“We have,” he said. “And what happened to the passengers you were carrying?”
Ethan drew in a sharp breath and let it out. “They’re gone,” he said, feeling weak. His voice trembled, and he cleared his throat.
“Were they taken prisoner?”
He opened his mouth and then closed it. The answer seemed to dance in the fog somewhere on the edge of his reality. What. Is. Missing.
“They didn’t take prisoners,” Nuko said, her face drawing tight as she answered for him. “There were explosions, and I don’t remember it all clearly. I don’t think anyone in the habitat container could have survived it.”
“Did you look for survivors?” He didn’t look at Nuko when he asked.
“Of course, they did,” she said. “It’s why my crew is alive.”
“What about your passengers on the ships?”
“I don’t have the license for human livery,” she said. “There weren’t any passengers on the Sun.”
“All of our passengers were in the habitat container,” Ethan added. “It came apart. Nobody came home.”
Coldwater nodded. “You’re saying nobody survived, except for your people?”
“How many times do we have to go over this?” he snarled.
“I understand it’s hard to lose a ship, Captain Walker. And it is hard to lose a payload, especially when it is full of passengers.” His voice almost sounded like he meant it, but his eyes darted between them like this was still just a charade.
He measured them in lightning flashes then shrugged it off. “How long did you remain and search for survivors?”
“We were there almost a week making repairs,” Nuko said.
“In that time, you never saw the ship that attacked you again?”
“If we had, I don’t think we’d be having this enchanting conversation right now,” Ethan said.
“No, probably not,” Coldwater agreed. “So, what exactly were you delivering that far out there?”
“It was a science station and a crew,” he said.
“What kind of science station?”
“One with lots of shiny parts,” he said. “Do I look like a scientist to you? How the frak would I know? I got a contract that paid well, so I imprinted it and loaded out.”
“After you did some high dollar upgrades,” Coldwater said. “At 65 Cybele if I’m not mistaken. Sensors and a very nice concealed beam cannon.”
“It’s legal. I got a license for it before we mounted it.”
“I’m sure you did, and we will check that of course.” He glanced up at the guard behind him and nodded. The man tapped into a wrist comm and sent text commands to someone else.
“I’d show you, but you locked me out of my systems so I can’t retrieve it for you,” Ethan said.
“We will check all of that when we are done with our interview,” Coldwater said, shifting in his seat.
“I only have one more question for you personally, Captain Walker,” he said. “Where exactly were you taking this science station?”
“I can’t tell you,” he said. What. Is. Missing. echoed in his brain again and he subconsciously thumped the side of his fist against the top of his desk in rhythm.
“You can’t tell me?” Coldwater’s eyes locked on him and he felt the level of his evil intent through the connection like a gut punch.
“The problem is I really can’t,” he said. “I don’t know where we were going.”
“You expect me to believe that you took your ship almost a thousand light years into unexplored space and you can’t tell me your destination?”
Ethan shrugged. “The only one that knew where we were headed was the Payload Steward. She hadn’t told me yet, and she was in the habitat container when we got jumped.”
“That’s convenient,” Coldwater said. His face said something more like, You’re lying.
Ethan heard the thought again, and he closed his eyes. What. Is. Missing.
“We will confirm everything we need with your ship’s AA,” Coldwater said. “You will order it to comply with a deep level search.”
“I’d prefer not. Marti’s a registered artificial citizen, so I think you need a—”
“I need nothing, Captain Walker,” he snapped. “Let me remind you where we are. More importantly let me call your attention to what I have on my ship that would keep you from ever reentering Coalition Space. All of that pain is pointed at you at this very moment.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Nuko hissed, nearly coming out of the chair.
“I don’t need to dare. I’m authorized to use whatever force I deem necessary to protect Coalition borders,” he said. “Just so you understand my authority is not limited strictly to physical force either. Unless your AA submits to a deep search of its data files, we will subject each of your crew members to a chemical interrogation, or a Brain Engram Scan, until someone confirms what we need to know.”
“What gives you the right?” Ethan snarled. He was on the edge of coming over his desk and giving Coldwater another scar across his face, even knowing the guard would shoot him for his effort.
“Captain Walker, put yourself in our place for a moment,” he said, once again zeroing his eyes in to deliver another dose of evil. “You’ve recently been out in the deep, well past where we have explored. We have no way of knowing what you may have encountered, unless we know where you have been. It is standard procedure for FleetCom to debrief any vessels reentering our space. It is nothing personal, and only a matter of maintaining security on the frontier.”
“I’ve told you where we’ve been,” he said. “And this is far past a debrief.”
“Here is how you have to take this,” Coldwater said. He leaned forward and as his eyes flashed between them, he realized they were both loaded to launch. He leaned back again, trying to make it look casual. “Either you tell me what I need to know, or we get it from your computer, or you simply never go home.”
“It’s alright, Ethan,” Marti said, over his private command comm earpiece. “I’ll let them load a file scrubber.” Its voice sounded strange. Much more human and almost an octave deeper than normal.
Nuko looked at him with a raised eyebrow and he shook his head with a slight jerk. She couldn’t have heard the comm, but she knew what had happened. Somehow Marti had gotten around the comm lockout on the command channel. He hoped his reaction didn’t let on.
Glaring at Coldwater he cleared his throat. “Under protest, I give you permission.” Out of his peripheral vision he saw Nuko’s mouth drop open in shock.
Coldwater nodded, and the guard tapped into his collarcomm. “Walker rolled over. Rape the computer.”
“Once we’ve downloaded the data matrix, if we don’t find anything concerning, you will need to report to Cyg-Deep Four for a customs check and recertification of your ship and licenses,” he said, standing up and turning toward the door. “By the way, I would recommend you do not leave Coalition Space again.”
The guard glanced at his wrist comm and nodded. “We’ve got the files.”
“Then Captain Walker, once my men are off your ship, and assuming we find nothing troubling in your computer’s data, we’ll return command controls to you. I think we’re pretty much done here.”
Ethan sat stone still until after his door clicked closed. He slammed both fists down on the top of his desk in rage and looked over at Nuko.
He could tell she understood. “We are most definitely not done.”
But that doubt bubbled up in his brain again.
What. Is. Missing.
Chapter Forty-One
They watched as the gun ports of the Argos swung closed and the ship pivoted back toward the Draco Sector and thrust away.
“I assume that means we’re clear,” Ammo said. “It wouldn’t have been too much trouble to tell us. Would it?” She stood on the ConDeck behind Ethan and Nuko, watching the cruiser with a cross between contempt and anger dancing across her features.
“They have restore
d the command codes,” Marti said. Its voice sounded normal considering what had happened to all of them.
“Let’s make legs.” Ethan sat with his seat facing away from his console, since he didn’t intend to stay on the ConDeck once the Argos was clear.
He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair as he waited.
Tap. Tap. Tap-tap.
What. Is. Missing.
“Problem with that,” Rene said, cutting in over the comm. “They discharged the coils. We’re dead in space until we can heat them back up.”
“Why would they do that?” Nuko whispered. She was staring at her console and hadn’t made eye contact with anyone since Coldwater left. It was obvious that she was fighting down her own demons.
They all were.
“Insurance in case we pulled a Miracle Mike. They were thorough if nothing else,” the engineer said.
“At least we passed the test,” Charleigh said, clearly forcing herself to sound optimistic. “Only another few weeks and we’re home.”
Ethan shook his head. “We’re under orders to proceed to Cygnus Deep Four before we can go home.”
“I thought we were free to go?” Ammo said.
“Apparently there are steps to complete before we’re allowed to get back to business,” he said. “Coldwater called it a customs check.”
“The term is a holdover from the nation-state era of earth. Customs inspections were put in place to prevent smuggling of untaxed goods across jurisdictional barriers between countries,” Marti explained.
“I’ve never heard of that,” Charleigh said, shaking her head.
“Me either, but since none of us has ever left Coalition Space, it isn’t surprising there’d be some department in the Coalition that processes things we’ve never seen before,” he said.
“Why? How many people travel beyond the edge?” Ammo asked with a shrug.
“Probably not many,” Nuko said. “After this, I’m never doing it again.”
Ethan reached out and put his hand on her arm and gave it a squeeze.
“It seems strange to me that they’d have a bureaucracy for something that isn’t commonly needed,” Charleigh said.
Ethan shrugged. “It’s the nature of government to grow bureaucracies that nobody wants. There are a lot of them that you never hear about because they stay out of the way of most people and only suck up resources.”
“What seems strange to me is that there is no reference to this process in any of the legal codes of the Coalition,” Marti said.
“What?” Nuko asked.
“There are no references to any customs or border patrol operations that I can find in any of the legal reference materials in my system.”
“That was a FleetCom ship. It might be in their procedures,” Charleigh suggested.
“I checked the FleetCom Unified Code of Operations and there is no sanction for a Border Patrol operational division either,” it said. “If there had been an indication of this procedure, I would have mentioned it before we left Coalition Space.”
“Maybe it’s something new?” she said.
“Or they were just a bunch of sadistic dimflatches that get off on playing pirate,” Nuko snarled.
“A multicruiser is a big asset to let go rogue,” Ethan said, shaking his head. “We’re not seeing the whole picture here.”
What. Is. Missing. He grabbed the arm of his chair to stop his tapping finger.
“Nojo,” Ammo said. She was staring at Ethan’s hand as he clung to the armrest.
“The Argos just jumped to cruise.” Nuko let out a long, slow sigh. She’d been tracking their departure on her screen and flipped the sensors up to long range mode to make sure they didn’t double back.
“What the holy frak?” she gasped. “Do we have sensor damage?”
Ethan twisted around to look at her screen. It looked like someone had drawn a drape over a third of the screen. “Rene, is there something up with the…”
His thought trailed off as the forward viewscreen danced and then something appeared. It was much larger than the Olympus Dawn and blocked out the stars like a hole in space.
Ethan stared at it for several seconds as he struggled to recognize it from a vague memory. A dream danced at the edges of his mind, but he couldn’t pull it forward out of the fog.
“I think it’s a ship,” Charleigh whispered.
He nodded. It was a ship. He knew that much, but the recollection refused to crystalize and give it reality.
Nuko was scrolling the screen’s view out to demagnify the view enough to see the whole thing, but the edges distorted as the image spun back. “It’s right on top of us. Where did it come from?”
“I believe it has been here all along,” Marti said. “I don’t think it means us harm.”
“Too late. I just shit myself,” she said.
“You’re free to go, Captain Walker,” a voice said over the ship’s internal comm. It resonated in a similar way to how Marti sounded when it gave permission to let Coldwater scrub its files.
“Who is this?” he asked suspiciously.
“All things in their time,” it said. “Good journey to you and your crew.”
“It’s moving,” Charleigh announced as the ship slid away and pivoted.
Nothing about it looked familiar, except that somehow, he recognized it. There were no recognizable features on the smooth black hull. No windows. No hatches. No markings of any kind. Nothing but massive bulbous curves and long thin edges that split the shape into irregular mountains of inconceivable purpose.
As it continued to swing slowly in front of them, there were not even any obvious engines. Although as they watched, an entire section of the hull flashed brilliantly and the ship leapt away, fading off the sensors at the same time.
“It’s gone,” Nuko said. “What the hell was it?”
Ethan shook his head. The memory of what the strange ship looked like dissolved into an image that lingered just beyond the edges of his mind. He had a vague certainty of having seen it somewhere before.
“Marti, you know what that was, don’t you?” he asked after several seconds of staring at the empty expanse of stars.
“It is part of what is missing,” the AA said over his private command comm. “While Captain Coldwell was interrogating us, it protected me.”
“You?” he asked as his fingers began drumming again. What. Is. Missing.
Nuko glanced at him since she’d not heard Marti’s reply. He tapped his ear, and she nodded, understanding. Her eyes told him she’d ask later.
“It is an immensely powerful awareness,” it said. “We shared consciousness, and it protected me from their attempt to take my data by force.”
“Where did it come from?” he asked.
“All I can say with certainty is that it identified itself as Dutch.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Ethan drummed his hand on the tabletop.
Thump. Thump. Thump-thump.
What. Is. Missing.
He sat at the back of the terrace of some nameless eatery watching the occasional traffic strolling past on the main concourse. It was thirdshift, and so the few that passed were either on duty or drunk and stumbling.
Cyg-Deep Four was not a huge station, but it had a wonderful view of a ringed ice giant and its cluster of pearlescent moons. There was no reason for it to be here except as the last way station to the outer edge and the small outposts humanity flung to the winds of the deep.
He’d stared out the window until he realized that the darkness beyond the planet was as absolute as the holes in his soul. He felt the empty void, with its distant points of light fading into the infinite night.
For three weeks, they’d been filling out paperwork. Insurance claims. Casualty reports. Death certifications. It had become an unending river of bureaucratic recycler stench that rivaled the smell of the turd-singularities they’d scattered along their course after they’d limped away from the…
Ethan stopped drummi
ng. Turd singularities? That was a dream.
He repeated it to himself. It was a dream. It had to be a dream.
He crushed his eyes closed against the memories. They weren’t real.
“You cannot sleep here, mister. It is a violation of station statute 659 slash alpha,” the waiter said, walking up and glaring at him. It was only a robot server, but it had a very human looking face, and it was set on indignant.
Ethan stared up at him blankly for several seconds and then nodded. “Sorry, wasn’t sleeping,” he said, but he nodded and pushed back from the table to stand. Nothing around him seemed connected to his brain.
“It’s ‘Captain’ to you.” Ammo appeared over the shoulder of the serverbot and pushed it out of the way as she dropped into the seat across from him.
“Abusing a station automated server is a violation—”
“Blow off,” she said. “Bring us two more of whatever that is.” She pointed at the cup in front of Ethan.
“I don’t think that’s a good choice,” he said.
The waiter sputtered once and walked away, looking indignant, even from its shiny metal backside.
“You’re probably right if it’s what made you look like moose dung.”
“Moose dung?” He nearly laughed despite his funk. “You’ve been hanging around with Quinn too much. What the frak is a moose?”
She shrugged. “I had to look it up when I heard him say it,” she admitted. “The core said the Moose was some kind of fraternal association from old Earth. But I don’t know why this club had mystical poop.”
The waiter returned and set two cups on the table. She shooed it away. “Open a tab in my name,” she said as it stepped back and scurried off.
“Why are you up so late?” he asked.
“I think it’s time we had a talk,” she said, looking at him with enough intensity he almost squirmed.
“I’m not feeling much like talking,” he said, looking around at the empty concourse. “There’s a reason I only come out—”
“What is missing?” she asked, raising an eyebrow and pointing down at his hand as he drummed the rhythm out on the table.
Wings of Earth- Season One Page 84