by Mike Freeman
Stephanie wrapped her arms around herself.
“I think so. It just feels so unfair.”
He nodded.
Stephanie looked around the room.
“I mean, for everyone.”
Havoc frowned at this extraneous detail. She looked at him.
“You?”
“Fine,” he lied.
Stephanie put a finger on his chest, tracing a shape on his recce suit.
“You're going to look after me aren't you, John? Make sure nothing happens to me?”
He looked down at her. She stared at him, biting her bottom lip.
He felt something stirring.
“Yes.”
“I hear you play tennis?”
He laughed.
“Are you serious?”
47.
Violette Hwan wandered drowsily along the side of the dark hangar on disc five, trying to concentrate on the glowing instrument in her hand. She felt sleepy due to the sedatives she'd taken. She was helping Jafari to scan for relay transmitters. It was a mindless activity, which suited her perfectly.
She was still coming to terms with the revelation of her terrible secret. She'd always thought she’d be disabled by the shame of it. Instead, she felt a kind of release. It was as if she’d needed to touch bottom to push back up. She'd never realized the weight bearing down on her until it had lifted off.
She became aware of the readout from the instrument in her hand. Positive lock. She stopped, confused, as the military shuttle loomed overhead. She froze.
Someone was communicating in a locked down part of the ship.
It could only mean one thing.
Her heart raced ahead of her thoughts, a jackhammer blocking her senses. She couldn’t think straight – she felt befuddled with the sedatives. What should she do? She couldn't just stand there.
Whoever was communicating didn't know that she'd detected them. They might not even know she was here. Even if they did, if she kept moving they might not suspect she knew about them. But if she kept walking, she'd trap herself in the end of the hangar. She needed to get back to the spindle to cast for help.
Terror gripped her heart, making her nauseous. What was the right thing to do? The longer she stayed, the more likely she’d give herself away. Unimaginable horrors menaced her from the shadows.
Panic squeezed in on her, surrounding her on all sides.
Fight or flight?
48.
Weaver was in the science hab. Images of the towers, both inside and out, covered the walls. But Weaver wasn’t looking at those. She was looking, along with everyone else, at Fournier.
“Jed, are you alright?”
Fournier sat nearby, staring into space as he delivered a bewildering soliloquy of what was apparently nonsense, though with Fournier you could never be sure.
“...the idea that such a function will decohere is nonsense since the branching history presents the opportunity for the black walnuts to take root, but beware they inhibit the other plants though juglone release.”
Fournier stopped speaking. His eyes remained unfocused and his lips continued to move.
Weaver knelt by Fournier’s seat and spoke gently to him.
“Jed, can you hear me?”
Fournier’s eyes were vacant. He seemed lost.
Weaver reached for Fournier’s hand and squeezed it gently. Fournier slowly turned his head toward her. She could see it in Fournier’s eyes as he reinhabited his mind, like a returning family switching on the lights across the front of their house.
“What?” Fournier said.
Weaver blinked.
“What?”
“What you said.”
“What I said?” Weaver said.
“Do you remember what you said?”
“What?”
Fournier raised an eyebrow as he looked around the room. He turned back to her and patted her hand.
“You're alright now, my dear.”
She laughed nervously.
“Jed, you've just had some kind of episode. You were sitting here and talking. You mixed a lot of subjects together. Do you remember?”
Fournier's face turned serious.
“No.”
Fournier tuned out, but in an appreciably different way – he was accessing shipnet as he played back what had just happened in the room. The creases across Fournier’s brow deepened.
“Oh dear. Well, for the moment I am back.”
Weaver smiled sympathetically. Darkwood stepped forward and patted Fournier's shoulder.
“Good to have you back.”
Fournier nodded his head in acknowledgment.
“And to spare any further embarrassment, I have already classified myself as 'amber' in our happy scheme.”
The atmosphere was subdued for a moment. Fournier's nonsense monologue was a painful shard of reality in the otherwise soothing balm of denial.
Fournier gestured at the images of towers lining the walls.
“Shall we take the first step?”
There were murmurs of anticipation as the scientists spread across the room, ready to take up the challenge. They were drawn to the tower images the way reptiles were drawn to heat – the energizing effect was the same.
Weaver found it incredibly exciting. They were lucky to have all this information so quickly. Except that it wasn't exactly luck, of course.
Havoc was an enigmatic character. She knew he was an evil bastard, they all did. He was dangerous and he didn't have any morals. But he was also bold and decisive and they needed that. He was also, she hesitated to admit, a bit exciting and unpredictable.
She couldn't reconcile the man with his actions. What he was and what he'd done. It made her feel sick. She shook her head again. Her aunt always told her she had a thing for bad boys but this was ridiculous. There was something going on between him and Abbott's adviser Stephanie. His ex-fiancée, apparently. But it was her that had gotten to Havoc, she knew, during tennis and afterward when she lost it with him. She could tell. But why should that matter? He was a criminal and she didn't want to go near him.
She shook her head. Given her unique mind, she could get a lot done in a short time if she could only concentrate. She needed to focus. She took a deep breath in and out.
She was fascinated by the images captured by the sensors dropped into the Colosseum. Its walls were lined with symbols and notations. She had a solid inkling of what they were. She thought they were mathematics. She was going to try and map them to human representations on the basis that if anything would be universal, it would be this.
The Colosseum was three kilometers high and eight hundred meters wide. The ideograms, scripts and symbols blanketing the inside of the tower covered around seven million square meters. If it was a library of mathematics it could herald a breakthrough in human understanding.
Touvenay stood in front of a screen showing what appeared to be a map of Plash inscribed inside another tower.
“Shall we review in an hour's time?”
Kemensky walked over to a screen with images of discrete rows of symbols that lined another tower.
“Is that long enough?”
Weaver smiled.
“I don’t think we need to solve everything at once. Let’s say one hour. Discussion by cast. Otherwise, silence.”
Fournier nodded.
“To better hear the footsteps of God.”
Fournier was drawn to the 'coherent clouds' on the outskirts of Jötunn and stood by a screen that displayed the gaseous wisps on the boundary of the massive star. Weaver smiled at him then turned back to her own screen.
And so they began. Annotating images, making links, and, of course, concentrating hard. With a final look at Touvenay's map, Darkwood wandered out and left them to it.
Weaver started at the beginning of the curving path at the top of the Colosseum. The first images she looked at appeared to be enumerating different symbols. She decided it was a base thirty two number system. Beyond these symb
ols was a set of basic operators. She deduced that she was looking at a formulation of the Peano axioms used to define number theory. There were axioms relating to equality, describing its reflexive, symmetric and transitive properties. She identified the symbol that she believed represented zero. There were sets of axioms relating to and linking various operators, showing addition as associative and commutative, and the less-than operator as transitive but not reflexive. Weaver hadn’t been so absorbed by the most basic foundations of arithmetic since, well, ever. She made deductions and identified symbols and fed them into their shared mission net so that the others could build on her thoughts.
She came across the concept of infinity, the Plash symbol for the lemniscate, relations between different sizes of infinity and tools to manipulate them. She ventured into algebra and its operations and relations, terms, polynomials and equations and then sped into one of her own loves, geometry, mapping the concepts back to human formulations. At these early stages everything seemed accessible with straightforward mappings. There were only a few areas that were expressed in ways that were unusual or, it seemed to her, a little odd. What she did find both daunting and awe inspiring was how little ground she was covering on the wall of the tower for the volume of mathematics that was being revealed. She moved on quickly, trying to go broad and fast rather than study individual idiosyncrasies. She wanted to try and map as much as she could.
“You cover the ground quickly,” Darkwood said.
Weaver jumped in surprise.
Touvenay stepped forward, studying her marked up images and mappings.
“That is a perspicacious mind you have, Doctor Weaver.”
Weaver blinked, still re-entering the reality of the lab after her immersion in the playground of her mind. The hour had passed. She felt flushed and realized that her heart beat was elevated. Darkwood looked at her, interested.
She smiled at him.
“It's beautiful. Inspiring.”
Darkwood smiled back at her, delighted.
Touvenay nodded.
“Alright, everyone. Let's see what we have.”
49.
In the military shuttle, Tyburn gazed down at Hwan. She was paralyzed like a rabbit in headlights, her features illuminated by the glow of the sensor instrument in her hand. Tyburn watched her, his face expressionless.
> I thought you locked the entrance.
Ekker looked pained.
> So did I.
> The jamming?
> All the way to the spoke. What’s she doing?
Tyburn appraised Hwan.
> Deciding what to do. She's sedated to the eyeballs.
> You want me to take her?
Tyburn shook his head.
> Not yet. She might try and bluff us. If she goes further inside she'll trap herself more.
Hwan stood below them, frozen. Tyburn wondered which way she’d go. Ekker licked his lips.
> I bet you––
Hwan turned and sprinted back along the hangar.
> Go!
Tyburn opened the shuttle doors and launched out of the cockpit to the hangar floor. Ekker dropped close by.
Tyburn considered the options as both men accelerated after Hwan.
> The doors?
Ekker nodded on the run.
> Already done.
~ ~ ~
Hwan sprinted for the wide open doors, confident that she’d got away from whoever was in the shuttle. She needed to get through the doors, along the short corridor and drop into the spoke. The interference was terrible in the hangar. Once she reached spoke eight she’d be able to communicate with everyone.
Thank goodness she hadn't gone further in. The exit grew ahead of her. She would make it, comfortably. She’d be able to summon help.
The hangar doors began to close.
Oh no, no, no.
Her mind swirled in panic. They would try to kill her. She wondered what to do. She had to get a grip. She needed a way out. It came to her in a flash. The emergency transfer lock. They wouldn't be able to block it.
She curved right, sprinted along the wall and disappeared into one of the narrow passages between the equipment racks. She would work her way through the racks to the transfer lock.
She could still make it.
~ ~ ~
Tyburn and Ekker slowed to a loping jog, circling like wolves on the hunt as the main doors closed.
Ekker shook his head.
> This interference is a nightmare.
> Deal with it. I’m not risking her getting a message out.
> Is she going to hide in the racks?
The two men looked at each other as they had the same thought simultaneously – the emergency transfer lock. Neither man spoke as they changed direction. Ekker produced a pistol.
> Put that away.
Ekker looked questioningly at Tyburn.
> Put it away. We won't need it.
Ekker grinned. His pistol vanished as they looped toward the emergency transfer lock. It was a simple hunt now. They didn't need to coordinate it. One would go ahead while the other flushed their prey onto him.
Tyburn nodded with satisfaction.
> I can see her. She’s in the racks.
> Got her.
Tyburn spun his head as there was a click from the entrance doors.
Ekker glanced at him.
> Fuck. Visitors.
50.
Havoc checked in on Brennen as he made his way over to the sims for tennis with Stephanie.
The medical paraphernalia enmeshed Brennen completely – he looked like a fly bundled in a web.
Brennen moaned. It sounded like Brennen was in pain. Havoc checked his chart in his mind’s eye. Brennen was well dosed with hytelline, pretty much at the limit.
Havoc frowned. With the amount of hytelline in his system, Brennen should be wearing nothing less than a beatific grin. Brennen moaned again. It was probably delirium but Havoc wanted to be sure.
“Chaucer, this is Havoc. Brennen seems to be in pain. Can you check him for me?”
“Of course, darling, I'll head right over.”
51.
Violette Hwan skulked through the equipment racks. She turned a corner and crept to the end of the row. Ahead of her, the hangar curved into the narrow corridor that led down to the transfer lock. She felt a wave of relief and edged forward.
She froze as she saw a man standing just inside the lock. It looked like Tyburn.
Fear gripped her. She was trapped. She stood paralyzed for a moment. Her heart was beating too fast. How could she get out of here?
She needed to breathe. She needed to think, to calm down. She needed a plan. Thoughts started to trickle through – they couldn't keep the area locked down indefinitely and there were weapons in here. But they would easily spot her with infrared. She chastised herself for her negativity. If they’d seen her, she’d already be caught.
She felt a smidgeon of her resourcefulness return. She could climb the racks and hide until the others came. She resolved to work back a little and climb one of the central racks. If she could find a weapon, all the better.
She turned to see a man's silhouette standing over her. Her gasp died in her throat. She tried to run but nothing happened.
She couldn't move.
52.
United Systems: Top Secret, Compartmentalized 5
Coding Frame: XWTHVQ TransSlipkey: 601-EJKJS
[Full key omitted]
Timestamp: #661-439-224-191# (Recent-1)
Origin: Scarlet Barracuda
Status: Assumed Secure, Agent Intact
[no deception flags raised]
Coded transcript: Complete, follows
[streaming authentication omitted]
[Geographical data file #837-879-432SB# enclosed]
Scarlet Barracuda> We have tettraxigyiom contamination. Can you treat?
US handler> Will advise. Status update?
Scarlet Barracuda> Mission disruption achieved. Exploration slo
wed. Various sites of interest located – file enclosed.
US handler> Excellent. Given our proximity, goal is now total mission disruption. Disrupt alien artifact removal and advise any developments.
Scarlet Barracuda> Can you treat tettraxigyiom?
US handler> Will advise. Confirm your goal.
Scarlet Barracuda> Advise now. Can you treat? No use mad or dead.
US handler> Yes we can treat. Confirm goal.
Scarlet Barracuda> We need to meet on the surface. I require treatment urgently.
US handler> Negative. Postpone until mission secure and liftout.
Scarlet Barracuda> Negative. Minutes count. No treatment, no cooperation.
US handler> We will treat. Advise location when known.
Scarlet Barracuda> Will do. Confirm goal is now total mission disruption.
Handler Observations
1. No tettraxigyiom treatment available, agent utility high but timeframe potentially limited. 50% confidence of agent loss within one week.
2. Suggest reassess risk reward of near term interventions in light of point 1 above.
3. Medical has a fabricated treatment procedure prepared if required for a surface rendezvous.
4. Fabricated treatment procedure may provide other opportunities including Eaton Mess.
53.
Hwan looked up in terror at the man's silhouette looming over her.
> Mr Darkwood?
> Lucius, please, Violette. Are you alright?
Thank heaven, Hwan thought, breathing again. Relief washed over her. She felt so much better with someone else here. She grasped Darkwood's hand and established point comms.
> I think Tyburn was communicating from the military shuttle. I have the readings. I think there are two of them.
> What?
> We need to get out of here. I was trying to get to the emergency transfer lock.