I follow the glass corridor until I get to the short walkway leading to the greenhouse lift. I pause before I get on and look out of the windows. Although it’s daytime, we’re enshrouded in dark clouds making it look like nighttime. Air pollution.
The lift hums as it takes me up one level. I let myself into the greenhouse and seal the door behind me. I inhale the moist air deeply. My whole body relaxes as my shoes crunch on the familiar path.
I make my way through the familiar mini forest, taking the long route through the center of the dome. Here I stop at the small pond that is surrounded by faux stone benches. I look into the pond and see instead of its usual clear water and happy fishes, a brown, lifeless pool lies there. I stand back and take a closer look at the rest of the forest around me. Yellowing leaves, dead underbrush, and limp flowers have replaced the natural splendor that I remember.
I hurry toward the classroom and fling open the door. Ms. Germain looks up, her hands sunk up to her elbows in dirt.
“You startled me, dear.” She uses one arm to wipe sweat off her forehead, leaving traces of the dirt that clings to her.
“Sorry. I was just worried about you. The trees and the pond—” I let my voice trail away.
My professor’s expression is tired and worn, but she straightens up and wipes her hands on a towel. She leads me over to the small wooden table usually piled high with coffee and tea supplies. Now it has several school tablets and some strange tech equipment perched on it.
I look around. “Where are the others?”
She sits down and leans back in the real wood chair. “It’s only you now. The others needed extra ‘essential’ classes right now.”
I plop down in the chair opposite her. “Essential? I thought this is one of our core classes.”
“It used to be.” She looks away.
“Then why am I still here?”
She looks back at me, her vivid green eyes piercing right through me. “Because you finished most of your classes already.”
I glance at the pile of student tablets. “Only my Year One classes like everyone else.”
She shakes her head, dislodging some of the dirt smeared on her cheek. “During your summer cruise they uploaded most of your Year Two classes as well.”
A sharp twinge shoots through my neck as I turn quickly toward her. “You mean that’s why it took me longer than Kai to finish my classes this summer?”
A hint of a smile plays on her face. “He had extra ones also. Just not as many as you. I routed your work through a special career track.”
My jaw drops. I stare at her lined face as my mind thinks back to all the classes I took this summer. I close my mouth and narrow my eyes at her. “Is that why I was taking extra environmental and leadership classes and my friends weren’t?”
She nods slowly, her eyes drifting to the strange equipment on the table. We sit there in silence for a moment.
Then she suddenly leans forward, staring at the screen. She stands up and her eyes dart around the cluttered room. I notice she’s pushed the student tables into one corner, leaving the middle of the room draped in plastic. Dirt and pots lay scattered all around.
“Come with me.” She hurries past me and presses a spot on the wall behind us. With a soft snick a skinny door opens.
I stand up as she waves frantically for me to join her. I hurry over and she pushes me into a small room. Lights automatically come on showing me a room very unlike the one we just left. This one is windowless, bright white and nearly empty.
She steps over to a bench with ropes attached and sits down.
I just gawk at her.
“Sit down and hold onto the ropes.”
I numbly obey, not used to her talking this way. A prickling sensation at the back of my neck keeps me quiet. The bench is bolted to the floor, with a matching one just a few feet from us. The only storage in the room is built in underneath each bench.
I’m about to ask what the heck is going on when I feel the bench move underneath me. I tighten my grip on the ropes and look toward Ms. Germain. She’s holding on tightly, her gaze fixed on the floor.
The ropes burn into my hands as the whole room is thrown sideways. I let out a small cry. When the movement slows down, I remove my hands from the scratchy rope and rub them together.
“What was that?”
“Earthquake.” Ms. Germain lets go of the ropes and inspects her hands.
“Seriously? That machine told you that far ahead of time there would be an earthquake?”
She nods without looking at me and opens the door. We step back into the clutter and I just stare at her. She moves around the room picking up pots and tools that I think may have already been scattered before the earthquake.
My tablet pings, and I dig it out of my pack. It’s Kai.
“Are you all right?”
I type back quickly. “Yes. You all?” I know Rand and Philip are in class with him.
“We’re fine. What was that? The whole building shook, and they made us go under our desks. Just like the bomb drills in grade school in China.”
“Ms. Germain said it was an earthquake.”
Cam comes to mind, and my heart races. I look up to where Ms. Germain is stacking empty pots. “Ms. Germain, can you tell if this earthquake was just around here or if our families are in danger?”
She looks up and glances at the machine on the table. She sits down and pulls out a virtual 3D keyboard and starts typing.
“Do you have offsite access that we could reach our families? I need to make sure my little brother is all right.”
Without looking up she says, “I’m sorry, they’ve blocked my outside access too. I just have this machine that they’ve hard-wired into the school’s data connect.”
Although I’ve studied enough spaceships to be able to take any of them apart and put them back together, I’ve never seen a machine like this before. “This doesn’t look like a seismometer. I’ve seen older models, ones they used before we had sat tech.”
Ms. Germain’s hands go still on the virtual keyboard. She glances up at me. After a few moments she swipes the keyboard away and turns toward me.
“Looks like it was fairly isolated to this area. I’m not sure where your little brother is, but there aren’t any damages recorded within several hundred kilometers of us.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “You already know that? What if the people in the camps out in the canyon felt that quake and are just too isolated to report it yet?” Pain wraps around my chest as I picture the people down in Hells Canyon living in tents underneath the looming lava cliffs. There would be no protection from falling rocks if an earthquake hit.
She gets up. “This machine is very precise. It was an extremely localized tremor. Only within a few kilometers of the academy.” She picks up her own tablet and starts typing. “I’m sending the results to the commander. He says there wasn’t much damage inside the academy either.”
The lights flash red. I glance down at my tablet. “Shouldn’t we still be in class?”
Ms. Germain puts down her tablet. “They’ve released us early for lunch so we can deal with any fallen items around the school.” She smiles as she looks over the mess on the floor.
“Need help cleaning this up before I go?”
“No. This is a work in progress.” She grins and her shoulders relax as she starts digging into the dirt and forgotten plants.
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning, then.”
She waves absently, already absorbed in her thoughts.
I walk slowly through the greenhouse. It strikes me as I brush past a sick tree that I didn’t get any concrete answers about why the greenhouse looks like it’s dying. Tomorrow. One huge problem at a time.
I head straight for the space dock.
Kai and Philip are waiting for me. Kai greets me with a warm hug. I relax into him, not realizing just how tense I am after the earthquake.
I pull back reluctantly. “Are we ready? Where’s Rand?”
“He’ll meet us in the ship.”
The three of us hurry around the outer walkway. Through the observation windows I see that the Kagawa is the only ship in the dock.
We make sure the outer doors are sealed before we enter. I shiver as the chilly air envelopes us as we step inside. I study the outside of the spaceship as we approach, our footsteps echoing on the metal decking.
“Over here.” Kai leads us over to the destroyed engine. Everything looks the same as before. Except for the mangled landing strut, which has been temporarily strengthened with pieces of junk metal rods.
The burn marks still cover the side and down the middle of the engine. I get a whiff of the acrid smell of scorched metal. I wrinkle my nose.
“At least they haven’t started repairs yet.”
“I put in a request to quarantine the ship,” says Philip. “Since the dock crews are on minimal shifts, they were happy to leave it alone.” He pulls out a small scanner. A green line of light shines out of it.
“Great idea. I’m surprised they actually responded to your request.”
“The dock mechanics are quicker to respond than the commander,” Philip states, frowning.
I nod. “We’ll meet you inside. I want to get into the nav system to see if the ship made any unscheduled stops before picking us up.”
Philip doesn’t take his eyes off the scanner. “Will do.”
Kai and I scramble up the ramp and head toward the main console. As we walk past the rows of passenger seating, the console comes into view.
I gasp. The top of the console is shattered, shards of glass scattered all around the area. Wires hang down from inside panels that have been ripped off.
I look at Kai. His eyes are wide and he’s shaking his head. “Someone didn’t want us to boot up this console.”
“Great. Can we still do diagnostics without the main console?”
“I’m not sure.” Kai takes a vid with his tablet of the damage. Then he pushes away the glass on the floor with his foot before kneeling down. He pries one of the damaged panels off.
“What in Jupiter’s name happened here,” exclaims Philip from behind me.
I jump and smack him on the arm. “You startled me.”
“Sorry.” He rubs his arm. “But seriously, what happened?”
Kai stands back up. “This wasn’t done by anyone who knew what they were doing. They left all the important connections alone. They only pulled ancillary wires and comm cards.”
He holds up a nest of wires as he leans over and pushes a button on a part of the glass console that isn’t damaged. Lights flash all across the console and the vid screen above cycles on.
“Let’s see what this girl has recorded.” Kai connects his tablet to the damaged console with one of the dangling wires and steps back.
8
The Kagawa
The three of us stare up at the blank vid screen. Lines and shadows cross as the console uploads data from inside the ship. Reboot code scrolls across half the screen.
“This might take a few minutes.” Kai sits down at one of the seats that’s free of glass.
“I’m going to check out the other computer consoles,” says Philip. He heads out of the main room.
I turn and survey the damage done by whoever didn’t want us to find evidence of sabotage. A sabotage to cover a sabotage. I walk over to the seating area. The vid here is twice as large for all the passengers to be able to view. I stand in front of the seat that my father was buckled into when I confronted him. It feels so long ago, but it’s only been a few months. I had recorded him confessing to escaping his confinement on Luna. As well as to stalking me and my brother.
Kneeling down, I run my fingers over the gouges made by the extra restraints used on my father. Even strapped in with a five-point locked harness and shackles my father managed to reach a signal blocker implanted into his wrist. Thankfully, Commander Svell had foreseen something like that happening and had given me a closed-circuit recorder.
I stand up quickly and walk over to Kai.
“Can you send me the maintenance logs for this ship from right after we had my father in custody?”
Kai types the command into his tablet. “There you go. What are you looking for?”
“A secondary recording system.”
“Secondary? Why would they do that?”
“Because of what my father did.” I scroll through the logs and find the date range I’m looking for. I open it up.
“Did you find something?”
“Yes. There’s a note that they upgraded the security system and added a local data receiver.” A cold shiver goes up my spine.
“I already found it.”
Kai and I turn to see Philip behind us, holding out a data chip.
I take it and hand it to Kai, whose tablet is tethered to the console. He inserts it into his tablet, and we watch as the vid overhead glows with flowing lines.
“Let’s use the big vid. This one is fried.” Kai turns in his seat.
I stand back next to Philip as we watch the large vid screen light up with a still image of the inside of the ship. Kai fast forwards until the chrono in the corner shows the date we landed. Then he slows it down, letting the motion program search for movement in the vid.
We watch days of nothing. True to the commander’s word he didn’t send mechanics into the ship.
Then the vid slows to normal speed as a man dressed in black shows up and heads straight to the main console. Kai freezes the frame. The figure wears a cold weather jacket and hood that hides most of his features.
“Recognize him at all?” Kai asks.
I shake my head. “Can’t really see much of his face. Philip?”
“I’ll run his features through the space net.”
I turn toward him. “You have space net access?”
He grins. “I hacked into the dock computer. It’s required to have space net at all times because of the ships coming and going.”
“Nicely done, Philip. You have a bright future as a space hacker.” I laugh.
He pretends to glare at me.
“Seriously, though. We need to make sure you’re on the same ship as us. I don’t think I’d want to be out there in space without you watching our backs.” I smile at him.
He looks up and smiles back. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”
Kai stands up and stretches. “Think you could reach my father?”
I study Kai for a moment while Philip finishes typing. Kai acts relaxed, but there’s a tightness to his shoulders that wasn’t there before.
I hold up a hand. “Why do you ask?”
“If he has access, we should take advantage of that. Right?”
“Right. I agree with that. But there’s something more. What did you see in those readings?” I nod toward his tablet.
He sighs and runs his hand down his face. “We haven’t had a chance to talk much about the earthquake a few hours ago, but the experience reminded me of something.” He sits back down and types into his tablet. The dark figure on the large vid disappears and is replaced by a colorized map of the region.
“Because of the space dock we also have access to sat imaging.”
I look between Kai and Philip. “You both are turning into hackers. Should I be worried?”
Kai smiles. “No. I definitely don’t know as much as Philip does, but I do know about research files and data streams when I see them.” A red dot shows up in the middle of the screen. “The commander has been compiling data of these so-called ‘earthquakes’ the past few weeks and compiling it.”
I step closer to the screen. “I bet it has to do with that strange machine Ms. Germain has in the greenhouse. I’ve never seen anything like it before. But the readings on the monitor kind of look that chart there.” I point to the corner of the screen where a vid has a moving line chart scrolling across it. “What is that?”
“I have no idea.”
“I might be able to help with that.” Ph
ilip flips his tablet around to show us a map similar to the one above, but this one has geographical features and yellow dots on it grouped together.
I study both maps, turning my head back and forth. “The yellow dots seem to be near populations. And the colored areas on Kai’s map seem to be localized around the academy and the base?” I glance over at Philip.
He nods. “Yes, but I’ve never heard of earthquakes acting like that. Staying around cities or man-made structures. Have you?”
Kai shakes his head. “We had quite a few earthquakes back home, but they seemed to hit at random locations. Maybe four the whole time I lived there.”
“It does seem strange they’ve had so many in the last few weeks.” I narrow my eyes at the large screen and the data scrolling across. “If we assume they aren’t earthquakes, what could cause such shaking and be condensed in one area like that?”
Kai comes to stand next to me in front of the large screen. He overlays the population map that Philip found. The red dot in the middle of it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. So close to the academy.
“Could these be attacks of some kind? Like what Sean experienced?” Kai asks.
I turn my head sharply. “What do you mean? Like explosives?”
He grimaces. “Bombs or large explosives could account for the kind of shaking we felt, possibly. I don’t know. I’m just trying to figure out what all this means.”
“We might have another problem right now.” Philip’s voice sounds several octaves higher than normal.
I turn toward him. “I’m afraid to ask.”
His eyes are wide as he runs his fingers across his tablet. He looks up to the screen.
We turn toward the vid and I recognize the outer dock corridor. A figure walks hunched toward the entrance to the dock. The cameras switch and the figure is inside next to the Kagawa. He looks around, his face still in shadows.
“What is that person doing?”
“Manually opening up the ship. This vid was taken after the console was already broken and the power panels destroyed for all but this room.”
We watch as the emergency hatch next to the main ramp opens little by little. The figure squeezes inside and then repeats the process to close the hatch.
Earthlight Space Academy Boxset Page 45