Escape (68 page)

O
n their way to meet Ferrel in the medbay, Kieran could sense the malestrom going on inside Jilly's head. The circumstances were suspicious, he had to admit, but there could still be a reasonable explanation.

Jilly must have sensed his thoughts, because she let out a sudden snort, but she didn't say anything.

“I'll ask Ferrel. I'm sure he had a good reason for lying to us last night.”

“What possible reason? There's only one that I can think of. He was too busy sabotaging the shields to bake a bread, but somehow the little shakra knew he'd need an alibi anyway.”

“Exactly. How did he know he'd need one?”

Jilly smirked and gave Kieran a sardonic look. “Maybe he read our minds.”

“But we didn't even meet him until he'd already been to the mess hall and back again, so how could he read our minds to know that he'd need to go? It doesn't make any sense, Jilly.”

“Fine, bury your head in the exhaust ports, but don't be surprised if the engine wash kills you.”

“There
is
something going on, but I doubt it's as sinister as you think.”

“They why did he lie, Kieran? Why did he erase the holo logs and then tamper with the AI so it wouldn't remember? I'll tell you why: because he wasn't in the mess hall for that hour last night. He was in the access corridor to the cargo bay, sabotaging the shields and who knows what else!”

“Woah, hey, hold on a minute. You seriously think Ferrel erased the logs
and
hacked into the mainframe to make the AI forget what he did?”

“Why not? It would explain everything perfectly.”

“Except that Ferrel wouldn't be able to do it. He could erase the logs, no doubt, even if they were secured, he could probably hack through the security protocols, but to hack a ship's AI and alter it's internal records is a tall order, Jilly. When an AI goes rogue it takes a whole
team
of specialists
weeks
to get past the AI's security measures and find out what went wrong. I don't think Ferrel could do that by himself. Certainly not in the time he had. AI's are much better at programming than us, and they can run circles around the best slicers in the galaxy.”

“Well, maybe Ferrel convinced the AI to lie, then! I don't know! But it would be far too much of a coincidence for all these events to be unconnected.”

They reached the medbay, and Kieran swallowed his reply. He ran his hand over the door sensor, and the door swished open. They saw Ferrel inside on his haunches beside the EMP. He turned to them and smiled.

“Took you long enough. We ready to blast some nanites? I've made a few adjustments to the power output which should allow to go all at once, so we won't have to worry about possibly reinfecting each other between firings.”

Jilly nodded, but she was frowning as she walked accross the medbay to greet him. Ferrel picked up on her concern quickly and raised an eyebrow at Kieran.

“Something wrong?”

But it was Jilly who answered. “Why did you lie to us last night?”

“What do you mean?”

“About where you were. We checked the holo logs. You weren't in the mess hall the whole time baking a bread. You got the bread from the dispenser and then left. Where were you before that?”

Ferrel's brow furrowed, and he studied each of them with a odd look. “I see you've been snooping.”

“Answer the question, Ferrel,” Kieran said. “Where were you? And what were you doing?”

A brief smirk lit up Ferrel's face. “That's
two
questions.”

Kieran crossed his arms over his chest and studied Ferrel intently, trying to read the boy's mind for the answers, but Ferrel's mind was curiously unreadable. Had Ferrel somehow discovered the secret to guarding his thoughts?

“Well, I was hoping I wouldn't have to tell you, but there have been some anomalies aboard the ship.”

Jilly cocked her head. “What type of anomalies?”

Ferrel found and held her gaze for a long, uncomfortable moment, his red eyes burning into hers. “Serious ones. I was just dropping off to sleep last night when the climate control system started venting coma gas into my room. I scrambled to the door, but it was locked and the security code wasn't the one I'd set. I barely managed to hack through the security before I succumbed to the gas.”

Jilly was actually smiling. “So you think one of us did it?”

Ferrel shrugged. “I considered that, but I wasn't sure what had happened, so I went to the cockpit to ask the AI. All my queries to the AI were answered with denials. There had been no malfunctions, and no tampering with the ship's systems. According to the AI, there had been no coma gas in my room, and the door hadn't been locked. Javax suggested that I was imagining things. For a moment I believed him, but on my way back to bed I passed by the shield console and noticed that the power levels for the aft shields were spiking way beyond the safety limits. Assuming it was another malfunction, I tried to disable the aft shields, but I found myself locked out of the controls. So I ran to the nearest access panel to disable them manually.

“Even before I'd finished getting the cover panel off, Javax demanded to know what I was doing. I told it that I was just doing some routine maintenance. That bought me enough time to disable the vidcorder feed and trick the sensors into reporting that the vidcorder was still functioning perfectly. The AI was probably baffled by the lack of input from the corridor, but the sensor trick must have fooled it, because when I cut power to the aft shield array, the AI didn't accuse me of sabotage.”

Jilly flashed a shallow smile. “And after all that you thought, hey I'm hungry, why not pop by the mess hall to get myself a snack?”

“Actually, I was on my way back to my quarters, but I heard you and Kieran coming. I still wasn't completely sure that one of you weren't causing the malfunctions, so I hid in an alcove and tried to read your minds as you walked by. I was surprised to find that you were both thinking about me and wondering why you hadn't found me in the mess hall where you'd expected me to be, so I waited for you to pass, then followed you to see what you were doing.

“When I saw you start repairing the damage to the aft shield array and overheard your conversation, I realized that you hadn't rigged the shields to overload. Which meant that an AI virus was the most likely cause, so I hurried back to the bridge, cut power to the AI mainframe, purged the system, and then rebooted it from external backups. On my way back to my quarters I popped by the mess hall to fulfill your expectations and explain where I'd been in case I ran into either of you. When I met you outside my quarters, it was easy to pretend I'd been in the kitchen the whole time, baking a bread.”

Kieran's took a moment to process Ferrel's explanation, then shook his head as though to clear it, and asked, “So why the ruse? Why not just explain the situation?”

Ferrel regarded him with a shadowy smile. “Because I was hungry and tired, and it was easier to lie about where I'd been than explain everything that had happened. Besides, the crisis had passed. With the AI freshly restored from backups there weren't going to be any more malfunctions.”

Jilly shook her head. “If you rebooted the AI from backups, why was it
—
”

“Denying that the aft shields had ever had a problem?” Ferrel smiled. “Because the AI came back online
after
the shields were repaired.”

“And the missing holo logs?”

“Did you repair the vidcorder power feed?”

Jilly frowned and shook her head.

“Then that's why.”

“We watched the end of the logs. We didn't see you in the corridor. The logs simply dissapeared after midnight last night.”

“I deleted the vid data of me sabotaging the shields, just in case the newly-rebooted Javax reviewed the logs and concluded from them that I was a saboteur out to get him. AI's can be particularly nasty when it comes to self-preservation routines. I didn't want to wake up to the hiss of coma gas again.”

Jilly pursed her lips and held Ferrel's blood-red gaze for a long, indecisive moment.

“I hope that I've managed to allay your suspicions
 
.
 
.
 
.
” Ferrel's gaze skipped out from under Jilly's rock-eyed stare, and turned to Kieran in silent appeal.

Kieran shot Jilly a quick frown, then said, “Of course you have, Ferrel. It was just hard to understand what had been happening without knowing the whole story. I'm sorry we started jumping to conclusions before we knew the facts. We should have talked to you sooner. I hope you'll accept
our
apologies.” Kieran sent Jilly a meaningful look and cleared his throat.

Her sullen expression lifted and she offered Ferrel a convincing smile. “Sorry.”

Ferrel returned her smile. “Apologies accepted.” He turned to the EMP device behind him and said, “Let's shivvy. The faster we get this thing outside and shoot ourselves with it, the faster we can get off this blasted rock.”

* * *

While they waited for Ferrel to set up the EMP, Jilly and Kieran kept a wary eye on the rooftop exit and their hands near their guns. They hadn't forgotten what had happened last night, when they'd been awoken by thousands of gray-skinned monsters trying to batter their way inside the ship.

The wind was whipping across the rooftop in a cold fury. Jilly looked up to the artificial sky, and shivered. She spent a moment admiring the deep indigo color, swirled with a wispy pattern of lighter blue. It was like a painting, so artistically rendered, complete with the cold, bright green pinprick of a sun that was already high in the sky. Apparently they'd slept in.

Jilly felt a sudden gust of icy wind buffet her, and frowned. Given that they were really inside a giant dome, the winds were hard to explain. She turned her gaze away from the aritifical sky and her eyes alit upon Ferrel where he was making last-minute adjustments to the EMP device. The winds weren't the only thing that was hard to explain.

You're still suspicious,
Kieran thought, obviously having read her mind.

Yes, I am.

Why? He explained himself perfectly.

A little too perfectly, don't you think? It's like he knew exactly what to say, because he'd already read our minds for all the answers.

You're being paranoid.

Maybe.

At that moment Ferrel turned to them with two thumbs-up and a grin. “Let's shivvy!”

A minute later they were lined up in front of the EMP, waiting for the device to charge. Jilly tried to clear away her suspicions, arguing to herself that Kieran was right. Ferrel had explained everything perfectly. There was no sense jumping at shadows when there were so many real monsters to worry about. Thinking of which, Jilly turned to keep the rooftop exit in view, just in case they decided to come back.

Unfortunately, there would be a minute or so after being hit by the EMP where they'd likely be knocked unconsious and vulnerable to an attack. But there was no way to help that without taking turns getting shot by the EMP, and that would only prolong their stay on the roof. Not to mention, if they didn't shoot themselves all at once, there was always a chance that they could reinfect each other between firings.

There was also a possibility that the virus had infected surfaces inside the ship, like a biological virus would, but because it was a
nano
virus, it seemed wasteful to Jilly for the designers to have programmed in a setting for the nanites to remain free of a host in the hopes of
maybe
infecting someone else. The best chance for the virus to survive and thrive was with a host, so long as one was available. She hoped that meant it wouldn't leave its host except to move to a new one.

She saw a bright blue flash from the muzzle of the EMP and heard a sound like glass shattering, and then
 
.
 
.
 
.

Jilly blinked to clear the dancing spots before her eyes and shook her head. She was still standing.

All of them were.

“What? Why weren't we knocked out?” she asked.

Without replying, Ferrel crossed the rooftop to the device and bent to check it. After a moment they saw him nod, and he shouted to be heard above the shivering wind: “The capacitors discharged completely. It definitely worked.”

“Odd,” Jilly said. “Let's get back inside so I can run some tests. We might need to increase the power for three people.”

“That shouldn't matter,” Kieran said as they started back toward the ship. “The EMP will be just as powerful against three as it will against one.”

“Then why didn't it knock us out this time?” Jilly asked.

Kieran shrugged. “I don't know.”

The wind howled ominously and Jilly shot a glance behind her. The rooftop door was still shut. Jilly frowned and began walking back toward the ship. “Well, let's run the tests to see if the virus is disabled. Leave the EMP here in case we didn't get it the first time around.” Kieran came up beside her, and they walked past Ferrel. He finished checking the EMP and fell in behind them, whistling a cheery tune that was all but swallowed by the wind.