FA+
Shop
235 submissions
Chapter 21: Unfamiliar Recollections
June 6th, 3234, 1814 hours
Earth Orbit
The lifeboat tumbled in space over and over again, rustled by its sudden departure from Slipspace. True, while the journey was rough, it was made in the best interest of the highly stressed passenger. The disgraced captain Vennettilli lay in the pilot's chair grabbing his chest which started to leak blood from the wound obtained from the fight with the Hunter. His breaths came rapid, but at the same time, strong. He was in no danger of dying from this injury, but he was not taking his situation for granted. In truth, he wasn't feeling much of anything at the moment.
Chris sat in the seat with his eyes half-closed. He gazed out of the cracked windshield to see Earth spinning in the distance. Slowly they made rotations where his home would would be visible for a second, a shining star for another, and blackness of space for the rest. His mind was taxed greatly over the last couple of days. He just couldn't take it.
"Ni... NICOLE, what time is it?" He asked in something a little more than a whisper.
"It's 6:15 in the afternoon." NICOLE's hologram said. "Today is June 6th. Do you know what that means?"
"June 6th." He squinted hard to try and remember the significance of this day. "June 6th... What happens today?"
NICOLE looked at the man with pity. "Your birthday is tomorrow, Chris."
He seemed to remember after this. "Oh yeah! Yeah. Tomorrow is my birthday. I'll be turning... twenty... twenty... fuck."
NICOLE decided not to involve herself that time. First and foremost it was an excercise that she was using to determine Chris' mental stability. Things were not looking good at the moment. She was concerned greatly over the Captain's integrity. He was her friend. A pang of sadness resonated within her programming. It was like watching a dying man remember details about his childhood.
"I'll be turning twenty six." He finally concluded. "That's right, isn't it?"
NICOLE nodded. "Yes, that's right."
Chris pulled himself into a straighter sitting posture. He winced as a bubble of blood floated from the bandages into the air of the lifeboat. "I'm a wreck: I'm babbling, I'm seeing things, and to top it all off, I'm starting to forget how old I am. Is there anything in your programming that can tell me what's going on here?" The Human asked this with intent in his voice, but she had no real answers to give.
"I don't have anything that can help you." the lynx said. "This is a program that, frankly, I can barely even recognize as a computer program. This is a fundamental step above anything we would consider code or algorithms. It's simply too alien to interpret, even for me!"
"So not even the Smart models back home would help?"
"Chris, I'm from the future. If I couldn't understand it at that point, what makes you think I can understand it now?"
"That firewall of yours." the Marine pointed out. "If that was out of the way."
"Well it's not. Get used to disappointment, because it's all around you here." She noticed that she had made him upset and attempted to change the subject. "Have you tried sleeping?"
He unclipped his belt and drifted around the cabin. "It doesn't feel like sleep, and I never close my eyes for more than half an hour at a time. I shut my lids, and then boom, I just wake up. I don't see anything, and there's no drowsiness."
"You can't dream?"
"Nope. Well, not anything I would count as a dream. More like, memories from another person."
"That must be the memories of the person who made the Cypher." NICOLE reasoned. "What have you been seeing?"
He sat there for a second trying to formulate a good enough answer to give her. "Everything, but at the same time, nothing at all."
"Care to explain that in more detail?" the hologram of NICOLE said.
Chris put a hand to his temple with his eyes closed shut. "I can see... I see a face (at least I think it's a face). It's blurred. I can't make out anything other than a mouth opening and closing. There's Forerunner text all over the place, plus flashes of Chaos Emeralds."
NICOLE said, "Can you see the text? Perhaps I can interpret it."
"No, it's going too fast for me to see. I can't even catch a single character. I see planets and moons. In the distance, there's a binary star. I see... something that looks like a ship. But... it's not like any ship I've ever seen before. It's design is so... alien that I... that I..." Then, he stopped midsentence. He shuddered as if a seizure were ripping through his body.
"Chris? CHRIS!" NICOLE shouted. She could do nothing though as she saw the young man's eyes roll into his head as it started to rock against the headrest violently.
He was gone. He was free of the lifeboat and its metal confines. His consciousness was straming through thousands of lightyears in a matter of seconds. Chris had no idea where he was and didn't feel any part of his body. In a moment of confusion and dread, he concluded that his entire mind had left his body... or was still there and recieving the mother of all psychic visions. He wasn't sure which.
Stars sped past him like Christmas lights. He saw flashes of worlds that had their surfaces burned by fire. He saw alien creatures that he couldn't even fathom. He saw a biped with gigantic eyes and long spindly limbs that screamed at him. He saw alien numbers and mathematics that would take him decades to even comprehend. All of this happened in seconds and in this time, he still had no idea about where he was even going.
Then another flash burned him and from the darkness emerged a monster the likes of which he had never seen: a supermassive black hole.
Every schoolchild nowadays knew that within the heart of the Milky Way galaxy, there was a black hole of such immense size and density that millions of suns couldn't even compare to the mass that a monster like that could ever achieve, and there it was, bending the light of the entire galaxy around it.
His movement was not his own. He rode this hellish roller coaster around the black hole. He remembered the warning about the Galaxy Bomb and how it had to do with this natural phenomenon. Just how did the black hole fit in?
From the infinite darkness came something he did not expect: a ship, or a station of some kind. Honestly speaking, it could be something entirely different that was so alien that he couldn't even grasp it. It was long, with one end fanning out into something he couldn't make out. Perhaps that was an engine of some kind. Massive spines protruded from the back of the object, which made the thing look like a skeletal flower. What caught Chris' attention specifically wasn't so much the shape of the object itself, rather the beam of light that was shooting from what he assumed was the bow of the vessel. The green beam extended from the ship into the depths of the black hole, eventually becoming too small to see.
The question here was why someone would want to shoot a black hole? It wasn't like you could actually destroy one. But then Chris reconsidered and had to think about what he was really looking at. He concluded that he just didn't know. He didn't know if it was a weapon, a ship, a space station, or something else entirely. It was far more likely that this thing was just too alien to understand. Then that raised another question? Who built it?
A hulk of metal flying across his vision gave him an answer. He looked at a ship as it was being pulled into the gravitational singularity of the black hole. The destinctive color and angular shape told him that it was a Forerunner vessel. He couldn't believe it. A Forerunner ship was broken and dead in space as it was pulled apart by gravity. The mere sight that something so powerful being destroyed told him that the people who built this thing shooting the green beam into the black hole must have been eons more advanced than even the great Forerunners.
Then the view changed again. He swept around and saw that a whole fleet of Forerunner ships were behind the first one, all of them trying to escape the gravitational pull of the stellar monster. All of them were failing. He silently hoped that they would Slip away, but it didn't come. Every single one of the alien vessels was pulled apart like building blocks, and even if anybody survived that, they were swallowed by the beast.
They were gone. A whole fleet of ships obliterated in one deft motion. Why hadn't they jumped to slipspace? They could have used the gravitational pull for momentum while they ploughed into FTL. It would be an easy thing, but something wrong happened here. That one simple move didn't happen, and it cost what Chris was sure was over a hundred thousand lives. It was amazing to watch, really.
But then his vision blacked out. When he opened his eyes, he was back in the lifeboat.
"Hey, can you hear me?" he heard someone say. The face in front of him was out of focus. "Hey, wake up!"
"Wh... who are you?" Chris asked.
"Hold on, you're a bit dazed. I'm a doctor. How many fingers am I holding up?" the man held up his index and middle finger. Chris squinted to make them out.
"Two."
"OK, your cognative skills are looking good." the medic reached into his breast pocket. "Follow my pen." He held his utensil in front of Vennettilli's eyes and moved it to the left, up, down, up, right, and left.
"Shouldn't I be in a hospital for this?" Chris asked.
"Hang on. We'll get you out of this pod in a second." the medic said. "Last thing: can you tell me why you were out here in the first place?"
Even in his dazed state, Chris wasn't stupid enough to answer that honestly. He knew that the Romulus would report a missing lifeboat, but he would buy himself as much time as he could. "We were in slipspace and had a reactor breach. We were told to jump ship, and I was the only one able to get to the pod. I don't know if any of the crew came out around here."
"What was the name of the ship?" The medic asked.
"I think I should really be in a hospital. In case you haven't noticed, I'm bleeding from the chest here!"
"What was the name of the ship? Tell me, and I'll get you out of this pod."
Chris was silently thankful that the medic didn't ask how one could possibly get a chest injury from a reactor breach. "The..." he searched through his mind for a suitable name and said, "The Alicia."
"The Alica, huh?" The medic sighed. "Alright. Odds are she's gone though. Good thing you got out when you did, crewman. Reactor breaches are terrible things. Hope you didn't get radiation poisoning."
"Can I PLEASE," Chris said, wincing slightly, "go to a god-damned hospital?"
The medic seemed happy to do so this time. "Certainly." he nodded. "A promise is a promise. Follow me." He drifted towards the back of the lifeboat and braced himself against the bulkhead. He tapped the airlock's control panel and keyed the release.
"Warning, pressure differences will result in explosive decompression! Do you wish to proceed?"
The medic looked at Chris squarely in the eye, smiled, and said, "Yes."
"Wait, what?"
The hatch sprang open and exposed the stars beyond. A blast of air exploded from the lifeboat's interior into space. There was barely any time for Chris to flinch as the air was sucked from his lungs. He grasped at a chair arm and held it to avoid being blown away while in free-fall. Within a fraction of a second, the air was gone, leaving the cabin silent and slick with flash-frozen ice.
He could feel the saliva on his tongue boiling in vacuum. He needed to close the door quickly before he passed out. The endangered Captain threw himself across the short distance to the airlock, taking care not to launch himself out the open portal to certain death. His body hurt as the bends were slowly taking place. The damned panel was right there, clear as day. His shaking finger tapped the touch screen and the hatch closed in silence. The air reserves on the lifeboat automatically responded to the lack of pressure by pumping in oxygen. Chris was nearly seeing entirely black when the air hissed in. At first, he was taking huge gulps to gain even a fraction of his vision back. Within another five seconds, he was breathing normally, and finally breathed a sigh of relief.
"Oh man, thank God."
"Thank GOD?" He heard a snappy voice cry out in horror. "I saw you nearly kill yourself! This time you just about did it!"
He kicked around and saw NICOLE looking at him with eyes so wide that they nearly fell out of her holographic head.
"Where's the medic? Was he blown out?"
"What, what medic?" NICOLE said. "You muttered to yourself, I tried to talk you out of it, and suddenly you decided it was too stuffy in here and wanted a breeze!"
Chris found a seat and sat down. He wiped the ice flecks from his beard. "You mean he was a hallucination?"
"No, I'm saying that he was carrying an active camouflage unit, and magically, you had the power to see through it!"
"NICOLE, I nearly unwittingly committed suicide. Now's not the time to take my job and be the deadpan snarker. Don't insult my intelligence."
NICOLE placed a hand to her head. She was truly surprised by this Human. She was surprised that Sally even considered getting in bed with him in the first place - granted, they both were drunk when it happened. He was arrogant, sarcastic, narcissistic at times, foolhardy, proud, chauvinistic, and now, he was shrugging off a near-death experience as if someone he didn't like made an offhand comment on how ugly his shoes were or something. However, she had to remind herself that he was in a rather rare position of having the organic equivalent of having a hard drive completely full of clutter.
"This hallucination," she began, "you didn't recognize this man?"
"Never seen him before in my life."
"Now that is interesting actually. All of your hallucinations or visions so far have comprised of people that you actually know, or knew at some point in your life. This one's different: it appears that the medic was generated specifically for the task of trying to get you to kill yourself. Your brain is now thinking of more creative ways to off you."
"Gotta love the subconscious." Chris said with faux-enthusiasm. "Such imagination; such grandeur!"
There's the Human I know!
"This is really helpful. The program in your head is taking up so much neural space that it must be interfering with major aspects of your cognitive and mental skills. You were having trouble remembering when your own birthday was for Mobius' sake! Your brain needed to get things back in balance."
"Through killing me." Chris said flatly. "Seems counterproductive, really."
"Sometimes the simplest way is the only way. Can you answer a question for me?"
"Hmm?" The tired Human hummed.
"When is your birthday?"
"Oh no, no more tests! Last time I took a test, I nearly blew myself out the airlock!"
"Just answer the question."
Chris raised an eyebrow because it was the first time that he had ever heard NICOLE use the word 'fuck', and so passively, like it was a natural part of speech. He could tell though that she was slowly getting pissed off.
"Right then: my birthday is... my birthday is on... is on... February...? GOD DAMN THIS SHIT!"
The entire hull of the lifeboat shuddered, and Chris was thrown out of his seat into the ceiling where he bumped his head. "What just hit us?"
Data flowed through NICOLE's body. "A better question would be 'what just caught us'. We've been tethered."
Chris swore again. That's it - game over. After all the running and planning, he was caught on the doorstep of his own home, all alone in a lifeboat. Quite a fitting end to his great run from justice.
"What is it, President Marshall's personal yacht? Maybe he'll have hundreds of party guests waiting to point and laugh while I'm taken away in handcuffs."
Even NICOLE had to smile at that. "Nothing so elaborate. I'm reading the vessel as the UNSC Burro, a Sarajevo-class surveyor."
"A survey ship, named Burro? Burro is Spanish for donkey. We've been caught by a space ass."
NICOLE said, "I see the Cypher hasn't reached your lower sarcasm node yet. Can't happen soon enough."
"Oh, is that a challenge?"
"Shut up! Someone's trying to talk to us!"
Chris stopped what he was doing and just listened:
"This is the UNSC Burro contacting derelict lifeboat Foxtrot Echo Foxtrot 3. Unless I am mistaken, and an old man in my position rarely is, I think that there's a renegade officer aboard that tub. Speak up, boy! Let me know you're still breathing!"
The Texan drawl would be recognizable if it were all the way in the Saggitarius Arm!
Chris tapped the COM. "Admiral? Is that you?"
"The good Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways, Captain. Yeah, it's me alright! Come on board and we'll discuss things over a bottle of the Old Kentucky."
He killed the COM for a second. "How do we really know that this isn't a trap?" he asked NICOLE.
"Does it matter? They have us anyway. One way or another, we're leaving this pod."
"I know you may not trust anybody wearing the uniform right now, but I think you may want to double time it. It's about Sally. Things aren't going too good for the kingdom."
"I'll be right over. Connect a docking bridge, sir."
NICOLE rolled the lifeboat in space to orient with a docking tunnel that extended to them. The Burro moved closer until the hatches hooked and synced. Within a minute of docking, the hatches cycled open, and the Captain (with NICOLE in his hand), walked onto the ship. Standing before him, as refined as ever, was Vice Admiral Gerome Andsworth.
Chris caught himself saluting. "Sir!"
Andsworth only laughed. "I thought you'd forgotten how to stand at attention. You're on the run, so I'll let it slide. He looked the young man over. "Good God, the last couple months haven't been good to you. You're a wreck."
"Being a wanted man does that to you, sir." He looked around. "Begging the Admiral's pardon, but why are we-"
"-standing in the hall of this cheap piece of Sinoviet junk instead of the elegant corridors of my beloved Indomitable? Your story first, and then mine." He looked down the docking tunnel towards the lifeboat. Andsworth turned to a tech. "Dispose of that." He ordered. "No need to attract unwanted attention, and better to leave them fumbling in confusion when they actually find the damned thing."
"Aye, Admiral." the Navy tech replied. The hatched sealed, and the lifeboat was blown free of the Burro's hull to spin in space, minus its' sole passenger and AI.
"Now, follow me, Captain. There is so much for us to talk about."
Andsworth led him down the dingy halls of the Burro. Chris took a look and decided that compared to the Emerald Fox, and especially the 200+ year old Indomitable, this was the ugliest ship he had ever been on. Ever. The ceiling was low, pipes were exposed, the flooring was grated and shabby, some of the windows even had cracks in them, and the chair padding had terrible polyester weaving. There was no possible way that Admiral Andsworth, the man who wanted nothing less than 110% would haven chosen to captain this ship by choice.
He followed the Admiral into what he assumed was some sort of meeting center. He couldn't think of it as a briefing room because this ship did not seem to be built for such a purpose.
"Please have a seat, son." Andsworth said. Chris was only too happy to accept the offer. The young man quickly sat down in the uncomfortable chair. He placed the AI on the tabletop. Adnsworth smiled. "Hello NICOLE."
The lynx materialized in holographic form. "Always a pleasure, Admiral. I am glad that we can meet together again."
"My thoughts exactly." The older man said. "You need anything? Water, soda? Something a little stronger?"
"I don't drink." The disgraced Captain said. "Water's fine."
A midshipman came and set down a glass with frosting on the outside. Chris took the water and gulped it down, enjoying the coldness of the liquid. He also crunched up an ice cube in his teeth, relishing the noise it made as it became slush.
"Hell of a ship you have here, Admiral." Chris said. "How long until her next tune up?"
Andsworth seemed to have caught the friendly joke but only flashed the hint of a smile back to the young man. "We can't all be blessed with the magnificent new inventions that grace the fleet. I am but a simple Admiral tasked with patrolling the dangerous areas of space… where many a ship enter and few re-appear."
Chris could tell that the Admiral was not giving the last few words anything that resembled joy appreciation. As a matter of fact, they seemed to be ringing with sarcasm; a language that Chris knew well enough.
"There's only one person in the world that could have brought you to this."
"Yup." The old man nodded sadly. "And it all happened because I didn't go after you personally."
NICOLE nodded in understanding. "You were skeptical."
"The news didn't fit what I knew about the Captain. Someone who dedicated themselves to the Corps for years suddenly tries to turn traitor and, quote, 'smuggle information to politically ambiguous allies' doesn't sit well with me. I knew something was wrong right from the very beginning. I could feel it in my bones.
NICOLE said, "Well, then it should come as no surprise when we tell you that… wait… is this room secure?"
"Little Lady, this is a ship that was built to travel to the ass-ends of space and chart the most monotonous gas particles that the Navy has to offer me. We have minimal firewalls, little to no weapons, and our AI is Dumb. I trust the men and women on this ship. Some people found my abrupt transfer to be suspicious to say the least. Now go on. What did you two find out?"
NICOLE cleared her nonexistent throat. "As I was saying, we found out an interesting fact regarding President Cleary's death."
"And…?" Andsworth sounded pressed to hear the next sentence.
"It was murder."
Gerome Andsworth got up and started pacing about. He rubbed his forehead with his hand and breathed deeply. "I guess it would be foolish of me to say that I didn't see something like this as a possibility, but to actually hear something like this…" He sat back down, pulled the chair closer, and looked at the disgraced officer intently. "Where did you two get this information?"
"Immediately following our escape from Mobius and the destruction of the Elijah Jones…"
"Stop there. We're not going forward until you tell me what in God's name you did that day! You know you destroyed an entire ship of people! 200 men and women died on that ship!"
"I know!" Chris said, brow furrowed. "I know. I see the explosion every time I go to sleep. I keep on hoping that the ship would just fire bow thrusters and move out of the way, but it never would." He placed his folded hands to his lips. "Sir, the ship turned to intercept the shot broadside."
"And why did it do that? You know that that one action will saddle you with the death penalty if they ever catch you? There are posters of you all over every inner colony within fifty lightyears. Quite the bounty on your ass alive. You're worth nothing to them dead.
Interesting.
"May I continue, sir?"
"Granted." Andsworth nodded.
Chris and NICOLE continued to tell their tale to Gerome, who sat there for nearly three hours listening to what they had to say and asking questions only when it was very important to do so. Christopher left nothing out of his recollection. It was like verbally making a report to a superior officer – which it was technically. Every tiny detail had to be noted if a situation was to be properly understood. He covered the Kingdom of Blaine, the Spartans on Installation 05, and most importantly, he revealed the nature of his companions, Samantha, Alan, and Abigail.
This made Andsworth even more curious. He was spot on about the Captain having some form of assistance during his run from the law. He could understand the fact that a indigenous soldier would help a respected member of the military – plus a member of the Royal Peers, but the mercenaries were a different matter entirely. Mercenaries were not cheap on the best of occasions, and nobody really hired any of them unless the reason was very good. Another thing was that they wouldn't just take any job, and since this particular pair came from Vanguard, they needed to be Lone Wolves.
So who hired the mercs?
He presented this question to the Captain who responded with a straight face:
"I don't know sir. I never found out from them."
"They didn't seem willing to explain the nature of their client?"
"No, I mean that the contract was paid anonymously. I read the contract invoice that the CEO made them take along. He never got the information from the client."
"I thought that mercenary groups needed to run background checks on their clients just in case anything they wanted was a bit too politically extreme."
Chris took another gulp of water. NICOLE answered for him.
"Well sir, it's in my experience that money speaks louder than the voice of corporate guidelines on the best of occasions."
Andsworth nodded in agreement. If the buyer paid a large enough sum… bits of procedure were conveniently 'glossed over'.
Vennettilli sighed in satisfaction. "You didn't want me to come aboard to talk about mercenaries hired to protect me. You wanted to talk about Sally."
Gerome shifted in his seat. "You can come in now." He said into a communicator on the table. Chris tilted his head in confusion when Rouge the Bat walked into the conference room, decked up in an ONI skintight jumpsuit with pouches all over.
Chris actually stood up. It was so nice to see a friendly face. He resisted the temptation to go and hug her. He really felt like he needed a hug right now. "Hello Human." Rouge said with a smile. "Glad to see you in this neck of the woods again!"
"Mmm" Chris said with fingers curled at his lip. "Nice to see that ONI has swept up quite the hurricane while I was gone. I apparently destroyed a hospital ship."
Rouge looked at her feet, immediately feeling guilty. "That was Section 2's work; I had no part of that."
Chris breathed deeply. "How many people have I 'killed' over the last month?"
Rouge bit her lip. He could tell that she was uncomfortable talking about this, but it was because propaganda was a nasty business. "Almost a thousand people."
Chris buried his face in his hands and groaned. "A thousand people…!"
"Men, women and children."
He groaned even louder. "You have any more good news to tell me? This special news about Sally. With the way our luck's been going, I wouldn't be surprised if she were arrested just because I had sex with her!"
Andsworth and Rouge looked at one another.
"I believe it's much worse than that, son." Andsworth replied.
"The Acorns are no longer in control of their Kingdom."
The glass Chris was holding dropped out of his hands and landed on the table with a thump.
"What?" NICOLE said, aghast.
"They've been removed as the leaders of the Kingdom of Acorn. They are now regents, which even includes Sally."
Chris' anger flared. His pulse skyrocketed, and just because this one fact filled his body with such fire, he slipped into Conditioned Awareness and slammed his fists onto the table. Cracks formed where his hands landed, and everything bounced, NICOLE included. Then he was back, feeling like when Zeus discovered Prometheus stealing fire. He wanted to punish and destroy.
"Sure, what's a few more dents in this lemon?" Andsworth said as an aside. Rouge just stood there impassively, looking as if she were about to cry, almost.
"THEY NEVER DID ANYTHING WRONG!" Chris roared. "THEY NEVER DID ANYTHING TO HURT ANYONE! THAT KINGDOM MEANT EVERYTHING TO SALLY AND HER PARENTS!" He looked at the old man. "She would have done anything for her people. They viewed her as a hero. She was a symbol of hope against Robotnik's conquest.
"How about you calm down, son?" Andsworth asked, his brow furrowing.
"Who gave the order to do that?" Chris demanded.
"Three guesses." Rouge said, folding her arms.
NICOLE growled, "Can we aim the MAC cannon at Marshall's office?"
"We don't have a MAC cannon." The Admiral said in a slightly annoyed tone. "I know; I've looked over and over."
"And even if we really wanted to take down Marshall, there's nothing to prove that he was involved. All that we know is that the last president was murdered. That's all we know." Rouge said. "
"The guy's insane!" Chris said. "You know that! Rouge, you're in his inner circle! You can break the whole operation down!"
"I would be protesting against something that the public supports!"
"What?" Chris said, confused.
Andsworth said, "You know what the public thinks of you?"
"Considering that I am the murderer of children, I imagine not too highly."
The Admiral scoffed. "ONI's put bounties out on people who have been in contact with the Chaos Emeralds. Your name is at the top, with a very tempting figure, I might add. Of over seventy people on the list, 70 percent are dead."
Chris said, "I hope neither of you decide to cash in. I haven't had a good run over the last month. With alien messages in my head, and the fact that I'm starting to hallucinate -?"
"You're hallucinating?" Andsworth asked. "About what?"
NICOLE cleared her throat. "I have had the 'pleasure' of witnessing some of the Captain's psychological episodes. He seems to be reliving traumatic events from his past, and quite frankly, his brain is getting tired of it. He's almost killed himself several times."
"Whoa now…" Chris said with palms raised in defense. Admiral Andsworth's head snapped from the AI to the disgraced Marine with eyes wide open in shock.
"My God. You tried to commit suicide?"
"It wasn't my active decision!" He protested, starting to get the feeling that they were now really feeling uncomfortable. "My subconscious was trying to bring my body back into balance."
Rouge scoffed. "Bring your body back into balance by suicide."
"That's what I said!" Chris. "Soon I was inventing characters I had never seen in my life before, like…" His breath came short, and his mind opened up. He was gone again.
"Oh, no! Not again!" NICOLE said. "Admiral, we need to get him secure! There's no telling what he'll do now!"
Andsworth hit his communicator. "Security to the wardroom! Tell the infirmary to get a bed ready and sedatives prepared for immediate use! Get in here now!"
Rouge ran over and tried to keep the shuddering man under control. "Can you hear me, Captain?"
"He can't." NICOLE said. "We just need to make sure he doesn't hurt himself."
"Come on, Human! Wake up!"
The world was dark. It wasn't something that he remembered from his past. It was different, like a vault. He tried to move around, but his body wouldn't obey. He could see a light forming ahead of him.
"Hello?" He called out.
"Hello darling.
He squinted, barely able to see the shape of a women walking towards him , hair blowing in a sudden gust of air.
"Sally?"
"Oh, I wasn't sure you'd remember me!"
Chris almost laughed. "How could I forget you?"
"I think it would be because of the surgery you gave me!" She became visible, and he saw what she meant. A huge gash was in her chest shaped like twin energy wounds. Instead of being cauterized like they should be, squirts of blood came from the gashes. Her face was dripping with blood. "Remember this? Remember putting a sword through my chest?" She grabbed him and threw him to the ground.
It caught Chris off guard. Sally was only 125 pounds. The fact that she was able to throw a nearly 200 pound man to the ground made him scared. He knew that he was a prisoner, and Sally was the abusive warden. Under other circumstances, he would have enjoyed this.
"I told you that I loved you! How could you just look me in the eye and slaughter me like an animal?"
"It was for your own good! I needed that information! It was because I loved you!"
She scratched his face. Blood leaked down his cheek.
"Look, I even have the ring on now!" She lifted her hand and he saw the golden band. "Will that make you care about me?"
"I ALWAYS cared about you!" Chris protested. He got to his feet shakily. "I always loved you!"
"Yeah?" Sally asked, "Then why did you leave me behind?"
"YOU TOLD ME TO LEAVE!"
But the projection of Sally wasn't having any of it. She reached behind her back and drew a knife nearly a foot long.
"Whoa.." Chris said, trying to back away.
"What's the matter, my sweet Human?" Sally asked, with a twitching smile. "Don't you trust me?"
"Sally, we can talk about this! Please, don't come at me with that thing!"
Then he was rooted to the spot.
"NO! SAL! NO!"
She whispered in his ear, "I'm only doing what's best for both of us." She reached back and plunged the knife in his chest.
Chris' body looked like it had a demon possessing it. His back arched, and he gasped with eyes wide open. It was clear that there was no interacting with him. The ship's doctor, a man named Herrald, ran to him with a syringe of a powerful sedative. Rouge was by his side. "What happened?" She asked, horrified.
"His synaptic functions are going insane. His heart rate's spiking well over 200 BPM. He's going to suffer hypertension… no wait.. heart rate is slowing rapidly!"
"What?"
"The man's heart is grinding to a halt! Someone find me some defib pannels!"
Rouge looked at Chris. His eyes were twitching as if he were in REM sleep. Rouge realized that if she could see into the young man's mind, she would know that whatever he was seeing was a nightmare.
Chris felt the blade pierce his flesh and tap bone. He howled as he grabbed the grip. Sally kissed him deeply as his lungs were filling with blood. He tried to yank the weapon out of his chest, but his hands were shaking too much, and Sally's lips were still pressed over his. The Human pried her off and tugged at the blade.
"Now we're alike, you and I." She giggled pointing at her chest wounds. "A mutual shower of blood is all we need."
"Why?" He asked. It was a gargling feeling that he never experienced before. He felt like he was drowning. In a sense, he was.
"I told you: I'm doing it to protect you! Someone has to take responsibility for your mind's safety."
"Not like this." He gasped. "Never like this!" His fingers were slick with his own blood, but he yanked the knife out of his chest, gasping as the serrated edge cut skin. He looked at it and realized that it was his Ontario Combat Knife, the same one he carried from Talahan. Suddenly, he took a deep breath and his hands stopped shaking. "This isn't real. You can't hurt me here. I need this data. Why don't you just fuck off and go back into the dark where you belong!"
Sally's eyes flared. With surprising speed, she grabbed the knife out of Chris' hands and plunged it through the side of his neck. The blade emerged on the other side, coated with blood. The Captain gasped in pain and felt the wounds, horrified as he could feel his own breath on the side of his neck. The pain was unimaginable. He sunk to his knees and tried to scream, but nothing came. Sally kicked him square in the face, knocking the poor man to the ground. He was dazed, in anguish, and had a knife sticking out of his neck, all inflicted by the woman he was engaged to. He shook violently.
In reality, Chris' heart rate slowed down considerably again, but his back arced and he made a shrill scream and clutched his head. Despite this, he still remained unconscious with eyes rolled up in his head.
"WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT GODDAMNED DEFIB?" The doctor screamed, knocking aside one of the medical technicians. "If this man dies, Andsworth will have all of our asses!"
NICOLE's voice came over the loudspeakers, "You're supposed to be a trained medical team! This is a hospital! QUIT FUCKING AROUND!"
A medical technician with an ensign bar said back, "Yeah, well we got saddled with the worst ship in the fleet, and the worst gear around! I should know! I worked on the Indomitable!"
"How could they do this to you?" NICOLE asked.
"Because we stuck with the Admiral." the technician said. "I found them!" the young man pulled out a pair of shock paddles and rubbed them together to form electricity. "Here goes nothing." he said and placed them on the Marine's chest.
Chris was about to pull the knife out of his neck when Sally's form placed her boot on his hand, preventing him from moving. "No, you need to feel that!"
"I'm going to die in here if you don't help me!"
She crouched and looked into his eyes that were flickering quickly. "Well, if you die, you die. Look on the positive side: at least you won't have to carry that burdenful knowledge in your head anymore! Then you can spend your last minutes with me! We can make them last!" She tickled his chin. Chris would have found it sexy had he not been stabbed in the throat, and was showered in blood from both his chest and Sally's.
"You're just in my head. You're not real. I have a real fiancee to go back to. You're just a two bit shade of my subconscious. You're everything ugly and obsessive about the Sally I know. You can go back into the hole you came from and brood with the rest of my undesirable thoughts, skank." He was surprised he could make that in one breath, much less the fact that he hadn't passed out from pain, but then again he had already passed out in the first place.
Sally's shade looked at Christopher with unbridled murder in her eyes. She was now determined to go a step above and pull the knife through his throat, sealing the deal. She made the motion that may have gone to the knife hilt, but then the world lit up for a split second.
"What was that?"
Chris was confused too. "I don't know. This is your playground!"
The flash came again. Sally looked like she was weakened. "Stop it!"
"Stop what?" He was able to get to his feet and even pull the knife out of his throat. Blood leaked, but it didn't gush. He wondered if there was any more blood in this subconscious body of his.
"Stop the flashing! I don't like it!"
Once more the world lit up, and Sally disappeared. Chris got dizzy. The world began to spin, and the next thing he knew, he was gasping for breath on an operating table. He made a grab for his pistol and saw that his hands were restrained.
"Where am I?" he demanded.
"Blood pressure rising. Heart beat stabilizing. He's coming back."
"Am I still on Andsworth's ship?"
"You're safe, Human." NICOLE said to him. "You're safe."
A man in scrubs came up to him. "I'm Doctor Eberrett. We just saved your life son."
"I nearly died again?"
Doctor Ebberett's mouth twitched when he said 'again', but chose not to notice it. "You were on death's door. Your heart nearly stopped pumping. You were in cardiac arrest. Even the defibulators didn't work at first. God must really like you."
"I don't know about God, but I just had a battle with my own subconscious. Can I get these cuffs off?"
"With your subconscious? Care to explain, Human?"
"I was actually 'inside' my own mind battling my subconscious. I'm not overlaying projections anymore - I'm going a step further with every incident."
"Who was the person fighting you?"
"Three guesses." Chris said, not really feeling like divulging that he was fighting Sally.
"Ah... oh..."
"Yeah, no kidding."
The door slid open and Andsworth walked into the room. "I came as soon as I heard. How are you feeling, son?"
"I'm OK, sir." Chris said. "I think they burned me with the paddles though."
Andsworth looked at the medical personnel, who looked slightly guilty. Then, the Admiral smiled. "Good work, gentlemen. You've saved our best chance for survival from an early grave. Captain, get dressed and walk with me."
It took him less than 2 minutes to get ready and he walked to the Admiral's quarters with him. NICOLE was already there, projected onto the desk via holo-lamps.
"What took you so long, boys?" The Lynx asked.
"Oh NICOLE." the old man said, "How I wish we had you with us on the Indomitable. You would have been quite a pilot given what I heard of your escape from ONI control."
"I would have been honored, sir." the AI bowed her head. "But with all due respect, I don't think it's right to get misty-eyed soo soon about the bygones of the past."
"Yes, I agree." He turned to the Captain, "Would you like a drink?"
Considering all that's happened up to this point, "Yeah, the strongest thing you have."
"Well, this is a surprise. You're in luck: I have a bottle of untapped Black Scotch. You look like you need a drink, as I'm sure you will agree." The Admiral retrieved the alcohol and poured generous measures of drink for the Captain who drank as if it was his last beverage.
"Have you recieved any intel on where your friends are?"
Chris shook his head. "Not a clue. Over the last couple of days, I don't think that we've had any other urge other than to get the hell off the Romulus. In all honesty, everything else was secondary."
NICOLE cut in, "Not to mention all of the databases aboard the Romulus wouldn't have any indication of the whereabouts of Major Hera, Samantha Jackson, and Alan Roan."
"Major Hera?" Andsworth said, interested.
"Yes sir." The AI nodded. "She's a Royal Air Force officer and she was the first person that helped us on our journey."
Andsworth tapped his intercom to reach the bridge.
"Bridge here. Go ahead, Admiral."
"Steffan, I want you to run a search on Major..."
"Abigail." NICOLE added.
"Major Abigail Hera, Royal Air Force."
"Yes sir, Admiral. Give me a moment..." There was silence over the COM. "Sir, I'm not able to find any records of a Major Abigail Hera. I've looked in the Mobian Defense Network Database. I'm sorry."
"It's alright, Steffan. Carry on." Andsworth clicked off his intercom and looked at the stunned Captain. "Well, that was unexpected."
"I... I don't understand..." He looked to NICOLE and then to Rouge. "She had to have been in the Air Force. She looked it, she walked it, she even talked it! Everything about her seemed so certain! She helped us get away!"
Rouge cleared her throat, "Have you considered the possibility that you were played? Maybe she wanted to isolate you and use you for her own purposes."
Chris' eyes were going wild. He was trying to make sense of everything. Oh who was he kidding, he could barely differentiate between reality and fantasy now. "She said..."
"People say a lot of things, Captain." Andsworth said. "Some people are really good at lying. You might have been convinced, dammit, NICOLE might have been convinced, but the facts are clear and search proves it. You've been deceived."
No. No, no, not again! NOT AGAIN! Who's side was Hera on? Was she in with Marshall the whole time, or was she a Mobian rebel who wanted a Human trophy? Just who was that woman? I hadn't even asked about her service history at all! The Admiral's right. I was suckered.
NICOLE was equally shocked. "She seemed solid."
Rouge sighed, "Not even you are totally impassable, NICOLE. Everyone can find a way to sneak past the toughest person."
"Does that mean that Roan and Jackson were plotting against me too?" Chris asked.
"No, they're legitimate." Andsworth said. "I've done business with Vanguard before. Roan and Jackson are indeed on the company's payroll and according to CEO Gustaff, they were indeed assigned to protect you. Unfortunately, I don't know who made the transaction, and Vanguard can't even follow the paper trail."
"So that means that Hera is the only loose end." Chris growled.
"Looks that way. We'll have to get in touch with Sally and learn more about..." NICOLE started. Then her eyes grew wide and she slapped her face. "Oooooh shit."
Chris didn't like it when NICOLE swore like that. "What? What happened?"
"The ship. We left the ship parked on Delta Halo."
It was like someone whipped a baseball bat in Chris' face. He slunk down in his seat and downed his cup. "They'll find it. They'll find it and we'll be in a world of shit. Oh no, Sal's been through so much already. She's not going to need this..."
Troy Marshall was enjoying a lovely day on Ceta Centauri. He was on the moon to make an appearance for dedication for a new university: the John Cleary Institute of Interplanetary Knowledge, a multi-million dollar school for Centaurians. Troy had gone through regular presidential routine: He exited his craft amid smiling citizens, posed for many pictures, kissed a few babies, and made rousing comments on how lovely the weather was on Ceta Centauri. Centaurians loved it when dignitaries commented on how great the weather was on that particular moon.
Currently, he was in a private suite overlooking the endless ocean of the planet. In the far distance, the blue sphere of Alpha Centauri II was visible, much like Luna was visible on Earth in the middle of the day. He sipped back an expensive vodka and let the sun shine on his skin. All was well here, and it was about to get even better for him. His communicator beeped. Marshall scowled. He hated being disturbed, especially when he was away on tropical destinations. He put down his glass and tapped the receive command. A holoscreen appeared which showed a Hunter Commander with his helmet on. Marshall shivered slightly. True, he had ordered the damn things to be created, but that didn't mean that he was entirely comfortable about them. They gave him nightmares from time to time.
"Go ahead, Commander. It had better be important."
"I think you would agree that it is, sir."
Marshall could sense the excitement in the Hunter's voice. In the background, Marshall could hear the screeches of Stalkers in their cages. "OK, report."
"We were just investigating the last known location of the Romulus, the ship the criminal was last seen around. It's likely that he stowed away and was able to get to Earth."
Marshall scowled. God damn it! "OK... then what?"
"We don't know much else. We were able to find the point Romulus jumped in around Earth and were able to find a lifeboat just floating around. The registry signssay that it was a lifeboat from that ship."
"Was our friend aboard it?"
"We searched it. The back hatch was blown. I think he may have spaced himself."
"No, that's not what I expect from this man. He wouldn't kill himself. He clearly had a way out and he took it. The problem is we need to figure out where he went exactly." Marshall let his mind wander, the intelligent cogs whirling within his skull. "Are you near the lifeboat?"
"We're in the Alpha Centauri system for clear signal broadcast."
"Well does your team have the lifeboat?"
"We tagged it."
"Alright fair enough. I want a team to look through the computer and check to see if it docked with any ships. Find the ship and seize it. If Vennettilli's aboard, grab him and bring him to me. I want him breathing."
"Yes sir. What about the crew of the ship?"
"Under Military Law, they would be harboring a fugitive and shall be dealt with accordingly. Make sure they get the message."
"Understood, sir."
Marshall half-smiled. In the wake of all the collosal failures that have occured up until this point, things were going pretty well. All he needed right now was a pretty bow on top of this present.
"Mr. President, we have one more thing."
Marshall whipped around, giddy with anticipation. "Yes?"
"After we cleared out the Library on Installation 05, we were able to find a pretty piece of metal parked not too far away from the Gondola Stations. Looks like a military vessel, the Emerald Fox."
Marshall's face split into a smile. "And...?"
"My boys scanned the ship's memory. Turns out, the Captain's been in constant contact with her highness Sally Alicia Acorn, and one of your agents, only known as Rouge. They've been sharing little tidbits of information every now and again. Would you like the message copies sent to you?"
"Now."
"Right away, sir"
Marshall could barely contain his excitement. He had them. He had the evidence to link the Kingdom of Acorn to aiding a criminal runaway. Troy Marshall felt like a kid on Christmas Day. He audibly laughed as he got the information on his databanks. First and foremost he would have the traitorous agent shot right in front of him. As for Sally Acorn... oh ho ho...
He tapped his intercom. "TUDYK!"
The assistant shivered over the COM. "Yes, sir?"
"Bring me Her Highness, the Princess at your earliest convenience. Let her know that it's a very urgent matter that we need to discuss involving... several conflicts of interest."
June 6th, 3234, 1814 hours
Earth Orbit
The lifeboat tumbled in space over and over again, rustled by its sudden departure from Slipspace. True, while the journey was rough, it was made in the best interest of the highly stressed passenger. The disgraced captain Vennettilli lay in the pilot's chair grabbing his chest which started to leak blood from the wound obtained from the fight with the Hunter. His breaths came rapid, but at the same time, strong. He was in no danger of dying from this injury, but he was not taking his situation for granted. In truth, he wasn't feeling much of anything at the moment.
Chris sat in the seat with his eyes half-closed. He gazed out of the cracked windshield to see Earth spinning in the distance. Slowly they made rotations where his home would would be visible for a second, a shining star for another, and blackness of space for the rest. His mind was taxed greatly over the last couple of days. He just couldn't take it.
"Ni... NICOLE, what time is it?" He asked in something a little more than a whisper.
"It's 6:15 in the afternoon." NICOLE's hologram said. "Today is June 6th. Do you know what that means?"
"June 6th." He squinted hard to try and remember the significance of this day. "June 6th... What happens today?"
NICOLE looked at the man with pity. "Your birthday is tomorrow, Chris."
He seemed to remember after this. "Oh yeah! Yeah. Tomorrow is my birthday. I'll be turning... twenty... twenty... fuck."
NICOLE decided not to involve herself that time. First and foremost it was an excercise that she was using to determine Chris' mental stability. Things were not looking good at the moment. She was concerned greatly over the Captain's integrity. He was her friend. A pang of sadness resonated within her programming. It was like watching a dying man remember details about his childhood.
"I'll be turning twenty six." He finally concluded. "That's right, isn't it?"
NICOLE nodded. "Yes, that's right."
Chris pulled himself into a straighter sitting posture. He winced as a bubble of blood floated from the bandages into the air of the lifeboat. "I'm a wreck: I'm babbling, I'm seeing things, and to top it all off, I'm starting to forget how old I am. Is there anything in your programming that can tell me what's going on here?" The Human asked this with intent in his voice, but she had no real answers to give.
"I don't have anything that can help you." the lynx said. "This is a program that, frankly, I can barely even recognize as a computer program. This is a fundamental step above anything we would consider code or algorithms. It's simply too alien to interpret, even for me!"
"So not even the Smart models back home would help?"
"Chris, I'm from the future. If I couldn't understand it at that point, what makes you think I can understand it now?"
"That firewall of yours." the Marine pointed out. "If that was out of the way."
"Well it's not. Get used to disappointment, because it's all around you here." She noticed that she had made him upset and attempted to change the subject. "Have you tried sleeping?"
He unclipped his belt and drifted around the cabin. "It doesn't feel like sleep, and I never close my eyes for more than half an hour at a time. I shut my lids, and then boom, I just wake up. I don't see anything, and there's no drowsiness."
"You can't dream?"
"Nope. Well, not anything I would count as a dream. More like, memories from another person."
"That must be the memories of the person who made the Cypher." NICOLE reasoned. "What have you been seeing?"
He sat there for a second trying to formulate a good enough answer to give her. "Everything, but at the same time, nothing at all."
"Care to explain that in more detail?" the hologram of NICOLE said.
Chris put a hand to his temple with his eyes closed shut. "I can see... I see a face (at least I think it's a face). It's blurred. I can't make out anything other than a mouth opening and closing. There's Forerunner text all over the place, plus flashes of Chaos Emeralds."
NICOLE said, "Can you see the text? Perhaps I can interpret it."
"No, it's going too fast for me to see. I can't even catch a single character. I see planets and moons. In the distance, there's a binary star. I see... something that looks like a ship. But... it's not like any ship I've ever seen before. It's design is so... alien that I... that I..." Then, he stopped midsentence. He shuddered as if a seizure were ripping through his body.
"Chris? CHRIS!" NICOLE shouted. She could do nothing though as she saw the young man's eyes roll into his head as it started to rock against the headrest violently.
He was gone. He was free of the lifeboat and its metal confines. His consciousness was straming through thousands of lightyears in a matter of seconds. Chris had no idea where he was and didn't feel any part of his body. In a moment of confusion and dread, he concluded that his entire mind had left his body... or was still there and recieving the mother of all psychic visions. He wasn't sure which.
Stars sped past him like Christmas lights. He saw flashes of worlds that had their surfaces burned by fire. He saw alien creatures that he couldn't even fathom. He saw a biped with gigantic eyes and long spindly limbs that screamed at him. He saw alien numbers and mathematics that would take him decades to even comprehend. All of this happened in seconds and in this time, he still had no idea about where he was even going.
Then another flash burned him and from the darkness emerged a monster the likes of which he had never seen: a supermassive black hole.
Every schoolchild nowadays knew that within the heart of the Milky Way galaxy, there was a black hole of such immense size and density that millions of suns couldn't even compare to the mass that a monster like that could ever achieve, and there it was, bending the light of the entire galaxy around it.
His movement was not his own. He rode this hellish roller coaster around the black hole. He remembered the warning about the Galaxy Bomb and how it had to do with this natural phenomenon. Just how did the black hole fit in?
From the infinite darkness came something he did not expect: a ship, or a station of some kind. Honestly speaking, it could be something entirely different that was so alien that he couldn't even grasp it. It was long, with one end fanning out into something he couldn't make out. Perhaps that was an engine of some kind. Massive spines protruded from the back of the object, which made the thing look like a skeletal flower. What caught Chris' attention specifically wasn't so much the shape of the object itself, rather the beam of light that was shooting from what he assumed was the bow of the vessel. The green beam extended from the ship into the depths of the black hole, eventually becoming too small to see.
The question here was why someone would want to shoot a black hole? It wasn't like you could actually destroy one. But then Chris reconsidered and had to think about what he was really looking at. He concluded that he just didn't know. He didn't know if it was a weapon, a ship, a space station, or something else entirely. It was far more likely that this thing was just too alien to understand. Then that raised another question? Who built it?
A hulk of metal flying across his vision gave him an answer. He looked at a ship as it was being pulled into the gravitational singularity of the black hole. The destinctive color and angular shape told him that it was a Forerunner vessel. He couldn't believe it. A Forerunner ship was broken and dead in space as it was pulled apart by gravity. The mere sight that something so powerful being destroyed told him that the people who built this thing shooting the green beam into the black hole must have been eons more advanced than even the great Forerunners.
Then the view changed again. He swept around and saw that a whole fleet of Forerunner ships were behind the first one, all of them trying to escape the gravitational pull of the stellar monster. All of them were failing. He silently hoped that they would Slip away, but it didn't come. Every single one of the alien vessels was pulled apart like building blocks, and even if anybody survived that, they were swallowed by the beast.
They were gone. A whole fleet of ships obliterated in one deft motion. Why hadn't they jumped to slipspace? They could have used the gravitational pull for momentum while they ploughed into FTL. It would be an easy thing, but something wrong happened here. That one simple move didn't happen, and it cost what Chris was sure was over a hundred thousand lives. It was amazing to watch, really.
But then his vision blacked out. When he opened his eyes, he was back in the lifeboat.
"Hey, can you hear me?" he heard someone say. The face in front of him was out of focus. "Hey, wake up!"
"Wh... who are you?" Chris asked.
"Hold on, you're a bit dazed. I'm a doctor. How many fingers am I holding up?" the man held up his index and middle finger. Chris squinted to make them out.
"Two."
"OK, your cognative skills are looking good." the medic reached into his breast pocket. "Follow my pen." He held his utensil in front of Vennettilli's eyes and moved it to the left, up, down, up, right, and left.
"Shouldn't I be in a hospital for this?" Chris asked.
"Hang on. We'll get you out of this pod in a second." the medic said. "Last thing: can you tell me why you were out here in the first place?"
Even in his dazed state, Chris wasn't stupid enough to answer that honestly. He knew that the Romulus would report a missing lifeboat, but he would buy himself as much time as he could. "We were in slipspace and had a reactor breach. We were told to jump ship, and I was the only one able to get to the pod. I don't know if any of the crew came out around here."
"What was the name of the ship?" The medic asked.
"I think I should really be in a hospital. In case you haven't noticed, I'm bleeding from the chest here!"
"What was the name of the ship? Tell me, and I'll get you out of this pod."
Chris was silently thankful that the medic didn't ask how one could possibly get a chest injury from a reactor breach. "The..." he searched through his mind for a suitable name and said, "The Alicia."
"The Alica, huh?" The medic sighed. "Alright. Odds are she's gone though. Good thing you got out when you did, crewman. Reactor breaches are terrible things. Hope you didn't get radiation poisoning."
"Can I PLEASE," Chris said, wincing slightly, "go to a god-damned hospital?"
The medic seemed happy to do so this time. "Certainly." he nodded. "A promise is a promise. Follow me." He drifted towards the back of the lifeboat and braced himself against the bulkhead. He tapped the airlock's control panel and keyed the release.
"Warning, pressure differences will result in explosive decompression! Do you wish to proceed?"
The medic looked at Chris squarely in the eye, smiled, and said, "Yes."
"Wait, what?"
The hatch sprang open and exposed the stars beyond. A blast of air exploded from the lifeboat's interior into space. There was barely any time for Chris to flinch as the air was sucked from his lungs. He grasped at a chair arm and held it to avoid being blown away while in free-fall. Within a fraction of a second, the air was gone, leaving the cabin silent and slick with flash-frozen ice.
He could feel the saliva on his tongue boiling in vacuum. He needed to close the door quickly before he passed out. The endangered Captain threw himself across the short distance to the airlock, taking care not to launch himself out the open portal to certain death. His body hurt as the bends were slowly taking place. The damned panel was right there, clear as day. His shaking finger tapped the touch screen and the hatch closed in silence. The air reserves on the lifeboat automatically responded to the lack of pressure by pumping in oxygen. Chris was nearly seeing entirely black when the air hissed in. At first, he was taking huge gulps to gain even a fraction of his vision back. Within another five seconds, he was breathing normally, and finally breathed a sigh of relief.
"Oh man, thank God."
"Thank GOD?" He heard a snappy voice cry out in horror. "I saw you nearly kill yourself! This time you just about did it!"
He kicked around and saw NICOLE looking at him with eyes so wide that they nearly fell out of her holographic head.
"Where's the medic? Was he blown out?"
"What, what medic?" NICOLE said. "You muttered to yourself, I tried to talk you out of it, and suddenly you decided it was too stuffy in here and wanted a breeze!"
Chris found a seat and sat down. He wiped the ice flecks from his beard. "You mean he was a hallucination?"
"No, I'm saying that he was carrying an active camouflage unit, and magically, you had the power to see through it!"
"NICOLE, I nearly unwittingly committed suicide. Now's not the time to take my job and be the deadpan snarker. Don't insult my intelligence."
NICOLE placed a hand to her head. She was truly surprised by this Human. She was surprised that Sally even considered getting in bed with him in the first place - granted, they both were drunk when it happened. He was arrogant, sarcastic, narcissistic at times, foolhardy, proud, chauvinistic, and now, he was shrugging off a near-death experience as if someone he didn't like made an offhand comment on how ugly his shoes were or something. However, she had to remind herself that he was in a rather rare position of having the organic equivalent of having a hard drive completely full of clutter.
"This hallucination," she began, "you didn't recognize this man?"
"Never seen him before in my life."
"Now that is interesting actually. All of your hallucinations or visions so far have comprised of people that you actually know, or knew at some point in your life. This one's different: it appears that the medic was generated specifically for the task of trying to get you to kill yourself. Your brain is now thinking of more creative ways to off you."
"Gotta love the subconscious." Chris said with faux-enthusiasm. "Such imagination; such grandeur!"
There's the Human I know!
"This is really helpful. The program in your head is taking up so much neural space that it must be interfering with major aspects of your cognitive and mental skills. You were having trouble remembering when your own birthday was for Mobius' sake! Your brain needed to get things back in balance."
"Through killing me." Chris said flatly. "Seems counterproductive, really."
"Sometimes the simplest way is the only way. Can you answer a question for me?"
"Hmm?" The tired Human hummed.
"When is your birthday?"
"Oh no, no more tests! Last time I took a test, I nearly blew myself out the airlock!"
"Just answer the question."
Chris raised an eyebrow because it was the first time that he had ever heard NICOLE use the word 'fuck', and so passively, like it was a natural part of speech. He could tell though that she was slowly getting pissed off.
"Right then: my birthday is... my birthday is on... is on... February...? GOD DAMN THIS SHIT!"
The entire hull of the lifeboat shuddered, and Chris was thrown out of his seat into the ceiling where he bumped his head. "What just hit us?"
Data flowed through NICOLE's body. "A better question would be 'what just caught us'. We've been tethered."
Chris swore again. That's it - game over. After all the running and planning, he was caught on the doorstep of his own home, all alone in a lifeboat. Quite a fitting end to his great run from justice.
"What is it, President Marshall's personal yacht? Maybe he'll have hundreds of party guests waiting to point and laugh while I'm taken away in handcuffs."
Even NICOLE had to smile at that. "Nothing so elaborate. I'm reading the vessel as the UNSC Burro, a Sarajevo-class surveyor."
"A survey ship, named Burro? Burro is Spanish for donkey. We've been caught by a space ass."
NICOLE said, "I see the Cypher hasn't reached your lower sarcasm node yet. Can't happen soon enough."
"Oh, is that a challenge?"
"Shut up! Someone's trying to talk to us!"
Chris stopped what he was doing and just listened:
"This is the UNSC Burro contacting derelict lifeboat Foxtrot Echo Foxtrot 3. Unless I am mistaken, and an old man in my position rarely is, I think that there's a renegade officer aboard that tub. Speak up, boy! Let me know you're still breathing!"
The Texan drawl would be recognizable if it were all the way in the Saggitarius Arm!
Chris tapped the COM. "Admiral? Is that you?"
"The good Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways, Captain. Yeah, it's me alright! Come on board and we'll discuss things over a bottle of the Old Kentucky."
He killed the COM for a second. "How do we really know that this isn't a trap?" he asked NICOLE.
"Does it matter? They have us anyway. One way or another, we're leaving this pod."
"I know you may not trust anybody wearing the uniform right now, but I think you may want to double time it. It's about Sally. Things aren't going too good for the kingdom."
"I'll be right over. Connect a docking bridge, sir."
NICOLE rolled the lifeboat in space to orient with a docking tunnel that extended to them. The Burro moved closer until the hatches hooked and synced. Within a minute of docking, the hatches cycled open, and the Captain (with NICOLE in his hand), walked onto the ship. Standing before him, as refined as ever, was Vice Admiral Gerome Andsworth.
Chris caught himself saluting. "Sir!"
Andsworth only laughed. "I thought you'd forgotten how to stand at attention. You're on the run, so I'll let it slide. He looked the young man over. "Good God, the last couple months haven't been good to you. You're a wreck."
"Being a wanted man does that to you, sir." He looked around. "Begging the Admiral's pardon, but why are we-"
"-standing in the hall of this cheap piece of Sinoviet junk instead of the elegant corridors of my beloved Indomitable? Your story first, and then mine." He looked down the docking tunnel towards the lifeboat. Andsworth turned to a tech. "Dispose of that." He ordered. "No need to attract unwanted attention, and better to leave them fumbling in confusion when they actually find the damned thing."
"Aye, Admiral." the Navy tech replied. The hatched sealed, and the lifeboat was blown free of the Burro's hull to spin in space, minus its' sole passenger and AI.
"Now, follow me, Captain. There is so much for us to talk about."
Andsworth led him down the dingy halls of the Burro. Chris took a look and decided that compared to the Emerald Fox, and especially the 200+ year old Indomitable, this was the ugliest ship he had ever been on. Ever. The ceiling was low, pipes were exposed, the flooring was grated and shabby, some of the windows even had cracks in them, and the chair padding had terrible polyester weaving. There was no possible way that Admiral Andsworth, the man who wanted nothing less than 110% would haven chosen to captain this ship by choice.
He followed the Admiral into what he assumed was some sort of meeting center. He couldn't think of it as a briefing room because this ship did not seem to be built for such a purpose.
"Please have a seat, son." Andsworth said. Chris was only too happy to accept the offer. The young man quickly sat down in the uncomfortable chair. He placed the AI on the tabletop. Adnsworth smiled. "Hello NICOLE."
The lynx materialized in holographic form. "Always a pleasure, Admiral. I am glad that we can meet together again."
"My thoughts exactly." The older man said. "You need anything? Water, soda? Something a little stronger?"
"I don't drink." The disgraced Captain said. "Water's fine."
A midshipman came and set down a glass with frosting on the outside. Chris took the water and gulped it down, enjoying the coldness of the liquid. He also crunched up an ice cube in his teeth, relishing the noise it made as it became slush.
"Hell of a ship you have here, Admiral." Chris said. "How long until her next tune up?"
Andsworth seemed to have caught the friendly joke but only flashed the hint of a smile back to the young man. "We can't all be blessed with the magnificent new inventions that grace the fleet. I am but a simple Admiral tasked with patrolling the dangerous areas of space… where many a ship enter and few re-appear."
Chris could tell that the Admiral was not giving the last few words anything that resembled joy appreciation. As a matter of fact, they seemed to be ringing with sarcasm; a language that Chris knew well enough.
"There's only one person in the world that could have brought you to this."
"Yup." The old man nodded sadly. "And it all happened because I didn't go after you personally."
NICOLE nodded in understanding. "You were skeptical."
"The news didn't fit what I knew about the Captain. Someone who dedicated themselves to the Corps for years suddenly tries to turn traitor and, quote, 'smuggle information to politically ambiguous allies' doesn't sit well with me. I knew something was wrong right from the very beginning. I could feel it in my bones.
NICOLE said, "Well, then it should come as no surprise when we tell you that… wait… is this room secure?"
"Little Lady, this is a ship that was built to travel to the ass-ends of space and chart the most monotonous gas particles that the Navy has to offer me. We have minimal firewalls, little to no weapons, and our AI is Dumb. I trust the men and women on this ship. Some people found my abrupt transfer to be suspicious to say the least. Now go on. What did you two find out?"
NICOLE cleared her nonexistent throat. "As I was saying, we found out an interesting fact regarding President Cleary's death."
"And…?" Andsworth sounded pressed to hear the next sentence.
"It was murder."
Gerome Andsworth got up and started pacing about. He rubbed his forehead with his hand and breathed deeply. "I guess it would be foolish of me to say that I didn't see something like this as a possibility, but to actually hear something like this…" He sat back down, pulled the chair closer, and looked at the disgraced officer intently. "Where did you two get this information?"
"Immediately following our escape from Mobius and the destruction of the Elijah Jones…"
"Stop there. We're not going forward until you tell me what in God's name you did that day! You know you destroyed an entire ship of people! 200 men and women died on that ship!"
"I know!" Chris said, brow furrowed. "I know. I see the explosion every time I go to sleep. I keep on hoping that the ship would just fire bow thrusters and move out of the way, but it never would." He placed his folded hands to his lips. "Sir, the ship turned to intercept the shot broadside."
"And why did it do that? You know that that one action will saddle you with the death penalty if they ever catch you? There are posters of you all over every inner colony within fifty lightyears. Quite the bounty on your ass alive. You're worth nothing to them dead.
Interesting.
"May I continue, sir?"
"Granted." Andsworth nodded.
Chris and NICOLE continued to tell their tale to Gerome, who sat there for nearly three hours listening to what they had to say and asking questions only when it was very important to do so. Christopher left nothing out of his recollection. It was like verbally making a report to a superior officer – which it was technically. Every tiny detail had to be noted if a situation was to be properly understood. He covered the Kingdom of Blaine, the Spartans on Installation 05, and most importantly, he revealed the nature of his companions, Samantha, Alan, and Abigail.
This made Andsworth even more curious. He was spot on about the Captain having some form of assistance during his run from the law. He could understand the fact that a indigenous soldier would help a respected member of the military – plus a member of the Royal Peers, but the mercenaries were a different matter entirely. Mercenaries were not cheap on the best of occasions, and nobody really hired any of them unless the reason was very good. Another thing was that they wouldn't just take any job, and since this particular pair came from Vanguard, they needed to be Lone Wolves.
So who hired the mercs?
He presented this question to the Captain who responded with a straight face:
"I don't know sir. I never found out from them."
"They didn't seem willing to explain the nature of their client?"
"No, I mean that the contract was paid anonymously. I read the contract invoice that the CEO made them take along. He never got the information from the client."
"I thought that mercenary groups needed to run background checks on their clients just in case anything they wanted was a bit too politically extreme."
Chris took another gulp of water. NICOLE answered for him.
"Well sir, it's in my experience that money speaks louder than the voice of corporate guidelines on the best of occasions."
Andsworth nodded in agreement. If the buyer paid a large enough sum… bits of procedure were conveniently 'glossed over'.
Vennettilli sighed in satisfaction. "You didn't want me to come aboard to talk about mercenaries hired to protect me. You wanted to talk about Sally."
Gerome shifted in his seat. "You can come in now." He said into a communicator on the table. Chris tilted his head in confusion when Rouge the Bat walked into the conference room, decked up in an ONI skintight jumpsuit with pouches all over.
Chris actually stood up. It was so nice to see a friendly face. He resisted the temptation to go and hug her. He really felt like he needed a hug right now. "Hello Human." Rouge said with a smile. "Glad to see you in this neck of the woods again!"
"Mmm" Chris said with fingers curled at his lip. "Nice to see that ONI has swept up quite the hurricane while I was gone. I apparently destroyed a hospital ship."
Rouge looked at her feet, immediately feeling guilty. "That was Section 2's work; I had no part of that."
Chris breathed deeply. "How many people have I 'killed' over the last month?"
Rouge bit her lip. He could tell that she was uncomfortable talking about this, but it was because propaganda was a nasty business. "Almost a thousand people."
Chris buried his face in his hands and groaned. "A thousand people…!"
"Men, women and children."
He groaned even louder. "You have any more good news to tell me? This special news about Sally. With the way our luck's been going, I wouldn't be surprised if she were arrested just because I had sex with her!"
Andsworth and Rouge looked at one another.
"I believe it's much worse than that, son." Andsworth replied.
"The Acorns are no longer in control of their Kingdom."
The glass Chris was holding dropped out of his hands and landed on the table with a thump.
"What?" NICOLE said, aghast.
"They've been removed as the leaders of the Kingdom of Acorn. They are now regents, which even includes Sally."
Chris' anger flared. His pulse skyrocketed, and just because this one fact filled his body with such fire, he slipped into Conditioned Awareness and slammed his fists onto the table. Cracks formed where his hands landed, and everything bounced, NICOLE included. Then he was back, feeling like when Zeus discovered Prometheus stealing fire. He wanted to punish and destroy.
"Sure, what's a few more dents in this lemon?" Andsworth said as an aside. Rouge just stood there impassively, looking as if she were about to cry, almost.
"THEY NEVER DID ANYTHING WRONG!" Chris roared. "THEY NEVER DID ANYTHING TO HURT ANYONE! THAT KINGDOM MEANT EVERYTHING TO SALLY AND HER PARENTS!" He looked at the old man. "She would have done anything for her people. They viewed her as a hero. She was a symbol of hope against Robotnik's conquest.
"How about you calm down, son?" Andsworth asked, his brow furrowing.
"Who gave the order to do that?" Chris demanded.
"Three guesses." Rouge said, folding her arms.
NICOLE growled, "Can we aim the MAC cannon at Marshall's office?"
"We don't have a MAC cannon." The Admiral said in a slightly annoyed tone. "I know; I've looked over and over."
"And even if we really wanted to take down Marshall, there's nothing to prove that he was involved. All that we know is that the last president was murdered. That's all we know." Rouge said. "
"The guy's insane!" Chris said. "You know that! Rouge, you're in his inner circle! You can break the whole operation down!"
"I would be protesting against something that the public supports!"
"What?" Chris said, confused.
Andsworth said, "You know what the public thinks of you?"
"Considering that I am the murderer of children, I imagine not too highly."
The Admiral scoffed. "ONI's put bounties out on people who have been in contact with the Chaos Emeralds. Your name is at the top, with a very tempting figure, I might add. Of over seventy people on the list, 70 percent are dead."
Chris said, "I hope neither of you decide to cash in. I haven't had a good run over the last month. With alien messages in my head, and the fact that I'm starting to hallucinate -?"
"You're hallucinating?" Andsworth asked. "About what?"
NICOLE cleared her throat. "I have had the 'pleasure' of witnessing some of the Captain's psychological episodes. He seems to be reliving traumatic events from his past, and quite frankly, his brain is getting tired of it. He's almost killed himself several times."
"Whoa now…" Chris said with palms raised in defense. Admiral Andsworth's head snapped from the AI to the disgraced Marine with eyes wide open in shock.
"My God. You tried to commit suicide?"
"It wasn't my active decision!" He protested, starting to get the feeling that they were now really feeling uncomfortable. "My subconscious was trying to bring my body back into balance."
Rouge scoffed. "Bring your body back into balance by suicide."
"That's what I said!" Chris. "Soon I was inventing characters I had never seen in my life before, like…" His breath came short, and his mind opened up. He was gone again.
"Oh, no! Not again!" NICOLE said. "Admiral, we need to get him secure! There's no telling what he'll do now!"
Andsworth hit his communicator. "Security to the wardroom! Tell the infirmary to get a bed ready and sedatives prepared for immediate use! Get in here now!"
Rouge ran over and tried to keep the shuddering man under control. "Can you hear me, Captain?"
"He can't." NICOLE said. "We just need to make sure he doesn't hurt himself."
"Come on, Human! Wake up!"
The world was dark. It wasn't something that he remembered from his past. It was different, like a vault. He tried to move around, but his body wouldn't obey. He could see a light forming ahead of him.
"Hello?" He called out.
"Hello darling.
He squinted, barely able to see the shape of a women walking towards him , hair blowing in a sudden gust of air.
"Sally?"
"Oh, I wasn't sure you'd remember me!"
Chris almost laughed. "How could I forget you?"
"I think it would be because of the surgery you gave me!" She became visible, and he saw what she meant. A huge gash was in her chest shaped like twin energy wounds. Instead of being cauterized like they should be, squirts of blood came from the gashes. Her face was dripping with blood. "Remember this? Remember putting a sword through my chest?" She grabbed him and threw him to the ground.
It caught Chris off guard. Sally was only 125 pounds. The fact that she was able to throw a nearly 200 pound man to the ground made him scared. He knew that he was a prisoner, and Sally was the abusive warden. Under other circumstances, he would have enjoyed this.
"I told you that I loved you! How could you just look me in the eye and slaughter me like an animal?"
"It was for your own good! I needed that information! It was because I loved you!"
She scratched his face. Blood leaked down his cheek.
"Look, I even have the ring on now!" She lifted her hand and he saw the golden band. "Will that make you care about me?"
"I ALWAYS cared about you!" Chris protested. He got to his feet shakily. "I always loved you!"
"Yeah?" Sally asked, "Then why did you leave me behind?"
"YOU TOLD ME TO LEAVE!"
But the projection of Sally wasn't having any of it. She reached behind her back and drew a knife nearly a foot long.
"Whoa.." Chris said, trying to back away.
"What's the matter, my sweet Human?" Sally asked, with a twitching smile. "Don't you trust me?"
"Sally, we can talk about this! Please, don't come at me with that thing!"
Then he was rooted to the spot.
"NO! SAL! NO!"
She whispered in his ear, "I'm only doing what's best for both of us." She reached back and plunged the knife in his chest.
Chris' body looked like it had a demon possessing it. His back arched, and he gasped with eyes wide open. It was clear that there was no interacting with him. The ship's doctor, a man named Herrald, ran to him with a syringe of a powerful sedative. Rouge was by his side. "What happened?" She asked, horrified.
"His synaptic functions are going insane. His heart rate's spiking well over 200 BPM. He's going to suffer hypertension… no wait.. heart rate is slowing rapidly!"
"What?"
"The man's heart is grinding to a halt! Someone find me some defib pannels!"
Rouge looked at Chris. His eyes were twitching as if he were in REM sleep. Rouge realized that if she could see into the young man's mind, she would know that whatever he was seeing was a nightmare.
Chris felt the blade pierce his flesh and tap bone. He howled as he grabbed the grip. Sally kissed him deeply as his lungs were filling with blood. He tried to yank the weapon out of his chest, but his hands were shaking too much, and Sally's lips were still pressed over his. The Human pried her off and tugged at the blade.
"Now we're alike, you and I." She giggled pointing at her chest wounds. "A mutual shower of blood is all we need."
"Why?" He asked. It was a gargling feeling that he never experienced before. He felt like he was drowning. In a sense, he was.
"I told you: I'm doing it to protect you! Someone has to take responsibility for your mind's safety."
"Not like this." He gasped. "Never like this!" His fingers were slick with his own blood, but he yanked the knife out of his chest, gasping as the serrated edge cut skin. He looked at it and realized that it was his Ontario Combat Knife, the same one he carried from Talahan. Suddenly, he took a deep breath and his hands stopped shaking. "This isn't real. You can't hurt me here. I need this data. Why don't you just fuck off and go back into the dark where you belong!"
Sally's eyes flared. With surprising speed, she grabbed the knife out of Chris' hands and plunged it through the side of his neck. The blade emerged on the other side, coated with blood. The Captain gasped in pain and felt the wounds, horrified as he could feel his own breath on the side of his neck. The pain was unimaginable. He sunk to his knees and tried to scream, but nothing came. Sally kicked him square in the face, knocking the poor man to the ground. He was dazed, in anguish, and had a knife sticking out of his neck, all inflicted by the woman he was engaged to. He shook violently.
In reality, Chris' heart rate slowed down considerably again, but his back arced and he made a shrill scream and clutched his head. Despite this, he still remained unconscious with eyes rolled up in his head.
"WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT GODDAMNED DEFIB?" The doctor screamed, knocking aside one of the medical technicians. "If this man dies, Andsworth will have all of our asses!"
NICOLE's voice came over the loudspeakers, "You're supposed to be a trained medical team! This is a hospital! QUIT FUCKING AROUND!"
A medical technician with an ensign bar said back, "Yeah, well we got saddled with the worst ship in the fleet, and the worst gear around! I should know! I worked on the Indomitable!"
"How could they do this to you?" NICOLE asked.
"Because we stuck with the Admiral." the technician said. "I found them!" the young man pulled out a pair of shock paddles and rubbed them together to form electricity. "Here goes nothing." he said and placed them on the Marine's chest.
Chris was about to pull the knife out of his neck when Sally's form placed her boot on his hand, preventing him from moving. "No, you need to feel that!"
"I'm going to die in here if you don't help me!"
She crouched and looked into his eyes that were flickering quickly. "Well, if you die, you die. Look on the positive side: at least you won't have to carry that burdenful knowledge in your head anymore! Then you can spend your last minutes with me! We can make them last!" She tickled his chin. Chris would have found it sexy had he not been stabbed in the throat, and was showered in blood from both his chest and Sally's.
"You're just in my head. You're not real. I have a real fiancee to go back to. You're just a two bit shade of my subconscious. You're everything ugly and obsessive about the Sally I know. You can go back into the hole you came from and brood with the rest of my undesirable thoughts, skank." He was surprised he could make that in one breath, much less the fact that he hadn't passed out from pain, but then again he had already passed out in the first place.
Sally's shade looked at Christopher with unbridled murder in her eyes. She was now determined to go a step above and pull the knife through his throat, sealing the deal. She made the motion that may have gone to the knife hilt, but then the world lit up for a split second.
"What was that?"
Chris was confused too. "I don't know. This is your playground!"
The flash came again. Sally looked like she was weakened. "Stop it!"
"Stop what?" He was able to get to his feet and even pull the knife out of his throat. Blood leaked, but it didn't gush. He wondered if there was any more blood in this subconscious body of his.
"Stop the flashing! I don't like it!"
Once more the world lit up, and Sally disappeared. Chris got dizzy. The world began to spin, and the next thing he knew, he was gasping for breath on an operating table. He made a grab for his pistol and saw that his hands were restrained.
"Where am I?" he demanded.
"Blood pressure rising. Heart beat stabilizing. He's coming back."
"Am I still on Andsworth's ship?"
"You're safe, Human." NICOLE said to him. "You're safe."
A man in scrubs came up to him. "I'm Doctor Eberrett. We just saved your life son."
"I nearly died again?"
Doctor Ebberett's mouth twitched when he said 'again', but chose not to notice it. "You were on death's door. Your heart nearly stopped pumping. You were in cardiac arrest. Even the defibulators didn't work at first. God must really like you."
"I don't know about God, but I just had a battle with my own subconscious. Can I get these cuffs off?"
"With your subconscious? Care to explain, Human?"
"I was actually 'inside' my own mind battling my subconscious. I'm not overlaying projections anymore - I'm going a step further with every incident."
"Who was the person fighting you?"
"Three guesses." Chris said, not really feeling like divulging that he was fighting Sally.
"Ah... oh..."
"Yeah, no kidding."
The door slid open and Andsworth walked into the room. "I came as soon as I heard. How are you feeling, son?"
"I'm OK, sir." Chris said. "I think they burned me with the paddles though."
Andsworth looked at the medical personnel, who looked slightly guilty. Then, the Admiral smiled. "Good work, gentlemen. You've saved our best chance for survival from an early grave. Captain, get dressed and walk with me."
It took him less than 2 minutes to get ready and he walked to the Admiral's quarters with him. NICOLE was already there, projected onto the desk via holo-lamps.
"What took you so long, boys?" The Lynx asked.
"Oh NICOLE." the old man said, "How I wish we had you with us on the Indomitable. You would have been quite a pilot given what I heard of your escape from ONI control."
"I would have been honored, sir." the AI bowed her head. "But with all due respect, I don't think it's right to get misty-eyed soo soon about the bygones of the past."
"Yes, I agree." He turned to the Captain, "Would you like a drink?"
Considering all that's happened up to this point, "Yeah, the strongest thing you have."
"Well, this is a surprise. You're in luck: I have a bottle of untapped Black Scotch. You look like you need a drink, as I'm sure you will agree." The Admiral retrieved the alcohol and poured generous measures of drink for the Captain who drank as if it was his last beverage.
"Have you recieved any intel on where your friends are?"
Chris shook his head. "Not a clue. Over the last couple of days, I don't think that we've had any other urge other than to get the hell off the Romulus. In all honesty, everything else was secondary."
NICOLE cut in, "Not to mention all of the databases aboard the Romulus wouldn't have any indication of the whereabouts of Major Hera, Samantha Jackson, and Alan Roan."
"Major Hera?" Andsworth said, interested.
"Yes sir." The AI nodded. "She's a Royal Air Force officer and she was the first person that helped us on our journey."
Andsworth tapped his intercom to reach the bridge.
"Bridge here. Go ahead, Admiral."
"Steffan, I want you to run a search on Major..."
"Abigail." NICOLE added.
"Major Abigail Hera, Royal Air Force."
"Yes sir, Admiral. Give me a moment..." There was silence over the COM. "Sir, I'm not able to find any records of a Major Abigail Hera. I've looked in the Mobian Defense Network Database. I'm sorry."
"It's alright, Steffan. Carry on." Andsworth clicked off his intercom and looked at the stunned Captain. "Well, that was unexpected."
"I... I don't understand..." He looked to NICOLE and then to Rouge. "She had to have been in the Air Force. She looked it, she walked it, she even talked it! Everything about her seemed so certain! She helped us get away!"
Rouge cleared her throat, "Have you considered the possibility that you were played? Maybe she wanted to isolate you and use you for her own purposes."
Chris' eyes were going wild. He was trying to make sense of everything. Oh who was he kidding, he could barely differentiate between reality and fantasy now. "She said..."
"People say a lot of things, Captain." Andsworth said. "Some people are really good at lying. You might have been convinced, dammit, NICOLE might have been convinced, but the facts are clear and search proves it. You've been deceived."
No. No, no, not again! NOT AGAIN! Who's side was Hera on? Was she in with Marshall the whole time, or was she a Mobian rebel who wanted a Human trophy? Just who was that woman? I hadn't even asked about her service history at all! The Admiral's right. I was suckered.
NICOLE was equally shocked. "She seemed solid."
Rouge sighed, "Not even you are totally impassable, NICOLE. Everyone can find a way to sneak past the toughest person."
"Does that mean that Roan and Jackson were plotting against me too?" Chris asked.
"No, they're legitimate." Andsworth said. "I've done business with Vanguard before. Roan and Jackson are indeed on the company's payroll and according to CEO Gustaff, they were indeed assigned to protect you. Unfortunately, I don't know who made the transaction, and Vanguard can't even follow the paper trail."
"So that means that Hera is the only loose end." Chris growled.
"Looks that way. We'll have to get in touch with Sally and learn more about..." NICOLE started. Then her eyes grew wide and she slapped her face. "Oooooh shit."
Chris didn't like it when NICOLE swore like that. "What? What happened?"
"The ship. We left the ship parked on Delta Halo."
It was like someone whipped a baseball bat in Chris' face. He slunk down in his seat and downed his cup. "They'll find it. They'll find it and we'll be in a world of shit. Oh no, Sal's been through so much already. She's not going to need this..."
Troy Marshall was enjoying a lovely day on Ceta Centauri. He was on the moon to make an appearance for dedication for a new university: the John Cleary Institute of Interplanetary Knowledge, a multi-million dollar school for Centaurians. Troy had gone through regular presidential routine: He exited his craft amid smiling citizens, posed for many pictures, kissed a few babies, and made rousing comments on how lovely the weather was on Ceta Centauri. Centaurians loved it when dignitaries commented on how great the weather was on that particular moon.
Currently, he was in a private suite overlooking the endless ocean of the planet. In the far distance, the blue sphere of Alpha Centauri II was visible, much like Luna was visible on Earth in the middle of the day. He sipped back an expensive vodka and let the sun shine on his skin. All was well here, and it was about to get even better for him. His communicator beeped. Marshall scowled. He hated being disturbed, especially when he was away on tropical destinations. He put down his glass and tapped the receive command. A holoscreen appeared which showed a Hunter Commander with his helmet on. Marshall shivered slightly. True, he had ordered the damn things to be created, but that didn't mean that he was entirely comfortable about them. They gave him nightmares from time to time.
"Go ahead, Commander. It had better be important."
"I think you would agree that it is, sir."
Marshall could sense the excitement in the Hunter's voice. In the background, Marshall could hear the screeches of Stalkers in their cages. "OK, report."
"We were just investigating the last known location of the Romulus, the ship the criminal was last seen around. It's likely that he stowed away and was able to get to Earth."
Marshall scowled. God damn it! "OK... then what?"
"We don't know much else. We were able to find the point Romulus jumped in around Earth and were able to find a lifeboat just floating around. The registry signssay that it was a lifeboat from that ship."
"Was our friend aboard it?"
"We searched it. The back hatch was blown. I think he may have spaced himself."
"No, that's not what I expect from this man. He wouldn't kill himself. He clearly had a way out and he took it. The problem is we need to figure out where he went exactly." Marshall let his mind wander, the intelligent cogs whirling within his skull. "Are you near the lifeboat?"
"We're in the Alpha Centauri system for clear signal broadcast."
"Well does your team have the lifeboat?"
"We tagged it."
"Alright fair enough. I want a team to look through the computer and check to see if it docked with any ships. Find the ship and seize it. If Vennettilli's aboard, grab him and bring him to me. I want him breathing."
"Yes sir. What about the crew of the ship?"
"Under Military Law, they would be harboring a fugitive and shall be dealt with accordingly. Make sure they get the message."
"Understood, sir."
Marshall half-smiled. In the wake of all the collosal failures that have occured up until this point, things were going pretty well. All he needed right now was a pretty bow on top of this present.
"Mr. President, we have one more thing."
Marshall whipped around, giddy with anticipation. "Yes?"
"After we cleared out the Library on Installation 05, we were able to find a pretty piece of metal parked not too far away from the Gondola Stations. Looks like a military vessel, the Emerald Fox."
Marshall's face split into a smile. "And...?"
"My boys scanned the ship's memory. Turns out, the Captain's been in constant contact with her highness Sally Alicia Acorn, and one of your agents, only known as Rouge. They've been sharing little tidbits of information every now and again. Would you like the message copies sent to you?"
"Now."
"Right away, sir"
Marshall could barely contain his excitement. He had them. He had the evidence to link the Kingdom of Acorn to aiding a criminal runaway. Troy Marshall felt like a kid on Christmas Day. He audibly laughed as he got the information on his databanks. First and foremost he would have the traitorous agent shot right in front of him. As for Sally Acorn... oh ho ho...
He tapped his intercom. "TUDYK!"
The assistant shivered over the COM. "Yes, sir?"
"Bring me Her Highness, the Princess at your earliest convenience. Let her know that it's a very urgent matter that we need to discuss involving... several conflicts of interest."
Category All / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 224 x 224px
File Size 10.5 kB
Comments