Dreamspinner Page 8
Once he had managed to make himself an acceptable meal, he sat down and thought about his situation. What he needed were lists. Tovis loved lists, they helped him keep his priorities in order, helped him focus when things were dangerous, which was quite often when working as a hired gun. Some people called him an assassin, but he did not like that title. It was inaccurate for a start, for often there was no cause for him to kill anyone. Sometimes he only needed to rough someone up a bit, break a few bones here and there to get what he wanted. Most of his jobs entailed threatening someone with violence until they gave up information, money, or something else of that nature, but now and again he was hired to play the role of ‘karma fairy’ as he put it. Rich folks tend to hold grudges, he thought as he ate, which always means a good payday for him. People tend not to complain about the cost when passion is coursing through their veins.
People’s need for vengeance afforded Tovis Kerral a good lifestyle. One such job usually paid five times as much as one of his ‘information gathering with menaces’ jobs ever did and it was just such a job that got him into the business. Back then, he was hired security for a gem mine owner on Lowembral 2. His boss paid well but often hinted to Tovis that he would like him to give services beyond his official job description. When the mine owner's daughter was raped, her father offered Tovis a huge sum to pay the guy back and he accepted. Once he had stepped over that line, it was impossible for him to return and although he had never wanted to end up doing that kind of work, he did try to stick to some sort of moral code.
A few jobs had been turned down flat and Tovis carried the scars to prove it. When you’re a hired gun, the people who offer you jobs tend not to like it when you turn them down and there are always more guys with lower moral standards willing to take your place. Right back at the beginning of his shadowy career, he decided never to take a job that involved violence to anyone he considered a good guy, women, children, or anything that would result in innocent people suffering hardship. More times than he was happy with, Tovis had been approached by jilted husbands or lovers wanting him to kill the offending women, and one wanted their year old twins killed alongside her. Another, the owner of a water treatment equipment manufacturer who had been beaten to a huge contract by a rival firm, asked him to poison the water in a large reservoir that would mean thousands of people would have died, so the rival would get the blame. Tovis was shot for turning that job down and almost lost a leg. Six months later, after several operations and painful rehab, he enjoyed paying him back and later heard that his employees were very happy when their boss disappeared while out sailing one summer day.
Tovis knew there was a large price on his head and sometimes wished his life had gone in a different direction. There were a couple of occasions he had been tempted to hand himself in to the law enforcers, but he knew he would probably end up with the death penalty, which would not allow him to make any sort of amends. Secretly, he blamed his childhood for his later life going off the rails. Although born on Arlenika Prime to Arlenikan parents, they were young and ill equipped emotionally to care for a child and handed him over to the authorities to be cared for. Eventually, he ended up in Deep Space Orphanage 1740, where he remained until his fourteenth birthday, when they set him up with the statutory three years life skills training. Despite knowing why his parents had given him up and that it ensured he was well cared for, he still felt abandoned and angry and probably always would.
When he finished eating, he thought back to his last conscious memory before waking up alone in a strange room inside a strange and empty space ship. The last thing he remembered was waiting by the side of a night time street for his contact to show up with payment for the job he had completed. After successfully bribing the cute red head with a large amount of money to keep quiet about who the father of her child really was, he was waiting for the politician’s personal assistant to arrive with the rest of the money he was owed. Tovis always insisted on half the money when he was hired, with the rest on completion and it always worked for him. He did not remember if the man ever turned up, for his memory became blank while he was waiting for him and his next awareness was waking up in the room on board the ship.
From out of nowhere, his reminiscences vanished as he became aware of the heavy presence of someone behind him. Time seemed to slow as Tovis registered the subtle feeling of someone’s energy having entered his own body’s energy field and reached for his guns. In one smooth movement, he rose from the chair, sending it flying to one side with a kick as he turned. He stood, both guns ready as he stared at the empty dining room and waited for his breathing to calm. After turning a full circle, he searched the kitchen and entire dining room area, but found himself as alone as ever.
“What the fuck is going on here?” he whispered aloud. His heart thudded in his breast and he took long slow breaths to calm it. “Either someone is fucking with me, or this ship is haunted.” Not being a believer in the supernatural, he dismissed that option right off and chose to assume someone was playing with his nerves. “It’s probably whoever brought me here trying to freak me out.” Guessing that some rich businessman or influential politician was laughing his balls off watching the whole thing on hidden cameras, he raised one finger and turned another full circle to make sure wherever the hidden cameras were, the asshole got the message.
The hot water was pleasant to his stiff shoulders and neck, so he allowed himself extra time to enjoy the shower. Having decided to use the room he awoke in as his own quarters, he secured the door by taking the key card slot apart and disconnecting one of the wires. It would not open without him first reconnecting the wire, so no one would be able to gain entry and murder him as he slept. After a few hours’ sleep, he would begin trying to fix the ship’s comms system and hope to be able to send a message to get help. He had many contacts to call on for a favour, so he would be able to avoid having to call the authorities who might recognise him. Even if he were not able to get anyone to help him out, he would address the problem if and when it arose. For now, he needed some sleep.
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6
Mykus frowned as he listened to the contents of the recording device he found on top of the drinks dispenser in the engineering briefing room. Three new messages had appeared.
“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?”
“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?”
“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.”
A space suit sat on the briefing room table and Mykus went over to examine it. The wrist/arm connector gaskets Tearan said, so he took the connectors apart and examined them. They were fine as far as he could tell and he frowned. Taking off his pants, shirt, and boots, he donned the suit and switched on the visor display.
‘WARNING – WRIST/ARM CONNECTOR GASKETS PERISHED – DO NOT USE.’
Sure enough, the suit claimed the gaskets were faulty. With a shrug, Mykus took off the suit, dressed, and wandered next door to the storeroom. Whoever had been responsible for overseeing the engineering storeroom should have been sacked, Mykus thought as he wandered around the untidy room and decided to rearrange everything when he had the time. After twenty minutes, he found a carton of gaskets and ripped it open, took two and walked back to the briefing room. Fitting them took no more than a cou
ple of minutes and when he donned the suit once more to check them, deep furrows creased his brow.
‘WARNING – FILTER VALVE 14 NON FUNCTIONAL – DO NOT USE.’
Without bothering to get dressed, Mykus marched back to the storeroom in his underwear, mumbling curses with the frustration. He remembered seeing a box of filter valve 14’s during his search for the gaskets, so he was able to go right to them. This time, the fitting took almost a half hour, but he eventually climbed into the suit for a third time, fully expecting to get a green light and a beep to tell him it was ready for use.
‘WARNING – SUIT BREECH – DO NOT USE.’
“What the actual fuck?” he snapped aloud, banging his gloved hand on the table. “Does nothing work in this bucket of bolts?” Fuelled by anger, Mykus strode down to deck seven in his underwear and dragged another suit from the rack, hauling it back up the stairs to the engineering briefing room on deck four. A couple of minutes later, after swapping the breather units over, he donned the new suit and switched on the visor display.
“WARNING – BREATHER UNIT MALFUNCTION – DO NOT USE.’
The scream of anger echoed around deck four and by the time he finished thumping his fists on the table, there were several dents in the dark stained wooden surface. “What the fuck is going on here? Why the fuck did someone bring me here? Get me the fuck off of this shit crate before I go mad,” he screamed, his frustration pouring from him unchecked. Sitting down, he dropped his head into his hands. “And why the fuck can’t I remember anything?” he whimpered and burst into tears. When his emotion was spent, Mykus dried his eyes and stood. Still wearing the suit, he left the room and trudged back down to deck seven, dragging the other suit behind him. There was something weird going on with the suits and his engineer’s mind refused to let it go. He wanted to understand, to fix it and would spend as long as necessary trying.
The large expanse of the shuttle bay seemed benign as Mykus peered through the window in the door, the flashing warning quickly getting on his nerves. Two shuttlecraft lay within and he wished he could hop aboard and fly out through the bay doors and take his chance in open space. Someone might stumble upon him, a freighter or liner perhaps, but at least he would be doing something other than rotting on board this becalmed ghost ship. Although the two shuttles where less than a hundred yards from him, they might as well have been a light year away. Without a working suit, getting to them was impossible. Tearan’s message said he wanted to get the bay doors shut and Mykus’s next thought was about that.
“I wonder if there’s another way to get them shut,” he mused as he wandered through to the prep room and began working on the suits and breather units. For hours he worked, trudging up to the engineering storeroom on deck four several times, but his mind was occupied on alternative ways to get those bay doors shut. While taking a break to have a meal, he mused on the problem. By the time he dragged himself back upstairs for the eighteenth time, having determined that no combination of suit and breather would work, he thought he knew a possible answer.
After a shower, he wandered along to the briefing room and sat down with a drink. “There has to be a contingency plan to get the bay doors closed in an emergency,” he thought aloud. “I can’t believe a ship would not have an alternative method of getting them shut, or open come to that, if access to the shuttle bay control panel is not possible. I’ll check in the main engineering section for an emergency control switch or something.” When his cup was empty, Mykus decided to find Tearan Lindo and tell him about the suits, so he got up and wandered to the stairs.
‘Inter-Galactic Elite Command, Unit 389C4 Headquarters. T Lindo Commanding Officer.’
“What the hell is the Inter-Galactic Elite Command anyway?” he muttered as he read Tearan’s scrawled message. “Sounds military to me.” After knocking three times and calling out, he returned to the briefing room and snatched up the digital recorder.
“Hi, Tearan, Mykus here. I spent all day checking all the suits and none of them will work no matter what I try. It’s weird, they should work. I reckon whatever happened here fried their computer governing systems or something. I’m going to try to find another way to shut the bay doors, there has to be an emergency system somewhere. I came by and knocked on your door but got no reply. You can find me in room eighty-eight, deck five, if I’m not in the main engineering section. I’m interested in whatever it is you’ve found out about the ship by the way.”
He put the recorder down and was about to leave when he realised he had not acknowledged the doctor, Soval Arma.
“Hi Doctor Arma. Do you have anything to help us get our memories back?”
Mykus went down to deck five and through to the recreation room, intending to spend an hour at one of the gaming tables before going to bed and noticed someone had been fiddling with the vidicom movie library digital console. The back had been ripped off and various components lay discarded on the table top. “Tearan didn’t say he knew about electronics,” he muttered as he tapped the screen to test it out. His eyebrows shot to the top of his forehead in surprise when the screen burst into life and he grinned as he flicked through the large library of movies.
Two hours later, he dragged himself to his room and fell into bed. His sleep was a dreamless void which neither refreshed nor relaxed him and he awoke heavy headed and lethargic. After a hot shower, which helped wake him a little, he went to the kitchen to make breakfast. Today’s schedule was to investigate whether the shuttle bay doors could be operated from engineering, or anywhere else aboard other than the shuttle bay itself. There was little doubt in his mind that such a system would exist on board, but he was not confident it would be functioning when he found it. The futile hours spent fiddling with the suits had sapped his optimism and a blanket of depression hung around his shoulders. With a huge effort of will, he got up and headed to the main engineering section.
Finding the shuttle bay emergency back up control was not difficult. Mykus was standing by the panel flicking switches within fifteen minutes of entering the engineering section. His problem was that like everything else not connected with any of the life support systems, it did not work. The floor of the engineering section was not only hard on his buttocks, but cold too and he shuffled his backside to get comfortable. Leaning forward, he peered inside the body of the console, the discarded access panel lying by his side. A mass of wires, tubes, connections, and components seemed to mock him as he tried to find something he recognised with which to orientate himself. Once he found it, he was able to follow the wires and connections along and make sense of the whole thing.
It had taken Mykus an hour and a half to make enough sense of the mass of wires and connections so that he was able to confidently say what each bit was for and it all seemed to be in first rate condition. There was nothing obviously broken or missing, no burned circuits, no blown components, and no loose wires. The next two hours were spent carefully following each wire, connection, and cable along until it disappeared into the main engineering conduit behind the wall. As he sat and ate a light lunch, he knew the only thing to do next was to try to follow the connections along in the conduit until they disappeared through into the engineering crawlspace that he knew should lie behind the first of the three hulls that make up the body of the ship. Like nesting cups, Mykus knew the ship would have been constructed with three hulls, one inside the other. Between the first and second would be a narrow walkway for use by maintenance crews and engineers. The second and third hulls would be separated by a layer of gas to insulate the interior from the stygian cold of space. His next thought was to wonder how he knew all this.
“I seem to be getting something of a memory back.” This was both a thrill and a relief and he grinned from ear to ear as he got up and stretched his back.
After his meal, Mykus went straight back to work, ripping the conduit access panels from the wall and tracing the path of each wire within. His keen eyes looked for breaks, splits in the protective sheathing, scorches th
at might indicate a burn out, even deliberate cuts but everything appeared to be in perfect condition. He traced the wires along through four conduit access panels before the whole thing turned through ninety degrees and headed towards the floor. After ripping up the floor level conduit access panels and examining the contents, relief washed through his heart. The floor conduit contained the bundles from all the engineering consoles and workstations, which joined the main conduit access tube at intervals, much like veins and arteries joining a spinal column. He was delighted that whoever built the ship had taken the trouble to ensure that the bundles were bunched and wired with different colours for each of the workstations and consoles. This would make the job of identifying which of the bundles originated from the shuttle bay emergency back up control, easy.
“At least someone did their job right,” he muttered as he delved into the mass with careful fingers.
Mykus tore into the pile of hot vegetables, closing his eyes with appreciation as he chewed. After a long day, he had traced the wires all the way from the console to the access port that led through into the engineering crawlspace. Sure now that the problem did not lie within the main engineering section or the emergency shuttle bay back up control console itself, he pondered on his next move. He now had the unenviable task of continuing to trace the wire bundle along inside the engineering crawlspace, all the way to the shuttle bay itself if necessary. The task was a laborious one rather than difficult, involving creeping along the narrow walkway, climbing down between decks to deck seven, then around to the shuttle bay itself. The wire bundle would then disappear through another access port into the shuttle bay access conduit, which would only be accessible from inside the shuttle bay itself. If there were no obvious problems with any of the wires or connections along the way, he knew they were stuffed.