The Galahad Legacy

by Dom Testa

  “Okay,” Triana said. “Great work, Roc. Thanks. For each of you tuned in to the tripcast, I’ll be available as we begin preparations. Feel free to contact me if you’d like to discuss any of this.

  “We’re not alone, as you know. Roc has identified thirty-two vultures that made the jump with us, and they’re right outside. We have no reason to fear them. Their job is to gather data and report what they learn. If you have concerns, please see me.”

  She looked up as Lita entered the room and stood just inside the door, her hands clasped in front of her, waiting. Triana couldn’t decipher the expression on her face, but after a few years of working together she understood the body language: “When you’re finished, I have something to show you.”

  “For the time being,” Triana continued, “we need everyone to remember what it took to get here, and what it will take to finish the job. This is not the time to let up, to neglect any duties or responsibilities. If anything, we need everyone on their toes, alert to anything that might fall through the cracks. Our radiation shield is still intact, and we’re safe.”

  With a smile, she added: “And we’re almost there. Can you believe it?”

  By now all of the Council members noticed Lita’s pose near the door. Triana closed out the tripcast and stood up.

  “Something to share, Doctor?”

  “Oh, I’ve definitely got something to share,” Lita said. “But you need to see it to believe it.” She walked out of the room, then turned and waved at the others to join her. “C’mon.”

  * * *

  Whatever her secret, Lita didn’t seem particularly worried about it. She made small talk during the short walk down to the Clinic. Channy filled her in on Roc’s report on the Eos system, and Lita agreed that Eos Three sounded like the wise choice. Gap asked a few questions about the medical effects of the Channel jump, but as far as Lita could tell there hadn’t been any significant problems among the crew. A handful of people had called her, but they seemed to only be looking for reassurance that the odd motion sensation was normal and widespread.

  “You can practically hear their sigh of relief,” Lita said with a grin. “I don’t think we have any actual hypochondriacs aboard the ship, but some people just need to be put at ease. In fact, I think that’s about seventy percent of a doctor’s job.”

  The party of five entered the Clinic and made their way down a short hall. Lita pulled up outside the door to one of the labs, and raised her eyebrows.

  “Ready for this?”

  The door swished open. Even from outside, Triana could see what had Lita so energized.

  “What is this?”

  Lita looked into the room, then back at Triana. “It’s exactly what it looks like.”

  They walked in slowly and gathered around a small glass tank. Inside, floating in a solution of supercritical fluid, was a jellyfish. It was much smaller than Torrec, perhaps six inches long, and its bell-shaped head was a pale blue color. It bobbed toward the top of the tank, then slowly settled to about the halfway point and appeared to hover.

  Triana spoke to Lita while keeping her eyes on the Dollovit. “I think I understand now. This used to be the small piece of Torrec’s appendage that you removed, correct?”

  “Uh-huh. I took a small section, maybe about an inch long. From that I sliced tiny little pieces for our tests, but I kept the primary fragment in this tank, filled with solution from Torrec’s original. One of my assistants came in here a little while ago to grab something, and just about wet herself.”

  Gap walked to the other side and squatted to look directly at the jellyfish. “Did Torrec give you any kind of heads-up about this?” he asked.

  Lita crossed her arms. “Let’s just say that he didn’t seem concerned at all about offering a chunk of one of his tentacles. And now I know why. Not only did that missing chunk grow back for him, but the piece I took off performed what’s called rapid cellular regeneration. Emphasis on rapid.” She nodded toward the tank. “At least now we know how the jellyfish population replenishes itself.”

  Triana muttered something under her breath, then said: “Torrec wouldn’t have volunteered the information. He’s very good about answering questions, but everything with him is direct. A direct question, a direct answer. He rarely offers unsolicited information. And you’re right, now we know why he was so quick to agree to the biopsy.” She let out a long breath. “Have you tried communicating with it?”

  Lita smiled. “Talon, this is our Council Leader, Triana.”

  The voice that came from the nearby speaker held the same mechanical qualities that Torrec had exhibited. “Greetings, Triana.”

  “Talon?” Triana said. “His name is Talon?”

  “No,” Lita said. “He told me that his name was Torrec. I guess each derivative of a jellyfish keeps the same name as the original. But I told him that was much too confusing for simple creatures like us, and I asked if I could give him a nickname. He has no idea what a nickname is, but agreed to answer to something else.”

  “Why Talon?”

  Lita shrugged. “No reason. I just wanted something else that started with T, and that was the first word that came to me.”

  “I think it sounds cool,” Channy said. “Talon.”

  Gap straightened up and looked at Triana. “Okay, so we have vultures and jellyfish with us at our new home. I guess we think of Talon as the first Dollovit ambassador to Eos.”

  Again, Triana felt irritation. It seemed that more advanced species felt no need to ask permission when dealing with the galaxy’s children. They could come and go as they pleased.

  And yet, she reminded herself, without the Dollovit and the Cassini they likely wouldn’t have made it this far.

  With a slight nod of her head, Triana said: “Welcome, Talon. Please let us know if there’s anything we can do to make you more comfortable.” It sounded clumsy to her ears, but seemed to fit the required protocol. She gestured for Lita to step outside with her. Once in the hallway she hooked a thumb back toward the jellyfish.

  “Any idea of how we contain this little guy when he begins to grow? Where do we get more of that fluid?”

  “It’s one of the things I asked him before I left for the meeting,” Lita said. “He told me that he can curb his growth to match his environment. But he also said that the Vo can get him more fluid. Because of the oxygen in the atmosphere they won’t be any help once Talon reaches the surface of the planet, but I think they’ll work something out long before that. In fact, they’ve probably already worked it out.”

  “I’ll bet you’re right,” Triana said. “Okay, I’ll be—”

  She was interrupted by a Clinic assistant who hurried down the hallway. “Triana, I think you’d better get in here. Mathias is calling, and says it’s important.”

  Lita looked at Triana. “He’s in the Storage Sections, prepping everything for the transport.” Without another word, they hurried back to Lita’s desk, where Triana snapped on the intercom.

  “Mathias, what’s going on?”

  “Tree, we were going through each of the cryogenic canisters, getting an exact head count and an inventory.”

  “Are the crew members okay?” Triana asked.

  “Yes, they seem to be fine. But after we confirmed all of that we started looking through some of the empty canisters. You know, they weren’t all used.”

  “Right. And…?”

  “Well, they were all completely empty. Except one.”

  Triana looked at Lita, who muttered under her breath: “Not another cat, is it?”

  “What did you find, Mathias?” Triana asked.

  “We found where Dr. Bauer was hiding out in here. A few of his things are in there.”

  He paused, then added: “Including a journal. I … uh … well, I glanced through it, and…” He seemed unsure of how to continue.

  Triana scowled. “C’mon, Mathias. What is it?”

  “Well, I know he was crazy, but if he was telling the truth in this journa
l, we only have a matter of days before the ship is blown to bits.”

  27

  Triana’s head pounded as she took the lift to the lower level. She remembered her dad fighting through a tough stretch of mysterious headaches that the doctors could never figure out, but they ended almost as abruptly as they’d begun. While her mother battled migraines in her teenage years, they ceased to be a factor in her twenties. Triana used to silently tell herself that her mother had defeated the headaches by ignoring them; her mother, she rationalized, made an art form of ignoring things.

  But the throbbing in Triana’s head was clearly brought on by hearing a name she thought was consigned to her past: Dr. Fenton Bauer. The mad man who slipped aboard Galahad before its launch, and who came within minutes—and feet—from achieving his sinister goal, was back. Not in physical form, perhaps, but in objective. He’d wanted to cripple the ship and terminate the mission before it even reached the orbit of Mars. A victim of the insanity brought on by Bhaktul disease, as well as a festering relationship with his own son, Bauer had been foiled by a determined Council and the quick thinking of Triana Martell.

  Her spirits, which had been so high just minutes earlier, sagged at the thought that he might succeed after all.

  Mathias was waiting when she walked off the lift. “Where was it?” Triana said as they marched toward the open Storage Section.

  “One of the bunks in the male dormitory, about five up from the floor. Couldn’t see his stuff from the floor, so we didn’t discover it until we were up on a ladder, examining the chambers. And there it was.”

  The first few rooms were beehives of activity. Crew members were busy cataloging everything, from materials and tools, to the sleeping passengers. Several gave Triana a nod and kept on with their business. She moved to the base of the ladder and looked up.

  “We left everything where we found it,” Mathias said. “I saw the last entry in the journal and called you, but we haven’t removed anything yet.”

  “Thanks, Mathias,” Triana said. Biting her lip, she took hold of the ladder and pulled herself up. She glanced at the sleeping figures as she climbed past, noting how peaceful they appeared. Theirs was a dreamless world, devoid of pain, fear, and sadness. For a moment, gazing at them, she envied their innocence; they journeyed without the weight Triana felt, without the responsibility.

  But the feeling soon passed. For they were helpless in this condition, and that was something Triana would never bargain for. Life on Galahad might be dangerous, but she much preferred to tackle the danger head-on, to rely on her wits and skills to survive.

  When the next rung brought her to the fifth level, she felt a shiver pass through her. The cryogenic chamber was in disarray. The hastily arranged bunk, with its disheveled blanket, held a number of personal items. Triana saw a collection of assorted food wrappers, obviously smuggled in from the outside. A jacket, nearly identical to the ones worn by the Galahad launch team—and no doubt used to camouflage Bauer’s entry to the ship at the late hour—was wadded into a makeshift pillow. And the journal.

  Mathias had left it near the ladder. Triana hesitated, unwilling to touch it, sickened by the hatred affiliated with it. Then, holding on to the ladder with one hand, she reached out and flipped the pages. The first entry that caught her eye was startling:

  Zimmer is responsible for the fire which will consume Galahad. Through his insidious nepotism, he has brought shame upon his so-called “last chance to save humanity.” It is nothing more than a vehicle to continue the Zimmer line. It is salt in the wound to a father whose son has been rejected for another.

  Bauer knew. He knew. Triana couldn’t believe that Zimmer would have told him, but the two men had, at one point, been close. Or at least Zimmer had thought they were close. After months and months of long, tension-filled days, it might have slipped out, perhaps during—

  No. Dr. Zimmer knew the pain that racked Dr. Bauer, the torture he felt over a splintered relationship with his own son. This couldn’t possibly have come up, not even in one of their weary, late-night meetings.

  It was beside the point. Somehow Bauer had discovered Zimmer’s secret, and the knowledge would have pushed him over the edge, made him vulnerable to Tyler Scofeld’s hostile rhetoric. And Triana saw now that it had driven him, in a Bhaktul-ravaged fit, to sneak aboard the spacecraft and plot its destruction.

  She flipped through the pages, mostly assorted rants, with one devoted to celebrating his access to the ship. There were multiple entries alternating between fits of rage and self-satisfied comments on his late-night sabotage.

  The unworthy star children will wake up in the morning to realize that this is truly a death ship. Damage to their crops is only the beginning. Access to the ship’s computer has been easier than anticipated and, as we planned from the beginning, there is no security to speak of. I will go down with the ship, but I’m ready. Bring on the darkness, darkness that can only mask the pain.

  Dr. Bauer’s pain was a potent mixture of mental anguish, caused by the troubled relationship with his son, and the destructive physical torment rained down by Bhaktul. While she grimaced at the evil design, Triana at least understood the ingredients of Bauer’s insanity.

  The last page of the journal—surprisingly legible, given the scientist’s deteriorated state—outlined one final, chilling vision.

  Tonight it ends. Triana will learn the truth at midnight, and shortly afterward her short journey comes to an end, the only end this mission deserves. And, should things not go as planned, everything is in place to assure—with no chance of failure—the cataclysmic eruption of this vessel. Fire will cleanse the galaxy of this detestable human race and sterilize it before it contaminates another world.

  Before I leave tonight I will settle on the date that will be the most fitting. Either the one-year anniversary of Galahad’s launch, or perhaps the next celestial alignment of the Earth, Saturn, and Eos. There would be something poetic in that, I believe.

  Or, if this is to be a profoundly personal statement, there’s always Marshall’s nineteenth birthday, which falls close to both of these dates. I’ll decide which of the three resonates within me as the truth, and commence the steps necessary to ensure that Galahad leaves a blistering mark in the night skies over the doomed inhabitants of Earth.

  Let it be done.

  Triana stared at the calm, coherent reasoning of Fenton Bauer. It was hard to believe that the end result would be the murder of so many innocent people. He’d truly been insane.

  She scrambled down the ladder, clutching the journal in one hand, and thanked Mathias for his work. In the corridor she stopped to inform Roc that an emergency Council meeting would take place in the Conference Room in twenty minutes. Foregoing his usual sarcastic banter, Roc agreed to circulate the news.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later they began to arrive. Channy and Lita walked in together, concern etched on their faces. Gap followed moments later. He threw a quick glance at Triana, but she was absorbed in the data scrolling across her vidscreen. Bon was two minutes late, but that merely allowed Triana time to confirm her research.

  When she was ready, she looked up from the screen and said: “We have a problem, and I won’t sugarcoat it. Dr. Bauer has apparently rigged this ship to blow up.”

  She quickly shared the final entry from his journal. The Council members passed around the actual book, and Triana watched the sickening horror register on their faces.

  “Marshall,” Lita said. “I take it that was his son?”

  Triana nodded.

  Gap laced his fingers together on the table. “This is incredible. He wanted us to fall into some sort of routine, to get happy and content … and then wham! With no warning whatsoever. That’s just plain evil.”

  “Could he do this?” Channy asked, pushing the journal across to Gap. “I mean, could he have fixed something to blow up?”

  Triana looked grim. “That’s one of the things I’ve been speaking about with Roc. Roc,
you wanna explain this?”

  “The bad news comes in three stages,” Roc said. “First, Dr. Bauer had unlimited entry to Galahad throughout the construction process, so he knew how to access every square inch. He could, quite literally, have arranged an explosion or breakdown on any part of the ship, and that includes within walls, floors, ceilings. For that matter, he could have rigged something within the guts of our ion-drive engines. We would need to practically dismantle the entire ship in order to isolate it. And remember, in space it doesn’t take much damage to create disaster.

  “Secondly, we have no idea what to search for. I’m sure that he hasn’t relied on traditional explosives. Knowing the way his mind worked, in fact, he would have relished the fact that it was a creative ending.

  “And finally,” the computer said, “we don’t know for sure that he’s even followed through with these musings. It’s possible that he never arranged for any of these, or that he ended up doing something completely different. There are too many unknowns.”

  Bon was the last to scan the journal’s page.

  “I’m assuming you’ve run the dates on these events?” he said with a cool gaze.

  “That’s what I’ve been doing,” Triana said. “Dr. Bauer listed three potential dates for our destruction. However, one of those dates has already passed. Allowing for time dilation, the celestial alignment he mentioned—Earth, Saturn, and Eos—would have occurred back home about seven weeks ago.”

  She could see the shudders that passed through the Council members; she was sure it was the same spine-chilling sensation that she’d experienced as soon as the data popped up on her screen. To think that they’d sailed through a potential doomsday, oblivious to the vile schemes of a long-dead former colleague …

  “That leaves two possible dates,” she said. “The one-year anniversary of our launch, which happens in exactly fourteen days. Or the nineteenth birthday of Bauer’s son, Marshall.” She shook her head. “And that is, believe it or not, in sixteen days.”