Past and Present
Chapter 12
…It Always Finds Us
Tracy Reager
Gideon and Dureena walked down the gray halls for the Mage's hiding place. They paid careful attention to where they were so they could find the way back; but it was hard when everything looked the same.
"I wonder how they know where they are going, nothing is marked." Dureena asked.
"I'm sure it's marked but not in a way that anyone but the mages can see it." Gideon replied. "My question is, where is everyone? I figured there would at least be someone after us by now."
"Somehow Galen always knows what's going on around the ship even if he isn't there. Remember how he used some kind of recording device to tape Trace; they probably have them all throughout these hallways. I'm sure they know where we are and what we are doing. Hell, they're probably leading us somewhere."
"Dureena?"
"Yes?"
"Next time I ask a question, be more optimistic." Gideon walked around a corner. Dureena grinned and shook her head. She kept checking all of the doors they passed, but none of them opened so far. "Gideon, what are we even looking for? I think we've been in this hall before…I think we're lost."
"Nonsense, you can't be lost if you're not looking for something." Gideon replied.
"So we're just walking around for no reason?"
"Hey if I remember correctly you're the one who wanted to go exploring." He leaned against a door and it opened. He jumped back, and then cautiously peered in the room. No one was there. "This looks like a meeting room of some kind."
Dureena walked in and looked around, she noticed two other doors along the far wall. Gideon followed behind her over to them. She pushed on one and it opened revealing a large table in the center and sinks long the wall. On the other side were stoves. "I think we found the kitchen." She opened a few cabinets to find many different types of foods. Not seeing too much that interested them, they turned around and walked back into the dining hall, then out into the hallway.
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Galen walked quietly behind Molin. He wasn't happy to be here and was anxious to leave. In his present state of mind, he failed to notice that Gideon and Dureena were no longer on his ship. He remembered the defense system went off, but he figured it was Gideon testing it out. They finally stopped outside the control room. Galen remembered it well, he spent most of his time there watching the outside world wishing there was something he could do to help. It was that urge to help that got him kicked out, which he first viewed as a bad thing, but now that he was out, he never wanted to come back to these bleak, claustrophobic, gray halls. He didn't miss his fellow mages because most of them avoided him any way. The ones he did miss were dead.
Molin entered the password to get into the control and ushered Galen inside. Galen was surprised when Fed jumped up and gave him a big hug.
"Galen, you've come back, welcome home!" Fed was excited. It had been a long time since he had seen his friend.
"It's nice to see you Fed, but I'm not staying long." He looked at Molin.
"Fed, I need you to find a transmission from here to the Excalibur that was sent about two weeks ago."
"Transmission? What kind of transmission?" Fed asked.
Galen played him the message then told him about the rest of them events on the Excalibur. He noticed that Fed seemed a little jumpy, but didn't pay much attention to it.
"That's interesting," Fed commented, "But what reason would anyone have to send a message to the Excalibur?"
"I don't know Fed, and frankly I don't care. I just want to find out who did it so they can be punished and the Excalibur can leave. I don't want them here anymore than they want to be here." Molin stated. "Now if you'll excuse me there seems to be another problem I have to attend to." He walked out of the room.
Fed looked at one of his monitors and saw what the problem was. "Who are those two?"
Galen stared in disbelief. " I left those two on my ship, how did they get out?"
"Could they have found a way to disable your defenses?"
"No." Galen looked at the screen. "Come on, we have to get to them before Molin does." He hurried out of the room. Fed quickly ran after him.
"So that's the one you love?"
Galen stopped dead in his tracks and glared at Fed.
"Yeah I guess you want an explanation." Galen just looked at him. "Well I've been watching the Excalibur recently and I saw you two together. I also saw the incident regarding that guy on Mars." He paused. "Galen, don't tell Molin, but I was the one who sent the signal. I wanted to see you again and meet this woman. I'm sorry that you have to go through all of this. I didn't think I was going to get caught." Galen didn't say a word. "Will you at least say something?"
"Fed, I don't know what to say. The only thing I can thing of now is getting Gideon and Dureena back to my ship and get off this rock!" Fed nodded and followed him.
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Dureena turned around the next corner and walked straight into someone. It was Molin, she recognized him from the messages. "Um, hi. Sorry I bumped into you."
"We'll just be on our way." Gideon grabbed her arm.
"You're not going anywhere. What are you doing here?"
"We were hungry so we decided to find some food." Gideon put on his best poker face and explained.
"I don't believe you. You lied to me before so why should I believe you wouldn't lie again?"
"We always learn from our mistakes?"
"Hah."
Gideon was just about to try another tactic when he saw Galen come around the corner. "Galen, we were just telling your friend here how much we were enjoying the place."
"I'll bet." Galen grinned. "It's ok Molin, I know them, they won't cause anymore trouble, I'll just take them back to my ship and…"
"Not so fast Galen. They were found wandering around, you know that requires a punishment."
"I think I can manage. Besides they are just too curious for their own good. They would never harm anything. I'll tell you what, I'll take care of these two and you can go back with Fed and concentrate on finding that who sent the message." Galen took both of them by the arm and walked off. Molin just stood in front of Fed, not really sure what to do. Gideon and Dureena walked silently next to Galen. He quickly led them through the halls back to the flyer.
Once inside, Galen locked the doors and turned towards his companions. "What were you two thinking? He would have killed you if I had gotten there in time. And how did you get out in the first place?"
"I used a spare tire to open the door, you know electricity doesn't go through rubber." Gideon answered.
Galen didn't know whether to laugh or be angry. "Very clever. But we now have a new problem. It turns out Fed was the one who sent the message hoping I was going to be on the Excalibur, but I wasn't at the time."
"Why would he want to do that?" Dureena asked.
"That's not important." Galen walked over and started the ship up. "The point is Fed doesn't want to be punished so we're not going to tell Molin about it. But that means that the Excalibur isn't cleared to leave. Now I can withstand a fight against those ships, but the Excalibur won't last long. We need a plan."
"Can't you call off the ships?" Gideon asked.
"No, they know I'm no longer one of the order and won't listen to me."
"Can we sneak out somehow?"
"We can Dureena, but that doesn't help the Excalibur."
"I know that, but isn't there a way to hide the Excalibur as well?"
"I might be able to cloak it, but their scanners will be able to see it even if they can't. And they aren't as maneuverable as I am, they won't be able to dodge the blasts."
"Would they expect the Excalibur to go backwards into the jump point?" Gideon offered.
"No because that's dangerous, the Excalibur isn't designed to enter hyperspace in reverse."
"Yes, but could it hold up if it did?"
"I don't know, it's a pretty big risk. Even still, they would still be vulnerable until they entered hyperspace. And I don't know if they would follow them into hyperspace or not." Galen replied.
"But what if we distracted the Mages until the Excalibur was clear?" Gideon walked over to the control panel. "Which of these is communications?"
"You mean you're serious about this plan?" Galen looked at him and Gideon just nodded. Galen shook his head and pressed a button.
"Is this secure?"
"Yes." Galen waited and soon Matheson's face appeared on the monitor.
"Lieutenant, I need you to follow my instructions exactly."
"Of course sir. Is there a problem?"
"Yes. We we're not cleared to leave and I don't think we will be anytime soon. So this is what we're going to do." Dureena listened as Gideon gave his orders to the Excalibur. She knew this plan had little chance of succeeding, but admired Gideon's optimism and Matheson's determination to see that it happened. At one point she looked over at Galen, he seemed to share her views on this plans success.
"Alright, wait until we are in between you and them before you do it." Gideon gave his last instructions and closed the channel. "Are you ready?"
"Oh, so nice of you to ask now." He sat down and had them sit down as well. As soon as he fired up the engines and message came through from Molin.
"Galen what are you doing?"
"I'm taking these two back to the Excalibur so they can't cause any more trouble." He ended the message before Molin could reply. He hit the accelerator and sent them flying into the atmosphere. Both Dureena and Gideon were amazed at how fast the flyer went. They shot threw space towards the Excalibur. Just as Gideon said Galen opened a jump point directly behind the Excalibur and flew in between them. The Excalibur's engines came to life and the retros fired sending them backwards into the jump point. Galen waited until they were through and then quickly flew after him. Surprisingly none of the Mages fired at either ship. Gideon's plan seemed to work, they were too stunned to react. Once inside hyperspace Galen quickly landed in the flight bay.
Gideon checked the Excalibur on the way in and most of it looked intact. He and Dureena went up to command. They noticed the one tube was out and that there were wires hanging in some corridors. When they got to the bridge they were shocked. Some crewmen were putting out small fires; most of the people had cuts or bruises and many of the displays were non-operational.
"Lieutenant, status."
"Engines are out, navigation is barely functional, there are scattered small fires throughout the ship and no major injuries have been reported so far."
"Any damage to the hull?"
"No sir."
"Good. Open a channel to Galen." Gideon sat in his chair and waited for the communications man to open a channel.
"Yes Matthew?"
"We have some problems Galen. Are engines are out and navigation is almost out." Gideon paused. "Can you merge with the Excalibur again so we don't get lost in hyperspace?"
"Of course." The screen went blank for a moment. "Ready when you are." Gideon pressed a button on his display screen and the navigation system suddenly came online. The crew was still amazed by how detailed Galen's radar was.
"Will this show us if any of the Mages come after us?"
"Yes. But if they haven't come already, they probably won't at all." Galen was checking through the Excalibur's systems. "Matthew, it looks like your engines are going to need serious repairs. We really shouldn't stay in the area to long, no need to attract unwanted attention."
"You mean the Mages know we are here?" Matheson asked.
"Do you see those red dots on the screen? Those are their hyperspace probes."
"Can't we just shoot them down?" Max asked from the corner of the bridge.
"Where did you come from?" Gideon asked sounding very annoyed.
"Well you didn't think I was going to stay in my quarters did you?"
"Of course not, why would I ever expect you to follow orders." Gideon mumbled quietly. Matheson smiled hearing every word of it. "Lieutenant, current status on the engines."
"Still down. I think it may be awhile til they are up to capacity."
"How long til they work at all?"
"At least three hours."
"Damnit, that's too long." Gideon pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Sir, Galen's flyer just left the bay." Matheson said.
"What?!" Gideon stood up. "Galen what the hell are you doing?"
"Helping you." He maneuvered the flyer close to the front of the Excalibur and dropped the tow cable down and latched on. He hit the accelerators and stepped onto the bridge. "Helping you out." The entire crew turned around.
Max's jaw dropped. He looked out the window then back to Galen. "How…how can you be here and…"
"I can fly my ship an not be in it." He looked over to Matthew. "I know it's not much but it's better than drifting in hyperspace."
"Thank you. We'll try to get the engines up and running as fast as we can." Gideon replied. "In the meantime, I'm going to go down to Med Bay and see how Sarah is doing."
"I'll be in my quarters." Dureena announced and left the bridge. Galen hung around for a few minutes, then left as well. On the way to Dureena's room, he checked his ship making sure everything was working properly. They were barely moving along, even the passenger transports moved faster than this. He sighed and opened the door to Dureena's room.
"I thought I locked that…" She stated.
"You did, but I overrode it." Galen grinned.
"Just don't teach Max that trick."
"He wouldn't be able to do it anyway. I went through my ship's link with the Excalibur." He explained.
"So you can't do it any other time?"
"I never said that." He paused and they both started to laugh.
"So, have bad off are we?" She finally got to ask the question that had been nagging at her since they jumped.
"Not good. At this speed it will be at least a week until we are out of their scanner range. Probably two if they move the probes and readjust the scanners."
"What about the Excalibur's engines?"
"I've checked them out. I don't care what that tech said; it will be at least 8 hours until the engines are operational. The nav system is basically gone, I'm not sure if it could even lock on to the beacons. So I will have to stay linked with it until we jump from hyperspace and back to a space dock."
"At least there isn't any damage to the hull." She paused. "What about the weapons?"
"Surprisingly still intact and fully operational." Galen sat down next to her. "How are you doing? You looked a little scared when we left the planet."
"I'm better now. I just didn't like the look that guy gave me down there. He seemed evil somehow…"
"Molin is very strict and likes to follow the rules. He's too serious actually. I never got to know him very well." For a while after they just sat in silence. Eventually, Dureena laid her head on Galen's shoulder and fell asleep. Galen realized he was feeling tired himself. He checked the two ships and a few various probes then fell asleep as well.