“It was a DNA thing,” Vince protested. “It was legit.”
“And who did you offload it on?”
Vince looked away, mumbling something under his breath.
“What was that?” Brent insisted.
“All right, I gave it to Mrs. Albertoni when she looked after Algernon that time. She seemed thrilled. Said she’d stick it on her fridge with a magnet.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Ellen asked.
“Algernon’s our fish,” Vince explained. “Mrs. Albertoni lives above the office. She feeds the fish sometimes if we’re all tied up.”
Ellen folded her arms. “I don’t give a damn about all that. I want to know why you people are incapable of concentrating on the task at hand.”
“It’s a gift,” Brent shot back. “We try not to squander it.”
“I’m trying to tell you where the salvage ship went,” Ellen said. “It’s important.”
“Then spit it out,” Brent replied. “Come on. We don’t have all day.”
“Oh boy.” Ellen took a deep breath, flaring her nostrils. “Right. Salvage vessel, The Twang, headed for Kamalon 3.”
“No!” Rawlgeeb placed his hand on his chest. “A dreadful place. We can’t follow it there. We simply cannot go anywhere near it.”
“Then the ship made a sudden course correction,” Ellen went on.
“Thank goodness.” Rawlgeeb relaxed. “So, where did it go?”
“Krisk.”
“Oh no!” Rawlgeeb cried. “Almost worse.”
“Will you can it with the amateur dramatics?” Brent demanded. “What’s so bad about Krisk?”
Rawlgeeb shook his head. “It’s no good. I can’t tell you. My information may be valuable, but you’ll say it’s ridiculous.”
“Try me,” Brent replied. “Kamalon 3 and its moons are Gloabon-run, so it’ll be good to get your perspective before we go anywhere near.”
“Very well.” Rawlgeeb paused. “They say that Krisk is a cursed moon, its surface roamed by the spirits of all those Gloabons who died in captivity on Kamalon 3. Their souls have been tormented beyond endurance, and now they wander the darkened valleys of Krisk, searching in vain for the one thing that will allow them to rest: the fabled G Seventy-three, the Requisition Form of Eternity. It holds many questions, but when they reach its final, golden checkbox, the trapped souls will, at last, be free.”
Brent patted Rawlgeeb gently on the arm. “My friend, you were right.”
“Good. I’m glad that you found my insight useful.”
“No, you were right about me finding it ridiculous,” Brent said. “I haven’t come across such a steaming pile of fanciful nonsense since I last filed an insurance claim, and let me tell you, that takes some beating.”
“But, what if it’s true?” Vince asked, wide-eyed. “There’s a grain of truth in every myth. What if there really is a Krisk curse?”
“Poor bastards,” Brent drawled. “Trapped forever in a tongue-twister.” He scraped his hand down his face. “Give me strength. I’m not bothered by ghost stories. I’ve dealt with whole armies of hollowed out zombies, all of ‘em shuffling endlessly from one place to the next, hungry for something they can never obtain. And I lived to tell the tale, didn’t I?”
“You’ve visited one of the Irradiated Zones,” Rawlgeeb said thoughtfully. “That was brave.”
“No, I took a trip to Walmarcostcopia two weeks before Teal Wednesday.” He shuddered. “I don’t know how I got out of there, but when I came to my senses the next day, there was some asshole at the door trying to deliver a hot tub. I had to fake my own death to get out of the repayment schedule, so don’t come to me with your scary mumbo-jumbo, Rawlgeeb. It’s time to strap on your big-alien pants, we’re heading to Krisk.”
CHAPTER 15
Andel-Kreit Coalition Ship The Kreltonian Skull
Undergoing Trial Run
Destination: Unknown
Zeb pressed his fingertips against his temples. If he’d been fitted with sweat glands, no doubt they’d have been in full flow by now, but as it was, his primary neural net was registering at least five distinct temperature warnings. If he didn’t locate the mysterious stealth ship soon, he’d have to request a recharge break and leave the sensor recalibration to Dex.
“Science Officer, progress report,” Commander Xander called out.
“I estimate that I’m eighty-five percent of the way into solving twenty-three percent of the problem,” he replied. “Although there’s an error margin of thirty-six percent in that estimate. Give or take a percent or two.”
Captain Stanch and Commander Xander exchanged a look as if each was waiting for the other to speak first.
“I think what the science officer is trying to say,” Dex began, “is that we’re on the right track, and we should have an update for you within the next…twenty minutes. Isn’t that right, Zeb?”
“Well, I…” Zeb’s voice trailed away as he saw the way Dex was staring at him. “Yes, sir, the chief engineer’s assessment is correct.”
“Very good,” Stanch said. “Keep at it. Forget about the other teething troubles for now and concentrate on finding the stealth vessel. All I need is that ship.”
Ensign Chudley turned around from her post at the comms console. “Oh, I know this one.” She sat up straight, raising her voice to add, “And a star to sail her by.” She looked around the bridge expectantly. “No? Is that not what we’re doing? Only, with this earpiece in all the time, I sometimes miss…never mind.” She turned back to her post.
Dex clicked his fingers. “That’s it. Ensign Chudley has just given me an idea. Zeb, wherever that ship is going, it’s probably using a very similar nav system to ours.”
“A reasonable assumption,” Zeb replied, “though I can’t see any useful way of progressing from that point.”
Dex hurried over to the navigation console. “Lieutenant Turm, is it not the case that all coalition and Gloabon vessels use the same type of long-range sensors to calculate their positions?”
Turm nodded slowly. “There are some variations if you take into account the older vessels in the Kreitian fleet, but what you say is true for all ships built in the last few years.”
“And those sensors generate very precise pulses, do they not?” Dex asked.
“Yes, but they’re very low power,” Turm replied. “They’d be very difficult to detect.”
“Difficult,” Dex cried triumphantly, “but not impossible. Am I right?”
Zeb cleared his throat. As a cybonic lifeform, the gesture was completely unnecessary, but he found it sometimes helped when communicating with his fellow officers. “I’m sorry, Dex, but on this occasion, your ambition exceeds your grasp. Our sensors are simply not powerful enough to identify such small signals reliably.”
From her post, Ensign Chudley muttered something that sounded like, “Bloody typical, my idea goes nowhere,” but no one else took any notice, so Zeb ignored the interruption. “One of the main problems is that our own navigational signals would swamp our sensors,” he went on. “It’s like trying to hear a pin drop into a haystack while you’re playing dust storm jazz at full volume.”
“So we’ll turn our nav systems off,” Dex shot back. “Think about it. We can identify the other ships in this sector and cross-reference them with the nav systems we detect. There’ll only be one that we can’t match. It’ll be a certainty. But we can’t do it while our own system is operational. All we’ll get is white noise and interference. We have to disable our dynamic nav signals.”
Xander gasped. “Outrageous! It’s against every reg in the book, and with good reason. To turn off our nav sensors would be to invite disaster.”
“To be fair to the chief engineer,” Zeb said, “it’s only against fifty-seven regs, or perhaps sixty-three if you count the appendices. Not all of them. Breaking every reg at once would be hard, although now that I think about it, it could be quite an interesting challenge.”
“
No, Zeb, it really wouldn’t,” Dex warned. He turned to Stanch. “Well, Captain, what do you say?”
Stanch nodded thoughtfully. “Firstly, Commander Xander, thank you for your assessment. I value your input.”
Xander acknowledged Stanch with a curt nod. “Thank you, Captain.”
“I value what you have to say,” Stanch went on, “but on this occasion, I choose to disregard it. Commander, I’m sorry, but in matters of this nature, I’ve learned to trust the chief engineer’s intuition.”
Xander’s cheeks tightened, the scales of her cheeks glinting in the cold beams from the overhead lights. “Sir, with respect, if we disable our navigation, we endanger the entire ship and its crew.”
“Your observation has been noted, however, on The Skull, we are prepared to operate under any circumstances, pressing ahead despite the loss of critical systems.” Stanch turned to Lieutenant Turm. “Nav, take a full set of navigational snapshots, and give me a safe journey time using just that data.”
“Aye, Captain.” Turm’s hands darted across her console. “Captain, our safe journey time would be three minutes. Andelian minutes, that is. Would you like that in Kreitian time units too?”
“No. Andelian is fine.” Stanch paused. “How about if we alter our projected safety threshold a little?”
Turm frowned. “Sir? You’d like a safer estimate?”
“No. A less safe one. Slightly less safe. Say, a ten percent chance of incurring damage.”
“Calculating that now, sir,” Turm said slowly. “I’ll just need a minute…or two…to, er, input the parameters and…that kind of thing.” She cast a look at Dex and Zeb, her eyes pleading for help.
Commander Xander let a hissed breath escape from between her tight lips, but she stared straight ahead, her eyes fixed on the main display screen.
“If I may suggest something,” Zeb chipped in, “I believe that I could capture all the navigational pulses in this sector within thirty seconds of our nav system being deactivated. After that, we can safely switch our navigation back on. It won’t give us enough data to locate the stealth ship precisely, but it will prove whether the concept works.”
Dex clapped his hands together. “Yes! And if we’re on to something, we can keep repeating the process until we get somewhere.”
“Or we fly into an uncharted asteroid,” Xander said, “or a rogue satellite, or the wreck of a ship, or some kind of space-time anomaly. I could go on.”
“Yes, but please don’t,” Stanch said. “Zeb, are you ready?”
“Aye, Captain. Sensors primed and…oh, hang on. They moved the frequency controls. Got it. Standing by.”
“Nav snapshots complete,” Turm called out. “Course is locked and is within safe parameters,” adding under her breath, “whatever those turn out to be.”
“Disable dynamic nav system,” Stanch commanded.
Turm nodded. “Dynamic nav is off.”
“And scream if you want to go faster,” Zeb shouted.
Dex shot him a look. “Zeb, what have I told you about humor?”
“Sorry, I sensed a little tension on the bridge, and nothing alleviates stress like a good belly laugh…” His voice died as he caught the full force of Xander’s glare. “Or I could just get back to the sensors.”
“That would be optimal,” Xander replied icily. “The clock is ticking.”
Zeb cocked his ear. “Is it?”
“Metaphor,” Dex said, turning the word into something like a cough.
“Interesting.” Zeb tapped idly at his console. “Okay, it seems to be working.” His brow furrowed. “What? That’s incredible!”
“Report!” Xander snapped.
Zeb held up his hands. “Well, it turns out that there are at least thirty-eight synonyms for time passing in Andelian, but more than twice that number in Kreitian. Why is that, do you think?”
Xander opened her mouth to speak, but Dex headed her off. “I’m sure the results of your scan are almost complete, aren’t they, Zeb? I mean, you have been running the analysis the whole time, isn’t that right?”
The silence hung heavy in the bridge as Zeb looked around the room, his lips moving soundlessly. “Well…yes, of course, I have. My neural net is capable of billions of operations a second, I can hold a conversation while simultaneously watching a monitor. I could probably perform a little light juggling at the same time if you think it might help.”
“Just…tell us the results,” Dex said slowly, his voice stretched tight, “and, under no circumstances, at any point, are you to juggle while serving on the bridge. The last time was bad enough.”
“Not at all? Not even at Klumzel?”
“Not even then,” Dex replied. “Do you have the results or not?”
Zeb rolled his eyes. “Sir! Results coming through now, sir.” He jiggled his head. “Here they come. Yes. Got it! We can turn the nav back on.”
“Dynamic navigation initiating,” Turm called out.
“And that takes only a second, doesn’t it,” Stanch stated uncertainly. “So all systems will be operating normally in no time.”
“Usually,” Turm replied. “However, we seem to be experiencing a slight delay. It appears that something is shorting out a circuit between the bridge and the navigational signal generator.”
Dex dashed to her side. “Show me. Where’s the short?”
Turm pointed to her display.
“I knew it!” Dex cried, sprinting to the door. “It’s that flecking drinks’ tray. I wondered where it had gone. It must’ve slipped into the cabling conduit.”
Zeb hurried after him. “I’ll help.” And as he exited the bridge, he pulled the tip from the index finger of his right hand, revealing a hardened alloy blade. The access panels for the cabling conduit were secured with a hexagonal Torx nut, but he had the right tool for the job. And if all went well, they’d have the navigation system back online in seconds.
CHAPTER 16
Earth
Surrana tensed. Someone was approaching the room. Were the security guards arriving after all? In three strides she was at the bedside of the unconscious Gloabon, ready to defend her. But in her moment of confusion, her senses had played tricks on her; the footsteps were not coming from the corridor. She wheeled around as a door at the other end of the room swung open, and a young man in a lab coat shambled in. He was smirking to himself, but when he saw Surrana, he froze, his gaze fixed on her bolt pistol.
“How…?” he started to ask, but his jaw went slack, and an incomprehensible mumble slipped from his quivering lips.
“Who else is in that room?” Surrana demanded.
The man’s throat bobbed. “No one. Well, except…you know.”
“No, I don’t.” Surrana’s eyes narrowed as she sniffed. The man oozed fear, the sour, sickly tang of it hanging in the air so thickly that Surrana could almost see it. “I asked you a simple question. Answer it.”
“But, I don’t understand.” He nodded toward her weapon. “How about you put the gun down? We both know how this is going to end. Better to give in quietly, and then they’ll go easy on you.”
Surrana looked him in the eye. “What’s your name, human?”
“Donny.” He tapped the name badge on his breast pocket. “Donny Pendleton. Remember?”
“No. But here’s what you’re going to do, Donny. Open the door, nice and slow, then step back into that room. I’ll be right behind you.” She smiled. “I hope that’s all clear because if you try my patience in any way, I will shoot you. Several times.”
Donny hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “Give me a second. I have to put in the code.”
Surrana nodded, then she watched as Donny tapped a sequence into the keypad. “Inside. Slowly.”
“Okay, I’m doing it.” Donny stepped into the doorway, and Surrana dashed forward, grabbing him by the shoulder with one hand, pushing him inside, while with her other hand, she swept her gun around the room.
“Oh no!” Surrana’s chest tightened as u
nwanted memories came flooding back: the white, windowless walls; the hushed whir of air-conditioning; the cloying stench of disinfectant. And the beds. The hospital beds ranged down the room in two precise rows, each bed draped in a white sheet. There were sixteen beds, and all but the one nearest the door were occupied. The inmates were Gloabons, and all of them lay still, tubes and cables running from their immobile bodies to banks of control panels set into the walls. But her gaze went to those poor creatures who lay on her left. Their right arms were exposed, and on each forearm, a tattoo was picked out in red, the neat ink dark against the green skin. A single word and a number: Surrana 2, Surrana 3, Surrana 4.
Bile rose in her throat, and she pushed Donny away from her, shoving hard. He stumbled, grabbing onto a bed frame for support, but he turned to face her. “Listen, if you put that gun down, I’ll fix your bed up and we’ll get you settled, all right? What’s your number?” He hesitated, his head twitching as though he wanted to look over his shoulder but daren’t take his eyes from her. “Are you Sixteen? I could’ve sworn you were all tucked up. I don’t know how you got past me, but–”
“Shut up!” Surrana bared her teeth. “I don’t know where these Gloabons came from, but I want them out of here, now.”
“What?” A bemused smile flickered across Donny’s lips. “They’re out for the count. They’re not going anywhere, and neither are you.”
“Wrong. How do I wake them up?”
“You can’t.” Donny seemed to find some reserve of courage, and he squared up to Surrana. “This has gone far enough. I’ll have to put this in my report, and Mr. Halbrook won’t be pleased. He’ll have you punished for this. Now, show me your arm.”
Surrana studied his expression for a moment. There was something to be gained here, some piece of the puzzle that this man could provide, and she lowered her weapon, turning her arm to show him her tattoo.
“What the hell happened to you? Wait…” The color drained from Donny’s face, and when he looked up, his eyes were round with fear. “Shit! It’s you. You came back.”
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