Now she supposed she actually did have to clean the kitchen.
Jade's voice on the corteX froze her in her tracks. “Hey, guys. I'm getting some weird readings down here in the Engine Room. It's probably nothing, but I could use a hand to take some measurements while I run some tests. Any volunteers?”
As in her dream, Olofi piped up to volunteer, trying to escape his bathroom duties, and Shango shot him down.
Bentley was already rushing towards the Engine Room. “I'm on my way, Jade.”
It was clear now that something beyond the natural was going on here. Sure, it could still be coincidence, the fact that Shango called for the ship to be cleaned and Jade needed a hand with the engines were themselves not particularly unusual events. But she didn't believe in that much coincidence. Which meant that if she did nothing the Chesed could face the same fate as in her dream. She hoped that, with warning, Jade could figure out what the problem was so they wouldn't be destroyed in the storm.
She was so intent on reaching the Engine Room she completely forgot about the wet floor and again slipped. This time she had been walking faster and the slip was much more forceful, causing her to hit her head on the slippery floor.
The world blinked out for a moment, and when it came back into focus she found Jelly Bean standing over her. “Bentley, are you injured? Do you require assistance?”
Bentley groaned in response and rolled over onto her side. Her head was pounding like someone was beating on the side of it with a hammer. Jelly Bean reached down to help her back to her feet, which she was able to do after a couple of false starts. “Damnit Jelly Bean, wet floor signs! How hard is that?”
The face in Jelly Bean's monitor displayed sadness. “My apologies, Bentley. I will be sure to put them down when I mop from now on. Should I take you to have your head examined? Your fall looked quite serious.”
She blinked a few times to clear the stars from her vision. “There isn't any time. Got to save the ship. Need to get to the Engine Room.”
Jelly Bean's face displayed curiosity. “I'm sorry, Bentley, is there some danger I am not aware of? Should I inform Shango?”
Bentley was still too dizzy to think quite clearly. “Yes! I mean, maybe. I don't know. There might be. That's what I need to go find out.”
“You sound disoriented. You should lie down for a while. Allow me to escort you back to your room.”
She shook the robotic assistance off. “No, really, I'm fine. It's probably nothing.” That's what she said, but she still hesitated. “Tell Shango to watch out for storms. That might not make any sense, but just watch out anyway.”
Jelly Bean's face displayed confusion. “Very well, I shall warn him about that, as well as about the bump to your head.”
Bentley groaned but knew she wasn't going to get anywhere so she gave up. Fortunately, by the time she descended the ladder to the Engine Room most of the worst throbbing in her head had subsided.
As in her dream, Jade barely glanced up at Bentley as she arrived. “Thanks for coming. These readings are really – well, weird doesn't begin to describe them. They keep changing, one second showing normal, the next displaying something completely out of whack. Like, fish swimming through air weird. I think there must be something wrong with the sensor system itself, a bug that's causing it to give inaccurate readings, but I'm having a tough time tracking it down.”
“And you want me to give you readouts as you perform tests on the engines.” This wasn't going to work. Nothing they had done in the dream had gotten them to bottom of just what was wrong with the engines. Jade must have been on the wrong track.
Jade was giving her a look of surprise. “You're one step ahead, I see. Nice to know I'm not the only one here who knows what we're doing. I'll just let Shango know…"
“I think you're wrong.” Bentley didn't know enough about engines to give any competing theory, but she needed Jade not to waste her time on the wrong track. “About the bug. I don't think it’s just a sensor problem. I think there is a real problem with the engines we need to figure out.”
Jade finally looked away from her work enough to study Bentley. “What makes you say that? Also, what happened to you? You look like a mess.”
Bentley became aware that her entire backside was wet from her time on Jelly Bean's wet floor. She probably was not looking her most convincing. “I slipped. But that's not important…”
“Did you hit your head?”
“No. Well, yes. But this isn't the head injury talking. I can't explain why I know the problem is with the engines.” Not without trying to convince you about prophetic dreams, anyway. “Let's just call it a gut feeling. But you have to trust me. This could be catastrophic.”
Jade arched an eyebrow at her and seemed to be contemplating whether a prank was being played on her. “Well, whatever. The tests are relatively the same, and I'll still need your help getting readings. I'll just keep an open mind that there might be a real problem instead of just a sensor bug.”
Bentley let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you. That's all I'm asking.” It was something. Jade might not look it, but she was the most brilliant engineer Bentley could ever remember meeting. If anyone could figure this out, it was her.
She threw herself into the work, being very careful when giving Jade her readings, looking closely for the small differences between the lowercase 'l' and the number '1', timing on her corteX down to the millisecond how long the readings took to go from normal to strange. They were working as an efficient team, clearing twice as many readings as Bentley remembered doing in the dream.
The result was, unfortunately, the same. Jade couldn't make heads or tails of the strange readouts and grew more frazzled about this inability as their work progressed. Bentley wished she could offer her some hint, a clue that would point her on the right track, but her dream was proving completely useless here.
Time was up when Shango's voice came on the cortex, “We have a situation up here. Everyone get to the bridge immediately.”
Oh no! No, no, no, not again! Was there still time to change things? They had failed to diagnose the problems with the engine, but maybe they could avoid the storm this time? In the dream, the engines only failed after they had entered the storm.
Bentley bolted back up the ladder and slid on her heels across Jelly Bean's wet floor. She made record time to the bridge, where the others were already gathered looking at the visual of the strange space storm.
She called out to Shango immediately, “Shango, we can't enter that storm! We need to get out of here, now!”
Shango was stern faced. “I agree, I don't like the look of it. I was just waiting for the clear from Jade to use the engines.”
Jade came onto the bridge right behind Bentley. “You're clear. They should be fine until I get another chance at diagnosing them. They were working fine earlier, after all.”
Bentley saw the storm growing larger on the screen. “Quickly!”
Shango didn't need the further prodding. He punched in the order on his console, pushed down for the Chesed to make the jump away from the growing storm...
Nothing. He tried again with the same result. “The engines aren't coming online. They won't respond.”
No, but we're not in the storm yet!
As if responding to her thoughts, the ship began to shake and rock violently as it entered into the mysterious storm clouds.
“We’ve entered the storm! But why aren't the Inertia Dampeners working?”
“They are working! The ship is shaking itself apart from the inside!”
It was all playing around exactly the same as she remembered it. Around her, panic set in as the crew were tossed around by the shaking of the doomed ship while Shango and Jade tried in vain to save it. Svend was tossed aside trying to reach Bentley. Olofi flew into the ceiling. Loco …
Loco was holding onto a railing with one arm, his drink cup in the other. He seemed mostly unfazed as he tried to pour the sloshing liquid down his throat, instead
getting most of it all over him. “Ah well, here we go again. Maybe third time's the charm?”
Bentley looked at Loco, mouth agape, as she realized what he had just said. He remembers.
Before she had a chance to figure out what that meant, the bridge came apart.
Chapter Three
Loco smacked the top of his head. As with the previous two times he had lived this day, it began with him in the crawl space under the pantry, at the moment in which he had hit his head on the bottom of the wooden shelf. That first morning he had been down there trying to find his secret stash of high quality booze and had accidentally raised his head too high. That was before he had learned that Shango had hidden his booze somewhere else. Overall, it was an inconvenient way to start the day, especially when you had to do it three times.
He pulled himself out of the crawl space using his elbows and dusted himself off. If things played out the way they had the last two times, Shango would be calling to them in a few minutes to gather so he could attempt to demand that they clean the ship. As usual, Loco would send Svend to do his actual cleaning duty while he searched for where Shango hid the booze. The good thing about reliving the same day over and over again was that it gave you extra chances. There were only so many places on the ship Shango could have hidden it. Maybe this time he could convince Svend to ignore cleaning and help him look?
In the meantime …
The cheap swill he poured into his silver mug every morning tasted like old battery acid but it got the job done, and there was no way he was facing this day for the third time completely sober.
Now where hadn't he checked? The Engine Room, but he doubted even Shango would go so far as to hide the expensive alcohol all the way down there. It would be ironic though, if the reason they have been exploding so much was that his booze was leaking on something important and making the engines fail. Bentley's room? He had searched almost all the others over the past two days, maybe he could sneak into hers while she was assigned to the kitchen...
As if thinking about her summoned her, Bentley appeared at the door to the kitchen. This was new. On his previous two passes through the day he had not seen anyone until he had been forced to come to the bridge.
Bentley was still in her nightclothes and was panting as if she had run all the way here from her room. “You remember.”
Loco calmly sipped his drink. He decided if he couldn't figure out where Shango had hidden his stash soon, he was going to need to find something to mix with this swill to make it more palatable. “Remember what, now?”
She was agitated, which wasn't exactly new. “Yesterday. And the day before it. The ship being destroyed!”
It seemed the fun advantage he held over the rest of the crew had already come to an end. “Ah yes, that. Yeah, I remember. Doesn't seem like anyone else does. Besides you, anyway.”
Bentley paced back and forth across the front of the room, her face scrunched up in thought. “Why just us, though?”
Loco supposed telling her that he didn't actually care why was a poor idea. “Maybe we're just that much smarter than everyone else. Our brains can handle what they can't.”
She gave him an incredulous look. “Yeah, I don't think that's it.”
He mocked being offended. “I'll have you know you're talking to a god. Our brains are on a whole 'nother level.”
“Shango and Olofi are also gods.”
“Yeah, well, we can't all be winners.”
She groaned and gave him a very serious look. “I guess it doesn't really matter why us. Maybe we've just been given another chance because the universe likes us.”
Loco scoffed. “Excuse me, have you met the universe? It's kind of a dick. Certainly doesn't want to do us any favors.”
“The important thing is, now that we know what's going to happen, we can stop it. Come on, we have to go warn Shango.”
Loco laughed and took another sip of his drink. “Oh, yes, I'm sure that will go over well. 'Hey, Shango, you won't believe this, but our ship already exploded. Twice. Why aren't we dead? Because space-magic is making us live the day over and over again. What, no we're not drunk. How dare you! Okay, maybe a little drunk.’”
It turned out Bentley was not in the mood to argue. “Stop being an ass and come on.” She grabbed Loco by the arm and dragged him by force from the kitchen and towards the bridge. For such a small woman she could be shockingly forceful.
“Fine, fine, I'm coming,” Loco conceded. “Though I think you're missing what a big opportunity we've been given here.”
Bentley clearly did not catch his meaning based on how she remained so stone faced.
Ah well, maybe next time she will. We have all the time in the world.
+++
Shango was the only one already at the bridge when Bentley and Loco arrived. “Oh, Bentley. You're up early. I was just about to call for everyone, actually.” He took in what she wearing and coughed. “Perhaps you'd like to change first? It can wait.”
Bentley felt like her nerves were way too frayed to go all the way back to her room to change before making sure Shango knew the dangers ahead. “Shango, there is no easy way to explain this. The ship is in danger. Sometime later today we're going to fly into a storm…”
“We shouldn't be stopping by any planets today,” Shango cut in.
“Not on a planet. Just kind of… in space. A space storm. I know that's strange, but you’ve got to listen. The engines are going to fail from a problem Jade is going to be unable to diagnose, and then the storm is going to shake the ship apart.”
Shango ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “And you know this how?”
Bentley tried to phrase it in a way that would make her sound the least crazy. “Cause I've already lived it. Twice. We all have, except for some reason you don't remember. Loco does, though. Tell them, Loco.”
To Bentley's horror, Loco did not. “I have made it a personal goal to remain as intoxicated as possible throughout this whole trip. I couldn't tell you whether time was repeating, or skipping, or doing a loop-do-loo. What day is it, even?”
Bentley's mouth was open in shock at the betrayal. “You, how could you? You know very well… What the hell is wrong with you?”
Shango shook his head. “That's a question I've been asking for centuries.”
Loco faked being hurt. “If even my dear leader is going to be cruel to me, I can go and get drunk elsewhere. I think I'll go hunt for my special stash. Someone seems to have misplaced it.”
“He'll never find it,” Shango said with an uncharacteristic grin on his face after Loco left.
Bentley knew that Loco had just made pleading her case dozens of times more difficult. Still, she couldn't quit. “Shango…"
He cut her off. “Maybe you ought to get some more rest, Bentley. Sleep off whatever is getting you so anxious. You have been under a lot of stress lately, what with the battle and the sword, and this mission to try and recruit your space-hermit mentor, and stress can manifest itself in strange ways. I'll excuse you from today's activities so you can rest, which you may find pretty lucky since I today I intend to get everyone to…”
“Clean the ship.” Bentley hoped that she could use her knowledge of how events would play to get Shango to believe her. “The ship has gone to hell since the battle, and you've had enough, because your ship is not a flying trashcan. You're going to trick Olofi into volunteering to clean the bathrooms, and you're going to assign Loco to trash collection since much of it is his empty bottles anyway. You're going to ask me to clean the kitchen, and particularly to hunt whatever is the cause of that rotting smell. And you'll have Jelly Bean do the floors… but she won't put out the wet floor signs and it will be a big hazard.”
Shango grew quiet for a while, studying Bentley with an intensity only someone with his centuries of experience could muster. “Alright.”
“Alright?”
“Alright I believe you.”
Bentley was so sure she had heard him wrong tha
t she got unnecessarily angry, only to have her anger deflate when she realized the truth. “You do?”
Shango gave a passive shrug. “We've been through a lot of weird stuff in the short time we've been together, more than all the rest of my years living among mortals combined. It's better to give you the benefit of the doubt, that this is just one more weird thing for our collection, than to ignore your warning while risking my ship. But we still have to figure out what's going on. I think you should start at the beginning”
Bentley took a deep breath and then quickly spilled out in detail how the past two days had played out for her: gathering for cleaning jobs, the call from Jade that she needed help with the engines, the storm, the destruction of the ship. Shango listened quietly, nodding occasionally but saying nothing.
He thought on it a while after Bentley had finished the story, tapping his fingers on the armrest of the captain's chair. “So it seems the problem stems from not being able to get back into hyperspace after switching to sub-light and getting close to that storm. It seems that the answer is simple: don't leave hyperspace today. We should be able to skip right past the area of space of your mystery storm. Jade will just have to wait to run her diagnostic until tomorrow.”
It was such an absurdly simple plan, but Shango was right. As long as they were in hyperspace they wouldn't encounter the storm, and without the storm their ship wouldn't tear itself apart. They were saved.
Bentley was overcome with relief. “Thank you, Shango. I knew you'd figure out what to do. Now, I think I'll take you up on getting that extra rest. I left Svend … quite suddenly this morning.”
The mystery of the repeating day might not be solved, but at least she had managed to save the ship. With this in mind she felt free as she made her way back to her room.
+++
“Everyone, on the bridge, now!” Shango's orders called to the crew a few hours later. The tone in his voice led Bentley to fear that things might not be as settled as she thought.
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