Atlantis Rising (35 page)

“Is that a good thing, or a bad
thing?” Jon said.

“Bad,” Deatra said.

Every eye on the bridge turned
towards her.

on and Deatra stood in engineering, looking at a hologram hovering
over the table. Mike and several technicians were talking quietly among
themselves on the opposite side of the table. Mike dismissed them from the
small office as they finished their conversation, and turned back to Jon. He
glanced over at Deatra briefly, and then back to Jon.

“We need to speak in private,
Jon,” Mike said.

Jon furrowed his eyebrows in
confusion; they were alone.

“I don’t understand. We’re
alone,” Jon said.

Mike nodded at Deatra. “If you’ll
excuse us, Princess,” Mike said.

“What?” Jon said. “She can stay.”

Mike shook his head, “No, we
really need to speak in private.”

Deatra looked at Mike with a
careful expression as Jon spoke, “Mike, it doesn’t matter if she’s here or not.
I tell her pretty much everything going on.”

“That may be the case,” Mike
said, as he sat down in a chair and leaned back. “However, I’m not discussing
anything that I want to say to you in private, in front of her.”

Jon’s face colored slightly; Mike
was being unreasonable. Jon didn’t see a need for Deatra to leave the room.
What was so private that Deatra couldn’t be around?

Jon started to speak, but Deatra
interrupted him, “It’s okay. I would like to go back to our room anyway. I’m a
bit tired and would like to rest.”

Jon looked over at her. “You
don’t have to go,” Jon said.

He turned slightly to look at
Mike as if saying this is final. Mike just put his hands behind his head,
watching them both as he waited.

Deatra reached up and cupped the
side of Jon’s face as she smiled. “I know I don’t, but I really am tired. The
past twenty hours have really drained me. On top of that, I have already given
you all the help I can regarding our current situation,” Deatra said.

“Okay, I’ll see you after we’re
done here,” Jon said. He leaned in and gave her a brief kiss before she turned
and left the room.

After the door shut, Jon spun on
Mike.

“That was completely uncalled
for,” Jon said.

The anger pouring off him made Mike
flinch.

“Was it?” Mike said.

He kept his voice steady even
though he was a bit scared on the inside.

“You KNOW it was!” Jon said. “How
dare you insult her? You not only insulted her, you insulted me! She will soon
be my wife, and I have the utmost trust in her!”

Mike stood up and leaned over the
table, both fists planted on the tabletop. He worked hard to control not only
his fear but his anger too.

“Jon that’s the problem,” Mike
said.

“What?” Jon said.

“I’m not going to go completely
into it right now, as we have more pressing matters to deal with out here.
However, you met her about a month ago, give, or take a week. You have given
her access to every section of the station and ships. There’s not really
anywhere she can’t go,” Mike said.

“Yeah, so?” Jon said.

“That’s the problem,” Mike said.
“We don’t know her. Some of us don’t trust her, and can't trust her in so short
a time.”

“You don’t understand,” Jon said.
“The bond I share with her lets me know her true intent. If she had any other
motives for being here, I would know about them. She truly just wants to help.”

“You’re right,” Mike said. “That
is something I don’t understand and probably never will unless it happens to
me. That doesn’t make us just instantly trust her though. We’ve been screwed enough,
and now we’re a bit leery of getting screwed again.”

“Do you trust me?” Jon said. He
had pretty much calmed down and had taken a seat.

Mike, who had also retaken his
seat, looked at Jon with a bit of confusion on his face.

“Of course,” Mike said.

“Then trust me when I say she is
a friend and ally,” Jon said.

Mike sighed as he spoke, “It’s
not that simple, Jon.”

“Why not?” Jon said.

“We know she has telepathic
abilities and frankly we’re a bit worried she might be manipulating you,” Mike
said.

Jon laughed as he spoke, “I think
I would know if she was influencing decisions.”

“Would you?” Mike said. “Would
you really know for sure you’re being manipulated?”

“Well, I would hope people would
notice it, and bring it to my attention,” Jon said.

“Hello! Earth to Jon!” Mike said.
“What do you think I’m doing, right now? I’m not saying she is doing anything
to you. Just that we have concerns with how much you trust her, in such a short
time span.”

Jon blinked as he sat back and
considered what Mike was saying.

“Listen, Jon,” Mike said, “mainly
we’re concerned about how she is at every important meeting we have, and how
she follows you around everywhere. You have basically pushed her on us, and not
given us time to get to know her. That seems a bit fishy to us.”

“I can understand,” Jon said. “I
never really gave it much thought. No one around us has ever really said
anything about that.”

“Your command staff was a bit
afraid to bring it up to you. If you were being controlled we were afraid of
what would happen if we said anything,” Mike said. “As far as those people
around you. They’re mostly Eutharans and if there was something going on do you
think they would betray their princess, or help her?”

“You know, I never thought about
that,” Jon said.

Mike nodded and continued,
“You’ve isolated yourself a bit from us, and it’s had us worried.”

Jon nodded as he thought about
what Mike was saying. Was Deatra controlling him to some extent, or did it just
look that way?

“Look,” Mike said. “Give us time
to accept her. If we ask to talk in private, respect that choice. If you go
back and tell her about this meeting, that is your call and there’s not a lot
we can do about it. I’m not going to ask you to stop bringing her along with
you everywhere, because that’s your choice too and I might do that same thing
if it was me.”

Jon nodded as he spoke, “I can
accept private meeting requests”

“I want her, from a security
stand point, restricted from R&D and all military grade hardware,” Mike
said. “Marc feels the same way and asked me to toss in the last bit. Brad wants
her restricted from sensitive engineering sections.”

“Hrm,” Jon said.

“By restricted we mean scheduled
visits with appropriate
Human
security,” Mike said. “It gives us time to
put up sensitive materials and secure vital sections.”

“I can swing that,” Jon said. “I
think I understand what you’re saying.”

Mike nodded, “I mean she comes
into an off limits section and brings her uncleared guards with her, and
suddenly we have eight to ten people in a section where they shouldn’t be. Ask
yourself this, you might trust her and that trust might be well founded, but
how well do you know those guards? Is it possible for any of them to be spies?
If you answer yes to that last question then you understand our position.”

“They’re all handpicked,” Jon
said.

“Handpicked, based on their
records with the Eutharan Empire, not on their records with the ADF,” Mike
said. “Very few, if any, have had any service with the ADF. Yet your guards
stand with you on the bridge of the Atlantis and in the Control Center of Ghost
Station. It’s all about security, and the safety of the people working for the
ADF.”

Jon nodded, saying, “I never
thought of it that way.” Then he grinned and said, “Maybe I should make you
head of security.”

Mike laughed, as he said, “No,
most of this came from Marc. I’m just his messenger. He and Oojoung have been
shadowing the Royal Guards, and even probing deep into their backgrounds.”

“Really?” Jon said. The look of
surprise told Mike he truly didn’t know about it.

Mike nodded.

“I guess that explains why
Oojoung has been assigning training exercises to us,” Jon said. “Sneaky little
bastard. Why didn’t they just come let me know what they were doing?”

Mike gave Jon one of those looks,
the kind that say, did you really just ask me that?

It took a second for Jon to
realize what he had just said before he responded, “Never mind.” Thoughts spun
his mind as he tried to put it all together. “Do people really not trust me
that much?”

“We worry about you,” Mike said.
“As I’ve said, we just didn’t know how to approach you about this situation.”

Jon nodded, “I understand.”

“I knew you would,” Mike said.
“As far as this discussion and its topics go… well, that is up to you to decide
what to do with our ideas, concerns, and information. You can just make the
changes and go from there or we can have a meeting. I think if you started
making changes, and said nothing, people would see, react, and become more
open. Inviting us over for dinner would go a long way towards us getting to
know Deatra.”

“I was thinking about doing that
too,” Jon said. “Dinner, once a week at my place for all command staff, would
be good.”

Mike smiled.

“That is if we get out of here
before the field collapses,” Jon said. His eyes returned to the hologram
floating above the table.

There were three large red spots
on the diagram of the ship. The largest was in Engineering where the fold
engine was. The other two were in the Main Bridge and Main Computer Core.

“Well this is what I wanted to
speak to you about,” Mike said. “We were sabotaged.”

“Sabotaged?” Jon said. His head
whipped towards Mike.

“Yeah,” Mike said. “Whoever did
this knew what they were doing.” Mike stood up and pointed to three spots near
the large red dots. “They placed charges in these areas and programmed them to
go off in certain conditions. We picked up Pansoete residue and found some of
the casings.”

“Pansoete, isn’t that a Eutharan
explosive?” Jon said.

“Yeah, the equivalent of C-4,”
Mike said. “My guess is the fold charge was programmed to go off the second we
folded. The other two went off simultaneously and took out the AI and Main
Con.”

“Why take out the AI and Con?”
Jon said.

“My best guess is that Atlantis
was taken out to hamper our repair capability,” Mike said. “With her down, the
spider bots don’t work very well, if at all. There’s also the emergency
protocols built in for just this type of thing that would have allowed us to
exit fold. Atlantis would have detected the explosion, before the Fold Drive
went offline, and dropped us out. The Con was taken out for that same reason.”

“Why didn’t the secondary Con
drop us out?” Jon said. “You would have thought they would have taken both
systems out.”

“It takes a few seconds for it to
gain complete control,” Mike said. “Long enough to get us stuck in Fold Space.”

“Now, according to Deatra, and
based on the rate of the field collapse,” Mike said as he reached up and
touched the hologram, which caused a countdown to start. It read sixteen hours
and thirty minutes, and continued counting down. “That is how much time we have
to get the Fold Drive back online before we become stuck here forever.”

“Can you do it?” Jon said.

“Maybe,” Mike said. “We’re
working on it right now. I also have several people I trust sweeping Atlantis
for more of the devices.”

“Good,” Jon said. “Have Terri
build a small trusted group, and join the search.”

“She already is helping,” Mike
said. “They’re sweeping the landing bays and munitions holds.”

“How long until Atlantis is back
online and operational?” Jon said.

“When we reach Ghost Station,”
Mike said. Jon frowned as Mike continued. “The explosion took out several key
components and will require a small refit. It will take me about four hours to
complete. If I had the parts I could do it now, but I wasn’t stocked as this
was supposed to be a shakedown cruise. There is good news though.”

“Good,” Jon said.

“The new armor is working as
expected. The manual subroutines controlled by Tactical are running and it’s
sealing the breech,” Mike said. “It will be another hour before it’s complete
though.”

“Nice,” Jon said. “But, that’s a
bit useless right now.”

“Not really,” Mike said. “In this
same situation, before the new armor, it would have meant we would’ve been
working in suits the entire time. That slows people down, a lot. The new armor
will allow us to remove the suits in an hour and work freely.”

Jon stood up as he spoke, “Okay,
get to work and keep me apprised of our situation.”

“Will do,” Mike said as he
followed Jon out of the room.

Jon stepped into his room and saw
Deatra laying back on the couch reading. He smiled as she looked up at him and
returned his smile. He sighed inside as he walked over and sat down next to
her.