The Dance Eternal

ch 22 and 23

22

Deep in the mining sector of the Dor’ien Conglomerate, near the edge of the sector where mining is dangerous, but the most profitable, Sidron rh’Thet, piloted his mining scow around large asteroids rich in coveted materials. His cargo hold was nearly full from a massive iron deposit he had contracted some work for (iron did not pay much, but it did keep his ship going long enough to earn more money), but he knew of a little cache of terrasine crystals that he’d been quietly chipping away on for several months. The ore, a dense, blue crystal that grew on asteroids, was integral in star ship weapon and drive systems and sells for great money; keeping a claim for long, though, often draws attention and inspires others to attempt to take it for themselves, making the selling prices even higher.

Sid had been fortunate in that he had found a vein that was under the asteroid's surface, with only a small, faint blue glow from a single protruding crystal to mark its location. He was playing it smart; he left a small marker to remind himself of its location, he kept the bore to the size of the original whole rather than widening it out and exposing the vein, and he only took a small amount at a time that could easily be explained as a random find. He had lined up several different buyers with no connection to each other, and parted out his loads to each in nice, profitable little bundles. One more haul, this haul, would get him to his goal; he’d pay off this piece of junk he’d been scrounging in for too many cycles, and still have enough to buy a great little cruiser that he’d been eyeballing.

An O-PAT frigate passed over on its usual patrol through the mining zone. Sid scoffed; uppity bastards that they were, they did keep the zone relatively safe from renegades and such. He guessed that they were okay, but he’d mostly had less than fun interactions with them; there were a few who made a little extra money by shaking-down some of the miners, demanding money for their ‘protection’. It was also a popular belief that several members of their higher echelon maintained some rather clandestine relationships, and it had had its effect on decisions made within the Omniversal-Planetary Authoritative Task-force.

The scow cruised between a pair of large asteroids, pockmarked with old collision craters and new mining sites, as Sid remembered an article he had read on the network about an O-PAT officer who’d “gone rogue”. The details were sketchy at best, but claimed the officer had “appropriated division funds illegally, taken nearly an armada’s-worth of ships, and began raiding and razing outposts across the galaxy.

In one of the few shows of solidarity shown within the organization in current memory, they assembled the majority of the O-PAT fleet and hunted the rogue to a mostly barren moon, and obliterated it – the moon was split into three chunks from the combined impacts from massive ship-borne cannons firing electromagnetically accelerated blasts of super-heated plasma.

He shook the thoughts of destruction from his mind as he rounded the asteroid that held his plot, when he noticed a flash past the rock. Sid fired up his scanner, and it returned an image of a ship that seemed intact, dark and apparently adrift.

He tapped through several menu options on the control panel, trying to get more information. “That’s odd,” he said aloud, “no I.D... you better hope that O-PAT frigate doesn’t find you.”

He turned his craft to the rock, found his cache, and began mining, but kept his scanner focused on the mysterious ship.

An hour later, as he was gathering the last of his bounty, the scanner beeped. He checked the screen, and saw that the ship was powering up. With the sudden mental image of being robbed, he slammed the thrusters on, wheeled his scow around and headed away from the other ship at full speed. Not even checking to see if was being followed, he wound between the asteroids to make it harder to track his movements. Soon, the station came into view ahead, and he opened an encrypted hailing channel.

“Jor. Hey, man, answer your damned com.”

A grumbling voice, smacking as if just waking, came back, “Wh… where’s the fire, mm?”

“Hey, open the bay. You need to see this.”

He maneuvered his scow into an approach toward the opening doors of the docking bay on the side of a large cruiser, its black-and-red paint job faded and marred. The ship was an older model mining vessel that had seen a long corporate service, then been auctioned off and replaced with a newer model. Sid and his partner, Jor, had paid next to nothing for the ship that looked like a length of half-flattened pipe, and had definitely gotten their money's worth, and then some.

It was time to replace her, though, Sid thought as he piloted the scow into the open hanger. He glanced at a large section on the outside of the hull, bright green and completely mismatched for the craft; a result of a rather aggressive pair of claim-jumpers they had encountered a few years back. Sid and Jor had hunted for weeks to find a panel of the right dimensions to patch the whole the encounter had left in the hull. They had done so many repairs and patches that she was almost not even fit to sail, much less recognizable as her original model.

They just needed a little more money. One more haul, Sid thought to himself. He looked at the cargo weight readout on his HUD, and grinned. “This haul.”

23

The bridge of the ship was dark, lights being unnecessary with the only living passenger in stasis. A screen blinked on, chasing away some of the darkness and casting a bluish glow on an empty seat, as lines of information cascaded from top-to-bottom. More monitors sprang to life, until all stations on the bridge were active.

“System initialization. Returning to full functionality.” Celeste’s voice echoed through her corridors, as lights came on throughout. In the stasis chamber, one tube lit up, it’s occupant in a deep sleep. A faint hiss issued from the pod, and the lid slid to the left and downward along the contour of the pod's shape.

After a minute, John’s eyes slowly blinked open, squinting in the light. He sat up, yawning and stretching his arms.

“Good evening, John. If you will proceed to the kitchen, there will be coffee waiting.”

“Oh, coffee,” he exclaimed groggily, “yes, have some.” He swung his legs over the side of the pod, the floor panels surprisingly not frigid on his bare feet. He leaned forward a bit, testing his legs, then stood, impressed in how easily he was able to do so. He’d figured his muscles would have atrophied after such a long period of immobility, but he felt as if he’d just awoken from a good night’s sleep; groggy and zombie-like, but rested. He looked down at the white pajamas he’d put on before climbing into the pod, then around the chamber.

“Hey, Celeste,” he called to the room.

“Yes, John,” came her immediate reply.

“Where can I find some clothes?”

“May I suggest settling into one of the quarters? The first room on the port side has several changes of clothes that I believe are sized for you.”

John left the stasis chamber, bare feet slapping on the rubber-coated floor panels, and when he arrived in the main cabin, he headed for the kitchen, toward the smell of fresh java brewing in a coffee maker that looked as if it were a part of the cabinetry; the square-shaped pot only added to the illusion. A drying rack under the cabinet held mugs, and he took one and slid the pot from its compartment and poured, taking in the aroma – a light Colombian blend with a hint of hazelnut. He took a sip and grimaced, “Not my favorite, but it’ll do.”

With his cup, he headed to the port-side cabins, found the first one and went in, the door opening at his approach. The cabin was spacious for its size, with a bed to the left that was affixed to hinges on the wall, to be folded away when not in use. On the right sat a desk close to the door, complete with a chair that had magnetized feet to prevent it from sliding about in turbulence. Next to the desk was a four-drawer dresser, and a bookcase sat in the corner. Two steps would cross the space between, but he’d lived in smaller in New York, and that place had a “kitchen” – a foot of counter that held a small microwave, and a small pedestal sink beside.

He opened-and-closed the dresser drawers until he found a full change of clothes, and soon was dressed in jeans and a green flannel shirt and heading for the bridge. He had found a pair of nice boots, heavy and steel-toed, and smirked at the click-clop they made, especially in the tighter corridors.

He approached the bridge, and as the doors opened, he immediately saw the view outside and was a little surprised; they apparently had stopped near an asteroid belt. Massive pitted rocks hung about, some rotating at various speeds, rounded by ages of collisions and larger than any building he’d ever seen. Smaller boulders, from the size of ocean cruise ships down to the size of a VW Bug, moved between larger ones the size of moons. Occasionally they careened from whatever lay in their paths, causing new debris to spread away.

He made his way around the central chair, and sat with his right leg over the arm, sipping his coffee and taking in the view. Small lights glittered in the distance, against some of the larger asteroids, and he wasn’t sure if it was his eyes or maybe reflections. He was about to ask when he remembered where he was supposed to be when he awoke.

“Soooo,” John drew out in question, “is this Alpha Centari?”

Immediately, the AI answered, “Negative.”

“Then, it’s on the other side of the asteroids,” he asked, his left brow creeping upward.

Again, “Negative.”

“So, where… are we?”

“Our current location does not match any known star maps; however, we have traveled approximately nine-hundred-thirty-two-quintillion light years past Alpha Centari.”

“Nine-hundred… quintil… WHAT? How long have I been asleep?”

“One-thousand-four-hundred-sixteen years, eight months, two weeks, one day- “

John’s coffee mug shattered on the floor, as he sat, eyes wide and jaw agape.

“John, I detected an abnormality in your heart rate – are you okay? Do you require assistance? I am able to perform CPR through- “

John snapped out of the pause, reeling his jaw in, “No, I’m fine. Are you sure something didn’t mess up your clock? Over fourteen-hundred years?!”

“All systems have functioned nominally, save for a small lapse of twelve earth-years.”

“A lapse? When?”

“My… data is corrupted around this event, I’m sorry. I have attempted scans of this data, but have had no positive progress. Also, routine maintenance is overdue. I can talk you through each step.”

“s**t,” he said, another memory occurring. “Where’s Steve?”

There was a pause, then, “John, I’m sorry…” she began, then stopped, and the sensor above the view screen intensified and focused into a beam which shone down on the floor at the front of the bridge.

John hesitantly stepped around the bridge, until the illuminated area was in sight. On the floor, slouched against the console, was a skeleton draped in familiar-looking shreds of cloth. Steve’s glasses lay on the floor next to his right hand.

John was silent, offering his respects, then looked up at the sensor. “How does it not reek in here? I know it’s been a long time, but this is a pressurized space.”

She hesitated for a moment, and he got the impression that this was difficult for her to discuss, “I used the climate controls to manage his body’s decomposition, as well as controlling the vapors released in the process. You were safe in the stasis pod, so there was no danger to you.”.

“I’m sorry, Celeste. That must have been tough to do,” he said, trying to be as comforting as he could. He remembered the conversations about the AI’s development, and was attempting to wrap his head around it as he went.

“Thank you, John. It was,” she said, then, “I am sorry, John. I was not sure what else to do with Steve’s remains.”

Hearing her sadness, he tried to be comforting, “It’s okay, Celeste. You did your best. Honestly, I’m not sure what to do, either.” He picked up the glasses, the thick lenses cracked, and one arm bent upward. “Did he suffer?”

“He sat there, and we talked, for a day-and-a-half after launch. I tried to help him, John, but he refused. He wanted to die, was ready in his soul. I think… he missed Leslie.”

John nodded slowly, relating to that loss. At length, he asked, “Did he leave any messages, instructions… anything.”

“There was this,” she said, and after a moment, Steve’s voice could be heard, talking about Goirah. John listened, then asked Celeste to play it back twice more; the whole time, the presence in his head purred warmly. After the last playback, he sat for a few minutes, pondering the weight of the information.

“So, Goirah is in… you, Celeste?”

“That is correct. She is a shield against the Mhorgesh.”

“A shield…” the thought clicked something in his memory, and, “that’s why they had no effect when I got inside. And am I to assume that the… was that ‘More-geesh’, you said,” he tried out the word, and it felt like it came out sideways and soured his tongue with its passing.

“It is a name borne in a language that is not easy to process, but you have the pronunciation correct. They are the beings you saw in the cavern, and I assume elsewhere before your arrival. The Mhorgesh are a product of the Ca’zid,” ‘ka-zeed’, she enunciated, “the massive seed-shaped craft that landed on Earth.”

John thought for a moment, then, “And you know this because of… Goirah?”

“Yes,” came her instant reply, “in return for providing her a form, she has shared her knowledge with me. In the time that you were in stasis, I have been able to further improve some of my functionality. However, I require an...” she hesitated, then said, “I will require an upgrade to several of my systems in order to progress any further.” She paused here, then, in a lower, conspiratorial tone she said, “Oh, and Steve left one other message for you; he said that you need to look very carefully around your room.”

“I will,” he replied. He knelt by the remains, then had a thought. “Celeste, you have some weapons, right?”

“I do,” she said, question clear in her response.

“How about missiles or torpedoes?”

“I am equipped with a pair of vacuum torpedo launchers. Why do you ask?”

John glanced to Steve's bones, then the rocks outside. “I think I have an idea how to honor our friend. He seemed to like old science fiction, and I remember something from a film I saw a long time ago -” He stopped here and chuckled, then, “A damn-long time ago.”

He grabbed a spare blanket and gently wrapped-up the bones, and took them down to the torpedo tubes. He found one of the torpedoes, and with Celeste's help removed the warhead, carefully replacing it with the bundle.

Back on the bridge, he browsed through the collection of music Celeste had stored, and to his small surprise he found the theme to the old Star Trek television series. Playing it throughout the ship, he fired the torpedo off into the void, aimed toward a distant nebula past the outer edge of the asteroid belt.

“Good luck out there, Steven Haverstad,” John said.

After a time, Celeste said, “Thank you, John, for putting him to a proper rest.”

He chuckled softly, “Don't know how 'proper' it is-” he quoted the air, then smiled at the gesture, “but I did what I hoped he would appreciate.”

John sat in the captain's chair for a time, both he and Celeste silent, until he finally stood, yawning, as the recent events swirled around in his mind. “Okay, I’ve been hibernating for a very long time; you’ve just told me a lot of stuff, and I need a bit of regular sleep. Let’s take care of the maintenance when I’ve had time to wake up and process this… shit.”

“If you need to process waste, may I suggest the restroom,” came Celeste’s glib reply.

John chuckled, “Not what I meant, but where is the toilet, for future reference?”