******
Haylek just stared at the panels. Moments ago, he managed to pilot the transport out of Venus-1, all the while being chased by police ships that were shooting at him. Not to mention being towed in the middle of a space battle.
The whole thing was surreal to him. If it were not for the fact that he was still sitting in the pilot seat and could still see the burn marks on the panels, he would dismiss the whole thing as some wild dream or fantasy.
“Waverider?”
He felt a hand on his shoulder—it was Freeze.
“Come on, let’s get out,” Freeze said.
Freeze’s voice felt somewhat muted to his ears. His eyes focused on their surroundings outside the transparent metal window. They had landed somewhere inside an enclosed structure, and he could see other ships and people moving about around them. He looked down at the control panels. Chorus was no longer standing there. He looked around trying to find her.
“Where is she?” Haylek asked.
“I don’t know,” Freeze said. “She faded into that gas form when we landed and disappeared. Do you still have the jewel?”
Haylek suddenly slapped his chest searching for it. Panic filled him as he could not find it. Was Chorus gone again? What was he going to do now without her? She had guided him on what he was supposed to do, and now she was not there to help him.
His hands continued to frantically search his clothing until he found it bunched up in his shirt. He sighed with relief as he gazed at it. But the jewel no longer glowed and it felt cold in his hand. The magic that seeped from it before was gone now.
“Well, I guess she’s back inside it,” Freeze mused. “Let’s go! There’s something going on out there.”
“Out there?” Haylek repeated, still in a daze.
“The ship! The Sea Wolf! We landed—don’t you remember?”
Haylek shook the cobwebs from of his head. “Yeah—yeah, of course. How’s Eddie?”
“They took him out on a stretcher—alive, I think.”
“What about the terminal?”
“The Doc has it; he’s already outside. Come on!”
“Okay okay, let’s go.”
They both exited the transport and stood in the Sea Wolf’s landing bay. Crewmembers were running around, either tending to equipment or other ships. The Doc was sitting on the floor with the terminal in front of him. While he worked with it, he seemed oblivious to all the activity around him.
“What is going on?” Haylek asked.
The Doc ignored him.
“We’re still fighting,” Freeze answered instead.
“We haven’t left yet?” Haylek’s stomach went into knots at the thought of more fighting. “But we made it aboard… why haven’t we jumped out?”
“Something with the engines,” Freeze said. “I heard one of them say that the ship can’t jump for another ten minutes.”
At that moment, one of the crew approached them. He was a short man with blond hair and blue eyes. He was wearing a fighter pilot uniform and carried his helmet in one hand. There was a mischievous look to him and he smiled with the butt of a cigar hanging from his mouth. Somehow he managed to talk without it falling out.
“Hello, lads,” he said. “I’m Mac.”
Haylek could smell alcohol on his breath. “Thanks, Mac, for saving us. It was brave.”
“Brave? Ah, but fortune favors the brave, Wav’radr. So the way I see it, the braver I am, the more fortune I’ll end up with.”
He slapped Haylek on the arm.
“There’ll be plenty of fortune to go around, mate—just stay brave!”
Haylek was about to ask him how he had learned his name before, when another crewmember approached them. He was a large, burly man with an unkempt beard and long, wild hair. His uniform was a faded yellow and had streaks of black goo staining it. He looked at the hackers briefly, and then turned to Mac.
“Orders from the bridge,” he said, his voice had a curious accent to it. “Need you and the pilots back on your steeds—we have incoming bogeys.”
Mac blew a plume of smoke out, and then turned to Haylek.
“See what I mean, mates? Plenty of fortune to go around!”
Before Haylek could ask him any questions, he slapped the helmet on and ran off toward the fighters.
The man sized up the three hackers. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but a beep from his wrist-link stopped him.
“Ralph here, sir,” he responded quickly, then walked away.
The Doc closed up the terminal and abruptly stood to join them.
“What we do now?”
Haylek stood there feeling a sense of déjà vu—it was as if they had been dropped off back at the shuttle garage again, aimless and with no idea what to do next. He turned to Freeze, but saw only the sheepish expression he was accustomed to seeing. There would be no helpful ideas there.
“All right, Chorus,” he said aloud. “What now?”
He felt a sudden tickle in his ear and jumped. Miniature Chorus was suddenly standing on his shoulder.
She whispered in his ear, “Get in that.” Her tiny hand pointed toward the far end of the bay, where a lone shuttle was parked.
“Why?” Haylek protested.
“Because your help is needed. Please do it.”
“Whatever,” Haylek said with resignation. The group made a start toward it.
“No,” Chorus said quickly. “Just Waverider—alone. Take the terminal with you. The rest of you stay here.”
Haylek half-expected Doc to protest, but he simply handed him the terminal.
He suddenly felt nervous. Whatever she was asking him to do, he was doing it alone. He made his way to the shuttle, dodging crewmembers that were running chaotically in all directions of the bay. Nobody stopped him along the way or even as he reached it.
The shuttle looked different from the other parked ships. It was long and had transparent metal windows that lined its sides. It had a black matte paint job on it and enclosures attached to the hull that seemed out of place. To him, it looked like a luxury yacht.
The ship’s door was open and a stairway ramp lead up into it—there appeared to be nobody inside.
“Where am I going?” he asked Chorus. “Why can’t the others come with me?”
“Just get inside. I will explain later,” she assured.
“No!” he protested. “I’m not doing anything more until you tell me why!”
Chorus jumped down from his shoulder and landed in front of him on the stairway. She looked up at him gravely, but it was hard to take her seriously—she looked like a mythological fairy to him—all that was missing were wings.
“In a matter of minutes,” she said sternly, “some bad things are destined to occur. It is a mathematical certainty that you and this entire crew are going to die. A slight chance exists that we can alter these events to avoid the unraveling that leads to that conclusion.” She motioned to the crew around the landing bay. “These lives are only important because of the role they play in the future of mankind. If this ship and crew are destroyed now, the human race will become extinct. In this moment of time, you can help them—you are the only one that can help right now.”
Haylek shook his head.
“How can you know any of this? How did you know about Eddie getting hurt—and Mac’s ship coming to rescue us? You seem to know about things before they happen—how? Are you psychic or something?”
Her eyes squinted as if trying to collect her thoughts before speaking.
“I see space and time in a different way than you,” she said. “What I see is like a stream of water, with leaves floating on top of it representing the different courses of reality. I can simply watch them as they float downriver to the ocean, or I can dip my hands into it and change where they go.
“I have seen a multitude of possible events as they could happen and traced their origins to this moment in time—when we are now
. This is not the first time we have met, Waverider. In another reality we have gone through this before, but this is the closest we have come to completing our destiny—we have never made it this far.
“What is happening now, and the part that the Sea Wolf plays, is critical to the survival and coexistence of man and machinekind.”
She paused and seemed to study him for a moment before smiling.
“So to answer your question, Waverider: yes—I am a little psychic.”
Haylek shook his head again. “I don’t understand… and I don’t believe you. What reason would you have to help us—us humans? You once almost destroyed humanity!”
“No. I did not even exist then; that was my mother and I am not her. I want to heal the wounds that she created and help usher in a new world where peace exists between us.
“Waverider, I know that you do not trust me because of what my mother did to the original Brotherhood, but that is not me. I want to help humanity and give the Brotherhood a place in this new world. You must put aside your fear and allow me to help. Please.” Her voice became pleading. “Please trust me.”
Haylek knew he had to make a decision on whether to help her—but how would he know he was making the right decision?
He looked around at the activity in the landing bay. Mac was already in a fighter getting ready to take off. He did not see any other fighters launching—perhaps he just missed seeing them take off. Haylek wondered what the pilots were up against—what were their chances?
Could he really help them? Could he really help the ship? And what about mankind itself? How could a lone hacker make any difference?
He looked down at Chorus. A miniature woman—who wasn’t even really a woman. She was made of nanobots—part of a machine that was the last living offspring of the A.I.—Majesty, who was defeated over a century ago. Perhaps it was crazy to think that he could somehow help humanity, but this whole thing was crazy anyway.
“All right,” he said finally, and then stepped up into the ship with her. “Let’s go.”