What May Come

Please see chapter 1 for author's notes.

Chapter 8: And So It Begins

Harlan gripped the harness lightly, tightening his hands reflexively as a force shoved him sideways in his seat. He realized belatedly that he and Radu, despite being in the back of the room, were actually sideways in relation to the engines and the direction they were being propelled. Goddard was being shoved backward in his seat, and even Radu beside him was clearly feeling the affects of the acceleration. The pressure didn't ease, although occasionally he was jolted and jerked as the ship swerved and dipped, apparently dodging some sort of obstacles in their path. At least he hoped it was just obstacles, and not the questionable engines they're heard earlier giving trouble. Well, too late now...

They all breathed a sigh of relief as the pressure began to lessen and then finally taper off to nothing. "I think it's over," Radu said cautiously.

"Yeah," Jacie agreed, coming back through the inner door. "We're back under our own power. Aslinn's going to pilot for awhile; he wanted me to give you the tour and the rules."

"Rules?" Harlan asked.

"Beyond the usual 'pick up after yourselves'," Jacie answered with a shrug. "Come on, I'll explain as we go." He waited until they'd unstrapped themselves, and then gestured back to the door he'd come through. "That way is the command post. It's pretty cramped, so I'm not going to suggest you go in. Notice anything about the door?"

"It's a blast door," Radu said cautiously.

"Yes. And so is the one from here to the bathroom, and the rec room, and…with the exception of the shower stall, any door you can walk through on this ship is a blast door. Designed that way on purpose, so if by some twist of fate we get blown into little pieces, we can seal the rooms individually if necessary. Can't seal them if they aren't shut however—the first rule on this ship is if you open a door, you make sure it gets shut. And that it latches." He stepped past Harlan and Radu, opening a door beside the couch. "The bathroom is in here. I imagine you've seen one before." A quick tug and the door was shut, and then he moved towards the front of the room, towards a door at the foot of the bunk Goddard had been on. "Through here is the rec room."

Harlan was the first to follow him, and he found himself in a room slightly larger than the bunkroom. A small area was sectioned off and seemed to contain a refrigeration unit and a heater—the galley Aslinn had mentioned. There was another bunkbed in the room, as well as another couch, but one wall was taken up with a long table similar to the one they'd had in their quarters, and there was another table in the center of the room. The back wall had a large cabinet and another door, and there was a third door on the opposite side wall, as well as one he assumed led back to the main hallway. "Where do those go?" he asked curiously.

"The back one leads to the bathroom again, and this front one to the hall," Jacie confirmed. "The other one…guess that's the other important you need to know. The living quarters have a thick blast shield around them—just as thick as the one in the hull. So please use the inner doors and stay out of the hallway if you can. There's no real reason to go out there anyway…it only leads to the cargo bay, and that isn't pressurized now. There's a door from the cargo bay to the bathroom too…it's locked now though. The only other parts of the ship with plating as thick as the living quarters are the escape pods. One through there—" he gestured to the third door, "one in the bathroom, opposite the shower stall, and one in the nose attached to the command post. Well," he shrugged. "There're two others, but they're meant for access from the cargo bay so they aren't exactly relevant now. All of them are marked, you'll be able to see the signs when you're closer."

"How long can they sustain people for?" Goddard asked.

Jacie shrugged. "There's ration bars and water enough for two weeks…the air supply, recycled, would last ten days. They've got limited flight capability…basic thrusters…but there's a two-way comm built into each and the distress beacons and are pretty strong."

"That's probably not a good thing in Spung space," Harlan muttered.

That drew a grin from their guide. "Perhaps not. Oh…when I said ten days, that was ten days for two people. I'm not sure what it would be for three. If it comes to that, you might be better off splitting up."

"You th-think we're going to need to?" Radu asked quietly.

That drew a shrug. "We're going farther into Spung space than I've been in two cycles. I hope we don't, but I also don't want to have to climb out of the escape pod with Az to point out the ones you should be in if it comes to that." He kicked at something on the ground, and then pulled one of the wheeled chairs around, dropping down to sit on it backwards with his arms crossed on the backrest. "Other good things to know…the back cabinets have games and models and stuff if you get bored, you're welcome to use to computer terminals." He waved a hand at the two monitors behind him. "Food is in the galley. Don't start any fires. Put stuff away when you finish with it, and close and latch the trunks and cabinets…getting whacked by a flying plate is painful. The furniture can all be moved, just make sure you lock it back into place. And if you need to strap into one of these wheeled chairs, double check that the floor clips are working. Az didn't once." He grinned. "Wasn't too long after we started together…I learned a lot of new words when he landed. Oh, yeah. There's medical stuff in all of the rooms, in the trunks marked with a blue 'x'."

Goddard nodded at that. "What's our ETA for the rendezvous?"

"Approximately twenty-one hours. We're traveling parallel to Spung space, so there may be points where we need to detour. It's unlikely, but…"

"Did you send a message back to the station?" Harlan asked suddenly. "About the guys who attacked us?"

"Aslinn tightbeamed something after we finished the slingshot run," Jacie confirmed. "I'm not sure what he said…you can ask him if it's important."

"Nah, just wanted to make sure. You think someone will actually do something about them?"

"They were probably gone by the time we left dock. If they weren't free agents then some kind of retrieval team would have been sent when they didn't return with you, and if they were they'd have even more reason to disappear. And there's a good shot they were working for the Triiad anway."

Harlan nodded at that; it was a little disappointing but not exactly unexpected. Radu seemed to feel the same way, moving to take a seat on the couch. Harlan dropped down on the other arm, while Goddard moved to sit on the bunkbed. "You said something about ship layouts and making a plan?" Harlan asked.

"Aslinn gave me some schematics…how most of the stations are laid out. With only the five of us, we're going to have to rely on stealth rather than force, and the less we have to improvise on the spot the better. If they're still on the Christa we obviously have an advantage, but if they Spung have taken them off the ship we have to be able to do better than guess. I'm not saying we should memorize the schematics," and Harlan heard the warning in his voice, "the last thing we need is to be overconfident. But if we can make reasonable assumptions and narrow down where they might be being held, that's all to the good."

"I'll help where I can," Jacie offered. "It's been a long time, but I'm the only one here who's actually been on a Spung station. And once we're in range of Tathaelon—another station—I know someone who got out a little more recently. Might have some ideas. It'll be seven or eight hours though…we don't need to risk a transmission powerful enough to be intercepted."

"I left the compupad with the information in the other room," Goddard said, standing. "I'll be right back."

"Commander? Harlan and I could look over the schematics with Jacie if you want to rest for a few hours," Radu offered. "Since you didn't…"

His voice trailed off, and Harlan nodded. "Yeah, Commander, you keep telling us we have to be awake and alert when we're making plans. And no offense, but you don't look real awake right now."

Goddard sighed. "Unfortunately, you're right. It's been a few years since I could pull an all-nighter without it having unpleasant effects…and I can't claim I slept so well the night before last, either."

"You might want to pull the bracing straps over, just in case," Jacie commented as he got up. "And don't worry about the schematics; I can pull them up on the computers in here."

"Wake me up in three hours," Goddard told Harlan and Radu firmly as he opened the door. "No more. We have work to do."

Harlan nodded, getting up from the couch and moving to sit in one of the chairs in front of a terminal. Radu tugged at another chair. "Umm…"

"Kick the base," Jacie told him as he moved his own chair over. "That's where the latch is."

"So where are these schematics?" Harlan asked as the terminal came to life.

Jacie reached across, tapping at the screen, and a program came up displaying several sets of station layouts. "Have you done this before? Snuck onto a station?"

"Once," Harlan agreed. "Catalina got kidnapped and sent to a Luff prison satellite and we had to go get her before she was mindwiped."

"Catalina? I don't remember that name."

"She came from the StarAcademy like us," Radu started to explain. "She's an engineer. She switched dimensions with Suzee—her best friend—when the other Lumanian ship exploded. Before that we thought she was imaginary—Suzee, I mean, not Catalina."

"She was invisible, not imaginary," Harlan said with a grin, remembering their arguments. It wasn't as painful to think about now as it had been when she first disappeared. They'd find a way to get her back eventually."

"I remember you mentioning the Lumanians," Jacie said with a frown. "You mentioned them when you were talking about the second time you met Warlord Shank, right? But I don't remember anything about invisible best friends or different dimensions."

"It's complicated," Harlan said with a shrug, ignoring the fact that he didn't understand it himself.

"I'll take your word for it." He turned his attention back to the screen, nodding at the icons displayed. "These are the categories we've gotten complete plans of so far. We've got partials on some others, but it's probably best if you start with these."

"Trading outposts, quarantine stations, asteroid mining camp, refueling stations, perimeter posts, military encampment," Radu read off. "I don't think they'd be taken to a trading outpost or a refueling station. Or a mining camp."

"We can probably rule out perimeter post too," Harlan agreed after a moment. "They'd probably want to take them inside their territory rather than on an edge where there's somewhere to run to. What's a quarantine station? They lock all the sick Spung in one place?"

"No, more like a…detention center, I guess you'd say. Not exactly a prison, but they put ships there coming into the Empire who haven't been approved, or who are heavily armed. And sometimes Spung end up there who are trying to get out. Usually it's a temporary stop."

"That sounds like a good place to start," Harlan said. "That or the military encampments." He selected that option first and was disappointed when only one layout appeared. "This is all you have?"

"They don't exactly leave plans lying around," Jacie returned. "And Az and I haven't really concentrated on getting inside the stations, we probably don't have everything available. I know we don't—Taver'd just about mapped out the entire lower quadrant last time I talked to him. But I haven't heard from him in months and don't have a reliable way to make direct contact, so you're stuck with what we have for now."

Harlan checked the listing for the quarantine stations and was relieved to find half a dozen different layouts. More would have been better, but at least they wouldn't be making guesses from a single diagram. "I think our first issue is going to be finding them."

"Spung keep records," Jacie offered. "Find an open terminal and hack the computers."

"Can you do that?" Radu asked.

"Me? Well…no. Can one of you?"

"I don't think so," Harlan said with a frown. "I know I couldn't…" He looked over at Radu who was shaking his head. "I don't think Commander Goddard could either...Miss Davenport is the one who's good with computers."

"Aslinn said something about tracking their spies and finding records about them," Radu pointed out. "Before you let us out of the cell. Could he do it?"

"I think he does that a little different, but we can ask." He tapped his commlink. "Az?"

"What's up?"

"Do you think you could hack into a Spung network and figure out where their friends are being held? From inside one of their bases, not from the nets out here."

There was silence for a moment, and then, "Yeah, sure Jace, no problem. And right after that, I'll part the Red Sea, cure the common cold, and make your girlfriend fall desperately in love with me."

"Funny."

"Sorry, brother, the best I can do is reroute email and get into some of their low-security databases. Assuming I could even log into one of their base security systems—which I doubt since even if I had a direct terminal we'd have to guess some Spung commander's passwords and our odds for that are just not good—I wouldn't even know where to look."

"All right, just a thought. How's it going up there?"

"5,427 stars, 5,428 stars…"

"So much for that idea," Harlan said with a sigh as Jacie closed the connection. He looked back at the diagrams for a minute. "We can't exactly go wandering around looking in cells and asking if anyone's seen our missing crew."

"Even if they're on the Christa, we'll have the same problem," Radu pointed out after a moment. "Who knows where the Spung would lock them up? We don't even know all the rooms!"

"We need a tracking device or something," Harlan agreed. "Hey…you design sensors, right? Goddard said you got a patent for something."

"Aslinn and I, with a bunch of researchers," Jacie agree cautiously. "It's not like science fiction though…I can't build you something that you can sweep over a station and suddenly know that there's a human on level 10b, room 17."

"What did you do for the patent?" Radu asked.

"Designed a drone that tracked chemical signatures put out by a certain type of eel and followed it back to its lair. Well, I designed the sensor, and Aslinn built the engines—they generate almost no heat so other animals aren't attracted to them—but the other scientists designed the drone body, and the recording and transmitting devices and the rest of it. They're the ones who are analyzing all the data too. But I'm not sure how that applies unless one of your crewmembers secretes some strange chemical…"

Harlan frowned. "Well, I don't think so, but there has to be something different from the Spung—hey, can you build something that measures temperatures?"

"They're called thermometers…we have one in each of the med kits."

"No, I mean from a distance. Rosie—she's Mercurian."

Radu's eyes widened as he caught on. "Her body temperature is almost two hundred degrees...more when she's upset."

"That I could track," Jacie agreed. "We'd still have to be on the station and in the same general vicinity though…a few hundred yards, maybe. Maybe farther…it depends how much hot-running machinery is in the area, and how much heat the force-shields are putting out. I'm not sure how the metal in the area would affect the readings…" He turned to the other terminal and began to pull up information.

"So we've just got to avoid detection by the sensors long enough to do a quick sweep through the cells."

"It looks like there are three monitoring stations," Radu said. "If we just destroy the sensors as we go, one of them is bound to notice."

"A distraction, maybe? There's only the five of us though, and we can't afford to get captured as well." He caught Radu's frown. "What?"

"What if we don't?"

"Don't what?"

"Destroy the sensors."

"What? So they see us sneak in? At least if they just seen them blank out they won't know what's coming."

"No, look." He pointed at the monitoring station. "It's small…probably only one or two guards in each at once. And they're already logged into the computers, watching the cells. That's what all those screens have to be."

"We use their own monitoring stations against them," Harlan said with a grin. "If we figure out when shift change is and take over right after it, we won't have to worry about being interrupted."

"They'll probably still notice something is wrong when we actually have to go in and get the others, but…"

"At least we'll know where we're going; we'll be able to move fast."

"But…" Radu sighed and his face fell. "They're probably watching the monitoring stations too."

"So we kill the sensors and tell them there was a malfunction," Jacie said with a shrug, turning back to them. "And that we called the techs, and we're sure it will be fixed any minute. Sound sufficiently bored and I doubt anybody will think anything about it. We shouldn't be in there long enough to raise suspicion."

"Yeah, but we'd need to know Spung first."

"It's my first language."

"I speak it too," Radu volunteered. "At least, I was taught it in classes."

"Aslinn knows some also, although he's got an accent when he's not careful. Between the three of us, we should be all right."

"So we've got a plan," Harlan said with a grin. "Part of one, anyway. Although we still have to get onto the station somehow. If they're on the Christa, she'll just let us land, but the commander is probably right. They'd probably put the others somewhere that's easy to guard once they get the ship where they want it. Maybe we could…"