War of the Spheres Read online

  She lifted her lovely face up out of my view again, and I went back to enjoying her tender fussing. Left on my own, I might have rubbed dirt on it and let it heal up with a bad scar, but this was much better.

  My ear got a hard tug suddenly—stitches? Yes, I knew the sensation well.

  “Ow,” I complained.

  “That’s the first time I’ve heard you respond to an injury.”

  “Yes—well, I can feel pain—I’m just not a complainer.”

  She clucked her tongue again and let go of me at last.

  “Looks good. That will heal better than that patch you slapped on,” she said. “As to the generator—you can see why people changed their mind about you. You made a big deal about riding up the elevator. There were already members of the team opposed to your participation, and when it turned out the diagnostics failed—”

  “I caught some of the blame?”

  She shook her head. “No, all of it.”

  “Good thing I’m already aboard, then,” I said. “They’re stuck with me now.”

  “Be careful, Chief—you’re getting kind of beat-up,” she playfully warned.

  I knew she was looking at the bandage over my head wound. I continued to wear it even though there was no trace of an injury underneath. I needed to avoid complicated explanations for now.

  “Sure. Thanks for the field-dressing.”

  “No charge, handsome.”

  I would have liked to linger and talk to Dr. Brandt more, and I sensed she wouldn’t have minded, but I knew I couldn’t leave the engine alone. Those two guards might start taking pot-shots at it with their guns for target practice.

  Making my way back to the hold, I re-discovered the two clowns that were supposed to be watching the payload. One played solitaire on his comm-link and the other was giving him advice about the next move.

  Perhaps they hadn’t been told how important the engine was—or perhaps they were commonly told everything was critical and had become complacent.

  It didn’t matter—the science team couldn’t even agree with each other. There was certain disunity there. Not everyone was as committed to the project’s success as they should be. Any number of them might be a rat, and there were many ways to get to the grain. I had my work cut out for me.

  Chapter 11

  The transport had stopped rumbling, and now slid quietly through space.

  I could hear Emily Hughes and Dr. Gevan having a loud exchange in the distance, so I went to find them. I passed a man and woman with poster-sized computer scrolls laid out side by side discussing highly intricate schematics. Ducking past them and rounding another corner, gained me some additional distance. I was able to get close and listen in without being in anyone’s line of sight.

  Dr. Gevan looked like a cranky schoolboy. He clung to a grab rail with both of his clawed hands to prevent drifting and complained to the colonel, who endured the squawking tirade with indifference. I waited within earshot and listened in.

  “Look Gevan,” Colonel Hughes said, “you’re the one who pushed for us to launch early.”

  “That isn’t what happened—you know darn well that all I did was point out the obvious: the Perseid activity is encroaching on our mission’s path. The launch had to be quick to beat the interference, or we’d have to wait it out and launch next month—that’s all I said.”

  Colonel Hughes was unimpressed with the old man’s complaining and quietly watched him.

  “Damn it! I’m a researcher. I wasn’t volunteering to be a deep-space explorer—I’m nearly eighty years old!”

  The old man seemed genuinely rattled, and Colonel Hughes softened her voice.

  “You’ll be fine,” she reassured him, and she reached out to touch his hand. “Traveling aboard Fairweather will be like falling asleep in a drift-cruiser. You’re all I’ve got for a navigator since we lost Bill Adams—I need you.”

  The only response from Gevan was a grumpy pout.

  “We’ll be relying on your professional input,” she continued.

  After the exchange, Gevan awkwardly pulled himself back to a seat in the main cabin and buckled up. I took this opportunity to butt in.

  “Colonel Hughes, I couldn’t help but overhear… Did you say your ship is called Fairweather?”

  “Eavesdropping, Chief?” she asked.

  “I was just passing by.”

  “Hmm.” She was measuring me all over again with her piercing gaze.

  “It’s an unusual name,” I said, “since fair weather offers little wind. In the past, a ship could be stranded for long periods of calm. Once everything was clean and organized, sailors had to be content to carve things with a blade or twiddle their thumbs...”

  “We’re not living in the 1700’s, Gray—and we aren’t talking about a big boat in the ocean. Fairweather will go where she pleases in spite of any weather or no weather at all. That’s the whole point.”

  She seemed wound up a little tight, so I didn’t pry further. “Your point is noted, Colonel Hughes,” I said neutrally in an attempt to defuse a little of her intensity.

  “When we deploy the engine,” she said. “It might help you to understand better if you think of this device as being the eye of a storm.”

  “Good enough for me. I can hardly wait to take our maiden hop through space. When would that be, by the way?”

  “There are many factors.”

  “Meaning: you don’t trust me enough yet to let me in on our exact itinerary?”

  She frowned and evaded me, floating down a passage. “Excuse me, Chief—I have things to do.”

  “Me too,” I said, and I watched her glide off.

  I was left for a moment with my own thoughts. The Colonel seemed to be a busy and driven woman, under a lot of pressure, but she was holding it together. I wasn’t so sure about Dr. Gevan.

  He was so terrified it left me wondering if this voyage wasn’t going to be more dangerous than people were letting on. After all, he’d been working on navigation with Dr. Adams—who had gotten himself on the bad side of the enemy. So, it was plausible that Gevan might know and be fearful about something that wasn’t on the surface.

  I’d have to keep an eye on the old man. There wasn’t much to do in the meantime, so I decided to go find Sean Fillmore and fish for more information.

  Eventually, I found him alone. He was harnessed into a seat in a small compartment with no viewports. He was looking green and studied an unrolled, portable computer screen. I drifted slowly over to him. He looked up, and then squeezed his entire face together in anguish.

  “What do you want? Why are you bothering me?”

  I would need to pour it on thick to get anywhere with this guy.

  “Calm down, Fillmore. I need some very important information. Colonel Hughes didn’t want the other scientists to feel slighted, so she secretly directed me to you for the best answers.”

  “Oh, she did?” he said, relaxing but still flushed in the cheeks. “Well, I guess that makes sense.”

  “Yeah, of course it does.”

  “What kind of information are you looking for?” he asked.

  Before I could answer, Fillmore’s color once again blanched away from his face. He looked down and grabbed his forehead in his hands.

  “Are you okay?” I asked him.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” he snapped. “It’s the whole ‘heavy G’s followed by weightlessness’ thing. It disagrees with me terribly.”

  “So, you aren’t cut out to be in space…?”

  “Well, obviously I’m struggling, but I can do it. I’ll be fine,” he promised. The tuft of hair hanging on his forehead fluttered with each syllable.

  “You know, you ought to focus on a point far away from you, and don’t try to read a screen until the feeling passes,” I offered helpfully.

  “Oh, don’t be a know-it-all, Chief Smart-Ass. It’s just a migraine brought on by the gravity shifts.”

  Before I lost him entirely, I decided to get down to real questions
. “Dr. Fillmore, do you know how Emily Hughes’ ship moves?”

  “Don’t be an idiot. I’m this mission’s propulsion expert.”

  “Well… Could you explain at my level, how the engine functions—so I can understand?”

  He took a moment to swallow hard. “Hmm… you probably won’t comprehend any of it, but I guess I can try.”

  “I’m sorry—I must be bothering you,” I said suddenly. “I should probably go look for a layman’s explanation from a lower-ranking team member. If you’ll excuse me—”

  “Hold on—don’t back out now! You’re just afraid you’ll get bored by an over-educated scientist rattling away, is that it?”

  “Nothing like that, Doctor. I merely—”

  “Have the courtesy and respect to listen when an expert is taking the time to explain something. Who knows? You might actually find yourself learning a thing or two.”

  I allowed myself a modest smile and nodded to him. Playing to the man’s vanity had him eager to tell me about the ship’s propulsion now.

  Fillmore cleared his throat loudly and began what sounded like a lecture on thermodynamics but turned out to be much more comprehensible.

  “Fairweather is designed to exploit electromagnetic fields. The ship uses these fields as a driving force to move her through space and even other dimensions. On board, Dr. Brandt’s engine essentially creates a virtual sail which takes advantage of any given EM configuration. To dumb it way, WAY down, these so-called sails adapt to and capture any given so-called electromagnetic weather and use it to travel anywhere desired.”

  “Are you shitting me?” I asked, crossing my arms and looking doubtful. “That doesn’t even sound real.”

  “Certainly it’s real!” he shouted. “Didn’t you get the experimental-prototype memo? This is cutting edge tech—we’re not canning vegetables here.”

  “What about the part where you mentioned other dimensions?”

  “Oh… Well, just to lay some groundwork… how far did you get into advanced calculus and theoretical physics?”

  He waited for an answer, so I shrugged.

  “That’s what I thought,” he said in disgust. “I’m not even going there with you.”

  “So, who is the dimension-travel expert?” I asked him.

  “You’re looking at him,” he said—getting snotty again.

  “You…and no one else on the team?”

  “No one comes close to my level. Not when it comes to understanding PDM.”

  “PDM?”

  “Para… Dimensional… Manipulation—PDM.”

  “Okay,” I said, in full bullshit mode now, “I thought you were talking about something else for a minute there.”

  Fillmore proceeded to blow on for several more minutes. The primary point of his lecture was nothing new. His every word sought to prove that he was the most unique and critical member of the team.

  “Alright, thanks for schooling me, Doctor.”

  He just eyed me in contempt, like I was a bug in his food. Fillmore apparently had an affliction that I’d seen from time to time among academic types: I called it the Superiority Complex.

  After escaping the gravity of the man’s ego, I moved into the ship’s central passages. I found a quiet spot and peered through an oval viewport into the inky blackness of space. I picked out a spot to focus on.

  I chose a red star: Antares, the heart of Scorpio. It was very attractive as long as you kept your distance.

  After several minutes went by, I let my attention fog over. Doing so allowed me to remember a scrap from my past.

  My memory conjured a pastoral scene. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful place… There were a good number of people present… birds… trees… the smell of barbeque in the air.

  It was in the suburbs outside of the city, and I was wearing my colors—blue and gray. As I walked through crowds, laughing conversations stopped and then began once again after I had passed by.

  They refused to answer my questions. Instead, they stood tight-lipped as I neared and only relaxed again when I was out of range. I appealed to them sincerely, but they were unwilling to yield.

  My mind drifted back to focus on the red giant called Antares. Was it me or the work that was so damned difficult to deal with?

  Hell, if I know, I thought to myself.

  I had completed my mission that day in the park, but many people had died. It wasn’t exactly my fault—I’d tried to help them. Still, while I watched the heart of the scorpion glint, I hoped this mission would leave a better feeling in my guts.

  Chapter 12

  I caught the drifting scent of musk and vanilla, and found my thoughts shifting, while my spirits became lighter. It struck me then that there was more I wanted from Jillian Brandt. I stopped thinking about the darker scenes of my past and went to find the fragrant doctor.

  She wasn’t far off, as my nose had indicated. I found her staring into space—literally. She was peering outside at the stars beyond the ship, lost in thought as I had been a short while ago.

  I rapped on a shiny white wall-panel near the porthole, invading her privacy.

  When she turned to see me gliding near, I got a smile. She made a simple smart-cloth coverall look like a party dress. It clung to her slender waist just right—and the rest of her too.

  “Is something on your mind, Chief—anything you want to know?”

  “There is always much on my mind, Jillian,” I answered.

  “Anything in particular you’d like to take a crack at?” she said. Then, she lowered her chin and looked at me, musing. I judged that the look was at least friendly—probably more than that.

  Taken a bit by surprise, I didn’t respond aggressively, but I did give her another appraising glance. She was sounding awfully friendly.

  Amply supplied and well-formed, her body type was downright old-fashioned in all the right ways. Better than that, I knew it didn’t even matter to her. She was comfortable in her own skin and had a pleasant confidence that wasn’t based on her looks.

  The unspoken vibes were coming through loud and clear, but I managed to keep my composure for now.

  “So…” I said after a moment, having honestly been distracted by her charming beauty. “Oh yeah—how long will it take to install the new engine?”

  She snapped her fingers. “Once we arrive, if they haven’t messed with the couplings, it ought to go in without a hitch.”

  “Nothing to it, huh?”

  “It will practically install itself. The difficult part is over—I mean getting away from Earth. Waiting for the big finish is all that’s left now, and I’m not accustomed to waiting around with nothing to do. I confess—I’m a bit frustrated.”

  She removed a tethering device she’d been using to restrain her long hair and shook loose the dark tresses.

  “Well,” I said, trying not to stare, “if there’s anything I can do…”

  “Sure there is,” she said. “Come over here.”

  She held out a hand to me and took my own hand in her slender fingers. Pulling me close, we turned to face the viewport and the black wall of space beyond it.

  “Loosen the kinks in my neck and shoulders. Would you? The gun-play and murders back on Earth still have me spooked—I’m really keyed up.”

  I complied, enjoying the process immensely.

  “Everything’s going to be alright, Jillian,” I told her.

  “Yes, I think so too,” she said.

  She made approving sounds for a minute or two. Then, she rolled her shoulders and arched her back.

  “Oh… that’s much better,” she said.

  For a moment, I thought I’d been dismissed—but then she came closer again. She wrapped my arms around her, nestled back against me and sighed deeply.

  “It feels so good just to stop and connect for a moment,” she said.

  Over her shoulder, I watched the darkness outside. At least I had one fan on this ship.

  A nagging feeling told me, however, that I wo
uld regret letting this go any further—but I soon realized I didn’t care. I suspected forming a new relationship would make for difficulties in the future—but I couldn’t make myself care about that, either.

  “Yes, it does feel good,” I said.

  A thought crossed my mind about aliens appearing on this transport, but I had already discarded that probability. I was betting they couldn’t hit a moving target with their little trick. My feeling of foreboding was coming from somewhere else.

  I pushed my worries away. I was feeling reckless and impulsive. I only cared about the present. We were in a unique bubble of time where all the important things were on hold for a short while.

  Letting my hands have free reign, I touched her in a different way, and she responded pleasantly. My fingers found the tab of her smart-zipper and slowly pulled it. Without a sound, the edges parted and the tab slid down to her navel. The warm rush of her heady fragrance washed over me.

  While we hovered near the forgotten viewport, she spun in my embrace to wrap her arms around my neck and it was all over. My hands cradled her by the sides of her face and I leaned in almost touching her lips with mine.

  I paused like that, drinking her in. Our lips came slowly together, but still lingered, teasing. I felt her hands slide under my tunic, and then her warm body pressed against my skin.

  I took a second to shuck off my tunic, and then another second to dart over and slap the privacy setting on the entry portals. After that we let ourselves do whatever we felt like for an hour or so.

  Enjoying a pause sometime later, we drifted in weightlessness. We smiled dreamily at each other without words.

  When that spell was broken, Jillian began messing with my bandages.

  “So… you seem to be healing unusually fast. I’d say the rate is something like twenty times faster than normal?” Jillian said, clearly wanting an explanation.

  She held my head bandage in her hand. The wound she’d revealed underneath was small and puckered. The scab had already fallen away and been replaced by new, pink skin. Other bandages had concealed injuries that were entirely healed.

  “Yeah—something like that.”