Shadowplay: Book One of the Starcrown Chronicles

by Jon Gerrard

  Chapter Thirteen

  The sub continued to look for us for more than a day. For the first few hours its crew followed a spiral search pattern as they continued flashing the area. When that didn’t work they tried a new tactic. They stopped flashing and moved around under cover of their stealth field and flashed areas at random as they tried to flush us out. After several more hours they gave up on this as well. Finally in frustration they began sweeping the area with their laser cannon. The beam lanced again and again through the space where our downjump vector would have taken us. Then they beamed the area where they had first detected us before we went silent. Since we had been adrift for many hours by then however, our momentum had carried us far from where we had been. They never even got within ten kilometers of our position. Eventually they gave up on this tactic as well. It was shortly after that when Alex reported the distant energy surge of a ship jumping to light speed.

  When they were gone I had life support and a few other important systems brought back on-line. Under the cover of our stealth system they shouldn’t be able to detect us even with flash pulses unless they were right on top of us. The air had gotten pretty thin and hot by then. In a few more hours oxygen levels would have been critically low. The tension level dropped noticeably when the soft whisper of flowing air returned. We still had to work in the dim glow of the emergency lighting because I kept the main systems shut down while the repair crews went to work on fixing the damage the torpedo had caused. I didn’t trust that the other sub was truly gone. They could downjump out of our limited scanning range and circle back on sublight drive. I wasn’t going to get caught by surprise again.

  The report from the repair crew was encouraging. Aside from the damage to that one cargo bay the ship was sound. A power conduit for the starboard passageway on C deck and the external loading door to cargo bay one were the worst of the damage. A day and a half later the hull had been patched and the cargo hold re-pressurized. The bay door wouldn’t work until we could get to a proper space dock but that wasn’t a big problem. As long as the hull was pressure tight we could get back under way. With the most serious damage repaired the crew began working on the severed power conduit. Ian estimated that they would be finished in a couple of hours. The only thing I had to do now was decide where we were going.

  Once Ian had given me his report I left the cargo bay. He didn’t need me looking over his shoulder while he and his people worked. I stepped out into the dim passageway and started back toward the main stairwell. My footsteps echoed quietly from the walls as I went. By ship’s time it was morning but the passageways were unusually quiet. Although normal duty shifts continued, ever since the last attack few of the crew ventured into the passageways if they didn’t have to. Even Bobby had stopped his usual hover-boarding through the ship. If people were about they tended to speak in low voices, as if fearful that our unseen foe might overhear us.

  In the first several hours following the departure of the enemy sub, the few crew members I had encountered all stopped to thank me for saving the ship. A version of our encounter had spread through the crew which made it seem like I had somehow masterfully outwitted the enemy. No matter how I tried to down play my role however I was greeted with hearty handshakes and claps on the shoulder from the men and kisses and hugs from the women. (Actually, that part I didn’t mind so much.) Alex encouraged me to simply accept the crew’s gratitude. It was in fact my quick actions which had saved the ship, she said. Besides, a crew needed to have faith in the ability of their captain. Let them think of me as their hero, she insisted. It was good for morale.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t feel like much of a hero. I knew I had blundered into that attack and it was only by pure luck that we had escaped. If I had been thinking I would have realized that whoever had planted that bomb aboard our ship would come after us again. I should have expected a follow up attack and had the ship’s stealth system up. Instead I had blithely continued on course for our next port as if nothing were wrong. I didn’t care what Alex said, I knew it was my fault.

  I pulled my mind back to my surroundings as I stepped onto B deck. I had planned to continue up two more levels to the command deck and return to the bridge but something had made me stop here instead. B deck was quiet like the rest of the ship. There was no one about as I turned toward the port side corridor. The deep shadows cast by the emergency lighting strips running along the base of the walls lent the ship a somber, surrealistic feel as I walked. When I looked up a few moments later I found myself in front of the infirmary. A talk with Doc was probably just what I needed. I knew he was an early riser so I wouldn’t be disturbing him. He also had a collection of some of the finest liquors aboard ship.

  I knocked and slid the door open. With main power off doors had to be opened by hand.

  “Doc?”

  Although the overhead lighting was off like the rest of the ship, I noticed that most of the medical equipment was powered up. Then I remembered that once the enemy sub had left I’d had power restored to the infirmary systems so Doc could treat the crew members who had been banged around during the attack. A few people had suffered broken bones which needed to be reknit and he needed power to his equipment to help them. The beds were all empty now however and the room silent.

  Doc stepped out of his office. “Cordass! Come in, Captain. How are the repairs going?”

  “Good. Ian should have everything up and running in a couple of hours.”

  “That’s good news. It’ll be a relief to have the lights back on again.” Doc gave me one of his scrutinizing looks. “When was the last time you got any sleep?”

  “I’ll sleep when the ship is repaired and we’re back under way,” I said, dismissing the matter with a wave. We’d had this conversation before. Doc was always telling me I was pushing myself too hard. I turned and started wandering around the infirmary.

  “Have you learned anything else about the ship that attacked us?” he asked.

  “No, but my gut is telling me we haven’t seen the last of them. I tell you, Doc, there’s something going on here. I can feel it.”

  “You mean other than the fact that someone’s been trying to kill us?”

  “You have a gift for the obvious.”

  Doc chuckled and sat down at the semi-circular console at one end of the room. From there he could monitor the status of each patient in the room. Of course now each of the read-outs was dark. “You told me that Captain Saha is carrying some kind of intelligence information.”

  “I know, but it’s more than that. There’s something else going on, something in the shadows that I can’t quite get a fix on.” I looked back as I heard a soft clinking. Doc had set out a pair of tiny glasses and was pouring a small amount of amber liquid into them.

  “Isn’t it a little early for that?” I asked, even though I had been hoping he would have something to help calm my nerves.

  “Doctor’s orders. I’m prescribing a mild sedative for a young captain with ‘I’ve got too much on my mind to get enough sleep for my own good’ –itis.

  I picked up one of the small aperitif glasses and swirled it slowly. The drink had a faint, nutty aroma. I took a sip and felt the liquid describe a warm path down to my stomach where it settled and radiated heat.

  “This is better than that other stuff you had,” I said.

  “That was brandy. This is a liqueur. It’s sweeter.”

  I took a bigger sip and felt myself beginning to relax.

  “You said you thought there was something else going on,” Doc said.

  “Right. It’s like there’s some ... outside force at work influencing everything that’s been happening.”

  “And you don’t like feeling manipulated, like you’re not in control of the situation.”

  I raised an eyebrow at Doc. He was digging around inside my head. “I thought you said you weren’t going to do that anymore.”

  He
shrugged and took a swallow from his glass. “You brought it up. So, you were saying?”

  “Look, I’m not going to talk to you if you’re just going to keep reading meanings into everything I say.”

  He chuckled again. “Okay. No more psychoanalysis. I promise. Just plain talk.”

  “Good. Besides, you wouldn’t like what you found if you kept poking around the dark recesses of my mind, anyway,” I said, draining my glass. I was feeling very relaxed now.

  I looked around for a place to sit and noticed a new addition to the infirmary. Off to one side was a padded chair which was incorporated into a complex machine. It took me a moment to recognize it as the device I had asked Lucky to find for me, and another moment to realize that it was active.

  “When was this installed?”

  “Ian put it in just before we left Toula. It’s a self contained unit. All he had to do was basically just hook it up to a power supply.”

  I walked over to the device and ran my hand along the edge of the control console. This could be exactly what I needed.

  “Does it work?” I asked.

  “Mark checked it over and said all the diagnostics reported normal but I haven’t had a chance to use it. We haven’t had any brain trauma cases so–”

  “I want you to use it on me,” I said.

  “Cordass, I don’t understand.”

  “I want you to use it on me,” I repeated, holding his eyes. “Look, Doc, this is confidential, doctor patient privilege.”

  “Of course, but can you tell me why you want me to use a neural assayer on you?”

  “I’ve ... um ... been having some memory problems. One of the guards on the prison transport from Haven clubbed me in the head and ever since then there are ... parts of my earlier memories that I can’t recall.”

  “I see,” Doc said, putting on his concerned parent expression. He stood and came over to stand next to me. It still amazed me that anyone could have found this gentle man guilty of assisted murder. “Any other symptoms? Headaches? Vision problems?”

  “No, just difficulty remembering some things from my past.”

  “I see.” Doc folded his arms and looked from me to the assayer and back. His expression shifted to his professional look. “Captain, I’ve never actually used this type of machine before.”

  “Are you saying that you can’t operate it?”

  “I don’t know. There’s a help menu and the operator interface seems simple enough...”

  “But…?”

  “Dammit, Cordass! This is your brain we’re talking about! If I go poking around in there without knowing what I’m doing I could cause some kind of damage!”

  I simply looked at him. Doc was one of the most careful people I knew. I trusted him to stop if anything started to go wrong.

  When I didn’t say anything he knew I was serious. His expression shifted to his angry parent look. “I’m not joking, Cordass! Your brain is nothing to fool around with.”

  I placed a hand on his shoulder. I loved this guy. “I’m serious too. And I trust you with my life. I know you wouldn’t do anything to harm me. But Doc, I need to know what’s behind that wall in my mind. And I need you to help me.”

  Doc looked at me for a long time. “At the first sign of trouble I’m going to terminate the procedure.”

  “Agreed.”

  He set down his glass and held his hands out flat, checking them. They were perfectly steady.

  “Have a seat,” he said.

  I climbed into the padded chair and he lowered a transparent dome over my head.

  When he was satisfied that it was adjusted properly he moved to the operator console and switched on the unit. It hummed slightly and I could feel a faint tingling along my scalp.

  “Just try and relax,” he said.

  I settled my head back and closed my eyes.

  “I’m going to start with a basic neural scan,” he said. “I need to calibrate the unit for your particular neural pattern.”

  The room was quiet for a while as he operated the controls and studied the read-outs. I could feel myself relaxing even more as the warmth of the liqueur spread. I must have been more tired that I realized because soon I felt myself starting to drift off.

  “There doesn’t seem to be any physical damage,” Doc’s voice said a while later from somewhere behind me. “Suppose we take a look at the inter-neuron synapse activity.”

  “Ummm,” I said. I could feel myself floating in that hazy semi-conscious state just before drifting off to sleep...