Novum: Exile: (Book 2)

by Joseph Rhea

  Since then, she had not only learned to speak by simply copying everyone around her, she had also mastered most of the ship’s control systems and somehow figured out how to break into every door lock on the ship, including, apparently, the ship’s recreation room.

  “It’s why you’re here?” he repeated. “What does that mean? Are you remembering something from your past?”

  She stared at him blankly for a moment and then said quite innocently, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Before he could demand an explanation, she turned and left through the door.

  Chapter 04

  The dock was bustling with activity when Jake walked down the loading ramp of the Rogue Wave and joined his first mate, who was just finishing with the dockmaster. “Thought you could use this,” he said as he handed her one of the two steaming mugs he carried.

  She nodded, which was as close as she ever got to thanking people. However, the way she wrapped her hands around the warm mug and breathed in the aroma of the coffee before taking a sip told him how much she appreciated the gesture. They stood in silence for a few minutes, watching the ships around them load and unload their freight.

  “Still on for an oh-six-hundred departure?” he finally asked. It was already five-thirty, and there was no sign of their cargo.

  She took another sip before answering. “On its way now. The dockmaster wanted to wait for some of the other ships to depart before bringing it down.”

  He took another sip and glanced back at the nearest vessel, another Proteus-Class hauler, a little smaller than the Wave. Then he noticed that the captain was pushing his crew to finish the load, glancing in Jake’s direction from time to time. “So, we’re sure this cargo is safe, right?”

  AJ laughed. “Safe? No, Jake, it is definitely not safe. It’s hazardous cargo. Remember? That’s why they’re paying us so much to haul it out of here.”

  “I mean, it’s not going to—never mind.” He had agreed to haul the damaged reactor all the way across the colony to the Rift for disposal. Reluctantly agreed, but agreed nonetheless. No use second-guessing that decision now.

  The main pressure door opened on the far end of the dock, and a dozen or so people in yellow HazMat suits walked through. Behind them, a nondescript gray box rolled out on a wheeled cart. He saw the captain of the nearest vessel push his people inside his ship and then quickly closed the hatch. The other captains followed suit, retreating to the relative safety of their pressure hulls. He was more than a little tempted to join them.

  AJ handed him her mug and walked over to the group. He just stood there, holding the mugs and wondering if there was something he should be doing. His former captain, Marcus Coal, would have said the sign of a good crew is a bored captain. If that was true, then he had a great crew, because most days he wondered if anyone would miss him if he suddenly jumped ship.

  The rest of the crew emerged from the Wave and walked towards him. Something about liability issues required that all people remain off the ship until the cargo was loaded and secured. Then he, the captain, would officially take possession and assume all responsibility.

  Most of his crew looked like AJ, a bit hung over. They hadn’t spent much time off ship in the past few weeks, and he couldn’t blame them for having a bit of fun. Only Jane looked as she always did: young, healthy, and vibrant.

  When he realized he had just used the word “vibrant” to describe her, it made him blush. She probably wasn’t that much younger than Vee, but her innocence and apparent lack of any form of inhibition made her seem much younger.

  He stood there watching her talking with the rest of the crew for about twenty minutes as the yellow suits walked in and out of the Wave’s cargo bay. She was a bit too far away from him to hear what she was saying, but every so often, she would glance over at him and smile.

  When the people in yellow suits finished, the dockmaster left the safety of his control room and handed him the departure slate to sign. “Good luck, Captain,” he said, and before Jake could respond, he added, “You’ll need it.”

  As the middle-aged man walked away, Jake mumbled, “Funny.”

  The dockmaster stopped and turned back to face him. “Sorry, Captain, but I wasn’t trying to be humorous. You’ve taken on quite a job, and I sincerely wish you the best of luck with it.”

  Jake felt a knot forming in his stomach. “It’s really pretty dangerous, isn’t it?”

  The man shook his head. “You misunderstand me, son. What I meant is that a small reactor like that is worth a lot to some people, even damaged like it is.” He glanced over at the Rogue Wave. “You have far more to fear from pirates than explosions, I’d wager. So, again I say good luck, Captain, and safe voyage.”

  As the dockmaster started to walk back to his control room, a group of men dressed in grey and blue city enforcement uniforms entered the dock. The man in front put a small microphone up to his mouth and spoke, his voice amplified by the overhead speakers in the room. “Attention all captains. Please exit your vessels immediately and stand clear for inspection.”

  “Inspection?” Jake asked aloud.

  “I’ll get to the bottom of this,” the dockmaster grumbled as he headed towards the men who were heading straight for the Rogue Wave.

  “What’s up with that?” his helmsman, Vee, asked as she and the rest of the crew walked up.

  “I don’t know,” Jake replied, then turned to his navigator, Ash, who seemed to be hiding behind the others. “Any problems last night?”

  Ash lifted his head but then quickly dropped his gaze to the floor. “Nothing happened. I mean, nothing to report, sir.”

  Jake glanced over at AJ and frowned. “You know it always worries me when people start calling me ‘sir’ out of the blue.”

  Ash stood tall then. “Sorry, Captain. I—”

  “Damn rebels,” the dockmaster said as he returned. “Shot one of them in a corn field on the other side of town last night, but one got away. Hope they catch the bastard.”

  As he turned and headed back to his control room, Jake looked at the enforcers moving in and out of the Wave’s cargo bay, then turned to AJ and whispered, “That man in the bar last night.”

  She nodded and whispered back, “I was thinking the same thing.”

  “They’ve finished,” the Wave’s engineer, Norman Raines interrupted.

  Jake glanced back as the last of the men stepped down from his vessel and headed towards the next ship in the dock.

  “Glad that’s over,” AJ said.

  “I was sort of hoping they were going to impound our reactor,” Jake said. When his first mate gave him a dirty look, he added, “Just kidding. Sort of.”

  Jake saw the dock light up, and then he found himself laying face down a few meters away. Explosion, he thought as he tried to pick himself off the floor, but his head was spinning, and his ears were ringing. His first thought was that the reactor had detonated, but then remembered that they would all be dead if that were the case. He rolled over, saw a ball of smoke billowing up from the far side of the dock, and realized it was something else.

  “Get up!” someone yelled, but with the ringing in his ears, it was hard to tell where the voice was coming from. He turned his head and saw one of the enforcers running over to him. “Get out of here, Captain,” he yelled. “We’ll try to cover you.”

  AJ was up by then and reached down to help Jake to his feet. “Who’s attacking us?” she asked the enforcer.

  “Other enforcers,” the man said as he took off towards the smoke.

  Jake pulled Raines to his feet and then looked back at AJ. “What did he just say?” Gunfire erupted in the dock, and Jake instinctively ducked. “Let’s get out of here!” he yelled as they all ran for the ship.

  Vee got to the bridge first and ran to her helm console. “We’re not cleared for departure,” she yelled.

  Ash was right behind her and jumped into the navigation chair. “I’ll see if I can override the dock controls.”

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p; Jake ran past them both to the command position at the front of the bridge, surveying the dock from the large forward viewport. “The whole place is on fire,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  AJ came up the stairs in the rear. “Why aren’t we moving, Helm?”

  “Working on it,” Vee replied. Jake was about to say something when she yelled, “Ash did it. We’re cleared!”

  “Take us out as fast as you can, Vee,” AJ said.

  Jake turned and watched the scene inside the dock as they began to slide backwards. Only when the lockout door closed in front of him, and he saw the water swirling outside the viewport, did he realize that he had been holding his breath.

  “What the bilge was that all about?” Ash said behind him. “I thought New Braska was a peaceful city. Boring but peaceful.”

  “There are any number of things that could have caused that fight,” Raines said from the back. “Shortages are everywhere, and people are getting tired of being told to be patient.”

  “One of the men told me that the attackers were enforcers,” Jake said. “They’re fighting each other. Why would they do that?”

  “Do you think anyone else got out?” Vee asked from behind him.

  There was silence in the room before AJ said, “It’s not our problem, Vee. Just concentrate on your station; I want to put some water between us and this place.”

  As they pivoted around and left New Braska behind, Jake turned to his crew. “Speaking of problems, I should let you all know that this could be a more dangerous haul than I originally thought, so I need everyone on their toes.”

  Vee shook her head. “I was told the reactor was stable, at least for the duration of our trip.”

  Raines spoke up. “I believe our captain is referring to the value of that reactor. It makes us a target.”

  “But it’s damaged, isn’t it?” Jessie said. She had taken her earphones off. “Even if it’s technically stable right now, it won’t stay that way. Who would want it?”

  “Criminals,” AJ replied. “Someone who would sell it to one of the more desperate outer cities and lie about its stability. Very few of the border towns have the expertise or equipment to tell a good reactor from a bad one.”

  “And when a reactor this size goes bad,” AJ said, “it will kill everyone within a kilometer radius. Getting this thing safely to the Rift will not only benefit us financially, it could save hundreds of lives.”

  “In other words,” Jake added, “if this reactor doesn’t make it to the Rift, then we don’t.” He paused and let his words settle in with the crew.

  Jessie was the first to react as she put her earphones back on. “I’ll make sure we’re not followed. If I have to, I’ll broadcast so many acoustic shadows; they’ll never be able to sort them out.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Jake said. He then glanced at his first mate. “The bridge is yours.”

  Chapter 05

  An hour later, Jake was bored, so he wondered back up to the bridge. Vee was on shift, and he saw her cocking her head to the side as she entered commands on her dashboard. They were supposed to be on autopilot, following a complicated zigzag pattern that Ash and his sister had programmed to help throw off any followers. As helmsman, Vee should have been sitting back, sipping coffee, and enjoying the downtime.

  “You should take a break,” he said as he walked up and sat on the edge of the chart table in the middle of the bridge. “Your grandfather is downstairs telling us Pre-Fall stories, like about when houses were made out of plants.”

  “Trees,” she corrected him, eyes still glued to the console. “And he always has a story. I sometimes think that he had to be born before the Fall to have that many stories.”

  “Well that would make him several hundred years old then, wouldn’t it?” he laughed. When she didn’t respond, he walked over to her console. “Is something wrong, Vee?”

  “The autopilot’s doing extra work,” she mumbled, as much to herself as to him.

  He leaned down close to her and whispered, “Are you worried it’s going to complain or start a mutiny?”

  She looked at him with a glare. “I’m serious.” She pointed to a set of numbers on her dashboard, as though they would explain her concern. They didn’t.

  “Look here,” she said. “The bow is trying to dive slightly. The ship is compensating by moving the battery sleds a bit more than they should be, just to compensate.”

  “Is that using too much power, or something?”

  “No, it’s trivial. However, it shouldn’t have to do that. The internal sensors monitor everything and everyone inside the ship, and the computer uses that data to keep the ship level at all times.”

  “I know,” he said, wondering if she was explaining the process to him because she thought he was an idiot who didn’t understand basic buoyancy. “It’s like the way we humans balance on two feet. Thousands of small feedback loops that keep us standing without consciously knowing our brain is doing it.”

  “Exactly. Only the ship’s brain thinks we are out of balance for some reason.”

  “Send your readings to the table,” Raines said in his ear. Jake stood too quickly and almost bumped heads with the engineer.

  AJ came up the stairs just then with a mug in her hand. “What’s up?”

  Raines was already standing by the chart table as Jake and AJ joined him. A three-dimensional model of the Rogue Wave appeared above the table and a number of green circles and lines floated in and around it. One line flashed yellow every few seconds.

  “What’s causing that?” AJ asked.

  “Our balance is off,” Vee said as she joined them. “I was just telling the captain. There seems to be too much weight in the forward half of the ship.”

  “Where?” AJ asked. Raines entered some commands on the table, and the image of the Wave split down the middle so that the inside floor plan was visible. A red dot appeared in the forward section of D-deck.

  Raines raised his head and looked at Jake. “It seems we have a stowaway.”

  AJ sat her coffee on the chart table and then calmly bent down and reached underneath. She came back up with a handgun. “Tell me exactly where he is.”

  Raines zoomed in on the floor plan. “Based on the weight distribution, our visitor seems to be hiding just forward of the starboard battery sled.”

  “Forward of the battery sled?” Jake asked. “If we had decided to dive, that sled would have crushed him.”

  “That’s a stupid place to hide,” Vee said.

  “Actually, that’s why it’s a perfect place to hide,” AJ said. “Those enforcers certainly didn’t find him in there.”

  “So, how did a stowaway get aboard my ship?” Jake asked as he and AJ headed for the stairs.

  She gestured for Ash to follow them, and then said, “Not easy, unless someone wasn’t minding the ship last night.”

  “Hey, don’t blame me,” Ash said defiantly, but his red face told Jake that the navigator might have something to hide.

  “I ought to send you in there without a gun to deal with this,” AJ said as she headed down the stairs, past the galley and mess hall and down to C-deck. When they reached the bottom, she added, “But instead, you’re going to wait here in case this person gets past us.”

  “Gets past us?” Jake asked, suddenly wishing he were armed as well. Even though he had never actually fired a gun in his life, let alone held one in his hand, the intruder wouldn’t know that.

  AJ unlocked the hatch under the stairwell that led to D-deck and climbed down the ladder, gun held out in front of her. She quickly scanned the small room and then moved silently toward the starboard side as Jake climbed down to join her. The midsection of the battery sled was visible though a small opening. He put his mouth close to the room’s intercom and keyed the bridge. “Pull the starboard sled back as far as you can, Vee,” he whispered. There was a humming sound and the sled moved backwards. At the same time, the port side sled moved forward, trying t
o offset the change in ballast.

  When the starboard sled clicked to a stop, revealing a small space in front of it, AJ stuck her head through the opening and just as quickly pulled it back. Her eyebrows knitted, and then she took a longer look. Before he could ask what she saw, she reached up and turned on the room’s lights.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered, stepping away from the opening. AJ tucked her gun inside the back of her pants and then motioned to him. “Come see for yourself.”

  He cautiously stepped forward and peered inside. Lying sprawled in a pool of blood at the end of the shaft was the man from the bar.

  Chapter 06

  “Our guest is waking up,” Raines’s voice said from the bridge speakers. Vee blinked her eyes and wondered if she had been sleeping. The clock on her dashboard said three-forty, which meant she was nearing the end of her midnight-to-four watch. Fortunately, no one else was on the bridge, so her secret was safe. Not that dozing at the helm was a court-martial offence, at least not outside the Guild. The ship was still on course and that was all that mattered.

  She stood up and stretched then, remembering Raines’s message, relayed it to the captain and first mate in their quarters. The crew had been taking turns watching the stowaway ever since they hauled him up to med bay. The room’s automated surgical bed repaired the bullet wound in his back quite easily, but he had lost a fair amount of blood. As a result, he had been in a coma for several days while his body healed.

  Ash came tromping up the stairwell with a cup of coffee in his hand. “Wake up, sunshine. It’s my turn at the wheel.”

  “This ship doesn’t have a wheel, and you’re twenty minutes early,” she replied then wondered if his “wake up” comment meant that he knew she had fallen asleep on duty. No, she assured herself; he said that every time he relieved her.