Chapter 8: A Teambuilding Exercise

January 12^th, 2279

As he went into REM sleep, he dreamt he was standing in a field, Ka’al was digging for potatoes nearby, which felt normal in the dream. As he looked up to the sky, a comet came his way. It was too large to burn up in the atmosphere, pulling an impressive streak of fire along its sides and behind it. It was fast, growing larger by the second, a fiery streak coming right at him. He finally saw six red eyes open in the comet and thought they looked familiar. As it closed in, he realized he was looking at the Rubicon, her hull blackened and still partly aflame with dark smoke trailing her. The next thing he saw was the six eyes blinking fire at him with a thunderous bang every time one of the torpedoes left the launcher, the room-sized projectiles filling up the sky, rapidly displacing air. They hit the ground ahead of him, first a few hundred meters away then closing in in a fraction of a second. The ground shattered and was catapulted into the air, like a heavy drop of water hitting the surface, violently displacing earth in the thousands of tons. He soon was also flying in the air, seeing the sky, air, sky, air, and then the sky again, rotating at high RPM. As he neared the stratosphere, he saw the ship hitting the surface, finishing off the planet which cracked like an egg. A calm melody was playing.

The dream was nothing special for a man constantly taking performance enhancers. They were known to play tricks on the mind. What was more worrying was the uniformed man sitting in his quarters at the desk, looking at him and playing with the unassuming box containing Basil’s sixth stripe. Basil turned off his alarm and was happy he had programmed the medcomp for a shot of caffeine.

- What do you want?

- We had an agreement, Captain Basil.

- Sorry about that. The ship’s too important.

- When the committee finds out, we’ll have a lot to answer for. You might have killed the whole recon-infiltration program.

- Ah, you’ll figure it out. You look like you could snake your way out of a trash compactor.

- I’m not the one you should be worried about, Captain.

- Not interested in your threats. Tell your superiors the Rubicon can go where none of our ships have gone before.

- Such as?

- The Helix. Cetus. Tabby system. Many more. We’ve always guessed our friendly neighbors have set up listening posts in the Fringe. Now we can go look.

- I see you have made your choice.

- Stop trying to be intimidating. It’s just not going to work. You are a low-level agent, proven by the fact that you actually have to come here in person. You think your superiors would do that? No, they are your superiors because they are smarter than you. You are a replaceable asset; they control the game. And they will see the value in the Rubicon.

The uniformed man showed no real reaction to Basil’s insult. He swapped his crossed legs over, from left leg up to right leg up and leaned forward.

- Stop using your CO ID.

- Why? My ship is attached to CO amongst others. The way I see it, I rejoined you guys.

- I’ll have a drink to you soon.

The uniformed man apparently had enough of being played with by a man with out-of-bed hair, scratching his scalp in a crumpled uniform. He got up and left the room, no expression on his face, having nothing more to add.

Guess they’ll be sending another guy the next time.

Basil eventually got up, grabbed the unassuming box, walked through the cleanarch and left the quarters, his hair back where it belonged and the uniform straightened. Those cleanarches were prime Catanian tech, replacing showers and washing completely by blasting the passing person with a multitude of chemical and physical measures, the only downside being the crews missing real showers so much they kept dreaming of them. He gave himself another shot of his happy cocktail and left the quarters through the small entrance passage. The door had already been unlocked and the uniformed man was nowhere to be seen.

Basil decided to talk to Nocks first. She was still in the same place and hunches position she’d been a few hours before.

- How’d that guy from CO get in here? Shouldn’t your drones stop him?

- Who?

- Just had a visitor from CO in my quarters.

Nocks was checking the logs.

- Noone was in there besides you. And the drones didn’t pick up anyone besides the whitelisted people.

- Well, either this station is haunted or CO knows a way to get around your security.

Nocks was absolutely clueless. XD had had no issues at all with their security; there wasn’t a single incident that pointed to issues with safeguarding their research after the drones were introduced. She decided to send one drone to the captain’s quarters, sticking itself to the ceiling, silently watching and drilling up to the charging station above to remain cloaked throughout. She also set up a censorship script in case the captain removed his clothes. She did, however, consider the possibility that her captain was simply hallucinating. He just looked the type.

- Where are the two security guys I ordered?

- Over there.

Nocks pointed at two people standing around, talking to each other, seemingly describing guns, as portrayed by how they held their arms out. One of them was a human, a true fleetface. Forgettable. Basil saw the potential in that. The other one was quite the opposite. He had been human at some point – or something that originally looked like a human – but half of his body had been replaced by artificial body parts. Basil figured he must have had some kind of accident. As he walked over, he could smell a strong odor of antiseptics, likely to keep the implanted body parts of the cyborg clean where they were connecting to human flesh. They both saluted him, which was untypical in the fleet, portraying their past as marines.