Blue shift protocol, p.25
Blue Shift Protocol, page 25
Goodhope groaned. He lay bound on the floor at Trenton’s feet.
Docking the pod had been simple enough. The safety recall had gone without a hitch. Propulsion fuel on the pod was topped off. But as Trenton scrolled through the navigation options, a growing stomach cramp reminded him he didn’t know what he was doing.
“Do us all a favor and climb out the airlock,” Goodhope said.
Trenton ignored him. His immediate challenge was to get his exhausted brain to dig deep and summon everything he knew about pod operations. He reckoned he could build one with all the parts in the neighboring cargo holds. He possessed the skills to repair leaks, misfiring stabilizers, fried electronics, and burned-out actuators.
Even post-Meridian Nexus had its security procedures. With Goodhope present, Trenton had bypassed that. And now he faced the fact that he didn’t know enough about ship programming to take the next step.
Penny would stand as much chance of sussing out the remote piloting software.
She sat nearby with the two kids. Jacko lay in her arms as she sniffled.
Trenton couldn’t bear to tell her this was as far as they’d go.
Goodhope spat blood. When he squirmed to sit up, Trenton shoved him down with a foot.
“There are consequences to disobedience,” the executive said. “You rejected Meridian with your rebellion. You rejected the Wall. There’s nothing left for you. Fitting, considering what you’ve taken from me. Galen would have thrived within.”
Trenton’s hands were fists. He had tried to shut out the memory of killing the inspector. His mind had replayed it countless times in search of how else he might have handled it. Had it all been for nothing? Worse, had his action somehow enabled the Gardeners to spread their experiment once they were free from Meridian oversight?
The screen winked, threatening to power down if no one touched it.
He double-tapped the screen with an index finger. “Why would you choose this? You’re a Meridian absolutist, aren’t you? You hate chaos.”
Goodhope chuckled. “Congratulations. You’ve been paying attention.”
“You want me for my hands. But I’m the one who breaks things. I’m one of the people who sent Meridian packing. I tried to space your colony of evil growths on the rock. You leave me stuck here, I’ll poison the water, contaminate the air, and kill your caretakers.”
“I’m confused. Who are you talking to?”
Trenton crouched over the man. “Not you, asshole. I’m going to make you waste energy and time. I know every part of the station and how to make it not work. And correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re out of soldiers.”
“What are you—” A rictus of pain as Goodhope’s head twitched. “You’re talking more than you used to, hon.”
Nikki’s voice. Hearing it come from Goodhope made Trenton flinch.
“This is hard for me, Nik. I wish we could have what we used to, but that’s gone now, and we both know it. But it’s Saanvi who I need to hear right now. If you want me to go away, that is. Otherwise, I raise hell.”
“Your leaving is the last thing I want. But it’s what we need.” Another shift in tone. Here was Saanvi. “We’ve come a long way, Trent. Imagine what it would be like if it were you and me, third-shift besties who kick ass and get the big bonuses.”
“Saanvi, I need your help.”
“Where were you when it was me who you left on that rock?”
“You didn’t seem to mind. Lucjan’s gone, just so you know.”
“I know. We mourn; do you know that?”
He bit the inside of his lip to not snap at the voice. Hearing Saanvi speak disgusting words through the lips of Goodhope was almost too much.
“Help me get out of here. Talk me through the pod remote interface. And the chaos leaves. I can even take Goodhope with me.”
“Such large-heartedness. You’d trade immortality for hours of air before suffocation?”
“We make it to the Nightingale and we’ll last weeks.”
“With the same end result.”
“You know me, Saanvi. A stick in the mud when I get told what to do.”
Silence. Goodhope looked like a zero-g pitch-ball thrower ignoring the signals from their catcher. A struggle was going on, and the executive was losing. “Red tab,” he finally said. “That’s the mainframe’s navigation plotter. And the rest is easy when you know how.”
“PROMISE ME THIS WILL work,” Penny said.
“We’re going to make it,” Trenton said. “Just get yourself strapped in.”
This was a trap. No question. Trenton was trusting Goodhope and his weird voices, and they would all die. And she was a fool for going along with it.
Climbing through the transfer tube into the pod was making her hyperventilate. Her breathing echoed within the vacuum suit helmet.
This pod was smaller than the last one. Another coffin, and they’d be launching into space.
Tape-wrapped Goodhope looked like a mummy from a vid. Oh, how he struggled when she and Trenton dragged him through the tube on the hand truck. His eyes bulged. He screamed against the rag stuffed in his tape-wrapped mouth. The kids had each required help, with Samantha still sleeping and Jacko conscious but too weak to crawl the tube.
Trenton squeezed into the pilot compartment. Grunted and fumed as he worked the controls and navigation screens. Once Goodhope’s hand unlocked the shuttle’s command tablet, all the systems lit up. As the voices had promised.
Would it let them go?
She still had only a hazy notion of what it was. An artificial intelligence? An alien? A hallucination made flesh by the willpower of its believers? If going to church brought her family together, then she’d bow and pray better than anyone.
But boxing themselves into a tiny metal bubble and leaving Nexus broke every rule she had ever made. So did trusting Trenton. The pod’s propulsion system didn’t fire like a shuttle engine. It hissed in short bursts, thrusting, correcting, and finally moving them off the hangar spur and away from the station.
There the rings turned like a broken toy. Glad to get rid of its most troublesome pest.
She cursed her broken brain. But what was the alternative? Sicken, go crazy, die.
After adjusting the safety harness on Samantha, she checked Jacko’s.
“Get yourself seated,” Trenton said. “It’ll be bumpy.”
She got seated and belted in. She hadn’t left Nexus since arriving from Woodruff as a child following the disaster that had taken her parents’ lives.
So many false promises from the rescue team of how she’d never lack for family.
Now she had survived two worlds ending. Jenny and Dez were gone. It hurt too much to think about them. Samantha and Jacko were the only ones left. Their lives confirmed she wasn’t a cursed thing from a fairytale. A trinket collected for its shine but betraying the owner with rot and destruction.
The pod wobbled, causing the harness to bite into her shoulders and neck. A moment later, the course steadied as bursts of thrust drove them faster.
The rock lay ahead, as did Trenton’s abandoned ship. He had been reticent about the plan, and Penny had caught the facial gestures. Goodhope, Samantha, Jacko, and it were listening.
“I’m getting the hang of this,” Trenton said. “We’re going to make it.”
She believed him.
Chapter Forty-Seven
How many times had Trenton boarded Nightingale alone for a repair or system check? This was the first time he felt like a foreign entity. A virus. The rest of the crew adopted by the Black Wall, leaving him behind.
Nikki’s voice, a memory clear as day. “We’ll never keep friends with you being standoffish.”
“Not standoffish. Just comfy with our alone time.”
Sometimes, you get what you asked for.
Life support puffed chilly air against his face as he searched the ship. Would the Wall have set a trap? No knowing. The computer had finished its reboot long ago, but he remained locked out. The shuttle hold stood empty. As he read the screens he could access, he confirmed no arrivals besides his own.
He returned to the airlock. “All clear.”
Penny helped Samantha and Jacko out of the pod while Trenton dragged Goodhope to the bridge. The executive’s wrists bled from the tape and plastic bindings.
“I can’t feel my hands.”
“And I told you to keep still.”
The captain’s station had a retinal scan. Do or die moment. Would an old Meridian log-in allow access?
With Goodhope firmly in his grasp, Trenton shoved the executive’s face into the console.
The screen went green, alive with command and control, with plenty of warnings to be cleared from earlier protocol infractions.
Trenton wiped a film of grime from the top of the monitor before returning Goodhope to the airlock.
“There’s nowhere to run,” the executive said. “Only I can help you.”
“Not running.”
“Then what’s the point of all this? You’re going somewhere. You need command authorization for a flight plan.”
He stepped into the corridor. “And you’ll give it if I ask nicely.”
“So, what now? You going to space me? Another ghost to haunt your every moment? You think that’s the end? I’ll be there until you succumb. And then I’ll make your eternity hell.”
“You can shove your mushroom prayer circle up your backside.”
Goodhope began to respond, but Trenton sealed the airlock door.
“What are we going to do with him?” Penny asked.
“I’m taking him with me. Get settled in. We have to assume we’re on a time limit before the Black Wall figures out what we’re doing.”
“You haven’t told me.”
“You’re going to Carpo.”
“I don’t know how to fly a ship.”
“You won’t need to. Command controls are available long enough for me to set a pre-programmed flight path. Carpo’s navigation system can take over once I call them and transmit the shuttle key. The Nightingale will be on autopilot. She’s always taken care of me. She’ll do as she’s told.”
“They’re not...sick? On Carpo?”
“The rocks never got close. There’s a limit to the effect. It’s why they brought them back to Nexus to hasten the spread. The Gardeners laid the foundation back when we kicked Meridian out.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“I can’t believe Carpo has anything like that there. They were always rabidly independent, more than we ever were. I won’t sugarcoat this; it’s a long trip. It’s not going to be comfortable, but the ship will know you and the others aren’t in a regen chamber. Only a few g’s burn. Command functions will scale back with no one at the helm. By then, Carpo will be the ones doing the flying.”
“Why can’t you come?”
He hesitated. Saying it meant doing it.
“I’m infected. You know it and have seen it. If I’m here, the rock might force me to bring the ship back. And I have to stop it.”
“How?”
“I’m still working that out. But the sooner we get this over with, the sooner I can leave.”
He got on the radio to introduce himself to Carpo. They were over a minute out. Double that to hear an answer. They needed to know they had incoming guests.
CARPO HAD QUESTIONS. He didn’t give answers.
What about his story would they believe? Surely, they’d already suspect something had gone foul on Nexus. With his warning, they’d be aware they were about to be the recipients of infected material delivered by an electromagnetic catapult. At least anything fired by the mass driver would take weeks to arrive at Carpo. It was the biggest flaw in the Wall’s plans.
Trenton had two remaining problems and nothing at hand to handle either.
He teased a notion in the back of his mind, afraid to shine a light on it.
Risky.
Even with a refueled pod, efforts at sabotage might disrupt the work on the mass driver for only a few shifts before he’d run out of propellant and was taken out by Nexus’ new overlord.
Other options? Could he hope to survive by taking refuge elsewhere?
Some of the satellite stations working away on the rock might be uninfected. No way to know for sure. What he had told Penny remained a hard fact. He might lose it at any moment and never regain his senses. Sending her and the two kids off was a win.
The Nightingale’s launch timer counted down on every screen, reminding anyone who bothered to read the announcement that a launch cycle had been activated. All crew and passengers better strap in.
Penny and the kids were all set in the Ops flight chairs.
He opened the airlock.
Her last concern before he left? “What’s Carpo like?”
“It’s small. Weird. Hard people. The sons and daughters of a tough line of spacers. Ganymede would be better, but it’s further out and there’s a lot of stuff the Nightingale might run into.”
“Is that a technical term?”
“It’s the best I’ve got. Trust the ship. She’s never let me down.”
As he dragged Goodhope back into the pod and got them detached and away from Nightingale, he felt an odd surge of confidence. Irrational, perhaps. He had repaired so many systems on the station and aboard the ships of Nexus’ fleet.
Who besides him knew better how to break things?
Chapter Forty-Eight
Fixing what needs to be fixed.
His mantra as the pod’s propellant supply flirted with empty. Were Saanvi or Nikki listening? Eavesdroppers in the recesses of his gray area poised to jam the Black Wall’s fingers into his mind once they sensed his duplicity.
An odd rush, like he was a kid stealing something.
“We would have been more comfortable aboard the Nightingale,” Goodhope called from the seats below the pilot’s space.
“If this were about comfort, we wouldn’t have left Nexus. We’re not done, you and I.”
The Dragonfly’s lights guided them closer. Even as the pod’s automatic systems took over, he craned his neck to glimpse the departing Nightingale. Too far away. Three hours since departure. Now his old ship was gone, another speck in the curtain of stars. He’d never see her again.
To Penny, he entrusted her, and to Nightingale, he entrusted Penny and her two surviving children.
Time to focus on the task at hand.
He had kept radio silent. Likely the Black Wall knew he was inbound.
Just another sleeper looking to be with his mates. He conjured warm thoughts of Saanvi, playing pinochle or dominoes with the pickup games that sprang up during off-shifts, collectively cursing rehydrated grub, and bitching about BO, flatulence, and recycled air.
“You’re fooling no one,” Goodhope said.
“You’re a cynical soul, Administrator Goodhope. That’s poison. You should know me by now. Performance-based trust. Forward optimism. It’s how Meridian views the future.”
“Don’t lecture me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
With a violent shake that made the pod feel as if it might shatter, they docked with Dragonfly. Arms pulled them into a bay that sealed and pressurized over the next hour.
Trenton scrounged for a snack but came up empty. Penny had everything they could grab.
No one stood ready to meet him as he climbed out the bottom hatch and into Dragonfly’s depressurized cargo hold.
His ears hurt and he worked his jaw. His teeth ached too. And his suit felt as if it had weights attached. Even as he slid his reliable pry bar into a belt loop, he readied himself.
Here were two ship crews of hostiles who would easily overpower him.
No one at the airlock. It let him inside.
Two of the Dragonfly scientists lay dead, strapped into emergency bunks in the main corridor. He found some of his crew likewise expired, both at stations within Ops and in the Dragonfly crew quarters.
He continued his search.
Isles’ crumpled form was wedged beneath the autodoc in sick bay. Bruised, with broken bones, he appeared to have been thrown about the compartment during maneuvers.
No sign of Captain Hideko.
Saanvi slept in the lead pilot’s seat on the bridge. No co-pilot. The ship was on standby.
He checked her pulse. Faint but steady. She didn’t stir. Everyone else was likewise gone.
The weight of it left him breathless.
“Why am I here?” Goodhope demanded as Trenton pulled him from the airlock. “I could have told you they were gone. Do humanity a service and stick that shotgun you stole in your mouth, why don’t you?”
“It’s not quitting time yet. I thought you’d appreciate that. We finish the shift. It’s something you and all your kind never understood whenever you showed up for inspections. No one on Nexus slacked off. If we did, we’d be dead. We knew that rule better than any other. And then you...you do this to us.”
He planted Goodhope into the XO’s chair. Not as forcefully as he’d like. Hard to do in zero-g. The executive squirmed as Trenton added more zip ties and secured him. Then he used him to unlock the ship. Said a prayer as the screens lit up.
The Dragonfly handled so much secret stuff that it might have had extra levels of authentication, like requiring two from command staff present to operate the ship. Goodhope and Saanvi’s presence was enough.
Trenton got on the radio and hailed Nexus Station.
“This is Trenton Keller on Dragonfly. Anyone still there?” He paused, unsure of what he was hoping for. A last sane voice, another survivor, someone to tell him not to take his next step? “If there’s anyone there, get to an emergency pod. The station is compromised. And for the rest of you...this is for the Nightingale. Trenton Keller out.”
He swiped to the navigation screen. Confirmed ship controls to the bridge, the reactor online, the engines in the green.
He made a mental apology to the bird, as he hardly knew Dragonfly. This would be its last voyage.
