A Secret Quest Read online

  “So, what exactly are you saying, Colonel?”

  “I'm saying that whoever sent those raiders after us had help from the inside. Someone had to mess with those systems for them to go offline like that.”

  Dyamatti instantly understood the implications of what Hastings was saying. It wasn't something to be taken lightly by any means. “Are you seriously suggesting that someone on this ship sabotaged us?” she asked.

  “I can't say if it was someone on this ship or even before we left Alpheena. But I intend to find out, Your Highness.” Hastings replied, his last words filled with a stern resolve.

  “Make it your highest priority, Colonel.”

  “Understood, Highness.” Hastings affirmed. “If you'll excuse me.”

  The princess nodded her understanding, and with a bow, the colonel made his exit from Dyamatti's quarters to start his investigation in earnest.

  Hastings had a hunch that the culprit was indeed among the ship's crew, although he would never have directly told the princess as much unless directly confronted. He reasoned that Princess Dyamatti had enough to worry about. Anything that he could do to help improve her focus on the task at hand was reason enough for him.

  Still, he thought he had a reasonable enough place to start; the ship's access logs. It was clear what happened to the docking mechanism wasn't a hardware malfunction. Although ship systems were known to fail, when hardware was the cause there were always indications that something was wrong beforehand. A squeak, a click, a grind, or some other audible clue would invariably give away an impending breakdown. With the docking clamps, however, there was no such telltale noise. It simply went offline, and because the princess's ship had been connected to another vessel at the time, other systems in turn were affected.

  His hypothesis was simple: Sometime after they had departed from Alpheena, someone rigged the docking system to malfunction. There were two ways this could have been accomplished: Either a timer was set to cause the error at the appropriate time, or whoever the saboteur was must have manually triggered the event from a local console. Either way, the access logs would tell him volumes.

  The Colonel arrived back on the bridge and made his way to the main control interface for ship-wide functions. This was the master terminal whereby every system on the ship could be monitored and configured. Although each system could be more easily serviced in the area of the ship it operated from, the master interface allowed a fair degree of control. But more importantly, it was the one station on the ship a root user could log into and access every log stored on the ship's computer.

  With a few quick taps of keys and button presses, a display of every log of system access was displayed on the holo-monitor. Hastings scrolled through the system heading of each entry, looking only for the ones that pertained to his quest. Of the hundreds of entries he saw, only three showed that the docking systems had been accessed since they left Alpheena a quarter cycle before.

  Of those three, two were labeled as system maintenance, which, when opened revealed nothing of particular interest. The entries listed a time, what system was involved, and for what purpose. At the end of each listing was the name of the person who had accessed the system. These were ordinary report logs. There was nothing in them that would help the colonel come any closer to finding the person responsible.

  That left the third entry, which was dated two days after the ship departed on its course. Hastings noticed that the wording and structure was rather odd. The heading read “1 warning – memory allocation sector 6F470”. When he opened it, the subject line was just repeated. Other than that, the log was empty. No name was listed. But he did have the time-stamp of when the log was made.

  While he was no computer whiz, Hastings knew a compiler warning when he saw one. Someone had attempted to recompile the software for the docking mechanism. It looked like a memory warning, which might have been deliberate. Code will compile and execute with warnings, but not with errors. A well chosen tweak of the code could cause a memory failure which would freeze out the entire system. It was just a theory, but it was as good as any other.

  Now all Hastings needed to do was match the log entry with a name. That part, though, was going to be more tricky. Unlike other logs, this one had been edited at the source, which meant that someone tried to erase their tracks. There was no way to completely delete a log; not even the colonel could do that. Backups were stored on an encrypted data sector that required a physical pass-card to view. But there were ways to alter the logs if one knew how and was so inclined.

  Hastings first thoughts were that the culprit was an officer; someone who had higher level access to ship's systems. But that was quickly ruled out when he realized that someone with the level of proficiency displayed could easily hack into another account or create a new one altogether. But there was only one place where that kind of thing was possible.

  “Anderson, have you noticed anyone using this terminal since we left Alpheena?” Hastings asked the young lieutenant.

  “No, sir. Just you.” she answered.

  “Have you noticed anyone on the bridge who shouldn't have been?”

  The young woman thought for a moment, “come to think of it,” she said as if prying loose a memory she didn't think she'd ever need, “Crewman Lambert came in not long after we left.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “That's just it, he didn't do anything.” the lieutenant replied. “The door opened and he was just standing there. It was kind of odd.”

  “Odd, how?”

  “He looked almost surprised to see me. It was like he knew the bridge was supposed to be empty.”

  The young woman's words caught Hastings by surprise. His gaze shot over to the lieutenant. “What do you mean, empty?” he asked.

  “It was about thirteen hundred hours and I normally grab a bite to eat about that time, but I stayed to run a few system tests. That's when Lambert popped in.”

  “Go on.” Hastings urged.

  “He just seemed surprised I was here. I asked him what he needed and he said he was looking for you about some computer reports or something. Then he left. That was it.”

  “That is odd.” the colonel agreed. “But not just because of his reaction to you.”

  “What else is there?” the lieutenant asked. “He was only here for a few seconds at most.”

  “Yes, but how did he get the doors to open in the first place? The computer won't even open the door for lower tier crew members.”

  “I didn't think about that, sir. I guess I'm just used to the doors opening for me.”

  While the regular crew members of the vessel had free reign to enter most parts of the ship, certain places were restricted to officers or specific ranking personnel. This was done for both security and protocol. Sometimes it was deemed wiser to shield sensitive conversations and actions from unnecessary eyes. What that meant was a crewman like Lambert shouldn't have been able to gain access to the bridge without someone letting him in.

  “From now on, Lieutenant, take your lunch at a different time each day. Don't have a pattern to it.”

  “Yes, sir.” the young lieutenant replied.

  “And if anything else like this happens, I expect you to inform me immediately.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  The lieutenant had barely gotten the words out of her mouth before the ship shuttered and lurched. All sorts of warnings started going off. It took the colonel a second to process that something potentially important just happened. When he realized it, however, his eyes started to quickly scan each holo-monitor readout for any information about what had just occurred.

  “Report!” he barked.

  Lieutenant Anderson hurriedly tapped the controls at her station. After a few seconds of frantic attempts to find the source of the problem, she turned to the colonel, “our star-drive is malfunctioning, Colonel.” she informed. “We're gradually losing power. We won't be able to maintain warp for much longer.”

  “Sh
it!” Hastings fumed. “Just what we need right now.”

  “What's the cause?” he asked.

  “I'm not sure, sir. All I can make out is something is wrong with the star-drive.”

  The colonel tapped the comm controls. “Chief Waters, meet me in the engine room.”

  “Already on my way, sir.” was the response.

  “Anderson, find us someplace safe and secluded where we can get this sorted out.”

  The lieutenant tapped a few icons on her navigational monitor and various destinations popped up. She cycled through several before selecting a suitable spot. “The only place in range is a small mining colony located in an asteroid belt.” she informed.

  “That'll have to work. Set a course.”

  Chapter III

  It seemed like Dyamatti had been stranded in her quarters for eons. While long voyages usually limited one to a vessel, and as such an extremely limited amount of free space to roam; being relegated to her personal quarters was like being caged or held captive. It was starting to wear on the princess' nerves.

  It had been more than a quarter cycle since they left Alpheena, but it felt more like a major cycle to the young princess. She couldn't take it anymore. The ship was traveling at warp speed and on its way home. There wasn't any foreseeable danger to worry about. Colonel Hastings would just have to allow her the liberty to wander the ship for a while.

  Confidently, Dyamatti strode to her door and opened it. But she froze briefly before her foot could find its way past the threshold into the corridor beyond. A slight twinge of guilt tugged at her gut as she acknowledged to herself that was she was about to do went against security protocols. But she needed some time away from her cage. The stress, compounded with isolation, was starting to become quite maddening. She would just clear her head for a bit with a short walk and then promptly return to her exile. No one needed to be the wiser.

  The guard posted at her door gave a cordial nod and said “Your Highness.” but otherwise did nothing as she stepped out into the corridor. The fresh, recycled air filled her lungs as she took a deep breath. It smelled pure and clean. And even though technically it was the same air she was breathing in her quarters, this air was out in the corridor. That made it better.

  But things quickly became a bit odd when a crewman ran past her on his way to the nearest mechanical access port. He barely even paused long enough to give the princess her usual recognition; instead he slowed long enough to give a brief nod and customary greeting before resuming his full gate and racing down the hallway. When he reached the end of the corridor, he gave a few presses to a control console. A panel on the wall slid away and the man ducked inside, vanishing from view.

  Before long, another crew member came darting towards her. This time the princess moved to the middle of the corridor and directly into the man's path. She intended to find out what exactly was going on.

  “What's all the excitement about?” she asked before the man could hurry by.

  “The star-drive is malfunctioning, Highness.” was the man's hasty reply.

  “Malfunctioning? How?” Dyamatti asked in return.

  “I'm sorry, Your Highness, but I really don't have time to talk about it. Ask Colonel Hastings. He can tell you more.” were the man's last words before he offered a quick bow and ran off in the same direction as the first man.

  The princess, now realizing that something was very much wrong with her vessel, tapped the monitor at the closest station and asked, “What is Colonel Hastings location?”

  The computer replied in it's dry and usual flat tone, “Colonel Hastings is in the engine room.”

  “Patch me through to him.”

  “Hastings here.” the voice on the other end of the comm said.

  “Colonel, what is our status?” Dyamatti asked in a tone that suggested she already knew much of what was going on.

  “Our status is fine, Your Highness. We'll be back to Alpheena before you know it.” the colonel replied, sounding a bit impatient at the disturbance.

  “And what of our star-drive?”

  There was an audible sigh from the other end. “I see word spreads fast on this ship.”

  “Never mind that.” the princess retorted, “have you located the malfunction with the star-drive?”

  “Chief Waters is sure that it's just a software glitch, Your Highness. It's nothing he can't have fixed in a couple hours.”

  “Will we be able to continue at warp in the meantime?”

  “Unfortunately, no. The star-drive is losing power. We've set course for a mining colony in a nearby system. It's secluded and we can make the necessary repairs there. Chief Waters assures me that he can get us back up and running again without much of a delay.”

  “Understood.” Dyamatti replied in her usual cool tone. “However, in the future make sure you inform myself or councilman Tyra immediately of any other developments. We all have our jobs to do, and I can't do mine without the proper information.”

  “Yes, Your Highness.” Hastings said as the comm was cut.

  Dyamatti had been on enough missions to know when things were going to take a bad turn. She was certain that this was one of those times. Something told her that Hastings still hadn't told her everything. The ship's malfunction could very well be another attempt at sabotage by the unknown perpetrator. The princess decided it was best not to take any chances.

  She quickly moved toward the center of the ship. That was the safest part, and as such, it was where all items of importance were stored. The weapons cache, critical supplies like medicine, and most importantly, the bands that To'lok had given her were all located there. The princess knew that whoever was trying to impede her mission was almost certainly after two things: The bands and herself.

  Dyamatti realized that if there was indeed a saboteur among them, then even the safest part of the vessel had been compromised. While she was quite sure it wasn't either Tyra or Hastings, everyone else was still a suspect. That meant those platinum bands which were so delicately crafted and made for such a special purpose might as well be lying naked in the corridor. And with so much riding on her mission, it was a problem she intended to remedy.

  When the princess arrived at the heart of the ship, she was greeted by the sight of two guards posted outside the vault door. These would be Hastings best men. The colonel would most likely trust these men with his own life, or even more, Dyamatti's. Unfortunately, trust of these men at the colonel's behest wasn't something Dyamatti felt she could afford.

  The princess gave a wave of her hand and said, “stand aside, gentlemen.” while she approached.

  Both men immediately snapped to attention upon seeing the royal figure. “I'm sorry, Your Highness, but the Colonel ordered that nobody be allowed in the vault.”

  Without even so much as a pause, Dyamatti retorted, “and just exactly whom do you think he answers to?”

  Realizing the folly of their ways, both men swiftly stepped aside to allow the princess to pass. She was gifted with many talents of persuasion. Sometimes all she needed to do was rely on her beauty and charm to take control of a situation. Still, at other times she could channel her father's commanding demeanor if the need arose.

  The door to the vault was unique among the ship's other doors. Instead of needing a key-code or the like, the vault was sealed to all except those with the proper DNA identification. And on this journey, that limited the number of people who could access the vault to only a small handful of people.

  With a press of her slender thumb against a special panel, the princess gained entry to the vault as it's great doors slid wide. She gave the guards one final look in passing before she stepped inside and sealed the way behind her.