Hallowed Nebula

by Eddie R. Hicks

  “Indeed,” Iey’liwea said “Captain, what were you thinking?”

  Foster couldn’t believe it. After everything she’d done, the council was ready to ignore it all based on what just happened. “I was thinkin’ about doing my job and saving the galaxy, and that includes all your asses.”

  Iey’liwea’s gaze peered at Foster’s eyes under her shades. “The Kepler is partly owned by Radiance—”

  “And partly by the UNE and IESA, captained by me! Who, I might add, was given full authority by the president of Earth to carry out this mission any way I deem necessary!”

  Iey’liwea continued. “And if we deem it necessary to have you removed from command of the Kepler, out of concern for our Radiance staff and a loss of confidence in your abilities, we will petition Geneva to make it so.”

  “Hey, Cap,” Miles said to her. “You smell somethin’?”

  She nodded. “Bullshit?”

  “Aye, so I ain’t imagining it.”

  Foster returned to the heated exchange of words, determined to make them fear the day they chose to argue with her. “UNE and IESA command will hear of this, hope y’all know!”

  “And we’d expect nothing less,” Marchei said. “Go tell them but remember the Kepler’s development was still partially funded by Radiance.”

  Her teeth ground against each other. Foster wasn’t winning the verbal war against the galaxy’s most powerful political leaders. It only made her internal fuming grow stronger.

  “With that said,” Hanei, the Linl representative, who had been silent, said. “Saressea’s command has been terminated pending her tribunal. Her team will be recalled at once.”

  “Our whole Radiance staff?” Foster asked.

  “Odelea and Tolukei will be the exception,” Hanei said. “They were technically recruited by you, not Saressea.”

  Foster found a hole in their plan, whatever its ultimate goal was. “I thought we can’t fly without Saressea and her team?” she asked and awaited their reply.

  “You can’t,” Iey’liwea said.

  “So, we’s stuck here then?”

  Iey’liwea’s face went through a number of conflicting thoughts before she returned to speak with the rest of the council in their language. Gotcha! Foster snickered internally. If Saressea isn’t part of the team, then the Kepler was grounded, and if it was grounded, they couldn’t complete their mission. Someone didn’t think things through.

  After five minutes, the council spoke to Foster. “Yes, Captain, you will be stuck here as you put it until a replacement liaison officer and crew are recruited. You will not be permitted to operate the Kepler until then.”

  Foster scowled at the five. Iey’liwea smiled conceitedly at her, probably thinking the words Gotcha, to herself.

  There were no further words spoken, and Foster and Miles stormed out of the chamber, marching down the pristine halls to the elevator up front.

  “Fuck me sideways all the way to Halifax,” grumbled the pissed off Marine.

  “Well, if you wanted to talk with the pretty girls outside, now’s your chance, Miles,” Foster said drily. “We’s gonna have lots of time . . .”

  “I don’t believe this,” he said. “It’s like they don’t care for the mission.”

  “Of course not, officially, the Draconians made two strikes against the Empire, and three against Earth. They probably feel that their prayers to their Gods are protecting them and if that’s the case. . .”

  “Their need to see us succeed probably lowered a notch.”

  “Captain Foster,” a voice called out from behind.

  Foster and Miles stopped and looked back toward the source of the voice. It was the Aryile representative Ienthei. He left the chamber then gestured for the two to follow him into an adjacent office. His personal office, Foster assumed, as there were a number of decorative holograms of Ienthei and a woman that looked like him, a twin sister.

  The door shut behind Foster and Miles when they entered. He stood before a window letting in bright white light that made it almost impossible for Foster, despite the shades, to see the towering skyscrapers beyond.

  She began to wonder how much time Ienthei had spent in this office, as his skin was fair, a rare sight among the people she saw coming here, even rarer amongst the Aryile. The citizens of the city all looked like they spent time sunbathing on the beaches of Florida daily or were just naturally dark.

  “Councilman,” Foster said, breaking the silence. “Please tell me the words you’re about to say is ‘just kiddin’.”

  “I’m afraid not, Captain,” Ienthei said, his Aryile accent was similar to South African. “However, I may be able to help you, provided you help me with something.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “And what’s that?”

  “My father has somehow come back from the dead,” Ienthei said, turning away from the window and its blinding light. “My dear sister and I would like to know why.”

  8 Rivera

  Rivera’s Hotel Room

  Paris, Earth, Sol System

  October 31, 2118, 06:08 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  The European sunrise that came into Rivera’s hotel room awoke her, warming her naked body with its golden light. She liked the feeling, it was like Mother Nature was massaging her awake. She had to sit up to look at the clock and check the time, her HNI flashed a connection lost error message. The THC from her cannabis session last night was still in her body, evidently, getting medicated temporarily killed the brain’s ability to interact with HNI.

  It didn’t bother her one bit, however. There were so many positive vibes in the hotel room. The sunlight gleaming over her body, her statute of Buddha she brought, smiling warmly at her on the desk ahead, the bong on the floor, calling to her to take another hit, and, of course, Doctor Emmanuel Campbell’s nude body lying next to her and all the sex they had the previous night.

  Positive vibes fuel positive thoughts, which create a positive path to walk through in life. The room she was in was full of that energy, casting out the negative energy the war with the dragons brought. Hell, she had almost forgotten there was still chaos going on in the galaxy. That was a good thing, to forget about that. Negative vibes only undid happiness around her.

  She fell back to the bed to stare at Emmanuel while he slept, waiting excitedly for her HNI to come back online so that she could re-watch the memories of their medicated fun and lovemaking they had when he put his well-endowed penis to work. It was the final thing she needed to add to this room full of bliss. Woosah.

  Emmanuel groaned when the sunlight finally met his fit body and he rose to greet her.

  “Wake up, you,” Rivera said, smiling.

  He smiled back, running his fingers through her long dark hair. “Says the sleep-in.”

  Rivera leaned forward for a kiss. When his eyes shut to indulge on the touch of her soft lips against his, she pushed him back onto the bed, climbing over him. She was ready to get the day started right.

  “Don’t you have a big day ahead?” he asked, looking up at her.

  “I’m the expert of that ship and its century-old tech,” Rivera said, running her fingers across his chest. “They’ll wait, they have to.”

  “Don’t make them wait because of me if we don’t have time.” He raised his hands, gently gliding them across her thighs, inching upward to her breasts. It made her tingle with excitement. “You weren’t kidding about what yoga did to your body,” Emmanuel said, grinning.

  “I used to teach classes out in Manila.”

  “Manila, the Philippines?”

  “Yep, born and raised,” she said. “Perhaps I can give you a yoga practice session tonight?”

  “I’d like that.”

  Rivera’s HNI status screen flashed virtually over her eyesight. Her brain was able to communicate with the implant. Confirmation messages sent by the Carl Sagan salvage team informed her of the time they planned to meet. It was within the next hour. She winced. Starting the day off right wouldn’t be h
appening.

  She rolled off him, and then off the bed, searching the floor for her clothes, wherever the hell the two flung them last night. He did the same on his end and then stood up with empty hands. His penis dangling was a bit of a distraction.

  “Where’re my drawers?” he asked. Rivera found them below her feet. She held them up smiling. “Pass them here.”

  “Naw,” she said, letting them fall on the floor next to her feet. “I’m too lazy for that.”

  “Well, that’s a shame.” Emmanuel reached down, and then came up with her bra in his hands. Something that was missing from her pile of attire she managed to gather. “I’m just going to hold this hostage then.”

  She had his boxers, he had her bra. “Fine,” she said with laughter. “Let’s exchange our prisoners!”

  After the exchange and a minute of kissing, the two returned to getting dressed and slipping into their IESA uniforms. Emmanuel stood ready to go his own way, Rivera double-checked the time she had left to board the transport that would take her to Geneva. Before the request could load, her HNI crashed, and it had nothing to do with her state of mind according to Emmanuel’s quick medical scan of her body.

  “Ugh, again, huh?” she groaned.

  “Yeah, again, like I said before your brain hasn’t gotten used to it.” Emmanuel finished his scans, flicking away the small holo screen displaying Rivera’s vitals and HNI status. “All right, I’m coming with you.”

  “After last night, you don’t have too,” she said. “I’m sure you got more than what you had expected.”

  “Still, it couldn’t hurt, and it’s my off day. What else am I going to do?” Using his HNI maintenance tools, he connected directly to Rivera’s HNI with his. A prompt flashed before her eyes, informing her that her HNI had entered diagnostic mode. “Keep your HNI in this mode for now. It will let me jump in and take a look at any problems.”

  “Is this secure?”

  “Yes, only people with medical implants in range, such as me, would be able to access your HNI’s operating system directly,” he explained. “Well, hackers too, but they don’t need you to have this secret door opened. They’ll open it themselves regardless of what locks you might have.”

  “Hackers,” she said slowly. She didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Don’t worry, HNI hacking is a pain in the ass. Hackers won’t target you unless you give them a reason too.”

  “Wasn’t hard for the Dragon Knight and Maiden.”

  “That’s different,” he said as the two went for the exit. “Their abilities are on a different level since they could affect military grade implants. Which last time I checked, was impossible.”

  She hoped what he said was correct. The other day, she read a news report online that had talked about reports of EISS agents on Amicitia Station 14 getting their HNIs hacked by a mysterious woman a few weeks ago.

  Lake Geneva, ESRS Carl Sagan Crash Site

  Geneva, Earth, Sol System

  October 31, 2118, 07:38 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  A transport circled and then descended onto the central fuselage of the Carl Sagan, still afloat on the lake. The transport descended slowly via the blue thrust of its landing thrusters. Its landing gear clung onto the metallic hull of the downed and aged ship of exploration magnetically. Once its landing was deemed secure and stable, its doors rose up, allowing Rivera and Emmanuel with a team of IESA personnel to conduct the lengthy salvage and recovery operation.

  Flashlights cast rays of light down into the empty and dark hallways which received very little, if any, power due to the damage. Water flooded the lower decks, drenching Rivera’s jumpsuit when she waded through it, creating dark waves of water in her wake. The empty and burnt bridge made her grimace. Months earlier it was in fine working condition, made possible by the numerous repairs she had to make to it during their time in Sirius.

  Her hand stroked the material of the captain’s chair, a chair Foster was no longer able to sit in. The smell of old electrical fires still lingered in the area created by the broken computer screens that were laughed at by Park and her EDF team when they boarded last summer.

  Rivera walked down below into Foster’s office, impressed that the window was still intact after the crash. Despite the depressing situation the ship was in, the view from the window gave a nice close-up view of the waves of water crashing against it from outside. The office was mostly empty now, Rivera and the team gathered Foster’s belongings that used to decorate the office including her telescope. Rivera grinned warmly, thinking back to the moment she picked up the telescope and gave it a quick look with her flashlight, happy to see it was still in good repair other than the nicks on its side.

  Accessing the habitat ring took up most of their day and navigating through it took up the rest of it. Due to its size, and it no longer rotating, there were some sections of it that were literally upside down thanks to the Earth’s gravity. Foster’s cat Starlet had been found wandering the halls when Rivera’s team first managed to enter the darkened corridors of the ring the first time. It was miraculously alive, very weak but alive. Her chest tightened as she thought of how long the cat had been without food until they had arrived back in the summer.

  Foster’s cat turned out to be the only survivor Rivera and the salvage team found back then. After a lengthy search of the cryo chamber, they confirmed that there were no other crew members inside. They double-checked it again today, just to make sure. A forensic team would take a closer look at all the cryo pods to determine if the missing crew had used them recently. None of that was Rivera’s job of course.

  The evening sun began to set, signaling to the recovery team that they’d have to wrap things up soon and return later, putting their search for signs of a Draconian boarding party or something else strange on hold. They needed to finish their investigation into the missing computer logs and recovering the AI core today.

  Oh, and Doctor Kostelecky wanted the medical records recovered, especially ones that dealt with Nereid and herself. Rivera understood the need to get Nereid’s files, having learned of the strange psionic activity in her brain. But Kostelecky’s records? Why was she so concerned about knowing what her physical condition was prior to their grand entrance into the twenty-second century?

  Rivera’s to-do list grew in size as she updated it with her HNI.

  Her flashlight lit a path that led into the Carl Sagan’s engineering, forcing a nonfunctioning door to slide open just enough for her and Emmanuel to slip through. The rays of light the two were shining about located a number of computer stations that were once attended by Rivera and her engineering crew. She grew concerned as to what became of them after the Carl Sagan vanished.

  Pushing past the computers, Rivera looked up to the second level of engineering, the location of the AI core. She activated her HNI’s communication app. “All right, guys, I’m at the AI core.”

  “Understood, need a hand?”

  “I got this,” she said to the holographic projection of a member of her team. “Just focus on grabbing any data from the medical logs. You’ll need to get auxiliary power back online first, of course.”

  “We’re on it, give us a few.”

  Emmanuel stood next to her, his eyesight looking into the story-high ascent that awaited them. “Wow,” was all he had to say.

  “Aren’t the AI cores in this century much more advanced?” she asked him.

  “And smaller,” he said, nodding. “But still, I’m impressed you and your crew survived the siege in Sirius with equipment like this. Had that event happened today, with this ship, I don’t think we would have won.”

  “Of course not, they wouldn’t have had me,” Rivera said, giggling. “And I mean that in the truest sense if you read the reports of what I contributed to the team.”

  Rivera stepped forward first to make the climb up while her eyes and her HNI scans searched for a means of climbing to the AI core.

  “Is there no ladder?” Emmanuel asked.<
br />
  “This section was subject to zero-g,” she replied. “It wasn’t necessary; you just pulled yourself up with the bars on the walls.”

  And it was those bars the two ended up using as makeshift ladders to climb to the top. She made sure not to look down, what they were doing wasn’t exactly safe, nor was it designed for what they were doing. This section of the Carl Sagan was never intended to experience the pull of gravity. It was a space only ship, incapable of atmospheric flight, and constructed in space. Chang crash-landing it into the lake in one piece was a testament to his piloting skills.

  Once they reached the interior of the AI core, Rivera pulled out a rack of wires and trays of data crystals, all important to the operation of an EVE unit, well one that was in operation during the 2030s. Her HNI scanned the wires and data crystals, searching for any signs of tampering, the data relaying over her eyes with various floating labels. As she searched, she tried to remember how she had left the AI core prior to the Carl Sagan vanishing. Those memories never did return to her.

  She pulled another rack of data crystals out from the wall, examining them closely. They all looked fine to her and her scans. She moved onto the next tray and saw the same result. With the exception of one data crystal, the one that contained EVE’s primary programming. The data crystal in question stood out from the rest. A thin strip of red tape was wrapped around it, with words written in Rivera’s handwriting saying, ‘DO NOT USE!!”

  Rivera remembered exactly why she labeled that data crystal. And why it was a bad thing if it had been inserted.

  She gasped and slowly backed away from the data crystal tray, making no effort to put it back in the wall. “Oh my God,” she whispered to herself.

  Emmanuel held onto her with concern. “Hey? Everything okay?”

  The long-dormant lights in engineering flickered on, eliminating the need for flashlights. Her team was quick to get power back on, the one time she really hoped they were working slowly. Looking back down below, she saw the numerous computer terminals boot up, she heard the sound of auxiliary power being fed into the ship’s systems, including the data crystal tray behind.