The Epherium Chronicles: Embrace (26 page)

The ballsy maneuver removed one of Krieg’s pursuers, but the G-Forces nearly made him pass out. His head wound pounded stronger than ever, and he felt as if he was going to vomit, but he managed to fight it off. At least the blood on his forehead had stop moving, but he couldn’t risk another turn like that.

A small group of rocks were directly ahead, but they were too closely bunched to fly through, so he was forced to choose a direction. He approached them from below, then went over. The missile, due to its lower approach, was forced to go under the asteroids. But despite its diversion, it managed to maintain its lock.

Krieg accelerated away from the asteroids and gained some distance on the missile. When the missile reacquired his fighter and began to close, he used his thrusters to spin his Stingray on its axis to face it head on. He activated his guns and fired several bursts, finally destroying it less than fifty meters from his position.

Debris from the explosion slammed into his fighter and alarms sounded as his engines went offline. Krieg took a few breaths to let the adrenalin rush pass, then he powered down his systems and performed a restart. Nothing happened. He knew his fighter was still moving backward, so he took a quick glance out the rear of his cockpit canopy. He could see an asteroid in the distance along his current glide path, but as he settled back in his seat a shard of one of the asteroids in front of him, broken loose by the missile explosion, clipped the nose of his fighter, sending it into an awkward spin. “Shiesse!”

The spin wasn’t very fast but it did manage to keep him from estimating the distance to the asteroid in his path. Using a trick he had learned from an instructor at the academy, he used his small terminal in the cockpit to reroute power charged in his weapons and targeting systems for a massive restart surge of his engines. He had one shot at this or he was done.

He initiated the transfer, and the engines roared to life. He pulled back on his controls and throttled up, but his momentum had carried him too close to the asteroid, and the lower part of his fighter’s nose scraped hard on the rock, sending a shower of sparks out beneath his fighter. As he moved away from the asteroid, he checked his hull integrity. His system reported warnings but no failures. He was lucky.

He reacquired the position of the attacking vessel, boosted his throttle and sped toward it. The ship was nearing the edge of the asteroid field, and he was running out of time. He weaved past two more asteroids just in time to see the ship disappear in a space-fold jump.

* * *

The
Armstrong
closed on the edge of the field when Aldridge’s screen identified the gravimetric disturbance of a space-fold event. “Captain, the hostile has jumped.”

Hood, who had just checked with the Helmsman Station, walked back to his own seat. “What’s the status of our fighter?”

“Krieg is still out there, sir,” Aldridge replied. “His ship status shows he’s a little banged up, but still functional. Our shuttle hung back as ordered, but has retrieved the beacon now that it’s clear.” She briefly check her other screen. “Now that’s interesting.”

Hood paused before he sat down. “What have you got, Lieutenant?”

“Sir, you need to see this. You’re not going to believe it.”

As Hood arrived at her station, Aldridge opened two windows that showed her identification programs. “I ran my analysis programs on the latest sensor data we collected from that ship, and this is what I found.”

Her terminal showed the ship in full detail now, and the analysis data streamed down the side of the screen. “The ship is an Earth design, sir. It’s an upgraded version of a prototype design of a stealth frigate that was developed during the war.”

“Are you positive of that, Lieutenant?” Hood asked as he looked at the data.

“Analysis confirms it, but there’s more. This design was developed by Epherium.”

The last statement caught Hood by surprise, and he brought up the ship’s information on Aldridge’s station. “I don’t recognize it. Are you certain of the design?”

Aldridge nodded. “The various designs created were all classified and limited in distribution, but it definitely is a match. The original prototype didn’t have a space-fold drive, but could have been easily retrofitted.”

“How many designs were there?”

Aldridge checked her system. “Seems as if there were at least six that made it to the second stage of development, but the final ship was never selected and put into service. We’re dealing with a ghost, sir.”

Sanchez stepped off the elevator lift and joined Hood at the Tactical Station. “Well, we had to wipe the catapult systems, and the techs are reloading them from the ship’s data archive. They estimate two to three hours before we can get them operation again.” He glanced at the screen. “Is that our bogey?”

Hood still stared at the screen intently and slowly nodded. He continued to read the ship’s specifications, then tapped Sanchez on the shoulder. “Raf, coordinate all the damage reports and casualty estimates and have them ready for me in an hour. And have Lieutenant Greywalker meet me at the Epherium office.”

“Aye, Captain. What do you plan to do?”

Hood called the elevator lift and turned back to Sanchez as the door opened. “I’m going to talk to McCraken again. This time I’m going to get some answers.” Hood started to enter the elevator lift and stopped. Standing in front of him was Maya Greywalker, whose cool blue eyes were staring at a very frazzled Henry McCracken.

Chapter Nineteen

EDF Armstrong
Deep Space Route to Cygni
Thursday
,
January 23
Earth Year 2155
Thirty Minutes After Fifth Jump

Maya grabbed McCraken by the arm and pulled him out of the elevator. Everyone close to the Command Deck exit turned to stare at the commotion. McCraken, who could barely keep his head up, stumbled around the elevator and nearly fell. From the look of things, Hood could only assume that he had been tasered.

Hood moved close to Maya. “Lieutenant, what are you doing?”

“Sorry, sir, but I had to move fast,” Maya said and looked at the growing numbers watching them. “I think we should continue this in private.”

Hood turned back to Aldridge. “Lieutenant, I need you collect all the damage reports and begin repairs. Power and defensive systems are priority and hold all casualty reports. I need to see them first. I’ll be back when this is over.” He waved to Sanchez. “Raf, you’re with us.” The foursome quickly entered the elevator lift, and Hood gave it a destination.

* * *

Hood opened the door to his quarters, and the rest of the group moved inside, but not without a few more grumbles from McCraken.

“Captain, I must protest. This woman has violated my rights and detained me illegally. I demand to be released, and I want her up on charges!”

Hood pulled back a chair. “Sit down, Henry.” McCraken did what he was told then Hood turned his attention to Maya. “I’m sure my Security Chief had every reason to take you into protective custody, but I need to you to calm down and let me sort this out.”

McCraken folded his arms in disgust, and Hood motioned silently with his head for Sanchez to stay close to him. Hood waved Greywalker over to the far corner of his quarters and out of earshot of McCraken.

“All right, Lieutenant, you’ve got thirty seconds to explain.”

Maya held out two dull metal necklace chains.

Hood recognized them immediately as identification tags. “What happened?”

“Hamels and his partner Jenkins are dead, sir,” she said as she pocketed the tags. “Both were killed with the same weapon, and I am positive that ballistics can match that to the sidearm Walsh used in the port docking bay.”

“So is Walsh involved with McCraken in this?” he asked.

Maya didn’t answer. Instead she opened up her satchel, removed an evidence bag, and handed it to Hood. “Open it, sir.”

Hood took the bag and removed the data pad from inside. “Whose data pad is this?” Hood asked as he examined the blood stains on the back.

“It belonged to Hamels. Whatever data he managed to recover from the wipe of the Epherium files, he made a copy and put it on his data pad,” Maya said in a hushed voice. “His killer erased the data on his terminal, but missed this.” She leaned in closer and pointed to the data pad. “Sir, anyone having knowledge of this data is a target, so I found McCraken and brought him to you. He’s our best link to what’s happening.”

Hood accessed the data pad with Maya’s help and opened the data file Hamels had stored. “It looks like personnel records, dates, but I don’t see anything special.” He continued reading, “Wait. Most of these dates are over twenty five years old.”

“I picked up on the dates as well. I checked the files, and Walsh is one of the people on this list, sir,” she explained. “All the personnel records were pretty standard, but there were several instances that referenced something called Project Sandman.” Maya turned off the data pad and replaced it in the evidence bag. “I have no knowledge of it, but I’m hoping that Mr. McCraken does.”

Hood gave McCraken a hard look. The Epherium liaison to the
Armstrong
was still fidgeting in his chair and wouldn’t even look at Sanchez. Hood turned back to Maya. “All right. Henry’s no fool. He has to know that there are things going on that could have him and Epherium tied into this, but we need to be careful not to shut him down. We need answers.”

“Leave that to me, Captain,” Maya said smoothly, and the two of them quietly conferred before joining McCraken and Sanchez by Hood’s desk.

Hood and Maya sat directly across from McCraken who was looking very uncomfortable now. “Henry,” Hood began, “I want to apologize for you being placed in protective custody, but I’m sure you are aware of the recent events surrounding this ship.”

“You call this protective custody?” McCraken protested as he pointed at Maya. “She tazed me!”

“Yes,” Hood said flatly. He glanced at his Security Officer, then back at McCraken. “I am aware of what transpired, but I assure you that Lieutenant Greywalker did what she needed to do to protect your life.” Hood paused, and let his words sink in. “As I mentioned before, the safety of this ship is at risk Henry, and it all points to this.” Hood pulled out Hamels’ data pad and opened one of the files that were recovered.

McCraken began to scan though the files as Hood continued. “This is the data Lieutenant Greywalker’s team recovered from your terminal after the attack in our office. Most of the files reference a Project Sandman. Do you know it?”

McCraken’s hands gripped the pad, and he took a few deep breaths, but he continued to look over the files.

Maya tapped Hood’s leg with her hand under the table. It was her signal to Hood to press harder if McCraken showed any reaction to the name.

“Henry, you have to help us. This data is important enough for someone to kill for it. Not just your people, but they forced us to jump into an asteroid field and used the chaos to get their operative off this ship. That person’s name was in your files, Henry.” Hood reached over and opened Walsh’s file on the data pad.

McCraken stared at the text on the screen in somber silence, then set the data pad down and slowly put his forehead on the desk. He softly pounded his fist in the desk and started to talk as the door to Hood’s quarters hissed open.

McCraken jumped back in surprise, but that was mild in comparison to the reaction of Petty Officer Martin in the doorway, whose face was now a ghostly shade of white. His eyes were trained on Maya Greywalker and her sidearm, which was pointed directly at his nose. In the brief moments as the door opened, Maya had leaped over the table, drawn her weapon and brought it to bear on Martin when he began to step inside. Afraid to move, he swallowed hard, and his satchel slipped out of his hands and hit the floor with a thud. His eyes, now pleading for help, found Hood already on the way to the door.

Hood moved beside Maya and put his hand on her left arm. “Easy, Lieutenant. This is my aide, Mr. Martin.”

Maya lowered her weapon. “Sorry about that. I had to be certain.” She walked back to the desk and sat down as Hood picked up Martin’s satchel and handed it back to him.

Hood smiled at the young man and color came back to his face. “Are you alright, son? Is there anything I can get you?”

Martin chuckled. “Another pair of shorts would be nice, sir.”

Hood laughed in return, then closed and locked the door. “Mr. Martin, I need to be candid here. This discussion is highly classified, and the knowledge and details of it will not leave this room. I know your clearance gives you access to my level, but I need your word on this.”

“You have it, sir.”

Hood escorted him into his quarters. “We could all use some coffee, Mr. Martin. This might take awhile.”

“I’m on it.” Martin moved to the kitchen to start preparing coffee for the group.

Hood returned to his desk as Maya continued questioning McCraken, who now seemed to be opening up.

McCracken held up the data pad and pointed at Walsh’s picture. “I barely know Mr. Walsh and didn’t meet him until I got on board.” He sat down the data pad. “Look, this has all gotten out of hand. All the trials we conducted for the project showed no side effects, so I don’t see how you could believe this man was—”

Hood interrupted him. “What trials, Henry? What were you doing?”

McCraken rubbed his forehead and scalp with the heel of his hand. “Okay. Back in Epherium’s early days, we developed the sleeper chambers that were used in almost all spacecraft until our inertial dampener systems were deemed safe for use with the accelerator gates. Many of the earliest tests with the systems showed that anyone in stasis for over a period of a week required some level of additional stimuli for their brain to maintain proper mental stability, so we developed ways to provide that for anyone in the cells.”

“Why was it needed, and how did you administer it to those in the pods?” Maya asked.

“Unlike a medically induced coma, our cryostasis sleeper chamber slows down all body functions, including that of the brain. But the brain is a tricky organ to mess with, and it requires a certain level of input to maintain functions like dreams to keep it healthy. In the first trial runs on the system, we discovered that the cryostasis process brought about a state similar to a sensory deprivation chamber and over time, those in the pods began to experience sanity loss due to the lack of stimulus for their minds,” McCraken explained. “So, we developed a neural infuser to provide different forms of stimuli from a set of predefined programs that a person’s brain could then use to generate dreams and maintain mental stability while in the pod.”

“That seems all rather tame, Henry,” Hood said. “So what has this to do with Walsh and the others? Your sleeper cells were already in use long before these dates.”

“That’s right. After our initial installations, a team of researchers continued to work on enhancing the system, but discovered a new feature,” McCraken said. He had everyone’s attention and for the first time in his life, it made him pause. He relaxed slightly and leaned back in his seat. “The research team found that the system could not only provide the structure for mental stability, but it could be used to teach new things like skills, languages, and even replace memories.”

Hood grabbed one of the hot cups of coffee, as Martin began to distribute them to the group. “If it had such promise, what happened?” he asked.

“Well, one of the members of the research team decided to conduct a private experiment using the sleeper pod and reprogrammed a person’s entire personality with a completely new one.” McCraken sipped the hot coffee gingerly then continued. “Of course, my company’s management understood the implications of the rogue experiment. We immediately bottled up all the related research on the project, but allowed for continued enhancements to the systems currently installed in all our sleeper ships.”

Hood set down his coffee mug and looked over at his Security Officer. “This research and the usage of sleeper pods ended a long time ago. The ability to alter personalities might still be valuable, but if it’s limited to long term exposure in the pods, I hardly see that it’s something worth killing for.”

Maya stared hard at McCraken. “The research into the technology didn’t end there, did it Mr. McCraken?”

McCraken sighed deeply. “Unfortunately no. As you know our colony ship project was immense. We spent two years recruiting the personnel with the right profiles for over fifteen thousand positions, but getting them to step onto that ship and give up their already established lives was nearly impossible, no matter how much we offered them.”

Hood shook his head slowly. “So you resurrected your personality reprogramming and used it, didn’t you.”

“Yes. Yes, we did,” McCraken said with a dejected tone.

Sanchez, who was still looking at his own data pad, turned it toward McCraken. Scrolling on the screen were the names of the
Magellan’s
personnel. “So if you used your system to create all these personalities to fit your ‘profiles,’ then who are these people?”

“Well, Commander. To answer that question, I need my data pad that was confiscated after the attack in my office,” McCraken said.

“It’s locked away in a secure evidence locker in my quarters,” Maya said as she stood. “I’ll retrieve it.”

As Maya exited Hood’s quarters, Hood typed a few commands on his terminal, and a three dimensional hologram of the hostile vessel that left with Commander Walsh appeared above his desk. “Henry, do you know this ship?”

McCraken watched the ship spin slowly in front of him. “Yes, uh...that’s our Echo design. We tried to create a stealth frigate at the end of Cilik’ti war, but it was never put into service. This one looks modified. It has updated weapons pods and some other equipment on the fuselage I don’t recognize.” His expression was clearly puzzled. “Where did this come from?”

“This is the ship that’s been shadowing us and forced us to jump into that asteroid field so it could extract Commander Walsh.”

McCraken shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t understand. That design was never used. We made a prototype, but we never even fielded it.”

“Well someone has, and it’s jump capable”

“It wasn’t us, Captain, and if it was, I would be aware of it,” McCraken said defensively. “You see, this design was our last joint venture development project. We teamed up with Greer Technology at the onset of the design, since they had a leading researcher on stealth technology. When the project didn’t pan out, we started looking into terraforming, which was Greer’s primary business focus. I think they took offense to that, and we haven’t worked with anyone else since.”

Maya re-entered Hood’s quarters and handed McCraken a sealed evidence bag. “Thank you,” he said as he opened the bag and removed the data pad and a string of wires with four black pads. McCraken began to plug the wires into the pads, fashioned them into the shape of a small cap and placed it on his head. He adjusted the pads to maintain contact with his skin then plugged a lead from one of the wires into his data pad.

Hood pointed to McCraken’s new head gear. “What is all this?”

“Answers, Captain,” McCraken said. He accessed the data pad and pulled up the information related to the
Magellan
crew. “Epherium has used a special encryption method to protect corporate secrets such as this for some time now. It uses an eidetic engram from a person’s memory for its encryption algorithm, and the only way to unlock the encryption is to allow me to access that memory and run the program.”