Morning Song: A Seeders Universe Novel (9 page)

And he had convinced Fisher they needed to do that one act while still in contact with Chairman Ray and send him all scans of the result.

So one hour after they had gotten in touch with Chairman Ray again, and with just under an hour left in trans-tunnel flight for the big ship, Jonas and Ray stood side-by-side, rifles over their shoulders, ready to go. They had decided to not seem threatening in any way, which was why they had their guns on their shoulders.

“See you in a moment,” Roscoe said to Fisher and Maria.

She smiled, but he could see the worry in her eyes.

“I’ll jump us,” Roscoe said to Jonas, who nodded.

“Do your thing, boss,” Jonas said.

The next moment Roscoe had them standing on the big deck about a hundred paces from Fisher’s ship.

The air smelled sort of stale, but not bad, and had a slight chill to it.

Roscoe looked around, not sure what to expect.

The monster room around them was too large to grasp. Like a distant sky, the ceiling overhead seemed to be full of lights. To his right, Roscoe could see a wall of some sort, but he had no idea how far that was, or even how tall that wall might be.

Scale was totally lost in a space like this, so much so, it almost made him dizzy.

“Wow,” Jonas said, slowly turning to look around. “Scans don’t even come close to showing the immensity of this place.”

“Any problems?” Chairman Ray asked, his voice clear to Roscoe.

Roscoe knew that about a thousand people were watching their every move and monitoring all data they were sending back from their sensors. Roscoe hadn’t wanted them wearing helmets, so they had on communications links with implanted mikes and ear buds. And about three ways to track them if the ship took them somewhere else.

Anyone stepping onto this ship would have those communication methods and tracking devices.

Maria answered him. “All scans of the
Morning Song
are showing no alarms or activity at all.”

“We ants out here on the big field see nothing either,” Roscoe said, slowing turning and admiring the massive hanger deck.

“Seems the ship doesn’t mind us,” Maria said.

“Coming in,” Roscoe said.

Roscoe jumped him and Jonas back to a special decontamination room on Fisher’s ship and the two of them were scanned at levels Roscoe didn’t want to think about.

“Clear on the decontamination,” Fisher said.

“We agree from here,” Chairman Ray said.

“A clean ship that has warmed up the place and turned on the lights,” Fisher said.

“Seems we have some exploring to do,” Roscoe said.

And after being out there in that huge space, that idea actually excited him for the first time.

SEVENTEEN

ONE HOUR AFTER the big ship dropped back out of trans-tunnel flight and they lost communications with Chairman Ray because of the ship’s shields, Maria found herself sitting beside Roscoe in the kitchen of Fisher’s ship.

He had on a tight black shirt and black slacks with the same wide belt buckle he always wore. His long brown hair was pulled tight behind his head. For the first time since they had been inside the big ship, he had no rifle with him.

She wanted to just touch the muscles that were clear under the tight black shirt, but she didn’t. Instead she let her leg sort of rest casually against his under the table. Being this close to him made her feel so much better in so many ways she wasn’t sure she understood just yet.

Fisher and Callie were both there as well. All of them were sipping on containers of water and she had one in front of her as well, but hadn’t touched it. Besides sitting so close to Roscoe, she was so excited about going out and exploring
Morning Song
, she almost couldn’t sit still.

Fisher looked at her. “Do you have opinions of the most important areas to explore first?”

“Command Center, of course,” Maria said. “We need to get control of this ship in some fashion or another and that has to be priority.”

Beside her, she could see Roscoe nodding in agreement.

Fisher looked around at his wife, then back at Maria. “You won’t get any disagreement on that at all. Second most important?”

Maria just shook her head. She wanted to see the entire ship, but she knew they had to prioritize right now. “Engines, then secondary control rooms, then living areas, then those big ships on that docking bay. We really need to see how they are outfitted and if they can function after all this time. On second thought, those should be right after the engine room.”

Fisher looked at Roscoe. “Your list?”

Roscoe looked at Maria. “I can’t disagree with that list at all.”

Callie agreed and so did Fisher.

“So there are fifteen of us,” Fisher said. “How would you suggest we split up or should we?”

Maria looked at Roscoe who nodded for her to go ahead.

“My suggestion,” Maria said. “One from each team remain here on the ship running scans ahead of the three groups that are out. Three groups out at a time, four members in each exploring group. We need at least one member from each of our teams in each group.”

“That feels right,” Roscoe said.

Fisher turned to his wife. “Would you mind remaining on board this first time? I need someone in command here who knows how to fly
The Lady.”

“I was going to suggest that,” she said.

Fisher turned to Maria again. “Who on your team knows the most about the Command Centers of older Seeder ships?”

“Hudson,” she said, without hesitation.

Hudson was one of her youngest at three hundred years, but looked far older than he should because of his long black beard and shaggy hair. He had made it his passion to study and fly in reality and in simulations all old Seeder ships she could get him near. He could take apart old Command Centers with his eyes closed.

“So the three of us and Hudson head to the Command Center,” Fisher said.

“Jonas could take a team to engineering,” Roscoe said. “His passion is engines of all types.”

Fisher nodded. “Two of my team are engineers as well. Perfect.”

They spent the next half hour detailing out who would go first and so on. They decided that Maria had been right and the third most important place to explore was the big ships on the hanger deck.

Then there was nothing else to talk about.

Maria was almost floating off the deck as she headed for her cabin to get what she might need in the Command Center of the
Morning Sun
. This was all a dream come true.

But in the back of her mind, something was nagging at her. She felt completely home inside the
Morning Song.
Completely, and that felt both good and worried her. She had no idea where the feeling was coming from.

But in her excitement, she decided to just think about that later. Right now she got to explore a Seeder ship that was so ancient, she couldn’t believe it actually existed.

And she was going to get to explore it with a man of her dreams.

It didn’t get better than that.

EIGHTEEN

ROSCOE HAD LEARNED very early on that when something was going smoothly, something ugly was about to happen. It didn’t always work that way, but his voice was telling him that was the case this time.

This ship had made him feel like an ant crawling somewhere on a planet’s continent. The builders of this ship were far, far beyond the knowledge and years of the Seeders now or ones working Andromeda.

Sure, the ship had been built by humans. Seeders. But not humans like them at all. Humans far, far advanced. So why did ants like him think they could get control of something this big?

That thought just kept nagging him and he had no idea what to do about that at all.

And he felt completely at home on the big ship at the same time and that feeling worried him even more and kept him even more on guard.

He had insisted that each group only jump with line-of-sight as much as possible. That way the ship would be able to know they were coming and they wouldn’t trigger alarms without warning.

He hoped.

“Ready?” he asked the three standing around him in the big former exercise room with the scanning stations. This room would be their jump base. Jonas’s group had the main scanning room, and the third group was using a back open area in the dining room.

Fisher, Maria, and Hudson all nodded as one that they were ready. Maria’s excitement for the moment had turned to serious worry. He wanted to hug her and tell it would be all right, but damned if he knew it would be.

“I’m going to do the jumping. I’ll take us about a kilometer away across the deck along the path toward the Command Center.”

Again they all nodded.

So he jumped them.

The incredible open space of the huge deck surrounded them.

The air did smell slightly stale this second time out, and the temperature was slightly under what Fisher kept his ship, but not too cold to be a worry.

Fisher’s ship looked like a tiny toy sitting in the middle of a huge room from this distance.

“Stunning,” Hudson said softly as if whispering wouldn’t draw attention to them.

Roscoe turned to Maria who was slowly turning, trying to take it all in, her large golden eyes even wider than normal.

“How do we look out ahead?” Roscoe asked her after giving her a moment to be shocked and look around.

He then moved over next to her as she fumbled to get her scanner out. Her scanner gave him a clear image of where they were jumping to, and a clear path to the Command Center.

It was going to take him about thirty minutes of quick jumps to get them there, mostly down huge hallways that appeared to be the width of a two-lane highway and up through decks into more hallways.

She checked the scan and then showed it to him, her shoulder brushing his arm. “We’re clear.”

He jumped them again.

“Scans are clear,” Maria said.

“Triggering nothing,” Callie’s voice came across clear in their ears. The three back on the ship were there to scan ahead and make sure no team triggered anything. “Second team leaving the ship.”

“Understood,” Roscoe said as they looked around.

He had jumped them right into the middle of one of the huge hallways. Fifty people could walk side-by-side in this hallway and not even touch shoulders. And the ceiling was high and the lights were hidden, but clearly there.

Hudson kneeled and touched the carpet under their feet. “I don’t think this is fabric,” he said. “I think it’s the decking surface itself formed to be soft and slightly flexible.”

Fisher pointed to regularly spaced panels about every twenty paces. The panels were dark. “Seems like they might have a ship-wide transport system like our own.”

“Ours is like this one,” Maria said, smiling. “This ship has been in flight since before Seeders came into the Local Group.”

“Yeah, that,” Fisher said, smiling back at her.

“Amazing,” Roscoe said. “But glad we’re not hiking. What are these rooms around us?” He pointed at the closed doors that lined the hall every fifty feet or so and seemed to blend perfectly into the wall.

“Offices of some sort,” Maria said, looking at her scanner.

“So how are we on the path ahead?” Roscoe asked Maria, moving over again to stand beside her and look at her scanner.

“Clear,” she said.

He nodded. “I’m going to pick up speed now until we get near the Command Center. We jump, check scan, and jump again. So stay close to me.”

Twelve jumps through identical hallways later, they were sixty-five decks higher in the big ship and in the hallway outside the
Morning Song’s
big Command Center.

So far, so good.

And that worried Roscoe far more than he wanted to admit.

NINETEEN

MARIA STOOD ONE hundred paces from the big door that led into the Morning Song’s Command Center. She couldn’t decide if she was more afraid or excited. Both emotions seemed to be warring with each other.

Roscoe seemed very worried, but he didn’t say anything. Fisher also looked worried and Hudson just looked excited.

“This is where we discover just how friendly this ship really is,” Roscoe said.

“Callie?” Fisher asked into the air, “any signs of anything coming to life around us or in the Command Center?”

“Nothing,” Callie said.

Maria studied her scans. It just showed the big room, nothing more. “Clear here as well,” she said.

Roscoe nodded and handed Fisher his rifle. Fisher nodded and put it over his shoulder.

“Back in a moment,” Roscoe said, striding down the hallway toward the big door. “Stay there.”