didn’t want to waste all that effort I had put into memorizing it.”
“Why did you break up?”
I considered, woefully recalling to mind the whole affair, along with its ever-so-sad ending. “Basically I think the reason she broke up with me was because I kept forgetting stuff that was important to her. Like, for example, I guess it was mainly because I could never remember her birthday. Chicks are funny about stuff like that.”
She smiled. “Funny,” she echoed.
“And then,“ I continued, I found out it wasn’t enough to remember the date. I had to remember it on the date itself, and even worse, I had to plan ahead and get something special for her, and additionally I had to get it wrapped... way too hectic.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. I was supposed to get something for my friend Molly last week, but I guess now I’m a little late. She had lowered the disrupter, and now was staring at the date displayed on the lower right-hand corner of my PDA’s main holo-screen.”
“Is the date on that clock right?” she asked.
“10:43 A.M. February 14th, 2412,” it read.
“Looks about right,” I said.
“Our flight took off in January of 2211,” she trailed off in a distant voice.
“Long time ago,” I said.
Her face filled with pleasant reflections “I like that number. 2211. My friends are so jealous. I’m going on a trip across the galaxy.”
Her smile lingered for a while, before it gradually faded.
“Must have been a special year,” I offered.
“More than two hundred years ago.” She was trying to comprehend, to get her mind around it. Almost angrily, she cried out. “Now I bet my friends are all dead. Lucy and Evan, and Jane...” she sobbed.
Gingerly, I reached out and drew her near to me, enfolding her in my arms. Now unleashed, her sadness flowed uncontrollably.
Aside from the physical hazards, I was starting to see why cryogenics had declined in popularity.
“And then,” she sniffed and smiled ironically, “then, I wake up on February 14th.”
“Must be a special sort of day,” I offered.
“Valentine’s day,” she mumbled under her breath.
I swore, clapping my hand to my forehead. “Dammit, I knew there was something familiar about that date.”
Tearfully amused, she looked me in the eye. “You know, you’re goofy, but cute.”
Resignedly, she unhanded the disrupter, and plopped it into my palm, handle first.
“Thanks,” I said, accepting it. “ ‘Preciate the compliment. Oh, and by the way,”
“What.”
“There’s a message for you on the comsystem.”
“Can you show me it?”
“Does this mean we’re friends now?”
She smiled, playfully. “We’ll see. Just don’t forget I had combat training.”
“And I trained as a pacifist resistor,” I threatened back.
She gave me a look.
We walked back out to the bridge, and her eyes widened, face flushed.
“Look, are you sure you’re OK?” I asked. “Coming out of cryostasis like that can be stressful. If you need to lie down or anything go ahead.”
“No,” she said quietly. “I’ll be fine.” She stepped up to the console and rapidly flicked a series of switches in an apparently familiar sequence. There was a small popping sound, and a few sparks flew from the console.
“Whoa,” she jumped back.
“It’s not working,” I commented. “I have to download the corrected operating software. There’s a patch available, but it looks like it might be a hassle to install, and loading entire operating system into an application thread on my PDA will only take about twenty minutes...”
“Twenty minutes?” she asked incredulously. Then she whispered: “It took them two days to load it.” She was staring at the date displayed on the ship’s console.
“So where’s this message?” she demanded.
I punched a few buttons on the side of the console that was still operational, and we got back to the window I had seen before.
Message for Jasmin.
Read now?
|
I stood aside as she clicked on ‘yes.’
“I hope you know what the security code is,” I said as the next screen popped up. “Would you like me to leave the room?”
“No, that’s OK,” she said, punching a series of buttons too rapidly for me to follow.
The harsh businesslike letters of the security screen faded, and were replaced by the dynamic motion of recorded video. At first, a giant, jolting, distorted out-of-focus hand filled the screen, apparently adjusting the camera angle, and then the hand receded as its owner sat back far enough away from the lens to behold in proper proportion.
Two adults, male and female, were sitting together on the exact same padded black leather chairs now in front of the console, in the very room we stood in. Both faces in the video were smiling reassuringly, but both showing signs of being emotionally on edge.
“Hi Jasmin,” began the woman, voice filled with obvious affection. “This is your mum and dad. We wanted to be sure you got this message in case don’t see you. I mean... if you wake up before we got back.”
The date at the bottom of the screen, in squarish line-drawn red letters read: “March 12, 2221.” Ten years after their departure in 2211.
“We’ve arrived in the vicinity of the Syrene starsystem, but there’s something gone wrong with the ship’s console, so we’ve gone off to get help, to get it fixed.”
Her dad broke in -- “Don’t worry dear. We’ll be back to get you as soon as we are able.”
My heart was heavy at hearing those words. They hadn’t realized that the beacon wasn’t working. That the navigational computers were offline, so they didn't realize that the ship was adrift, careening slowly and randomly through space. They didn’t know they wouldn’t be able to find their way back. Her mother, brow furrowed, was concentrating on remembering something.
“There was an important message I was supposed to give you,” she said. “they told me long ago. The H.G. Wells spaceport.”
My jaw dropped. “Hold it. Put it on pause for a sec.”
Brushing a tear from her eye, Jasmin hit pause. “What?”
“The H.G. Wells spaceport. Syrene.”
“So? What about it? I never heard of it.” Her voice wavered with emotion.
“That would be because it was only completed less than a year ago.”
She shrugged. “So?”
“So how did your mom know about it back in 2221?”
She was silent. “Didn’t H.G. Wells write a book called ‘The Time Machine?’ My mom read it to me when I was little.”
Impatiently, she shrugged again and punched play, and the images came to life once again.
Her father frowned at her in irritation. “I don’t know what’s got into you, Alice. There’s no such thing as the H.G. Wells spaceport. You’re just going to confuse the girl.” He faced the camera again, smiling nervously. “We’re heading off in the shuttle toward the planet called Syrene.” He fretted anxiously. “We wish we could take you with us, but for some reason your cryopod’s timer didn’t trigger, with the ship’s systems all askew like this we figure it will be best not to manually initiate the awakening sequence.”
“...And your visitor,” her Mom continued, “I forget his name, but it starts with an X. You can trust him. He’s a worthy friend.”
Her father turned away again, frowning. “Alice, hush.” He waved at the camera. “Don’t worry Jazzy, we’ll be back for you in a jiffy,” he said with gleeful hubris.
Her mother was crying now. “Good by dear. Don’t forget, we’ll always love you.”
The image faded and went blank.
Jasmin turned to me, face towards the floor, and collapsed into my arms, sobbing and shaking uncontrollably. With frantic futility, I put an effort into soothing her mussed hair, but wound up just holding her tiny body close to mine as her emotion poured forth.
After what seemed like centuries, the tears and sobs began to ebb, and the warmth of her youthful flesh pressed against mine, my shirt soaked from her lachrymal flow.
“Does your name begin with an ‘X?’” she queried.
“Xithnous, yes it would.” I spelled it for her.
The information filled her with a mysterious calmness, and we stood together, our bodies gently close. The sweet stillness of her childlike breathing brushed softly against my shirt pocket, and her fingers absent-mindedly traced the shapes of my shoulderblades.
At that inconvenient moment, the intercept monitor I had set up screeched annoyingly.
“What the hell is that?” she asked, with obvious irritation.
“Intercept monitor. I have it set up to warn of any Imperial ships headed in this direction.”
Reluctantly, we broke apart our embrace, and she watched while I punched several buttons and gestured in the air to bring up the monitor display.
It would have been too far away to detect any ordinary ships, but all standard-issue Imperial vessels were equipped with a specially encrypted tracking device, so that the central command center would be able to monitor each and every move at all times. Supposedly, the tracking was encrypted, but the underground had cracked the codes long ago, and most non-Inquisition ships nowadays had some sort of similar Intercept monitor to warn of approaching Imperial cruisers.
“What’s it say?” she asked.
“Three ships. Recon configuration, with medium battle array. Should arrive in approximately ... 4.2 hours.”
“Didn’t you say it would take only twenty minutes to fix the controls?” she asked.
“Well yeah, twenty minutes to pull in the patch from the Galactranet onto my PDA, but from what you said a full reload into the main console would take several days. Looks like I had better go for the patch, which would load more quickly but looks like a it will be a hassle to install.” My heart raced, and brushed drops of perspiration from my forehead. “Gonna be tight.”
She shrugged and sat down in the black leather console chair to watch as I went to work.
It was one of those tasks that would have been stressful even without time pressure. The added urgency didn’t make it any more pleasant, and it took all of my willpower to force myself to assume a measured pace, to execute each step with verifiable certainty. There would not be any time to go back and fix mistakes.
Twisting my fingers in the air, to turn the holo-knob, scrolling to the spot in the history matrix where my last search for intact version Sabre DX-42 OS was stored. Poring over the results, I punched the points in the air to bring up a search dialog, and dragged it to the side for better visibility, punching in another key phrase to search for while I scanned the page in front of me...
Some time later, I heard gentle music drifting from one of the corridors that branched off from the main control room I sat in, and I turned to see that she had left. I halted the frantic commotion of what I was doing for a minute to listen.
Solo harp in the distance, as if bridging across a yawning chasm in the ages of time. It started, there was a mistake, and it stopped, then started again. Now continuing beautifully, flowingly. An ancient Celtic air, it sounded like. Now I heard the sound of singing, floating gracefully like a bird taking off in slow-motion mirrored in a still lake below.
I let my shoulders relax, and my mind go blank momentarily, felt myself yearning for my flute that had been left behind on a distant planet some time ago, for the hours to spend in leisurely strolls through luxuriant twists, turns, and curves of melodic hills and valleys.
I sighed, returning to the treadmill, the perpetually scurrying chipmunk-wheel of infinitely aggravating nitpicky little details.
Glancing at the clock, it was already under three hours they would be here.
I held my breath, turned the final virtual holo-valve to allow the current to flood back into the console, and the whole thing lit up, like a glowing city at night.
All over the ship, different systems that had been out of whack for several centuries sprang into motion, blinking, emitting quiet beeps and clicks, and correcting the skew, tightening the slippage, emending the drift.
Only after she reappeared on the deck did I notice silence that had replaced the harp music.
“You play very beautifully,” I remarked, as she sat down in the chair to my right.
“Thank you.”
“Of course, I couldn’t hear very clearly, from way out here. Sometime I would like to listen close up.”
She smiled. “If you had, you wouldn’t have thought I played so well.” Her hands flew over the controls as she brought the engines back to life. “What’s going on with the airlock?” she asked.
“Oh. My escape pod.”
“You’ll need to bring it into the main shuttle bay,” she said. “It looks like the landing shuttle is gone.”
“Wow,” I said. “It looks like you really do know how to fly this thing.” Better than I could, right now at least, I thought to myself. These controls were arcane and archaic, and there were half a dozen things it would take me precious time to puzzle over.
She shrugged. “Told you.”
“Look, can you get us out of here? We have some time still, but these these location coordinates are not the right ones for us to be occupying right now.”
“Sure, I can. But it won’t do any good to go anywhere if they’ve placed a homing beacon on the ship.”
I clapped my forehead with my palm. “Of course. Duh. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Girls are smarter,” she said. “You could go have a look for it while you’re bringing your escape pod into the shuttle bay.”
I bolted upright and strode towards the hallway I had come in.
“You might want to take this along with you,” she said, holding out a universal directional signaling detector, an old one about the size of a box of candy.
I was about to tell her that I had one the size of a business card ... that I had left on board my now-nonexistent ship. Sighing, I accepted her offer.
“And don’t forget to bundle up,” she called after me. “It’s cold out there.”
It took me about fifteen minutes to find it, and I felt silly holding this huge old piece of antiquated electronics. But it the detector did work, and sure enough there was the homing beacon, an ugly tapering cylindrical thing about the size of a soccer ball, colored dull grey, stamped on the side in blood red with the emblem of the Inquisition, and with the classic flashing light on the top pulsing about once a second. It was lodged in the crease between one of the decorative fins and the hull, but fortunately the robotic arms the pod was equipped with were long enough to reach it, and I could disable the adhesion field easily with a dissolution algorithm I had come up with long ago for a similar purpose.
No sooner had I pulled the pod away from the ship, than the ship itself began to move, slowly. My heart pounded with anxiety. She wouldn’t just leave me here, would she?
The comscreen flashed to life, filled with her lovely face. “No offense dude, but I’m going to speed things up a bit by rotating the shuttle bay doors in your direction. Your calculations gave the amount of time until the physical intersect. Strategically speaking, it would be advantageous to subtract the time that we would be within radar range from that estimate. Meaning that we only have twenty minutes left, so you better get your tail back in here.”
“Doh,” I clapped my forhead. “Radar range. That one always gets me. So I guess I’ll toss the beacon away into space,” as I was about to do.
“How about we launch it using the catapult, simultaneously using a brief punch-thrust to propel us in the direction of Syrene, after which we coast on momentum until our thrusters are clear of detection range. That way, if they do happen to detect a burst of thruster blast, they’ll associate it with the alteration in the course of the beacon. Plus, the catapult will give us complete control over the direction and velocity, unlike a random toss with robotic arms. ”
“Right,” I said, meekly. “Just what I was about to say.”
“You’re a really lousy liar,” she said. “And you know what else?”
“No.”
“Girls are smarter.”
I cursed wordlessly.
The open doorway of the shuttle bay appeared in front of me, and with a light tap on the thrusters I found myself inside. The doors promptly closed behind me.
Once the pressure had equalized, she slid open the inner access door, (she had been watching through the square portrait-sized window) and helped me disengage the beacon from the robotic arms. It wasn’t too heavy, light enough for one person to handle.
“Here, let me get that,” she said, “You’d probably drop it and break it.”
“Hey,” I protested.
She opened the door to a nearby transport chute and tossing the nasty artifact of the Inquisition inside, and selecting “catapult” from the menu of buttons arrayed alongside as the door slid shut, and there was a soft bumping sound as nasty thing was whisked off to its destination.
Silently, we both hurried back to the bridge, where we sat as before, I on the left and she on the right. Her hands flew across the controls.
“Syrene,” I said.
She nodded. “Once we’re moving, If they get within radar range, they’ll see us,” she said.
“Let me handle that,” I replied, already gesturing in the air over the PDA, sliding and toggling and twisting the virtual controls and panels. “Just get us the hell out of here.”
She blinked. “OK.”
“Cloaking field,” I explained.
“Oh. Well, Here goes a quick blast to send us in the direction of Syrene, as I launch the beacon in another direction.”
“You should send it away from them, not towards them, so it will take longer for them to catch up with it.”
She smiled wryly at me. “I figured the best strategy would be to launch it in the direction of another populated starsystem nearby, but in the opposite direction of our projected course, one which which the enemy ship would plausibly presume to be our destination. I chose Narzene from the list that your PDA turned up.”
“Why do I even bother?” I asked.
“You’re goofy,” she said, “But cute. OK, here we go.”
I sat back in my seat, bracing myself for the jolt, but the counter-thrust gravitational damping was perfect, and I didn’t feel a thing. Damn, these old Sabres were built right.
We both watched on the display as the nasty old beacon flew off to vanish in the stars, and meanwhile I worked to get the cloaking device up and running. I had never used it on a vessel as big as this one, but the same basic principle scaled up just fine, and once I flipped the virtual toggle to power the cloaking subsystem, and we were apparently, no longer apparent.
“Those things still spook me out,” she said, watching me.
“What, the holo-controls?”
“Is that what you call them? Waving your hands in the air to make stuff work.” Her movements got all flustery to illustrate. “Weird,” she said. “It’s going to take me a while to get used to them.”
After a good ten minutes or so, the three Imperial vessels noticed the change of course, and set off faithfully in pursuit of the beacon.
Apparently, our disappearance was successful.
Completely drained and exhausted from the days events, I stumbled off to find something that looked like a guest bedroom in order to collapse in sleep. A glance back, I saw her starry eyes twinkling as she sat watch over the bridge. Then again, she had spent plenty of time resting.