Shadow Core - The Legacy (11 page)

“Is he alive?” Nick asked as he moved closer.

“Yes... If I'm reading this right,” Kade replied.

“Safe to assume this is the guy that was inside the sleeper pod, but what's he doing in there?” Nick asked.

“Hmm... the interface says this is a maintenance chamber, and if I remember right Aurora said we couldn’t contact him because of 'core maintenance'. So is this what Aurora meant?” Kade asked, looking confused.

“Might explain why Aurora didn’t want to answer when Jude asked about it, but what does it mean? Is he a cyborg or something?” Nick asked while staring at the outline of the floating figure.

“This readout doesn’t show anything that looks even remotely cybernetic,” Kade said, examining the body scan results displayed on the console again. “The only thing that stands out is this reading... 'Core charge 42.35%'... whatever that means.”

Kade continued with her attempts to find a way to get access to the chamber. And Nick, having seemingly lost interest, resumed his exploration of the room, focusing on the sleeper pods.  

“What are you up to?” Kade asked as she saw Nick looking over the controls of a nearby pod.

“I'm waiting. For you to open up the chamber, or the local military forces to find this ship, whichever happens first,” Nick replied with his back turned towards Kade while fiddling with the pod's controls.

“Let's hope it doesn’t come to that. The last thing we need is to have to deal with those cretins,” Kade said, making no effort to hide her dislike for the Sol Union.  

“What's up between you and the Union anyway? You clearly don’t like them, but is there a particular reason why?” Nick asked.

“There are several reasons,” Kade started to explain. “They have little tolerance for smugglers, even though they often contract them. More often than not they end up confiscating the goods afterwards and fining or arresting the smuggler... or worse. So they're not exactly good for business.”

“From what I hear, working for them pays well,” Nick pointed out.

“As long as they keep their end of the bargain, sure. But even the legal trade runs can backfire in a hurry if you come across the wrong customs officer,” Kade said.

“You make it sound like they're all corrupt, I'm sure they aren’t all like that,” Nick said encouragingly.

“You sound like an advertisement vid...” Kade said and then turned away from the console, towards Nick, as she started play acting.  

“Come trade with the Sol Union today!

The Union! Working hard to improve customer relations for more than two thousand years.

We may still shaft you, but we aren’t all bad.”  

“OK, OK, point taken,” Nick said as he tried to keep himself from laughing. “But getting shafted in a trade is hardly exclusive to deals with the Sol Union.”

“True, but few others can match their 'holier than thou' attitude. The sheer arrogance some of them have borders on the insane. Which makes them even worse to deal with, they are way too much hassle.”

“I think I'm starting to see a pattern. So your issue is purely professional then?” Nick asked sceptically.

“No. There are a few personal reasons too, but I'd rather not talk about them,” Kade said as she turned back towards the chamber's console.

“Oh come on!” Nick said in frustration. “You can't leave it there! It was just getting good. And here I was hoping to get a glimpse of your epically mysterious past, and how your psychological scars shaped your ultimate destiny... or something.”

“You what?” Kade chuckled.   

“Bah! Never mind. Subject change. These pods haven’t been used in a very long time,” Nick said as he finished going over the data on the nearby pod.

“Define 'long'.”

“Very long, well over a hundred years. In fact I don’t think any of the pods in this room have been used recently, except for your friend's over there,” Nick said as he looked carefully around the room.  

Nick had just looked past the open doorway when something caught his attention. He had seen someone standing by the edge of the doorway out of the corner of his eye.

The hallway beyond the room was dark, the lights having turned themselves off when they had first entered the room, so Nick couldn’t make out who was by the door.

“Jude?” Nick asked through squinting eyes as he approached the doorway, but the small figure quickly turned and ran away.

Nick raced to the entrance, the lights in the hallway activating as he walked into the corridor. But as he looked down the long pathway, he could see no sign of whoever had just been standing there. And he could swear he had heard a girl's giggling voice.

“What are you doing?” Kade asked, scaring the living daylights out of Nick, who hadn’t noticed her moving up behind him.

“Don't do that! You trying to give me a heart attack?” Nick asked, out of breath.

“You're way too jumpy,” Kade said, oblivious to what Nick had just experienced.

“Did you just...” he started to ask but then realised he was about to make himself sound crazy. “No. Never mind. My mind's just playing tricks on me.”

And just as Nick was calming down he noticed Kade's attention shift. Nick heard the sound of doors opening behind him, probably the nearby elevator, and Kade was looking directly at it.

Due to his recent experience he was still a bit shaken, and just before he could turn around...

“Hey!” The cheerful female voice said, causing Nick to almost jump out of his skin.

Nick grabbed his chest, breathing heavily, and realised it was just Jude.

“What's wrong with you?” Jude asked.

“You two are gonna be the death of me!”

“What?” Jude asked.

“Ignore him,” Kade said, happy to see her sister.

“OK,” Jude replied as she walked past Nick and all three of them headed back inside the room, the lights in the corridor automatically turning off again.

Nick was still jumpy, but he put the experience down to stress and moved on.

Kade and Jude, in the meantime, were walking back towards the chamber.

“Excellent timing. This console is driving me insane, could you give me a hand with it?” Kade asked with renewed vigour.

“Sure, but first things first,” Jude said ominously as she slowed down slightly, letting her sister move ahead. And then, suddenly and without warning, slapped her in the back of the head.

“Hey! What was that for!” Kade asked as she turned around, startled at her sister's actions.

“That was for not telling me what you've been looking for all these years.” Jude scowled.

“Oh, that,” Kade said holding the back of her head.

“Yes, that... but I forgive you.” Jude smiled.

“Wait...” Kade said as she let go of her head and looked at Jude with a confused expression. “If you hadn't figured it out until now, what gave it away?”

“You'll see.” Jude grinned mischievously.

“Am I missing something?” Nick asked, wondering what that little display had been all about.

“About fifteen years of back-story, give or take half a decade.” Kade and Jude smiled.

“What?” Nick asked, thoroughly confused.  

“Never mind,” Kade said dismissively and then turned back towards Jude. “You think you can open this up?” She asked, pointing at the chamber.    

Jude walked up to the chamber controls and quickly read through the information displayed, trying to get a grasp of the system.

“It can't be opened from the outside while the sequence is running. At least, not without a command override, which we don’t have,” Jude said.

“Can you hack it open?” Nick asked.

“Of course! But I would need my system breakers, which are back at the airlock room. But there’s an easier way,” Jude said.

“How?” Kade asked.

“Like this,” Jude said and then took a deep breath. She pressed the intercom button and shouted at the top of her lungs, “WAKE UP DRAKE!!!”

Startled by the rather rude awakening Drake slowly opened his eyes and looked around the chamber. The walls of which were actually transparent to him.

Drake couldn’t help but wonder just what, exactly, had happened while he was sleeping, and why Static hadn’t bothered to wake him up. But mostly he just wondered how these people had managed to get inside the sleeper room unchallenged, which shouldn’t actually be possible.

Still a bit groggy, Drake moved towards the door and pressed the controls, reactivating the gravity inside the chamber and causing the door to open.

He stepped outside the chamber, his feet touching the cold room floor, and as he saw the expressions stamped across the three strangers faces he suddenly realised that he hadn't gotten dressed after leaving the pod. He was down to his shorts.

As he stood there, in his underwear, Drake wondered what he could have done in a previous life that would cause the universe to keep putting him in these situations. He must have certainly done something completely vile in a past existence, like kick a kitten or something, for crap like this to keep happening to him. Or maybe this was just another example of Static's warped sense of humour.

“He's awake,” Nick said out loud, and then whispered to himself, “This could complicate things.”

“He's naked!” Kade said, blushing slightly.

Jude whispered to Kade, “He's cute.” Causing her to blush even more.

“Oh! Sorry about that,” Drake said, though he didn’t look particularly embarrassed by his lack of clothing. “I was supposed to be awakened shortly after you docked. But someone, who shall not be mentioned, probably thought it would be funnier this way.” He walked past them, heading towards his pod.  

Kade whispered to Jude, “Who is he talking about? I thought he was the only one on board.”

Jude whispered back, “I'll explain later.”

“Ah-ha! I knew I wasn’t seeing things,” Nick said happily. “That girl I saw was real, so... who is she?”

“Girl? What are you talking about?” Drake asked without turning to face Nick.

“Don't play dumb. The girl that was in the corridor a while ago, looking at us as we searched the room. She ran off when I noticed her but I bet she was the one that was supposed to wake you up, right?”

“Not unless 'she' looked like a man, about my height, with a beard... and I very much doubt he would have been in the corridor,” Drake said as he reached his pod. The nearby storage locker opening automatically.  

Inside the storage locker was a set of black clothing, bearing the Shadow insignia.

Drake reached inside, grabbed his clothes and started getting dressed. And as he started putting on his trousers, he looked at his three visitors. Trying to gauge their state of mind.

The man seemed jumpy and a little confused.

One of the women was doing her best to avoid eye contact, looking at just about everything in the room but him. And the other just kept staring and smiling, which was making Drake feel a little self-aware. Then again, he was down to his shorts.

“How did you get in here anyway?” Drake asked. “And please don’t tell me you broke your way in. I've got enough stuff to fix as it is,” he said as he finished putting on his trousers, now looking marginally more presentable.

“Kade used a code to open the door,” Nick said.

“She did?” Drake asked, looking at the two women and wondering which one of them was Kade.

“You did?” Jude asked while also looking at Kade, wondering where she had gotten the code from.

“It was... a lucky guess?” Kade said, still trying to avoid eye contact with Drake.

Drake finished putting on his T-shirt, Kade's overall level of discomfort dropping significantly now that he was mostly dressed.

He paused for a moment, as he looked at Kade unconvinced at her explanation. Then he tilted his head slightly, smiled and resumed getting dressed.

“I see... nice guess!” Drake said.

“Really? Just like that? You're a very trusting person,” Nick said in a condescending tone.

“Not really,” Drake said. “Trust, much like respect, must be earned. It's not something I'm in the habit of just giving away. But if that's the story Kade wants to stick to then I’ll accept it... for now. I would have preferred 'I saw it in a vision', but 'lucky guess' works too I suppose,” He said as he finished putting on his boots.

“Vision?” Kade asked, surprised at Drake's comment. “How did you know I said that?”

Drake smiled and asked, “Lucky guess?”

The Infiltrator

Drake was finally looking presentable, though by current standards his choice of clothing wouldn’t exactly be considered stylish.

His choice of attire in the real world wasn't all that different to his virtual environment counterpart. He was wearing a black T-shirt with shoulder emblems, black cargo trousers and reinforced boots. The only real difference was that now he was also wearing a silvery technical harness over his T-Shirt.

“You seem remarkably calm considering you have armed strangers on board your ship,” Jude said, wondering if Drake had noticed Kade and Nick's side-arms. “For all you know we could be pirates.”

Drake said confidently, “In my experience, panicking doesn't solve much. It just tends to make things worse. Besides, your guns can't harm me.”

Kade took another look at Drake, seeing that there wasn't even a trace of fear in his eyes. He seemed to truly believe what he had just said.  

She couldn’t really decide if the person standing in front of her was courageous or just plain stupid, though she was leaning heavily towards stupid. His state of mind would have to be questionable at best for him not to fear a pulse gun.

Nick removed his gun from its holster and started examining it, choosing to err on the side of caution. The readout on the gun was saying that it was fully charged and there was no visible indication that the weapon was anything but fully functional.

He looked around the room, searching for any obvious defence systems which could be triggered in order to protect Drake, but could see none.