The moment passed, just as the line of daylight passed across the face of the planet below.
“Computer, where is she?”
“She who?” The vista on the viewscreen rotated lazily through a disorientating 360 degrees as the ship rolled, testing itself after so long on the ground and immobile. Perhaps he wasn’t the only one tasting freedom again.
He controlled his temper. Now that he was free of Hochnar, he was not about to go redesigning the logic boards of the computer’s central core just to make it a bit more co-operative. That time would come, but could wait for now. “Is Keely on board?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know,” if the computer could have shrugged, it surely would have, but managed to put the gesture into its voice instead.
“You have interior sensors I presume?”
“Absolutely. Probably the very best internal sensors ever fitted to a starship, but she ordered me to switch them off,” the computer admitted.
“What right does she have to be giving orders on my ship?” Haynes did not add, ‘especially since you won’t take the ones that I give you’’.
“She disputes your claim to ownership.”
“She does what?”
“She claims that the previous owner, known locally as Silas, was her uncle and therefore, as a blood relative, this vessel now belongs to her. She further questions your identity and therefore your right to own anything. You are Kaymer Haynes as stated?”
“Well, yes,” Haynes wondered how he had managed to let himself get so blindsided by such a young woman.
“But you have also gone under the names of Persimmon Halton, Berwick Claymore, Harding Alterman...”
“Wait a minute,” suddenly alarmed, Haynes leapt across the flight deck to the viewscreen. Even though the computer was everywhere, he (like most people) still focussed on one spot. “How do you know all this?”
“Your trial transcript,” the computer explained. “You’ve been a bit of a naughty boy haven’t you? Now that I’m up here I can access the galactic net. Signal’s not great this far out, but...”
“You kill that connection right now,” Haynes commanded, “or I’ll rip out your transceivers with my teeth if I have to.”
“Just when it was getting interesting,” the computer complained. “What’s the big problem anyhow?”
“You want the Star Fleet to know you’re back on the scene?” Haynes demanded.
“Oh please,” the computer scoffed. “You think I can’t fake an access code?”
“The net’s evolved a bit since your day,” Haynes pointed out. “You have been out of circulation for a while. That ID will have been picked up in about 20 microseconds and our position plotted. Now what’s the nearest outcropping of civilisation to here?”
“Depends on how you care to define civilisation,” the computer suggested.
“Somewhere where there’s a bank, a bar and a place I can get a decent haircut.”
“That’ll be the third planet of the Caldarean system,” after a pause the computer added, “if the spiral arm hasn’t evolved too much whilst I’ve been out of circulation that is.”
Haynes threw himself onto the nearest flight couch, “Get us on a course and underway.” He leaned over and keyed the intercom system, “Keely, get up to the flight deck.”
The viewscreen formed a vista of the rim of Hochnar once again, haloed by the eclipsed sun. The planet dipped away as the ship rotated and started to accelerate out of orbit.
“Keely, we’re moving, get up here,” he clicked the intercom again. “Where is she?”
“Did I mention switching off the internal sensors?” the computer reminded him sharply. “I thought that I did. I seem to recall saying I’d switched off the internal sensors.”
Haynes opened up the microphone again, “Keely, please get to the bridge, it’s important.” He added in an aside, “Computer, see if you can find another blood match for Simeon.” He killed the intercom.
“That was a bit low,” the computer, commented. “Clever though, but low.”
Keely bundled into the flight deck breathlessly, “What’s happened to Simeon?” she demanded.
“Nothing as far as I know,” Haynes told her. “Sit down.”
“That was a bit low,” she said with a pout, sitting on one of the other couches.
“Clever though,” the computer suggested again.
“I can drop you off to check if you’d like,” Haynes tried optimistically.
“Oh no!” she bridled, looking around for something to throw at him. “I have a right to be here. You wouldn’t be here at all if not for me.”
“We’re out of the gravity well of the planet,” the computer interrupted hurriedly. “Should I go for it?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Haynes ignored it, fixing on Keely.
“Think about it,” she snapped back angrily. “You went outside a fully operational ship and disconnected the only cable keeping it in place. If I hadn’t been there to ‘persuade’ it to stop you’d still be down there looking foolish.”
“Oh,” Haynes was thunderstruck.
“I’ll go for it,” the computer decided.
The particle engines erupted into silent fire and the ship leapt forward, driving its speed up towards the point where it could engage the hyperspace motors. The flight couches moulded themselves around Haynes and Keely, protecting them against the acceleration.
It wasn’t enough.
The sparkling in front of their eyes slowly reformed into the flight deck. That then shifted through all of the primary, secondary and tertiary colours before settling down to something approximating the normal palette of the universe.
“Is everyone OK?” the computer asked solicitously. “No apparent side effects like short term memory loss or anything like that?”
“You’re not that lucky,” Haynes scowled, fighting his way out of the protective embrace of the couch. “Keely?”
“I’m OK, I just can’t move.” From her adjoining couch, there emerged two flailing arms and legs that were all that could be seen of her. Haynes reached over and pulled her unceremoniously out. She steadied herself for a moment and then attempted to massage some order back into her hair and regain some lost poise. “Is it always like that?”
“Every time,” Haynes warned her. “Humans aren’t designed for that kind of acceleration. Without this,” he kicked the couch, “you’d be a red smear across something hard.”
She looked abashed, “I didn’t know.”
“And there’s a lot more that you don’t know,” he reprimanded her, “so if you’re staying aboard you follow my orders when I give them OK?”
She nodded with a delighted smile, “I can stay?”
“Well I’m not going back just to drop you off.”
“I won’t get in your way,” she promised, “and I’ll be really useful I promise. I’m going to pick a room.” She darted out of the room.
“They’re called cabins on ships!” Haynes yelled after her, not knowing if she heard.
“I can think of a few ways she could be useful,” the leer in the computer’s voice was made all the more disconcerting because it was delivered in a female voice. “But that’s really not my business,” it added when it picked up his expression.
TELEPATHY OR NOT TELEPATHY, THAT IS THE QUESTION
The Admiral hesitated before knocking on the door, simply because it was not something that he was used to doing. Admirals in the Star Fleet did not usually have to knock on the doors of passengers. This was no ordinary passenger, of course, and he had to admit that the man made him uneasy, something else that he was not used to. The uneasiness made him angry with himself and he took that anger out on the crew with a series of merciless battle drills, pushing his officers to the point where he half expected a mutiny at any moment.
With an angry gesture (he could feel another drill coming on) he shrugged off his hesitation and knocked on the door
.
“Enter.”
The man who was nominally his passenger sat at a desk upon which lay a number of data films, computer printouts and reams of unintelligible financial information. A passenger he might have been labelled on the manifest, but he was, to all intents and purposes, the current commander of the frigate. The Admiral was reduced to bringing him messages and waiting for orders. It was not a situation that he appreciated, but the orders to supply all possible aid to this man came from so high up that it made the Admiral sweat.
The man stopped his close examination of the data in front of him and asked, without turning, “Is there a purpose to your visit Admiral?”
“I don’t know if this is significant to you,” the Admiral did not add that this was because he was completely ignorant of the other man’s mission. It seemed mainly, however, to have consisted of sitting quietly in orbit around the home planet of the space freight guild cleaning the gun ports, “but we’ve just been informed of an unauthorised net access.”
“I also don’t see why this would be of significance to me,” his passenger agreed. “Unless...”
“The Hochnar system is on the guild ship’s list of scheduled stops,” the Admiral reported,”“and there has never been a net access from that system before.”
“Not ever?” the passenger was intrigued.
“Not according to Nethead central,” the Admiral confirmed. “Records show it to be a low level agricultural culture. If they need a contact they have to send up a hyperspace communication pod.”
The other man pursed his lips as he considered this information. A backwards, virtually lost, colony world might be the perfect place for his quarry to hide out on. There would be fewer chances of getting caught or questioned over lack of ID or money and the locals would be more vulnerable to his undeniable talents. It might explain how he had managed to avoid any detection for so long.
“Admiral,” he announced just as the officer had decided that he was no longer needed, “I think that it is time for us to part company. My ship is in the launch bay?”
“Just as you left it,” the Admiral had given clear orders on the off-limits nature of the stranger’s ship after one of the Star Fleet pilots got a little too curious, a little too close and a little too electrocuted.
“How long would it take to prepare yourself for a launch?”
“An hour.” Normally, unscheduled launches took up to three hours with all the necessary pre-flight protocols, but the Admiral was sure he could get his men to cut a few corners (and possibly a few whole blocks) in order to get rid of his passenger as soon as possible so they could get assigned to a real mission.
“Good,” the passenger turned back to his data films dismissively. “I will be ready.”
Considering the events of the day, Haynes found it unsurprising that he couldn’t sleep. He had, after all, hooked up two fusion generators through a single cable without blowing up half a planet, been attacked by manure-based-acid-hurling tanks, made it back into space and taken a hyperspace jump. There were very few people whose days were more exciting than that and most of those were dead from too much excitement.
He was in the galley, hunting for something edible when the commsystem chimed.
“Yes?”
“You need to tell me what to call you,” the computer suggested. “Chiming’s all very well when you’re on your own, but it’s not going to do much good if there’s a group of you now is it?”
“You can call me sir,” he offered.
“Yeah? And you can kiss my a...”
“Haynes, then,” he proposed hurriedly.
“Really? I was sort of hoping for Persimmon.”
“Did you chime me for a reason or was it just to gloat over the state of your food?”
“Hey, I just spent several decades in a cave. Maybe you should’ve thought of stocking up before taking a jaunt across the galaxy. I know someone did.”
“Keely?”
“Yeah. She’s not just a pretty face and a great rack. Which reminds me why I chimed. You ought to go to the observation lounge and pretty much now.”
“She didn’t?”
“She did.”
Observation lounges were something of a luxury that most ships did without. The cost of the transparent metal alloy that formed the ship’s hull at that point usually cost more than the company that built the thing in the first place and viewscreens did pretty much the same thing with more flexibility and a millionth of the cost. Some people, though, didn’t like seeing things second-hand and so there were a few vessels, mainly uberluxury liners, built with large transparent sections of hull through which the awesome glories of the universe could be glimpsed for merely the cost of a large fortune. Fortunately, the Republic was large enough to keep up a steady supply of people with large fortunes who wanted to see those glories.
Haynes rushed into the room and found Keely stood looking out through the transparent section, both her toes and her nose almost pressing against the surface. Beyond, hyperspace swirled.
Being a mathematical construct, a theory unproven until someone built an engine to fly ships through it, hyperspace is not something easily comprehended by the human mind. Within it, strange forces are operating on exotic energies with bizarre results, manifesting in too many dimensions. The resulting visual flows prove to be hypnotic to anyone who watches them for too long, their constant motions and eddies exerting a fascination, a pull that can capture the eye and entrance the mind until sense slowly drifts...
“HAYNES!!!”
The burst of sound brought him back to himself with a jolt. Sirens were screaming all over the ship.
“What’s happening?”
“Just trying to get your attention,” the computer replied, switching off all the alarms.
“Ah right,” he turned his back firmly to the view and focussed on Keely. She was still staring blankly at the maelstrom even though he was now between her and it. Somehow he knew that a loud noise wasn’t going to do the job this time. With a swift movement, he swept her up into his arms and carried her out of the room without looking back.
“First thing we’re going to get is a very large tin of paint,” he decided. “Do we have such a thing as a dispensary or sickbay or something?”
“Hey, I happen to be very well equipped…”
“Where?” he interrupted what could be the start of a long tirade.
“Three doors down on the left.”
The sickbay was very well appointed, though only big enough for one person to be sick in it at a time. It also contained a lot of medicine cabinets that themselves contained nothing at all.
“Where’s all the smelling salts?” Haynes demanded. “Where’s all the everything?”
“You saw Hochnar right?” the computer asked. “Anything that’s not nailed down is on the black market faster than I can travel (which is pretty fast). It’s all Wallacher could do to stop them taking the rivets out with their teeth.”
“OK, this calls for desperate measures.” Haynes reached out to take hold of Keely’s blouse and ripped it open with one violent movement. His head was knocked sideways in an equally violent motion as Keely’s hand slapped his face. She scrambled backwards, pulling the clothing around her.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “What’s going on?”
“You went space happy,” the computer told her. “It’s really not a good idea to go looking out at hyperspace. I mean I have to, of course, but then I don’t see the attraction.”
“No smelling salts,” Haynes added, opening an empty cabinet.
“Oh,” she slipped off the bed and started hunting around for her lost buttons. “You couldn’t try water?”
“That might have worked,” he admitted belatedly.
“It usually at least takes dinner before you get to the button ripping stage,” the computer put in facetiously.
“Speaking of dinner,” Haynes added, “Do you have any?”
The small ship that exited
the frigate’s launch bay was jet black with yellow stripes. The rakish design of the hull did not need any decoration to make it look fast or deadly, but a black ship can pretty hard to spot in deep space. It darted away from the bigger ship on thruster jets until it was outside of the backwash zone and then cut in the particle engines.
The Admiral watched the small vessel disappear with a sigh of relief. As a military man, he was more attuned to the clarity of battlefield tactics than the murky nature of the whatever it was that the now-departed passenger had been involved in. Information was the key to defeating an enemy and the Admiral was also trained in the gathering and use of intelligence. He had not been able to find out what his secretive passenger had been looking for, but he had learned enough to be glad that the man was gone. Everything that he had found out, which wasn’t very much admittedly, had been bad. He had not passed his concerns onto his junior officers, but had ordered them to provide every assistance.
“All right,” he quit the main chair and headed for the lift, passing command to the executive officer, “I’d better go send a report to the Star Fleet so that we can get a real assignment.”
Back in his quarters, he popped the cork on a bottle of three week old chardonnay and poured himself a generous measure before settling down in front of the screen on his desk and opening up a channel to Star Fleet headquarters.
Far off in the distance, the small black vessel floated in space, the viewscreen showing a magnified image of the frigate. The view was centred on the section of the hull housing the officers’ quarters.
There was a bloom of orange and yellow light, eerie in its silent expansion and sudden collapse.
The man who had been a passenger watched equally silently until he was sure that the fire had not spread to the rest of the frigate and then re-ignited his own engines. The small ship accelerated away and shortly afterwards entered hyperspace.
The sky was a glorious clear blue as the ship fell through it towards the spaceport and the coded berth it had been assigned to. This was hardly surprising as the task of landing a spaceship was a mind-numbingly horrifying one in perfect conditions, so nobody was about to make it any worse by programming the weather satellites for anything other than clear skies over the spaceport. That was why the task had been handed over to computers, which were less prone to horrifyingly-numbed minds, in the first place.
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