Ghost of Mind Episode One (16 page)

She was healing. The power reflecting off the
core was sustaining her, repairing the enormous damage she had
wrought upon her form, and re-energizing her all-but-gone energy
stores.

Ideally she would have liked to push herself
right into the core. To have found some way to access it.

The energies would not have ripped her apart.
Unlike the robot and the winds and everything else on Orion Minor,
the core would have helped, not tried to kill her.

She, of course, had not been able to access
it though. She was in a service duct close enough that the energy
still reached her, but actually plunging into the core would
probably have kicked so many safety protocols that she would have
been instantly discovered.

Which was a fact that was slowly dawning on
Alice as she came around again.

She had not been discovered. She was still
lying in exactly the same position.

No one had found her. She had not been
dragged away.

Fixing her attention on the top of the
service duct again, she watched the rippling light that pushed its
way through the core beyond.

There was probably ten meters of reinforced
hull between her and the core, and yet that incredible energy field
still impregnated into the metal, shifting out as far as it
could.

Alice had been forced to break through almost
15 security fields to get this far into the service duct and this
close to the engine.

She could see one of them now as she lolled
her head to the other side. It flickered a bright blue.

She stared at it with dull eyes and an
attention that was drawn thin by fatigue.

She could feel unconsciousness claiming her
again. This time she didn't fight it. She smiled up at the ceiling.
The glow of the omidium core shifting over and encasing the tunnel,
she let it do its magic.

She took whatever energy she could, and Alice
healed.

Chapter 26

John Doe

He hadn't slept particularly well, but come
0600 in the morning, he'd received an urgent message from the
bridge crew. So tugging on his uniform, deliberately avoiding
looking at his tired reflection in the shiny finish of the elevator
door, John stepped out as soon as the doors opened with a ping.

As he walked onto his bridge, his XO got up
from the command chair and nodded his way.

‘
I would not have disturbed you,’ Chado
said quickly.

John put up a hand. He knew the stakes. If
Chado had bothered calling John to the bridge, then it was
urgent.

‘
We have received a priority one communique
from Orion Major,’ Chado shifted past John and made a hand signal.
Instantly the holo emitters in front of John's chair sprang to
life, and a picture of a floating blue orb appeared a second
later.

Picture perfect, John found himself
yawning. ‘Okay,’ he managed, ‘we aren't scheduled to visit Orion
Major. Are you sure this isn't someone else's problem?’

It was a joking questions, and at least it
got a snigger form Foster, but Chado - as always - replied with a
stony glance.

‘
It is our problem. Because Rear Admiral
Fletcher has made it our problem.’

John's mouth tugged down into a frown.
‘Fletcher, Fletcher, I know that name,’ he leaned forward in his
chair, a distracted look on his face as he tried to
remember.

‘
Heads up the Union Forces Research
Division,’ Foster answered from his chair.

John clicked his fingers. Then his
expression soured. ‘So what the hell does he want with
us?’

‘
He has requested we rendezvous with him
immediately on Orion Major,’ Chado replied quickly.

‘
And did the Admiral say why? Our orders
are to head straight to the Rim from here—’ John began.

‘
He has pulled rank,’ Chado
interrupted.

‘
So this is not a request then,’ John
shifted back in his chair, crossed his arms, and stared out at the
floating blue orb of Orion Major before him.

Orion Minor might have been a hell hole of a
backwater planet, but its twin was anything but. Orion Major was a
hub of trade and research. A beautiful blue crystal of a planet
completely swamped with floating cities. The view was incredible,
the streets were clean, and there wasn't a slum in sight.

‘
This better be good to delay our mission,’
John mumbled.

‘
Apparently the Admiral is confident that
he has something that will assist us in our travels through the
Rim,’ Chado clarified as he made a new hand gesture and the picture
of Orion Major flipped out of view. In its place the image of a
woman appeared instead.

John's eyebrows descended in a snap.

Blond, with sparkling blue eyes, and a lithe,
slim form, she was incredibly beautiful by human standards. She was
dressed in a blue, high-cut tunic that John could recognize as
being the height of fashion, even though the closet he ever came to
looking stylish was when he was running around in sleek black
armor.

Foster coughed pointedly. ‘Wow, okay, I
like this mission already.’

John shook his head slightly. ‘So tell me,
what exactly does this woman have to do with us and the
Admiral?’

‘
She is part of the Aurora Program,’ Chado
answered with a growl.

John could have joined in. He sat up
straighter in his chair, his cheeks draining of blood and paling in
a snap. ‘You can't be serious. They're not going to lump us with
one of those. They are untested—’ he began. Then he stopped.
Because he was preaching to the converted here; every member of his
crew would know what the Aurora Program was, and they all shared
John's misgivings.

It was meant to be the Union's last hope. If
they couldn't figure out the power source of the Old Ones, then
maybe they could bring one back to life to ask them.

The Old Ones had disappeared 100,000 years
ago, and no member of any of their races had been seen since. They
were all dead, all gone, and their secrets had been taken with
them.

The Aurora Program had farmed information
from Old Tech databases and scanned every single device the Union
had hold of.

The point had been to produce an implant that
could provide a wearer with the ability to interact directly with
Old Tech.

The Old Ones, after all, had not used their
devices directly; they had not manipulated them with gross physical
movements, everything had come from the mind. They had interfaced
directly with everything they had ever built. The premise and
entire hope of the Aurora Program was that if an implant could be
produced to allow someone to interface with Old Tech, they could
use it to turn the stuff back on. And if not, delve deeper into its
secrets.

There was also an influential, if crazy
theory out there, that Old Tech was somehow sustained by mental
energy. If that was the case, then someone with one of these
implants could re-energize a device simply through their
thoughts.

John did not believe it for a second. He
thought the whole program was a waste of money. An astounding waste
of money. Because the funds it commanded from the Union would be
better placed reducing the class gap; bringing the slums into the
light.

Crossing his arms tighter in front of his
chest, John narrowed his eyes as he stared at that image of the
beautiful woman in front of him.

‘
Her name is Evelyn,’ Chado
continued.

‘
Just Evelyn?’ John asked with a
frown.

‘
Just Evelyn,’ Chado replied. ‘She has the
latest version of the Aurora implant.’

Oh great.

John knew what was coming next.

‘
Admiral Fletcher has assigned her to our
vessel. She will accompany us into the Rim. We will be directly
responsible for her safety.’ Chado reeled off the facts.

John wanted to go back to bed and try to wake
up. Because this had to be a dream. A particularly bad one.

There would be no way John could get out of
this. Even if he kicked up a stink and went to the top brass, he
would not be able to fix this.

‘
I guess we should alter course,’ he
managed through a frustrated breath that lingered in his chest as
he tightened his arms further. ‘Looks like our mission to the Rim
just turned into babysitting.’

John knew he wasn't being entirely fair;
though he had a problem with the Aurora Program, that was no reason
to extend his ill will to that woman, Evelyn. But neither could he
fight the feeling that told him this would all end in tears.

‘
I guess I better have a chat to Admiral
Fletcher. I'll take it in the conference room.’ With that John
pushed himself up. He walked right through the holo emitters, the
perfect image of the woman rippling around him as he moved straight
through her.

‘
Aye sir,’ Foster answered.

When John had finally finished his
conversation with the Admiral, his mood had not improved any.

They were going to pick Evelyn up on Orion
Major, then – just as Chado had warned – take her to the Rim. The
Admiral had stressed at least five times through the conversation
that Evelyn was considered of extremely high value and that he
would be holding John directly responsible for her safety.

John had held his tongue. If Evelyn was so
sodding important, then the Admiral could look after her himself.
Sending her on a mission to the Rim was intrinsically dangerous.
From the pirates to the Factions to the mine belts, Evelyn would
not be going on holiday here. And no matter how good John and his
crew were, they wouldn't be able to ensure her safety.

But the Admiral had not wanted to hear it,
and though John didn't always have the correct level of respect for
his superiors, on this occasion he had held his tongue.

Walking back onto the bridge, John knew his
expression was a surly one.

‘
Look on the bright side,’ Foster turned in
his chair, one of his trademark grins spreading his lips wide, ‘at
least she's prettier than you, sir.’

John raised an eyebrow. A true, dignified,
proper commander would have pulled Foster up on that.

John was none of those things.

But he was effective. And that was what
mattered most. Pomp and circumstance were for the guys who didn't
have the universe to save.

‘
Plus, from memory, you quite like Orion
Major. The floating cities remind you of home, right?’ Parka walked
in from the elevator, fixing John with a keen look.

‘
I was born in the slums of Earth,’ John
replied with a short laugh.

‘
I know,’ Parka uncrossed her arms and
nodded. ‘I know that. But look how far you've come. Climbed all the
way to the top of the tower,’ she mumbled.

John got the joke. For a boy from the slums,
nothing reminded him so much of home as worlds that didn't have
them. The clean floating cities of Orion Major were so far from
where John had come from that he had confided to Parka on several
occasions he couldn't help but remember Earth.

‘
So what are you doing on the bridge?’ he
finally mumbled.

‘
Telling you that the fluctuations in the
engine's output have not stopped,’ she crossed her arms. Parka was
not human, she belonged to a stout but strong race of green,
thick-skinned aliens. Her arms were muscled and ended in ten-digit
hands.

Right now all of her fingers tapped against
her arms.

‘
Sorry, fluctuations?’ John shifted his
head up as he looked at her properly for the first time.

‘
I have not yet informed the Commander,’
Chado interrupted from behind him.

‘
I forgot. You conked out in your quarters
after your little adventure on Orion Minor. Well this is me telling
you now that ever since we left port on Minor, the engine has been
fluctuating.’ Parka instantly raised a hand. ‘Nothing major,
nothing critical. But something is draining our
systems.’

‘
Some kind of leak in the relays?’ John
asked as he couldn't help but yawn again.

‘
I didn't realize you were an engineer. And
no. We've checked the relays. It might be a problem in the fields
stabilizing the core. Or maybe the bulkhead in that section has a
crack or something. We won't know until we shut down the core, and
we can’t do that until we're in space dock. So I'm kind of happy to
hear we're heading to Orion Major,’ Parka leaned past John and
fixed her rapidly-blinking purple eyes on the hologram of Evelyn.
‘And cheer up, John; Foster is right; it's going to be so much
nicer to have someone prettier than you on board.’

John let Parka's comment slide.

‘
I'll keep you appraised of the engine
core. But there's something else you need to know,’ Parka
continued.

‘
More bad news?’ he got there
first.

‘
I'm not entirely convinced of that. I'm
ready to write it off as feedback from that transport beam that
went haywire. Or maybe it was too much interference caused by that
gas leak in the hangar bay—’

‘
What is it?’ he tried to speed her
up.

‘
There were several fluctuations in our
security systems before we left dock on Minor. Nothing too big.’
She made a face. ‘And like I said, it could have been the gas or
the feedback, or both.’

John tapped his fingers against his leg.
‘Play it safe. When we dock on Orion Major, flush it out. Go system
to system, if you have to, but find out if anyone accessed
it.’