Dreamspinner Read online

  Laying the injector on a counter top, he wandered through a doorway into the operating theatre and stared in disbelief at the sight that greeted him.

  “Holy shit,” he cursed aloud at the writing scrawled over the walls. “This was definitely not here last time I was here.” The words had obviously been written hurriedly, with little care taken to make them legible. Each line slanted down at one end and the words got smaller towards the end of each line. What was most surprising to Tearan was that it was written in Arlenikan. Despite this, the illegibility of the words made it difficult for him to read. From the little he made sense of, he gathered that someone was frightened of something that was only referred to as, ‘them.’ There was mention of bodies being cut up, a dead child and ghosts haunting relentlessly. “Whoa, what the hell was in that injector?” Another part talked about amnesia, and Tearan’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. Someone was describing having no memories except knowing who and what he was. “Same here,” he said aloud as he read on. Whoever it was seemed to be having a bad time with the amnesia, if all the stuff about ghosts and bodies was to be believed.

  “If it’s the engineer guy, he’s not going to be much use to me with that level of paranoia going on.” Tearan shook his head as he went through into the small ward. One of the beds had clearly been slept in, the sheet hung limp, half on the floor and the small bedside locker lay on its side, spilling its contents everywhere. “Ghosts I presume?” he muttered and left the room. The next room down the corridor was the morgue and he grasped the handle to let himself in and then hesitated. A sudden frisson of fear coursed through him and then was gone before he could try to understand it. Shaking his head, he pushed the door and entered to find it very much the same as he remembered from his previous visit. There was nothing that seemed out of the ordinary, so he left.

  The isolation ward was not the same as he remembered. A huge cart labelled, ‘bed linen – soiled,’ stood by the door and he knew it had not been there during his last visit. Sniffing, he registered the strong chemical smell that hung in the air and wrinkled his nose. “I guess the psycho is a clean freak.” Knowing the only remaining room on deck six was the non-denominational temple, he registered the same flutter of emotion as when he last visited it. The room was unchanged but he decided to linger for a few minutes to try to get a grip on this new feeling. The conviction that faith was somehow important to him again filled his heart and he thought back to the new memories of the day he left his family to join the military. There was no religious aspect to those memories but he would swear in any court anywhere in the galaxy at that moment, that he was a man with a strong faith. Growling in frustration, he shook his head and left, heading for the stairs back up to deck three and the safe confines of his new base.

  At deck four, he hesitated before continuing up the stairs to deck three and looked down the corridor to his left. Although he had been here when he did his initial sweep of the whole ship, something nagged at him and he felt compelled to have another linger for a while. There was clear evidence of someone having spent a lot of time in the main engineering section. Tools, goggles, and some kind of harness lay on the mezzanine by the engine housing. Panels had been removed from various consoles and a carton of digital components lay on its side, spilling its contents onto the floor.

  “Someone’s been fiddling,” he muttered. “Probably the engineer guy. Maybe he’s fixing it so we can find out what’s happened. Where the fuck is he though?” In the engineering briefing room, he got another surprise that gave him a partial answer at least to one question. Up on the wall by the drinks dispenser, underneath where he and Mykus Romin had written their names, an arrow was drawn. Following its direction, Tearan’s eyes fell upon the digital recorder that lay on top of the drinks dispenser. Smiling, he snatched it up and switched it on.

  ‘‘Hi there. I’m Dr Soval Arma. I’m a medical practitioner and I’m also alive. Anyone have any idea what has happened here?”

  “Dr Soval Arma? That must be the psycho from the medical bay. So our only doctor is a crazy loon who’s convinced he’s haunted by cut up bodies. Just my luck.” Clicking over to record, Tearan greeted the doctor.

  “Hi there, Dr Arma, Tearan Lindo here. Sorry, I’ve no idea at all. I have started getting my memories back though. How about you guys, and where are you?”

  It sounded like a friendly enough greeting, one that invited further interaction without being gushing or taking needless risks. He had not exactly hidden his own presence, having written as much on the entry door to the security room so he was not being anti-social. There was no more to do but wait until someone decided to answer, so he would check back a couple of times per day. Back at the stairs, he studied the map of the ship. Something made him frown every time he looked at it and so far, he could not understand why. All he knew was that something about the lowest two decks dismayed him. Something was off down there and as it had not gone away or lessened at all since he awoke, he decided to pay another visit. With a resigned shrug, he trudged down the stairs.

  The red glow from the flashing warning above the shuttle bay door was visible from half way down the stairs and he was suddenly glad there was no accompanying alarm to drive him crazy. The space beyond the door was huge, it seemed a shame that it was going to waste and Tearan knew he must try to get those bay doors closed. The map of the ship showed the entire deck to be taken up with the shuttle bay, prep room, and cargo hangar, making him wonder if it had been a freighter or merchant vessel. The size of the shuttle bay seemed a little excessive for the size of the rest of the ship and this was the sort of incongruity that bothered him. Although the ship had eight decks, each was compact and he estimated the crew to be around fifty or so maximum.

  Next door in the shuttle bay prep room, Tearan stripped down to his underwear and donned one of the suits that hung along the wall. It was all very familiar, his fingers knew what they were doing as they fastened clips, checked hose connectors and adjusted straps. He was again convinced that he had done this before but the memory remained elusive, the imagery lying just out of sight beyond the fog. Once fully installed within the suit, he clipped his hose to the breather unit outlet, then put on the helmet and switched on the visor display.

  ‘WARNING – BREATHER UNIT MALFUNCTION – DO NOT USE.’ The warning flashed up right in the centre of his vision, this time accompanied by a high pitched buzzer just in case he failed to notice the bright red flashing capital letters.

  “Shit and fuck,” he hissed as he switched off the visor display and began to extricate himself from the suit. He was sweating with the effort by the time he sat down in his underwear to catch his breath and had gone through his entire vocabulary of curses and swear words at least twice. The suit had been a little snug for him, which made getting in and out something of an effort. The next suit was slightly larger and far easier to get into but his heart sank when once again the warning flashed across his visor.

  ‘WARNING – BREATHER UNIT MALFUNCTION – DO NOT USE.’

  As each unit and suit were made in one piece, it meant getting out of the suit and putting on another each time. There was no way for him to find out if the unit was functioning until he had completely donned the suit. He did try putting on a helmet without the suit and swore when the visor display announced that he had failed to fool the system.

  ‘WARNING – SUIT NOT PROPERLY SECURED – CALL FOR ASSISTANCE.’

  There was no way to avoid having to put on each suit in turn before finding out if the breather unit worked or not and by the time he took off the last of the dozen suits, each one had failed. The problems ranged from breather unit malfunctions, helmets not securing properly, perished gaskets in glove/arm connectors, damaged hoses, and various other vague ‘suit malfunction’ problems.

  “This is ridiculous,” he yelled aloud and thumped a fist onto the wall. “There’s a dozen suits here and not one of them is working? What kind of hayseed operation were they running here?” After screaming in frustra
tion and thumping the wall several more times, he sat down and put his head in his hands. When he had calmed down, he dressed and thought about the problem as calmly as he could. “Okay so none of the suits are working. Maybe the crew took all the ones that worked as they left the ship. Ships always have more suits than crew in case of damage, so it’s not unusual that there are a dozen here not working. Okay umm, think. C’mon think. None of them works but the reasons they don’t work are all different. I know I can’t repair any of them, even though I can feel recognition for wearing and operating a suit, I feel nothing at the thought of repairing one.” Before he cursed with frustration, a thought occurred to him. “I can’t, but maybe the engineer guy can. Mykus something or other, he might be able to repair one.” With renewed hope, he went along the line of suits and grabbed one. “Perished gaskets at the wrist/arm connectors would seem to be the simplest to fix. We’ll try this one first.”

  With the suit tucked under one arm, Tearan strode along to the cargo hangar and was again impressed by the size of it. Easily twice the size of the shuttle bay, the space was filled with carefully stacked cargo bins. He climbed into one of the hover carts and took a minute to familiarise himself with the controls. After ten minutes, he switched it off and climbed down, satisfied that he would have no difficulty in reaching even the highest of the cargo bins in the stacks. Hidden on the floor of one of the other hover carts was a digital cargo manifest, which he was delighted to find was fully functional. Sadly, there were no space suits amongst the cargo, but everything else he might ever need was there. He kept hold of the device and headed back to the stairs to check out deck eight.

  Leaving the suit and digital manifest by the stairs, Tearan descended to deck eight, the map of deck seven catching his eye as he did so. His left foot stopped in mid air as his eyes widened in understanding.

  “What the fuck?” he said aloud as he stepped back to the map and gave it his full focus. The plan of deck seven showed the cargo bay, the prep room and cargo hangar, but what he had not noticed before was the size of each of the spaces. Thinking back to when he had entered the cargo hangar a few minutes previously, he remembered thinking how it was around twice the size of the shuttle bay.

  “The map is wrong,” he muttered as he put a finger to it and traced the outline of the cargo bay. “It’s bigger on the map than it is really. Much bigger actually, almost four times the size of the shuttle bay, at a guess. Holding out his middle finger, he measured the two rooms as they appeared on the map and sure enough, the cargo hangar was four times the size of the shuttle bay. Running down the corridor, he flung open the door to the cargo bay and entered, turning around a full circle to get as good a feel for the place as possible. He paced it out, then ran back to the shuttle bay and paced along the corridor. It was a very rough measurement, but he proved it to his own satisfaction. The cargo hangar was only twice the size of the shuttle bay, not four times as on the map.

  “I wonder why that should be?” he mused as he sat down on the top step. Deck plans wouldn’t be made with such glaring errors. I guess they decided to cordon off some of the available space and use it for something else, maybe whatever their emergency was made the decision necessary. Maybe the survivors are hiding in there.” He leapt up and ran back to the cargo hangar and over to the far wall. If the crew had suffered some emergency and had time to construct a false wall behind which they were still hiding, then he wanted to know why they left him alone. Running the length of the wall, he yelled at the top of his voice.

  “Hey in there. Hello, can anyone hear me? I know you’re in there behind a false wall. You left me behind, assholes. Hey. Hello. Fucking answer me you morons.” He ran up and down and yelled his lungs out as he tried to get a close up view of the wall. Shelving stacked with cargo bins ran the length of the entire room along the wall, preventing him from getting right up to it, but there were no obvious doorways or hatches visible. In order to examine the wall in detail, he would need to unload the whole length of shelving. “Okay. If that’s what it takes, then that’s what I’ll do. It’s not as if I don’t have the time now is it? If I can get the engineer guy, Mykus, to fix the gaskets in that suit, I can throw stuff I won’t need out through the bay doors and make space for the stuff on those shelves. There’s loads of empty crew quarters and extra space in briefing rooms and along the corridors for all the other stuff too.” With this new plan firmly set in his mind, Tearan approached the stairs and regarded the map. The ship was oval, with the power coils, exhaust and heat dump units stuck to the sides three quarters the way down to the rear end of the oval shape. Subsequently, decks four and five were the biggest, being situated around the widest point of the oval, and each subsequent deck both above and below was slightly smaller. Deck eight was the hazardous waste store and according to his estimation of the map, was approximately two-thirds the size of the cargo hangar.

  After pacing out the hazardous waste store, he confirmed to himself that the room was approximately a quarter the size of the cargo hangar. This is something the engineer needs to see, he decided. One thing about the wall struck him immediately. If it had been constructed as a result of some emergency, then the builders were top class craftsmen. There was nothing that pointed to it having been put up in a hurry. What he could see of it looked as solid as the others and matched them in appearance. If it were not for the discrepancy on the map, he would never have noticed.

  Glad that he had allowed his instincts to guide his actions, Tearan returned to the stairs and climbed to deck seven, collected the suit and digital manifest, then climbed to deck four. In the briefing room, he dumped the suit onto the table, went over to the wall and picked up the digital recorder.

  “Mykus, it’s Tearan Lindo here. Could you repair the wrist and arm connector gaskets on the suit please. I want to get the shuttle bay doors closed but none of the suits down there work. If you can’t fix this one, there are others down there. I need one functioning suit so please help if you can. If we can get just one suit working, I can get in there and close those bay doors and we can then check out those shuttles. Maybe we could take off in one and rescue ourselves. I have made a discovery about the ship too and would appreciate your help. Can we meet up? Find me on deck three, in the security room. Thanks.”

  There was little more to do without the help of Mykus, so he picked up the digital manifest and headed back up to his base to make himself a meal. As he ate, he studied the manifest and thought about how to rearrange the stores. If he never gained access to the shuttle bay, he would need to find somewhere to store everything on that entire stack of shelves in the cargo hangar. From the manifest, all the food and items he would be using the most, were on the first two rows of shelving. He decided to move as much of the food as possible to the main kitchen, dining room, recreation room, and neighbouring crew quarters. He would do the same with cleaning materials, toiletries and anything he would use on a day to day basis. Anything to do with mechanics or ship repair and maintenance, he would take to engineering. Mykus could have input on that and anything that the two of them deemed unnecessary could be stored away in other areas of the ship. That would leave the first two shorter rows of shelving empty to receive everything from the much longer end wall shelving. He could then dismantle the racks and get close up to the wall. Even if it turned out to be a waste of time, it would give him something to do and it would be helpful having food and supplies a bit nearer to hand.

  Two hours later, Tearan puffed as he ran up the stairs two at a time. The eight decks of the ship with their connecting staircases made an excellent running track that he took little time in making full use of. The ship had two staircases situated on opposite sides of the oval hull and Tearan used one to descend, the other to ascend. Three circuits of each deck before descending to the next, then the same on the way up made a very effective cardio vascular workout. After repeating the whole procedure five times, he returned to base to lift some weights in the small gymnasium set up in a corner of the main
area. Realising that he felt at home here in the security room, he guessed that his role in the Inter-Galactic Elite Command was largely security based. He had discovered that not only was he totally at ease with guns but had an eye for detail, was a good strategist, was self disciplined, fit and strong. Not a bad set of qualities, he thought as he stepped into the shower and gave himself up to the pleasure of the hot water cascading down his body.

  Pinpoints of light stared back at him as he gazed out through the viewing screen on the bridge. Having yielded to the temptation to revisit, he sat in the Captain’s chair and stared out into the void. Feeling tiny in such a huge universe, vulnerability gripped him and pricked at his eyes as he allowed thoughts of what might happen to him if he never got off the ship, to linger at the forefront of his mind. He was well aware that all sorts of dangers lurk ready to catch even the most experienced space traveller. Despite the mountains of food in storage, no matter the warmth or safety afforded him by the life support systems, a rogue comet or wandering asteroid means a horrible death at any time. Although the life support systems all appeared to be working now, any one of them could go wrong and he would have no idea how to fix it. If Mykus were unable to keep those of the ship’s systems that appeared to be functioning, in working order, it would be a nasty end for them. Now that there was a doctor alive somewhere, they need not worry about minor injuries or illness, but if anything happened to him, neither he nor Mykus would be of use. The dangers were many but he knew almost nothing about how to overcome most of them, so he decided to keep his mind from dwelling on them. He would concentrate on more immediate needs and for the moment, that was rearranging the cargo hangar. Returning to the security room, he lay down and was asleep within twenty minutes.

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  5

  Tovis Kerral awoke and realised within five seconds that something was wrong. Not the kind of wrong that brings a disquieting knowledge of something forgotten, but the kind that makes you sick to the stomach. This was the kind of wrong that keeps you awake at night listening to the sound of your own mind worrying. It was the sort of wrong that makes you wish you were five years old again so the grown ups will sort out the problem. His head throbbed but that was not what worried Tovis. Hangovers were no strangers to him and he endured them all, most of them without complaint knowing his own over indulgence was the cause. No, this head throbbing was the kind you get when you have been very ill and reminded him of the time he accidentally ate three Jurgmata fruits and almost died. The coma had lasted three weeks, or so he had been told by those responsible for his care at the time. When he finally awoke, his head throbbed night and day for another month; a constant drilling that drove right through his temples and almost drove him mad. He hoped this headache was not going to last that long. Reaching up with both hands, he closed his eyes and massaged his temples for over a minute before opening them again.