Endeavor
Page 2
“Really, Vastian?” she chuckled, “That’s where the food ultimately comes from?”
“Okay, yeah maybe I never thought much about the details. So, let me get this straight… you’re suggesting there are hidden food-processing facilities on this ship?” I asked.
“Listen…” she said, switching the power off on her needle, “This is sounding a lot like the conversation I had with your predecessor. After that day, no one ever saw him again. I don’t think I want a repeat of that. I’m pretty fond of you. Forget it.”
“No, come on! You’ve got me intrigued now. And hey, I think you’re quite alright as well,” I said, truly wondering if she’d actually date a much younger guy, “You said something about voids earlier.”
“No,” she said, starting up the needle again, “I can’t sit here wondering about my own involvement once the news comes out that we’ve lost another person.”
She started coloring in my tattoo while I watched her. She was certainly cute in an almost demonic sort of way. And the concept that she’d been interested in dating me made me see her now in a different light. I wondered just then how high those leg tattoos went. She’d always worn shorts to show off that her legs were completely covered in tattoos, almost like a sleeve. Now she had me thinking about things I shouldn’t have been thinking about.
“So anyway, what’s your shift typically?” she asked me.
I banished those sinful thoughts from my mind, then cleared my throat, “Nine to nine Wednesday through Saturday.”
FOUR
Life on the bridge was a pretty dull and antisocial affair for the most part. There were always three people on the bridge at any given time and since there wasn’t a whole lot required of us, we usually spent our time watching VidClips or VidFilms on our portable electronic pads. I usually played ‘Star Warrior’ or ‘Path of the Ninja’ on my pad whenever I wasn’t using it to read eBooks or to peruse the extensive eLibrary.
Don’t get me wrong, however. I definitely had a job to do at the Navigation Terminal, but it didn’t take me twelve hours to do it. For the most part, I did my hourly checks to ensure we were still on course and I performed my local scans every six hours and compared the results with the current map. In a twelve hour workday, I probably did about two hours-worth of actual work. That left a lot of time for Sheng Lau the Ninja to search the world for the Mystical Sword of Kanal.
I was about a half hour into my battle when I glanced over at the Helmsman. Today it was Quinn, the guy with the broken foot who was supposed to fight me earlier.
“Hey, Quinn,” I said, “Have you heard anything about something called ‘voids’ inside this ship?”
He nodded, never taking his eyes off of whatever game he’d been intensely playing on his pad. It was the Officer of the Deck who responded however.
“It’s the two unknown rooms both forward and aft that won’t be accessed until we get to our destination. Surely you learned about it in school,” McDermott stated.
McDermott was an older portly man who didn’t really take proper care of himself. His gray hair was always a mess, he rarely shaved, and he probably weighed over two-fifty. He was one of the four Bridge Officers who acted as Captain during his particular shifts on the bridge.
I guess I should explain the way our ship was commanded or governed. This ship was designed to be managed by a quartet of Captains rather than a single one. When one of the Captains either died or became unable to perform his or her job anymore, a new Captain was voted for by all members of the crew twelve years and older. A Captain merely had to be someone seventeen or older since that was the age of consent or adulthood.
“I’d have remembered if anyone mentioned that before. I mean, doesn’t anyone wonder what’s in those mysterious rooms?” I asked, “And are they locked or are we just being polite and not accessing them?”
“Securely locked by the ship’s automated systems,” Quinn said.
“Yeah, no one knows what’s behind those doors. My belief is that it simply gives us access to the lowest levels of the ship where I imagine all the building supplies are,” McDermott offered, “After all, where are all the chainsaws, dump trucks, and bulldozers?”
“Hmm… I hadn’t thought of that,” I pondered, “So how do we land a ship this huge onto a planet’s surface?”
“It’s all automated once we bring the ship into orbit. All I know is that it’s designed to land in water,” McDermott offered.
There was a moment of silence while I imagined this ship somehow having the amount of thrust necessary to give us a soft landing. Quinn blurted an expletive as he apparently must have died in his current game.
“I don’t remember ever seeing either of these two voids. What do the doors look like?” I asked.
“Those doors are useless and have been for almost eighty years so they’ve since been either blocked off or covered completely by supplies. Originally, these two void-rooms were attached to small meeting rooms at the front and the back of the ship,” McDermott explained while Quinn turned in his chair toward us, “Each room had a long table surrounded by chairs. Maybe we were supposed to meet in these rooms when those two doors opened, then we were to go through the doors.”
“Those are the two long brown tables in the restaurant now, aren’t they?” Quinn asked, “Because they don’t match the white ones.”
“Yeah, as our population grew, we needed those tables and chairs elsewhere, causing those rooms to have no real purpose. As such, they became a catch-all for junk, supplies, broken bed frames, ripped chairs, you-name-it.”
“I know the exact room you’re talking about!” I laughed, “Dad had me go in there once to look for some wheels we could salvage from an old office chair. It’s like two or three rooms down the hall from here, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, that’s the forward void. The aft one is near the freezers,” McDermott said.
When he mentioned the freezers, that got me to thinking about what Ariel said about the food mystery. I was just about to ask where our food came from when I noticed Quinn looking at me curiously.
“You got the Razor Cord?”
“Yep, and that’s where I got this split lip as well,” I said, pointing to the tender bottom lip that still felt a little swollen.
“Who’d you fight?” he asked, “Thomas wouldn’t have done it because he’s been clearly getting out of shape. And I know Nena wouldn’t since she just had a baby last week.”
“Sensei!” I grinned.
“No you didn’t! You couldn’t have even landed a single blow,” he chuckled, “Seriously though, who did you fight?”
“Seriously, I fought Sensei and I even scored two points before she DQ’d herself,” I said, “I got her riled up when I scored my second point so she retaliated with an upper-level move.”
Quinn started laughing when he saw that I was serious, “Was it a kill move?”
“Yeah, but don’t say anything to her. I feel bad that I had made her that angry. And it had to have been humbling to get bested by someone far beneath her skill level,” I said.
“No, sorry but I have to say something!” he kept laughing.
I shook my head as I looked at him. It irritated me that he found the whole situation so funny.
“Please, seriously don’t say anything. She was actually crying when she realized what she’d almost done,” I said.
His eyes were wide for a moment, then he seemed to ponder it, “Wow, you mean that she was about to truly kill you? Yikes. Yeah, something like that should just be quietly buried.”
“Thank you.”
FIVE
After our conversation, I’d set my pad down and then I immediately set out to find those doors in our main computer system. I had access to the computer mainframe via my Navigation Terminal and I still had all the skills I’d learned in IT training to get me past the firewalls that protected all the background programs.
That’s not to say that we didn’t have a secure computer system on this
ship. We honestly did and no one could ever break in and take over the ship in anyway. It was entirely impossible. But the thing was, I had been nosey and inquisitive back in school and I happened to snatch up one of the command log-ins when I’d seen it carelessly noted on a sheet of paper on a prior Captain’s desk. I’d penned that twenty-digit alphanumeric code onto the palm of my hand and memorized his fairly simple password. Over the years, I’d since memorized both the entire log-in and the password.
Because of this, I was able to get to some of the more secure systems, but certainly not all. It made it easier for me to at least access the firewall that I’d just now circumvented. This allowed me to see systems that no one else on this ship was probably able to see. Thankfully, McDermott’s and Quinn’s workstations were situated in such a way that no one could see what I was doing as I scrolled through a slew of data.
Most of what I scrolled through meant absolutely nothing to me. But one odd thing kept alerting me to something that made no sense at all. Typically, I shouldn’t see numbers as high as I was seeing in certain areas, particularly in reference to the mass and the overall magnitude of our ship. Everything looked to be about a hundred times larger than it should have been.
Even population references weren’t looking right. I found a way to convert the data into a visual diagram and just when I hit enter, the system booted me back to my main Navigation home screen. I leaned back and stared at it for a moment, then wondered if there was an emergency that warranted such a sudden switch.
I performed every scan I had access to and discovered that everything was entirely normal. There were no potential emergencies or anything at all that would have explained my sudden expulsion from those background programs. I took that moment to get back in there just to see if it would happen again. Besides, now I definitely wanted some answers.
Once I’d logged in and managed to get past the firewall again, I decided to go straight for the doors to the void as I’d initially intended to do in the first place. It wasn’t hard for me to pinpoint the forward void which was almost directly behind the bridge. I immediately located a program that literally asked me if I wanted to shut down the alarm before disengaging the door lock. I simply chose “yes” then hit enter.
I was a little concerned just then over the simplicity of such a task. Granted, I was currently inside areas of the computer where no one could even get to, but still. Suddenly another simple notification appeared. It read: “Door will remain open for a half hour, then it will be sealed permanently until the appropriate time.”
I gaped in awe as I stared at my screen. It then began counting down from thirty. I quickly escaped out of all those programs so as not to leave a trail of my criminal activities, then I deleted my cache. By the time I was done, I probably only had about twenty-eight minutes remaining. I launched from my seat a little too quickly, then turned to McDermott and explained that I needed to go to the bathroom.
Out in the corridor, I quickly located the “junk room” and shut myself inside after switching on the light. McDermott’s description of the contents had been quite accurate. There was little room to safely move about between all the broken pieces of furniture or boxes of unknown content.
I stepped cautiously over a torn sofa, then tossed a few wooden boards out of my way as I navigated toward the open door against the far wall. I had to climb over two broken chairs before I made my way to all the boxes that lined the wall and had been blocking most of the open doorway. I began quickly tossing the boxes to the side, landing them into a heap. It took me only a few minutes until I was able to see into the dimly lit room beyond the doorway.
That was the moment I recalled that every single minute counted. I should have been counting so I’d know how much time I had before I needed to return. I’d guess that I only had twenty minutes left just to be safe. In truth, I probably had as much as twenty-two or twenty-three minutes.
I entered the room only to find a dimly lit stairwell and it curiously only headed upward. It made no sense to me that the stairs would head upward instead of downward. Nevertheless, curiosity beckoned for me to head up. After about ten stairs, I came to a landing that circled around to another stairwell of about ten more stairs. I navigated those stairs quickly and found myself at another landing that spiraled around and brought me to a third set of stairs.
I breathed deep, recalling that I needed to head back down at some point before the door sealed me into this stairwell. I made my way up that third set which again brought me to a spiral landing that offered me a fourth set of stairs. I took these two-at-a-time as I now ran up toward my mystery destination.
It was the fifth set of stairs that finally brought be to what appeared to be nothing more than a gray plastic door. It sounded to me like there was someone taking a shower beyond that door. I reached into the chrome finger-slot and cautiously slid the door to the side, causing the sound of water to become more prominent. I was then immediately startled by the presence of a clear wall of flowing water. Beyond that sheet of falling water, I could see what appeared to be a sunny world with blue skies and trees as far as the eye could see.
I surprised myself by boldly stepping out onto the rocky ledge, then I quickly turned around to see that the sliding door was still open. It was clearly evident that it had been molded to look like the same sort of stone that made up this mountainside. That was when a shrill female scream stole my attention away from the rock face.
I turned around quickly and realized that if I pressed my body to the rocky wall, I could slide to the left on that little ledge while staying somewhat dry. I needed to get away from this four foot-wide waterfall that obviously served to hide the door. I sidestepped three times, discovering then that I was probably about ten feet up above a beautiful natural pool of water that was surrounded by an equally beautiful forest. Then I heard the terrified scream again coming from almost directly beneath me. That’s where I witnessed a strange man quite forcefully trying to shove a flailing woman under the water. I leapt from the cliff in that moment.
SIX
It wasn’t a pleasant landing being that the cold water was probably only about four feet deep. A violent splash announced my presence while my feet landed hard into the muck that served as the base of the pool. The man had been startled enough to release his captive as he then twisted suddenly toward me with a look of confusion. The intense man with the goatee couldn’t have been more than a few years older than me.
“Who’re you?” he blurted as he drew a long black blade from the back of his shorts.
“H-he was going to k-kill me!” the woman gasped and coughed.
She was still dangerously close to this sturdy shirtless man who now wielded a knife in a threatening manner. Thankfully, he was pointing it at me instead of at her. I was growing concerned over her choice to merely shimmy a few steps away from him.
“My name is Vastian and I didn’t appreciate the way you were treating this lady! Who does that?” I demanded as I closed the gap between us.
“He’s the g-guy that’s been tying up and drowning women!” she choked out, sounding like she’d taken some water into her lungs.
My enemy swung that wicked knife at me which I easily dodged. He stepped toward me, stabbing that blade toward my chest with the clear intent of killing me. I dodged each jab and could tell he was getting angrier with each miss. He lunged at me and slashed toward my throat this time. That violent swing gave me the opportunity to retaliate. I quickly snapped his arm at the elbow, then I delivered a firm punch to the kidney followed by two quick blows to his face, knocking him out far too easily. I grabbed hold of his wrist to keep him from drowning and then dragged the heavy man to the edge of the pond. Then I turned to see his victim stumble in the water. I was still a little startled by the fact that she hadn’t run for her safety already.
I rushed back into the water while she turned to me and immediately put her arms around my neck.
“I can’t walk,” she continued to sob.
“I… I want to go home,” she cried, hugging my shirt to her chest, “I need my mom.”
We both were startled by a rustling sound coming from the woods behind her. She started to whine and cower toward me while I stood up ready for a fight. That was the moment that two men in black shirts and camouflage pants appeared. They both wielded rifles that were suddenly aimed in my direction.
“Step away from her, you pile of-”
“He rescued me!” she cried out, then pointed toward the prone man who was starting to regain consciousness, “Shoot the man over there! He hid me inside a dirty shed for a week and then he just tried to drown me!”
I relaxed my fighting stance when the two men lowered their weapons and began approaching the man at the edge of the pool. I tucked my white undershirt in while my eyes then moved past these men toward the rocky cliff with the twenty-foot waterfall. About halfway up, I noticed a little ledge that I surely couldn’t reach anymore. Right about the same level of that ledge was a rectangular darkness that was barely visible behind that portion of the waterfall. While I gazed upon that shadowy window of hope behind the waterfall, it suddenly started to shrink, disappearing from the left side to the right and ending with a very audible metallic clack. One of the armed men heard that sound and glanced up at the ledge, probably expecting to see a sniper up there who had just cocked his weapon.
Instead, there was merely a hidden door that no one could see anymore. And the sound he heard was the sound of me losing everything I’d ever loved and cared about. It was the sound of my life ending. I felt my knees buckle beneath me as I fell to the ground and started to cry.