Surviving The Theseus (6 page)

Regina walked to the right side of the
holographic room and pressed a circular, blue button on the wall.
As soon as she did, a glass partition slid up from the floor and
down from the ceiling and joined to enclose the room. A second
later, the glass transformed from crystal clear to brown, matching
the other walls. She could no longer see into the holographic
section.

Regina walked over to a large bay window,
closed the slatted blinds, came back, and jumped behind a light
brown sofa, her running shoes squeaking as she landed on the
hardwood floor. The sofa offered a nice hiding spot, at a
forty-five degree angle against two walls, facing the fireplace.
She pointed her gun over the edge of it, keeping herself as close
to the living room entrance wall as she could.

Ten minutes passed and Regina heard nothing.
No one approached and no one tried to get into the cottage. Leave
or stay? Were they waiting for her to come out? She cursed to
herself. Wait, it was.

Another couple minutes passed and then the
porch floorboards creaked.

Fear nothing for fear breeds mistakes. That
was one of her father’s mantras and one she often repeated to
herself in such situations.

Regina steadied herself on her feet and
hunkered down. Her right arm rested on the couch and the gun
pointed at the door.

The porch floorboards creaked again.

George, Mary, and Michael waited in a large
boardroom. A large window overlooked the docking bay they had just
chased the runner into.

George and Mary sat at a massive oak table
fitted with twenty high-backed leather chairs.

Michael stood by the window, watching the
activity in the docking bay. The runner ship sat askew in the now
waterless upper glass bay.

The room’s walls were plastered with maps of
star systems, gates, and pictures of Alpha leaders who had
previously been in control of precinct ship Lancer.

Lights hung from cables, suspended from the
ceiling, dimmed down and throwing Mary and George’s shadows in
long, narrow shapes across the table.

“I knew they would be kids,” Mary said.

“SPARS kids, no less,” George said. “Only
two, thank God.”

“Why,” Mary said. “Who cares how many there
were?”

“Fewer pissed off parents,” Michael said.
George’s lips pursed into what looked like a thin smile. “The thing
that really surprised me was that they were both girls and only
fourteen.”

“Well, if I were their parents, they’d be
grounded for four years,” Mary said.

George nodded. “It will be worse after the
SPARS council finishes with the parents, reaming them out over how
their kids knew the controls in the ship. They will probably be
demoted and put on suspension for awhile.”

“Yeah, they are --“ Michael stopped himself
when the door opened and a short man with a gray mustache and gray,
wavy hair walked in, looking about the same age as George.

“Good day, people,” said the man as he walked
in, carrying a small rectangular device in his right hand, about
the size of a paperback book.

“Hello, Brad,” George said.

The others nodded to Brad as he looked up at
them, and then took a seat at the head of the table, putting the
device down in front of him.

Michael came away from the window and sat
down at the other end of the table from Brad.

They all waited patiently as Brad got ready.
“Screens,” Brad said, and instantly twenty glass screens, as flat
as paper, popped up through openings in the table. Everyone had his
or her own screen to view. There was one for every chair at the
table. “Give me a second.” Brad fiddled with the device he put down
on the table. His device was a smaller version of the screens
before them, clear as glass and paper-thin. He talked into it.
“Pyramid Cruise Line case file. Slide one, please.”

A picture of the Pyramid Cruise ship appeared
on all the screens. It looked like an Egyptian pyramid had been cut
in half, from the top down and then flipped on its side so the flat
part from the slice faced up, and then the whole thing got
stretched out. There was a rounded dome on the whole top section.
The levels of the ship were like levels on a pyramid, with the
shortest level at the bottom and the longest level at the top.

Brad let them study the image of the ship for
a few seconds and then said, “In case you haven’t guessed already,
your team is being pulled from the Planetary Games security patrol
to a new assignment.” Brad placed his handheld device onto the
table in front of him. “Your control devices have been updated with
the same information --“

Brad nodded towards his device.

“-- that this one has.”

Michael watched his screen. The image of the
ship rotated. It looked like a model representation of the real
thing. There was no detail on it. And no stars in the background.
Just the image rotating on a black background.

Brad leaned in a little and spoke into his
device. “Next slide.”

A mapping image popped onto the screens,
revealing a small picture of the Pyramid ship, gates, and
planets.

Brad continued. “If you look at your screen,
you can see the path the Pyramid has taken, and where it is
supposed to be right now.”

Michael noticed a lined path from one planet
to a planet in another system, where the Planetary Games happened
to be about to take place. But the ship’s path only went three
quarters of the way there.

“We got a call,” Brad said, “from Pyramid
headquarters that they lost contact with their ship over eight
hours ago, and have not been able to reach them.”

“They’re the only ship in the fleet so far,”
Mary said. “Not the maiden voyage, but pretty close. Probably some
bugs in the system still.”

Brad looked over at Mary, his eyebrows
furrowed. “That’s what their headquarters think. They said there
have been no problems with communications before, but they did just
have some software upgraded and think it may be the culprit.” Brad
looked over at George, his eyebrows back to normal, his brown eyes
soft and kind. “It’s probably nothing, but I need you to take your
team and track them down and make sure they’re okay. But -- “

Michael knew it before Brad said it.

“-- you’re on your own. I need all available
resources for security at the games. Those idiots who organized it
did not count on how many planets would want to participate. They
grossly underestimated the security needed.”

“You can’t spare one extra team, Brad?”
George said.

“No, I can’t. Half the ships are already at
the games, and half of the ones left in the bay are under repair.
Plus, we have to maintain our regular security posts. As it is, all
the other military branches are chipping in and we’re still not at
a number we should be.”

Michael felt a rant coming on, Brad trying to
justify why they had to go out on a hunt that, if it was what Brad
was saying it was, could have been checked out by the nearest gate
patrol. All they had to do was follow the matchstick road.

Sure enough, after a deep inhale, Brad
continued. “It’s a cluster fuck with billions of people en route or
already there, and thousands upon thousands of ships of all sizes.
The rest of the precinct ships will be on their way soon. Lancer
will be moving to the nearest gate by the games. I’m sorry, George,
but that’s why I picked your team. Your team combined has the most
field experience.” Brad sighed. “There’s one other thing.”

“You’re killing me,” George said. “Only one
ship for the whole team?”

Brad nodded. “I’m sorry, but that’s the
situation, as shitty as it is. Your control devices have more
information about Pyramid One. Lancer is close to going through a
gate so you have to leave right now. Keep in contact.”

Brad leaned towards his device. “Screens down
and control off.” The screens moved down, back into the table,
turning to clear glass as the images disappeared. “Talk to you
soon.”

Brad got up, looked like he was about to say
something else, and then just nodded at the group, a forced smile
on his face.

After he left, Mary and Michael looked at
each other and shook their heads. George noticed.

“We’re going whether we like it or not, but
damned if I won’t be prepared, even if it’s most likely just
software glitches. Michael. Mary. I want you and everyone else to
read everything about this ship. I want you all to know it inside
and out before we get there . . . docking bay, engineering,
control, communications. Everything.”

Another floorboard creaked, just outside the
door of the cottage Regina hid in, and she could have sworn she
heard a man’s voice say “Shh-it!”

Regina smiled.

She heard the iron latch on the door slowly
open with a slight click.

She moved her index finger over the
trigger.

The latch released.

She took a breath.

The door slowly started to open.

Regina held the breath.

Two silhouetted figures entered the cottage.
They closed the door and dropped themselves into near dark, except
the light coming from the porch and what light remained from the
sky above coming in through the windows in the dining area.

There wasn’t enough light to see their faces,
but Regina knew the figures to be a man and a woman. She felt no
threat from them, but she wasn’t about to take any chances. “Hands
in the air and walk towards my voice until I tell you to stop.”

The man jumped back when Regina spoke, but
the woman did not budge.

Regina continued. “I have a forty-five, with
a shock blast of ninety-nine percent, pointed at you, meaning if I
even nick a finger there’s a ninety-nine percent chance you will
never get up again just from the voltage alone.”

“We’re unarmed,” came the woman’s voice, as
both the man and woman lifted their arms above their heads and
walked towards Regina.

“Stop right there,” Regina said as she stood
up. The man and woman stopped just inside the living room. Regina
hopped over the couch, never losing sight of the pair.

“Let us explain why we followed you,” the
woman said before Regina had a chance to ask.

Regina pointed her gun away from them, over
to the couch, and both of them moved and sat down on the couch as
Regina backed up by the fireplace.

“My name is Rachel Winslow, and --“

Rachel nodded towards her partner.

“-- this is Blair Campbell.” Rachel looked
directly into Regina’s eyes as she spoke, never wavering from her
gaze.

Blair looked around the room, his right leg
bopping up and down.

Rachel continued to stare at Regina. “We’re
passengers on this thing, and we were hiding on this level after
coming out of our rooms and finding clothing lying everywhere, but
no people anywhere, until we saw you.”

Regina looked them both up and down as Rachel
spoke. Rachel was older than Blair, maybe in her thirties, with
long curly, black hair, blue eyes, short and fit. Blair was a tall,
heavy-set man, with dark, slicked back hair to his shoulders, brown
eyes, and an engineering ring on his right hand. Regina missed no
detail. It felt like she was profiling these people, like she was
on the job.

Blair smiled as he noticed Regina looking him
over. Regina did not return the smile. She was too busy staring at
his large off-kilter nose. It was wide and long, and looked like it
had been broken, but not recently.

“So you’ve been hiding up here since this all
began,” Regina said.

“No,” Blair said as Rachel gave him a
piercing stare that he ignored. “We tried the docking bay first,
but the entry doors were sealed and we couldn’t get in. We then
took the stairs all the way up here.”

Blair’s leg continued moving quickly up and
down.

“Have you seen anything else unusual, other
than the clothing piles?” Regina asked.

“Yes, an orange light,” Rachel said, “in the
distance on our room level. We got an uneasy vibe from it, and
that’s when we tried to get to the docking bay.”

Regina watched their eyes as they spoke and
she couldn’t tell if they were lying or not. They seemed genuine.
One thing that stuck in her mind and wouldn’t let go was the
engineering ring Blair wore.

There were engineers all over the place, but
none Regina could remember that wore rings like Blair’s platinum
one. Only a particular kind of engineer wore a ring like that, but
she couldn’t remember what kind at the moment.

Regina relaxed a bit and let her arm drop,
the gun now pointed at the floor. Blair’s leg stopped moving.

“Do you have any idea what is going on?”
Rachel said.

“None at all. I was hoping you two
would.”

Rachel shook her head.

“I’ve been inside the orange light when it
flashed,” Regina said, “and it felt very threatening to me. And
some sort of brown, gooey blob came out of nowhere at me. It
missed, but it almost seemed like it tried to follow me, as if it
were alive.”

Rachel and Blair looked at each other. Blair
started shaking his leg up and down again.

“That’s weird,” Blair said and Rachel
nodded.

“Well, let’s go,” Regina said.

“Go where?” Blair said.

“Control Room.”

Blair furrowed his brow. “What for? We’ve
stayed alive for hours on this level.”

“And what did that get you? Alive, yes, but
nowhere near off this floating ghost ship. We don’t even know what
direction we’re headed, or who might be in control of this
ship.”

Regina started to move towards the back side
of the couch. Rachel stood up.

“Where are you going?” Blair asked
Rachel.

“She’s right. We need to start thinking about
how to get out of here alive, and I’m tired of being a pussy.”