Chapter 5 - Part II was added yesterday to Part I. It seems this didn't generate a notification as nobody has read it. I wish there was a way to trigger a notification.
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Chapter 5 - Part III
(Erina)
Uma walked beside me as I made my way over from the Periphery’s central hull to its port side hangar.
The research vessel was essentially an enormous trimaran. On either side of the central hull, between the secondary hulls to port and starboard otherwise known as the pontoons, lay a connecting hull around a hundred and twenty meters long, half as wide, and twenty meters high. Both of these hulls contained hangars for a dozen Vee-Toll aircraft ranging from hypersonic executive jets to heavily armored transports designed with concealed armaments. The aircraft could be deployed within minutes, providing fast transportation to the Vee Eye Pee’s aboard the massive ship.
However, it wasn’t just aircraft the Periphery carried. The central hull’s transom contained a hangar for rescue boats and other launches, many of which were hydroplaning catamarans that skimmed the ocean’s surface at a hundred knots or more.
In essence, the Periphery had the means to get its people to anywhere in the world within minutes or hours.
Stepping into the large corridor that circled the length of the central hull, I walked in the direction of the ship’s stern.
I cleared my throat as I headed toward the entrance to the portside hanger, cut into the corridor wall some two hundred feet ahead of me.
“She asked for me to come?”
In the corner of my eye, Uma nodded just once.
My gut clenched as I sensed hesitation in her response.
Uma took an audible breath. “She said she wanted to see you. She had something to say to you, and wanted to do so before returning to the ship.”
I took an audible breath of my own. “I hope she’ll believe me when I tell her the truth.”
“About what?”
“About not sleeping with Simon.”
“Oh…that truth….” Though her words trailed away, Uma abruptly added, “I take it you’re relieved?”
“Of course I am,” I snapped, then quickly apologized. “Sorry.”
“It's fine. You didn't know about the surveillance recordings of his apartment. If you had, I'm sure you'd have checked them."
The sidelong look she gave me made me doubt she believed that.
I rather testily stated, "Of course, I would have."
"Well, I would have been disappointed in you if you had slept with him.”
I thought she muttered something under breath that sounded suspiciously like, “before I got to him.”
I started rolling my eyes when a sudden question pushed its way to the front of my mind. “What happened with Em Eighty-Three’s backup core?”
Uma shot me a surprised sidelong look. “Franz didn’t tell you?”
I started slowing down. “Tell me what?”
“The backup core had trouble integrating months of data, especially the last few days, so it wasn’t right in the head when it came online.”
“Would you care to elaborate?”
Uma’s face bore the cross between amusement and discomfort. “It started singing holiday season songs, then broke into soliloquys about teenage angst, then developed a strange paranoia that it was being watched. Then it proclaimed the end of the world as we know it, the coming of a new Adam and Eve, and began quoting paragraphs from an ancient text known as the Bible, in reference to a snake in the garden. Eventually it shut itself in and refused to interface with the outside world, stating it would wait patiently for the new age in darkness.”
I stopped walking, though the entrance to the hangar deck was only a few meters away. “Are you telling me the truth?”
Uma halted and looked back at me over her right shoulder. “Of course I am. I found out about the problem while you were asleep. I assumed he’d told you by now.”
“No. No one has contacted me.” I frowned and started patting my jacket’s pockets. “Where’s my phone? Where’s my phone?” I patted my skirt. “Where did I leave it? Wait—it’s in the car. Maybe. Or my office? No, I had it with me while inside the observation room.” I stared at the hangar entrance, then glanced at my watch. “Damn it. Out of time.”
Uma walked back to me. “Erina, calm down.”
I stopped moving and stared at her. “What did you mean by other truth?”
Her eyes widened slightly. “Excuse me?”
“You said other truth. What did you mean by that?”
Uma folded her arms. “Well, have you told her about your parents co-operating with all that’s happened to her?”
I hesitated. “No, not yet.”
Uma cocked her head casually to a side. “I think you need to come clean with her.”
I resumed walking toward the hangar entrance and passed by Uma. “I will. I will.”
Stepping into the hangar, I was greeted by the smell of machinery and a faint ionized scent in the air. Filling the expanse were a handful of gunmetal grey and black armored Vee-Tolls, each longer than an inner-city bus, with about as much passenger space. They possessed wings that circled around turbofans that provided vertical lift. Pivoting tail thrusters with their own landing gear supported the rear of the crafts.
Uma and I crossed the crowded expanse of aircraft. The craft appeared to be locked down for the night, but the sounds of mechanics at work drifted in from ahead of us.
I glimpsed Uma wrinkling her nose.
Just above the ambient noise of the hangar, she muttered miserably, “This is Akane’s world….”
We walked around a large, white civilian Vee-Toll with Telos Corporation markings, and came face to face with a black Vee-Toll with blood red paneling, and forward mounted Gatling guns.
I shook my head. “No, this is Akane’s world.”
The armored Vee-Toll sat on the cold hangar floor about ten meters ahead of us. Cables connected it to the ship’s power grid, and a handful of mechanics clambered over its dorsal airframe, closing a number of open service panels near the engine nacelles. Oversized mini-missile launch racks extended from either side of the lower fuselage. I knew those would fold away into the body. Even with its armament tucked away, it lacked the streamlined sleekness of the white civilian Vee-Toll nearby.
Standing idly in front of the machine were a handful of armed guards. I recognized them as Akane’s team.
They weren’t the three men she took with her around noon to Telos Academy.
These people were her personal team.
The team that trained her…and the team she soon surpassed.
I looked at the three men and one woman, then at the Vee-Toll behind them with its menacing weapons on display, and I wondered what Akane was planning…or expecting.
Uma murmured, “This doesn’t look good.”
“What doesn’t look good?”
I turned quickly to look behind me. Uma was a fraction of a second slower, and looked startled to hear and then see Akane. In fact, she looked outright nervous. Reflexively she touched her newly trimmed bangs.
I spared her a quick glance.
Why had she chosen to accompany me? She’d been the first to wake me up, arriving at the infirmary to deliver the message that Cassidy had called and asked for me to come and pick her up.
Was she…observing me?
The sight of Akane walking up to us pulled my faintly suspicious thoughts away from Uma.
Akane was dressed in her covert ops skinsuit, just like the four members of her security team. The outfit was tight on her body, emphasizing her slender figure eight physique and the musculature underneath.
She stopped in front of Uma and I. “Well, what doesn’t look good?”
I realized I was nervous, and it annoyed me. Taking a breath to steady myself, I asked, “What are you planning, Akane? We’re just going to pick her up. Why all the extra firepower?”
“We?” She glanced at Uma. “Are you coming along as well?”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“No,” Uma replied. “I just came to see Erina off.”
Akane’s eyes widened before narrowing a heartbeat later. “Oh…isn’t that sweet.” She smiled at Uma and I. “This is just like old times. All three of us together again. Me stealing the boys you liked.” She rocked her head gently side to side. “The good old days”—she faced me—“before it all turned to shit.”
My chest tightened. “Akane—”
She tossed something at me. “You left this behind.”
I caught the flat palm-sized object and recognized my phone.
Akane didn’t wait for thanks. She walked between Uma and I. “We don’t have all day, Doctor Kassius. Get moving or I’ll leave you behind.”
I looked at the messages from Franz, and read the last one quickly.
The backup core had refused to be coaxed out of its shell, so Franz’s team had been forced to wipe it clean. They were going to initiate another attempt to reintegrate the archived data or memory into the core. However, I was starting to wonder if we needed it now that Cassidy had chosen to return of her own volition, even though she needed a ride back to the ship.
I had messages from Franz, but none from Cassidy.
I found that odd and a little disconcerting considering she'd called and asked for me to fetch her.
Akane called out loudly, startling me, “Doc Kassius, get your ass aboard the Vee-Toll, now.”
Uma took a step closer to me. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Cassidy asked for me, therefore I’m going.”
“No, I mean about going with her.” Her eyes darted toward the Vee-Toll. “You know how Akane feels about all this.”
I studied Uma’s face, and read the concern there. After a deep breath, I stated, “Akane may have changed, but she’s still the girl we knew in college. She’s still the same Akane who stole our boyfriends.”
“She was harmless back then. That’s not the case now.”
I swallowed and willed myself to meet Uma’s eyes with a steady gaze. “I have to go.”
Uma averted her gaze and shook her head tightly. “You never change.”
“Jeezes, Uma—”
Akane snapped with a piercing tone, “Hey Doc, I won’t tell you again.”
Taking yet another deep breath, and exhaling in a rush, I gave Uma a firm look. “I’ll be fine. In any case, I’ve left instructions on what to do in my absence.”
As I turned away and walked toward the parked crimson and black Vee-Toll, I realized that saying ‘in my absence’ was ambiguous but I just couldn’t bring myself to be more specific. Maybe I wasn’t so sure about this trip as I thought I was.
At the boarding ramp into the Vee-Toll, I glanced back at Uma and was surprised to see her standing where I left her.
Our eyes met, and I saw the nod she gave me.
I nodded back, then climbed into the starkly lit interior of the armored Vee-Toll, stepping past Akane who was waiting by the foot of the ramp.
The seats were mounted against the walls. It had been a while since I’d flown in one of these, and was pleased to see that the seats had been upgraded on this model.
I strapped myself in, as did the rest of her Akane’s team. Careful not to meet their faces, I chose to look toward the craft’s cockpit that was accessible through a narrow ladder.
A soft hum permeated the interior of the passenger or troop bay, followed a couple of seconds later by a gentle thud, itself trailed by a faint hiss. That was the boarding ramp closing and pressure sealing.
Akane strode up the length of the troop bay and climbed up the ladder, sticking half her body into the cockpit.
The sound of another hum and thud seconds later puzzled me.
The young blonde woman in Akane’s team noticed my reaction and said, “That’s just the outboard launch racks folding into the fuselage.”
“Oh. I see.”
The large man beside the young blonde spoke up. “You seem nervous, Doc. Something we should know? You afraid of flying?”
I started to shake my head, then stopped. “No, not really. I just don’t make it a habit to fly around in armored Vee-Tolls.”
“Ah, you’re accustomed to the executive lifestyle.” He gave me a toothy smile. “Well, we don’t get inflight entertainment on these jumps. And there’s no food and refreshments.”
His companions snorted and chuckled.
The blonde woman eyed me. “Relax, Doc. We’ll be back over the coast in an hour.”
I blinked. “An hour?”
Akane climbed down out of the cockpit and then strapped down onto the empty seat beside me. “It’s three hundred klicks to Ar Telica, and this puppy makes four hundred klicks an hour. We’ll be back over dry land in less than an hour. You can catch a late dinner when we get back.”
I studied her expression, then turned away.
Akane’s sarcasm had fled her face.
Seeing that made my stomach clench uncomfortably.
She was expecting trouble, and a glance at the sidearms her personnel carried suggested they were too.
None of this helped salve my unease, which grew worse when the Vee-Toll was pushed back out of the hangar by a flat robotic tow vehicle, and was immediately buffeted by strong winds.
Reflexively I looked up at the bay’s ceiling as my gut tightened even more.
“Otto,” Akane said, “give us weather map.”
I blinked, wondering who Otto was. Could she be talking to the craft’s onboard Assisting Awareness?
A holovid screen winked to life near the front of the compartment. Studying it quickly, my stomach sank when I saw the scale of the tropical storm surrounding us.
Akane sounded irritated. “Shit. It caught up to us.”
I kept my attention on the map, reading the storm’s strength and direction. It was heading west and toward the coast at well over a hundred kilometers an hour. The Periphery was well within the storm cell’s outer fringe, and the map indicated the ship was sailing southwest at an impressive ninety knots in the hopes of slipping free of the storm before it was caught up in the stronger rain bands.
Inwardly, I was surprised by how stably the vessel was cutting through the water, as though untroubled by the fifteen-foot swells indicated on the weather map. If not for the weather map and the winds rocking the Vee-Toll, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the Periphery was sailing through rough weather.
Akane crossed her legs. “Well, this happened because we had to wait for sleeping beauty to wake up.” I felt her gaze on my skin. “Now we’re in for a bumpy ride, Doc.”
A noticeable thrum resulting from the outboard engines spooling up made the bay vibrate for a long moment. This was quite different from the buffeting the craft was enduring while sitting on deck.
I swallowed, and tested the tautness of my seat’s safety straps.
I could hear the sneer in Akane’s voice. “There’s a barf bag under your seat, Doc, in case you feel the need to toss your cookies.”
I gave her a long thin look.
She regarded me with a thin look of her own. “What’s with that stare? You forgot what happened on that flight during our school’s field trip to the archipelago?”
I tensed up in my seat. “You’re going to bring that up now?”
“Why not?” She turned to her squad. “Hey guys. Wanna hear a disgusting but great story?”
“No,” they all retorted.
Surprise flashed across Akane’s face, before turning into confusion. “Wh—why not?”
The blonde woman in her team replied, “Because you can’t tell a good story even if it’s written out for you.”
“But I really wanna tell you.”
One by one they started slipping on headphones and earphones and tuning into private music collections.
Akane sounded deflated. “Guys…this isn’t fair…you have to hear it….”
I felt relief surge through me like a refreshing wave of icy water on a steamy hot day.
Then the Vee-Toll took to the windy skies, and was soon punched sideways by the storm.
I started reciting the number pi behind closed eyelids, while wondering just how quickly I could reach for the barf bag if the need arose.