My Star (6 page)

“Yes. So if the hypothesis is true—that E-corp knows all about this abundant extraterrestrial energy technology, and they keep it secret—then the intel we gather on this mission is going to be kept secret, and is never going to benefit all of humanity. So we’re effectively helping E-corp obtain more intel and knowledge about abundant energy resources for them to exploit and monopolize, in order to increase the company’s power over our world.” Kurt looks frustrated.

“So what do we do now?”

“I don’t know.” Kurt whispers.

“We have to keep this strictly between us. Captain Alvah seems to be an authoritative ‘company man’, and he seems to have an itchy trigger finger, so I’m sure he wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to leave us behind in deep space somewhere, if he heard us conspire about E-corp like this.” I catch myself biting a fingernail off. I never bite my nails.

“You’re right. We have to stay quiet about this.” Kurt gets up to check if anyone’s eavesdropping by the door.

“There must be some way to get this information out for it to benefit all of humanity...” I’m stopped mid sentence as the door to the hatch opens.

“What did you find?” Captain Alvah sticks his head in the door.

We both look at the captain somewhat gaping for a moment, until Kurt gets a hold of himself.

“We found an interesting dusty substance of what seems to be a highly magnetic mineral...” Kurt continues talking as he gets up and walks Captain Alvah towards the lab, where all the samples are kept.

SEVEN

weapons

Now that I know Captain Alvah is occupied talking to Kurt, I take the opportunity to go snooping around. First I head for the captain’s private quarters, but when I get there, Rosie is nearby, so I can’t slip in unseen. Instead I change direction for the storage, where he’s got a little booth in one corner reserved as his second office aside from the huge luxurious office space he’s got in his private cabin. This small desk space pretty much makes the entire storage his second office, and no one dares to go there without his prior permission—so I should have the place to myself. I quickly look through the papers on his desk and in his drawers, but nothing catches my attention. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but I’m sure the captain isn’t to be trusted. I look through the storage. There are boxes of drink powders and dried foods of all sorts. It’s mainly what we eat onboard, along with the occasional addition of fresh kale, spinach or other super green leaves that are high in calcium, chlorophyll, and alkalinity, or that grow fast. The leaves are grown on the gardening floor—a small separate entity of the ship we call the Greenhouse that has shelves stacked from floor to ceiling of plants growing in dirt.

I look through all shelves and peek in some of the boxes, but find nothing out of the ordinary. I look at his desk again—but nothing indicates that the captain or E-corp has a secret agenda. I sit down in his desk chair. I suddenly feel tired. It’s the kind of tiredness that comes from feeling resigned and defeated. I don’t even know what I was hoping to find—and why do I need tangible proof anyway? I already know that the captain most likely has a secret agenda. I already know that I’ve signed over my soul to top-level secrecy along with all the other crew members onboard, and surely there’s an intentional strategy behind us being “owned” like that. We’re puppets in a bigger game, but I just don’t know what the game is.

Above the captain’s desk, there’s a notice board full of layers of paper with graphs and notes. It’s very old fashioned to use paper instead of a digital display, but then again the captain is also rather old-fashioned guy—bordering to Neanderthal! Hah! My eye catches the corner of a piece of paper sticking out underneath all the layers. I carefully uncover it. It looks like a hierarchical ‘tree’ of all members of crew. It’s much set up like I’d expect it to be with the captain’s name at the top, and the waterfall of crew members’ names below him, all connected by vertical lines—with one exception. There’s a much thinner horizontal line going out to the left from the captain to someone called “The Officer”, which is also connected by a thin vertical line with another member of crew further down the waterfall—”Lorenson”. I remember the name, but I’m not sure to whom it belongs. Mental note to finally get acquainted with all of the crew. I also notice that there’s some kind of color code—most of the crew names are highlighted in pale yellow, the captain and Lorenson in pale orange, and four names, including mine, aren’t highlighted at all. The other names that aren’t highlighted are Kurt, Martin and Rosie—strangely it’s the only ones except from the captain, that I’ve actually had a conversation with...

I put the paper back on the board, and cover it up the way it was before. I’m only just done, when I hear voices approaching outside the door, and I instinctively hide under the desk. The desk is build solidly into the wall. I press myself against the wall under the table to make myself as invisible as possible, and kick myself in my mind for choosing this hiding place. If it’s the captain coming back to sit at his desk, it’s highly likely that he’ll discover me here—but the voices are just outside the door now, and I haven’t got time to go hide somewhere else. My heart is racing, and an ocean of excuses for why I’m in the storage room are brewing in my head. Suddenly the wall gives way to the pressure of my shoulder with a little thump. It’s not too loud, and I pray that the voices outside haven’t heard anything. There’s knocking on the door, and then it opens. I hold my breath, and hear someone walk in. It sounds like it’s one person walking to the back of the storage, picking something off a shelf, and then leaving again. As the door shuts, the conversation outside continues, and gradually the voices disappear in the distance.

I breathe again, and realize I had even closed my eyes—as if that should help. Like an ostrich hiding its head in sand thinking “If I can’t see them, they can’t see me.” Funny!

I’m relieved and eager to get out of there. I get up and make sure that I’ve left no trace in my hiding place under the desk. Then I notice that the space beneath the desk isn’t as deep as it should be. It’s only a little, but just enough for me to suspect that there might be a fake wall under the desk, where the wall gave way to my shoulder. And sure enough there is. With some difficulty, I manage to move the fake wall, and a secret stash is revealed. As I said, I’m a ‘noxpert’ and don’t know a lot about anything specific—which includes weapons. But I can say this much—there’s a few guns, something that looks to me like grenades of different shapes, and then a collection of small bottles with ‘toxic’ and ‘lethal’ labels on them, next to a handful of syringes. I want to take a photo with my personal device, so I can research on the weapons and the poisons later, but all info recorded on the personal devices are automatically uploaded to the common computer, where someone could potentially hack into it. I can’t take that chance, so I’ve got to rely on my memory. I take another look at the poisons and what I believe are grenades, but I already feel these unfamiliar names and details fade in my mind.

I put the fake wall back up, skedaddle out of the storage room undetected, and head back to my quarters to collect my thoughts.

“Phew. I finally satisfied all the captain’s questions.” Kurt slips in the door to my cabin. “What’s the matter? You look very strange. Are you feeling ill after the asteroid walk?” Kurt sounds concerned.

“No no, nothing like that.” I hesitate and wonder if the cabin is bugged. I’m aware that any kind of detected betrayal or action of mistrust towards E-corp will be punished severely... probably with death, I imagine. But I need to know that Kurt is with me, and Kurt should know the danger we’re in, so I dig out an old fashioned paper pad and pen, and start writing.

We can’t speak. I’m afraid the cabin is bugged. Do you think the hatch, where we talked about the light is bugged?
I hand Kurt the pad with my writing on. He looks puzzled, but reads it and writes me a reply on the pad.

The hatch doesn’t need to be bugged—it has the intercom... But I don’t think anyone was listening. Usually the control room only listens in, when the green activation button is pushed. Then there was the intercom in the suits—but they were turned off. What’s going on
? Kurt writes on the pad and returns it to me. Then he looks patiently at me almost as if I was a child.

I think we’re in danger...
I write on the pad about the secret stash of execution weapons I just found.

Kurt goes pale as he realizes the threat, and rips the pen out of my hand.

We can’t speak about the light, and we’ve got to appear dedicated to headquarters and E-corp.
Kurt writes frantically fast on the pad.

We have to hide that we speak to each other in confidence. We better keep our conversations to a minimum. Only speak when there’s nobody around. That way they won’t suspect we’re sharing intel, and they will feel in control of us. They can finish us off in a snap, if they feel we’re posing any kind of threat.
I feel calm under the circumstances, but very much awake. We’re filling the pages of the pad quickly now.

Who are ‘they’?
Kurt writes fast in imperfect letters full of panic.

Surely it’s Captain Alvah and the mysterious ‘Officer’ on Earth, possibly a guy named ‘Lorenson’, and presumably all the other highlighted crew members, excluding just you, me, and Martin. Perhaps Rosie is excluded too, although it’s my impression that she obeys all the captains orders without question, so she might soon be ‘highlighted’ too if not effectively already. ‘We’ are probably only including three—you, Martin and me.

Should we tell Martin?
Kurt’s eyes are wide open as he hands me the pad.

He seems to be very open and extrovert when he finds someone who wants to listen. Even if he’s not with ‘the highlighted’, how can we know he’ll keep it secret, and not reveal our knowledge by accident. Do you think it’s safe?
I already know what I think.

Kurt reads what I’ve written on the pad, and shakes his head in reply.

If Martin confides in us by himself, then let’s warn him of the danger, tell him to keep quiet and only speak to one of us. But not tell him everything we know and suspect. Keep him at a ‘need to know’-basis, so there’s less risk, if he should happen to spill the beans.
I hand Kurt the paper pad. We’ve filled almost half of it now.

Let’s not tell him anything. He appears to be a blabbermouth, and might give us away.
Kurt looks sad, and his writing is getting sloppier.

But his life is in danger too, if he doesn’t keep his head down, and his nose to himself. We’ve got to warn him. Plus, we could use an ally.
I hand over the pad, and squeeze Kurt’s wrist to encourage him.

Right. Then let me do it. I’ll tell him the bare minimum.
Kurt sighs as he hands me the pad.

He seems ready to give up, and I think a bit of encouragement is in order.

Look. We’ve made contact with aliens, ET’s. We’ve had an actual conversation with an ET, and we’re learning something extraordinary—almost unbelievable. This is what we came here for. Sure there’s a conspiracy we’ve got to navigate through, and learn the politics of—but we’re also experiencing something that humans have dreamt about for centuries.
I try a vague smile, but Kurt just stares at the words on the pad in my hand.
The task now is to get the captain and ‘them’ to trust us. Keep our heads down and collect as much intel as we can.
At least the words I’ve written have a calming effect on me, if not on Kurt.

Kurt just sits there, and stares into thin air.

I tear the written pages off the pad, and put them in the incinerator. The incinerators minimize the amount of trash produced on the vessel, as well as minimize the risk of spreading germs and bacteria. And now this incinerator minimizes information about our secret too.

Everyone straps up for hyper speed, and the ship moves rather turbulently, like it did during take-off. When the turbulence finally stops, we’re next to what appears to be a space station. It says ‘E-corp’ on the side of it.

I look at the surrounding space. There are no longer any familiar star constellations or planets around. The Milky Way is far behind, and there are three moons in the distant space behind the station—all three in different shades of grey.

Apollo approaches the dock at the space station with the utmost care, and finally lands steadily in the dock. The ship is locked in, and the hatch is opened for free access to and from the space station.

All crew members gather in the dining hall.

“This is our outermost space station, and the last stop we make before entering virgin space. It’s the most restricted area of our entire corporation, and it’s an honor and a privilege to be here.” Captain Alvah speaks to the crew in his pompous manner. “In addition to the general provisions of food, oxygen and water, we’ve brought certain provisions, that need delicate handling. I need only our two flight captains to stay behind to monitor the Apollo. The rest of you will carry the special provisions onboard the station under Jack’s supervision.” The captain nods at Jack, who’s usually in charge of technical stuff relating to the engines and the controls of the ship. Jack is another crew member I haven’t had an actual conversation with.

“Lorenson, you come with me.” The captain heads for the space station followed by Lorenson, who turns out to be a small, rather skinny guy with a balding head, and a serious-looking face.

Everybody else follows Jack, who distributes boxes and containers between us in the storage room. I get a box that is rather light and easy to carry. I follow the others through the hatch and onto the space station. It’s gigantic. Much bigger than I could ever have imagined any facility in space. I wonder what they use all that space for, and how many people there are. We enter into what seems to be a huge hangar, where different engines hang from the ceiling. There are vessels parked on the floor of the hangar. It’s primarily small one- or two-seater spaceships, carrying something that look like weapons.