“You look light years away,” Ayan whispered to him as she double checked the power feeds leading to the main wormhole emitter systems using a holographic schematic.
“I think they're waiting for you to give the order,” Oz reminded him with a wry grin. “You're going to have to let me in on that thought later.”
Jake recovered himself and cleared his throat, focusing on the main holographic display arranged in a semicircle in front of the main command seating. “All stations ready?”
“All stations report ready,” Oz confirmed.
“Then flip the switch. Let's see what the galaxy's been up to.”
The Triton’s hypertransmitter systems came online soundlessly. Even though no one could see them with the naked eye everyone on the bridge knew that the stolen system was generating hundreds of micro wormholes a second, reaching out to distant solar systems, other hypertransmitters, space stations, digital way stations and major shipping lanes across the known galaxy.
At first a few messages trickled through, then Jason Everin's console lit up, followed by Jake's then Oz's and finally Ayan's. They were viewing a summary of collected data, hundreds of topics and titles scrolled by faster than they could read. Selecting one topic led to hundreds of subcategories that contained news reports, personal communications, financial reports, entertainment, purchasable designs, advertising and more advertising.
Jake checked his personal directory and caught names of people he'd come to know since he'd taken command of the Samson, a few law enforcement offices that wanted to offer him work as a bounty hunter or repossession agent and even a call to arms for the Triton herself which he promised himself he'd look into later. Then something he didn't expect caught his eye and he put his finger down on it before it could scroll up and out of sight. Captain Lucius Wheeler of the Order of Eden ship Saviour conducts a public execution of Triton crew members. It said. He tapped it open and glimpsed the face of a former crew member from the Samson, Silver.
Before anyone could see the small image he archived it. “Everything we're getting is quarantined, right?” Captain Valance asked Jason in a hushed tone.
“Yeah, why?”
“Nothing can slip out?”
“Not with the block in place on everyone's comms. Only senior staff can start receiving news, general entertainment and personal messages have to be scanned.”
Jake looked back and saw that the senior staff were just starting to receive updated news and new instalments from their entertainment subscriptions. He looked across the faces of the crew and spotted Ashley eagerly bringing up one major news and entertainment report after another. The small holograms that hovered over her comm unit would have been a little comical if he didn't know what she'd be stumbling upon. “Ash, shut down your comm unit please.”
She didn't look up at him at first, concentrating on the preview of a Hyper Pongo League game she was receiving instead. “Why? Something wrong with my comm?” Her expression fell in the next instant as she came across an advertisement for her ex-lover's public and evidently painful public execution. His holographic face was ragged, complexion sallow, eyes red, and his gums were receding terribly, bleeding openly. A set of cables had been drilled into his head like a crown. Another group had been driven into his neck, their entry points seeped with blood and pus. “Kill me, please kill me,” begged Silver quietly, barely moving his mouth. As Ashley watched a signal was delivered to his brain. The slack and exhausted face on her display contorted and screamed, howled with reckless abandon.
Ashley's eyes were instantly brimming with tears, her opposite hand went over her mouth and as the image faded to be replaced with the message; TRAITORS DIE, ONLY ON JUSTICE ONE, 2137, she shook her head in horrified disbelief. “Oh no, no no no,” she sobbed quietly.
Stephanie's arm went around her waist and she was guided to a side passage that led to the security office before anyone else, Captain Valance included, could get to her.
Jake made eye contact with Stephanie as she turned away and was reassured by her knowing nod. She'd take care of her more sensitive best friend, there was no one better on the ship. “Stop all justice feeds and archived programming,” he ordered Jason as he turned around.
“Already on it. We'll have a master copy of everything in digital quarantine. Two other people have seen that advertisement though, it's marked as high priority on at least thirty networks.” Jason was silent for several moments as he worked the semicircular holographic display in front of him, there was so much information scrolling no one else could keep up. He turned white and shook his head; “They tortured some of them to make effective commercials. I'm sorry Jake.”
“I should have seen this coming,” Jacob replied quietly, trying to help sift through the more sensitive data.
“Let's hope the few people who received that ad didn't know anyone from the Samson and just skipped through it.” Something else caught Jake's eye then and he brought up his financial information. He was confronted with a display filled with red marks. With a quick twitch of his finger he hid the financial report. “All right, have we sent all the crew's messages?”
“They're out.”
“Good, shut it down.”
“We planned for another nineteen minutes.”
“I said shut it down,” Jake reinforced firmly.
Ayan activated the kill switch for the wormhole system and it powered down. “On the brighter side, the test was a fantastic success.” The initial technical report on the wormhole systems started to come in, filling the air in front of her with electrical schematics, power readings, wormhole trajectory, compression and emitter stress data.
“We contacted over twenty thousand nodes anonymously and released our packets into the network without origin markings. The communications systems that picked them up will automatically mark everyone's messages with their origin markers and it'll look like the crew's messages came from everywhere at once,” Jason said as he confirmed that everything had been sent and accepted by at least one hypertransmitter node.
“Good. How often do large ships do that kind of thing?” Jake asked.
“All the time. Military ships, pirates, slavers, you name it. They all like to keep their positions on the hush so anonymous transmissions are a must if they have a big enough vessel.”
“I thought so. Send my congratulations to the crew and tell the flight deck to make final preparations to launch fighters. We need to clear out the raiders so we can make repairs and move on.”
“Aye,” Oz acknowledged, starting to stand.
Jake caught his arm and looked him straight in the eye. That expression was gravely serious.
Oz sat down. “Privacy mode, command seating,” he ordered the bridge systems. A visual blurring and audio obscuring field surrounded the five command seats at the centre of the bridge. “What's going on Jake?”
“There's more to the public execution situation. Wheeler. He's hunting down former Samson and Triton crew members and making an example.”
“Isn't Wheeler dead?” Ayan asked.
Jake didn't reply, only brought up a Justice One Station broadcast marked with the Regent Galactic and Order of Eden logo. As the program identification faded a gargantuan stadium appeared. It was marked with countless sponsor logos, even some of the front row attendants were covered with them. The green padded surface of the field surrounded a massive platform. Several humans hurried around, picking up what appeared to be small mechanical and organic parts from the synthetic turf.
“This is a half time show?” Ayan asked, quietly shocked and appalled as she pointed to the platform that had risen out of the centre of the field. It came equipped with a pit for musicians, trap doors, a long restraint rack with three prisoners under a black sheet and several heavily armed guards.