by Josi Russell
“You go ahead,” they both said.
Ethan started again while Kaia stayed quiet. “According to these coordinates, we’ve been off course for months!”
“About 5 months, I’m guessing.”
“Exactly! How did you know?”
“Because an FTL tracking beacon was activated in the external comms center on Day 1755 of the voyage. It's been receiving navigational information from somewhere and transmitting that information to the tertiary nav room ever since.”
“What?” Ethan’s breath was coming quickly now. “FTL tracking beacon?”
“Yes. That comm cable I found led me straight to it. There’s a good chance that it’s overriding the system and taking us to Beta Alora. And Ethan . . . it’s way too advanced to be ours.”
Ethan was on his feet. “We’ve got to cut that cable!”
Kaia laid a hand on his arm. “We can’t, Ethan. Not until we find out what that beacon is doing there and what its override capabilities are. Cutting it may fry the whole nav system. Or it may be booby-trapped to do something worse.”
“Worse?”
“Someone took a lot of care to hide this. It’s wired into several key systems, and I’m not sure why. If we mess with it, it’s not impossible that the whole ship could be disabled.”
Ethan sank back on to the couch. “How do we find out how it got there?”
“I’m not sure, but I suspect that the information is in that box.” Kaia gestured to the computer terminal, with its oddly cheery flashing lights. “What does the computer make of the information?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“The computer can’t find any info on the module. It says the module is blank.”
Kaia looked at the screen, where the equations were still prominently displayed. “We could just have it read from the screen. It would take a while, but—”
“It can’t see that information, either.” Ethan interrupted. “It thinks the screen is blank.”
“What?”
“Computer, please translate the information on the main hold screen.” Ethan said, in order to prove his point.
“Information not found.”
“Please report what you detect on the main hold screen.”
“The screen is blank, Mr. Bryant.”
Kaia was looking at the screen in fascination. “Wow. Either it’s electronically shielded information or the computer itself is programmed not to see it. Electronic shielding is virtually invisible to computer systems. But that’s very very complex programming. Nearly impossible, in fact.”
“It sees the module, even what was on the module before you wiped it clean, but none of the new information.”
Kaia’s eyebrows drew together. “What are we going to do, then?”
“I guess I’ll just keep translating it manually. I may make some mistakes, but I think I can get the gist of it.”
“How long will it take?”
“Well, I don’t think I can translate everything, but if I’m selective, I should be able to get a good chunk of it done in a week. I’ll aim for the important stuff. Like the Navigational Coordinates, that sort of thing. Maybe the ship’s manifest will have something about this homing beacon. Maybe a clue as to where it came from or why it activated so suddenly.” He gazed across the hold. “If we can find out about it, maybe we can trace what its connected to and find out how to shut it off.”
Kaia looked doubtful. “That’s an awful lot of information, Ethan. You’ll have to sleep. You’ll have to eat.”
“I will.” Ethan shifted uncomfortably. “But, Kaia, I have to try. It would drive me crazy to just sit around here and watch us drift closer and closer to a planet we’re not supposed to go to.” He swallowed. “I keep thinking about the dimensional map. I keep thinking that we can’t be more than a few weeks away from Beta Alora. I want to know what we’re in for before we get there. Maybe, like you said, some emergency protocol was activated somehow, and the ship is responding by taking us to the nearest planet. If we can find out what that protocol is, we can determine if its valid or not. If it’s not, maybe we can steer the ship back on course before any more time is lost. But we can only do that if we find out quickly enough. Once we’ve reached the planet, I don’t know how hard it will be to get back on course. They’d have to have a spaceport for us to dock. . .”
Kaia interjected. “If we wanted to start again once we were docked, we’d have to initiate the propulsion sequences . . .”
Ethan nodded. “And—” he paused. “I don’t know if I can get us started again manually. The real Caretaker would have had that kind of training, but I—I don’t. I’d rather get us back on course without having to use the manual navigation system.”
She saw the burden of 4,000 souls in his eyes. “Okay. Get to work, then. I’ll get us some supper.”
Ethan shot her a weak smile and turned back to the journal.
Chapter 16
For the next several days, Ethan lived on the couch. He would eat his meals while walking around the hold, stretching his legs. As soon as the food was gone, he was back at the journal. The ship’s manifest ticked on, item after item. He worked steadily but only uncovered the most basic of information. When he reached the list of items in the cargo hold, he learned quickly to identify the symbol for “container,” used to designate each passenger’s box, and skipped translating the contents of each. That information was found on the ship’s main computer in English, so retranslating it seemed a waste of time.
Upon realizing that the main computer also had a manifest, Ethan would take a break from translating occasionally and cross-check his translation with the ship’s main computer. On the sixth day he finally found a rather glaring difference in the two records.
“Kaia,” he said, startling her from her own work. She was refitting the laser razor to be more compact and portable so that she could take it through the shafts. Her plan was to open all the panels along the length of the comms cable she’d found to see what else, if anything, it was linked into. “Come look at this.”
She crossed to the couch and gazed down at his journal, which was filled with curves and symbols almost beautiful in their complexity. He had abandoned flipping back and forth in the book and had developed a new system in which he read the equation from the screen, wrote the symbol in the journal, and then typed his translation into the holoscreen using the hovering keyboard. This made it much easier to cross-check with the computer, as he had a second holoscreen displaying the ship’s manifest next to the one he was working on.
“I found a discrepancy,” he said, pointing to the two screens. “The ship’s main computer has listed a whole section in the cargo hold full of weapons for the military contingent.”
“The nonexistent military contingent,” Kaia corrected him.
“Well, according to the new manifest from the tertiary nav computer, the contingent also has nonexistent weapons.”
Kaia squinted at the screens and saw that the section where the weapons were listed on the main computer was omitted on the translated version.
“The weapons aren’t even mentioned.”
“That raises a pretty significant question,” Kaia said, looking him in the eye.
“Right. Which of the two manifests is correct? Are the weapons here or are they not here?”
“I guess I’ve got another excursion.” Kaia was already headed for the door. She turned back to him. “You should come. It’s time for your break anyway.”
Ethan nodded. “Okay. I need to get out for a minute.”
Six days of intensive translating had made him stiff and achy. Perhaps a quick trip to the hold would work out some of the cramps in his muscles. He noticed the stretch in his body as he lengthened his strides down the long silver hall. He saw, from the corner of his eye, how Kaia had to take quick steps to keep up with him. Suppressing a smile, he started to take exaggeratedly longer strides. She nearly broke into a jog. He kept at it until she was a
lmost running to keep up. Then he broke into a headlong run toward the elevator. He heard her burst of laughter and then her pounding feet, surprisingly close to him. He pushed harder, but she was right on his heels when he barreled into the elevator and slammed into the back wall. She slammed into him, and he turned and caught her in his arms, laughing. Their breath was coming hard, and he felt her ribs rising and falling against his. Involuntarily, he pulled her closer to him, tickling her playfully. She squirmed as his grip tightened.
“Don’t—” she gasped, “tickle me! I can’t breathe!” Her voice was high and light, and he laughed.
“I won!” he said, still tickling.
“Okay! You won! But that’s just because you’ve been saving up all your energy sitting on the couch.” She twisted out of his grip and hit the button for the cargo hold.
As the elevator began to move, they leaned side by side against the wall, still laughing and catching their breath.
“Computer,” Ethan said, as the elevator stopped. “Project the map, please.”
The map appeared in front of them.
“Direct me to the weapons storage.”
A pulsing yellow line appeared on the map and they followed it through the hold. At the back, a huge door separated a walled-off compartment from the rest of the hold.
The door remained shut as they approached. “Computer, access code eight eight eight four,” Ethan commanded.
“Access denied,” replied the computer. The door remained shut.
“What do you mean, ‘access denied?’” Ethan barked.
“Your access to the weapons storage is denied, Mr. Bryant,” the computer explained with its customary circular logic.
“Wrong access code,” Ethan said, glancing at Kaia. “I’ll try the red code. That gets me into anything. Computer, access code vermillion four six.” Ethan opened his eyes wide in anticipation of the retinal scan that usually came along with that code.
It didn’t come.
“Access denied,” the computer responded again.
“Computer! What code do I need to access this storage hold?”
“You’ll need the military clearance code in addition to the Caretaker’s red code, Mr. Bryant.”
Kaia nodded. “That’s right. I forgot. The ranking ship’s officer also has a code. Both are needed to open this door.”
“But we have no ranking officer,” Ethan said. He realized too late how this statement might affect Kaia. “Sorry,” he said quickly.
“It’s okay.” She tried to smile at him. “It’s true. I don’t know where we could find that code.”
“Looks like this may be one mystery we can’t solve,” he said.
“Unless . . .” Kaia reached into the pocket of her coveralls. She produced a small, tapered tube. The new, improved laser razor. She looked at him her eyes full of anticipation. “It’s still calibrated for the exact thickness of the titanium walls.”
“How will it affect an entire arsenal of highly volatile weaponry?” he asked, though he wasn’t nearly as nervous as he had been about cutting through the walls near the navigation system. “Could you just cut the lock?”
“Too destructive. The door wouldn’t close again, so it would be flapping open for the rest of the journey. I was thinking we’d just make a little hole here. If we need to, I can solder it back closed later. That also keeps us well away from anything explosive.”
He could tell she was itching to try it, and the closer he got to the unknown planet, the more he wanted reassurance that they had the ability to deal with any unforeseen hostile situations.
He gestured toward the door. “Okay. Crack it.”
She moved forward and carefully aimed near the bottom of the door. The laser was silent as it sliced a round-cornered hole just large enough for them to get through. The piece fell inward with a crash as the last corner was cut.
Chapter 17
The room was dark and cool as they moved through the opening. The automatic lights didn’t turn on until they stood up. The room was big, but not as dramatically big as others on the ship. It was maybe three times the size of the Caretaker’s hold, with large shelves holding giant metal boxes. In contrast to everything else on the ship, which looked new and shining, the boxes looked as if they’d been knocked about a lot. They'd also experienced some heat; random scorch marks marred the boxes.
Ethan immediately sensed that Kaia was disturbed. “What is it?”
“These should all be big glass-fronted weapons lockers. We should be seeing the whole arsenal of particle guns and mini-bombs and . . .” She walked to one of the boxes, laying her hand against its tarnished surface.
“The whole room has been modified to hold these.” She ran her fingers over the side of the box. Ethan walked up to stand beside her and noticed an incredibly complex locking mechanism holding the box closed. It was a sort of keypad, but the buttons were arranged in oddly diagonal rows and had strange markings on them.
“What are the chances of cutting into one of these?”
Kaia shook her head. “Too risky. I have no idea what they’re made of or what they contain. Could be explosive or—” He saw her shiver.“Organic.”
“Organic? Alive?”
Kaia nodded. “Who knows? I couldn’t cut through them without knowing what’s inside.”
Ethan knew she was right. “Well, then, a mystery within a mystery. Could it be possible that the weapons are in these boxes? Maybe they tried a new shipping technique with this ship?”
“Possible,” Kaia said doubtfully. Then she glanced at Ethan with fearful eyes, “But, Ethan, look at the locks. They’re not—“ she hesitated and put a slightly trembling hand up to the keypad. It was immediately obvious that her hand would not fit comfortably on the keys.
“Not made for humans,” he finished.
Hearing him say it chilled both of them.
Kaia dropped her hand and turned away from the box. “Maybe there’s some diplomatic reason that we’re transporting alien cargo. Or maybe the boxes contain gifts for the human race.”
“Maybe.”
Kaia’s face brightened. “But, Ethan, if the contents were dangerous, they would never have made it on board. I mean, there are really strict regulations about what’s allowed on passenger transport ships.”
“Right.” He tried to sound convinced.
“No, really—you can’t get dangerous items even close to the spaceport. Much less on the ships—”
“Dangerous items like energy pistols?” He looked her in the eye.
Kaia stopped, taking that in. “Okay. That’s a good point. But a little energy pistol is a lot easier to sneak on board than forty huge crates.”
He shrugged. “Depends on your connections, I guess.” Turning back toward the door, he continued. “Anyway, there’s nothing we can do about it right now. I should get back to work on the data upstairs. At least now we know that the Tertiary Nav system’s manifest is more correct than the main ship’s computer. Unless the alien boxes are, for some reason, filled with human weapons, there are no weapons on board.”
“Except my energy pistol.”
“Except,” he conceded, “your energy pistol.”
As they slipped back through the hole in the door, Ethan remembered the modified grooming laser. “Hey,” he said as he reached down to help Kaia up after she came through, “nice work with that laser, by the way.”
She beamed. “I am pretty proud of it. It seems to be working well. I gave it a portable power source, so it’s much more useful now.”
“Should you need to slice through any more walls in the ship.”
“You never know.”
“Well, just don’t get too excited with it.”
They finally made it back to the hold, and Ethan grabbed a steak and fries before settling back to his work again. He went back to the manifest and checked out the cargo hold. This time when he looked at it, he noticed something new. At the end of the cargo manifest were several equations he’d sk
ipped, thinking they were passenger box contents. Perhaps translating them would solve the mystery of what was in the big tarnished boxes. His excitement was quelled quickly, though, when he graphed them and realized that the symbols were not familiar to him at all. He was almost sure they weren’t pure Xardn. Rather, they looked like some of the modified symbols found in the branch languages. He felt sure that they held some clue, but for now he was out of ideas on how to determine their meanings.
Frustrated, Ethan navigated back to the main menu. He’d sorted through as many of the Navigational Coordinates as he could stand, and now he felt out of leads in the List of Items.
He expected no surprises in the List of Human Cargo, but he liked the idea of finding Aria’s name in Xardn, so he entered the list and skipped to the last column of equations. The last passenger he assumed was himself, so he quickly jotted down the equations for the second-to-last passenger on the list and began charting it with the glyphtol. He wrote the symbols:
To his disappointment, it simply read Human, Female, 24 Spaces of time, Pregnant. Her actual name wasn’t on the roster at all. In fact, none of the passengers names were there. The roster simply listed the characteristics of each. As Ethan scanned through the columns of descriptions, something about the equations began to puzzle him. Quickly, he sketched the symbol for the word passenger on the open page of his journal.
Then, carefully, he counted the cusps and did some calculations. The result were the parametric equations:x(Ɵ)=(53-124)cos(Ɵ)+(205)cos(((53-124)/124)Ɵ), y(Ɵ)=(53-124)sin(Ɵ)-(-205)sin(((53-124)/124)Ɵ)
He cross-checked it with the symbol before every passenger description. It was a different equation. He reached for the glyphtol and began to chart, a tightness growing in his chest. Kaia, fiddling with a bundle of wires on the other end of the couch, glanced up and noticed his new intensity.
“Find a clue?” she asked lightly.
His voice was anxious as he answered, “Maybe.”
Sensing his anxiety, Kaia went back to her work, waiting. Seconds passed as Ethan moved the glyphtol over the paper, the laser burning its path. He slid the instrument to the side and looked at the remaining symbol in horror.