Chapter 30
John Doe
‘So let me get this straight,’ Evelyn said as she gave the cutest smile on record, ‘you’ve never tried ice cream? Aren’t you human?’
John, trying not to look too embarrassed, stretched his shoulders a bit, and made what he hoped was a manly show of shaking his head. ‘I never really got the chance back on Earth,’ he mumbled.
Evelyn’s beautiful blue eyes widened. ‘That is no excuse. For a human to never have tried ice cream, is, is, well criminal,’ she concluded.
A part of John wanted to put a hand up and tell her straight away that the reason he had never tried ice cream was that as a child he had been lucky if he’d been able to eat at all. But she seemed to be having such a good time poking fun at him, that he stopped himself.
‘Well,’ she nodded down at the ice cream in John’s hand, ‘what do you think?’
John shrugged his shoulders. Sugary, kind of creamy, and it certainly had more flavor than most of the recalibrated foods he got on the Pegasus. But he put a little bit more effort into smiling, and maybe that effort came from the sparkle in her eyes. ‘It’s pretty nice,’ he offered as he finally finished it.
‘Pretty nice?’ She shook her head, her silky golden locks spilling over her shoulders, pushing against the high collar of her blue tunic. ‘When I was found by the Project,’ she said as she began to play with her fingers distractedly, ‘ice cream was practically my best friend.’
A little bit of the luster and sparkle fell from her shine. And John found himself trying harder to keep his smile in place. Because he could read between the lines on that one. ‘What was . . . the Program like?’
She stiffened a little, pressed her lips into her teeth, and obviously tried hard to hold onto her natural exuberance. ‘Okay, I guess. I can’t say I have known much else. It has really been my life for . . . as long as I can remember,’ she managed eventually.
It was quite a change in topics, and quite a change in mood. It left John with a heavy feeling in his stomach. When he had agreed to take Evelyn on a tour around the docking ring, he’d thought he’d just been doing his duty. After all, if he was expected to spend the next several months to year with this woman, he had to put on a show of being friendly, reliable, and approachable, right? Especially if the Admiral was going to be looking over his shoulder every 20 seconds to see how John was treating his precious asset.
But what had meant to be a simple walk had kind of turned out to be . . . a lot more pleasurable than John had expected. Evelyn was nice, painfully nice, and what was more, she had a personality too. She wasn’t the mind-washed robot that John had been expecting.
Clearing his throat, he thought it was a good idea to change the topic. ‘Your quarters will be ready shortly. Parka is just doing the finishing touches to the security system the Admiral has demanded.’
Evelyn clenched her teeth together and let out a sharp hiss of air through them. ‘I am so sorry, John,’ she said as she shook her head, ‘I know he can be over the top. He takes the Program and every participant in it very, very seriously.’
‘I can bet,’ John agreed in a low voice.
‘But he is a good man, and the Program . . . is really important.’
John nodded back to her, mustering a smile as he did. While he wasn’t ready to be so easily swayed on what he considered to be an enormous waste of time and money, he couldn’t blame Evelyn for it, could he? She seemed to be just a woman stuck in the middle, a particularly nice one at that.
Bringing a hand up and patting it over the back of his head, John let out a little sigh. Then he nodded towards the railing before them. ‘It’s an incredible view, isn’t it?’
That particular smile returned to Evelyn’s face. It was a very distracting move. It seemed to make her eyes sparkle all the more, and her cheeks fattened as her lips spread wide. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘Yes it is,’ John practically said under his breath.
The two of them walked over to the ostensibly thin metal railing that ran around the edge of the promenade. There would be no risk of anyone tripping and falling over it though; there were incredible force fields that surrounded the entire docking ring.
Essentially it was a giant floating metal doughnut, sliced up into multiple layers, with ships docked all around the top section. But in the center was nothing but air. And the various promenades that run around the central rings, had a fantastic view of the empty middle. You could lean your hands right over the railing, push yourself as far against the weather field as it would let you, and peer right down to the swirling clouds and the tiny speck of blue ocean so far below.
As John looked around, he could see many other people, many other couples too, doing exactly what they were doing. Smiling, chatting, leaning against the railing, and staring down at the beauty underneath.
It was planets like Orion Major, with its incredible floating cities, that could lull you into thinking that everything in the universe was perfect, modern, technological, advanced, and incredible. But no matter how fantastic the view was, it could not expunge from John’s memory Orion Minor. And as he stared down past the swirling clouds that were being pushed to and fro by the frantic winds of the atmosphere, the memory of her popped into his mind.
The hood, the lips, that terrible moment where the soldier robot had snapped her up and tried to strangle her.
His shoulders tensing, his jaw locking into place, John ran a hand down his cheek and tried to relax his muscles.
Maybe Evelyn saw that moment of tension, because her smile changed. ‘I suppose you are under a lot of pressure with this mission,’ she mumbled quietly.
Yes he was. But he could bet that she was too.
‘I’ll try not to let you down,’ she said after another careful moment.
It was such an incongruous statement that John gave a little, huff of a laugh. ‘Sorry, let me down? How could you let me down?’
‘My mission is very important,’ she replied back quickly, her eyes blinking fast, her expression shocked.
John’s skin paled as he realized how rude he’d just been. Bringing up his hands, even shuffling back a step, he shook his head. ‘I didn’t mean to imply that you were . . . ’ He stopped herself from saying useless and he gave a heavy swallow instead. ‘Look, I’m sorry, I accept and understand why you are coming along,’ his cheeks were starting to feel hot, and he wanted more than anything to run away from this conversation before it got any worse.
But thankfully Evelyn didn’t turn on her foot, trundle off to the Admiral, and tell him how much of a brute John Doe was, instead she offered a wry smile. ‘Sorry,’ she managed.
Letting a pressured breath through his teeth, John nodded his head. ‘I’m sorry too.’
The two of them dwindled into silence, but it was a particularly heavy, meaningful one. It was the kind of silence that two people share when they are standing right next to each other, trying to stare at anything save for the other person, and yet more aware of their presence than anything else in the universe.
In other words, intensely awkward, but something more too. The kind of pause that makes you want to know just exactly what the other person is thinking of you and just exactly what might happen next.
But John would not get a chance to find out. Because at that moment he received a call. Frowning at Evelyn as he pointed to his ear in the universal sign that someone was receiving communication, he half turned from her.
‘What is it?’
‘It's big, is what it is,’ Parka answered with a heavy, resounding sigh. John was lucky that the audio feed technically bypassed his ears and was fed straight to his brain, otherwise his eardrums would have rattled at Parka’s resounding breath.
‘What's the matter? What have you found with the scans?’ John suddenly straightened.
‘Oh, you need to sit down, Commander, because I have a lot to tell you. First I’ll start off with our little friend from Orion Minor,’ Parka'
s voice grew low and tight.
But it was nothing compared to hell low and tight John suddenly drew himself. His stomach gave a kick, his shoulders snapped in, and his eyes opened wide.
He’d been trying very hard not to think of her.
‘I just got a call from Orion Minor, they finished the scans, they finally think they know exactly what happened to that transport beam,’ Parka didn't sound pleased.
John found his jaw tightening as he latched a hand onto the railing by his side, his knuckles growing white as he clutched the thin metal rod as tight as he could. ‘Where did she end up?’
‘You can take that doomsday note right out of your voice. She is not dead. She landed right on the top of Block Alpha. And so did her little friend, the soldier robot. But while he was unlucky enough to re-materialize smack bang inside a giant chunk of ore, she was fine. Scans confirm that she lived through the ordeal.’
John's face could have fallen off; his cheeks and mouth descended with such a snap that his neck actually gave a shake. ‘Sorry? She is alive? Do they have her in custody?’
‘I told you this was big, John, so of course they don't have her in custody. I've not finished my story yet.’
But regardless of the fact that Parka had not finished her story, John's brain was jumping ahead of him. If the woman had lived, and the transport beam had somehow managed to re-materialize her somewhere with enough oxygen and stability that she didn't suddenly get sucked inside out from the vacuum of space, then knowing her, she would have found somewhere safe. Because John could remember the tenacity and determination. She had lived through a three-kilometer fall, surely she had managed to pull herself up after she had landed from the transport, and then run off somewhere safe.
There hadn’t been a great deal up on the top of Block Alpha that had been safe at that point. With the weather fields down, the place had been a cold, windy, hellish nightmare. In fact, the only ships that had been docked there that were allowing traffic in and off had been the Pegasus and some giant mining vessel right on the other side of the ring.
Taking a swallow, back straightening as his muscles tightened, John shook his head slightly. ‘Have you finished the scans on the ship?’ he blurted out in an instant.
‘You're getting ahead of yourself, and of course I thought of that too. But no, we didn't find anything with the scans,’ Parka finished.
Before she could add anything more, John let out a beleaguered sigh. A part of him had really been hoping, as crazy as it sounded, that they would find the woman tucked up neatly inside the Pegasus after all of these days.
But apparently he wasn't going to be that lucky.
‘Stop interrupting me, John, because I'm not finished. The reason we didn't find anything with the scans, is that the scans were interrupted. In fact, our whole ICN was hacked.’
John let those words settle over him. He now leaned into the railing, clutching both hands onto it. ‘What the hell?’
‘Oh yes, and it gets worse. When we finally got control again, I did the first thing I could think of. Instead of scanning for bio scans, which can take a very long time, I scanned for sodium bloody chloride.’
John’s eyebrows descended in a click. ‘Salt, but why would you . . . ' He trailed off. Because he was being very stupid, wasn't he?
‘I don't know what that woman is, I don't know what she is capable of, but I do know that after her little trip around the salty, smelly wastelands of Orion Minor, she was bloody covered in the stuff.’
John pressed his teeth together, clenching his jaw, letting the pressure build up and translate down his neck and shoulders and torso until it made him grip his hands even stronger.
‘It's all through the service ducts, all through the elevator shaft, and John, you might not like to hear this, but it's in your room too.’
His eyebrows now descended so low that his eyes practically closed. ‘What?’
‘And that's not all. In the elevator shaft . . . . Look, I've never seen anything like it. But as soon as the scans found salt, I went in and checked them myself. And John, chunks of metal have been ripped into. It looks like someone, maybe a robot, maybe one of the hard races, has dug some kind of tool right into the metal sheeting and used it to climb vertically up the shaft.’
It felt like John didn't have any blood left in his face; his cheeks and brow and lips were so cold it could have given him frostbite. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Am I sure those little perfect handholds hadn't been ripped into the side of my elevator shaft before? Yes, John, I am very sure. And here's another thing. I cross-referenced the shape of the damage done to the elevator to the damage done to that little service panel we pulled out from close to the engine core . . . ’ Parka trailed off.
John finally closed his eyes. What the hell was happening here? He knew, just as well as Parka knew, just as well as anybody in the entire Union knew, that there was nothing that could withstand the incredible radiation of an omidium engine core. And yet, if what Parka was saying was correct, then someone, that woman quite possibly, had done just that.
Keeping his eyes closed, John planted a hand over his face, leaning hard into it. ‘I'm coming back to the ship,’ he concluded in a snap.
‘Of course you are,’ Parka agreed, ‘because this is bloody serious. I have no idea what I'm dealing with.’
‘Keep it together until I get there,’ John snapped and then he cut off the audio feed.
He turned slowly to Evelyn. Her eyes were wide, and it was clear that she had heard the entire conversation and was smart enough to pick up on the fact that something wasn't going right for John Doe and the Pegasus.
‘What is it?’ she asked in a slow, quiet voice, those beautiful blue eyes wide as she spoke.
John, still with his jaw clenched, shook his head slightly. The move was tense, and if he didn't find a way to relax his shoulders, he would no doubt end up with a fantastic headache by the end of the day. But right now a fantastic headache would be the least of his problems.
‘I have to go back to the ship, we have a . . . problem,’ he said with a short nod.
‘I’m coming too; I could help you,’ Evelyn said as she took a keen step towards him.
For a moment John considered telling her that wouldn't be a good idea, but he stopped himself in time. If this woman really was going to be aboard the Pegasus for the whole mission, then John had to start relying on her, especially if he wanted to keep the peace with the Admiral. So giving her a short nod, the both of them turned around and quickly headed back down the promenade.
The view and its beauty gone from his mind, there was only one image John could concentrate on. That hood, those lips, and that half smile.
She was alive.
And even though that meant John was now facing a world full of problems, he couldn't help but smile in turn.
An invisible weight lifted off his shoulders. The specter of her throat being crushed by that soldier robot evaporated. In its place the hood remained. And the question, the burning question of what and who she was and what exactly she was running from.
John quickened his pace until he ran.