Chapter 26
I awoke in a white room, on a clean white bed, a white sheet pulled up over me to the neck. My clothes were gone. It felt as though I was dressed in only boxer shorts. I had a pretty good headache going. There was a smiley-face stuck to the ceiling above me.
I tried to sit up but succeeded only in raising my head. The rest of me refused to budge. RJ’s face appeared on my left and stared down at me.
“I wouldn’t try that just yet.”
“Why am I restrained?”
“You’re not. You’re so beat up it just feels that way.”
“Perk?”
“He’s hanging in there.” RJ nodded to my right.
I turned my head to see Perk, in the same totally white environment, beneath a clear Plexiglas tube, asleep.
RJ continued. “It was some form of plasma bullet. It made a pretty good size hole. Designed not to cauterize, so the victim would bleed more. It shut down his left lung, but the Doctor rebooted it. He’s gonna make it.”
“But the ship and crew?”
“You’re gonna be proud of us. Would you believe Ringo and Salardy took out two of them? They fell for the fake net messages. Pell’s phony call for help worked like a dream. The two of them walked into the beams, got knocked down by the blast and Ringo and Salardy were waiting. They unloaded everything they had. Their suits failed and they became visible, but they were already dead.”
“And that’s not all. We sealed off most of level two, all except the main corridor, and then caught one of them coming out. He was in some kind of hurry like he got a message it was time to leave or something. Wasn’t paying enough attention. Broke two of the beams and got into a fire-fight. I think maybe when they die, the suits shut down or something. Anyway, the remains of those three are in isolated deep freeze. And, you won’t believe who took that one out. Frank Parker.”
“Frank Parker shot one?”
“Not just shot one, firefight! The thing was invisible for quite a bit of it. Frank was all over the place, diving, rolling, shooting. It’s on video when you get a chance. It’s gonna go viral if it’s ever leaked to Video-Tube.”
“Frank Parker was in a firefight and is still alive?”
“Yeah, didn’t even get a scratch. Can you believe that? Frank has reinvented himself.”
“So, how many left?”
“Can’t say. Life Science isn’t going to be scanning anything any time soon. Their stuff is screwed up pretty bad. But the point is we have control of the ship. We’ve got detectors set up all over the place, so much that whoever is left can’t hardly go anywhere without us knowing. Everyone is safe for the most part. Most of the crew is still back in the tail section, under heavy guard. They are aching to get out. There’s a lot of floating vomit back there because it’s all zero G, of course. But many of the life pods are open so they have everything else they need. The plan is to keep them there until we’re certain the ship is secure. Don’t want any hostage or kamikaze situations popping up.”
“How many did we lose?”
“That’s the hard part. No way to account for people still hiding we don’t know about. A rough estimate is maybe thirty to forty. Many of those have been found still on board, all prep’d for the trip to the alien ship. There’s no hope for them. We still don’t even know what they were doing with them.”
I tried to rise up again, against the pain and managed to push up onto one elbow. “I have to get up. There might be a way to find out how many are left, and where they are.”
“It’s a good guess they are on the lower level. That’s the other bad news. We discovered they’ve been transferring our air and water to their ship. Don’t know how only know a big chunk of it is gone. But, since you and Perk convinced them to leave, that has stopped.”
I managed to continue up to a sitting position. The movement alarmed the Doctor. He came briskly over with the stern doctor look on his face.
“Adrian, you’re on some pretty heavy pain medication, you can’t be doing anything.”
“I just need to make a trip to the Captain’s quarters. It won’t take long.”
“Have you looked at your chest?”
I looked down to find my chest had turned to a deep hue of black and blue.
“Your back is identical. You have micro-fractures all over the chest area, front and back, and you have a grade three concussion, which is no joke. If we hadn’t gotten to you when we did, the swelling in your brain would have killed you.”
“Still, I just need a quick trip to Captain’s quarters, Doc. I’ll go slow and come right back.”
“How can that be so important? If your pulse rate climbs too high, you’re likely to have an aneurysm.”
“I’ll be back within twenty minutes. I promise. Security will be with me all the way.”
“Well, you are the acting Captain of this ship. I won’t try to override you, but remember any exertion and you won’t be awake to do anything at all.”
I slid my feet down to the floor. It looked so far away I thought it might not be reachable. Fortunately, my legs had become ten feet long so they touched down easily. I swayed with the Doctor clamped onto my right arm, and took a moment against the table to get orientated.
JR showed up with a flight suit and helped my legs into it. He pulled it up behind me and steered my arms into the sleeves. I continued to sway like a drunkard as I chased the zipper handle around and finally won the contest by zipping up. Without asking, I felt JR working some zippered boots onto my feet, and with that my ensemble was complete.
“Who’ve I got?”
JR answered, “Ringo and Patterson. The others are on patrol. Oh, and me. I’m coming along on this one.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
With RJ under one arm and one of the swat guys under the other, I did my best to make the Doctor think I was under my own power. It was a pathetic attempt, and by the look on his face, I could tell he was watching a train wreck.
By the time we reached the Captain’s quarters my legs had recovered enough that they felt like those antique spring-shoes kids used to play with. I was walking on pogo sticks and my vision was like looking through a periscope. I asked the three of them to wait outside. They looked at me like I was insane.
When the doors slid open, I did a Frankenstein swagger into the room and let them close. The nearest rescue vehicle was the desk. I staggered over, leaning too far forward, but made it.
There was no wait. Staring down at the desk for composure, the room suddenly began to glow the golden light. My fatigue disappeared. I straightened up to find the Emissary standing in her open door. To my surprise, she came gently forward until only about three feet away. She reached out a hand and touched my right arm.
My body began to tingle as though it was enveloped in a soft static charge. The electricity descended into me and the feeling turned to one of euphoric, physical joy. I straightened up further as my thoughts and vision began to clear. I exercised my left shoulder. It worked well.
Looking up, I found her back in the doorway. I was not certain she had ever actually been near me, but my physical condition was vastly improved.
I looked at her in wonder.
She spoke within my mind. "Not too much.”
“Perk?”
“He will be well.”
“All the others?”
“All is as it must be.”
I wondered to her about the intruders.
She replied, “One, down below.”
Along with the information, I understood in giving it to me she had somehow sinned, at least from her point of view. I wondered how that could be.
An answer came that was beyond my understanding. She was not a part of the present. She was more of the past and future. At some point, the ‘rogues’ as she had called them, would evolve to become a spiritual race. She already knew them then. To her, all were eternal souls. All woul
d find their way. She could see the perfection each would become. To intervene in any of their paths meant her name was entered on a page in the book of their lives.
I did my best to understand. She gave me a look of kindness.
“Visit once more.” Her door slid shut more slowly than usual. The glow dimmed. Her energy field subsided.
I looked at my chest. It was still black. I ran a couple steps in place. Everything worked well. My vision was clear. I headed for the door.
Outside, they were astonished at my renewed mobility. I begged off by saying I was just recovering faster than expected. We headed back toward sickbay.
“RJ, how many entrances to the lowest level?”
“We counted three.”
“Are the SWAT intercoms working?”
“Yes, but we have not been using them much since we do not know who’s listening to what.”
“Ringo, are you familiar with the emergency bulkhead seals used to close off a corridor when there’s a breach?”
“Part of standard training, Commander.”
“Here’s what I want. As quietly as possible, seal off the entrances to the lower level, forward and aft. Leave the mid-ship hatch alone. Once you have those sealed off, tack-weld an emergency bulkhead seal in the corridor that leads to the mid-ship entrance. Do it around a corner. In other words, if you come out of the lower level, you will not see you are blocked by a new door around the next corner. We need to do this fast in case the intruder decides to sabotage the rest of our air and water if he hasn’t already.”
RJ looked over at me. “I don’t completely get it, Adrian.”
“We’re going to slowly decompress the lower level. Sooner or later, he will be forced to leave. He will then be trapped between the decompressed lower level and the new emergency bulkhead.”
“Why trap him? Why not just decompress the whole thing and let him die?”
“Because that’s not what advanced races do, RJ.”
I could feel the gambit of emotions running through RJ. He was the spiritual one, the defender of the old ways, the man who did crossword puzzles on paper rather than a state-of-the-art ereader. The loss of friends, the threat of death, the will to stay alive, had invoked executive privilege on those tenets held so deeply in his heart. He looked over at me once more.
“I understand.” After a moment, he asked, “What will you do with him?”
“We’ll put him to sleep, take his suit, and put him in suspended animation.”
We reached sickbay, and with a few more instructions Ringo and Patterson headed out to set the trap. The Doctor immediately noticed I was under my own power and came over.
“You seem much better.”
“I just needed to walk it off a little.”
“Let me take a look at your chest.”
I opened my coveralls and displayed the bruising. He furrowed his brow and pointed his little light in my eyes. “That’s odd. I’ve never seen that much progress from that kind of concussion; very odd.”
“Doctor, since I am up and around, RJ and I need to visit life support. It’s one last thing and then I’ll knock off for the next twenty-four hours, I swear.”
The Doctor still looked perplexed by my sudden recovery. He squeezed his chin, stared, and shook his head. “Okay, but any setbacks and you get right back here.”
I gave him a thumb up and we headed back out. When we were alone, RJ spoke. “I know the secret, Adrian. It was easy.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s a classified video system, only available to the captain, for secretly monitoring the crew and you used it to somehow locate the alien.”
“It’s that old saying RJ. I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
“It’s our secret.”
When we reached Life Support, a Security team already stationed there had beam guards at both ends of the corridor and the entrance. They were so pumped up I felt fortunate they hadn’t taken a shot at us.
One life support engineer had been brought up from the tail section. He sat at the control console as we waited for Ringo and Patterson to call in. Forty-five minutes later the trap was set. The Life Support engineer began a slow drain of the atmosphere on the lower deck. It seemed like an eternity, but finally we saw the mid-ship hatch open and close, allowing us to remotely lock it.
I had expected him to take longer. It could have been hours, depending on how much breathable oxygen he carried in his suit. It was likely he considered that resource precious, having stolen most of ours. They had emptied the nearby tanks and would have gone on to the rest given the opportunity.
With the Doctor in tow, we hurried down to the trap and took turns peering through the small observation window. The section of sealed off corridor appeared empty, but we knew he was there. He must have known we knew but held onto his betrayed disguise in desperation.
Using the bleed port valve on the temporary bulkhead, we flooded the compartment with a cold fog until we could see a faint alien outline through infrared goggles. Using them, the Doctor injected anesthesia at a level he thought might be safe, and within minutes our prisoner was prone on the floor.
SWAT went in, pulled off his wrist control, and secured him with tie-wraps. With a gas mask on his ugly little face, and the Doctor monitoring what life signs he could find, they took him away.
Our ship was secure.