The ship was oddly quiet.
It took Helios a while to deduce the source of this strange silence, since the engines were a white noise from the moment he had boarded the ship. Their humming was like a normal background for everyday routine and without it, everything seemed a little ominous. Even normally crowded corridors were deserted and Helios wondered where had everybody gone, as he met nobody on his way to the second navigational lab.
Wondering what had caused this sudden predicament, Helios's head snapped up, when he heard quick tapping of shoes nearby.
"Who's there?" he said, a little against himself. There was nothing to fear on the ship and yet, the athmosphere made him uneasy.
"Oh."
Helios gasped quietly with surprise, when Chronos emerged from behind the corner. He expected anyone, but not the captain of the Faradayers. The man was in casual clothes, surely on his day off, but his expression was contorted and he was frowning.
"It's you, Sunny." he said distractedly, looking carefully at walls as if looking for something. But before Helios could even react with obvious exasperation, the man gripped his arm hard.
"Is there an emergency alarm switch?"
"Huh?"
"A switch. For alarm. Is there anything like it here?"
It was Helios' turn to frown, since what Chronos said was simply strange. Of course he knew there was an alarm switch, but it couldn't be used before all other means of activating the system had been used. As he told the other that, Chronos frowned even deeper. "I see. But where is-"
"Greetings Kepler. I am the representative of the Anglers."
Helios looked around in confusion. The voice coming through speakers was familiar, but the words held no sense.
"We have apropriated this vessel and are currently purging all unnecessary elements. Life support is currently suspended..."
"What?!"
"Shit!"
Chronos gripped Helios' arm tighter, pulling him after himself. They started to run together, quickly accelerating, especially after the calm, indifferent voice was interrupted by Keeler's hysteric shout about the bridge being compromised and something about the screens, which was incomprehensible.
"Please, do not resist."
/
"Yes! That's it!"
Sitting on the lower bunk with still ruffled sheets, Selene fist-pumped enthusiastically, when his screen didn't grey out, but beeped appreciatively, accepting the software.
He looked terrible, all pale and with deep, dark circles around his bright eyes. Hunched, focused exclusively on signs appearing before him, Selene spent better part of the last three hours in this position, not caring for cramps or back pains. The pad he got from his sister was beginning to run out of power, when everything suddenly made sense.
He had to admit that he had had quite a scare when both of them entered the room and faced Castor. Selene knew him as an excellent programmer, but didn't interract with him all that much, so seeing his stony expressionless face from up close sent shivers down his spine. Even more so that Carmilla had identical expression on her usually smiling face. But as they shared with him the data, the projects that they had had access to, Selene understood that even if they were a little suspicious, they were not the people responsible for the recent problems, so he shouldn't focus on that then.
"You sure?" Carmilla asked, looking even worse than Selene. Her complexion was ashen and she sweat a lot, over and over again wiping down her forehead. "Let me see?"
As she took over the pad, Selene pinched bridge of his nose, feeling that a huge migraine was gathering behind his eyes. But if he was right, if only he was right, everything was going to be alright and everybody would be safe and nothing would happen to Helios...
"Greetings Kepler. I am the representative-"
Three navigators listened in stunned silence to the announcement, along with Keeler's shouted call for help. However, when the other two just sat and did nothing, Selene sprang from his place and ran to the door.
"We have to help them!"
"Are you sure this will cancel out the brainwashing?" Castor asked calmly, pushing the glasses up with his index finger, pointing at the pad with his other hand. Selene turned abruptly on his heel, disbelieving.
"Yes! Yes, I do! But what does it have to do with anything? They need help!"
"Indeed." Castor got up from his chair, taking the pad from Carmilla and quickly transferring the data to his own device, attached to his belt. Then, he passed Selene on his way to the door, not looking back.
"Wait! I-"
Selene wanted to follow, but to his surprise, he was violently pulled back by his shirt, turned around and pushed onto the bed again. As he regained his balance and tried to prop himself up, he looked directly into a barrel of a handgun.
"I don't think so, brother."
Even though Carmilla looked very sick, being pale and trembling from seemingly high fever, her grip on the trigger was correct and her hands didn't shake. The gun was proffesionally pointed in direction of his heart.
"Jacqui, what-?"
Carmilla half-smiled and Selene felt that his heart stopped with fear.
/
Helios ducked, when Chronos' kick sent struggling tech to the opposite wall.
"Don't hurt them!"
"Who cares! Shit, how many more of the are there?"
"Not many! Ethos, hang on! Punch him in the throat, now!"
"Keeler, come here! That's it, sweetie, just stay behind us and everything'll be alright!"
Comanding the few conscious people left in the Bridge, Helios and Chronos somehow managed to take over the area, however not without damage. The brainwashed techs seemed to have twice the strength they normally had and were terribly persistent unless they hurt their heads. As much as everyone understood they had to make path for the navigators no matter what, the crew were too many and too persistent for them to make any considerable progress.
The commander stormed inside with Castor by his side, his face paled with contained fury, when he pushed away the techs that were advancing on him.
"What in blazes is going on here?! I want answers, men!"
"I think I can explain, sir!" Ethos called from behind Helios' back, where he found temporary shelter form more attacks. Already typing on a nearby keaybord, at the same time avoiding looking directly into the screen, he started to describe the situation to the Main Navigator, when suddenly, the lights flickered and went back on.
"Whoa, nice one, Ethos!" Helios called, pacifying one of the last affected ones. By his side, Chronos wiped his face with his elbow, leaving bloody trace on his forehead.
"It wasn't me!"
"Who, then?" commander Hayden asked, already calm and composed. He looked as disheveled as all of them did, but somehow more dignified.
"Must've been Djinn and Seiryuu, then."
A voice that came from the entrance was familiarly rasping and when everybody turned to see the intruder, they all sighed in relief, seeing Cain. However, they didn't have time to actually ask him something, because right behind him came Pollux, dragging struggling Abel after himself and Gasket, holding a gun directed at the navigator's head.
"What the-?"
"Sir, we've caught the perpetrator behind all of this!" Pollux shouted and gasped, when Abel's foot kicked him in the shin. Even tied up, the navigator expressed uncanny will about trying to escape, completely ignoring Gasket. Maybe he was correctly assuming that she wasn't allowed to kill him, so scaring him with this possibility was a failure? Helios didn't know, but he saw that the woman made a really fast decision, because only a split of second passed since Pollux weakened his grip, when Gasket pounced on Abel and hit his head with the grip of the gun.
The navigator went limp and slid bonelessly to the floor.
"Hey!" Cain exclaimed, jumping forward to hold the other's body. "Whatcha doin'?!"
Gasket shrugged pocketing her gun, as she hauled Pollux to his feet.
"Can someone tell me what's going on?" Commander Hayden asked, his tone icy cold. This situation was bordering on grotesque, since all personnel in the room was occupied with something and up until now ignored their commander as they desperately attempted to make things right. But as the uproar calmed temporarily down, Hayden was having none of it anymore.
"It seems we had a saboteur on the ship." Keeler was still engrossed in typing, so fast that his voice was hardly recognizable in all that patting. "And according to what the fighters say, it appears to have been Abel."
Keeler, Ethos and Castor were positioned across the room, opposite to the entrance, working on two consoles each. In everpresent keybord sounds, enormous amount of data was being processed and Helios didn't even want to think how fast their brains were working, in fear of shortcircuiting his own. Instead, he came closer to Cain, who was delicately cradling Abel's unmoving body.
"How is he?"
When Cain looked upwards, Helios nearly chocked on his own breath. Never had he seen such a hopeless expression of concentrated conviction.
"Not good." Cain's voice was more raspy than usual. As he winced, Helios could see big, ugly bruises on his neck, as if someone had been trying really hard to strangle the other fighter to his last breath. Seemed like Abel's apprehension was quite a challenge for the three of them. "But he is alive."
"Was it really his work?" Helios asked, immediately regretting it. But he couldn't catch the words that had flown from his mouth and he watched, upset, as Cain stiffened and looked at him as if he wanted to snap, but in the end decided not to. It hurt, seeing so much devotion and his inability to deny the accusation, no matter how much he wanted to.
An unfamiliar sound came from one of the consoles. Keeler, who was the one behind it, gasped in amazement.
"Sir!" he called. "There is an official ship asking for access to our docking station!"
"Alliance?"
"Yes, sir!"
Commander seemed to ponder about it for a moment, taking in the sight before him: few navigators, furiously working on bringing the systems back online, some tired, battered fighters and majority of the crew, that was lying unconsciously on the floor or where the kicks and punches of Helios and Chronos put them. As his frown deepened, he turned to still waiting Keeler.
"Access denied. We cannot risk anyone disrupting our procedures. We have to deal with what we-"
The door opened with a soft hiss, when a group of people marched in. Before anyone could do as much as blink, several figheters, in combat suits and armed with heavy shotguns positioned themselves around the room, pointing the weapons at the Commander. Because Hayden stood in the middle of the room and behind him were only the navigators' consoles, the only targets beside him could be Ethos, Keeler or Castor. Poor Ethos stopped working, his mouth opened widely in surprise, his eyes round and innocent. Keeler wore a similar frown as Hayden, while Castor calmly finished typing in the command for computers, before looking at the attacking company, pushing his glasses up his nose, as per his habit.
Helios flinched, uneasy, because despite mirror helmets, he could tell all fighters holding weapons were not from the Kepler. Faraday's, then.
The door hissed again; one more person appeared and Helios couldn't help but gasp in time with Cain's swearing, when Lestat looked at them scornfully.
"It is not wise to refuse the police, sir." she said, very calmly and very lifelessly. "Because they might think you have something to hide."
"What is the meaning of this, fighter?" Commander Hayden straightened, his serious expression once again contorted with anger. He wanted to move forward to Lestat, but the closest soldiers brought their weapon to their faces, as if in warning, lowering them very slowly and deliberately. "Is this a riot?"
The woman still looked at him without expression.
"Not really." she said and added, as Hayden took a step back, to the consoles. "And I'd be grateful if you remained in one place, sir. Castor?"
Commander knew better than to react carelessly to any sudden noise he heard, so when there was an 'oof' sound behind him, he didn't respond. However, from faces of the crew in front of him he could deduce that Castor had just pushed Ethos behind his console and tackled Keeler further away, behind another one. Which meant far and out of his reach.
"Thank you." Lestat stated.
Hayden wanted to say something, but when he moved too violently, one of the soldiers brought his gun to his helmet, this time not going back into offensive, but passive stance.
"We kind of take over the ship right now." Lestat sighed, as if it had been more trouble that it had been worth. "not for long. Just enough for the investigators to board."
"Investigators?" in the commotion, Cain had backed into a corner, shielding Abel's unconscious body. However, the surprise must have been too much if it overcome his possessivenes and worry and made him speak.
"That's right." Lestat didn't even look at him, but at her beckoning one of the soldiers moved from his place and positioned in front of Cain and Abel, protecting them. "All in all, we had a sabotage case here, did we not?"
Helios watched, as Cain froze and paled rapidly. In some strange thought process, he looked around himself, searching, but Chronos was nowhere to be found. At the same time, from behind consoles came violent cursing, as Keeler wrestled with Castor, while Helios could see that Ethos must have hit his head and was lying now curled up not so far away.
The door opened once more.
Up until now, Helios had felt that nothing made sense, but somehow dealt with it, as there always had been something to do, someone to protect and fight. Right now, everything got even more confusing, as Carmilla entered, protectively hugging stack of working pads and discs. Lestat turned to her, as she marched forward, hunched.
"Do you have everything?"
"Yes m'am." Carmilla said weakly and even Helios, despite standing quite far away, could tell that she didn't feel well. "We pulled this out from his personal computer. Everything is in here.."
It was a split of second. As everyone was looking at Carmilla, her words focusing attention on her and her hands, the soldiers' reaction was a moment too late. Helios could just hear a sharp sound, could see the girl's body, unnaturally bent with a bloody rose on her breast, before someone knocked into him, violently pushed away and suddenly all sounds went away and the darkness swallowed him whole.
/
"... which, as presented, resulted in a serious increase..."
Helios listened to the briefing, at the same time trying very hard not to fall asleep. The topic was the most interesting, concerning the events of the past few days on the Kepler, but the speaker used so many long and ambiguous words, that his attention started to swim away, no matter how hard he tried to focus and understand.
Commander Maxwell, the leader of the Third National Navigational Academy and an assigned partner to Commander Faraday, came on the police ship together with another armed squad. Let in by Encke and his fighters, Commander Maxwell took over the Kepler in the name of the Alliance, making the whole ship undergo emergency procedures, such as strict quarantine and body check on every possible occasion.
She was a short, very thin woman, with tightly clasped lips and a bun out of grey hair. She looked like nothing, but she had everybody running around as she wanted in no time and Helios snickered everytime he saw her and her tall aide, scared senseless and on a verge of crying. It was no wonder how this scary woman had become a commander, but Helios wondered how in the hell did they get paired up, she and Faraday.
As his thoughts shifted completely away from Comander Maxwell's lecture, Helios threw a quick glance to the side, where Commander Faraday sat. She had changed from her fighter clothes and now displayed all needed insignia of her status, so different from what she had been showing around the past few days. As she sat, listetning, her lips were curled in little smile, mocking and self-confident, as if she was proud of herself. And probably she was, Helios thought, in the end she had caught the culprit she had come here for.
Looking around told him that all of the important people were there. The Lead pair, Keeler and Encke, squad leaders and medical representatives all together. They listened in silence, some with unbelieving expression on their faces, some frowning and others just plainly surprised, as Commander Maxwell explained the situation they were put under not so long ago. How long has it been? One day or two? Helios knew, but it was hard remembering with this headache...
There had been a short command and apparently Maxwell must have finished, because everybody stood up from their chairs and started to leave the room, by the time Helios fought his throbbing headache down. Adjusting bandage on his battered head, Helios jumped to his feet, not wanting to behave rudely in front of the commanding officers, but a sharp voice halted him in place.
"Helios! Stay."
Unconsciously standing at attention, Helios turned on his heel, only to be confronted with Commander Faraday, still with that disturbing smile on her face.
"Spare me a few minutes of your precious time, Helios." Faraday said and for a moment she sounded just as provocative and aggressive as Lestat, whom she had been know as for the last week or so. But the impression was gone in an instant, replaced by someone more calm, more charismatic and more powerful. Still looking him in the eyes, Faraday said. "I hope you can take care of the rest, Rowena?"
"Certainly." Commander Maxwell answered, organizing the workpads on the table. "However, I do think you should not let all these brutes run around unoccupied, Alma." She sniffed disapprovingly.
Faraday laughed. The sound of it, foreign and disturbing, snapped Helios out of stupor he had gone into while staring into her hypnotizing eyes.
"I'll take care of it. Now, would you please leave us?"
Commander Maxwell straightened.
"Naturally."
"Thank you, Rowena."
As she left, Helios experienced a sudden drop in tension he had been feeling for a while. Which was curious, since he thought that Faraday was more of a dangerous opponent than unfamiliar navigator, even if a commander.
"How is your head?"
Faraday left him alone in the middle of the room and sat behind her desk, leaning back in the cushioned chair.
"It's okay." Helios stuttered. He was at a complete loss as to why she was talking to him all alone, looking as if she had just decided she needed a break.
"Good. Now, tell me. How much did you understand from Rowena's lecture?"
Rowena?, Helios' brain tripped over what that could mean, but it quickly started over, even more terrified of not keeping up. "Ugh... not so much, m'am?"
To his utter astonishement, Faraday laughed again. She looked entirely different when compared to her alter ego, Lestat and that differences were still confusing Helios. He somehow got used to snappy female fighter as a rarity, so a female commander caused him some troubles to comprehend.
"Figures. She has a knack for complicating things."she sighed. "But you know that Hayden was arrested?"
"Yes, m'am."
"Do you know why?"
"Because of treason?"
Helios was beginning to feel uncomfortable, standing still and so stiffly. Experimentally, he tried to move his arm, when the joint cracked loudly.
"You can sit, you know?" Faraday quirked an eyebrow at him, so beet red with emberassement, Helios took a seat by the conference table they used for the briefing earlier. "So, treason. Meaning?"
"I don't know, m'am."
Faraday closed her eyes for a moment. Then, she straightened and supported her elbows on the desk, facing Helios with her full attention.
"The man known as commander Hayden was indeed a commander, no doubts about it. However, when some time ago the Central Command had run a statistics check on all the data they had on achievements, to their surprise it turned out that commander Hayden's ship was always meeting Colterons much more often than any other squad delegated into deep space with possibility of the contact. Suspecting something fishy, they ordered my squad to investigate and, if possible, uncover the one responsible for alleged sabotage."
Helios blinked in confusion. He understood that Faraday was important rather unconsciously, so hearing about her ties to the Central Command should have felt normal. It didn't.
"At the same time, CC dispatched a reinforcements team for the Kepler, which had been deployed to go into Colteron territory. They had been switched out and my team took their place. As "the reinforcement team for the Kepler" came a squad from the Military Investigation Bureau or rather Faraday's Suicide Squad, as people call us."
Faraday smirked, seeing that Helios stiffened. As she approprietly assumed, he must have heard about that nickname and wondered.
"I have to say, getting inside was deceivingly easy. We expected at least a little bit of resistance, but none followed our arrival. Aside from small accidents, of course."
Unconsciously, she was massaging her throat, healthy now, but memory of the bruises must have been too fresh. Helios thought about Thanatos and his beaten up face, as well as Charon, who ended up in medical with a lot of complicated fractures, when he attacked red-headed Muffin.
"My code-busters easily slid through the ship's firewall which proved to be nonexistent. We extracted data that pointed us in the right direction about some alien ship, security system of which could have been the cause of the problem... when the same situation happened again! I think Castor nearly flipped, when he compared the logs from before and while we witnessed your expedition to the derelict, Helios."
"But... what exactly-"
"Do you remember the sudden flash? We ascertained that it must have been some kind of light-based brainwashing. However, everybody who went on the ship came with their medical check-up alright, so it was quite a fix." Faraday frowned, remembering the situation. "Not to mention that somebody started to sabotage our work."
"Sabotage? Again?"
"Oh no. The saboteur of the ship was Abel alone, as he had been affected on the derelict. However, it had been obvious for us that someone had been aware of the real purpose we had had and had tried to actually make the crew suspect us and collectively get rid of us."
It was Helios' turn to blink. Sure as hell he didn't remember anything like that.
"How about the harrasement complaints?" Faraday asked gently, correctly reading his expression. "For quite some time we also suspected Keeler to be involved in that incidents, but in the end he was acquitted thanks to Chronos' investigation. But when someone sabotaged all away ships, saving ours, we knew that we had to hurry."
"I remember that." Helios said, slowly, thinking about it. In his memories, he still could see Pollux and Suzaku, protecting themselves from angry mob. "But your ships were also seperated from ours and people started to wonder and all."
"They had to be. We had equipment much different from yours or the standard one, Helios."
"Really?"
"Oh, yeah." Faraday grinned. "There were a lot of changes made, when comparing to a normal starfighter, but the point is, some of our ships had ion shells equipped. That was what you saw when we fought Colterons."
Helios gasped.
"You mean-?"
"Chronos and Gasket teamed up and managed to blow up some on the Hive's power stations and that must have damaged it enough for the aliens to retreat. I didn't want to use them and well, we actually had a ban on using them, but Chronos made the decision and if I have to say, there were not many other option available at that time. Especially when certain someone disabled our shields."
"Hayden again?"
"Oh yes."
"But, why did he?"
"I didn't say that yet, did I? Well, when Hayden had been a navigator beginner, he had experienced something like Abel did. His squad had encountered a derelict ship and he had been affected by the brainwashing, be it light or sound based. The algorithm had been slightly different, that's why he was undiscovered until now, but the motive had been the same: to destroy as many ships as you can."
Helios winced.
"That's sick."
"No. Just sad." Faraday shook her head. "If someone had noticed it earlier, we wouldn't have had so much trouble to begin with. But Hayden remained undetected and he could calmly execute programmed algorithms."
"Until now? How many ships did he...?"
"Many, Helios. All too many."
"And he just let himself be apprehended?"
Helios didn't see anything funny in his question, born out of shocked incredulity, but Faraday laughed out loud.
"Of course not! His miscalculation was that there were many of us and it was unavoidable for him to loose sight of some of us one way or another. This and that we hurried. He thought he had more time, but we managed to gather the proofs before Rowena came. That was such a fortunate circumstance."
Faraday was sitting by her chair, her face supported on her entwined hands. As much as Helios relaxed after commander Maxwell had left the room, he was well aware that this one was testing him. How and what for, he didn't know and above all, he was tired of all those mysteries going on over his beaten head.
"Why are you telling me all of this, m'am?" he asked, after a moment of silence. Rising an eyebrow at him, Faraday straightened up in her chair. Somehow, she seemed disappointed.
"Well, I assumed you would be interested in it, is all. Being indirectly involved, you sure did help us some..."
"Me?"
"You did." the commander stood up and started slowly pacing in front of the conference table. As much as Helios found her gaze unsettling, now that she wasn't looking him in the eye anymore made him even more nervous. "You took care of your navigator and, by extension, mine, too. I'm grateful, so as a thank you I thought you'd like to know what was going on. My mistake. You are dismissed."
Being faced with such abrupt send-off, Helios frowned.
"So it's just... an acknowledgement?" he asked, standing up from his place. Unnamed emotions boiled in his chest, impossible to identify simply as 'rage', 'confusion', 'irritation' or 'curiousity'. With a strange urge to get to the bottom of it, he consciously ignored received order and decided to push Faraday further in her explanations. "Not a try to make me forget about something by turning away my attention to the arrest?"
Faraday, who had been watching the opoosite wall in thought, now turned to him. Her face was lit up with satisfied smile.
"So you do have a working brain behind all of that terrible hair." she said, smirking. "Well done, fighter."
With Helios watching her with eyes narrowed in suspicion, she kept talking.
"You are right and you're not. Exchange of information or, well, explanation of those was indeed an acknowledgement. I'd be happy if you treated it as such. However, at the same time I did want to not discuss a certain thing. Maybe you can guess?"
Faraday was goading him, Helios was painfully aware of that and it was the only reason why he made a try to actually think through what she wanted from him. Should the situation be any different, he would be out of here long time ago.
"Is it about Selene? And this twins' bussiness?" he asked, gruffly. Even though he made an effort to be calm in the presence of his superior, his temper took the better of him and Helios couldn't take anymore Faraday's irreverent attitude.
"Right again." Helios gritted his teeth, as she seemed mockingly impressed once more. "This 'twins' bussiness' as you call it, involves your navigator, who seems to become more important to you than an average fellow member of the crew-"
"Is this a threat?"
"And one of my navigators, a code-hacker named Carmilla. Yes, it is about their 'twins' bussiness', Helios."
"If you do anything to Selene...!"
"Why would I?" Faraday interrupted, her mockingness suddenly gone, leaving strict voice and hard lines on her face. "He was useful and I don't destroy anything that possesses some value. No, what you should be afraid is how he is going to deal with his problems now."
"What problems?" Helios barked, gripping the backrest of the chair in front of him. "What did you do?"
"You have just left the med bay, have you not?" the commander asked, suddenly changing the topic, what caused Helios to frown even futher. "have you met your navigator yet? Because I think he should still be in the med bay of the police ship."
Helios paled rapidly.
"What happened! Why is he injured!?" he was ready to turn on his heel and storm outside to find Selene, but he was caught in place. Faraday was holding his arm in tight grip, suddenly being in front of him instead of some meters away.
"He isn't. Don't panic." she said. Seeing that Helios was still agitated, but he didn't show any sign of running away, she continued. "Selene accompanies Carmilla. She is the one who got wounded during the apprehension."
"But you said you surrounded Hayden and arrested him! How is that even possible to get injured in a situation like that?" Helios shouted, disbelieving. He wanted to add something more, but stuttered and fell silent, focused on what his memory was trying to present him from the corner of his thoughts. "unless... he had a gun? Hidden somewhere?" well, he did hear a gunshot before someone knocked him unconscious. Could that be...
"Bingo. Carmilla had a datapad with her with all information proving that Hayden is behind of this. A moment earlier Castor eliminated any possibility for Hayden to take hostage, so I guess he snapped. He shot Carmilla and shortly after he was shot by Gasket. Now he is contained in a special cell, deep in the ships lower levels. It's not a pretty sight. "
"How is she?"
Faraday stared at him strangely, before answering.
"Not good. She is dying."