The Awakening (The Hyperscape Project Book 1) (18 page)

 “When do
you want me to start, Captain?”

“Immediately. I
don’t want to take any chances.” Argos turned to gaze out of the ready-room
window, as he often did when deep in thought.

“Of course, Sir.
I’ll get right on it.”

In the lab, Karg
stared out of the isolation room. “Tell me again what you call the one that
looks like a beast.” He twisted his head and peered at the homemade game board
that was spread out on the table in front of Nick.

Nick put his
finger on top of a hand carved Chess piece that sat along the back row of the
checkered board. “It’s called a Knight.”

Karg reared back
and snorted. “That’s a ridiculous name. You have black ones and I have white
ones, yet they are both called night. Of course, if you only called certain
black ones night, then what would you call all the other black ones? I guess
you could call the white beasts day and the black ones night. At least that
would make more sense.”

“Karg, forget
what they’re named, okay,” Nick replied impatiently. “Just make a move.”

“Okay, move my
day
piece up three and right one.”

Nick sighed.
“You really are impossible, you know that?” Nick picked up Karg’s remaining
Knight and held it over the spot Karg wanted him to move it to. “Here?” he
asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Yes, there. And
that’s check me, I believe.” Karg grinned through the glass barrier.

Nick looked up
at Karg. “Check
mate
. It’s called checkmate, and there is no way….” Nick
frowned as he examined the homemade board. “I’ll be damned. It
is
checkmate.” He glanced back at Karg. “You know, you wouldn’t have beaten me so
easily if I hadn’t been so focused on teaching you how to play.”

Karg sat back.
“You’re right, this game is fun,” he said, still grinning. He looked at Nick
for a long moment, an odd, almost emotional gleam in his eye. Nick was
surprised by his next words. “Thank you for staying down here in the lab with
me and keeping me occupied. If you hadn’t, I’d be going space crazy from being
locked up in here. I don’t like feeling caged,” Karg confided.

“No problem,
buddy. I know how boring isolation can be. I’ve had to go into isolation many
times before going on missions.”

“What on Rakozi
for? Were you ill?”

“No, I wasn’t
ill. They kept us in isolation to make sure we didn’t have a virus, or that we
didn’t get one before going on the mission. I always wished I had someone to
play Chess with during my long hours in there.”

The door to the
lab zipped open and Arya stepped into the room. “Hey guys. How’s Stinky doing?”

Karg’s
expression hardened. “That’s not funny,” he snapped.

“Good news. The
maintenance bots have finally cleaned up the mess. Good thing too. Any longer
and it would have corroded through the deck!”

“That’s not
funny either,” Karg grumbled.

Arya looked at
the game board in front of Nick. “You two playing Chest? Doesn’t look too
challenging.”

Nick cracked a
smile. Arya’s mistake was cute. “It’s called Chess. And don’t ask me what the
pieces are called either!”

Arya’s mouth
went into the little side-quirk she got whenever she was bemused. “Relax,
grumpy, I’m just here to check on Karg.”

“Stinky’s doin’
fine.” Nick continued in an unconvincing fake accent. “Keptain! Sensors show
some sort of gaseous anomaly ahead.” He lowered the tone of his voice. “Yes, I
do have a nose, ensign. Evasive maneuvers.”

Arya giggled so
abruptly that she accidently spit on the glass wall between them and Karg.
“Sorry, Karg,” she said as she wiped the dots off the clear barrier. “But it is
funny.”

“Yeah, he’s a
barrel of laughs.” Karg folded his top two arms over his chest, pulled his
knees together, and laid the closed fists of his bottom two arms on his thighs,
as if shutting the two out.  He almost looked like a huge pouting child,
which made the scene even more comical. 

Nick tilted his
head toward the glass wall. “Lucky for us there is a waste disposal unit in
there. Of course, I thought the stink may still breach that glass containment
wall.”

Karg grumbled
something unintelligible.

Arya rolled her
eyes at Nick. “That’s not glass. It’s much tougher than glass. It’s a
transparent tri-tanium alloy created by injecting a helium isotope into the
crystalline matrix.” Arya flipped a switch on a nearby console, and the
transparent barrier turned opaque. “It’s only clear when you apply a current
through it. Like this.” Arya flipped the switch back on and Karg appeared
through the transparent barrier again.

Nick pushed back
his chair and jumped up to take a better look. “Oh, man, that is way cool!” He
tapped the barrier. “So this stuff can withstand a plasma rifle?”

“It would take a
lot more than a plasma rifle, or a gaseous anomaly, to get through that,” Arya
answered.

Karg glared at
the two of them. “I’m starting to think I’d be better off alone in here.”

Arya turned back
to Nick. Ribbing Karg wasn’t what she had come for. “I can see he’s getting
back to his normal self. Maybe we should give him a break. Besides, Argos
wanted you to show me how the hyperspace module works.”

Nick rubbed the
back of his neck. It made sense that the Captain would want someone else to be
familiar with the workings of the module, just in case, God forbid, something
happened to Nick. “Okay.”  Even though he was agreeable, Nick still felt a
little protective of his module and the technology it contained.

“You know how
Argos is,” Arya said. “The last thing he said to me was that he didn’t want to
take any chances.”

 “Yeah,
that sounds like Argos. Always prepared.” Nick turned back to Karg. “Guess I’ll
see you later, Karg. Best two out of three?”

“You know where
to find me.” Looking forlorn, Karg sat back and picked at the fingernails of
his bottom right hand. “Not like I’m going anywhere.”

“Not anymore,
thank goodness,” Nick whispered to Arya, causing her to giggle again.

“I heard that!”
Karg grumbled.

The two grinned
and waved, then headed out of the door.  

Nick half jogged
behind Arya as they went to the hangar bay.

“I’ll never get
used to how fast you walk,” Nick said.

She grinned and
gave him a sidelong glance. “I’m walking slowly so you can keep up.”

“Figures,” he
muttered.

The hyperspace
module sat in the center of the bay, looking like a rustic, antiquated relic
alongside Admiral Onaka’s sleek gunship. Arya wasted no time climbing into the
module for her first lesson. Nick had always enjoyed teaching, but his students
had always been wet-behind-the-ears earthlings with the attention span of a
gnat. Teaching an eager alien about a technology they didn’t possess was new
and different. Teaching someone who was actually interested would be nice for a
change.   

Nick leaned into
the cockpit. “Argos is right. It would be a good idea for someone else to know
how to fly this thing in case something happens to me,” he remarked, his arm
draped inside the craft’s cockpit. Nick moved to reach for a switch on the
instrument panel and felt a gooey substance on the side of the module squish
against his chest. “Damn. Slimy has been messing with my module again. Last
week I had to go get some of my stuff back, again, after he ‘
borrowed’
it. It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t always covered in goo.” Nick grabbed a
rag and wiped the slimy mucus from his shirt.

“Okay, where
were we? Yeah, that’s right. Beginning the art of hyperspace deployment. Now
pay attention. Watch closely. The abort switch is here.” Nick touched a control
switch on the left of the console. “And this over here is the amplitude
control.” He drew her attention to the right of the console. “Just point the
nose in the direction you want, flip this switch to arm it, and adjust your
amplitude for the window’s size. The window will form about half a click in
front of you. Once the window is open, it will remain at that position in space
until you shut down the generator. So, regardless of the change in your
orientation, the window will remain fixed in that one place until you turn it
off. Or the generator blows out. Just be sure you’re not inside the window when
it collapses.”

Arya’s eyebrows
arched upward. “Yeah, I’ve seen what happens when something gets caught in a
collapsing hyperspace window. I wouldn’t want to end up like that.”

Suddenly, a high
pitched siren wailed through the bay, startling both of them. “Christ! Now
what?” Nick exclaimed.

A voice squawked
from Arya’s com-badge. “Arya? Arya, where are you?”

Nick didn’t
recognize the voice. But he hadn’t really had a chance to meet the entire crew
yet, small as it was.

Arya’s concern
was apparent as she tapped her badge. “Kyrk? What’s going on?”

Nick raised his
brow. “Kirk?”

Arya quickly
waved her arm at him. “Shush!”

“Arya. The
Captain…he’s dead!”

“Argos? Argos is
dead?” Arya’s head and shoulders dropped. “How?”

“He’s been shot.
A close range plasma blast to the chest.”

Arya looked
confused. “What are you doing on the bridge? Where’s Sirok?”

“Sirok is gone.
I came to give Argos the latest report on the Mok’tu, but the bridge was empty.
That’s when I found him in his ready-room. He was just lying there on the floor
in a pool of blood, dead. Then I noticed that he had managed to write two words
on the floor with his own blood. ‘Spy is’ was all he was able to write before
he died. Arya, there’s slime on the Captain’s console.”

A few beeps
filled the silence while Kyrk worked the control console. “And that’s not all.
A wide beam transmission was sent out from this console, detailing our exact
location. It was broadcast on a
Dragoran
channel! I don’t know how, but
all vid surveillance and other data logs have been erased. I didn’t even know
that was possible. It’s triple purple encrypted access.”

Nick
automatically pulled his plasma pistol from its holster. “That slimy bastard! I
never did trust those beady little eyes of his. All four of them!”

Nick’s heart
skipped a beat when Arya turned her face toward him and he saw the tears
streaming down her speckled cheeks. The news of Argos’ death had impacted her
deeply.

“Argos was like
a father to me. I can’t believe he’s gone,” she sobbed.

He brushed a
tear off one cheek and was startled to realize how soft her skin felt beneath
his fingertips. “Don’t worry,” he murmured as he gazed into her green cat eyes.
“I’ll find that bastard.”

The death of
Argos had brought out deep emotions in him as well. He had come to respect the
man, even admire him. Argos reminded him of another important man in Nick’s
life. His father. Just like Argos, Nick’s father had always commanded respect,
and always comported himself with dignity and honor. Slimy was going to pay for
his treachery. That was a promise Nick would keep.

“It
must
have been Sirok that erased those files. He’s our best tech. If anyone could
pull it off, it would be him.” Arya sniffed hard and wiped the tears from her
face, her eyes now filled with steely determination. “You go and help search
for Sirok. I’ll stay here and guard the module.”

Nick hesitated,
concerned about leaving her alone in the hangar bay.

Arya waved him
on. “Go. I’ll be okay.”

Nick reluctantly
agreed. Seconds later, he cautiously entered the corridor and headed straight
toward the lab. “Karg, I’m on my way to let you out of isolation,” he said into
his com-badge.

“It’s about
freking time! Hurry up or I swear I’m going to rip this door off!” Karg huffed
in frustration. The pounding of Karg’s fists on the door rang out loudly over
Nick’s com-badge.

“Hold on, buddy.
I’ll be there in a minute.”

Growing ever
more wary of the dangers all around, Nick made his way through the dark
corridor. Sirok could be hiding anywhere in the gloomy passages. As far as Nick
was concerned the ship could use a little more lighting in the hallways. His
inferior human eyesight was really becoming a problem for him now. Apparently,
he was the only species on board that found the lack of visibility annoying.
Nick stared into the darkness, trying to discern the shapes before him. Damn,
if only he’d brought a flashlight.

Alone in the
darkness, he jumped every time the ship made a noise. He’d never paid much
attention to the normal creaks and sounds of the vessel before, but now they
were downright unnerving. His heart beat faster with each step he took. The
widely spaced row of overhead lights running down the corridor glowed softly,
like dim street lights down an old deserted country road. In between, utter
darkness. The dark recesses and blind corners had Nick’s chest pounding with
fear as he pushed forward.

As he nervously
crept along, one of the overhead lights glistened off a glob of slime stuck to
a door access keypad. The door was still open. Nick crept up quietly to the
entrance and quickly bobbed his head into the doorway and back out again.
Damn,
it’s too dark to see anything.
Walking into the unknown completely blind
was definitely not on his favorite-things-to-do list. He paused to gather
enough courage to enter the room. “This is such a bad idea.”
One...two….

“Nick! Where the
hetek are you?” Karg’s voice blasted over the com-link.

The sudden loud
sound of Karg’s voice booming through the dead quiet hallway almost caused Nick
to come unglued. “Dammit, Karg! Hold on, I have to check something out.” Nick
took a long, slow breath and held it for a moment as he tried to overcome the
effects of the adrenaline racing through his veins.

“Crap!” Nick
reached down and flipped on the light attached to his pistol. He had totally
forgotten about the weapon’s built in light. “Moron,” he hissed at himself. 
“Can you get any more brilliant?”