Novum Chronicles: A Dystopian Undersea Saga

by Joseph Rhea Rhea

  “What questions?” Jessie asked.

  “Where did it come from?” Wood said. “Why was it sent here? Who sent it?”

  “What if we don’t like the answers?” Vee asked.

  Raines answered her. “We most likely will not like the answers, dear, but we still have to ask the questions.” He scanned each of the faces on the bridge, ending with Jake’s. “I’m afraid that I must agree with Dr. Wood this one time. The fate of our colony could very well rest in finding out what’s out there.”

  “Is it even possible to travel four thousand kilometers beyond the border?” Jessie asked.

  “Good point,” Ash said, looking relieved. “We don’t have the fuel to make it that far, even with full batteries.”

  Raines shook his head. “That’s not exactly true.”

  “What do you mean?” Jake asked.

  “We could use the reactor.”

  “In the hold?” AJ asked. The engineer nodded.

  “Isn’t it, you know, unstable?” Vee asked.

  Raines stroked his chin. “I can’t guarantee exactly how long it will last, but I believe that if I can tap into it to power the thrusters for the first two thousand kilometers, we should have just enough to make it that far with the fuel we have aboard. That is, assuming that we don’t push the ship too hard. Our standard hauling speed is the most fuel-efficient, so I would recommend that.”

  Ash looked as though he were going to pass out. “Hauling speed on this ship is only ten kilometers per hour. It would take at least sixteen or seventeen days of nonstop travel to go four thousand kilometers.”

  “That’s from the far western border,” Raines said. “However, from our current location, it would be more like five thousand kilometers, so at least three weeks. Say, a full month just to be safe.”

  “Won’t that use up our life support, not to mention our food supply, in a month?” Jessie asked.

  “In terms of life support, the air scrubbers are, admittedly, pretty old. I searched for replacements in the last two outposts we visited but couldn’t find what I needed.”

  “But will they last?” AJ asked.

  “I’ll have to do some calculations and carefully monitor things along the way, but I think I can make them last. Now in terms of provisions, we would obviously have to ration things a bit, but we did fill up with corn products before we left, so we are in better shape for a journey like this than we otherwise might be.”

  “Corn?” Jake whispered to himself and realized that rationing might not be so bad after all, at least for him.

  “So the ship might be ready for a journey like this,” Vee said, “but are we?”

  “A one-way, month-long trip into the unknown, with old carbon scrubbers, not enough food, and a power supply that just might explode and kill us all?” Ash joked, though his face looked pale. “What’s to get ready for?”

  “It might not be one-way,” Raines reminded them. “If there is nothing but a refueling station out there, then we could presumably recharge our batteries just like the salvager did and return.”

  AJ walked up and stood beside Jake, looking out of the forward viewport. “I believe in you, Jake,” she whispered, “and as you said, we don’t have a lot of options.”

  He nodded and then addressed the crew. “Listen, everyone, I won’t force anyone to go with me. If any of you want to go back, head to the shuttle right now. I’ll give you the transmitter, and you can surrender to the Scimitar. Blame everything on me, say whatever you want, I don’t care. But if you want off this ship, you should leave now.” His eyes turned to Vee and Jessie. “That goes for everyone, so choose.”

  “I’m in,” Vee said.

  “So am I,” Jessie said.

  Jake glanced at his navigator, but he was busy at his console. “Like you could make it out there without me.” He glanced back at Jessie. “Besides, where my sister goes, I go.”

  Jake walked past the crew to the chart table then turned and leaned against it. He had a flashback of being in that same position while talking to Stacy the night before she died. A part of him wanted to continue dwelling on the past, continue torturing himself for letting her die. However, the reality was, before she died, this ship was her home, and she was happiest while on board with her crewmates. They were her family.

  He looked down at the well-worn deck plating and realized that the Rogue Wave had become his home too, and this crew was the closest thing he had to a family. They might very well die on this trip, but at least they would die together.

  “Are you ready for what’s ahead, Jake?” a voice behind him asked. He turned to see Jane standing at the top of the stairs. She had asked him something similar when he first took command of the Wave. Looking back, he hadn’t really been ready for what was to come, but that didn’t stop him. Now, against all odds, his parents might still be alive, and in three to four weeks, he might know for sure.

  “I think this time I really am,” he said, and in saying the words, realized that he was telling the truth. He turned back to the faces surrounding him—his crew, his family—and said, “Let’s go.”

  Book 3:

  Rubicon

  Rubicon 01

  Jake’s morning started like any other, with an upset stomach. They were ten days into what could very well be a month-long journey into the unknown, and rationing had forced them to be more creative than usual with their meal choices. Last night it was Vee’s turn to cook for the crew, and whatever his helmsman put in that corn casserole gave him horrible gas the rest of the evening. No one complained about the meal, because everyone knew things would be getting worse before they got better, but you could see the unhappiness in their eyes as they ate. At least they still had clean water, so it was easy to wash the mouthfuls down.

  He dressed in his workout clothing as he did every morning and headed out the door and down to C-deck. The Rogue Wave wasn’t a large ship, only seventy meters stem to stern, and the inside, livable portion, was much smaller. However, like most Shippers, he was learning how to make do with what he had, especially when it came to working out.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he turned left and headed to the starboard lockout, then jogged in place while it slid open. He stepped through, turned left again, and headed through the second door to the observation corridor. Through the elongated viewport on his left, he could see the upper torso of the Walker silhouetted against the dim glow of the cargo bay lights. He jogged down the steps at the end and then turned and passed through another door leading to the forward section of the bay. Once inside, he ran ten circles around the bay, high-fiving the Walker’s left arm each lap. Finally, he entered the portside corridor and returned aft to the staging area where he had started.

  He circled the staircase twice to burn a little more distance then headed towards the aft deck crew quarters. As he ran the narrow hallways, he noticed that the rec room lockout door at the end of the hall was slightly ajar. Normally, that would be impossible, since it was part of an automated system to keep the utility fog particles from escaping. However, he had pulled the plug on the room at the beginning of their journey to conserve power, much to the irritation of the crew. Recreation rooms were obviously important for maintaining crew morale on long and lonely trips, but having power for heat and light, not to mention water and air purification, was far more important.

  Realizing he could use the extra floor space of the rec room for his run, he stepped into the chamber, opened the inner door, and jogged inside. He was startled to find himself inside an ancient library. It was said that in the years before the Fall of Man, humanity’s distant ancestors visited these buildings to stare at ancient paper and cloth versions of modern-day books. This simulation had a number of interesting details such as a pair of oversized stuffed red chairs on a fuzzy gold carpet in the middle. One of the chairs was facing away from him, and the combination of a bare leg hanging over one armrest and a mop of red hair visible over the top, told him who was in there.

  “Ple
ase tell me you didn’t override the rec room’s security again, Jane,” he said.

  Jane didn’t turn around but wiggled her bare toes at him. “I didn’t override anything,” she said, and then pointed a long, delicate finger at the ceiling, “This was Norman’s idea.”

  Jake was taken aback. “You’re telling me that my chief engineer is running this program against my orders? I find that highly unlikely.”

  She stretched her toes wide and then leaned around the corner of the chair to look at him. “This is not an active simulation,” she said as she stroked the arm of the chair. “He programmed this and then cut the power. The nano-scale particles will remain in their configuration until entropy defeats the locking mechanisms that bind them.”

  He knew Jane was trying hard to simplify her explanation of utility fog, and it was a little irritating, coming from such a young person. “You’re telling me that he set up one final simulation and then froze it. I get that, but why an old library? You do realize these places never actually existed, don’t you?”

  “Why do you say that?” she asked.

  “Well, it’s like you said about the rec room particles. Entropy breaks everything down over time. In other words, anything from the past has to be better than what we have today. There is simply no way something this rundown could have existed in the Pre-Fall era.” He looked around the room. “More importantly, if you’re going to build one last simulation, why not make something more practical, like a weight room, or maybe a Guild-style bar?”

  He was joking, but as usual, she didn’t get it. “A weight room would be redundant as we have plenty of heavy objects in the cargo bay to lift in order to build muscle mass. Likewise, a bar would be impractical since you can’t drink utility fog particles when they are powered down.”

  Jake walked over to one of the bookshelves and surveyed the titles. There were books by authors with unlikely names like Faulkner, Mooney, Howey, Wells, Tolstoy, and a dozen others he had never heard of. He pulled down one book that had giant mechanical spiders on the cover. When he opened it, he saw nothing but empty pages. “You’re telling me that this is more useful? A room filled with blank books?”

  She smiled. “Norman told me the titles came from old images of libraries. He said that it’s our generation’s duty to recreate what was lost to the past.”

  He looked sideways at her. “He wants us to guess what was originally in these and write them ourselves?”

  “That would probably be a waste of time,” she said. “He suggested finding a title that speaks to you and then start writing your own story.”

  “That does sound like something he would say,” he admitted. “But I still think it’s a waste of time.”

  “Plus,” she added, “writing in these books doesn’t use additional power.” She stood beside the chair and saluted him. “Those were the captain’s orders, weren’t they?”

  As she stood there, barefoot on simulated golden carpet, tussled hair now grown down just past her shoulders, he realized that he was becoming more and more attracted to her. Not that he would ever admit it to anyone, and he certainly wouldn’t act on the emotion.

  As he stared at her, he realized that it was no longer her resemblance to his ex-girlfriend, or even her childlike innocence, that made her so attractive. She was a girl—a woman—unlike anyone he had known before, and a part of him imagined sweeping her up in his arms and carrying her away. To where, though? They were both trapped inside a metal boat, heading rapidly away from civilization into uncharted waters. Was there a worse time to fall in love? Then again, was there a better time?

  In an attempt to shake off the thought, he walked over and sat down in the second chair. It was surprisingly comfortable. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should stay in here for the rest of the trip and write my life’s story,” he said aloud, but he was really just talking to himself. “Maybe it would give me insight as to why the bilge I brought us all out here.”

  Jane moved the other chair closer to his, then sat back down and propped her feet on his armrest. “If you could have chosen your life’s path at birth, what would you have done differently?”

  “My life’s path? At Birth? That’s not possible.”

  “Why not? Everyone is born with innate, natural talents, so it should be a simple matter of following where those talents take you.”

  “It’s not that simple,” he replied, although as he said those words, deep down he wished it were that simple. “Besides, I’m more of what you would call a ‘generalist’ in that I’m good at a lot of different things, but I’m not the best at any one of them. I guess that’s why I never found one particular job that I wanted to pursue.”

  She looked at him intently. “Being good at a lot of things seems like a very good trait for a ship’s captain.” When he didn’t respond, she added, “You don’t think you’re a very good captain, do you?”

  He sighed then leaned back and closed his eyes. “You don’t mince words, do you, Jane?”

  “Jessie says that life is too short to be anything but honest,” she whispered.

  He kept his eyes closed, enjoying the quiet. “My mother used to say, ‘Life is short, so try to make each day matter.’ I don’t think I really understood that—until lately that is.”

  “You haven’t been following her advice, have you?”

  He opened his eyes and looked over at her. “I don’t think you know me well enough to make that kind of a statement.”

  She stood up and then slid slowly down to the floor, doing a perfect split on the carpet. “I think I know you better than you know yourself, Jacob Stone.”

  He jumped to his feet. “Don’t do that!” he yelled, surprised by the sudden rage she had evoked in him. “Those are Stacy’s words, and you are copying her voice.” He turned to leave, but she was suddenly there, holding his hand with both of hers.

  “I’m sorry, Jake. It seemed like you needed comfort, and I thought—”

  He turned to her. “You thought imitating my dead girlfriend would make me feel better?” When he looked in her eyes, he was reminded that she was still quite young and inexperienced. Maybe she just didn’t understand. “Look, Jane. I know you’ve probably broken into every database on this ship, and I know there are probably recordings of Stacy in there.”

  “Quite a few of them,” she interrupted.

  “The point is, I don’t want to think about her. I don’t want to live in the past. Not anymore.” He looked up at the collection of books surrounding them. “I don’t even want to write about that past in one of these so-called books.” He took her by the shoulders and looked her square in the eyes. “I want reality. I want to be here, right now...” With you, he added silently.

  She copied his actions, grabbing him by the shoulders, and then began swaying back and forth. “Is this what you call dancing, Jake?” she asked with a genuine gleam in her wide eyes.

  He let go and sighed. “I guess I should be going.”

  “Well, you certainly know how to kill the mood,” she said with a pouting lip. Now she was mimicking Jessie’s voice.

  “Sorry. I just have things to do.”

  She went back to her chair and returned with a book and a pen. “I knew you wouldn’t be interested in writing your story using someone else’s title,” she said, “so I had Norman make a special one just for you.” She handed him the book then breezed past him without another word and headed out of the room.

  He glanced down at the book’s title: Facing the Blue: The Journey of the Rogue Wave, By Jacob Stone. He shook his head. She apparently didn’t understand a thing about him, and he certainly didn’t understand her. Maybe that’s for the best, he thought as he cupped the book under his arm and headed out the door.

  Even though he knew that the powered-down nano-particles should stay attached outside the rec room, he was still a bit surprised when the book didn’t simply disintegrate when he stepped into the hall.

  As he walked past Jane’s quarters, he was tempted t
o knock, but then he heard her voice coming from beyond the bulkhead door ahead. When he opened it, he saw her standing at the open door to the dive locker. He walked up beside her and peeked inside. Norman Raines, along with Ash and Jessie, were seated around a six-sided table that Raines had built a few days earlier. Under normal circumstances, neither Jake nor AJ would have allowed something like that in a working area of the ship. However, this particular trip was anything but normal.

  “You’re dead, Ash!” Jessie said to her older brother with a taunting laugh.

  “Don’t count me out just yet, little girl,” Ash replied.

  “Feeling lucky, are we?” Raines asked. He held the cube-shaped die in his fingertips, making sure the side embossed with six white dots faced his opponent.

  “I was born lucky,” Ash replied, shaking his own die in his outstretched hand.

  “And I was playing this game forty years before your lucky birth,” Raines said with a calm smile.

  “That’s right,” Ash shot back, “I forgot just how old you really are. Sure you don’t need to stop for a nap or something?”

  Raines’ smile weakened slightly, but he covered it quickly. “That certainly is a lot of beans to risk for one challenge,” he said, glancing down at the small brown pile lying in the center of the game board. “Once these are gone, there are no more.”

  The ship’s engineer was correct, Jake thought, as he watched the game from the doorway. All food sources were being rationed, and their small stockpile of precious coffee beans had quickly become the most valuable form of currency aboard his ship. For reasons known only to Ash, he had just bet the last of his personal allotment on a silly game.

  “The game is called ‘Hex,’” Jane whispered. “It’s best played with six people, but it works with two or three players as well.”

  “I know how to play,” he whispered back, “but how do you know about it.”

  She turned and looked at him oddly. “I learn quickly,” she said then turned back to the game.