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“Rose can stay here and guard this place. I’m going to get that crazy, murdering—”
“Lydia, You’ll never find him if I don’t accompany you,” Rose pointed out.
“I-I think I can help with that,” Jenny said. “Working on all of those phones gave me a lot of inside knowledge on how Eden Rose’s systems work. Eden Rose, would it be alright if I modified Lydia’s and Dann’s phones phones to tap into your data stream to track Lt. Cobb?”
“I cannot permit that, Pvt. Pixton,” Eden Rose replied. “Access to that level of information is restricted. I would require authorization from the ranking officer on board to grant you access.”
“And, at the moment, that would be Lt. Cobb,” Rose added. “I can’t override that restriction, I’m afraid.” She shot a look at Dann that he could only take as meaningful.
“Lt. Cobb is the ranking officer? He can’t be, not in his current state. That’s ridiculous,” Dann stated flatly. “He is not fit for command.”
“Are you prepared to remove him from command?” Rose asked.
“Yes, absolutely. What do I have to do?” The very idea that Rose Dawn still recognized Lt. Cobb as a viable command officer boggled his mind, but Rose had explained that Rose Dawn thought in a much more linear, restricted fashion than Rose herself or any human personnel did.
“Please state clearly the reason Lt. Cobb is considered unfit for command,” Rose Dawn instructed.
“Because he’s a homicidal lunatic! He is clearly unfit for command,” Dann said. One of them was just going to have to assume command. Jackson would be a fairly solid choice, he thought, though Jenny was pretty adept at unconventional thinking in a crisis, which could serve them well.
“Additional opinions are necessary for a charge of this type in the absence of qualified professional diagnoses. Pvt. Pixton, Pvt. Jackson, do you concur?”
“Y-yes,” Jenny responded.
“Yes. Absolutely, yes.” Lydia had her arms crossed and was waiting impatiently near the door.
“Rose Dawn, I concur as well,” Rose added, though that was more for the crew’s benefit; she didn’t have to speak aloud to make her opinion known to the ship.
“Very well. Transfer of command has been noted in the log. UTS Rose Dawn stands ready under the command of acting Captain Dann Chambers.”
Dann’s jaw dropped. HIM?
Dann stepped inside after the others, feeling grateful for the respite from the cold and the wind. The scene that greeted him flooded him with relief; for the first time since he’d awakened, he saw a room full of glowing green. Only an occasional red light marred the display.
Lydia was rushing from cryo-pod to cryo-pod, checking name plates until finally she stopped, staring down at one with a silence almost bursting with gratitude and relief. After a moment in which she seemed to drink in the sight of the pod, she visibly steeled herself and turned back to the group. “She’s here. She’s okay.”
“I’m so glad for you!” Jenny exclaimed. “W-what’s our next move?”
“We stick to the plan. We beat him here, so we wait for him here. We know this is where he’s headed.” There was steel in Lydia’s voice that promised that Cobb would regret his arrival.
“I—Oh no. No—!” Rose’s face was stark and as close to sick as Dann could imagine an android ever looking.
“What is it?” he demanded, feeling his own insides tighten up.
Rose clenched her fists and gritted her artificial teeth. “Another cryo-pod has gone dead. It’s in a bay near by. The nearest one to here.”
“H-he doesn’t know the way,” Jenny said, her voice catching, but hard through the pain.
“We’re going after that son of a bitch,” Lydia stated in a tone that brooked no argument.
“We can’t leave this bay unprotected!” Dann protested. “Rose will have to go, and the two of you are the best suited to deal with him!”
<>
The group flew across the snow-swept tundra, flying towards the bay that housed the largest group of survivors the ship had left. They followed Rose, who had had to run hard to catch up with Lydia implacable flight to her daughter’s defense.
Dann and Jenny brought up the rear, having only a vague idea of where the cryo-bay was in relation to the terrain of the biome. Lydia hadn’t left them time to do much more than grab what gear they could—supplies had been left behind entirely—and take off in pursuit.
In spite of their best efforts, all traces of Cobb’s passage were gone by the time they crossed into the tundra. The boat trip back had taken too long. The snow that fell was far less than the blizzard they’d seen the last time, but it was more than enough to hide his tracks.
The plan was simple; Dann had proposed it as soon as they’d all made it to the boat. They knew exactly where the cryo-bay was, thanks to Rose. Cobb didn’t, unless he asked Rose Dawn, which seemed unlikely. They were to race to the cryo-bay, either to confront Cobb if he’d beaten them there, or wait for him if he hadn’t. What they did when they found him depended largely on him; Dann had seen Rose handle the bear. He wasn’t too worried about him.
They made their way through snow drifts, or around them if they were too deep, climbing generally upward on the large hill that had to pass for a mountain in the ship’s interior. The size might not have been convincing, but the roughness of the terrain certainly was. Between the exertion and the cold, the trip up the hillside took several hours. There was no sign of Cobb anywhere they could see. That might, Dann thought, have had something to do with their inability to look away from where they were setting foot for any length of time.
Finally Rose signaled a stop. At first glance, the rock face looked like any other they’d seen in their climb; closer inspection revealed that the frost-rimmed, indistinct shapes in the rock were the outlines of the door and lever.
Dann kept his eyes on Lydia; she was far calmer than he could believe, at least at first glance. A second belied that impression. There was enough tension in her stance to rip the mountain apart if it were released. The sight of the undisturbed snow covering the lever only caused the slightest hint of relaxation in her frame. Her eyes were pools of thick lava; heated, implacable, slow moving, unstoppable.
Rose grasped the lever, swinging the door wide.
XLocationX XLocationX XLocationX - XLocationX
XLocationX XLocationX XLocationX
Jun. X, 2565 A.C.E.
Dann tore his eyes from the display in disbelief. Cobb was barely recognizable. He looked strong, but hadn’t regained the mass he must’ve had before freezing. He was skeletal and wirey, his movements shifting between swift and sure to shaky from moment to moment. But it was the eyes more than anything that really creeped him out. They shone brightly with madness; they’d have given his mental state away even without the terrifying rictus grin that seemed to be permanently plastered across his face.
“Rose,” he said, “are there audio pickups there too? He looked like he was mumbling to himself before he ran upstairs and out.”
“They’re all over the corridors, yes. Let me set it to replay those last few moments.”
The four of them—Jenny and Lydia had crowded around to see—leaned in to hear, as the mumbling was very soft, almost like he didn’t realize himself that he was speaking. Rose adjusted the volume, making his words, or sub-vocalizations, really, somewhat clearer.
It was something like trying to pick words out of the wind, but a few times Dann could’ve sworn he heard the word trap, and a lot of invective, mostly directed toward them he thought. His eyes widened at the language the man was using. He kept glancing around the area, as though trying to make up his mind. His body was tight, drawn in upon himself, as though expecting attack, or some kind of harm.
After about a minute, he stiffened, his face in profile, half-shadowed. His grin grew wider, and he cast his gaze up the stairs and toward the door that should have lead him to the sub-arctic tundra biome.
“The sea of red lights … the green pool of the unfortunates,” he said with sudden shocking clarity, and then he seemed to laugh soundlessly. His eyes narrowed with a hunter’s intensity then and he stalked up the stairs and out of the view range. Moments later they heard a door creak ponderously open, and the screaming of sub-arctic winds. Rose shut the display and the sound off.
Sea of red lights, green pool. Dann’s eyes widened, and he turned to look at Lydia apprehensively. She had gone very pale at the implication; she stood rigidly still. With a glance but without a word, she spun on her heel and was gone in a flash up the corridor to where their supplies—and weapons—were kept.
Gord McLeod