by Joseph Rhea
In reality, he could probably still operate any console on the ship, but since becoming captain, he had found that he had lost some of those skills, or at least misplaced them. You lose what you don’t use, his former captain used to say.
“Drowned that,” he said as he walked up to the helm station and laid in the original course to the Rift. He even bypassed Ash’s autopilot and powered up the thrusters manually.
By the time AJ came up to relieve him four hours later, he was feeling pretty comfortable in the helm chair.
“The captain doesn’t usually take a rotation,” she said as she slid into the navigation chair next to him. “But if you feel comfortable enough up here, I could probably use an extra hand during this trip.”
“I’m actually happy to help,” he said. Ships on long voyages used the ‘four on, eight off’ rule when it came to bridge operations. That way, three people could cover a full twenty-four-hour day without burning out. However, even that took its toll on long trips, and having a forth bridge officer helped quite a bit. She was right though; captains seldom took a full rotation. That was partly because captains were, by their job description, always on call, ready to make life-or-death decisions at a moment’s notice, and therefore had to stay well rested. There was also the belief that captains needed to remain ‘above’ their crew. Separate, in order to maintain the chain of command.
Jake, however, was not one of those captains, no matter what his crew or the people in the bar thought of him. He was more than happy to take a shift. It kept his mind off other things. Things like the past. Things like the future.
He transferred helm control over to the navigation console so that he could remain seated while AJ officially took over. All four stations on the bridge were interchangeable, even though the usual layout was helm at the starboard bow console, navigation across the aisle at the port bow console, acoustics at the starboard aft, and engineering at the port aft console. During all docking maneuvers, or when something interesting or dangerous occurred outside, all positions were filled, but during long cruises, only a single bridge officer was required.
That made sense, logistically, but it also made for boring shifts. Captain Coal always insisted on a second person on the bridge, especially during the night shifts. He even arranged card games on the chart table, just to keep the person on duty awake.
Of course, staying awake was less of a problem with Norman Raines brewing a new pot of coffee every few hours. Speaking of which… “I’m going for coffee,” he said to AJ. “Want some?”
“Sure,” she said, “and when you get back, maybe you can give me a foot massage. And my chair’s kind of squeaking. Can you fix that for me as well?”
He frowned. “You know, crewmates are allowed to do things for each other from time to time. What’s wrong with that?”
“Because we’re not crewmates, Jake. You’re the captain, and I’m the first mate. We each have jobs to do and positions to uphold. The crew expects a certain degree of separation. Separation between them and us, between you and me.”
He stood up. “So, you’re saying that we can’t be friends?”
She stood up and leaned in close. “We can share a bunk during off hours, if that’s what you want,” she whispered. “Only we don’t show it on the bridge or talk about it around the crew.”
“Hey,” he said, waving his hands in mock seriousness. “I just offered to get you a coffee. I never said anything about…”
“You know what I mean,” she said as she sat back down and began working her console.
He dropped his hands. “I do, actually. Coal used to say that on a ship, the captain and first mate were the parents, and the crewmembers were their children.” He thought about that for a moment, and realized that, in Coal’s case, one of the crew really was his child.
As he stood there, lost in memories, AJ said, “Go get your coffee.” When he realized what he was doing and turned to leave, she added. “If you see Vee or Jessie, could you ask one of them to bring me up a cup?”
“Sure,” he said.
Chapter 11
When Jake reached the bottom of the stairs, he saw the rest of the crew sitting around the table. Even Jane was there, sitting on the floor in a fetal position, as usual. “Where’s Wood?” he asked.
“Asleep in one of the aft quarters,” Ash said.
“Is it a good idea to leave him alone?”
Vee spoke up. “We locked his door from the outside.”
He nodded and then went into the galley. He was about to pour himself a coffee when he noticed the pot was empty. He held it up towards the table. “Anybody going to make another?”
“We need to talk, Captain,” Raines said, “and I think AJ should join us.”
He contemplated this. “I don’t usually like to leave the bridge unattended.”
“We’re in open water, Captain,” Vee said. “Besides, I can reach my helm chair in less than eight seconds.”
He smiled. “Timed yourself, have you?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
He shook his head and then called up the stairway to AJ. When she came down, he joined her at the table. He looked at Raines. “So, what’s up?”
“I’m not exactly sure where to begin, Captain.” The old man stared down at his clasped hands as though he were looking for the words there.
“Is this about the salvager?” AJ asked. “Were you able to find out anything about it?”
Raines nodded his head while continuing to stare at his hands. “Oh, I have indeed.” After another long pause, he looked up at the group around him. “I’m sorry. I’m still trying to process all of this myself. Perhaps I should have waited—”
“Just tell us what you found,” AJ insisted.
“I’m sorry. You’re right of course.” He nodded to his granddaughter, who activated the screen on the back wall. The drop bay appeared with the curled-up body of the salvager filling up most of the space.
“We were lucky the body was segmented,” Vee said, “and able to fold up in this manner. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to get it aboard.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” AJ said.
“Nobody has,” Raines said. “I believe it is a Pre-Fall robot that has been resurrected and somehow reprogrammed for salvage operations.”
“As far as I know, nobody’s ever gotten a Pre-Fall machine to work,” Ash said.
“Well, someone got this one working,” Vee said, “and we all know who that was.”
“The people from the forest dome?” Jessie asked.
“They were just grunts,” AJ said. “It had to be someone from the Ministry of Science who did the reprogramming.”
“Dr. Wood worked for them,” Jessie added. “Maybe he knows something about it.”
“That’s why he hasn’t been allowed near the cargo bay,” Vee said.
“And why he’s not with us now,” Raines added.
Jake looked around the table and then at Raines. “Can we just get to the point?” he asked. He appreciated that the crew were allowed to speak freely during meetings, something Captain Coal frowned upon, but sometimes he missed the simplicity of the old days. “Did you find out where this thing came from?”
“I don’t yet know its origin, and I doubt I ever will. Its memory seems to have been erased, although I’m not sure how that was accomplished. However, I did manage to retrieve its navigation log for the past year, and I think I know where it picked up the birthing sphere.”
When he didn’t continue, Jake prodded him. “Where?”
Raines glanced back at the stairwell and then at Vee. “Are you sure Dr. Wood is still in his quarters?”
Vee turned and touched the wall panel. A small sub-scene appeared showing Wood asleep on his bunk. When Vee turned up the volume, they could hear him snoring.
“Very well,” Raines said, nodding to his granddaughter. Vee swiped the screen and the image disappeared. He turned back to Jake before answering. “You asked where
the sphere came from, but I’m not sure you will believe what I have learned. I’m not sure I believe it.” He looked back at his hands.
“Drown it, man!” Jake yelled. “I don’t need any more suspense. Just tell me.”
Raines looked up at him with a solemn face. “According to the salvager’s own logs, it picked up the sphere to the far west of the border.”
“West of what border?”
“The western border,” Raines said flatly.
He studied the old man’s face for signs that this was some sort of practical joke. Then he looked at the rest of the crew to see if they were in on it, but they seemed as bewildered as he felt. “You’re telling me that it came from outside of the colony? How far?”
“I can’t be sure, but it’s at least four thousand kilometers.”
“Four thousand kilometers?” Jake repeated as he stood and walked around the stairwell into the galley. He shook his head and said, “That’s just not possible.”
“You’re right, of course,” Raines said. “Nothing can get past the border defenses, and certainly nothing we know of could travel that far and return, yet it seems that something has. Repeatedly, according to the navigation records.”
“Those can be altered, can’t they?” Jessie asked.
“Of course they can,” AJ said. “That’s the answer. The owner of the salvager simply altered the nav records to keep people like us from discovering where they’ve been.”
“But why make up something so outlandish?” Vee asked. “Why make it seem like the salvager went four thousand kilometers outside the colony?”
“They were lazy,” Ash said from the galley.
“How so?” Jake asked.
Ash came back around the stairwell. “Translational shift,” he replied. “The easiest way to hide your nav course is just add an offset to every record.”
“So you’re saying that they just added four thousand to the range coordinates?” Jake said.
“That would make it easy to decipher,” Vee added.
“Unless they added an offset to the bearing as well,” Ash said. “Which, unless the owners were complete morons, they would have done.”
“Actually, the salvager isn’t using a polar coordinate system,” Raines said. “That’s why it took me so long to figure it out. It’s using an old fashioned Cartesian coordinate system, with X being the east-west component, and Y being the north-south component.”
That brought Ash back into the room. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Ah,” Raines said, his eyes coming back to life. “It doesn’t make sense for a vessel navigating inside the borders of a circular colony. But…” He let the word hang there above the table.
“It makes sense outside, in open water,” AJ said.
“I still don’t buy it,” Ash said, returning to the galley. “My theory of adding an offset to the coordinates works just as well in that system.”
“I would consider your theory,” Raines said as he stood up and walked over to the display wall, “if it weren’t for the fact that other locations in the salvager’s records line up with real places inside the colony.” He brought up a colony map on the wall, with its standard polar coordinates, then added a Cartesian coordinate overlay. To add to the confusion, a red line appeared that zigzagged all over the place and occasionally veered completely off the map. Jake assumed this must be the salvager’s route during the past year. Those lines converged in the spot Jake knew to be the location of the forest dome.
“So the records haven’t been altered,” Jake said, “that means the salvager is somehow able to cross the border.”
AJ looked at him with a bewildered expression, which was something Jake had never seen on her before. “It can’t be true,” she said, almost pleading. “The border is impenetrable. Nothing gets in or out. Nothing.”
Jake surveyed the room. Only Raines’s face looked as though it weren’t in complete shock. “I don’t get it,” he said. “So the Counsel lied to us. What’s new?”
“You don’t understand,” Raines said. “To Shellbacks, to people like us who have lived aboard ships most of our lives, telling us the border can be crossed is like someone telling you the Capitol City dome isn’t really there.”
“But the dome is real,” Jake replied. “It keeps the water out and the air inside.”
“It’s not really that different,” AJ said, “at least for us. At least for me.” She looked at Raines. “Is it really possible? And if so, how is it possible?”
Raines shook his head. “I can’t answer that question, at least not right now.” He looked at his granddaughter. “Vee and I plan to continue our research after this meeting. I just wanted to fill you all in with our progress—”
“Tell them about the device we found,” Vee interrupted.
Raines lowered his eyebrows. “There is no benefit in discussing that which we don’t yet understand,” he said.
“What device,” Jake asked.
“It’s nothing,” he replied then turned to face Jake. “I’m sorry; let me clarify that, Captain. We found a small box inside the salvager that appears to serve no purpose. It isn’t wired into anything and seems completely inert, electromagnetically speaking.” He looked back at Vee. “For all we know, it is just a piece of junk that was accidentally dropped inside by the people who reprogrammed it.”
“Very well then,” AJ said. “I guess we should let you get back to—”
“I think it’s a key,” a small voice said. Everyone stopped and looked down at Jane who was sitting on the floor in the corner. She had been so quiet, Jake had forgotten she was there.
“It’s really nothing, sweetheart,” Raines said.
She stood up. “I said it could be a key,” she said more clearly.
“A key to what, Jane?” Jessie asked as she walked over to stand by her friend.
Jane pointed to the wall. “To your border, of course.”
There was a moment of silence around the table, then Ash looked at Raines. “Could she be right?”
Raines folded his arms across his chest and stroked his chin. Then he looked at Jane. “What makes you think it’s a key, sweetheart? We found nothing electromagnetic emanating from it.”
Jane looked at Jessie. “You forgot to test it for acoustic signals,” she said.
Jessie shook her head. “I didn’t think to…” She pulled a portable microphone from a pocket and aimed it at the box. When she put her earphone back on, she frowned. “Drowned it, she’s right. Really high frequency but low power. Definitely a coded signal in there.” She looked up at Jane. “How did you know?”
All eyes turned towards Jane, who seemed to shrink under their gaze. “I’m not a Beta, if that’s what you think.”
Jessie frowned. “No one is saying that, Jane.”
“He’s thinking it,” Jane replied, pointing directly at Jake.
“Hey,” he said, holding up his hands. “I’m really not, Jane. I’m like everyone else here, in that I just want to understand how you seem to know so many things.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know anything,” she said, “I’m just good at figuring things out.” She turned to Raines. “Like I don’t know the device you found is a key that allows the salvager to cross the border, but it is a logical hypothesis.” She spoke the word “hypothesis” slowly, as if she was using it for the first time.
Raines chuckled. “Indeed it is, my dear. However, to verify your hypothesis, we would need to run some tests.” Raines looked at Jake. “Do I have your permission, Captain?”
Jake was still staring at Jane when he realized someone was speaking to him. “Captain” was still a title he associated with other, better people, like Marcus Coal. “Um, permission?” he mumbled to Raines.
Raines nodded. “You do realize what it means if this device allows the salvager to cross the border at leisure, don’t you?”
He nodded, but he was still thinking about Jane, and that she was right about something else: tha
t he still thought she might be the pureblooded Beta they were looking for. Was he actually afraid of her, or was it that he wanted to be afraid of her? Her resemblance to Stacy made her overly attractive to him, and maybe believing that she was something less than human helped him resist her.
“Captain?” Raines said.
Jake shook his head. “I’m sorry, what were you saying?”
Raines knitted his brows. “I said that if Jane’s hypothesis is correct, if the Counsel created a device that allows vessels to travel back and forth across the border, then we have all been lied to.”
“More than that,” AJ said. “It means that the Counsel has knowingly allowed dozens of vessels to be destroyed over the years, hundreds of people killed for no reason.” She stared at Jake, rage filling her eyes. “It means they are guilty of murder.”
Raines held up his hands. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves now,” he said. “We don’t even know if the box works, or if it does, how it works. Let’s hold off talking about murder until we find out more.”
“How can we test it?” Ash asked.
“Simple,” Vee said as she stepped closer to her grandfather. “We leave the device out of the salvager and let it go. See what happens the next time it tries to cross the border.”
“That could take a while,” Jake said, turning away from Jane so that he could concentrate on what was being discussed. “I agreed to call this robot-thing here, and I agreed to bring it aboard so that you could study it. However, following it around for the next few weeks, just to see what happens when it tries to leave the colony, is something I’m not willing to do. We’ve got limited—”
“I can speed things up,” Jessie nearly yelled. When she realized that she had interrupted him, she lowered her eyes. “Sorry, Captain. I didn’t mean to—”
“Go ahead,” he said, eager for an alternative solution.
“Well,” she said, “If someone can give me a coordinate outside the border that the salvager understands, I think I can transmit a generic ‘pick up’ command that will send it there.” She looked at AJ and then back to Jake. “We certainly wouldn’t have to wait long.”