Dreamspinner Read online

  After carefully replacing the recording device, he went down to deck five to make himself a meal. He was pleased with his accomplishment and gave himself an extra-large portion of meat to celebrate his ingenuity. As he ate, he wondered whether any of the ship’s other systems might have such inhibitors fitted. Now he knew what to look for, he would recognise it no matter where it was situated. It would not hurt to spend some time checking out the main sensor array controls and then perhaps the ballistics and weapons control after that. If he and Mykus worked together, they might get the entire ship working again. They might even be able to fly it to the nearest system. Surely if they pooled their knowledge and experience, they could get the ship moving in some fashion? Then he remembered in one of his messages, Tearan said he thought he had navigation skills. Between the three of them, they could fix this, he postulated.

  Not wanting to waste any more time now that there might be a possible way out of this strange situation, he headed up to deck three as soon as he finished his meal. The main sensor array governor was completely alien to him, but that did not deter him for more than a moment. After giving the console and its bank of switches, dials, and levers, a quick once over, he realised none of it meant anything to him. Unperturbed, he sat down on the floor and ripped off the repair access panels.

  “Wow,” he muttered at the mass of components, tubes, wires, and connections. For a moment, his confidence vanished and he almost changed his mind. The dizzying mass of guts inside the body of the sensor array governor was so unlike anything he had worked with before that he suddenly doubted the logic of the whole idea. After a moment of hesitation, he shook his head and remembered the inhibitor components. “All I have to do is look for something the same as the thing I removed from the comms,” he reminded himself, “and ignore everything else. C’mon buddy, you can do this.”

  As he had done on the bridge, Tovis gradually worked his way into the body of the sensor array governor, searching for the same three components as the ones he found in the comms. After three hours, his body ached, as did his head, and he was thirsty. Carefully extricating himself from the body of the sensor array, he wiped a hand across his brow and decided to finish for the day. He would start again refreshed after a few hours’ sleep. With a groan, he stretched his back and rotated his shoulders a few times, then walked back to the stairs. A hot shower would help his muscles relax, he thought as he stripped his clothes off.

  Once dressed in a change of clothes, he made his way to deck five and the recreation room to watch a couple of movies. Tovis loved movies. He was a thinker, a worrier, and sometimes found it difficult to stop his mind from working at top speed. At such times, he found himself craving movies. The often rather shallow and unsophisticated nature of them allowed the deeper levels of his mind to switch off and get some much needed rest. He found even the dullest of movies very therapeutic to watch and never criticised them as he often heard others doing. To him, it was the action of watching that he enjoyed, not the subject of his attention. They were a form of healing meditation for him. After gathering a plate of snacks and a drink, he settled down and flipped through the movie library.

  Waking refreshed and with hope soaring in his heart, Tovis was ready to get back to the sensor array. The hope, the need for success, swept through his mind as he imagined seeing the lights on the control panel come to life before his eyes. For five hours, he was carried along on a wave of optimism. When his physical discomfort became too great, the hope began to struggle. His ass was cold and numb from sitting on the floor and his neck ached from craning it at all angles to peer inside the body of the console. All that discomfort and he was only a quarter the way into the huge mass of wires, tubes, connections, and components. After taking a break for something to eat and drink, he wandered along to the security room to find Tearan, then down to the main engineering section in search of Mykus. Having failed to find either of them, he went down to deck six to find the doctor but the place was deserted. His mind finally had to allow the thought he had been avoiding, to enter his consciousness and demand attention.

  “Where can they be?” he asked himself aloud as he climbed back up the stairs. “Why can I never find them and why do they never find me?” No answers came and the questions bothered him. Being honest with himself, he admitted that he had been wondering about it for a while but did not want to face it. “It’s not as if they can disappear, we’re on a space ship for fuck’s sake. We all know each other is around. Both Tearan and Mykus have mentioned getting together, so why have we not yet done it?” A thread of paranoia wound itself around Tovis’ heart and clung there. Now that he acknowledged the strangest aspect of this entire strange experience, those unanswered questions raced around his head, dominated his thoughts, and sapped his optimism.

  Feeling unsettled and pessimistic once again, he decided to channel some of the negative energy and work out in the small gymnasium he remembered seeing in the security room. If Tearan returned, it would give them a chance to say hello, exchange experiences and information, maybe even formulate a plan of action together. After lifting some weights, he went for a run and thought about his life as he ran along corridors and up and down the staircases. His early life in Deep Space Orphanage 1740 was not marred by cruelty or abuse of any kind, but it lacked the sort of connection that only loving parents can give a child. During his lifetime, he knew many people with memories of terrible cruelty or outright neglect as children. He was well aware that not all parents are able to love their children unconditionally. Having missed the undivided attention of parents and a family, he always yearned for it.

  There were times when he considered the option of searching out his natural parents, but the possibility of them rejecting him a second time always made him hesitate. As he ran along the corridors of the space ship, he wished very much that he had searched for them. Now that his survival was not guaranteed, the absence of answers to those questions about his childhood was an aching void. He did not want to die with that void still empty and decided that if he did survive, he would seek them out and get those answers. The people who ran the orphanage were kind, but the life was by necessity a little regimented. This was largely because there were three hundred and forty two children being raised there at any one time. Tovis understood and did not blame them for any lack of individual attention he experienced. Quite the opposite in fact. Being the only thing approaching a family, it angered him when he heard people dismissing the orphanage system as flawed. “It might not be perfect,” he mused, “but it did alright by me.”

  There were several times during his dubious career, when large sums of money came his way, all of which he anonymously donated to the governing body of the Inter-Galactic Deep Space Orphanages. They took him in as a newborn, raised him, educated him, secured employment for him, and equipped him for life as an adult as best they could. They did it all without ever beating him or abusing him in any way and until his career choice demanded that he be a little less visible, they kept in touch with him regularly. Tovis was grateful and despite feeling he missed out by not having loving parents, he knew without doubt that he had been raised by people who genuinely cared.

  Shaking his head to dispel the melancholic mood, he ran up to his room on deck two for a shower.

  “I have to concentrate on getting away from here,” he muttered as the hot water cascaded down his back. “I can think about my life later. For now, getting off this crate is my first priority.”

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  9

  Tearan stood in the cargo hangar and examined the long racks of shelving. His task was to rearrange the stores to gain access to the long wall at the back of the large space. It seemed obvious to move all foodstuffs and related stores to the kitchen and dining room for storage. Food, drinks, condiments, crockery, cutlery, cleaning materials, and laundry products, all would be better stored in the kitchen and dining room itself. Everything would be on hand for easy resupply and there was plenty of space in the recreation
room next door for any overspill.

  “Okay, let’s do this,” he said as he walked over to the hover loaders. After noticing that one of the vehicles appeared to be missing, he frowned. He must have remembered wrong, he decided as he hopped into the nearest and started it up. Maybe Mykus has one, he thought as he manoeuvred it alongside the first of the huge storage racks. Before beginning the task of rearranging the storage, he spent an hour removing all but one of the tables in the dining room, leaving plenty of room to stack everything. Having spent several hours studying the digital manifest, he made a plan so that everything would be stored in a logical manner. This would make sure everything would be easily accessible and should help ensure nothing essential was lost or forgotten.

  Specially sealed crates of preserved meat, fish, shellfish, and poultry went up first and were stored together in one area of the room. Next came crates of preserved vegetables and fruit, which he stored separately from the meat. Dried protein chunks, herbs, spices, powders, and sauces. Baking ingredients, cereals, freeze dried and powdered juices, all were stored according to their purpose and frequency of use. Anything that might be used more often was placed in front of those things used more infrequently. As he worked, Tearan entered everything into a brand new manifest so he had a running account of everything. There was no hurry to get it done quickly, time was plentiful and he wished to fill it as much as he could, so he took his time and made sure everything was done properly.

  Cleaning and laundry materials were stored next door in the recreation room, as were personal washing necessities. All stock connected with the auto snack and drink dispensers were stored with the various machines. He did not bother to supply the machines in the senior officers’ briefing room and observation lounge as they would not be used too often. With only three people on board, Tearan supposed everyone would be happy to stick to using the ones in the dining room, recreation room, and engineering briefing room. If they did complain, he would not mind fetching more supplies for the others, as well as those in the security room, as and when they were needed. Once the dining room was filled, he stored all the extra stock in the nearest of the staff quarters along the corridor. By the time all foodstuffs had been moved, three of the staff quarters were filled to the ceiling. Tearan guessed that they could all live to a good standard for at least five years, longer if they were careful. That was assuming rescue never came of course, which he decided to dismiss as impossible.

  As he laboured, memories floated back and he wallowed in the relief as each one came back to his mind like missing loved ones and slotted into place. Many times during the day, Tearan laughed aloud as he remembered some of the antics he and his friends got up to during their seven years military training. The officer in charge of Tearan’s squad, a strict disciplinarian but fair judge quickly earned all the boys’ respect. There was no particular single moment when he was aware of having left boyhood behind; no one moment when he knew he was finally a man. Instead, his was a gradual transition into manhood and when he returned to his parents at the end of those seven long years, the boy they had waved goodbye to was gone. In his place was someone who looked his father in the eyes like a man, a man who his father rapidly came to respect. Tearan saw combat during his seven years but his parents knew better than to question him. His father remembered his own seven years and the traumatic battle that claimed ten of his own squad, leaving him the only man standing amongst ten corpses and held his questions back. His mother remembered the way her husband’s eyes would cloud whenever she asked him about his time, the way he would shake his head and say nothing more than, “We will not speak of it my love,” and held her tongue as she embraced her son.

  Memories floated back as Tearan worked and by the time he sat down to a meal after finishing work for the day, he felt whole for the first time since waking up aboard the ship. Like welcoming an old friend back into his arms, he got to know himself anew and decided that he liked the man he found. The memories from his early years were strong and vibrant, as if he were remembering them from just days ago. Oddly, the more recent memories, those from the previous five years of his life had a hazy quality that made them more like dream images than memories. They were there but felt almost like the memory one has of a movie. You can remember what you have seen but there is no personal connection with the images. Then there was the woman.

  Her face floated through Tearan’s mind and despite not having any concrete memories of her, he felt a strong conviction that she had been a part of his life somehow. As he tried to fix upon the image with his mind, it wriggled away and the more he chased her, the quicker she escaped him. It was frustrating and his heart pounded with irritation at not being able to fill in what he felt sure was an important part of his life. The only thing he was sure of was that she was important to him at some time, and that she was gone. How or why she was gone was a mystery, but Tearan knew in his gut that she had a major impact on his life, by her presence and by her leaving. As he ate, he suddenly felt that perhaps it would be best if he never got those particular memories back.

  Tearan awoke after a night of troubled dreams. Terror coursed through him as he ran, his feet heavy as lead seeming to conspire to slow him down. Angry voices followed close behind and he became terrified for his safety. Darkened streets gave way to wasteland and derelict buildings, which quickly became open fields and long matted tussocks of grass that snagged his ankles and grabbed at his feet. Leaping a river, the icy water shocked his bare feet, but still he ran, knowing his very life depended upon it. Trees loomed in the dark and he flew into their protective arms, desperate to find cover in which to hide from the throng on his heels that bayed for his blood. Leaping roots and fallen trees, Tearan raced through the undergrowth, following no particular direction or plan. All at once, a searing pain tore through his thigh and he fell, howling in agony as the voices caught him up. Dead leaves cushioned him as he wrapped his arms around his head, screamed in pain and felt himself surrounded by his pursuers.

  The trees faded, to be quickly replaced by a deep circular pit in which he was held captive. The same angry voices yelled at him from the rim of the pit, twenty feet above. His naked body shivered, as much from fear as cold, his feet bound to stout wooden posts by restraints that bit into his skin painfully. Icy water sprayed down from above, a constant freezing mist that chilled him through to the marrow. Angry voices screamed from above and fingers pointed down at him from the darkness. Not knowing why he was being held, nor what he was supposed to have done, he cried and begged for mercy, waking with tears fresh on his cheeks. He sat up in bed, relieved that it had been nothing more than a nightmare.

  Over breakfast, he decided that his nightmare was most likely a result of finding himself alone aboard the space ship. That, coupled with the influx of memories the day before must have upset him, he decided. This was obviously a sign that his mind was getting over whatever trauma had befallen everyone and he was relieved beyond measure. It felt like a huge weight lifting from his shoulders and hope coursed through him. He dared to hope that he might get off the ship after all, that if he and Mykus worked together they might get the ship working again so they could call for help. With fresh hope, he got up and headed down to the cargo hangar.

  Tearan stopped as soon as he entered the large space and knew something was different. For several moments he stood and focussed his attention on the room, an instinctive knowing deep inside his gut telling him that something was out of place. Just as he was about to shake his head and assume he was imagining things, his gaze fell upon the hover loaders that stood against the far wall.

  “What the fuck?” he muttered, his brow creasing into deep furrows. He walked over to where the vehicles stood, counting them repeatedly but always getting the same result. “There was one missing yesterday.” He spent the entire previous day using one of the loaders, driving it up and down stairs and along the corridors on deck five and not once had he encountered anyone else using another vehicle. If Mykus or anyone el
se were using a loader, either they would have heard him on his, or he would have heard them on theirs. Not once had he been aware of any odd noises that might have signalled a hover loader in use elsewhere and the longer he thought about it, the odder it seemed. Finally, he had to admit that something about it was off. With a scratch of his head, he climbed aboard the nearest loader.

  His focus for the next few hours was to move as much as possible from the long wall of shelving and put it onto the shorter rows, into the space created by moving the foodstuffs. In order for everything to be easily accessible, he was careful to mark down the changes in the digital manifest as he worked. If Mykus should need a component, wire, tool, or connector in an emergency, knowing where to lay their hands on it quickly might mean the difference between life and death. Tearan realised how grave the situation could quickly become, so he took the trouble to list everything accurately. By the time he stopped for a mid-day meal, all the available space on the short rows of shelving was filled. The next obvious task was to move the crates of medical supplies down to the medical bay where it belonged. This would create more space for engineering stuff.