Chapter 28
John Doe
John took the opportunity to stretch his shoulders as far as he could and twist his head around. He was still standing on his own just by the front of his ship. They had docked in the spacious almost palatial docking ring of Orion Major. The ring generated its own gravity and atmosphere, and it meant John could take deep breaths of air as he waited.
He was standing in his dress uniform. He hated the thing. The high collar itched his neck. Shoving a finger into it and fiddling with the stiff fabric, he scratched at his eyebrow.
For a second he turned behind him to clap eyes on the Pegasus. His ship.
She really was beautiful. An experimental Galaxy Class cruiser, she was equipped with the latest omidium core. She was fast and powerful, and exactly what you wanted when you were headed deep into pirate territory.
She wasn't large; four levels, only 500 meters long, but she wasn't small either.
She was perfect for John. Fast and able, and with the best crew around.
He could never stop himself from smiling whenever he saw her.
He reached out a hand to run it across the giant nose that arched up above him.
‘Commander,’ he heard a gruff voice announce from behind him.
John whirled on his foot.
Admiral Fletcher was walking up the metal walkway, Evelyn at his side.
She fixed him with a smile the second she saw him. And even though John wasn't the type, he almost wanted to blush.
Straightening up and locking his arms behind him, John gave a low nod. ‘Admiral, Evelyn,’ he said, nodding at them both in turn.
‘I heard you've got engine trouble,’ the Admiral growled by way of salutation.
John shook his head, always keeping his arms rigid and stiff behind him, the hands locked together. ‘Nothing to be alarmed of, sir. My Chief Engineer is running a diagnostic. We've had slight fluctuations in the power grid. She assures me it will be sorted in the hour.’
The Admiral gave a curt nod. A sour looking man with hallow eyes and grey beard, the Admiral did not look like the kind to smile, ever. ‘I see. I have briefed you in full, Commander, and I should not have to remind you that Evelyn is an extremely important asset. Look after her,’ he said, voice slow and pointed.
No, he really, really didn't need to remind John of that; the Admiral had repeated that point to the nth degree.
But John didn't point that out, instead he flicked his eyes to Evelyn just as the Admiral called her an asset.
He saw her eyes drop down to the floor for a second, then her gaze quickly levelled and she looked his way.
No one should have to be called an asset. It was dehumanizing. Guns and ships and engine cores were assets; people were so much more.
‘Evelyn will require her own quarters,’ the Admiral began, then he continued by listing the extraordinary number of resources the woman would need.
Rather than make a face, John kept his expression even. He did however flick his gaze over to her once as she mouthed the word 'sorry' clearly his way.
It got his attention, even made the corner of his mouth curl.
He liked her already.
When the Admiral had finished, he demanded a tour of the ship, then told John he would meet them in the diplomatic district of the docking ring at 14:00 for a final debrief.
It was an odd experience taking the Admiral and Evelyn around his ship. John felt like a tour guide, a really bad one. What made it worse was that his crew were all snapping salutes and scurrying around looking busy, obviously trying to impress the Admiral.
It made him feel so awkward. And it really didn't help every time Evelyn leaned to the side and stifled a smile or soft laugh with her hand. By the time it was over and Evelyn and the Admiral disembarked, John was ready to throw himself into the engine core.
‘Oooh, that went well,’ Parka walked up behind him and slammed a hand on his shoulder when the Admiral was sufficiently far down the gangway that her voice would not travel.
When the Admiral was finally out of sight, John turned and shook his head, pressing his fingers into his nose as he walked around the side of the Pegasus, heading for the gangway.
‘Wow, she likes you,’ Parka began.
He put up a hand quickly.
Parka put up her own hands, her multiple fingers spreading wide. ‘Hey, I'm not going to say anything.’
Grumbling, John decided to leave it. ‘Tell me you've got good news about the core. I kind of promised the Admiral that you would have it sorted by the hour.’
‘Well you are lucky, because we've tested the bulkhead and there are no cracks,’ Parka said, but as she did, the smile practically slipped from her face.
For the first time John really looked at her, and he realized that she had something hidden behind her back.
‘What?’ his skin started to prickle down his spine.
She brought around a section of metal. It looked like plating. It had a massive dent in it.
Parka turned it around in her hands for a while.
‘What is it?’ he asked, voice slower.
‘I actually don't know. Okay, no, I know what it is; its hull plating off service duct 2B. But I can't tell you how it got a dent in it like that,’ she kept considering the piece of metal, twisting it easily around in her hands. Her race was strong, after all.
‘Have you run it through the scanner?’ John nodded its way. ‘Any biological residue?’ his voice was tight. Though Parka had laughed at the suggestion, the possibility that there was a saboteur aboard John's ship suddenly looked highly likely.
Parka shook her head. ‘Nothing, no residue.’
‘Robot then?’ John suggested.
‘You don't understand where I found this, obviously you don't know your ship's blueprint well enough to realize where service duct 2B is.’
‘Just tell me.’
Parka stopped twirling the metal around. She looked straight at him. ‘It's right near the core. About as close as you could get. No robot, let alone a biological could withstand the radiation of the omidium core; it fries anything in sight.’
‘So what the hell did that?’
‘Whatever it was, it managed to pull out a section of cable behind this panel too,’ Parka ran some of her many fingers over the bump in the panel. ‘Our best guess at the moment is shutting own the core caused an overload in the conduits in that section and caused the panel to pop right off.’
John didn't answer.
‘After all, there is nothing - robotic or alive - that could operate that close to an omidium engine. That's one of the reasons we have such thick plating and so many security fields. Not even our ICN can go that deep. Those conduits are purely mechanical. Anything in that section has to be as simple as hell otherwise the radiation will fry its circuits.’
‘But that panel looks like it has been punched,’ John leaned in and grabbed the corner of it, stopping Parka from twirling it in place.
She looked up at his eyes sharply, her own purple irises twinkling up at him. ‘I know.’
‘But nothing could have done that, right?’ John's voice was still tight.
‘Like I said, nothing can survive that close to an omidium core. A biological would have been fired within seconds, and a robot's neural processors would have been overloaded faster.’
‘So there was an overload that caused the panel to burst off, damaging it like that,’ John concluded.
‘That's right, Commander, that's my best and only guess,’ Parka said.
John tried to get over the sinking feeling in his gut. ‘Scan—’ he began.
‘Oh we are already doing that. We're scanning the whole ship. Now the core has been shut down, scanners will be able to penetrate every single service tunnel. They'll even be able to scan the center of the core itself.’
‘But we're not going to find anything?’ John hazarded.
Parka nodded her head. ‘I certainly hope not,’ she said with a wry smile, ‘otherwis
e I'm going to have to call the Union Force Military Academy and get them to update their course on omidium engineering.’
John sucked in a breath and pushed it through his clenched teeth.
‘I'll deal with this, Commander, why don't you take some leave? I heard you've got a final meeting with the Admiral at 14:00 now. Well by my count that leaves three whole hours to bum around the docking ring markets. You never know what you might find.’ Parka nodded low at him, considered the buckled piece of metal in her hand once more, then turned around and walked away.
She left John feeling uncomfortable. Though he knew the facts of omidium, he also knew what a punched panel looked like; he'd done such damage himself, when dressed in his armor, of course.
Mulling over it and hoping like hell that Parka wouldn't find anything in those service tunnels, John walked towards the gangway. Maybe Parka was right. Maybe he should take the next few hours to unwind before his mission really began.
So John, putting his worries behind him, walked past the bulk of his ship and towards the elevator ring at the center of the docking platform.
As he caught sight of the white metallic doors, it brought it all back. Images of that robot with its fingers locked around that woman's neck streamed into his mind.
He blinked his eyes hard, even rubbed his thumbs over them.
They would not go away.
After all, sometimes death affects you. And John had the feeling this one would be hitting him hard for some time.