Ghost of Mind Episode One (23 page)

And then John Doe did exactly what he had
wanted to do so much on Orion Minor. He picked the cloak up. He
brought his hands up, rested his fingers on the fabric, and he
moved it around, manipulating it back and forth.

There was silence on the bridge as everyone
watched him, but as John studied that thing in his hands, he became
less and less aware of everyone else.

He remembered so distinctly leaning down on
that security transport, locking his fingers over the hood, and
trying to tug it back. The woman had leant her face into him, her
cheek brushing up against his fingers, but that was it. She hadn’t
pushed him back, she hadn’t yanked her head away; the impediment
field had been in place, after all.

But no matter how hard John had tried, he had
not been able to shift the fabric.

‘
It must be running out of power,’ he said
under his breath, repeating that one age-old fact about Old Tech
that every single citizen in the Union knew off by heart. ‘Even if
it was somehow shielded from energy loss over the years, surely it
will be running dry.’

He turned on his foot, facing Evelyn.

He really needed her to say yes. He needed
Evelyn to say that the next time John met that strange woman, the
cloak could easily fall from her eyes, revealing what was
underneath.

But Evelyn did not confirm anything. She
looked intensely uncomfortable for a moment, then she shrugged her
shoulders. ‘Everything I have been taught tells me to say yes to
that, Commander. But I have to be honest, I wasn’t expecting what I
saw on that footage. It just doesn’t . . . make
sense.’

John felt cold at her words. Because he
understood them perfectly.

Finally letting the cloak fall from his
fingers, the holo emitters turning off as he did, he walked back to
his chair. He did not sit down however, instead he turned slowly on
the spot, surveying his crew.

‘
Watch out, here comes a chest-thumping,
patriotic speech of encouragement,’ Foster said quietly under his
breath.

John didn’t pull him up on it. Because Foster
was absolutely right. It was time for John to rally the troops. He
had no idea what he was dealing with, but the more the specter of
that woman ran free in John’s mind, the more he knew this was a
mystery he had to solve.

It seemed impossibly important. Every
intuition he had told him that there was no simple explanation to
be had in this situation. She was not a pirate assassin, she was
not a robot, she was not an Ionian jumper.

She was something else entirely. Some
possibility that he hadn’t even thought of, beyond imagination and
reason for now.

But not forever.

And that would be when John remembered.

Playing back the first time he had seen her
in that corridor in the slums, he ran through the entire event in
his head. And he stopped, he stopped as his eyes drew wide.

The node.

When she had jumped over that railing and
John had been so stupid to follow her, he had thrown a node onto
her.

A simple but impossible-to-detect method to
gain a transporter lock. It did not have a signal, it was not a bug
or some kind of transponder; it was simply a unique molecular
signature. One that the Pegasus computer had been specifically
trained to hunt for.

Unless somebody who had been laced with it
did a full chemical analysis of their body or clothes, they would
not be able to pick it up. And that was the beauty of it.

It was also, quite possibly, John’s only
lead.

Not even bothering to turn around to tell his
crew what he was about to do, he marched towards the elevators.

They knew his personality; they’d been
working with him for years.

He was off to track down his clue.

When he entered engineering, practically at a
run, he looked up to see Parka drumming her fingers on a console
and staring right at him.

‘
What is it? You've got a particular look
in your eye,’ she pointed out as she drummed her fingers
faster.

‘
The node,’ he said in a snap, his voice
clearly excited.

Because he was excited. If he could get the
computer to find a lock on it, then he could finally figure out
where that woman was.

‘
What about it?’ Parka did not suddenly
drop what she was doing, slam all 20 fingers over her mouth, and
tell John how brilliant he was.

So John slowed down, some of his
enthusiasm waning. ‘The node that I laced the woman with on Orion
Minor when we were both falling down from Block Alpha. Presumably
it's still on her unless she has had a complete sonic clean, that
is.’

‘
Which she might well just have done, or
something a little better,’ Parka said, her lips pulling
thin.

‘
What are you talking about?’

‘
I've already thought of the node, John, I
am your brilliant Chief Engineer, after all, and unlike you I
haven’t been distracted by Aurora Projects and Rim missions over
the past several days. As soon as I figured out the woman might
have slipped on board, I did a scan for the trace, but I didn't
come up with anything . . . concrete.’

‘
What do you mean?’ John asked
quickly.

‘
What I mean is that if, somehow, that
woman managed to get close enough to the omidium core, then the
radiation would've scrambled the molecules of the node.’

John let out an unhappy breath. This was not
the news he had been looking for.

He was back to square one.

Maybe Parka noticed his disappointment,
because she put up one of her hands, her ten fingers waving in the
air. ‘Not so fast. Don't give up hope yet. I said it scrambled it,
but it didn't get rid of it completely. I've been trying to beef up
the system, getting it to run through a simulation of just what
that much radiation would do to one of our node signals. Hopefully
it will be able to filter through the millions of possibilities,
and start scanning the immediate area for them.’

‘
How long will that take? How many
resources do you need? Feel free to make this a system priority,’
John said with a strict, curt nod.

‘
I did feel free, I've already done it.
Because believe you me, John, I want to track that woman down just
as much as you do. Not only did she rip holes in my elevator shaft,
but I want to meet a creature that can stay that close to
omidium.’

‘
We don't know that for sure,’ he
hazarded.

Parka looked up at him sharply. ‘Don't you
dare pretend you're not intrigued as all held by this. And yeah,
sure, I know we shouldn't be jumping to conclusions here, but John,
seriously, I have never seen anything like this.’

As the Chief spoke, some of her enthusiasm
began to reignite John’s interest. It made him stand a little
straighter, his heart beating faster, his hand slicking with
sweat.

‘
If you're happy for me to shut down
lighting to half, stop some of the other maintenance tasks, I can
give this everything we've got. And we might just be able to get a
signal in the next five minutes,’ Parka offered.

John didn't even have to think about that. He
gave her the immediate go-ahead. And then he waited, a full five
minutes, not moving from his position, watching Parka intently as
she worked.

As time drew on, his Chief Engineer became
steadily more excited; John could see it as her purple eyes
widened, her fingers darting around quicker, her tongue sticking
out from between her lips and teeth.

Then it happened. The computer gave an
electronic chirp, and its voice confirmed they had a successful
lock on the target.

‘
Bring it up on holo feed,’ John and Parka
snapped at once.

The computer did not hesitate. And in an
instant John saw her. The woman.

He didn't have a direct visual yet; the
computer was going off the blueprints of the docking ring, imposing
the woman as a red flashing dot in one of the upper levels.

‘
Call the local authorities,’ John said as
he started to back off, ‘phone this into the Union Forces. We have
to be so careful,’ he said as his jaw began to stiffen around his
words.

He had to be so careful. He'd stuffed this up
once before, and he was not going to do it again.

‘
Oh, don't you worry, Commander, I am going
to get the cavalry in full. But I suggest we don't do anything
until we have a proper plan. I've seen footage of how that woman
can move, and I don't want to take any chances.’

Neither did John. So for the next hour and a
half he worked closely with Parka as the two of them informed the
relevant authorities, gathered together the necessary forces, and
planned their mission down to every last detail.

When it was over, and John was finally ready
to put it into effect, he did something he hardly ever bothered to
do. He told the computer to give him a maximum upgrade. To make his
armor as sophisticated as the Union Database would allow. To do so
it would have to draw on the Pegasus's supply of rare elements,
taxing it by a half, but John knew what he had to do.

He also knew what he was up against. He could
remember how swiftly and easily the woman had knocked him off his
feet.

And that was not going to happen again.

Rubbing a hand on his chest, John got
ready.

Chapter 34

Alice

She was sitting on the counter of a shop,
staring out at the massive windows that led onto the promenade and
the incredible view beyond.

She was letting her legs kick back and forth
as her fingers drummed over the hard surface.

Everything was in shades of clean crystal
white and shiny silver with the occasional blue glinting logo of
some company swimming above the shop doors all around her.

Her eyes were fixed on the clouds.

They were so immense, there were so many of
them, and they appeared to dart wherever they wanted to, free from
restriction and rules.

‘
Possible plan 203,’ Helper said from her
side.

For the past hour and a half he had been
resolutely trying to come up with a plan of escape for the two of
them.

The only problem was, no matter how
sophisticated his plans were, they wouldn’t work. Or maybe Alice
didn’t want them to work. Maybe her view of the galaxy and universe
was so cynical that the thought of finally finding help was one she
could not succumb to.

‘
We will board the next freighter to come
to this docking ring. We overcome the systems, fake red alert, and
ensure all crew leave aboard the safety pods. We then redirect this
vessel to the closest transport hub. Using the Galactic Transport
Network, we head to the Pharos Galaxy. Due to the persistent lack
of development in this area, chances of being discovered by Union
forces are slim.’

Alice forced a smile. In a way she liked the
plan; she’d heard about the Pharos galaxy, and its incredible water
worlds were sights that she would love to see.

The problem was, she really doubted the
plan could work. ‘How are we going to get through the transport net
in an abandoned ship? Every ship is checked before it goes through
those, in case it’s carrying pirates and whatnot. It’s one of the
Union’s new regulations to limit the movement of the
factions.’

‘
There exist approximately 1500
manipulations to the ICN that would allow us to do this. But if you
do not like the plan, I will come up with a new one,’ Helper said,
without a hint of anger.

He’d been doing it for hours now, and every
single plan he had come up with, no matter how hopeful, Alice had
always grumbled at.

But he was right; there probably were
hundreds and thousands of ways to make that plan work. It was the
kind of thing they would have to do while thinking on their feet.
If they just decided on something, just, as Helper had already
suggested, go up to the docking ring, steal the first ship they
could get their hands on, and then rely on their wits and
capabilities, no doubt they really could get free of the planet,
and quickly and effectively too.

Alice was just . . . used
to failing. She was used to desperation, and it was so hard to
really internalize the fact that now she had help.

‘
Plan 204,’ Helper began.

But then he stopped.

In midsentence.

He wasn’t thinking; he wasn’t suddenly
computing new possibilities or fixing some previous assumption.

He wouldn’t do that. Alice knew enough about
the technology of her own kind to appreciate how sophisticated it
was. She also had been on the run long enough to get a sixth sense
for danger. And right now her back was crawling.

She turned sharply over her shoulder,
glancing along the long section of open hallway that led between
the shops.

‘
I have detected a reduction in atmospheric
pressure,’ Helper suddenly said, and there was a distinct
frightened, tense edge to his voice.

It made Alice sit up straighter, her back
snapping forward, her muscles twitching tight.

‘
What is it? Are other life forms headed
this way? Is it security bots? Is it scanners?’ She jumped to her
feet.

‘
Completing more detailed scan,’ Helper
chirped quickly. ‘It is suggested you take up a defensive position
until this anomaly is computed.’

She understood the warning. Helper didn’t
know what was going on, and considering what they were up against,
it was best to treat it as absolutely suspicious.

Plus, as Alice started to rely on her own
senses again, she got a distinct feeling that something was up.