“My people, the original passengers, all died long ago. My companions and I believe that the demon, as he travels through the universe, seeks out intelligent life to bring to the ship so that he has new victims. It is possible he discovered inhabited worlds in this galaxy of humans.”
“Is there a way of finding out how the ship got here?” Jeff asked.
“Yes, I have limited access to some computer systems. One moment, please. It will take a little time. I need to redirect the data so that the demon does not suspect anything.”
Minutes passed that seemed like hours to Jeff. “How did you learn our language?” Even if the computer did the work of translating, it must have its knowledge of the language from somewhere.
“The sensors of the ship pick up radio signals by default. Subsystems with artificial intelligence extract translation routines out of these. That had already been planned before the ship was built.”
Jeff wanted to nod, but couldn’t because of the metal cap around his head.
“May I ask you a question?” the alien asked.
“Of course.”
“How did you come on board the ship?” It is the first time that strangers have entered the ship without being transferred immediately to cryopods.”
Jeff took a deep breath. Then he told the creature about their war, the attack on Acheron-4, how the antimatter chambers had failed, and how at the last moment they’d spotted this ship, which had taken them on board. He also told the alien about their journey through the interior to here, the edge of the core area. As he recalled their adventure, it seemed to him as if they had been on this spooky ship for years. If it was really controlled by this demon, why had it taken them on board in the first place? He presented this question to the alien.
“I do not understand it, either. But he seems to be allowing you to penetrate to the core of the ship unscathed. Either he is playing an extremely perfidious game for his own amusement, or you have something he wants.”
Jeff snorted. “I wouldn’t say he let us through unscathed! My crew are being killed off one by one. At first we thought you light aliens—I mean avatars—were responsible.”
“We are not responsible. No emergency avatar can harm a living being.”
“But I am being followed by emergency avatars.” Jeff thought of the incident a few days ago, when he’d believed he had only just escaped with his life.
“Yes, that was me,” the alien said. “I tried to contact you in the transit hub before your companion arrived. Then the situation became too confusing for me. Later, we wanted to stop you from going into the cavity and exposing yourselves to the dangers there. But we did not reach you in time. In fact, we have been watching you since your arrival.”
Jeff was about to interject with a question, but the alien continued. “I have the data you wanted.”
White dots, distributed in a bluish grid, appeared on the black screen. Then a red line zigzagged across the map.
“This is the course the ship has taken in this region of your galaxy.”
Jeff pulled his handheld out of his pocket and held it in front of his face, as he couldn’t bend his head to look at it. He called up the navigation screen and rotated his own star chart until it matched the projection. He traced the course of the alien ship with his forefinger. Then he pressed a button and a list of the star systems that the ship had passed through popped up.
Holy shit!
“Grimaldi-2, Alderon-8, and Deneb-6. Those are all systems that were attacked by the rebels.” The alien ship must have followed the rebels and then taken the humans who were doomed to perish.
But immediately Jeff realized that something was wrong with this theory. He had misunderstood the situation completely. And even worse: all of humanity had made a terrible mistake. The rebels weren’t responsible for the downfall of those worlds. Those who had doggedly claimed that humans would never be so malevolent as to destroy inhabited worlds had been right all along. The rebels hadn’t been responsible. It had been this ship, controlled by the demon! He must have somehow gotten hold of Quagma bombs and destroyed those worlds after bringing parts of the population onto his ship and putting them into cryopods.
“What have we done?” Jeff whispered under his breath. They had taken revenge on behalf of the Empire. He himself had wanted to avenge the murder of his father by destroying rebel bases on which civilians also worked. If they now also attacked an inhabited planet, as some hardliners had been demanding for months, then this orchestrated mass murder would be carried off to perfection.
And the demon at the heart of this ship probably followed the radio communications and reveled in the misery he had inflicted, while at the same time abducting people to his hellish cavitys where they were forced to torture one another.
He had to stop this. Somehow. He had to do something. Or at least inform the fleet, so that no more fatal errors were committed.
“What can we do?” Jeff asked quietly.
“There may be a way out,” the creature’s voice replied. “If the demon really wants you in the center of the ship, then you must try to get into the control room.”
“And then? Should we try and destroy his cryopod?”
“You would not succeed. The cryogenic pods in the control center are hermetically sealed and cannot be reached without detailed knowledge of the systems. But there is an emergency mechanism that can override the system. A console with a switch with this symbol.”
An image appeared on the screen. It resembled a company logo: a yellow circle surrounding a smaller black circle with eight rays. Like a black sun in front of a yellow background.
“If you find this, press it.”
Jeff wasn’t very hopeful about making it to the control room, and yet he was curious about this switch. “What happens if we do?”
“It is an emergency device that only the captain knew about. It was a safeguard, in case a foreign power invaded the ship. Not even the demon knows how important it is.”
“How do you know about it?”
“I installed parts of the system while building the ship, including the switch, and was sworn to secrecy.”
“And what happens when it’s activated?”
“Several things,” the alien replied evasively, which bothered Jeff. “But it will give us back some control. And it will give you a chance of escaping this ship.”
“How?”
“That is more than I can explain right now.”
“All right.” Jeff imprinted the logo in his memory before the screen darkened again.
“You should return to your fellow crew members now,” the alien said. “Otherwise the demon will become suspicious.”
“If he’s surveying the ship, he’s probably aware of our conversation,” Jeff said.
“I hope not. There are several areas of this ship that cannot be monitored due to technical defects. Don’t forget, he is controlling the ship as an avatar, by controlling most of its computers.”
“And the part we are in now…”
“… is not under his surveillance. Incidentally, it would be better if you didn’t mention our meeting to your shipmates for the time being.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t rule out that the demon is controlling one of you.”
Joanne! So that was it. The demon had taken control of her and that’s why she had killed Castle. And Owl? Had he also been controlled by the demon when he slashed his stomach? Had one of them perhaps also killed Fields and Irons? And all this time they had assumed the light aliens were responsible.
“OK, I won’t say anything. And you’re right. I know who has been taken over.”
“Then be careful. I wish you well.”