As he moved away from the ship, he saw something out his starboard viewport. It was an isopod, far larger than any they had spotted before, sliding through the water and heading directly for the Wave. As the monster reached his ship and engulfed it with its long arms, Jake banked hard to starboard and pushed the shuttle’s thrusters to maximum. He was determined to ram it, hoping that the action would force it to attack him instead. However, before he got close, the creature picked up the Rogue Wave as though it was a child’s toy, and then moved quickly away. After a few minutes of chase, Jake slapped the console in frustration and killed the thrusters. There was no way to catch the creature and no way to stop it.
Rubicon 07
Breathe!
Jake gasped and opened his eyes, startled by the strange voice in his head. He was still in the cockpit of his shuttle, still sitting inside his uncomfortable hardsuit, but the interior lights were off. Only the control panel in front of him was still lit, and one light in particular was flashing red. He could hear a woman’s voice faintly repeating two words, over and over. Low oxygen! Low oxygen!
He bit down on the air intake inside his suit and blew hard, then tried to suck whatever oxygen was left in its tanks. The carbon dioxide scrubbers in his suit’s rebreather gave him half a lungful of air in return, but he knew it wasn’t enough. He was going to be dead soon and there wasn’t much he could do about it.
His memory of the past few days was fuzzy, but he knew he had been following the signal he had picked up earlier, when the Wave finally ran out of power. Unfortunately, when he reached its point of origin, he found himself in the exact dead center of nowhere. No lost colony, no refueling depot, nothing but empty sea. As the shuttle’s thrusters used up the last bit of energy from the batteries, he had set his shuttle down on the sea floor to await the end.
He turned and looked behind at the empty benches in the back of the shuttle, and wondered what had become of his crew. Were they still on the Wave? Were they any better off than he was?
As he turned back and saw his own reflection in the forward viewport, his low-oxygen imagination made him see Stacy swimming towards him in the cold dark sea beyond the glass. She really was out there somewhere, he reminded himself, and he would soon be joining her. A fitting end, he mused, for the man who killed his future wife.
You didn’t kill me, she said inside his mind.
But, I let you die, he thought back. Just like my crew. Wait! My crew? Stacy’s face outside began to undulate, just like the creature that attacked his ship a few hours earlier. Attacked my ship? Where are these memories coming from? What happened to my ship? My crew?
Then he realized that it really was a creature out there, moving directly towards him. It was coming back for him. Coming to complete the job. He looked again at the displays on his dash and confirmed that he was, in fact, out of both power and air. There was nothing left to do but wait for his death. A part of him wished that the creature could have held off a few more minutes; let him pass out from lack of clean air before consuming him. Now, he would be conscious when it ate him, which again, maybe he deserved. Wait! Why do I deserve to die?
As the silhouette of the massive creature passed directly over him, he closed his eyes and imagined huge teeth piercing the shuttle’s hull, blood dripping from them as they cut the shuttle in half. The still-reasoning part of his oxygen-starved brain reminded him that the slightest crack in the pressure hull at this depth would trigger an implosion. Most likely, he wouldn’t feel a thing.
You’ll feel everything, another voice inside his head told him. It was his own subconscious talking to him, he knew, but the voice was decidedly feminine, and this time it wasn’t Stacy.
As he fought to catch his breath, he tried to sit up and found that his arms wouldn’t move. When he opened his eyes and looked down, he saw that his wrists were strapped to some sort of bed and he was no longer inside the shuttle. He looked up and saw that he was inside a small cylindrical room, not much bigger than his quarters but much taller. The walls were clean and white, like a medical bay.
“I see you’ve decided to rejoin us,” a woman said as she entered the room. He didn’t recognize her, but she wore a white medical uniform and scanned a slate in her hand as she approached.
“Recreation room,” he said, trying desperately to understand what was happening to him. “It has to be.”
“You believe that you are inside a simulation?” the woman asked.
Jake glanced at her and then turned away. “I don’t remember your face,” he said. “My rec room has a limited number of human models, and I know them all.” He pondered the idea that perhaps Jane was involved in this elaborate ruse. She could probably fabricate a new face. She had computer skills unmatched by any of the crew.
“This is not a simulation, Captain,” the woman said. Even her voice was original, which also pointed to Jane. Of course, maybe the whole crew was involved, and Jessie could probably alter the voice database. She was an acoustics expert, so it wasn’t out of the question.
“We need to get back to work, guys,” he said to the room. “I’m serious; you need to end this now.”
The woman jotted something on her slate then asked, “Can you tell me your full name?”
Jake tried to move his arms again then gave the straps a hard yank. “I’m really not kidding, people. End this now!”
“Your full name,” the woman repeated.
“Jacob Stone,” he said. “Is that the idea? I answer your questions, and then I get to leave?” It suddenly dawned on him that maybe the rec room was running on its own. Maybe something happened to the crew after they placed him inside. Maybe some sort of disaster was keeping them from letting him out.
He yanked repeatedly on the wrist straps then looked up at the woman. “This is a priority override. End this program now!”
The woman frowned, and then said, “Captain Stone, I realize you might have difficulty understanding this, but you are recovering from an extended period of oxygen deprivation. You are not currently inside the Rogue Wave. In fact, we don’t know where your ship is, and we’re hoping you can help us locate it.”
Since he didn’t seem to have many options, he decided to play along for the moment. “Okay, so where am I?”
He heard a hiss as a door slid open and a second person entered the room. It was another woman, and as she approached and her face became visible, Jake’s heart nearly stopped. Captain Steele stepped up next to him and bent down, her silver-white hair reflecting the overhead light. “You’re right where you belong,” she whispered. “Under arrest for the abandonment of your vessel and the possible murder of your crew.”
“Murder?” he asked, unable to believe what she was saying. “What happened to them?” he yelled. “What happened to my crew?”
“That’s what we are going to find out,” Steele said as she turned and walked back out of the door.
Jake looked up at the woman. “Do you know what happened to my ship? My crew?”
She shook her head. “We found only you inside your shuttle. No sign of your ship or your crew.”
“How long?”
“Have you been here? We found your shuttle two days ago.”
His memory of the creature moving towards him came back to him. That had to have been the Scimitar. He had thought he was going to die, but had in fact, been rescued.
The woman turned and pulled up a chair then sat next to him. “Listen, I’m not supposed to talk about the trial, but I feel you ought to know what we know before it starts.”
“Trial?”
“General Court Marshal. Captain Steele’s orders. Even though you are apparently not a member of the Shipper’s Guild or the military, you are the captain of your ship, and that makes you responsible for your crew.”
“Of course I’m responsible,” he said. “But, I’m having difficulty remembering how I got here, or what happened to my crew. We were on a course due west from the colony and travelling for several weeks. Now I
’m here.” He looked up at her. “There’s nothing in between.”
“It’s called hypoxia. Prolonged oxygen deprivation damages brain tissue,” she said. “I’d say you are lucky to even be alive. If we had found you a few hours later...”
“How did you find me?” he asked. “We left the Scimitar on the other side of Civica’s border.”
She pulled her chair up closer. “Again, I’m not supposed to be talking to you, so if they ask...”
Jake nodded. “I understand.”
“Apparently they recorded the signal you used to disable the border defenses. It took over a week to decipher the code, and then we were able to cross the border ourselves.” She paused and, after glancing around the room, continued. “Captain Steele was ordered back twice, but she ignored them. Seems that she was bound and determined to catch up with your ship.”
Jake nodded. “Then where is my ship?”
She shrugged as she stood up. “As I said, we didn’t find it. We only found you, sitting alone inside your shuttle. Out of power and out of air.” She glanced at him. “What was it like? Sitting all alone in that shuttle, waiting for the end?”
“It was horrible,” he whispered.
“Thank you, Doctor.” Steele’s voice issued from the overhead speaker. “That’s all I need.”
The woman looked at Jake with a frown on her otherwise kind face. “I’m sorry, Captain Stone. I had my orders. Your trial will begin immediately.
His bed rotated vertically until he was nearly upright. The white wall in front of him faded, or more precisely, it became a window, and he saw the outline of a group of people sitting on the other side of it. The lights above them were off and he could make out none of their faces.
“Who are you people?” he called out.
“That is a jury of your peers,” Captain Steele’s voice whispered in his ear.
“I still don’t believe any of this,” he said, feeling as though he was losing his mind. Both the shuttle and this place seemed utterly real to him. However, he knew one of them had to be fake, either a dream or an elaborate simulation.
“They are both real, in a fashion,” the doctor said.
“What?” he asked. “Are you reading my mind now?”
“Actually, that is precisely what we are doing,” Steele replied, moving to stand in front of him. “This is what we call an Interrogator, one of the best in the colony, actually. It allows us to probe your memories and observe your actions at any point in your recent past. With it, we can determine the guilt or innocence of any subject without the need for traditional interrogation procedures.”
“By traditional, you mean beating confessions out of people, right?”
“No need for such hostility,” Steele said with a slight grin. “We are not here to intentionally convict you of any crime.” She Waved her hands to the group of people behind the window. “We are all here to simply learn the truth of what happened to your ship and its crew, nothing more.”
“I imagine you would like to know as well,” the doctor said. “It must be driving you mad not knowing.”
“But I can’t remember. And you said I have brain damage from lack of oxygen.”
“The human brain is quite good at spreading memories to different neurons, sort of like data backups, which is why memories often return to people with severe brain trauma. The Interrogator scans your entire brain, and it can piece together these backup memories much faster than you can.”
“In other words,” Steele interrupted, “we will find out what happened to your ship, even if you can’t remember.”
“Can we just move this along?” someone on the outside, one of those faceless jurors, asked. His voice was muffled, as though it was being altered to keep his identity concealed. “We are running out of time and I just want to know what happened to the crew.”
The doctor’s soft voice answered him. “Forcibly recalling memories is actually a rather dangerous procedure. Memories are stored in a sort of ribbon format, meaning they have to be traced in order, and at certain speeds.”
“Also,” Steele’s harsher voice cut in, “we need to learn what happened on board his ship beforehand, determine what events would lead a captain to abandon his own crew.”
“I didn’t abandon my crew!” Jake yelled, but no one seemed to be interested in what he had to say. Should he just tell them what they wanted to hear? Make something up? Get this whole debacle of a trial over with?
He turned back to the dark window. They were out there watching him, he knew, hiding their faces, hiding from him. If they were his jurors, people deciding his guilt or innocence, he had a right to face them. “I have the right to face you!” he yelled.
“Not here,” Steele said. “However, one of them wants to ask a question.” The exterior light came up slightly, and he could see the silhouettes of a dozen or so figures seated in two rows, each wearing long black cloaks, their faces hidden by over-sized hoods. They looked like executioners from fables. “Proceed,” Steele said.
One figure from the back row stood. “Can you tell us what those creatures really were?” The voice sounded feminine but obviously altered to hide her identity.
Jake shook his head. “We never found—”
“My question was directed to Captain Steele,” the woman interrupted. There was a long pause, and Jake wondered if this person had just stepped across the line with her captain. Then again, maybe being selected as a juror on this ship gave her some degree of protection from her wrath.
Steele cleared her throat. “We have no direct evidence of any life forms beyond our borders. Period.”
“But the recordings,” the hooded woman replied. “We have his memories. Surely that is—”
“I said we have no direct evidence,” Steele repeated, much more sternly this time. “For all we know, Mr. Stone was hallucinating the entire event.”
Jake noted that she called him “Mister” instead of “Captain.” It was her way of belittling him, he knew. What he didn’t know, and maybe never would, was why she hated him so much. Was it really just that she thought he didn’t deserve to inherit his former captain’s ship? If that was all it was, maybe it would help to tell her that he agreed with her.
Another cloaked figure in the back row stood. “If we can’t distinguish between actual experiences and hallucinations, then how can we proceed?” The juror was male, although his voice was also disguised.
“We can and will proceed because this method is the only way for me to find the truth,” Steele said.
“You mean for us to find the truth, don’t you?” the man corrected.
“But hallucinations are not the truth,” the original woman replied.
“We will proceed on my authority as captain of this vessel,” Steele said, switching to her command voice. Coal could use that voice too, although his former captain seldom had need of it. A moment later, both jurors sat back down without another word. Apparently, their juror status didn’t give them complete anonymity. “Go ahead, Doctor,” Steele said.
Jake closed his eyes and yelled, “I don’t want to do this anymore. I can’t keep doing this.”
“Are you willing to confess to your charges now?”
Jake took one last look at the darkened faces then turned back to her. “If I did what you think I did, abandoned my crew, left them out there to die, then I don’t deserve anything better.”
The doctor looked back at Steele then nodded. “So be it.”
Jake found himself standing unbound inside what looked like a docking port or huge cargo bay.
“You will now pay for your actions,” a familiar woman’s voice said. Jake turned and saw his jurors standing on the other side of the room, their hoods still covering their faces.
“You abandoned them,” a familiar male juror’s voice accused.
“I was trying to help them. Can’t you understand?” Something began to hiss loudly, and then water came gushing out of openings on the walls. They were flooding the bay. “
Wait! You can’t do this! I was trying to help them. I was...”
“You abandoned us,” the female juror said. “You abandoned us all, and you will pay for that.”
“Us?” Jake asked, trying to back away from the water. “What do you mean?” One by one, the jurors threw back their hoods, revealing their faces. It was his crew. Stacy was there too, as well as her father, and both of his parents.
I’ve lost it, he thought to himself. I’ve been without oxygen too long. My brain is corn mush.
Suddenly, the outer door opened, and the ocean came crashing into the bay. It knocked him over and then smashed him against the back wall. He tried to fight against it, but the ice-cold water quickly rose to the ceiling of the bay, removing any chance for escape. At the last second, he grabbed a mouthful of air and then closed his eyes and sank to the bottom. So this is it, he thought to himself.
No, Jake, Stacy’s voice said. This is not it.
Then what is it? he asked.
It is time for you to return to us, she said. Time for you to breathe.
What?
Rubicon 08
“Breathe!” someone yelled. Jake gasped and opened his eyes and saw that it was Jane, not Stacy, staring down at him. “Breathe!” she yelled again.
“Stop yelling!” he tried to say, but the words stung his throat. His lungs burned like fire, and his chest felt as though someone was sitting on him. Then he realized that he was breathing. He was breathing air. He was alive.
“How long?” he tried to ask, his voice dry and crackly.
“How long have you been here?” Jane asked, wiping sweat from his forehead. “You’ve been asleep on this cot since we found you this morning. I came in to check on you and saw that you weren’t breathing.”
Novum Chronicles: A Dystopian Undersea Saga Page 23