The Pathfinder Project (16 page)

Upon their escape, his
realization that the ship was also equipped with a complete, traditional PTP
system had caught him completely by surprise. Terrorized at first, he had
almost been happy that they were hidden and undetectable for a time, because he
knew that
punishment
surely awaited him upon a successful return to
Earth. He had prepared himself for that possibility – knowing that the good of
the Brotherhood would override any personal needs he might have.

But this situation was
different and everything had completely changed in the blink of an eye.

A stab of fear ran through him,
and he glared in anger at the silent transceiver still lying on the bed. The
device had landed there after being angrily thrown there. He had abruptly
noticed the
Pathfinder
’s latest CAS movement by looking out a window,
and suddenly realized the device might never again activate. Something was
different now… something terrifying that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
Perhaps it was the realization that a Brotherhood presence on this vessel
was
now limited completely to him
. The truth of the matter was impossible to
deny – the starship had leaped out here so far away from the familiar stars of
home and into almost total darkness. A part of himself that he had never
suspected was there had now fallen dark and silent, too. The longer he felt the
loss the more upset he was becoming – he desperately struggled to maintain his
composure, grateful to be currently off-shift and alone in his newly assigned
cabin.

What was he supposed to do
next
?

Everywhere he had traveled
while touring the ship he had passed off duty marines or – even worse – armed
guards stationed near all of the critical areas. There had been no update from
his people prior to the attack as to what his next course of action should be. His
fellow Brotherhood members must have erroneously assumed that they would
successfully capture Khyber Base and re-integrate their undercover agent back
into the fold. Now he felt snared like an animal – if he attempted sabotage or
even a simple escape he would be caught and killed.

Escape
?

He became extremely furious at
the simple thought, sitting down in the center of the room and pressing his
head against raised knees.

Escape to WHERE exactly
?

Even if he managed to penetrate
the hangar bay’s security and somehow steal a ship, how was he supposed to get
home without help from the other members of this crew?

Further… if he did manage to
escape, presumably the
Pathfinder
would soon leap to a new destination
somewhere just as far distant. That meant the next time the starship made use
of its newfound super-charged PTP capability the spy would be stuck here
forever –
alone
. He let out a sob of despair and tears rolled down his
cheeks as he realized that he was trapped… trapped aboard the American ship.
Emotions he had always been able to suppress abruptly began welling up from
deep within him, and he knew that if he didn’t learn to control them quickly
and behave normally in public his true identity would inevitably be discovered
and capture would soon follow. Feeling grief-stricken and helpless, he sat
quietly sobbing in the center of the room for quite some time.

*    
* * *     *

“What a freaking piece of
junk!
”
Thomas Roh snarled, turning and hurling a piece of electronic equipment against
the nearest wall. “
Work
damn you!” He was standing on the footrest of an
F-175 fighter, next to its cockpit. His latest attempt to reactivate its
systems had ended in failure. He ran a hand through his thick hair and paused
for a minute, thinking carefully to himself.

“We’ve found a working, older
version of the software,” pointed out Angie – an attractive dark-haired female
standing across from him and working on the same ship. “It’s just a matter of
time and patience now. We review each enhanced subroutine from the upgrades and
won’t add it into our starter program until we’re certain we’ve filtered out
all the viruses and backdoors.”

“Some of the legitimate code is
part
of the virus,” snapped Thomas, still angry. “We may end up having
to eyeball every line of code. Do you know how many of those there are?”

“I know that this would be a
lot more difficult if we hadn’t found an unaltered, original version of the
software,” Angie commented, turning her attention back to her work. She let him
vent his anger and shook her head briskly at Glen as he walked over from a
second F-175 that was sitting on the hangar deck behind her. They had set up
three teams to “compete” with each other, figuring that would give them the
best results. Each would come up with a new software program with as much of
the Brotherhood infiltration coding removed as possible. Then they were
planning to compare and contrast those three programs, using them to draft a
final version that would hopefully be completely virus free.

“Thomas, how long has it been
since you slept?” asked Glen carefully, studying the young man’s face. “Every
time I’ve started a new shift, you’ve either been in the Lab or here in the
hangar bay working on one thing or another.”

“Do you
know
how much
code I have left to sift through?” the young scientist asked, anger filling his
voice.

“I’ve got a pretty good idea,
yes,” Glen replied. He could see the fatigue in Thomas’ eyes along with the
pressure the young man was putting on himself to get things done. “How
long
has it been since you slept?”

“Shouldn’t you get back to
working on
your
stuff?” asked Thomas, failing to conceal the hostility
in his tone.

“Fine, you can tell it to the
Captain,” Glen responded. He powered off his laptop, closed its lid, and set it
next to the rest of the equipment between the two fighters. Then he turned
toward the exit and began walking toward a Comm-link. Thomas watched in anger
at first, then ran after the older man and grabbed his arm.

“
Wait!
” he pleaded
desperately. “Please don’t go to the Captain.” He took a deep breath and looked
his co-worker and friend directly in the eyes. “I’ve worked hard to have a
chance at eventually taking over command of the Lab from you – it’s just that
we’ve had to solve so many of these frustrating puzzles in so short a time.
It’s getting to me a bit, that’s all.”

“How long has it been since you
slept
, Thomas?”

“I… I haven’t been able to
sleep since the day of the attack,” he finally confessed. His expression
changed to one of shame. “I went off-shift a couple of times the first few days
but wasn’t able to drift off. So I just kept returning to the Lab or here and
continued working. It’s kind of just become old hat. I
have
been taking
meal breaks.”

“You haven’t slept in
six
days and you never told anyone?” Glen asked carefully, beginning to feel a
little angry himself. “We’ve got most of the tough stuff licked, Thomas – it’s
okay to take a longer break if you need to. For God’s sake, do you know what
you can do to yourself if you ignore your body’s basic needs?”

“The Captain wants…”

“The Captain wants the fighters
back up and running as soon as possible!” Glen interrupted. “And as soon as
possible doesn’t mean that you have to stay down here every minute of the day
ruining your health.” He pointed firmly at the nearest lift. “You’re off-shift
as of this minute for at least two days. Report to Dr. Simmons and have her
give you something to help you sleep.” He pointed again for emphasis.

“But we’ve got all this code to
go through. What if…?”

“Your team is just that…
a
team
,” Glen pointed out. “You’re actually hurting it if you’re working with
all that fatigue.” He looked carefully into Thomas’ tired eyes. “We did
great
,
kid! We got the CAS system on-line and functioning and we couldn’t have done it
without you. Trust me; we’ve left the Brotherhood behind. They can’t
possibly
follow us through a long range CAS transit!” He shrugged. “So maybe it’ll take
us a day or two longer than expected to get the fighters running – but we want them
to actually work
correctly
when we tell the Captain they’re ready –
right?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Go see Karen and get something
to help you sleep. That’s as close as you’re going to get to an order from
someone you work for.” He paused, letting the impact of what he was saying sink
in. “Don’t feel bad about it, either. Did you know that there are lots of
other
people who have had the
same
difficulty?”

“No, I guess I didn’t.”

“Our home world is more than
likely destroyed… we’ve lost family and friends… and everybody was wondering if
we
were next,” Glen said forcefully. “That’s why the Captain made the
decision to move the ship away from the Sol system. Because the constant stress
of dealing with everything was starting to affect even our best people. We all
need
some time to catch our breath and keep ourselves healthy because we all
need
each other now more than ever.”

“Okay, I’ll stop in and see the
Doctor,” Thomas promised. He entered the nearest lift and Glen watched it
slowly rise toward the passenger area. He started back toward the F-175 he had
been working on, hesitated, then walked over to the Comm-link next to the lift.
His fingers quickly tapped in the number for the Medical Ward.

“
Dr. Simmons
.”

“Karen, this is Glen,” he said,
unable to hide the concern in his voice. “Thomas is on his way down to see you.
He hasn’t slept since the attack and he really looks like he’s got a serious
problem. I’m hoping you can make sure that the kid gets some rest.”

“
We’ve had quite a few of
those already, Glen,”
she replied.
“It’s common among workaholics, and
unfortunately that’s the type of person generally requested for projects like
the
Pathfinder.” She paused, thinking carefully. “
From what I know about
Thomas he’s probably going to resist a long-term treatment plan. I think he’s
been putting a lot of pressure on himself and slowly winding himself up long
before Earth was attacked
.
People who work as hard as he does don’t
want
to let up.
It often takes just as long a time to unwind that kind of
an emotional spring as it does to coil it up
.”

“I know, and the worst thing
about the situation is that he thinks it’s his fault somehow,” Glen said
softly. “He’s one of my best people and we wouldn’t be alive if he hadn’t made
things happen in a hurry. We owe him a
lot
.”

“
I’ll do my best for him.
But you might want to consider planning a lighter duty schedule for him…
perhaps indefinitely
.”

“He’s not going to like that,”
commented Glen. “I don’t think he’s going to like that at all, Doctor. You
better be ready to stand firm with him.”

“
I didn’t say he was going
to
like
it
,” replied the Doctor. Glen nodded and closed the
Comm-link. He sighed and took a quick look around at all the electronics
specialists dotting the crowded hangar bay. Normally only deckhands, pilots,
and support ship mechanics hung around down here. A first glance now and some
people might think they had moved half of the electronics from the Lab Wing
into the bay. Trying to remember where he had left off in his seemingly endless
search through the fighter navigation program, Glen headed back toward the F-175.

*    
* * *     *

Dr. Juliana Markham tapped
up-to-date coordinates into the keyboard on the workstation next to her. Above
her, one of the huge computerized telescopes in the Observatory wing
immediately received and began processing the new parameters. The telescope
hummed slightly as its lens setting auto-adjusted and its angle shifted
slightly. The Doctor and her staff had been steadily recording images of the
distant Galaxy clusters and taking navigational readings for most of the day
now. She wasn’t sure if their original mission still applied, but until she heard
otherwise she planned to be ready if the Captain called looking for
information.

She smoothed wrinkles out of
her light blue blouse, noting that they ran a pretty informal office on this
end of the ship. Most of her staff were walking around wearing blue jeans or
cotton slacks… there wasn’t a suit or white coat around. Anyone who didn’t know
them better would think the Observatory was run by civilians – instead, it was
the focal point for some of the brightest minds on Earth. Julie was a tall,
strikingly beautiful woman with graying hair. She was approximately 55 years
old and in her mind she used the word “approximately” a lot where her age was
concerned.

“The latest navigational
reports the staff have put together are being routed to your terminal Doctor,”
said Kari Hansen, her Administrative Assistant. The short, auburn-haired young
woman smiled and added, “It’s quite a lengthy set of file names – we’ve
identified a lot of possible destinations already!”

“I’ll bet,” replied Julie,
pausing long enough to put on a pair of reading glasses. She called up the
first report on her workstation and began reading briskly; taking careful note
of all the new information provided with a curiosity that continually
astonished everyone who worked with her. Adam Roh entered through one of the
hatchways that led back into the ship and Julie idly noted Kari walking over to
make certain the proper authorization badge dangled from the man’s shirt
pocket. The pretty young woman was one of the most efficient and organized people
that Julie had ever met. If they were going to be millions of light years from
home for any length of time, then Kari was the person you wanted to have around
keeping your office running.