Midway: Chapter 36

  “Attention New Horizon crew, may I have your attention please.  This is Maharet Sengupta.”

  “As you must all be aware of by now, there is a problem on the ship.  Details are hard to come by at the moment, but we’re working on it.  You’ve probably noticed that we are currently changing course.   This is the work of an unknown person onboard, and at the moment we have no way to know where the ship is being redirected to.  We won’t be able to calculate the new vector until the thrust maneuver is completed.   Rest assured though, my daughter Dhika has calculated that it will be weeks until we have insufficient fuel to correct our course back to Haven.  One way or another, this situation will be resolved long before then.

  “Operations are currently underway to address the emergency, but due to security concerns we are unable to give much detail as to the specific nature of the threat or our specific plans.  I make this address to warn you all to be sharp, to remember your emergency training, and to be prepared for the situation to change quickly.   I am officially instituting Emergency Protocol Delta.  Please assemble the children into their classrooms and everyone on board please report to your duty station, whether or not it is your shift.  Double check your systems, head count your entire department’s staff, and please alert Johannes, Dhika, Alissa, or myself about any anomaly that you may discover in your equipment or personnel.

  “One more thing, but I wish to first caution you against paranoia.  We have no reason to suspect that any more than one individual is responsible for this situation, and there are almost three hundred people aboard this ship.  All but one is your friend, and the perpetrator is currently most likely in hiding.  Be alert, but do not be too quick to suspect your comrades.   Any and all suspicious behaviour must be reported if it is observed regardless just in case.  I must warn you though, if you are not careful you will see enemies everywhere in a situation like this.  Trust in your crewmates, trust in yourself, and we will all be okay.   We will be alright.

  “Finally, you may notice Uzodimma about the ship with Johannes.  The details of the situation will be readily available when appropriate but suffice to say, to the senior staff’s satisfaction it is clear that he was not the murderer.  We are currently operating under the assumption that the true culprit of the crime for which he was blamed, is the same person who is responsible for our current situation.  Uzodimma is doing everything he can to assist us, and is working closely with Johannes at the moment.  Do not be concerned if you see him about the ship.

  “Further details will be made available when appropriate.  Do your jobs and mind your training.  Follow your orders and we will endure.  The mission WILL survive.

  “Thank you.”

   

  “She might have given too much away in mentioning about me,” Uzodimma remarked.

  “Maybe, but at least she didn’t mention the involvement of the sims or anything specific about our plans,” Johannes replied.

  The older man had calmed down somewhat, and the two were about ready to give up on finding any new information which might reveal who their murderer or hijacker was.  They were also coming around to the reality that it ultimately didn’t matter at this point.

  “You know, he’s got to be at least a little crazy,” Uzodimma observed, “but I’m unable to see him as completely detached.  The man spoke to me Johannes, he was contemplative; he knew that when he moved on the ship I would expose him.  With his technical prowess he could have easily found a way to tidily arrange my suicide.  He’s taken control of the ship using the sims, but he could have instead simply locked himself on the bridge and vented the ship’s atmosphere, or at least threatened to in order to get what he wants.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “My point, is that despite how violent and vengeful the murder was, our hijacker seems to be at least reluctant to kill under any other circumstance.  It’s almost as though despite himself, he’s committed in some deep sense to his own twisted sense of fairness.  Maybe he’s only willing to do something bad to someone whom he feels deserves it?  Maybe he’s hoping to re-join the community once we can’t change our course back?”  

  “Well he can’t be that virtuous,” Johannes replied.  “After all, I find it hard to believe that the three people who were on the bridge when he took it are still alive.”

  Uzodimma got a half disappointed, half pained frown on his face, and then looked down.  “You’re probably right,” he conceded.  “I hadn’t considered that…”

  “Well, I’m about ready to give up on this and order the breach, how bout you?” Johannes asked.

  “I don’t think we’re going to find any more clues.  I also can’t see what difference it would make at this point if we did know who was doing this,” Uzodimma offered.

  Johannes thought a communication request to Alissa to ask what her status was, but to his surprised nothing happened.  “Oh no…   I was afraid of that.”

  “What?” Uzodimma asked.

  “My Brainchip isn’t working, is yours?”  

  Uzodimma closed his eyes for a moment and then shook his head.  “No it’s not… whoa, that’s a weird feeling, I feel so… so disconnected all of a sudden.”  It was indeed an unnerving feeling.  Since they were young they’d both had an intrinsic relationship with the technological world they lived in, and now the world felt ominously cold and dark, so… uncommunicative.  For the first time in their lives they felt as though they were in an unfamiliar place.

  “He must have killed the Brainchip system,” Johannes noted.  “I was afraid of this… we knew he had the ability to manipulate the Brainchip logs.  It only makes sense that he would do this.”   He opened his wrist scroll and clumsily tapped at the screen, attempting to manually open a commlink to Alissa, and after at first not being able to remember how and furrowing his brow in frustration, he eventually met with success and her face appeared on it.   “What’s your situation Alissa?”   Have you and Dhika made it to the bridge yet?”

   “We’re almost there,” she replied.  Her image was bobbing up and down a bit with the bulkheads of the hallway passing behind her; they were obviously on the move while she spoke.  “Dhika claims that she could bypass ordinary door lockouts, but she predicts that more extravagant measures have probably been put in place which will block her here.   We’re carrying two shotguns and a laser rifle, and we just picked up the plasma torch from Engineering.  We’re heading to the bridge now.”

  “Good work, both of you.” Johannes said. “Tell Dhika to confirm her suspicions about the locks but don’t try to actually open the doors yet.  Just see if she would be able to if given the order, then wait for us to join you.  We’re on our way now.”

  “She heard you,” Alissa’s bobbing head stated.  “We understand.”

  “I assume you two have been monitoring the motion sensors and cameras you installed outside the bridge door?”

  “Absolutely.   Nothing so far.”

  “Alright.  Oh, and in case you didn’t notice, the Brainchip system is down, so be wary of that too alright?”

  “Yeah, I noticed when I tried to answer your call.  Thanks Johannes, we’ll see you soon.”  

  “See you soon.”

   

  “Alright Dhika, give me a second and then you’re up.”  Alissa reached up and cut the power cable to the security imager in the hallway which monitored the door to the bridge at the end of the corridor.   “Alright, well that’s out.  You’re clear to work on the door, they’re blind to what we’re doing out here now."

  “Okay,” Dhika said as they approached the door panel.  “Oh shit, look at that.”

  “What?”

  “The remote cameras we set up, they’ve been replaced with dummy transmitters.  They must’ve been sending us false signals  since we left.  That means anybody could have come and gone while we’ve been away.”

   With clumsy touches to her wrist scroll Alissa opened a commlink to Johannes, who was now the one who appeared as a bobbing head on her screen.  “Johannes Dhika says that her cameras here were replaced with dummy transmitters sending out a false image of the corridor.  That means somebody could have come or gone in the meantime.”

  “It doesn’t matter now.  I’m sure it was just the hijacker himself entering the bridge.  I’m not going to bother with calling another head count though.  We figure it really doesn’t matter at this point who it is, we need to stop them no matter what,” the bobbing head said.

  “I agree,” Alissa said while looking over at Dhika who nodded her agreement as well.  “Whoever it is, we need to stop them now, before this goes any further.”

  “We’re almost there,” Johannes said, “finish checking the door locks and then wait for us.”

  “Understood.”  Alissa closed the channel.

  “Help me get this bulkhead off.”

  Alissa held the panel in place while Dhika unscrewed the fasteners keeping it flush with the wall, and then handed the screws over to her as she went.   After the sixth screw, she carefully peeled back the wall panel to reveal an intricate network of wires and circuitry.   “You know, it’ll take me a while just to figure out if I can get anywhere here…” 

  Alissa just nodded.  She was not technically trained beyond the basic systems literacy which was essential just to exist on a ship like the New Horizon.  From her perspective Dhika’s technical skills could just as easily have been magic.  Her sense of technological impotence was acutely accentuated by the fact that she could no longer activate anything via Brainchip.  There was nothing in particular she needed to control with her thoughts at the moment, and anything she might need could relatively easily be manually controlled via buttons and touchpads, but it still put her at a distinct unease.  She felt as though she were missing a limb, or maybe a sense, it was hard to tell.   Alissa watched with curiosity as one by one on about a dozen wires, Dhika carefully stripped contact spots and attached alligator clips which had transceivers embedded in their small handles.   She then sat down on the floor and leaned up against the wall before fully deploying her medium scroll and setting to work on it.  “I think I’ve encrypted the signals interface with the clips here pretty good, even with the help of all of the sims working collectively… I don’t think my encryption program could be penetrated in any less than a few days…”

  After a few minutes of vigilantly standing guard and watching Dhika tap away at her pad, Alissa’s boredom finally set in.   She set the laser rifle on its charge up cycle and had Dhika move ten meters down the hallway and away from the door, just in case.  Ten minutes later she sat herself down on the opposite side of the hallway about halfway between the door to the bridge and Dhika, with the laser rifle laid down in front of her fully charged.  She rested the shotgun in her arms, never deviating its aim away from the door.  

  Soon after, Johannes and Uzodimma appeared.  “Any luck?” Johannes asked.

  “It’s weird,” Dhika remarked in frustration.  “It’s as though I should be able to penetrate the security lock out, but just when I think I’m about to, it scrambles again.  It’s a sophisticated program, I think it’s designed to be difficult to detect… it lets you think that you’re making progress then stymies you just when you think you’re about to actually get somewhere.  I keep getting the impression that it’s just screwing with me…  It’s actually starting to get really frustrating.  Not only can I not tell you if I can do it, I can’t even tell you how long it would take me to figure that out, let alone how long it would take to actually get anywhere,” she stated flatly in frustration.

  “Well, every second we wait wastes more fuel we can never replace,” the patriarch said, stating the obvious.  “This course change continues to be an absolutely unacceptable reality which we have to act on now.”  The other three nodded their understanding.  

  Johannes gave the order.  “Okay Dhika, start cutting.”

  “Johannes, shouldn’t we get some more people up here for when we do get through?” Alissa asked.  “I mean… just the four of us and only three weapons against four sims and who knows… who or, or what else is in there?  I really don’t like those odds…”

  “I share your concern Alissa, but if this turns into an all-out firefight, well… well I shudder to think of it.  Every single life on this ship is just too valuable.   If it really comes down to that… we’ll need fifty people down here with overwhelming force and any kind of weapons they can get their hands on, and that would be a very bloody, very brutal affair.  I’m still hopeful we can resolve this situation without all that, and that I’ll be able to reason with whoever’s in there.”  

  He surveyed his motley crew and all three of them were obviously scared and on edge, though Alissa and Dhika both seemed to be hiding it well.  “I know that I’m putting all of your lives in danger with that attitude and with that choice.”  His breakdown about the injustice and horror of not having any real choices in their lives was fresh in his mind.  “We won’t proceed unless we all agree.  I’m asking each of you to pay your life debt on the chance that we can end this here and now with just us, without endangering so many other lives in the process.”

  Hesitantly, but with growing confidence and conviction, they all nodded their agreement together.  “Alright then,” he said, grateful for their consent.  

  “Let’s get this done.”   Alissa stated coldly as she turned to the door.  At that, Dhika lit the plasma torch, pulled down her welding helmet and set the plasma tip to the door, first penetrating it, and then slowly moving it across the surface into a curved shape that was to become a circular entrance.

  A few minutes later, when she was only about a quarter of a meter through her cut, the door suddenly slid open, and standing in it was the imposing figure of the Wiremu Tynes simulant, with a bulky body more than two meters tall and a broad grizzled face.  He was the perfect image of their former captain, except for the vacant expression on its face.  The simulants were designed to be perfect simulations of the real people they were based on, but the complete lack of personality or emotional expression was not only terrifying, it was somehow deeply and fundamentally disturbing.  With one flat and powerful blow from his hand to her chest, he knocked Dhika back, sending her flying backwards five full meters through the air, straight out in front of him and down the corridor.  She flew past Johannes and Uzodimma, landing beside Alissa.  While Johannes was frozen with fear, Alissa raised the fully charged laser rifle as Uzodimma dove for the shotgun on the ground beside him.

  With his other hand, the Tynes simulant raised a fully deployed large scroll which started emitting a powerful flashing of light which overloaded Johannes nervous systems and knocked him out.  The last thing Johannes heard as he lost consciousness was the unmistakable thunderous blast of a shotgun and if he’d been in a state to consider it, he would have been left to wonder if Alissa or Uzodimma had managed to get a shot off at the sim, or if it had been the sim himself with the shotgun he’d been carrying slung over his shoulder.  Before he could think such thoughts though, there was only darkness and nothingness.

   

  Maharet was in the zero gravity engineering section where the fusion core and ion engines were located, overseeing the efforts to somehow manually take control of the system but they were meeting with little success.  It seemed that all they could do to stop the course change was to entirely destroy the engines, but that was obviously out of the question.  Not only would they be unable to correct their course, it would mean that they could never slow down and would shoot right through their target solar system.  She was also keeping in contact with Johannes and taking in reports about the headcounts in the various parts of the ship which were required by the security protocol.

  She had arranged for Johannes to contact her every five minutes to report his progress, and four minutes ago he had reported that they were going to begin cutting into the door.   If something was going to happen, now was when it was likely to, and she was anxiously awaiting his next message.   Her wrist scroll flashed an incoming communication but it was not Johannes, it was the school group, one of the last places to report their head count.  It was Seth, Johannes’ son in law and the headmaster for the secondary school.

  “Everyone there Seth?”

  “No Ma’am.  We checked everywhere and then again to be sure before reporting in, I mean… none of us can believe it, there must be some other explanation…”  The poor man was obviously distraught with the burden of the news he was reporting, it was deeply wounding for him to even consider the possible implications. He hadn’t yet himself been able to find a way to believe it to be true.

  “What is it Seth?   Tell me.”  Maharet was quickly developing a grave sense of dread herself.

  “Tycho, it’s… it’s Tycho, he hasn’t shown up to his duty station at the school, and we can’t find him anywhere…”

  “Oh no…”  She terminated the communication line, and quickly tapped at the screen to initiate a communication request to Johannes, but it was too late.  There was no response.  She slumped down in her swiveling chair, exasperated.  “No… no, not Tycho… please don’t let it be Tycho,” she whispered to herself.