“She’s as fine as she was after that thing came out of her, OK?” Miz barked. “She’s, like, no better and no worse. OK? That clear enough for you?”
Loren nodded quickly. “Sure. Yeah. Makes sense.” She shifted awkwardly. “And, uh, what about you? Are you—?”
The door slammed in her face. Loren made a move to walk away, then stopped.
“Nothing happened. With Cal, I mean.”
“Like I even care,” came the reply.
“No, I know. It’s just… We agreed it wasn’t fair. To you, I mean. That wasn’t all of it, but… Nothing’s going to happen.”
There was silence from beyond the door.
“I just thought I should tell you,” Loren said.
Miz’s reply was notable by its absence.
“So, OK. Bye.”
Silence.
Then:
“I know you’re still out there.”
“Uh, yeah,” said Loren, almost sounding surprised. “I’ll just… I’ll go.”
Nothing.
“Yeah. I’ll just go.”
She about-turned, gave the door a look that was part disappointed, part relieved, then headed for the bridge and met Mech along the way.
“You up?” she asked.
Mech groaned and side-eyed the kitchen door. “Yeah. I’m up.”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks. Well done on not getting torn to pieces.”
Loren winced. “Not sure I’m in the clear quite yet, but we’ll see.”
She gave the cyborg an encouraging pat on the shoulder, then continued along the corridor to the bridge.
Mech turned to the kitchen door, spent several seconds muttering and shifting uncomfortably, then he tapped the button to open it.
Cal sat at the table, his arms wrapped around a thin, droopy-looking Splurt who was pressed to his chest. Two pencil-thin arms had sprouted from the green pancake and clung tightly around Cal’s neck.
Both man and blob heaved and shook, as if sobbing big, silent tears.
Mech pressed the button again.
“Nope. Not getting involved in that,” he decided, then he swiftly swung around and hurried back to join Loren on the bridge.
Loren looked round from where she was trying her controls again.
“That was quick. Did you talk to him?”
Mech clanked to his spot up front. “In a way.”
Loren watched him, eyes narrowing. “In an actual, it really happened kind of a way?”
“Not strictly in that way, no,” Mech admitted. He waved a hand. “But he’ll be fine. He’s getting it out of his system. Right now, we need to worry about where the fonk this thing is taking us.”
“I may have some thoughts on that, sir,” Kevin announced.
Loren and Mech both looked up. “Oh?”
“Indeed. While I haven’t been able to pinpoint our exact location, I’ve been able to cross-reference our origin point with an estimate of our heading. When I factor in our current velocity, something quite interesting happens.”
“Oh?” said Mech. “What?”
“My CPU catches fire,” Kevin replied.
Mech’s eyes narrowed. “And how does that help us?”
“Oh, it doesn’t, sir,” Kevin replied. “I mean, it’s a hindrance, if anything.”
Loren did her best not to appear annoyed. Getting annoyed with Kevin rarely achieved anything. Or nothing you wanted it to achieve, at least.
“You said you might know where we were going,” Loren reminded him.
“Oh, yes. Well, once I extinguished my CPU and assembled the corrupted calculation data, I was able to plot our trajectory and calculate approximately where we are,” Kevin continued. “If you’d care to look at the screen, I can show you a map.”
The swirling colors became solid blackness. Loren and Mech waited for the map to appear.
“Well?” snapped Mech, who didn’t have quite the same level of self-control as Loren did. “Hurry the fonk up.”
“That’s it, sir,” said Kevin.
“Say what?”
“The map, sir. That’s it.”
Loren raised the obvious point. “It’s blank.”
“Indeed, ma’am. By my calculations, we are in uncharted space,” Kevin explained. “I’m sure there are things out there—stars, planets, and so on and so forth, but I don’t know where to put them at present, hence the map being black.”
“Then why show the damn thing?” Mech groaned. “Why not just say, ‘We ain’t got a map’?”
“Because we do have a map, sir. You’re looking at it,” said Kevin. “Granted, there’s nothing on it at present, but it’s still technically a map.”
“Doesn’t really help us, though, does it?” said Loren.
“I disagree, ma’am,” said Kevin, a little haughtily. “For example, I’ve been able to project that we are here.”
A red dot appeared in the otherwise featureless blackness.
Loren briefly closed her eyes, then gave a nod of resigned acceptance. “Well, I stand corrected.”
“Get it the fonk off the screen,” Mech barked. “Come back to me when you got some star systems, or planets, or any point of fonking reference whatsoever.”
“As you wish, sir,” said Kevin.
The map—for want of a better word—shrank and moved up to the top right corner of the screen. A cancerous rectangle infecting the otherwise elaborate wash of moving color.
“I said get it off the screen,” said Mech.
“I thought it might be more useful there, sir,” Kevin argued. “Also, it did take me quite a long time…”
“Know what? I’ll memorize it,” said Mech. “There, I memorized it,” he concluded, after an infinitesimal pause. “Now, get rid of it. We don’t need to see it.”
“As you wish, sir.”
The map halved in size.
“All the way, Kevin.”
The map halved in size again and became semi-transparent.
Mech considered pressing the matter, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. “Fonk it, that’ll do,” he grunted.
The swirling colors were replaced by blackness again. Mech’s fists clenched all on their own. “No, Kevin, that wasn’t an invitation to put the map back!”
“I didn’t, sir,” Kevin said. “This wasn’t me.”
The screen wasn’t black, Mech realized. Not all the way. Pinpricks of light dotted the darkness—faint, but growing steadily brighter.
They weren’t the only thing growing brighter. The inside of the Untitled’s bridge was illuminated in broad strokes of vibrant light. Loren turned in her chair and saw a brilliant ball of green pulsating in the air near the center of the bridge.
The Symmorium Sentience had returned.
“Help me,” it said inside their heads, and then it dropped with a clank and lay motionless on the floor.
Twelve
Cal gave the Symmorium Sentience a prod with the toe of his boot, waited a moment, then said, “Hello?” quite quietly.
When no response came, he said it again, only louder.
He, Loren, and Mech stood around it, waiting to see if it was going to do anything.
As the seconds passed, they concluded that no, it probably wasn’t.
Cal put his hands on his hips, made a series of clicking noises with his tongue, then said the word, “Well,” a few times in succession. None of this really helped with the current situation, but it successfully conveyed the impression that he was doing something, and bought him an extra few seconds before anyone might reasonably expect him to do something useful.
Splurt hung over his shoulders like a scarf, eyes pointing to the floor, tiny arms hanging limply against Cal’s chest. If he had any interest whatsoever in what was happening with the Sentience, he was going out of his way not to show it.
“Is it dead?” Loren asked.
“Of course it’s not dead,” Cal scoffed. He raised his eyes to Mech, who stood across from him on the other
side of the dormant green ball. “Is it dead?”
Mech studied the display on his forearm. “I don’t know. I’m still getting energy readings, but I don’t know what they mean.”
“Energy’s good though, right?” said Cal. “That’s a positive sign.”
“Maybe,” Mech said. “But for all we know this thing self-destructs after it dies. It could just be building up to an explosion.”
Cal drew air in through his teeth and looked down at the ball. “Well, that would suck.”
He looked back over his shoulder at the screen. “Kevin, how’s the rest of your map going? Found out where we are yet?”
“Actually, sir, I more or less had it exactly right the first time,” Kevin crowed.
The red dot that signified the location of the Untitled pulsed to draw attention to itself. “This is where I calculated we were,” Kevin said.
The dot shifted half an inch to the left and down. “And this is where we actually are.”
“Hey, that’s not bad,” said Cal. “That’s almost dead-on. Good work, Kevin.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Loren looked up. “What scale is that map?”
There was a pause.
“Sorry, ma’am?”
“The map. What scale is it?” Loren asked. “Without any stars or anything I can’t tell. How far off were you with your guess?”
“It wasn’t a guess,” Kevin protested. “It was a calculation.”
“Sorry. How far off were you with your initial calculation?”
Another pause.
“You mean, how far apart was my estimated location from our actual current location, ma’am?”
“Yeah.”
There was a sound not unlike someone puffing out their cheeks. “A distance, ma’am.”
Mech craned his neck upward. “I think what’s she asking is, how much distance?”
“Was it a long distance?” Loren asked.
“Long is such a subjective word, don’t you think, ma’am?” said Kevin. “Is a mile a long distance? Hmm? Is two-point-eight million light-years a long distance?”
“First one no, second one yes,” said Loren.
“Is it?” asked Kevin. There was that sound again, a slightly-sheepish blowing out of air. “Then yes, ma’am. I was off by a long distance.”
Loren nodded slowly. “Right. So you were—”
“A smidgeon over two-and-a-half million light-years away, yes,” said Kevin, a little snippily. “Although, in the grand scheme of things, that’s barely even a blip.”
Mech regarded the viewscreen. “So, we’re almost three million light-years out into uncharted space?” he grimaced. “Well, ain’t that just fonking great? How are we supposed to get back?”
“Oh, no, sir,” said Kevin. “I merely thought we were headed out into uncharted space, because I assumed the Sentience was taking us in a straight line.”
Everyone looked up at the ceiling. “And I’m guessing it didn’t?” asked Cal.
“No, sir. It seems to have gone around the houses somewhat. We’re barely twelve light-years away from where we started, in fact. If you squint, you can probably still see the Zertex and EDI ships.”
Cal narrowed his eyes and leaned closer to the screen.
“Just my little joke, sir,” said Kevin. “Of course you can’t. That would be madness.”
Cal tutted and turned back to the Sentience. “So, it took us here. Why? What’s here? What’s around us?”
“Not a lot, sir,” Kevin said. “We’re between systems. No stars or planets in the immediate vicinity. It’s all a bit empty, really.”
On screen, something brown and planet-sized rose into view.
“What about that?” asked Mech.
“Oh!” said Kevin, sounding genuinely surprised. “Where did that come from? I swear it wasn’t there a moment ago.”
“It’s OK, Kevin. We all make mistakes,” Cal said.
“No, I mean it, sir,” Kevin insisted. “It couldn’t possibly have been there. I double-checked and everything.”
“Seriously, Kevin, don’t worry about it,” Cal assured him. “Just find out what you can about it.”
“Wait,” said Loren. She stepped past Cal and closer to the screen. “Mech, look at that.”
Mech followed her finger. He stared blankly for a while, then began to shake his head.
Then he stopped.
Then he stared.
“What the fonk is that?” he wondered.
A circle of brilliant orange, approximately the size of the planet’s visible icy pole, hung like a spot in its upper atmosphere. It rotated in time with the planet itself, hanging in geostationary orbit above the equator.
“Some kind of portable sun?” Loren guessed. She looked to Mech to gauge his reaction. “Surely not?”
Mech considered this. “Kevin, you said there are no stars around here, right?”
“None close by, sir, no,” Kevin confirmed. “Nothing this could be orbiting, at any rate.”
“And you’re sure?” asked Cal. “Because you did fail to notice the big desert planet just a minute ago.”
“I didn’t fail to notice it, sir, it wasn’t there,” the AI insisted.
They all regarded the planet for a while. It was barren and rocky, with a scattering of dark-green lakes on each hemisphere, none of them connected together. Those, and the dusting of snow at the pole were the only distinguishing features about the place.
“Well, it’s there now,” Cal said. “Anyone have any suggestions as to what we do?”
“Uh, yeah,” said a voice from the door.
Miz stepped in, holding Tyrra by the arm. The girl’s eyes were dull and lifeless, but she shuffled along under her own steam, albeit leaning on Miz for support.
“She does,” Miz said.
“The Library,” she said, in a dry, rasping voice that suggested a sixty-a-day smoking habit. It didn’t sound like the voice Cal remembered, and he found himself wondering if it was even her own.
Tyrra’s arm rose shakily. Her eyes struggled to focus as she extended a finger toward the planet. “The answers I require may be found in the Library.”
Cal turned back to the screen again and regarded the barren, largely lifeless-looking world below. “Which part is the Library?” he asked.
Tyrra sagged against Mizette, the words emerging from her as a strained, breathless hiss. “All of it.”
“OK, you’re doing great. Now down,” said Cal. “Down. Down. Slowly, not so fast.”
“Will you shut the fonk up?” Loren told him. “I know what I’m doing.”
“No, I know,” said Cal. “I’m just trying to help, that’s all. But you’ve got this. I’m not worried.”
He sat in his chair, knuckles white from where he was gripping the armrests. “I have complete faith. Total confidence.”
A rough, rocky horizon leveled off a few hundred miles ahead of them as the Currently Untitled descended toward the planet’s surface, sand and dust billowing up around it before the heat from the ship’s landing thrusters turned them into tiny shards of glass.
Up front, Mech stood bracing himself against his console. This did not go unnoticed by Loren, but she chose not to comment on it and instead focused intently on the instrument panel before her.
A wind buffeted the ship, forcing Loren to make a series of minute adjustments to their descent. She gently guided the Untitled lower, easing it toward the planet’s surface.
It was easier if you didn’t think about the viewscreen, she’d discovered. Most of her training had been done on a Zertex simulator, and provided she only paid attention to the ship’s readouts and not what was happening outside, it was just like being back at the Academy.
Of course, if you crashed on the simulator the worst thing that happened was some disapproving looks from the instructors and, if you were involved in a team activity, a light beating from the other cadets. Crash an actual ship, though, and the consequences were far—
&n
bsp; There was an almighty clang as the Currently Untitled landed.
It was fair to say that it wasn’t one of the all-time great landings. It wouldn’t be going down in history anytime soon as a textbook example of how to land a spaceship.
And yet, it had technically been a landing. An actual landing, not one prefixed with the word ‘crash’ and suffixed with an outburst of creative swearing.
“There. We’ve landed,” said Loren, trying not to sound too surprised by this. She cautiously removed her hands from her controls but held them close, as if the sticks and levers might do something unexpected at any moment.
They didn’t. The controls, like the ship, remained completely stable.
“Jesus,” said Cal.
He looked around, not quite believing it. “We’re on the ground?”
Mech checked the screen, then looked at his console. “Uh, yeah. We’re on the ground,” he confirmed. “We’re actually on the ground.”
“And we’re in one piece?” Cal asked, before deciding he could answer that one himself. “I mean… We’re in one piece!”
Loren sighed. “You don’t have to sound so surprised about it. I am a pilot. Like, an actual pilot. It’s what I do.”
“It’s not what you usually do,” Cal reminded her. “But I have to hand it to you, Loren, that was a pretty good landing. Great job.”
Loren looked pleased with the compliment, if a little uncomfortable. “Thanks.”
She looked meaningfully toward the guest chairs, where Miz sat with Tyrra. She had her hands wrapped protectively across the girl’s face, shielding her from the impact they had all been bracing themselves for.
Miz held Loren’s eye for just a moment, then scowled and looked away. It wasn’t an insult, though, not technically, so Loren took it as a win.
She was just facing front again when Kevin spoke.
“Should I extend the legs, ma’am?” he asked.
“Huh?” Loren asked, the words not yet filtering through.
“The landing legs, ma’am,” Kevin said.
Loren froze. Her eyes flicked to a button situated in the center of her console. It was quite a large button, and not easily missed.
Space Team- The Collected Adventures 4 Page 42