Ghost of Mind Episode One (6 page)

When John had rematerialized on his bridge
and told the crew to lock onto the falling woman, he'd figured
there was no point to transporting her to the cargo hold, the brig,
or even the usual transport bay; the bridge was just as secure as
anywhere else, plus, she wasn't exactly big.

But right now he was regretting that mistake
big time.

When the transport beam had surged, it had
lost hold of its target and had snapped down to the planet below.
But it had not been shut off.

It had locked onto a massive chunk of
snow-covered ground, and in just under two seconds it would have
made it rematerialize on the bridge of the Pegasus.

It would have crushed everyone, everything,
and probably popped the side of the hull.

But he'd managed to redirect the beam, just
in time.

There was a tense moment as John waited for
the computer to register his move, then the bridge let out a
collective sigh as everyone wasn't suddenly crushed under tones of
icy rock.

‘
Beam direction altered. Contents
materialized two kilometers off starboard.’

‘
Damn,’ Foster let out a spluttering breath
that made his voice sound like a shaking metal sheet.

Oh yes, damn, that had been very, very
close. Sweat collecting along his brow and already dripping down to
his eyes, John wicked it off with a flick of his sleeve. ‘What just
happened?’ he didn't bother to swear. It wasn't out of decorum or
any sense of duty at being the commander of the vessel; he swore in
front of his crew all the time. It was because he could hardly
sustain the breath.

John had only ever seen a white transport
beam on a battle cruiser, never, ever anything smaller than that.
The amount of energy required to sustain just a normal transport
line was astronomical.

‘
Ah,’ Foster bought time as his fingers
flew across the console in front of him. Though Foster, and any of
the other crew on the Pegasus could integrate directly with the ICN
via their neural implants, John never allowed it. Off ship, maybe,
but on ship it only posed a risk. He'd seen people go mad, their
sense of self fried from too much use of the direct uplink. Plus,
it could be hacked too easily. Any space bum with a link to the
Union ICN could get past the firewalls and snoop around local
activity. John had seen it way too many times. The beauty of using
mechanical input - fingers darting over panels and voices shouting
at computers - was that it was far harder to hack. The Pegasus
locked out most neural control, and unless you were a living body
standing right in front of the right panel, it would block out
access. Archaic, yes, but far safer. And John had experienced
enough trouble in this universe to know that safety was the better
option.

That being said, his ship had almost burst at
the seams after accidentally transporting a chunk of a planet to
the bridge.

‘
Sir, somehow massive feedback was created
along the line, it overloaded the transport lock
and . . . ’ Foster drew quiet for a second,
‘the beam locked onto the nearest object.’

‘
A chunk of ice and rock,’ John added, his
voice low and surly.

And then he stopped, because he was really
forgetting something here. ‘The woman—’ he began.

Foster turned around in his chair, the black
and blue uniform of the Union Forces tight around his shoulders.
Foster was young for his job - most ship's pilots had to be trained
for years before the Union would let them helm an experimental
vessel like the Pegasus. But Foster was a brilliant kid. In his
early 20's, with a face that never seemed to stop smiling, at least
he brought an edge of humor to the bridge. Humor that could cut
through the overpowering cynicism of John’s XO.

But right now Foster wasn't smiling. His face
was pale, his cheeks slack. And he was shaking his head.

John felt like he'd been kicked in the
stomach. Sniffing sharply, swallowing, he sat back down in his
chair.

He didn't like to lose people. Even if he
didn't know them. His job was to protect, when he failed, people
died.

‘
Lieutenant Foster, begin an immediate
investigation into the transport beam malfunction,’ Chado said from
beside John.

Chado was John's XO. As second in command, he
tended to deal with all the crew disputes while John got to run
around on planets pacifying pirates and furthering the Union cause.
A towering Talan, Chado had never cracked a smile. Not once. In the
two years John had been commanding the Pegasus, Chado hadn't moved
his cheeks other than to scowl. And scowling was something the
Talans were very, very good at.

‘
Get me a com link to the Head Engineer,’
Chado stood, tugging down on his uniform as he did. Talans were a
blue-skinned race with impeccable cheekbones and eyes that might as
well have been lasers considering how fiercely piercing they were.
And right now Chado did not look happy.

‘
Where did the extra energy come from—’
Chado began.

The computer let out a click signifying
that a comlink had been opened. ‘Don't give me that, you think I
know yet?’ Parka snapped. ‘That surge completely fried a whole
computer bank. We aren't going to have long-range scanners for
hours.’

John watched as Chado began to scowl.
Though it was hardly as if Chado ever stopped frowning; the natural
and permanent grimace of his race deepened. ‘You will maintain
disciple,’ he snapped.

John put up a hand, quick and neat. He did
not have time for a verbal fist-fight between his engineer and XO.
He needed to find out what had happened to that woman.

Was there a chance she was still alive? Had
she jumped over that railing with a plan?

Bringing his hand up, mouth far too dry, John
accessed the small panel next to his command chair.

Parka was obviously right, and long-range
scanners were toast. But that didn't mean John couldn't use the
Pegasus’ visual field to get a lock on the woman. Or her body.
Because unless she had jumped over the railing with one hell of a
plan, she would be a red dot amongst the pure white snow.

Feeling uneasy, not wanting to see on visual
what his mind was already doing a horrific job of imagining, John
told the computers to get a lock on where the woman would have
fallen.

Suddenly the rest of the bridge drew quiet as
they realized what their Commander was doing. The holographic view
screen no longer showed a section of Block Alpha - the location the
transport beam had shot through. Instead it descended down and
down, magnifying as the image shook and shuddered until it locked
on the surface of the planet.

Orion Minor really was barren. Nothing but
ice and salt. There was foliage, but nothing an Earth boy like him
should recognize. Slim, almost metallic-like poles stuck up from
the snow, with tiny white fronds dotted all over them. The Orion
version of a tree, it was the only structure that could withstand
the wind and cold.

As the computer finally locked onto the only
thing on the horizon that wasn't white, John's stomach gave a
kick.

He recognized the blue of the woman's hood
and the black of her tunic and pants.

The rest of the bridge stilled. No matter how
much they dealt with death, John was proud of the fact none of them
had grown accustomed to it. He'd come from the slums, he knew
exactly how easy it was to block yourself off to others’ pain. He
also knew exactly what that let you do. If death didn't scare,
shock, or disgust you, there was nothing stopping you from doing
it. Killing.

And that was a slippery slope.

Getting up slowly, letting his tense muscles
unwind, John stood. Though he really didn't want to, he walked up
to the holographic image around him. If he'd felt like it, he could
have instructed the computer to make the holograms solid so he
could truly touch them. It was a great way to interact with a
prospective environment without yet being present. If you managed
to get a scan of the inside of a pirate den, you could walk around
hiding behind the crates and heavy weapons, seeing exactly where it
was best to hide, finding the nicest vantage points should a gun
battle ensue.

And right now, if John had wanted to, he
could have walked up to the image of the woman in the snow, knelt
down, and picked her up.

She had fallen on her front, her arms and
legs splayed out at an awkward angle.

Her hood had finally fallen form her face,
not that John could see it. But he couldn't help but lock eyes on
the back of her head. She had black-blue hair that wasn't entirely
human. In fact, if John needed any more evidence that the woman was
not - or
had
not been -
entirely human, it was the fact her body hadn't broken apart or
squashed on impact. A fall form that height under those conditions
would have mutilated a body.

She was intact. Her clothes were a little
torn, ripped in sections over her arms and legs, having no doubt
been lacerated by the salt-laden winds.

But her flesh was unharmed. He could see a
section of her bare shoulder, though it was steadily getting paler,
it was not covered in blood.

‘
Computer,’ John forced himself to take a
deep, calming breath. He couldn't stand there and look at the
woman's body for the rest of the day. ‘Lock onto these coordinates.
Tell the authorities on Orion Minor to send out a team to pick up a
body. And computer,’ John added suddenly, ‘tell them to prioritize
this.’

He knew that a request to pick up a slum
dweller who had been stupid enough to throw herself off Block Alpha
was going to go straight to the bottom of the pile. With the
weather fields out throughout the whole building, the engineering
and security staff would have other priorities.

But as John stared down at the vision of the
woman face-first in the snow, his fists tightened by his sides.

She'd shown strength and speed that was not
normal. Just what species was she? Maybe she'd stolen several Union
implants, hell, she could even have been a pirate assassin. Though
he doubted that. Because the second the possibility popped up in
his mind, a vision of her looking up at him after he'd caught her
followed. Even though that hood had stayed resolutely over her
eyes, he could recall the exact pull of her lips as she'd frowned
up at him.

Her chin had dimpled, her cheeks drawing
tight and hard.

What a picture to have stuck in his head. But
pressing a hand to his temple and letting it run down until he
clutched hold of his jaw, John told Foster to put in a priority one
dispatch to the Orion Minor security forces.

‘
Pulling rank there, John?’ Parka said, her
voice snapping over the comline. ‘The Prime is going to love that.
Still, I'm behind you on this one. Any creature dumb enough to jump
off a building three kilometers high is worth
investigating.’

John gave a sharp swallow. Finally he turned
away.

But not before something happened.

He'd brought his hand up and given the signal
to cut the visual feed. Just as he’d made a swiping motion with it,
the computer picking up on his movement and terminating the visual
link, she’d moved.

The woman had moved.

Everyone on the bridge had snapped around to
see it.

Bodies stiff, mouths open, just for a split
second before the feed had terminated, they'd seen her buck
forward, plant her hands in the snow and sit up.

Then the holo emitters cut out. The image of
her snow-covered body gone.

‘
Get it back, get it back,’ John screamed,
voice way too loud. His crew were right by his side, and none of
them were hard of hearing. But he couldn't control it; the surge of
fear that erupted through him at the sight of her bucking forward
cut through his control.

Foster's fingers flew across the console,
his eyes darting to and fro and his shoulders tensed. ‘Locking back
onto it. Three seconds,’ he added.

It would be the longest Three seconds of
John's life.

Chapter 9

Alice

She sat up. Though it was not slow. As her
body regained consciousness, she shot upwards, her torso twitching
so violently it sent her knees skidding in the snow.

Alice did not always have to breathe. It was
a relatively unique feature of her race, but given warning, they
could rely on several redundancies to sucking in nitrogen-rich air
to live.

Given
enough
warning was the key point though. Alice's body had a
variable structure. She was not capable of completely changing her
form and appearance, but she could redirect the unique form of
energy within her to bolster certain systems. Rather than
subsisting on air, she could utilize the wind buffeting against her
body and ripping through her already torn clothes to sustain her.
If there was no wind, she could use heat, or water; anything. Not
for long, but for however much time it would take to get her out of
a compromising situation and back to safety.

Clamping a hand on her chest, the fingers
caked in salt, she didn't care that it scratched uncomfortably at
the skin.

She'd almost died.

Her mouth opening wide, gasping back and
forth like a fish out of water, she stared down at the snow before
her.

It was not splattered with blood; Alice’s
race, though possessed of a circulatory system like a human's, did
not subsist on a substance that any other race could recognize.

Pure energy, or something like it.

The specifics didn't matter though. All Alice
cared about was that she was alive.

Her hood was off. Despite her tired and
almost broken body, she tugged it back over her head.