Escape (67 page)

She nudged his shoulder and asked, “You think he left any food for us?”

He turned to her with a grin. “Not likely. If you want something to eat, don't leave the starving teenager alone in the kitchen.”

* * *

When they reached the mess hall, however, Ferrel was no where to be seen. The enormous space was empty, and by the look of it, undisturbed.

Jilly turned to Kieran with a frown. “Not in his room, not here, so where is he?”

“Let's check the kitchen.”

But he wasn't there either.

Kieran sighed. “Am I the only one who feels like we spend a lot of time trying to track this kid down?”

“He's really starting to fire my afterburners.”

“Well, let's check the bridge. Maybe he's up there running systems checks. Or maybe he's in the medbay tweaking his EMP. We can stop by there on the way.”

“Good idea.”

They found the medbay empty, so they continued on to the bridge. Sure enough, they found him there, sitting in the captain's chair, with a faraway look on his face.

“Hey! Ferrel!” Kieran called as they strode accross the deck toward him. He slowly swiveled the chair to face them. For a brief instant he was scowling, but then he broke into a broad, toothy grin.

“Look who's finally awake.”

“Yeah.” They stopped in front of him. “What are you doing up here? You know it's a big ship to have to search room by room for you. You could have at least let us know where you were going.”

Ferrel shrugged. “Seemed like you two might not want to be disturbed.”

Jilly blushed and looked away, out through the viewports. She noted that the rooftop was still free of monsters, and let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.

“Why'd you come to the bridge?” Kieran asked, dodging Ferrel's insinuation that they'd done more than sleeping last night.

“I wanted to make sure everything's in order for our departure. All the systems check out, so we're green to go as soon as we zap ourselves with the EMP.”

“We should probably get on with that,” Jilly said, not looking away from the empty rooftop. It was bright and sunny outside; long morning shadows were slowly retreating accross the castcrete, proving that the city's artificial sky was still doing its job.

Kieran nodded. “Good idea. Before those creatures come back.”

“We'll have to shoot ourselves all at once to prevent reinfection,” Jilly said, finally tearing her eyes from the rooftop.

Ferrel's brow furrowed, and his grin faded, but he didn't raise any objections. Jilly tried to read his mind to see what had him so concerned, but found no thoughts there to be read.

He swiveled his chair away, to face forward again, then spent a protracted moment staring out the viewports.

“Well?” Kieran prompted.

Ferrel stood and walked by them, nodding as he passed. As he was leaving the bridge, they heard him say, “Don't forget to disable the shields. Large patroller ships like this one don't allow the airlocks to operate while the shields are enabled. It's an old security protocol to prevent prisoners from escaping.”

“Right. I'll do that. Thanks for the tip,” Kieran said.

Jilly frowned, watching Ferrel go. Something about that comment didn't seem right. Had Ferrel once been arrested by a ship like this one? Had he been a fugitive once? With that possibility in mind, she was more eager than ever to check the holo logs.

* * *

Jilly watched as Kieran walked to the set of stairs leading from the command deck to the crew deck below. She bit her lower lip, wondering whether she could use the opportunity to check the holo logs. Kieran wouldn't see the point, but she had to know. Maybe she should just level with him and explain that she was still suspicious. How would he view her continued suspicions? Would he humor her or get angry?

Kieran turned to her from the top of the stairs. “You coming?”

Jilly nodded. They walked down the stairs together and rounded the lower deck to the shield control station. This time the holo display showed all green and yellow. There were no black areas denoting gaps in the shields. Apparently Kieran's midnight handiwork had done the trick.

Jilly watched him begin typing commands into the console to disable the ship's shields, and realized that this was her opportunity to check the holo logs. Without saying anything, she walked back the way they'd come until she reached the security console. Once there, she pulled up the logs and narrowed her request to logs of the mess hall between the hours of 24:00 and 1:00, the time that Ferrel said he'd spent baking a bread. She stood quietly watching a holovideo of the mess hall for a few minutes, but didn't see Ferrel enter. The mess hall remained in darkness with the telltale fuzziness of the security camera's light amplification. She watched a minute more, then heard Kieran calling for her.

She grimaced but called back: “Over here!” and subsequently heard his footsteps ringing across the deck plates toward her.

“What are you doing?” he asked, stopping beside her, his eyes glued to the holovideo. “Please tell me that's not another holo log from last night.”

Jilly gave no reply, but leaned over the console and punched the fast forward button twice until they were watching at 4x speed. They watched 30 minutes zip by on the timestamp in the corner of the video, and still the mess hall stayed in darkness.

They were approaching the time that they'd met Ferrel outside his quarters. Jilly glanced at Kieran. His brow was furrowed in confusion. “Are you sure you picked the right timeframe? Maybe he came in earlier, went into the kitchen, and we missed it.”

Jilly was about to give a hot retort about him always defending Ferrel when the holovideo rebuked him for her. The lights snapped on inside the mess hall and Ferrel walked in at a jerky 4x speed. Jilly slowed the recording down and they watched in realtime as Ferrel strode accross the hall to the meal dispenser, punched in a selection, and waited all of a minute for a steaming pile of ready-sliced bread to pop out. He slid his tray over to the condiments and meticulously spread butter and then jam over each slice. From there he turned and strode purposefully back to the entrance of the hall. The entire scene took less than ten minutes. Hardly the hour Ferrel had claimed. And he certainly hadn't baked the bread himself.

Jilly turned to Kieran with eyebrows raised.

Kieran's eyes had narowed to a scowl. “I'm going to have to have a talk with him.”

Jilly shook her head. “Not yet. First let's see where he
actually
was.”

“You think he sabotaged the shields. Why would he do that?”

“I don't know.” Jilly leaned over the console and brought up a schematic of the ship to help her find the holos of the corridor leading to the cargo bay. Once she found the appropriate corridor and the associated vidcorder, she typed in a query for all the footage from that vidcorder between the hours of 24:00 and 1:00 and brought up the resultant footage.

Instead of watching the holovideo shift from the view of the mess hall to the corridor before the cargo bay doors, the holoprojection spat out a floating error message:

>>RETRIEVAL FAILURE. REQUESTED LOGS NOT FOUND.<<

Jilly frowned and tried again.

>>RETRIEVAL FAILURE. REQUESTED LOGS NOT FOUND.<<

She shook her head, and punched in another request, this time for the entire day of logs from that corridor. The computer returned holovideo data for the entire day. Then she tried to access the logs for the following day, starting at 24:00, and found nothing. Between midnight and now no holo logs had been recorded for the corridor in question.

“What's wrong?” Kieran asked.

“The logs aren't there.” Jilly queried the system once more, this time asking the ship's AI to explain the gap in the security logs.

>>REASON UNKNOWN.<<

“I'm getting a bad feeling about this,” Jilly said.

“Me, too.”

Jilly queued up the last 10 minutes of the holo logs from the previous day. The video showed an empty corridor, again obscured in the fuzzy washed-out colors of the camera's night settings. The camera was pointed down toward the large, double doors of the cargo bay, showing the full length of the corridor. But Jilly noted that in the recording, the cover panels along the wall, which they'd found open last night, were in their proper places. Whatever had happened to the aft shields had happened after the camera had stopped recording. As though someone were trying to cover up their sabotage.

Jilly typed:

>>RETRIEVAL FAILURE IS USUALLY CAUSED BY EQUIPMENT MALFUNCTION. SUGGEST YOU CHECK RECORDING AND STORAGE DEVICES.<<

>>MY DIAGNOSTICS INDICATE NO PROBLEMS WITH THE SECURITY SYSTEMS.<<

>>HOW DO I KNOW THE HOLO LOGS YOU REQUESTED SHOULD EXIST? SUGGEST YOU CHECK BRAIN FUNCTION.<<

Jilly gritted her teeth, then typed:

Kieran let loose a short chuckle. “Are you arguing with a computer?”

“Maybe.”

The computer gave no reply. They waited in silence for almost a full minute before Jilly grew impatient enough to type,

>>SORRY. WAS PRETENDING TO COMPLY WITH LATEST COMMAND.<<

>>DID YOU ACTUALLY CHECK BRAIN FUNCTION?<<

“Insolent little shakra.” Jilly turned to Kieran with an incredulous look. He was smiling broadly. “Who decided to give AI's personalities, anyway?”

Kieran shrugged. “Give anything self-awareness and intelliegence and eventually it will evolve a personality.”

Jilly snorted and typed another query. G, WHY
ARE SECURITY LOGS MISSING?>

>>INDETERMINATE. ANSWER REQUIRES SPECULATION.<<

>>DO NOT YELL AT ME.<<

>>EQUIPMENT MUST BE
MALFUNCTIONING DESPITE REPORTS
TO THE CONTRARY. SENSORS COULD BE BROKEN.<<

>>I WOULD KNOW IF THEY WERE.<<

>>WHAT IF YOU WERE A COMPUTER VIRUS DESIGNED TO FRUSTRATE ME BY ASKING STUPID QUESTIONS? MY RECORDS CANNOT BE ALTERED.<<

Jilly let out a long sigh and shook her head. “How do you work with these things?”

Kieran chuckled. “You get used to it.”

“I'd rather get a plasma torch and start melting the mainframe.”

>>I HEARD THAT.<<

Jilly looked up at the ceiling with narrowed eyes. “So you can monitor the bridge, but not the cargo bay access corridor.”

A cultured male voice replied: “I know everything that happens on this ship.”

“Fine. Then tell me what happened to the holo logs for that corridor.”

“The most recent logs for that corridor are over a month old. As I suggested, the sensors are probably damaged.”

Kieran nodded, then turned his own gaze toward the ceiling. “What happened to the aft shields last night?”

“Nothing happened to them last night.”

“Well, when did the aft shields stop functioning?”

“Most recently, when they were turned off as part of the regular disembarking procedure for this vessel. Over a month ago.”

Kieran blinked. “Did you notice a problem with the aft shields at any point last night?”

“No.”

Kieran's brow furrowed at that answer. “No?”

“Is that a question or an echo?” the AI asked.

Kieran found Jilly's gaze. “There's something very wrong here.”

“You're just beginning to figure that out?” she retorted.

“The AI's has no knowledge of the damage to the shields.”

“Or the missing holo logs,” she added.

“How is that possible?”

“May I offer a suggestion?” the AI's voice interrupted.

“What's that?” Jilly asked, sounding annoyed.

“Dementia.”

Jilly shook her head. “Computer
—
AI
—
whatever you call yourself
—
”

“Javax.”

“Okay, Javax. I have an important task for you to perform. It's critical to the survival of this ship and future health of your systems.” Jilly paused meaningfully.

“I take it from your dramatic pause that I should enquire as to the nature of this task. What is the task you wish me to perform?”

“Shut up.”

Chapter 46