"Our
ancestors were bread for slave labor, to mine the gold, crude oil and precious
metals buried deep within the planets. After they had finished mining and taken
all that a planet had to offer, they would leave the many of the slaves to fend
for themselves with only the vaguest memory of an arrogant and powerful life
form to haunt them. From these memories the groundwork lay on which religion,
laws, civilizations and governments were founded. Our ancestors knew only what
they had been taught by them; they are the creators we were created to serve
them."
Lord Kelnor Din, "Legacy of the Obolids,
Chronicles of the Visitor, 2382 TS
CHAPTER III
Down the long sterile
corridor, John towered over the horde of khaki uniforms hovering around him.
Even with his head bent over the duty roster he carried in his hand, no one
stood as tall as he did. There were few responsibilities that he hated more
than the duty roster. Nobody was ever satisfied with shift assignment and there
was always some joker looking for extra leave that nobody wanted to cover it.
It was a pain in the butt every 168 hours. Neila seemed to be the only person
capable of satisfying most everybody. She would leave her own schedule open and
work it around everybody else. Not that she enjoyed working the screwy hours;
she just felt it was easier for her to rearrange her time than it was for others
with families.
John's mind kept
drifting back to the previous night he'd spent with her - and managed to
override the chatter for leaves. He could still see the silhouette of her body
through that peach gown, and feel the texture of her flesh in his palms. He
thought her fragrance still lingered in his nostrils, or was that just his
imagination on overtime. She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever made love
with: a fact that terrified as much as excited him.
The rush of air and
whoosh of the portal sliding open took him away for his sensuous daydream and
back to the noise of the crew. The hovering stopped at the portal entry, except
for his assistant, Corporal Stringer. "Did you get any of that?" John
asked him once the crew was out of earshot.
"Yea. Can you
believe the extra leaves? I don't think there are enough people in the whole
system to cover half of these."
"I don't remember
if I'm in command of Security Central or the Nursery School."
"Commander,"
Shelly alerted. "Scanners are detecting an unknown object."
"Here, see what
you can do with this," he said, passing the roster off to Stringer.
"Get Neila to help if you need it. She's good," he called back at him
on his to Shelly's console. "What've ya got, O’Malley?"
"I don't know. I
completed the systems check when it just sort of sprang up there. I'm waiting
for a read-out."
They both shifted
their gazes toward the terminal expecting to see an analysis of the object to
be there, but the screen totally blank. "Are you sure you did the
request?" John asked her.
"Yes, Sir. I
wanted it up before got here," she frowned.
Shelly was the
extremely efficient type, who always took the extra step to make everybody's
job easier. Her efforts did not escape his notice, so he smiled down and patted
her once on the shoulder. "Nice try. Do it again."
"Computer, scan
sector 926 Bravo," she commanded, but the computer did not acknowledge
her. "Something's wrong," she said as she searched her console for a
reason for the delay. "The coordinates are right, syntax is correct. Why
won't it respond?"
John could not see
anything abnormal on the console, either. "Hand me that probe," he
said. She grabbed pencil thin wand and slapped it into his palm. The action
should have initiated the probe to scan the override chip implanted there and
immediately engage the program. They watched for the override to engage, but
screen never flickered. He stepped behind her chair and reached his long arms
around either side of her to manually type his code into the system.
"Who's on patrol in that sector?" he asked as he typed.
"Tigers."
"Give Nalon the
Coordinates. We need a visual," he ordered, and punched the enter key. The
screen held fast to the blank expression. "What the Hell?" He stepped
from behind the chair to flip at COM link to Maintenance.
"Maintenance,"
a yawning voice responded.
"What the Hell's
going on down there?" he demanded. "Where’s the damned repair
crew?"
"What? What are
you talking about? And who the Hell are you?"
"Your C.O. that's
who. Why haven't the emergency overrides kicked in?"
"I don't know,
Sir. My board's clear. Everything is up and running fine on this end. What
seems to be the pro ....?”
"Everything is
not up and running." Max had walked in while John was barking at the COM
link. He realized immediately that a problem existed and went directly to
Shelly's console. "I have a blank screen and a major malfunction up here .
. ." Max mumbled something about Neila and John interrupted his bark when
he heard her name mentioned. "What?" he asked Max, then remembering
the COM link said, "Stand by, technician. Now what's this about
Neila?"
"That's the same
blip Neila had when the terminal shut down yesterday. The computer shut itself
down and the blip disappeared before we could ID it. It was reported, they
checked it out, said nothing was wrong."
"She didn't tell
me anything about that."
"It's all in the
log. It wasn't a major event, so I guess she figured you'd find it in the
report."
John went over the log
in his mind, but could remember if he read anything about a shut down. He told
the technician check his log.
"Affirmative. We
sent a crew up at
"Everything is
not A-OK. I want up here, now." Before the technician could acknowledge
the order, John barked another one at Shelly. "Where the Hell is
Nalon?"
The portal whooshed
open again to Neila walk through it. One glance at commotion around her station
told something was wrong. She quickly crossed the floor to stand beside Max.
"What's going on?" she whispered.
Max pointed at the
scanner, "Your friend is back," he said.
"My what?"
she said, and followed the direction of his finger. "That's the same blip
I saw yesterday."
John turned around
when he heard the whispers behind him. "So I hear. Why didn't you tell me
about this yesterday?"
"It was over
before either of us realized there was a problem. Maintenance never even saw
the actual shut down," Max tried to explain for her.
"It was logged. I
thought, if it was a significant event, you would ask me about it."
Searching his memory
again, he still couldn't recall seeing the entry. "Tiger Squad is
reporting in, Commander," Shelly announced. At that instant, the portal
slid open, again, and the same three maintenance technicians walk through it.
They observed the commotion at Neila's console and then frowned at each other.
"Patch them
in," he told her. "Go ahead, Nalon," he said to the air, but
before the captain could respond, Shelly blurted out something and began
frantically adjusting dials, pushing buttons and flipping switches.
"It gone!"
she said, again. "It just disappeared."
"Track it,
Shelly. Stand by, Nalon."
"Impossible
without the computer. There's nothing for me to track. No tail, no vapor trail,
no distortions, nothing. It simply disappeared for the scanner. Like somebody
switched off the damn light." A muffled whirling sound was suddenly
emitted from behind, announcing that the computer had booted itself back on
line. The head technician gestured for a crewman to open a wall panel while he
and the other went for effected terminal.
John acknowledged them
with a nod of his head and turned his attention to the pilots. "Nalon, are
you in position?"
"Affirmative,"
a voice answered.
"Tell you saw
something."
"I don't know.
Something was there for an instant, and then it was gone. Sensors aren't giving
me anything to track. On board COM went died. Sounds like the same thing that
happened on your end. The light went off. That pretty much sums it up."
"No it doesn't
Commander," a second voice cut in. It was Higgins voice, Max's former
wingman.
"Go ahead,
Higgins," John said.
"It was round.
Like a silver ball."
"You saw
it?"
"Yea, for about a
micro second. I think it was bigger than a Halberd. It had to be for me see it
at this range."
"Okay. Check the
perimeter and hang around through repairs. Then I'll want a full report.
Higgins, I want you to give me a number. Estimate range and size. We'll feed it
and the scanners back into the computer and see what we can come up with."
Once Higgins acknowledged his order and Nalon signed out John turned his
attention to the technicians. "What happened to my system?" he asked
himself more than anyone else.
"There must be a
connection." Neila said. "Each time the sphere was in a sector, the
computer system was affected. It manages to isolate a power source and
manipulate it. That much is clear. But why not the probes?"
John nodded an
agreement. "I know, the computer patches into the probe for in put. It
doesn't make since. The probe is the first thing I go for if I wanted to sneak
through a sector."
"Sure it makes
sense," Shelly injected. "Well, think about it. We sit here with our
eye glued to these screens every second of the day. A blank scene is tough to
miss. And if it happens when we blink, the computer takes over. It sounds the
alert, runs the scan and does the dispatch before we can finish blinking.
"You're
right," Neila agreed. "It homes in on any foreign objects and relays
the coordinates to the fighters."
"Which is what
should have happened whether the probe was down or not," John added.
Neila nodded her head.
"Right. But if there's no computer, a crewman has to actually see it,
decide if it's unusual and then react. That takes time. Maybe enough time to
jettison out of that sector."
"So the computer
would have to be down before they entered the sector, right?" John asked.
"Yea, except that
it didn't happen that way," Shelly answered. "I had just finished my
scan. There was nothing in 926 and the system was on line the whole time. If it
weren't I would have known."
"That's the way
it happened yesterday," Neila said.
Max finally decided to
jump into the conversation. "Wait a minute. I can see where this is going.
You don't actually think ECOS had anything to do with this, do you?" He
looked around at their faces for an answer. "There's no way any of them
could have pulled this off."
"Why not?"
Shelly asked. "It's a perfect way to slip a shuttle through the sensors. A
rebel could have disguised himself as a technician and installed a chip during
a routine maintenance check. Who would know?"
"Oh, Hell. A
programmer couldn't rig up a delay program that precise. Even if one could,
nobody could know about it, not even the computer. It'd have to be shut down to
install it. That alone would set of the alarms." Max paused for a moment
and slipped his hands into his pockets. "Besides, I already checked into
it."
"You suspected it
yesterday?" Neila asked.
"I don't know what
I suspected. It just seemed a little too convenient for that particular
terminal to collapse right about the time a stolen shuttle full ECOS fugitives
would be passing by the probe. I was up all night trying to figure it out. So,
I went over to maintenance to check their records. That panel was last opened
about two hundred years ago. Back when the new inter-links were installed. It
all goes through maintenance. If a light goes off on their board a three-man
crew is dispatched to open the panel. This thing hasn't flickered since it was
installed."
"Well, that's not
exactly accurate," the chief tech said from behind the panel. "There
was one incident about thirty years ago. We use the actual video in the
holo-trainer for drills.
"I remember
that," another tech said. "It was back when my father was on the
crew. I was just a kid; but I remember the whole complex went berserk. Alarms
start blaring, lights flash and a 403 error messages flashes on the coms. You
can't mistake a real shut down."
"That's why nobody
could believe your report," the chief when on to explain. "Nothing
happened. No lights, no alarms, no messages. If I hadn't seen the thing boot up
with my own eyes, I still wouldn't believe it."
"What caused the
shut down thirty years ago?" John asked.
"I wouldn't know.
The incident was classified. The Counsel edited most of the record before
they'd let us use it."
"I see. Is this
the only terminal that's ever been down?"
"That's right. I
ran a diagnostic while you were still on the link. It showed all of the
terminals functioning normally. Including this one."
"Is it possible
to isolate one terminal and shut it down from another one?" Neila asked.
"Sure, but
everybody would know about it. There's alarms built into the hardware to
prevent unauthorized tampering. No way to bypass it. Too many backups."
"Your telling us
that there is no way that this thing can do what it just did. Right?" John
said.
"That's what I'm
telling you. You see this power strip?" he said holding up a flat wide
belt for them all to see. "There ought to be a blue streak in this line
right about here. That's where it went down and booted up. It's an interrupt in
current. Anytime the current is disrupted, for any reason, it shows up on these
strips as a burnout. That's why we still use them."
"Well, according
to that, the terminal wasn't down." Neila concluded.
"Oh it was down,
all right. It just wasn't turned off."
"Is that
possible?" she went on to ask.
The man hesitated,
first to eyeball at his and then to look at the belt. Finally, he answered
simply, "It wasn't yesterday."