Chapter 10
John Doe
He was on his feet. Nearly everyone else was on their feet too. The holo feed in the center of the bridge showed one thing. A woman, arms huddled around herself, walking through the barren white wasteland of Orion Minor.
‘How the hell is she doing that?’ Foster said under his breath for about the eight time.
John did not have an answer for him; John had no clue how someone could survive that kind of fall, let alone get up to walk against the wind of the planet below.
‘We need long-range scanners now,’ Chado snapped again.
Parka groaned over the comline, swearing in her own unique tongue.
‘Get me the Orion Prime. We need to access the planet's own scanners,’ John managed.
He'd been silent for too long, just watching mesmerized as she'd taken one labored step after another.
He still hadn't seen her face. When they had re-established a visual lock on her, she'd already tugged her hood into place. And no matter how hard the wind buffeted and ripped at the rest of her clothes and body, it did not shift the hood once.
He frowned harder. His lips seemed to be stuck in the gravitational pull of the planet below as his body stiffened further.
John had seen a lot in his time. From the worst the slums of the Universe could provide to the strangest and wildest experiences being a Union commander had delivered him. But he'd never seen anything like this.
‘She may be a robot,’ Chado suggested, voice curt and sharp.
John had thought of that. She wasn't though; he'd seen her heat signature. She was biological.
‘She may possess those advanced implants the Union is working on, the ones for use on extreme planets,’ Foster offered, voice breathy.
‘The ICN would have picked that up immediately,’ John replied.
‘Perhaps she is an Ionian Jumper?’ Chado suggested.
‘She would have survived the fall, but not the cold,’ John kept staring at the woman, not shifting his gaze to the rest of the bridge once. ‘As soon as we get access to the Orion ICN, get it to send a super-fast probe. I want a visual of that woman's face.’
John's gaze darted over the hood as he spoke.
He was standing right in front of her. As she walked, huddling against her own body, she moved just before him. He was just outside of the hologram field, but if he'd felt like it, he could have reached out his arm a few bare centimeters and grabbed hold of her hood.
‘Sir, we've gained access,’ Foster finally informed him.
Sucking in a breath so large his chest punched forward against the tight-fit of his uniform, John whirled on his foot. ‘Send the probe, alert the security forces, tell them this is a Union Forces override. I want a team at her location in the next two minutes,’ he snapped.
And he meant it.
Whirling on his foot again, he nodded sharply at Chado.
His XO narrowed his large blue eyes, the flecked skin of his blue face tightening. It was a very knowing look. ‘I suppose you are going back down there?’
John offered a simple and brief nod. Hell yes he was going back down there.
But that wasn't all. Transport was a systems-heavy activity. It took a lot of energy, and you had to justify it every single time you used it. But so was upgrading into armor. Especially the specific kind John had in mind.
Crunching his shoulders and clenching his hands for a brief moment, John took a sniff. ‘Computer, select restricted upgrade alpha 1,’ John said.
Chado looked at him, and John's XO's eyes blazed.
Technically it was the job of an XO to not only ensure the safety of the crew, but also the commanding officer. But John had a nasty habit of being the first one to put his hand up whenever danger reared its ugly head, and would run off, leaving Chado to simmer in the corner.
As the computer lifted John off the ground, it did not have to - very thankfully - take apart his clothes in order to recalibrate the matter to generate his armor. Neither did it take a chunk out of the floor or reef off a whole section of hull.
The Pegasus had a full store of elements on board from which all the system’s recalibraters could draw. And they had just been restocked.
The armor took seconds to knit over his muscles and skin, and the process wasn't nearly as biting and uncomfortable as the one he'd undergone on Orion Minor. The ICN in the slums had done its best job, but the Pegasus’ computers were designed with knitting upgrades and armor in mind.
In seconds John landed, his boots hitting the floor with a resounding and satisfying clang.
He was good to go in some of the best armor the Union could manufacture. Unlike the crap he'd received in the slums, this stuff would not be eaten apart by the wind. The second he touched down on the ice-covered surface of the planet, his armor would generate an impediment field, slowing the wind down to a bare puff, the salt dashing against his jet-black and grey armor as if it had been thrown by a child.
‘Lock onto me, transport form here,’ John snapped.
Technically he could have run down to one of the transporter bays, but he didn't have the time. Instead he kept his gaze focused on the image of the woman walking against the wind.
Was it just him or was she getting quicker? Her arms were no longer gripped around her middle, the shoulders high as she huddled against them. They were loose and free by her sides, her fingers not even clutched into fists.
Her head was level, then it snapped up. She'd obviously seen something in the distance.
‘Security forces en route, will reach target in 30 seconds,’ the computer informed him just as a yellow light shot through the floor at a 90 degree angle and locked him in place.
John's molecules began to break down.
It was never a pleasant feeling. Talk about being ripped in two; if you didn't know you'd be rematerialized on the other end, you'd think death had finally reached you.
It could send people mad; John had seen it on numerous occasions. One of the men he'd gone through military academy with had lost his mind the first time he'd gone through a beam.
But John had found the secret of surviving; have something to live for. Have something to justify going through the torture of being transported for, and you're mind would quickly forget the latent sensation of having your muscles ripped from your bones.
And right now John had something to live for. He had something he desperately needed to find out. Just who in the universe that woman was.