He went out of the A-Dock door and looked at his arm. He looked at the three minor rents he'd identified, and plotted the fasted, safest course to each of them, then started for the first one. That was the one outside of Jessi and Marek's new space. "Should have done that before leaving," he sighed. "Oh well, nothing like an adventure," he said.
He patched the first hole efficiently, then radioed back to Marek. "The first repair is done. You can both use your room now,"
"Thanks man!" came the ecstatic reply.
"Heading to the next fault," he radioed.
Marek radioed back. "Roger,"
Eli released the maglocks on his boots, and dialled them down to 40%, allowing him to walk and even make small bounces along the ship's hull, his tether reaching out behind him. Out in the void, the stars were like liquid, moving around him, dancing in his dreams and eyes, and moving through and around him, suffusing him with joy. It was an indescribable feeling, but one only he and Holloway had ever experienced. Jessi got gravsick, and there wasn't a suit around that could fit the genetic differences in Marek - four legs, three arms. His alien form hadn't been all that off-putting to Jessi, and all Eli saw was a friend. But...first shift were the only ones allowed to leave the ship to commit repairs, and there were only - really - four of them that the captain considered trustworthy enough.
He rounded the expansive curve of the ship's cargo bay and found the second breach - it was more serious and close to one of the grav locks for opening the auxiliary bay door. He noted that, sealed the breach and moved on. More bouncing, and around to B Bay. A patch on the wiring that he'd set up, to supply the med bay, and then...
Curious. The third 'breach' wasn't a breach at all, it was the med bay quarantine lock. And something was oozing outside of it. Or, not oozing, it was a solid shape. A straight leaf, which split in the middle to create a tail-shaped end. A luminescent blade, it seemed. Cautiously, Eli moved towards it. As soon as it noticed him though, it looped around, and the leaf reared up, a cobra ready to strike. It punched into space next to the Quar-bay, and with a silent rending, and an outrush of gas, the ship seemed to lurch and twist, almost throwing him free of his hold. He upgraded his mag boots, and said 'Ooops", as the internal alert warning flashed up into his heads-up display.
The Mystery of the Watermaid
The medbay looked benign and undamaged. Nothing overt then. Good. I don't like prissy people that carry on with 'I told you so's' he thought to himself. Straightening his uniform and wincing as the fabric rolled across it at the base of his neck, he rapped twice, efficiently to announce his arrival.
Dr Zedec looked up from a higher-tech tablet than the one Holloway was using and raised an eyebrow. "Is there anything I can help with Captain?"
"I just thought I'd check in," Holloway said. Zedec looked at him impassively. An awkward silence hung in the air, which he broke by saying, "May I enter?"
Zedec seemed to shake himself, and said 'yes, of course. Please excuse the clutter!" There was a forced, manic joviality in that statement, one that Holloway wasn't sure how to take. He looked around, at the few piles of paper, the desultory cloth sitting in the area where he'd been arranging supplies. Nothing dirty, nothing cluttered. Holloway gave a weak smile.
"Dr, you're fine. You should see Marek's space - there are tools and items everywhere!" he said. Zedec smiled thinly.
"Is this a consult for your health? Or a social call?"
"A bit of both," Holloway said, one hand rising to the patch of now infected skin at the back of his neck. "We usually all sit down on first shift for one meal, but we haven't seen you there, a few of us have been worried and concerned for your comfort," he said, and added, "…and I've got an infected scrape on the back of my neck, it's uncomfortable."
"Oh, I've not been at the meals because I've spent the last few days trying to get the bay set up. I often forget to eat until later, but the recycs are good. All bar one," he said.
Mystery solved.
"Yeah, about that, I'm sure that Jessi would have mentioned during induction that we have one recycler that doesn't work?" Zedec paused and in an exaggerated, clown widening look, he slapped his forehead, eyes wide.
"I forgot, I apologise," he said quietly.
"Not a problem," Holloway said. Vague disquiet seated further into his gut, and he decided that he needed to do a full inspection. Zedec gestured to the Medbay couch. "Please, sit, I'll look at the irritation on your neck.""No, it's ok. For now, I'd just like to complete inspections," Holloway pulled his tablet off his bed and turned it to show that he was running through checklists. "We wanted to make sure the Quar-bay was fully powered, and we've covered everything that needs to be done, and, I wanted to give you the protocol for ordering, re-ordering or requesting stuff. Our internal system doesn't work." Zedec frowned but inclined his head to his own tablet.
"Jessi explained in orientation. Claimed you were missing some items when we landed at Kepler and couldn't replace them," he said. There was a note of disproval in Zedec’s voice now, and Holloway smoothed down a flash of anger.
"No...we're missing a coupling or two, and we're making do till we make it to Themisa, where there's usually a good stock." Zedec nodded and rose to his feet. "Shall I take you around my layout?"
"No, the tablets should be tracking just fine," Holloway spread a flurry of fingers over his own tablet, and eleven green boxes popped up. "Shipshape, all storage looks optimal. I'm not so interested in micromanaging my crew. As long as everything is stored adequately, and easy to access, that's good enough for me." Zedec’s stance eased a little bit but made no move to pass through to the Quar-bay. Holloway tipped his head towards the door behind the Med-bay, and Zedec turned and jumped as if he'd forgotten it was there.
"I do need to check the Quar-bay. We've had a leak report, and the external sensors on this side of this ship are...temperamental," Zedec moved into space between him and the door.
"Captain, I must object. I don't want to upset the delicate balance of the flora. It was already very unsettled getting it into your Quar-bay, even using the direct load dock,"
Holloway cocked his head. "Does it really have such a weak containment field that it doesn't allow for the minuscule pressure changes..."
"The quar-bay is currently entirely depressurised. I did mention it to...Asala...your third shift pilot?... and she gave me clearance and would inform you. She overrode the alarms for me,"
Holloway froze. "I'm sorry, we don't HAVE a third shift commander. We run two shifts of 12 hours, with half over change over each side."
Zedec stopped and then looked over to his panel. "I have the information here, Captain. I asked an was assured that you had cleared it," The information pinged up on his panel and he frowned.
"This is not the Markus Helix," he said, looking at the information scrolling past. He knew that multi-jump transits *could* sometimes cause confusion, but this was different to anything he'd ever seen. "Dr Zedec, you travelled in on the Markus Helix, didn't you?" Zedec nodded slowly. "Asala Hedera is third shift XO on the Helix. You've had no such permission, nor could override the alarms, so if you believe your experiment is in a vacuum, it's only sensing that from its containment." Zedec shook his head.
"I disabled the alarm. I thought I'd had permission," he said. He was gazing directly at him, though. There was no evasion or embarrassment, no realisation of doing anything wrong.
"How did you vent it?" he said quietly.
"I left the bay door open, just a crack,"
"Doctor. That...."
There was a lurch and a loud alarm, and the ship tilted to one side. In Holloway's ear, he heard Eli say "oops," through the static.
Zedec snarled, "What was that?"
"Nothing. Eli's on it."
"Captain," Eli's voice said, and Holloway sighed.
"Patching through...I'm in the Medbay,"
"Sorry, no, don't do that. The Watermaid...it seems to be outside..."
He shot a startled look at Ze
dec. "Sorry, repeat please?"
"It's OUTSIDE. It just stabbed into the side of the ship. It caused one of the rooms to completely decompress,"
"Hang on. You’re telling me that..."
Zedec sighed. "The Watermaid that I've developed will reach into the void. I'm assuming Eli is telling you that right now?"
"And that it stabbed my ship," Holloway said mildly, slightly shocked.
Zedec blinked. "That's not possible. It's not...It can't be sentient,"
"I think Eli might beg to differ. Eli, can you get back in, and we'll seal...is it the quarters next door to medbay?"
"It is. On the weaker wall side,"
"You," he said, pointing at Zedec, "You and I will talk. I'm pretty sure no matter what my warrant of trade covers, it's not this. But I need to reinforce the forcefield around this room, and you need to tell me everything,".
A Fugitive's Cost
"We've got two more days before we get to Calliba," Holloway said, as everyone gathered in the mess hall. “We'll get the hole patched, with a field or with parts, and then continue. But Zedec has some explaining to do, and I've told him that warrant be dammed, he will explain. If he doesn't, I'll have him charged with ship tampering,” Zedec sat, impassively looking at the table.
Jessi thumped the table in front of her, her cup vibrating. "He should be in cuffs, and in the brig!" she yelled. Livid purple bruises striped her face. In checking in with everyone once Holloway had secured his ship, he'd discovered she'd been briefly knocked unconscious, bouncing her face off a ladder. Marek hadn't fared much better and had his arm in a cast. He'd watched Zedec angrily. Eli and Holloway were both ok, and most of the second shift had slept through it, given their rooms were locked down for sleep anyway. Holloway had decided, to keep this simple, he'd only discuss it for now, with the crew members awake for the incident.
"Might do later, depends on what he has to say," Marek said. "As the chief security officer, I can authorise that. And I'm medically trained," he said, casually. Zedec shot him a dirty look, and Marek bared his teeth, his golden eyes turning as silver as the sharded teeth that suddenly appeared.
"Do you want the short or long story?" Zedec said, finally. He looked seething, and as if he'd been caught - a child with his hand jammed in the cookie jar.
"Let's go with one then the other," Holloway said. He placed a cup of liquid in front of him, it steamed and smelled of Aurelian tea.
"Civility at least," Zedec said and sighed. "We think that the Essedi Mataura has to spend some time developing while travelling back to its home galaxy."
"That's it?"
"That's it," Zedec said. "And it seems as if we're right."
"We?"
"The Matara Brotherhood. We control the ship," he said calmly.
"No, you don't."
"You know nothing," Zedec sneered.
"Pretend we know nothing," Holloway affirmed.
Zedec snorted. "You do. Matara, the silence at the centre of the universe. We are the stuff of myth. And if we can create one - just one - myth, we'll have created the thing that was prophesied-"
Jessi interrupted, "You're doing this because some dumb book said so from when? Old Earth?"
He shrugged. "The documents that we base our creed on are ageless. As are the co-ordinates where we found the seeds. That document is even older in fact."
"Let me guess," Marek said.
"Calliba." All of them said it together. Zedec smiled thinly.
"New Earth's ocean is far too polluted to deal with mermaids, which is what we think these create. Calliba might. We collect them, take them back, and restore Earth. Anything hospitable for myths that humans of old encountered is also hospitable for humankind."
Holloway stroked his face, then finally looked over to the window behind them, out into the void. "Zedec, you're confined to quarters. I'm locking the medbay and will put the quar-bay into lockdown and full quarantine. You won't get to open it. " He pressed a few buttons, and Zedec winced. "and that's you locked off of anything bar basic access."
He glanced at Marek. "Unit lockdown means no handcuffs, but no need to let him leave his quarters unescorted. He joins first shift for all meals, you bring him." Marek nodded, and roughly hauled Zedec to his feet, shoving him towards the door.
Once he'd left, Eli banged his head softly on the table. "Boss, do you not sometimes wonder if it'd be worth revoking some of our warrants, or...you know...better background checks?"
Holloway barked a laugh. "Find out what you can about Calliba before we get there. I'm curious if he's delusional or it's just a secret that we've never stumbled across,".
Jessi sighed. "The difficult thing about this is it's misplaced..." she looked up, and stopped. "never mind. Humans make ideas with patterns and things that it things are patterns, and work on those. For all we know that's what happened." she said. "But we're going there anyway, and if he's lying, we can leave him there."
"Sorry?" Eli said.
"Dump him. Water planet. We could claim it happened in the breach,"
Holloway sighed.
"Marek," he said into his comms. "Don't leave Zedec alone with your wife."
A Shortcut
There was only one component of his ship that worried him. A bodged, battered, jury-rigged affair that came with his pilot, A bodged thing that he'd designed in fact, before he'd quit his space at a prestigious design unit - owned by his family - and came out into the void. And, as if summoned, the hatch directly above him opened and a small face, framed by shaggy black and grey hair, peeped through. He looked around, quietly observing whether anyone was available, then, spotting Holloway, seemed to lift slightly, then, with a loud click, he reached out to the bars about four feet from the door, faced away from the captain, and slid out, dropping down the tube, then hanging, easily from the monkey bars above. The table below him had always been designated as a landing space, but he still looked down, planning his landing fastidiously, before dropping in the almost half-g gravity, landing softly, and overbalancing slightly. Holloway leaned up, grabbed his webbing and placed his fist at his back, stopping him from falling backwards, or tipping forwards. Graceful, it wasn't, but it was almost as common as breathing for them now, so he was used to it. The pilot's deck directly above the galley was the only straight down drop, and Eli was the only one that did it. Atana, his second pilot, would use the corridors, and take four minutes or more to make the same move that Eli did in 20-40 seconds.
"Mon Capitaine," he said, his soft accent giving away his excitement. "We've been sent a new course change. Well...a new course change presented itself to the probes, and they've signalled back."
"What?" Holloway said, cup halfway to his mouth. Eli grinned.
"What if I told you, I could cut three to five weeks off our transit time?" Holloway placed his cup on the table and when Eli didn't continue, made a rolling gesture with his wrist. Eli's blue eyes sparkled, and he pulled a marble from his pocket.
Gesturing over it, the ball expanded, showing the volume of space around them. At first, the whole volume filled the area above the table, then it cut to the top a segment, rotating to align to show where they were. Then, a small volume highlighted, and he clicked his fingers, and it expanded, and their ship, tiny, against the stars. A line in blue slid around the side of an asteroid field, the main feature in the region a vast asteroid field, with a moon and planet on one edge. That was Calliba, a waypoint they were headed for. Quick stop, water, air, then around the field. But now, there was a dotted line, from the moon through the field. Eli was fidgeting, bouncing on his toes, thankfully, the projector stayed still. "Calculations, alignment. Praise the Old ones, the Stars have aligned,"
"Eli, it's far too late in the day to be talking in even mild riddles. Wanna tell me what's so exciting, what we need to decide, and risks, and we'll go from there?"
Eli sobered, and his smile slipped. Holloway felt bad - Eli was like a puppy, but Holloway was tired and annoyed. They'd fallen behind schedule l
oading the stuff, given the order was altered at the last minute to include the quarantine items, so, a course change would be - could be - interesting - but not through the Reefs of Calliba. And that was what he slowly realised he was looking at. A rare full transit through Calliba's asteroid field, the reefs.
"Captain, the Reefs are aligning to give us an almost perfect path," he said solemnly. "We need to be...brisk...loading from Calliba. I'd send the Scapula, personally, but I'm not sure Denneer has cleared the last fault, so...obviously, that factors in."
The Scapula, their skiff and atmorunner was a battered little box of little more than the bare minimum of components that let it work just fine travelling in the space between the edge of atmosphere - where Eli tried to ensure they parked close enough to support that - and down to the planet. It wasn't the main shuttle for transferring supplies, but it did the job of basic runs and collections from worlds where it didn't need to land. But Denneer had reported that the last inter-atmo trip had damaged one thruster, and when Holloway looked, there was a scorch mark along one side of the craft. Looking at logs, it had been hit by a static charge, and that had blown the engines on that side. Not an easy repair job until they got back to the 'Inner reaches', an area that was as populous as you could wish, but things could be bodged till then. But, as it was a ship that goes to atmosphere and back, bodging made everyone nervous.
"So...we need to get the Scap up to scratch. But it's still remote pilotable with a drone lead, isn't it?" Eli nodded. Holloway sipped his coffee thoughtfully, the spout of the cup resting against his lips. "So. Scap goes down, with a drone, and if we lose it, we can retrieve it later?"
"Water planet cap, no," Eli said, respectfully.
"Ah...crap. Ok, so it's a 'do it and risk throwing away?' Again, Eli nodded. Another thoughtful sip.
Eli then said, almost as if musing it over in his head, "We...could...send Scap to the limit of its safe margin, which is mid-atmo according to Denneer, " he paused. Holloway let him ruminate, before Eli finished, "the drones *could* be reconfigured to gather supplies. It would be slower, but not as slow as losing Scap entirely," Holloway tapped his fingers in a roll a couple of times, a staccato rhythm that let him mull over everything that was scrolling past.
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