by In Churl Yo
Then the world shook, and the alarms sounded. Neema banged her head against a support strut on the wall before righting herself and accessing her cufflink. It took only a few minutes to hack into the ship’s systems and learn about the explosion in the C ring, a few seconds more to route a path to the bridge. If lives were at stake, if there was any way that she could help, Neema was going to try.
Pandemonium had besieged the command center of the Gaia, and when she arrived, it took Neema a few moments to get a proper lay of the land. The bridge was a tiered rectangle with stations set up at different levels surrounding a virtual display table in the center. Science and engineering sections were at the top, followed by operations and tactical in the middle, with navigation and command at the very bottom—which is where Neema saw Dr. Lightsea conferring with several section heads, no doubt concerning the recent mess made in the C ring. Artificial gravity plating, available only here and in the engine room, produced powerful gravitomagnetic fields that kept the crew from floating away.
She knew better than to get into the middle of whatever discussion was being had. Instead Neema tried to stay out of everyone’s way and observed, hoping to glean whatever information she could to help her process what had happened. Not two minutes later, a recognizable if motley crew sidled on either side of her, making Neema smile.
“You’re late,” she said.
“You try navigating inside a moving walkway with a bit of space sickness,” Baller replied while holding his stomach. “I’m still trying to figure up from down.”
“Hear anything good?” Milton asked.
“Nothing yet,” said Neema. “They’re still trying to assess whether it was a mechanical problem or sabotage.”
“Ooh, really?” Tifa said. “Sounds exciting.”
“Does this ship have escape pods? Like lifeboats or dinghies?” Elsif whispered. His eyes darted around the room for the nearest emergency exit, then fell when he couldn’t find one.
“You’re the dinghy,” Baller responded.
“Shush,” Neema ordered. “Something’s happening.”
Dr. Lightsea threw up a window and everyone stopped to watch the video image—someone was running down a debris-filled passage, the lights overhead flickering on and off and a haziness in the air. “Talk to me, Nox,” he said.
“Looks like Hydroponics Four was ground zero. I’m hearing that we lost two people in there, still checking though. Bulkheads are sealed around the blast area and for now the breach is contained, but it looks like the arboretum may be compromised.”
“Arboretum?” Dr. Lightsea pointed to someone nearby. “I need to know if anyone was scheduled to work in that section today. Hurry.”
The man with white hair started coughing. “I’m going to try to get visual confirmation. Standby.” Nox’s hand was seen entering codes on a keypad next to a closed doorway, and a few moments later, the hatch slid open and the surrounding air began moving inward, almost taking him inside with it.
“Um, I’d say that’s confirmed,” he yelled over the roar of the wind. Nox punched the controls to reseal the door, and all was quiet again. “We’re losing atmosphere in there.”
“I’m afraid I have more bad news,” said Dr. Lightsea, reading a report from a nearby virtual screen. “There was a team of eight working on the heating systems in the arboretum when the ring blew. There could still be people in there.”
The white-haired man nodded. “Alright, but I could use a little help.”
“Tell him I’m on my way,” Caleb said, already moving out of the bridge and into the connecting core passageway, but not before he exchanged fleeting glances with Neema just as he disappeared.
Dr. Lightsea eyed the remaining Kiters and motioned them to join him. “I’m reading just over 20 minutes before the air runs out,” he told Nox. “You’ll have to be quick. And someone’s coming—a man from the group you brought up.”
“Caleb,” Neema said. “He’s on his way.”
The white-haired man processed this news. “Well, if there are people inside, we’ll get them out,” Nox promised.
Then Dr. Lightsea turned to Neema and said, “My friend speaks highly of you—so does my daughter.”
“You should thank her. Zoah’s the only reason we’ve been civil since we arrived,” she replied. “The Kiters would have turned this place inside out by now, but your daughter’s proven herself to us more than once when it mattered. That makes her family. She asked us to wait and give you a chance, so we’re waiting.”
“I understand. I appreciate your constraint.”
“I guess in a roundabout way that makes us related. Consider us part of the team. We’re here to help.”
“Look at this then,” Dr. Lightsea said and pulled up another virtual window. Time-stamped security footage showed two technicians tending to various plants growing in raised beds before the image shook and the screen turned white. “There doesn’t appear to be anything amiss prior to the explosion, no disturbance of any kind. We’ve checked our systems and data streams—nothing. As far as we can tell, there’s no obvious reason that explains how any of this could have happened. In fact, according to our reports, it’s like it didn’t happen at all.”
“We’re pretty good at locating things that don’t exist,” Neema said, trying not to think of the Gaia itself. “Maybe if you let us log in, look around, we might be able to find something. We Kiters know our way with a keyboard.”
“So I’ve heard,” Dr. Lightsea replied. “Perhaps a fresh set of eyes might be warranted. In this case, those of a hacker could be just what’s needed.” He led them to a nearby set of stations, and with a few keystrokes on his cufflink, granted them access into the system—not that they needed his help to get in, but Neema appreciated the gesture. He trusted them, moreover it meant they were partners of a sort, which only added to the growing oddity of circumstances she had had to accept since waking this morning.
Neema sat Tifa and Elsif down and let them to get to work.
# # #
If only that blasted noise would end its incessant wailing, Theodore Ogden could concentrate on the task at hand. Recent revelations about his life and work had already proven to be a serious distraction, and now these alarms were interfering with his thought processes to the detriment of efficiency—not to mention causing people to scurry about him like cockroaches. It was a wonder he could get anything at all accomplished in the little time he’d allowed himself, but he was an Ogden. He would persevere. The airlock he was working on finally gave way to his security override, not a moment too soon.
He felt sorry for them all, that they could believe the illusion his mother and Lightsea tried to pass as history—a fabrication easy enough to see through, although their end game escaped him. No matter. Whatever objective they hoped to achieve was futile now. He had seen to that. It was a shame they didn’t get a chance to discuss the subject more before he slipped away unnoticed in the chaos. Now they never would.
Ogden stepped up the ramp into the inside rear cargo area of a modified, specialized drone—the only one of its kind. As such, the ship was well-protected, alone in its landing bay and in quarantine. They had tried to hide it from the world, perhaps even attempted to forget its very existence, but he had found it, and with it would reclaim that which was taken.
Now all that remained was Lightsea’s irksome daughter.
Her ineptitude showed no bounds, so obvious was she in her pursuit of him. He had seen the girl almost immediately. She was her father’s daughter in this regard, a complete and utter disappointment. Ogden would enjoy seeing them both fail along with the other fools complicit in this grand deceit. All in good time.
He watched a video monitor from the drone ship’s cockpit, caught himself holding his breath as the cameras showed the girl stepping up the ramp to the rear of the aircraft. Ogden confirmed on the nearest station that he had indeed locked the hatch behind him. He couldn’t make things too easy for her after all, lest arousing suspic
ion.
Then the Ceres CEO waited. She took an inordinate amount of time picking the lock but soon followed Ogden inside. He held his finger over the button for the right moment—a hunter anticipating its quarry, the trap set and ready, the kill at hand. When the airlock sealed shut behind her, he activated the emergency procedure that trapped Zoah Lightsea inside the drone’s rear cargo bay. Next a low hum purred within the vessel’s walls as vacuum pumps began their work, removing the air from inside the sealed room.
As the young woman began to slowly suffocate, Ogden couldn’t help but smile.
# # #
Caleb had stopped trying to run almost immediately. He had all the grace of a cartoon character bouncing through the passageway as the low-gravity atmosphere and inertia played havoc with his judgement—not only zigging when he expected a zag but outright underestimating the actual physical force behind his efforts. He was going everywhere and nowhere fast—not the result he was looking for, especially since he knew the clock was ticking. Nox needed him now.
After some trial and error, he settled on a motion that settled somewhere between a long jump and swimming. It probably didn’t look as graceful as it felt to Caleb, but at least he was making good progress.
“Nox, are you reading me?” Caleb asked while switching frequencies on the com line. Static soon gave way to a response.
“I knew you always cared,” the man with white hair replied.
“Is that what you think this is? Look, I just needed something to do. Sitting around a conference room staring at a bunch of virtual feeds isn’t my thing. Besides, someone needs to keep an eye on you.”
Nox laughed. “Everything you’ve heard, and you still don’t trust me.”
“I don’t trust anybody,” Caleb said. “In fact, I don’t like people, generally speaking. The jury’s still out on you.”
“Well, I appreciate the help. It’s not looking so good here.”
“Whatever you need. But I’m still a few minutes away.”
“I’ve managed to isolate the problem somewhat. The explosion in the hydroponics lab weakened the structural integrity of the adjacent compartment, which happens to be the arboretum, one of the largest sections on the entire ship. We’ve got multiple ruptures in the environmental ducts venting atmosphere, but that’s not even the worst part.”
“What’s the worst part?” Caleb asked.
“I’m not sure yet. I don’t want to say until I can assess the damage firsthand, but it’s probably something very, very bad.”
“So, we deal with it if we have to.”
“Roger that.”
Caleb reached the C ring junction, then found the correct passage that would put him closest to the arboretum. He ascended though the connecting spoke, and halfway through flipped around and began to fall up toward the ring as centrifugal forces pulled him outward. Once he landed, he took a quick look around. “I’m outside the hatch now. Where are you?”
“Maintenance shaft,” Nox responded. “I’ve managed to slow the leak using some back pressure—will attempt to limit it from in here while you get those people out. That’s our primary mission. We’ll determine the scope of the damage and whether it can be contained only after we’ve completed the primary. Understood? Get ready.”
Caleb grabbed a nearby strut and held on. The hatch slid wide, and the threshold pulled him inside its maw until the environments equalized, the torrent diminishing ever slightly to a strong wind. He got his bearings and began searching for survivors as the hatch sealed shut behind him. “I’m inside. Air’s pretty thin in here.”
“You’ve got around 12 minutes before it thins out completely,” the white-haired man said.
Caleb scowled. “I noticed you picked the easy job.” Oxygen deprivation was already starting to set in, affecting his senses, making everything wobbly. “Hang on, I think I may have found one.” It wasn’t until he was next to the unconscious worker that he was sure the body was real. “Looks like they got caught up in the blast, but at least this guy’s still alive.” Caleb lifted the man onto his shoulders and carried him into the passageway, where he set him down. As he turned to head back inside, the corridor began to tremble and shake around him, the deep thunder of another explosion sounding in the distance.
“The arboretum?” Caleb asked.
“No. That was somewhere else on the Gaia.”
Caleb cursed. “Quite a ship you’ve built here.”
Nox didn’t reply. Instead, he accessed the local operations data streams, searching for a reason that might explain a critical, multiple-systems failure in two different sections of the ship, but found nothing—except a feeling in the pit of his stomach that only grew stronger.
# # #
“Oh my God,” Dr. Lightsea exclaimed as the virtual display table projected a three-dimensional cross-section of the Gaia with several areas highlighted in red. Using his fingers, he expanded the A ring and drilled down to a small crimson cube and stared at the blinking image, hardly able to absorb what he was looking at.
“Is everyone okay?” Neema asked. The effects from the second explosion had subsided, but she could see Dr. Lightsea already pinpointing its location.
“Looks like another blast—different part of the ship,” said Milton.
“Not just any part,” Dr. Lightsea said, walking toward the group of Kiters. He threw up the schematic and pointed. “Diagnostic systems around this room are down, and I need to know what happened in there.”
“Hang on a tick,” Baller replied. “They’re almost in.”
“Odd. It’s got no designation,” said Elsif, “but this is the room where the blast occurred. The hull doesn’t seem to be compromised. We’re not venting atmosphere…”
“What about the inventory? The equipment? Was it destroyed?” asked Dr. Lightsea.
“Nothing’s responding,” Tifa answered. “Either the system was damaged, or we’ve been locked out. I’m searching for a work-around. Don’t you have an override or something?”
“It’s not working either,” he replied. “Perhaps the network’s damaged, or…”
“I’m in,” Elsif said.
The virtual desktop expanded across several windows suspended in the air above the station. Data feeds and status reports scrolled into view. A video feed lit up, cast in a hazy snow, and revealed the broken, scarred remains of a lab or engineering bay.
“No,” Dr. Lightsea gasped. “Please tell me that room is sealed.”
“Sealed?” Tifa asked.
“Quarantined! Tell me it’s been quarantined.”
She turned, entered a few commands onto her virtual keyboard. “Well, seeing as how the door and part of the wall are missing, I’d say not.”
“There’s something more,” Elsif added, “which might be pertinent. I mean, if you meant quarantined, like, really quarantined.”
“What is it?” Neema said.
“See, it looks like a hack. The environmental systems are operating above spec,” said Elsif. “Here—the ventilation program. It’s circulating air all around the Gaia, bypassing the scrubbers and filters. That’s not normal.”
“What makes you think it’s a hack?” Milton asked.
“Look at this—someone programmed the air handlers to max out the flow volume. Then they froze the system, erased the logs and encrypted access. Took a pretty good crack to get back in.”
Neema leaned closer to glare at the code. “Now why would someone do that?” she said.
“To spread the virus,” Dr. Lightsea answered. “To infect everyone on the Gaia with the Zombie Flu. If this reading is correct, I’m sad to say it’s already happened.”
“But I’m not sick,” said Milton. “We’re all okay.”
“You won’t be symptomatic for days,” he responded before finding the nearest chair to collapse into. “Of course, we’ll have to test ourselves to be sure, but given the circumstances, I don’t see how we could have escaped infection.”
“Well, isn’t this just
dandy?” said Baller. “I guess we’re all bloody dead already, eh?”
“Not yet, we aren’t. You made the Zombie Flu,” Neema said as she faced Dr. Lightsea. “You must have also made a cure.”
“Of course,” he replied. “But it was destroyed with the lab. We could create more, but it would take time. By then, most of us would have already passed the point of remission.”
“So, that’s it then? Just roll over and die?” said Milton.
“No,” Neema answered. “Elsif, show me that code again.”
The young hacker grabbed the window above his head and tossed it over to Neema, who caught the virtual file and slapped it into the air—where it stuck in front of her at eye level.
“Mm-hmm,” she said, paging through the lines of code with her fingers. “All we have to do is find whoever wrote this program. Assuming they’re still on this ship, they’ll have the cure on them. Dr. Lightsea, can you synthesize more if you had a sample to work with?”
He nodded. “The work would go much faster. We might make enough in time to save us.”
“Unless this collaborator has some kind of death wish,” said Tifa. “For all we know, he might want to go down with the ship.”
“Oh, not this guy,” Neema replied. “I guarantee you he’s not about to let himself get killed.”
“You know this man?” Dr. Lightsea asked.
She nodded. “Each hacker has their own style and language. They reveal tendencies and bias in their code. It’s almost like a thumbprint. I know who did this. Matter of fact, most of you do, too. Look around. Tell me, who’s missing?”
The Kiters scanned the room. Individually, they soon came to the same conclusion. Their faces turned grim, their eyes inflamed.