Novum Chronicles: A Dystopian Undersea Saga

by Joseph Rhea Rhea

  “Grandfather, how could you possibly know?” Vee asked.

  Raines walked toward Jake. “I think you’re responsible for this.”

  “Me?” Jake asked as he looked down at the two dead men. “How exactly am I responsible? I was trapped inside your mine ship when they shot each other.”

  Raines looked at Nia. “I’m afraid it’s also partly my fault,” he said then walked back to the ship. “I misread one of these symbols. The hull is scratched in several places, and I guess I just didn’t double-check my notes well enough.”

  “Norman, what are you talking about?” Nia asked as she walked up and placed her hand on his shoulder.

  Raines seemed to slump in on himself. To Jake, he suddenly looked like Captain Coal on the last night of his command. “This isn’t called a mine ship,” Raines finally said. “It’s a mind ship.”

  “You mean ‘mind,’ as in human mind?” Jake asked. Raines nodded, but that still didn’t clear anything up. “What would a mind ship do?” he asked, but then a possible answer came to him. “Oh no...”

  “You were watching us on the viewscreen inside, weren’t you?” Raines asked. Jake nodded, still refusing to believe the truth he had just guessed.

  Raines looked over at the dead bodies. “What were you doing just before they shot each other? What were you thinking?”

  Jake shook his head. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “What were you thinking, Jake?” Nia asked.

  “I just thought that they should go ahead and shoot each other. I might have even said it out loud.”

  Everyone looked at him and then at Raines. “You’re telling us that this ship of yours reads minds?” Ash asked.

  “And then acts on those thoughts,” AJ concluded. “But how?”

  “I have no idea,” Raines said, “but if this object can truly read a person’s thoughts, then is it a huge leap to believe that it could alter another person’s thoughts, as well?” He looked at Jake. “You wanted them to kill each other. The mind ship transferred that thought directly to them, and they carried it out.”

  “Is it active now?” Vee asked. “Are we in danger?”

  Raines looked at the ship. “I think it has been active since we brought it aboard. I detected a low-level carrier Wave emanating from it, but I had no idea what it was.”

  “That might explain why I have felt so irritable lately,” Nia said.

  “Yes,” Raines said, “but to answer Vee’s question, I don’t think we are currently in any danger. I think you need to be seated inside the ship to operate it as Jake did.”

  Jake looked at Raines and then at Nia. “Did either of you know about this before you brought it on board?”

  Nia shook her head. “We honestly had no idea. I knew they had some potential Pre-Fall weapons stored in that dome, but...” She looked at the ship and then back at the Grange brothers. “If the Council knew what they had in their possession, how dangerous it was, why would they leave it where it could be stolen so easily?”

  “Council?” Jake asked, suddenly aware that his life was becoming more complicated by the moment. “You didn’t tell me you were stealing from the Council.”

  “Maybe they left it there for us on purpose,” Vee said, ignoring Jake’s protest. “Maybe they wanted us to take it so that we could figure it out for them. Figure out how it works with no risk to any of them.”

  “Which is exactly what we just did,” Ash said. He looked at Nia. “So what do we do now?”

  The proximity alarm went off just then, and the floor began to tilt. “Who’s on the Bridge?” Jake asked.

  “No one,” AJ replied. “Your ship’s autopilot must be changing course on its own to avoid hitting something.”

  “We’re in deep water,” Ash said. “The only thing we would be avoiding is another ship.”

  “Let’s get to the bridge,” Jake yelled as he tried to make his way to the lift. The sloping deck was now becoming pronounced. The Wave was in a hard left turn, which only made sense if they were being corralled by several ships. Jake looked at Nia. “We’re in trouble!”

  “Get her back to medical,” Nia said to Raines as she tried to guide Jane toward her friend. “Please make sure Jessie is stable, as well.”

  “I’ll take care of them both,” Raines replied as he took hold of Jane’s hand. Nia then tried to follow Jake toward the lift door, but the deck was sloping so badly it was difficult to walk upright.

  “Not working,” AJ said. She had reached the lift first and was pounding on the call button.

  “The Grange brothers must have locked it out,” Jake replied. “Guess they planned to keep us down here.”

  Ash and Vee had gone in the opposite direction and had just reached the two exit doors. After struggling with them, they confirmed that they were both locked, as well.

  “We’re trapped in here,” Nia said as she, Raines, and Jane Doe reached Jake’s position.

  “Not necessarily,” Jake said as he moved over to a small door on the opposite side of the bulkhead. He opened it, revealing a small storage room filled with tools and spare parts for the Jumper.

  “If you’ve got a welding torch in there, maybe we can cut our way through the door,” Nia said.

  “Hopefully, we won’t have to do that,” Jake said as he stepped inside the room and pulled a panel off the back wall. Underneath was a small access hatch.

  “Where does that lead?” Nia asked.

  “D-deck,” he replied as he turned the center wheel to disengage the locking pins. “One of the advantages of being a wog who hates small places is that I know where every single door is located on this ship, even well-hidden ones like this.”

  The hatch opened into a cramped space with a low ceiling. The back half of the room was filled by nearly a dozen meter-wide cylinders lying on their sides and stacked two high. This was the ship’s compressed oxygen and nitrogen storage, which supplied their breathing mixture as well as the air needed for pressurizing lockouts and creating bubbles for supercavitation travel.

  Jake crawled through the small hatch first and then helped the others through. Jane started to walk toward a small opening on the starboard side of the room, but Raines stopped her. “That’s dangerous, Jane,” he said. “See that yellow striped tape? That means danger. Do you understand?”

  Jane nodded. “Battery sleds,” she said. “They move forward and back to adjust the ship’s pitch.”

  “That’s right, dear,” Raines said, then looked at Nia. “How does she know that?”

  Nia was busy helping Jake open the ceiling hatch. “Ask Vee about it later,” Jake said as he finished turning the hatch wheel. He then lifted the door and used the wall-mounted ladder to climb up to C-deck. This time, he didn’t wait for the others and ran up the stairs to B-deck and the bridge.

  Displayed on the chart table, Jake saw four Colonial Guard ships circling the Wave, allowing no opening for the autopilot to find an escape route. They were an unmistakable design, with their cylindrical hulls and formidable weapons cluster mounted on the bow.

  A flashing yellow light on the helm console said his ship was being hailed. “What do we do now?” he asked as the others came up the stairwell.

  “We talk to them, of course,” Nia said then looked directly at Jake. “Remember, we have done nothing wrong.”

  “Nothing wrong? We have an incredibly dangerous weapon in my cargo bay, which by the way, we stole from them. And, oh, let’s not forget, there are two dead bodies down there as well. Two people who were most likely working for them.”

  She put a hand on his shoulder. “Calm down, Jake. While everything you said is technically true, the people out there know none of that. One thing I learned from working for the government is that the Council doesn’t trust anyone outside of the Council, and so the Colonial Guards are told very little when they are sent out on missions. To compensate for this, they have become good at tricking people into telling them what they need to know.”

 
“So we say nothing?”

  “On the contrary,” she said. “You should speak freely because you have done nothing wrong. If you are clever, you might even be able to make them tell us a thing or two about what they know about all of this.”

  “Me?” Jake said. “You expect me to talk to them?”

  “You are the owner of the Rogue Wave,” AJ interjected. “The Law of the Sea states that the authority of the ship’s owner if he or she is aboard supersedes that of the captain, especially a temporary captain like Nia.”

  “Even if I wanted to speak with them,” Nia said, “they will demand to speak to whoever is in charge and that’s you.”

  “What do I say?”

  “Whatever you have to,” Nia replied, “but remember to hold your ground and keep them off balance if you can.”

  “Can you stay nearby to help me if I get stuck?” he asked.

  “They might recognize my face,” she said. “I’ll be downstairs, monitoring your conversation.”

  “Fine,” he said as if he had a choice.

  Ash and Vee assumed their stations while AJ sat down at the acoustics console. As Nia went down to the galley, Vee turned off the autopilot and brought the Rogue Wave to a full stop. AJ then sent a hail to the Guard ships. While they waited for a reply, Jake walked up to the command station at the bow and looked out the viewport. The running lights of two of the four ships were just barely visible from his position. He turned up the low-light filter to see the ships more clearly. When the filters kicked in, he noticed there was nothing but water below him.

  He turned to Ash. “Where are we?”

  Ash checked his console. “We seem to be over the Rift,” he said, looking as surprised as Jake was. “We were skirting the western edge on our way south to the drop-off point. They must have pushed us out here when they were corralling us before.”

  “Why would they do that?” Vee asked.

  “If I wanted to get rid of someone,” AJ said, “this is the place I would do it. No witnesses and no evidence left behind.”

  “Great,” Jake said as he stared out at the darkness.

  Genesis 07

  “They are responding,” Vee said. “I’ll put it on the forward—”

  “Actually,” Jake interrupted, “put it on the chart table. I want to get a good look at who I’m dealing with.”

  The room crackled with static, and then the upper torso of a man appeared on the chart table. The rendering was so good; it looked as though the man was standing inside the table.

  He glanced around the room before speaking. “Cargo vessel Rogue Wave. This is the Colonial Guard Vessel Scimitar. Prepare to be boarded.”

  “Scimitar,” he heard Nia mumble down in the galley. “Like that is supposed to scare us.”

  “On whose authority?” Jake asked the man. He looked young, which was a good thing.

  “To whom am I speaking?” the man asked as he turned and looked up at Jake.

  Jake stood tall, realizing that his image would be projected as looking down on the man from his point of view. “I am Jacob Stone, the owner of this ship.” Then he remembered Nia’s advice about holding his ground. “To whom am I speaking? What is the meaning of this attack?”

  The man looked off to the side before responding. “I am Lieutenant Winnick, and there has been no attack. I have been instructed to search your vessel for possible stolen cargo.”

  Instructed, he thought. That means someone else is in charge. “Tell your captain that it is a waste of my time speaking to his lieutenant and that he should address me directly if he wants my cooperation.”

  The young man looked stunned, and then he was suddenly gone from the table projection. He was replaced by a woman with a face aged by decades in command—a face he recognized. “Jacob Stone. Didn’t expect to see you out here.”

  “You know her?” AJ whispered.

  “Captain Steele,” Jake said. He felt sweat building on his forehead, but he knew he had to remain calm, even though their situation had suddenly become much, much worse. “I didn’t expect to see you, either. What can I do for you, ma’am?”

  “We are investigating a possible theft from one of our storage facilities,” she relayed calmly. “Your ship is on a direct course away from that location. May I ask what you are doing out here?” She glanced at a small slate in her projected hand. “Looks like you are far off your flight plan. That, in itself, is a violation of the law.”

  “Law,” Nia mumbled again. “What does she care about the law?”

  Jake shot Vee a look that said, Please shut Nia up! However, she didn’t seem to understand his glare. Her blank stare did give him an excuse, though. “I’m testing a new crew,” he said. “They’re pretty green, but then again, they were the best I could get.”

  Steele nodded. “Yes, I understand. I admit that I was surprised when my crew informed me that your ship was out here, Jacob. However, that is still not a valid excuse for violating your flight plan.”

  “I know,” he replied calmly, “and I’ll be sure to file the correct paperwork when I get back. Now, if there is nothing else?”

  “Well,” she said, “there is the matter of the stolen items. I’m afraid that I will still need to have my people search your ship. Formalities, you understand.”

  “Formalities, my ass!” Nia mumbled, a bit louder this time.

  “I didn’t get that,” Steele said.

  “You do realize that my ship has no top docking port,” Jake replied.

  “Yes, that’s an annoying feature of Proteus-Class ships.”

  “Which means that you can’t forcibly board us,” AJ said as she stood up for the first time.

  “You look familiar,” Steele said, turning to face AJ.

  “Lieutenant Commander Juno of the Shippers Guild. I’m assisting Captain Stone with his crew training.”

  “Well, Commander, you are correct, of course, but I’m hoping a forced boarding will not be necessary. If you and your crew have nothing to hide, I think we can settle this matter rather—.”

  “Send a shuttle,” AJ said, interrupting her. “They can attach to our lower docking port. We will hold station and await your arrival.” She made a finger-across-her-throat gesture at Vee, who cut off communications. Captain Steele’s hard face vanished.

  “What are you doing, AJ?” Nia said as she came up the stairs. “We can’t allow them to board this vessel.”

  “We don’t have a choice,” AJ said. “We’re surrounded.”

  While they discussed their limited options, Jake walked up to the command station and stared out at the darkness. In his imagination, he saw Stacy floating out there. He imagined he was in the dark water next to her. Then, as in all of his nightmares, she began to fall away from him into the icy-cold depths below.

  “They’re coming,” Vee said, bringing Jake back to the present. He looked out of the forward viewport and saw a small shuttle being lowered from the Scimitar.

  “We’re going to jail,” Vee said.

  “We’ll be lucky if we only end up in jail,” AJ replied.

  “You know, Colonial ships are Pontus-Class,” Ash said. “We're Proteus. They are bigger and faster, but we can go a lot deeper than they can. We could try to lose them down in the Rift.”

  “They will blast us as soon as we start to descend,” AJ said. “Remember? No witnesses out here.”

  “Then we have to hide the mind ship,” Vee said.

  “How do we hide an object that big?” Ash asked.

  “None of that matters,” Nia said. “We absolutely cannot let the Council have that weapon. Do you understand? We’ve all seen what it can do. It has to be destroyed.”

  “By destroyed, you mean to destroy our ship. Kill ourselves,” AJ said.

  “How exactly would we do that?” Ash asked.

  “If we attempt the dive you suggested,” Nia said, “I think the Guards would do the job for us.”

  “I can’t believe you’re considering this,” Vee whispered.


  Ash looked out at the Guard ships and sighed. “Unless someone comes up with a brilliant plan to somehow destroy the object without killing ourselves in the next five minutes, I don’t see any other option.”

  Jake, still staring out at the darkness, smiled. “I think I have that brilliant plan.” Before anyone could respond, he headed for the stairwell. “No time to explain. I need Ash to help me.” Both Nia and Ash ran toward the stairwell. “I only need one of you,” he said as he ran down the stairs.

  “I brought this mess on board,” Nia said. “If there’s a way to fix this, I will be involved.”

  “Fine,” Jake said, not wanting to waste a second arguing the point.

  When Jake reached C-deck, he jumped off the last step and ran toward the diver locker on his right. As Ash and Nia came in, he pointed to the hardsuits hanging on the back wall. “Put those on as fast as you can.”

  “Are we going for a swim?” Ash asked as he headed for the suit on the left side. Jake pulled the one on the right side off its hook, and it dropped to the floor, smashing his toes. “Drown it!” he yelled. “I forgot how heavy these things are.”

  Ash and Nia were nearly suited up by the time Jake figured out how to open the armored pressure suit and crawl into it. He shoved his head into the transparent headpiece and then remembered that he needed to seal the back first. He was about to swear again, but Ash was suddenly there, helping him close it up. “They’re much lighter underwater,” Ash said through the suit’s intercom. He hit the final closure, and Jake took a deep breath of cold filtered air as it began filling his suit.

  “Unfortunately, we won’t be going into the water,” Jake said into his intercom.

  Nia had just finished putting on her suit, as well. “What? I assumed we were going outside to disable the docking port, or at least try to attack that shuttle when it arrives,” she said.

  Jake waddled toward the door, the heavy suit slowing his progress. “That wouldn’t get us out of this situation.” He exited the locker and turned left, toward the lift. After wasting several seconds removing the lockout device that the Grange brothers had attached to the lift controls, Nia and Ash followed him inside, and he closed the door and pressed the descend button. He listened to the sound of his own heavy breathing as they dropped. Apparently, the others had given up guessing his plan.