Zoe finished half her meal bar, drank most of a bottle of water and fell fast asleep in Ashley's arms. It was quiet, dark, and she couldn't help but feel a little selfish at the comfort that holding Zoe gave her. Attempts at finding out what was going on with the ship and crew on her command and control unit failed. The command network was absolutely dormant. She turned her attention to Zoe’s personal records and the first thing that caught her interest was surveillance footage of her in the Botanical Gallery. In the playback she was running through a finished park area that Ashley hadn’t seen before, it was maze like, with tall bushes and fruit trees everywhere. It was a playful chase between two of Iloona’s four or five year old children and Zoe, and the eighteen month old was having the time of her life until she tripped and fell into one of the ankle deep creeks that ran through the outer gallery. The pair of children picked her up right away, made sure she was all right and raised her spirits in moments by splashing around in the shallow water with her, turning it into a game. Ashley didn’t know how happy Iloona would be with two of her youngest children turning up soaking wet, but they were all having great fun.
When she brought up the rest of Zoe’s profile she was surprised to discover that she had been adopted by a human, Vivian Lea, who had also adopted a young human boy and girl. She lived in the Botanical Gallery, and was a Pandem refugee.
Just looking at Zoe sleeping peacefully in her arms reminded Ashley of her own childhood. She couldn’t understand why, because her upbringing was quite different. She was bred for slavery, and raised in a stock house, then sold at the age of four. She barely remembered the stock house, which she assumed was a mercy. They raised as many children as possible in a small space, and since they weren't clones, they were treated fairly well, but they were still only a product. Considering that she could have been a clone instead and subjected to painful accelerated growth treatments, even more crowded conditions and forced direct neural education, being brought into the world naturally and sold by her mother as a baby was the better option, where slavery was concerned.
Zoe wouldn't find herself in such a situation. Everyone she knew despised slavery, and after holding the youngster for just a little while she couldn't bear to see anything happen to her. The holographic image of her playing with the other children, all of them older than her, was a relief. Zoe seemed to enjoy life in the Botanical Gallery, playing in the grass, splashing on the edge of the shallow creek there, and learning to climb with a little help from one of Iloona's older children. Only days before Ashley would have had to be reminded that there were hundreds of civilians working and living in the Botanical Gallery. Watching the playback of what life was like for the orphans there, and how survivors of Pandem had already moved right in was a shocking reminder.
She'd moved herself into the life of a fighter pilot, even though she was the Master At The Helm. As a career it suited her exceptionally well. Ashley loved the study, technical demands, and the responsibility of the position, but after seeing Zoe in the Botanical Gallery and saving her in medical, she realized she needed something more. "How could I have forgotten all about it?" she asked herself in a whisper.
The lawn she attended yoga classes at on most mornings seemed small. The place where Zoe and the rest of the children were taken to play was a corner of the Gallery she'd never seen. She doubted most of the busy crew of the Triton had seen most of the place, and she vowed to spend some time there, to relax, and to make sure Zoe was happy once things calmed down.
"Well, this whole section is sealed again," Larry said as he came through the door. "The soldiers were called to the bridge, something big is going down there, but I couldn't tell you what. Oz and Jason have everything deactivated on the command deck."
"Did you tell them that I'm ready to pilot this thing as soon as I find a console?" She whispered back.
"No, you'll be doing that in a few minutes. The conference room just a few doors down is still intact. You can use a section of the table as a control board. Oh, and there's chatter of a Uriel fighter moving around at long range. I'm thinking Valance has come looking for his ship."
"That's Captain Valance," Ashley corrected quietly as she slowly rose to her feet. Zoe was so tired she barely stirred.
"Aye, aye," Larry led her to the conference room. The lights were still glowing a dim blue, on reserve power, and she could see where heavy bulkhead doors had been lowered, cutting off half of medical. If they were anything like the Botanical Gallery doors, they were a meter or more thick, made to withstand incredible forces. “You’ll be a welcome sight. You’ll be saving them the trouble of finding another pilot.”
“Wouldn’t they just come and get me?”
“I listed you as killed before Crewcast was silenced so anyone who managed to break into the system wouldn’t come looking for a Master At The Helm in a medically induced coma.”
“Oh, well then I guess they’ll be really happy to see me.” The conference room was a more welcoming space. Larry had gathered a pile of nutrient bars, blankets, bottles of water, and had even brought in two portable gurneys. Ashley took a seat and transferred her ident from her comm unit to the table. The helm controls came up straight away, partially as a holographic projection and partially covering the surface itself. Around her console were live star charts, damage displays, a virtual communications panel, and a navigational assistant much like the navnet she was used to seeing.
She tried to put Zoe into the chair beside her, but her hands reflexively tightened their grip on her hair. "Okay, looks like I have a new copilot," she chuckled, depositing her passenger in her lap. Her eyes half opened and she relaxed for a moment. Then, as though she just realized that she was in a different place, her pale blue eyes popped open and she stared at the holograms hovering above the table.
"She's going to be a distraction, I should take her," Larry said as he stepped forward.
Zoe retreated against Ashley, sending her a worried look. "It's okay, he's a friend," Ashley reassured as she tried to lift her out of her lap.
Her protests came as a panicked squeal.
Ashley hushed her, soothing Zoe with shushing sounds and stroking her face. "It's okay. You're just going to have to be really quiet and still, alright?" She soothed, knowing that there was little actual chance that her instructions would stick, regardless of how they were delivered.
"That's it," Larry grumbled, bringing up a sub display on the conference table.
"What are you doing?"
"Checking game history. If she's anything like every kid old I've met, then she has a favourite," he searched Zoe's profile for a few seconds and activated a program that featured rounded, bouncing characters in the shape of letters and numbers. Their hyper, high pitched voices immediately caught Zoe's attention and her grip on Ashley's hair loosened.
"What is it?" Ashley asked as she watched a nine chase a frantic one.
"Bumper Muncher. I've never heard of it, but I think she knows it pretty well."
Zoe looked up at Ashley, her eyes conveying a request for permission.
"You wanna play?" She asked, feigning excitement and surprise.
Zoe nodded emphatically.
"Okay, here we go," Ashley said as she lifted her up and put her on the table across from her.
The little girl made a gesture as though she were picking up the game display and it disappeared, sounds of muffled protests and comical panic seemed to come from her closed hand until she threw it into the air above the floor beside Ashley. The game image appeared there and Zoe got down from the table with Ashley’s help. Within minutes she settled in to play her game, changing the shape of the virtual walls so the characters, each in the form of a different number, so they collided into each other. The black numbers added together to become one larger number when the collided, and were reduced by red numbers. "She's really good with the computer," Ashley commented quietly as she watched the comically frantic numerical characters rush around the changing virtual space.
"It's a Sol System model, completely intuitive. She doesn't know how inconvenient most computers are, so she assumes it works like the rest of the world."
"I've only ever moved something from my comm unit to a display and back, never even tried what she's doing. Then, I s'pose you know all about what Triton can do," Ashley commented as she checked the status of the ship and started figuring out where they were.
"I trained on this model for three years. The hardest part has been pretending I don't know much more than anyone else."
"You're going to have to teach me a few things sometime."
"Only if you show me more about Crewcast. I haven't been able to ask questions since its designer is also the best investigator on the ship. If I used it heavily I know he'd figure me out."
"Really? How?"
"Crewcast builds a behavioural profile of all its users. It's an intelligence man's wet dream. Most of the crew use it so much that it probably already knows who everyone knows, how long they've known them, what kind of relationships people typically have and anything else. Ever notice how the old Freeground crew don’t have complete public profiles? It's a trap. If you have nothing to hide, there's no problem, but if you do, it takes discipline not to reveal anything important."
"Huh. Good thing I don't have anyone to talk to about your secret. Unless someone else knows."
"No one else knows."
"If they did, would you tell me?"
"No."
"God, one more secret, especially a doozy like yours, and I'll explode."
"That's my fault. I shouldn't have let you rest so long."
"Or let a skeevy soldier into my room."
Larry nodded.
They worked in silence for a moment longer, and Ashley tried not to look at her navigator. He'd sat beside her for many shifts on the bridge, they'd spent time together after work, and she wouldn't have guessed at his true purpose on Triton. If she'd known how dangerous he was, things would have been different. She felt uneasy enough with him sitting across the table from her, and hoped that her attempts at casual jibing didn't go too far. A distressing thought fought its way to the fore; that he'd dispose of her after he'd completed some goal, and she did her best to suppress her fear.
Larry brought up a security status display, partially in two dimensions on his side of the table, and partially in three, where two dozen red spots flashed on a holographic representation of the Triton. Ashley finished her calculations and confirmed that they were just outside the planetary nebula, then started an emergency course calculation in the navigational computer before taking a closer look at it. "What are the yellow areas?"
"Parts of the ship that have been recently contested or are between enemy contacts," he said as he focused in on the upper command deck. All the corridors, most of the crew quarters and all the offices were marked in yellow. Ashley caught a glimpse of the concourse outside the main bridge, and a chill ran through her. The enemy soldiers were lining bodies up along the wall, at least a third of them were in Triton uniforms.
Before she could get a really good look Larry deactivated the live feeds, and all but the structural and bare tactical information remained. It was enough. There was a collection of red markers on both levels of the bridge. "We've lost the ship," she whispered, trying to keep calm.
"No, you're sitting there at the pilot's controls. In case you haven't noticed, you're the only one with direct access to the helm. Engineering was cut off a while ago, it was the first thing the soldiers did. Chief Grady suppressed several soldiers from the first boarding party and locked them in a decontamination chamber without their gear after almost crushing them to death with a gravity fluctuation, but he eventually had to weld the emergency bulkheads shut. Communications with him and his people has been spotty ever since."
"But, the bridge."
"Is nothing but a collection of dead terminals." Larry sighed and nodded to himself, as though digging deep for more patience. With a few gestures he zoomed out and shifted the three dimensional display of the Triton so they could get a better look. "It's bad; I won't lie to you when you can see it all for yourself. The enemy has taken the hangars, command levels and half the interior outside of the Botanical Gallery. On the other hand, they can't take this half of medical without cutting for days, and the same goes for the Gallery. There's also a fight going on aboard their own command carrier, and Frost's people have fused the mooring clamps onto their ship, so they're not going anywhere."
"Wait, so you want me to pilot this ship while hauling another one riding piggyback?" Ashley exclaimed.
Zoe looked at her wide eyed, reacting to her tone more than anything.
Ashley turned, smiled and stroked the youngster's back. "S'okay, play your game hon," she soothed.
"Jason has a plan, that's why I like him despite the fact that if anyone is going to catch me eventually, it'll be him. I think I know what it is, too."
"Wouldn't it be helpful if they knew I was here?"
"No, I'm listening to the enemy's communications and it's pretty obvious that whatever our Intelligence Officer has planned hasn't kicked in yet. If we try to use internal comms, we'll probably be discovered. That's why there's no comm traffic right now, and why Agameg has been waging his own war all along."
"Right, so you're saying that I shouldn't worry about all the fighting going on right now and just get ready."
"Exactly."
"Fine, in that case, I have a heck of a lot of nav data to get through and some calculations to make. New weight distributions, mass considerations, shear estimates, not to mention we're down to one operating engine," she said sweetly for Zoe's benefit. Her attention had turned back to her favourite game, where she controlled a running number three that became a six, nine, and twelve as it gobbled up other threes.
"I'll give you a hand. Just be ready for anything, I don't know when Jason will be putting the next phase of his plan into motion."
A sinking feeling started to overwhelm Ashley, and she couldn't help but ask; "D'you think they might leave us behind?"
Larry looked up from the conference table display and caught her eye. "No. There's no way they can capture the command carrier, even this relatively small one, even if they could get to engineering or the control centre. That, and Jason wouldn't leave the people in the Botanical Gallery behind. He wouldn't dishonour Oz that way."
"Dishonour Oz?"
"Something Oz told me the other night. He'd die to protect the civilians at the centre of this ship," Larry said almost mournfully.
"Oh," Ashley returned her attention to her work, trying to use the limited data at hand to create a control profile that would allow her to safely pilot the ship.
The pair worked in silence for a time, the sounds of Zoe's game providing background noise that was so cheery that it seemed inappropriate for how Ashley felt.
"There it is, that fighter the Command Centre's been trying to pin down," Larry said, bringing it up on the main holographic display. The signal was coming from the inner edge of the nebula, tracking with the path of one of the smaller meteor clusters within.
“I don’t think that’s a fighter, they would have detected and slagged it already if it was. He must have attached an inactive beacon to a meteor so he could use it as a relay,” Ashley said, looking at the rough shape of the meteor cluster.
“That makes sense. I was wondering why they didn’t destroy it. They must be waiting for it to transmit, see if they can trace it back, or decode their message, see what that pilot has to say.”
“They’re not the only ones.”