Europa (Deadverse Book 1) (31 page)

- Crysta –

“Beep. Beep. Beep.”

She cracked her eye open, her current dream still persisting with her in her waking state. She glanced over to the far door, and still no light. Then she remembered; it was her day off, she didn’t have to wake up early. Plus, her alarm didn’t sound like that at all. The room was still dark, so maybe it was just part of her dream, and she closed her eyes again, hoping to go back to whatever it was she was drifting in.

“Beep. Beep. Beep.”

This time she sat straight up. That wasn’t a dream, it was an alarm, but a different one. It was an alarm that she had never expected to hear, or at least, hoped never to. She stumbled out of her small bed and reached over for her tablet, hanging by a tethered hook on the wall. She tapped the screen twice and her login showed up. Just under it, the warning symbol blinking.

“Shit.”

She didn’t even bother to put any clothes on, and ran out into the main ring. The cold air rushed to greet her, but she didn’t have time to dress. She rushed down towards the center drive shaft, reached the edge, and waited for her ring to make the turn. As soon as it linked into the main corridor, she jumped through, from the artificial gravity into none at all. She took one of the side handles and pulled herself, floating up towards the bridge. As she floated down, she logged into her tablet and read the message.

“Oh, shit,” she uttered quietly. She scrolled past and brought up the comm, and swiped down to get to Ben’s channel.

“Boss,” she said, “you need to wake up now.”

She passed two more rings, stepping into them and passing through. Just before the bridge, she reached the final ring, and waited for the third spoke to rotate into view, then stepped through. While nearly all the operations of the ship could be run from the bridge, she sometimes preferred to do her work directly on the AI servers. Plus, it was always warmer in the computer room, and she was woefully underdressed.

As she walked into the room, the familiar hum of electricity and computers greeted her ears and she pulled herself into the seat. Her tablet dinged again, this time with a small picture of Ben. She tapped it and a video of his smothered face and tattered grey hair showed up darkly in the screen.

“Crysta?”

“Boss, get to the server room now,” she said, an edge of panic in her voice.

“What’s going on?” he asked, moving about his tiny room getting dressed.

“We have a bad fuel leak. BAD!”

Ben decided to skip his clothes and was down in the room in two minutes.

“Talk to me,” he said, walking in.

“Ok. Hammy has a whole parameter of warnings that are programmed in to the flight home. Basically just to point out if anything is off. Well, as of thirty minutes ago, a big red flag came up.”

Crysta brought up a screen and showed Ben. It showed the fuel levels for the trip.

“Is that what I think it is?”

“Yeah, we are at half of our fuel consumption.”

“In just eight days?” Ben gasped. “A leak then?”

Crysta could see his mind racing. “Ok, we need to kill the drive now and start working on calculating how long it will take now. Get the AI online and I will go wake up Connie.”

Ben spun around to start walking away, but Crysta grabbed his arm.

“That’s the thing. I tried talking to Hammy, and it’s, well, messed up.”

“How so?” Ben asked, turning back.

Crysta raised her finger. “Hammy, status readings please.”

The artificial voice echoed, “All readings nominal.”

Ben gave Crysta a confused look.

“So, um, what’s going on?”

“It gets weirder. Hammy, can you put up a visual flight path model up, please, with current location?”

The fuel gauge on the screen was replaced by a simple schematic of the solar system, with a semicircular line coming out of Jupiter and headed towards a spot in the solar system where Earth would be. A small pinprick showed exactly where the Odyssey was.

“That’s… right in the middle,” Ben stammered. “How accurate is this?”

“How accurate is anything right now?” Crysta said. “I’ve been running diagnostics on Hammy for just a few minutes now, but not a single error come up. Here’s the funny thing: Hammy, what’s been our flight time from Europa?”

A counter showed up on the bottom of the solar system screen. It showed eight days, three hours and twenty seven minutes. It showed the distance traveled, just under half of what they were supposed to fly.

“Hammy,” Crysta continued, “how are you keeping track of time?”

“Internal chronometer. Atomic counter clock.”

“Hammy, are there any other methods you can use to keep track of time?” Crysta asked, Ben looking curiously over her shoulder.

“Solar system orbital movements as well as solar pulse.”

“Please calculate our flight time with these two methods please.” Crysta pointed down to the screen.

A second set of numbers showed an entirely different time: four months, seven days, eight hours and two minutes. Ben looked back and forth, from Crysta to the screen.

“So, is something wrong with the AI?”

Crysta shrugged her shoulders. “Hammy, any errors with time calculation?”

“None, ma’am.”

She looked back up at Ben.

“Ok, don’t we have our own scope?”

Crysta nodded, clicking on a set of programs on the screen. The solar system vanished and a set of command prompts came up.

“Do it yourself, though, with no assistance from the AI. Let’s see if it’s him.”

Ben turned to leave.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to get Connie up. We’re gonna check the fuel levels ourselves. Tell me the moment you see anything,” he said, then walked out of the small room.          

Crysta turned her focus back on the program. She could program nearly anything, but only if she knew exactly what she was programing. Running a program she hadn’t coded herself was always a task. In that case, she would just use the AI to help her, but it was clear she couldn’t this time around. She would have to rely on some logic.

They were eight days away from Jupiter, so therefore, the gas giant would be clear to see. She opened up the program, and messed around with the menu settings a bit. It took her a minute, but she found the link to the scope. She clicked on it, and waited for the signal to confirm the scope was online. She poked around the controls some more and finally found the simple keyboard keys to move it. A small video popped up, showing a live feed of the camera. It was confusing at first, but then she realized that it was facing towards the front of the vessel, and the giant ice shield was distorting the view. Slowly, she turned the scope until it was facing backwards, with the telltale blue glow of the ViZMR drive just under the view. She twisted her lips when she saw the rest of the image.

It was entirely black.

There was no Jupiter sitting there in the image. Not even a hint. There were plenty of stars, and one particularly bright star, but no sign of the storm of colors she had seen every day for two years on Europa. She turned the scope around again, moving it in all directions. She could clearly see the shape of the drive and the rings slowly going around it. Stars were clear in every direction until the edge of the ice shield blocked everything from sight. There was a slight blur that came off the edge of the ice, but it was minor. She recorded everything, and spun around a few more times, but again, found no hint of the gas giant.

Then she decided on something else.

“Hammy, can you find Jupiter on the scope?”

A small confirmation button appeared on the screen, allowing the AI to take over. She clicked OK, and watched as the scope began to turn slowly towards the rear of the ship again. A separate image of the solar system popped up. It was a 3d globe with the Sun right in the center, and a map of the constellations plastered around the edge of the globe. The stars began to flash as the AI compared them to what was on the scope. Within thirty seconds, the camera had stopped moving and the AI had confirmed he had found it. It took a screenshot, which was then displayed as a still image on her screen, with that bright star just above the words: Jupiter.

She tapped her tablet.

“Boss,” she said into Ben’s comm. She waited for his confirmation, then replied, “weird just got weirder.”

- Joyce –

As usual, that little bit of crud in her eyes just wouldn’t go away. The entire ship was up now, but she just couldn’t catch up to actually being awake. So she kept rubbing her eyes. What made matters worse were the nearly dream-like things Crysta kept telling her. As she booted up her computer, her IT friend kept going on about how they were already halfway home, even though they had only been gone from Europa for eight days. Ben was angry, mostly because he was hitting that wall of unknown again, so he wanted Joyce to try to confirm anything about their weird situation.

She rubbed her eyes again, watching her programs come up on the OS. One by one, in the order she needed them to: the hardware boot ups, the driver loading, the dish link, the comm apps, the data banks and the recorder. She hadn’t planned on using any of the programs or gear until they were close to Earth, but it appeared they just might be.

She had tuned in the ship’s comms into the server room, where she and Crysta were working. Her friend was still working with the AI to come up with any explanation for what was happening, or just how to diagnose whatever malfunction was going on. Meanwhile, Connie had the far more dangerous job. She had just gone out to do a visual inspection of the fuel tanks where the scope was unable to see. From their internal readings, the fuel was legitimately at half, with actual physical readings done from each individual tank. Now, they had to find the leak.

Connie knew this was part of her job. At some point, they’d want to go out and inspect the ice shield anyways, but it was still a highly risky move. At the speed they were traveling at, if she came loose, she would be gone forever. The system they had in place of tethers and locks was fairly simple and straightforward, but Connie was taking no shortcuts. She had been out there for almost two hours now, and she had only just now reached the underside of the ship, where the scope had no view. Now she was going to have to crawl along the side of the ship and in between the rings, and inspect every fuel tank. It was going to be a long day for her.

Jenna showed up briefly with a plate of hot steaming food and some water, which Joyce gulped down in an instant. It was going to be a long day for her as well. The rest of the crew was out inspecting every inch of the ship to see if there was any internal damage that might explain the AI’s odd behavior and their own readings.

After downing the food, and making sure all the programs were up and running, Joyce loaded the first set of parameters she already had in place. The dish had been installed pointing ahead, although it could be turned very slowly. The whole array had several transmitters and receivers, but the two most important ones were the radio and the laser. She brought up the radio first and opened up a wide channel, allowing all signals to flow in and be recorded.

The first readings came nearly immediately. They were strong signals, far more than anything she had ever received on Europa. She parsed a few, then brought one up on the screen. She looked at the wave and recognized it right away: automated data signals. She opened up her link to the AI and ran it through.

“All right, Hammy,” she said. “What are we looking at?”

“The readings are encrypted, please hold.”

The screen opened up another app automatically, and the powerful AI started cracking the code. It took it nearly a minute, which Crysta joked was a long time. As soon as it was completed, the AI responded.

“These are military AI commands. Specifically, attack vectors for squadron 137B, off the coast of Morocco. The signal cut off at target advices and optionals.”

“Origination?”

“Eastern American seaboard.”

Joyce ran a signal strength simulator and the numbers that came back continued to confirm their position in space. She continued to run through other signals, and every single one came back as military in origin, orders, data transfer, all via radio waves, all encrypted. And every single one confirmed how far they were from Earth. She messaged everything to Ben and rarely received anything but an affirmative reply.

Beside her, Crysta couldn’t come up with a single error. There had been no changes to the code, and no corruption. Her powerful AI was running exactly as it should, although it hadn’t come up with an explanation for the two varying travel times. She was running through more ship diagnostics along with Hammy when Charles entered the small room.

“Ben said you were picking up military signals?”

She nodded. Charles leaned over and wrote something down on the white board the small desk had.

“Do me a favor, can you run this code through any of the signals and let me know if it shows up, anywhere?”

Joyce looked down at the simple five symbol code.

“Yeah, should be simple enough. What is it?”

“It’s a personal command code.”

“And what is it for?”

“It will tell us if anyone alive is sending these signals.”

Crysta overheard and gasped a bit. Charles turned and faced her.

“Yeah, it’s a pretty big deal.”

He left without any other explanation, but Joyce inputted the code and began back searching all her other signals. Not a single one came up with the code in it.

Connie continued to work her way through the ship’s exterior. As each hour passed, Crysta could find no errors, and the signals from Earth actually started to become slightly stronger, even if by tiny hints. They discussed it, so Crysta ran another travel time based on the solar pulse, and the new reading was shocking. She called Ben up.

“Yeah?”

“So, we ran the solar pulse timer again. And we just added a couple of days travel to our total from last night.”

“What the hell is going on?” Ben asked.

“You know where we saw this before, right?” Joyce mentioned.

“Yeah. I don’t like the coincidence. Did we keep any of the data from that?” Ben asked.

Crysta began typing on her keyboard.

“Other than what we talked about, what kind of data would there be?” Joyce asked.

“I don’t know. Did we leave data behind on Europa?”

“Yeah, tons. Stuff we could technically download from Earth if needed. But we blew the base right?”

“Did it?” Ben asked. “We never saw anything.”

“Ok,” Joyce replied, clicking on a new app. “Let me point the dish back at Europa and see if I can link in.”

Crysta replied that she had not found any data specifically about the temporal anomaly they had encountered within the alien ship.

“Ok. Ms. Hunter, let me know as soon as you get anything.” Then the comm closed.

It took her a few minutes to move the dish around manually, then she required Hammy’s assistance to get it lined up perfect with Europa. The moment the AI confirmed the alignment, a whole new alarm went off on Joyce’s screen. It was blinking red.

“Um,” she said, clicking the alarm off and reading the log. “We have a message. It’s huge, too.”

Crysta pushed her chair over next to Joyce and watched. She clicked the message open and the first image shocked them. It was Emir, haggard, but alive.

“Odyssey,” the message began, “If you get this, capture and subdue Glorin. Immediately. It is of uttermost importance that you keep him under close eye, and keep him away from your computers at all costs. What I am about to tell you will seem like fantasy, but please listen carefully. Glorin is not who he says he is.”

Joyce turned and looked at Crysta in utter shock. The message began again, and Joyce quickly tapped into Ben’s comm.

“Boss,” she said, “you have to come see this right now.”