phil jones2 (48 page)

With a flip of a few buttons she found herself in, and moments later the progress bar vanished and the sequence was hers. Now to get away from here and...

'That's far enough.' a croaking voice came from the doors as they slid open. 'We have been monitoring your progress, and unless you have an inexplicable death wish it is clear to me that our systems are not under any threat... other than espionage.'

Annika froze in her tracks, scanner in hand and eyes looking at the duct. There was no way she was going to make it back to the ship and blast off, her sensors had told her that wasn't an option with all the Voravians loitering around. She had hoped to find Smith or divine another exit somehow, but both had been a faint hope. She had to key the ignition sequence now before the Voravians could get their claws on...

The scanner exploded in her hands.

Oh.

'You will come with us now, Lieutenant Annika.' The Translator said, disappointment more than anger clear in his voice.

What choice did she have?

Chapter 46

! ! !

T
ime is of the essence they say, and as the ship floated dead in space, abandoned by two escape pods and with only asteroids for company it could be argued that this wasn't a very productive use of its time at all.

Except that this poor abandoned ship wasn't quite as abandoned as aforementioned. Its former crew may have thought it so, but they had forgotten one individual.

'Hello?' Doctor Samej called into the darkness. 'Hello?'

The ship's computer was decidedly rude in refusing to answer him.

'Ground control to Major Tom? Can you hear me Major Tom?'

The continual lack of response left Samej's shoulders slumping, he truly was alone in this darkness.

Almost.

Making his way hesitantly through the darkness, Samej could tell the distance of the various walls and doors by how long it took the squeaks of his clown shoes to reverberate off them. Ears to his hearing, for earing so well. He thought this pointlessly to himself, given that there was nobody to subject his punning ways to. Oh sweet crackers on a sofa he was lonely. In fact, he didn't have crackers or a sofa for that matter. Somehow, things had just managed to get worse.

'Why is nobody here?' Samej wailed, which elicited a beeping noise at the end of the corridor.

He squinted his eyes forward, and in spite of his best efforts they did not tiptoe out of his skull and investigate their surroundings. This was most disappointing, the research still wasn't complete then.

His spindly legs made their way forward instead to the light glowing panel in the darkness from which the beeping had come from. Nothing jumped out and devoured him in the process, much to his surprise. As a result his eyes were allowed to peruse the text that scrolled across the screen.

AUDIO DISABLED, VISUAL ONLY.

'The audio needs crutches?' Samej asked the panel.

AUDIO DISABLED, VISUAL ONLY. The panel continued to inform him with exceptional consistency.

'How can it be visual only if I can't see anything?' Samej wailed, his arms flailing around in the dark and hitting him in the face.

The letters changed, though whether they did so because they understood his plight was questionable at best.

AUDIO CAN ONLY BE ENABLED FROM THE MAIN COMPUTER.

The main computer? That was all the way up in the cockpit. How was he meant to get there in the dark?

Faint arrows appeared on the floor, offering scant illumination as the door slid open.

After Samej had clambered down from the ceiling and his heart rate resumed something close to its normal function, he eyed the screen with a confused look on his face. He hadn't issued any orders to the computer... had it read his mind?

A single word came up on the screen.

NO.

'Oh, okay then.' Samej said, starting to follow the arrows and feeling slightly more comfortable about the whole situation.

YOU'RE WELCOME.

He decided that now would probably be a good time to go and follow some arrows, given that they weren't going to follow themselves. Well, actually upon closer inspection it did look like they were pointing to each other, so he supposed they were following themselves. Clever little arrows.

Semaj decided to join in with the whole following deal, given that according to the terminal it would lead him directly to the cockpit. The luminescence from the friendly little arrows allayed his fears somewhat, though he made a conscious effort to avoid staring into any darkened corners.

The sliding doors were the biggest ordeal, every time they slid open he found himself either in a foetal position or clinging to the ceiling. He had tried chucking one of his clown shoes at it to open the door but to no avail.

So it was that a shaken and exhausted Doctor Semaj made it to the cockpit of the ship, and finally came face to face with the main computer.

'Hello?' he called out to the room as the lights came on with a strange thrumming noise. 'Is there anybody in there?' he paused for a moment. 'Just nod if you can hear me... is there anyone home?'

'I cannot nod as I lack the material form in order to do so.' a pleasant female voice informed him. 'Is there something I can help you with, Doctor Semaj?'

Semaj scratched his frazzled head and stared at the space and rock tumbling by the now-active viewscreen. 'Where is everyone?'

The screen switched to escape pods being ejected in considerably less rocky space. Ah, they had abandoned him for some reason.

'The crew ejected the escape pods and ordered the ship to enter standby mode and hide in this asteroid field to avoid detection.'

Well, that made absolutely no sense. Why would they abandon the ship if nobody had detected them in the first place? He asked as much to the computer.

'Reason unknown.' the voice informed him.

Samej looked around the cockpit in despair. How was he supposed to work all this equipment by himself? Actually, how was he supposed to work any of this equipment? He was a doctor, not a multi-purpose... thing.

That sounded better in his head.

'The ship may be fully automated by a neural computational link that approximates a facsimile which can work effectively with the cortical implant.'

Semaj blinked. His cortical implant. That was how the computer was reading his mind the whole time! He didn't pretend to understand the rest of it.

'I like cheese.' he hesitantly told the computer. 'Does that help?'

The computer nodded inside Semaj's cortical implant. 'You also like cake.'

Semaj clapped his hands together, situation forgotten. 'There's cake? I love cake!'

A distinct lack of cake appeared at his command, which suggested that there was an absence of cake.

'Sadly with the replicators offline it is impossible for cake to be generated at this time.'

Semaj mused over this. 'So what you're saying is that your suggestion of cake may be false?'

Silence descended upon the room, as if a great weariness had just taken form, come through the viewscreen and plonked itself in the Captain's chair without asking.

'While cake is off the menu, it may help with the neural link.' the floating cheesecake informed him.

The good Doctor blinked. A floating cheesecake?

'What the... where did you come from? Why do you look so delicious? Why are you floating?' he spluttered, each question becoming more exasperated.

'After scanning your cortical implant it was decided that this form would be most suitable for the integration of your mind with the computational system.'

Doctor Samej wiped away the metaphorical weariness from the Captain's chair and rooted his posterior to the rather large dents in the cushioning. 'It looks like I'm in charge then.' he said.

'Affirmative.'

Samej stared out into the space field with all the floating rocks as the equally floaty cheesecake joined his side. 'Steady as she goes.' he commanded, pointing at the viewscreen with a skinny finger and waiting for things to sort themselves out.

'Captain Samej, we cannot go steady without the Engineering section activated.'

He tugged at the whiskers of his currently green and pink moustache. 'Activate the Engineering section and then go steadily.'

'Negative, Captain Samej. The Engineering section must be activated manually.'

The Doctor-turned-Captain winced. 'You mean I have to go all the way back out there in the dark?'

'Negative, Captain Samej. Minimal lighting has resumed to guide your path.' the floating cheesecake informed him, a hint of impatience creeping into its cream.

'Okay! Okay!' he wailed, swinging his arms through the cheesecake and trying his harded to ignore the pang of hunger in his stomach. 'It's just you and me cheesecake, so I'll go down and turn on Engineering and then we can get out of here.'

'Negative, Captain Samej...' the cheesecake began.

'But you just told me I had to do that!' Samej half-screamed.

'Negative Captain Samej, your task remains the same. Your assertion that it was just you and this computational system was in error.'

'Wait... what? Are you trying to tell me that one of the crew is still on-board the ship? Why didn't you contact them then?'

'Negative, Captain Samej.' the now-familiar mantra of the computational cheesecake said. 'None of the crew aside from yourself is present on the vessel. The life form has not been identified.'

The Captain's eyes widened. 'You mean to say we have an intruder on the ship?'

The cheesecake nodded, in spite of its lack of head. 'It has been using the service vents most efficiently in its time here and has remained largely undetected.'

'Where... where is it now?' Samej asked. 'I need to know I'm not going to die on my way to...'

'Engineering.' the computer finished the sentence for him.

'Oh no.'

The lack of response from the computer was as good as an 'oh yes'.

'You can't make me go down there! You're just a floating cheesecake!'

'Affirmative.' the computer said, as if trying out a new word to placate the increasingly panicky Samej. 'However, without the Engineering section active, life support for this section of the ship will expire in roughly two hours.'

'You're a cheesecake! You don't need to brea....oh.' it dawned on him then. 'I have to go down there, don't I?'

The cheesecake continued its ducking and rising mimicry of a nod. 'If it helps Captain Samej, I can accompany you as you attempt to disarm the intruder.'

A hostile invader that had previously avoided detection and was now in control of the ship up against a medical doctor armed to the teeth with clown shoes and a cheesecake. Yeah, sure, those sounded like good odds.

So they slowly made their way down to Engineering after a brief pit-stop in the armoury and a partially blown bulkhead convinced the computer that Samej shouldn't be armed. The squeaking of his novelty clown shoes was pretty obvious to any intruder but he couldn't bring himself to go bare-foot on the deck plate. Even thinking of doing such a thing sent a shiver up his spine.

Squeak, squeak squeak. Stop.

The large double-doors to Engineering slid open and Samej called out into the darkness. 'We have... We have you surrounded! Come out with your arms raised and your gun not pointing at me... please?'

'A stirring speech.' the cheesecake informed him.

Nothingness greeted his requests, apparently whatever was in there had no interest in giving up that easily. This only left one option...

'Captain. I fail to see how this strategy will result in our re-capturing Engineering and restoring power and life-support.'

Samej uncurled from his ball slightly and looked up at the cheesecake between snot and tears.

'Your gasping for air between choking sobs will not successfully lure your opponent into a false sense of security and merely takes up more power from the life support system.'

'But whatever is in there could blow my head off if I try and turn it back on!' Samej said, starting to wail and then catching himself.

'Captain, it would appear that you are going to die anyway should your inaction prove to be your permanent course of action.'

Dammit, the Cheesecake had a point.

'Very well then.' Samej finally said, rising himself with a squeak to standing position and wiping away his tears. 'Let's deal with this intruder once and for all!'

With that, he went charging into the room with a scream, his floating companion hot on his heels.

The intruder stared at him with a withering look as it uncurled from its rest atop one of the banks of computers, as if simultaneously asking the Captain to go away and inquiring why he had to make such a racket.

'That's the intruder?' Samej pointed, looking back at the cheesecake in askance.

The intruder launched itself at him and scored a direct hit to Samej's defenceless face.

'Argh!' the Captain shrieked as he fell to the floor, but the blow wasn't fatal. He searched about the Engineering room and found nothing.

'Captain, I suggest we power up the Engineering systems now that the intruder has made a break for the vents once more.'

Samej ran a finger across the claw marks on his face and winced, the cheesecake made a good point, but he couldn't shrug off the incident so easily. 'Why was there a cat in Engineering?'

In what was a stunning display of the transmutative properties gifted to the computer's imagery systems, the cheesecake shrugged.

'It clawed my face! Who is going to fix this?'

A brief pause. 'Captain, you are the doctor on this ship.'

'Oh yeah. Better get this Engineering thing on then so you stop bugging me.'

The cheesecake floated over to the appropriate activation lever and after a few abortive tugs Captain Samej had a fully functional ship once again.

'So what do you suggest now?' he asked his floating companion, trying not to pick at the ointment he had plastered all over his swelling cuts.

'Long range sensors indicate that the two escape pods headed in entirely different directions. Fortunately it would appear that their calculated impact zones are converging with each other.'