Salvage Merc One: The Daedalus System (5 page)

The holo vid flickered to life in front of us, and it was an image of Boss Three standing there, wringing his hands over and over. He looked directly at me then off the vid at someone else.

“What?” he asked. “I know! That’s what I’m doing! Hey! Tell Boss One to keep his hands off my chips! I’m still eating those! What? It’s recording? Son of a gump.”

He cleared his throat and straightened up.

“Salvage Merc One,” he said. “Joe. We are sorry you have to go through this. We know you have many, many questions. Unfortunately, part of your quest is to find the answers yourself.  Without the struggle for knowledge, your transformation will happen. The journey is as important as the arrival.”

There was a voice from off holo and Boss Three shook his head. His face scrunched up, and he tried not to look angry, but failed at it miserably.

“That is not from a motivational poster!” he snapped at the off-holo voice. “Do you want to do this? Do you? No? Then shut the fo up, okay? Sheezus.”

“This isn’t helping,” I said.

“Be patient,” Mgurn responded.

“Tell me to be patient again, and I’ll patiently jam my foot up your vent,” I said.

“The AI can help you with your search only in the most rudimentary way,” Boss Three continued. “Supply it with information, and it will analyze that information. That is all it will do. You will have to decide what the results of that analysis mean. Good luck.”

He stood there for a while then relaxed and scratched at his nose.

“You think he’ll buy it?” he asked as he walked away and the holo blinked out.

“Are you foing kidding me?” I shouted as I leapt from my spot and took a swipe at the fading holo. I spun about and glared at Mgurn. “Get my KL09. Now. It’s Boss killing time.”

Mgurn’s face was nothing but confusion and fear. “Uh, Joe, maybe take a breath or two. Count to ten.”

“I am sorry, Salvage Merc One, but I was required to report your threat of violence to the Bosses,” the AI announced. “It is part of my programming. There is a second holo vid I am supposed to play in the event you became enraged. I believe that has occurred.”

“You bet your artificial mind it has!” I yelled up at the ceiling.

A second holo vid came to life, and Boss Seven stood right in front of me.

“Joe. Chill, man,” Boss Seven said. “We all had to go through something like this. You’ll do just fine. But, in order for the artifact to truly accept you, you must complete this quest and the trials it involves. Like I said, we all had to do something similar.”

He held up his hands before I could protest. Even though this was pre-recorded, I was certain that his telepathic abilities came into play.

“Yes, this quest of yours is considerably more difficult and involved than what any of us had to do,” Boss Seven said. “But there has to be a reason for that. Trust in yourself, Joe. Trust your own abilities. They will get you through this. Be strong and try not to turn into the monster that you are already becoming. I know you, Joe. I’ve been inside your head. We shared a consciousness once. Everything you need, you already have. Just sort through it and you—”

He stopped and looked off-holo.

“Dammit! Now he’s eating
my
chips! Will someone get him another bag or—”

The holo cut off, and I was left standing there, my fists balled up, my brain about to explode.

“I have been told that you had visions of possible destinations,” the AI said. “Would you care to tell me what you saw? I can process that information and perhaps narrow down options.”

“That is a good idea,” Mgurn said. “Tell it, Joe.”

I wanted to argue against both of them, but they were right. It was a good idea. So I told the AI everything I saw when I went all glowy and met Naked Snake Lady who used to be Alya Horne.

It took the AI a long time to process everything, but in the end, it gave me this answer, “Nothing matches those descriptions in my database.”

“Surprise,” I muttered and plopped back into my chair.

“Is there anything else you can tell me?” the AI asked.

“Nope,” I said. “I’m all out of info. Looks like we’re at square zero.”

I closed my eyes and let my mind wander. You’d think that with all the gifts I had been given by the previous Salvage Merc Ones, some stronger than others, I’d at least be able to make some sense of what was going on. Not even my primary gift, total clarity, kicked in. I had been left to flounder.

Mgurn was humming a tune, but I ignored it. Or tried to. Flashes of rage popped up inside me and I had to remind myself that he was only there to help. Do not kill Mgurn became my internal mantra. I said it over and over and over again.

Then something occurred to me and I had to switch my mantra to do not kill Joe.

“I’m an idiot,” I said.

“Would you like me to stay silent on that or comment?” Mgurn asked. “I am willing to do either.”

I stood up and began to pace back and forth.

“We’ve been going about this all wrong,” I said. “I’m Salvage Merc One. I need to act like it.”

“Yes, that is true,” Mgurn said. “And that means…what, exactly?”

“That I need to figure out what I’m salvaging!” I exclaimed. “It’s so simple, I feel like a total dipcrud for not figuring it out sooner. The quest, and the trials, are what I have to go through, but they are not the end result. They are not my ticket. I have to find my ticket.”

“You are supposed to break the curse that consumed Alya Horne,” Mgurn said. “Is that not your ticket?”

“No, that’s an end result also,” I said. “The curse will be broken when I salvage what I am supposed to salvage.”

“Which is?” Mgurn asked.

I stopped pacing, I looked at him, and shrugged.

“Fo if I know, buddy,” I said. “But if I can figure it out then maybe we’ll get somewhere. At least to the starting point.”

“The opening of the labyrinth,” Mgurn said and nodded sagely.

“Exactly,” I said and snapped my fingers. “Once I know what I’m salvaging then the artifact should point me in the general direction just like it is supposed to.”

“I must apologize, Joe,” Mgurn said. “I should have realized this as well. I have failed you as an assistant.”

“Nah, it’s all good, buddy,” I said.

Once the realization that I needed to approach the problem just like I’d approach any Salvage Merc One problem hit me, a considerable amount of my building rage just seemed to dissipate. It didn’t leave completely, but it was no longer forcing its way to the surface of my mind.

“I’m sorry that I have been a huge dick,” I said. “I know I can be a pain in the ass, but all this anger and grrrr I have been feeling isn’t who I am. I may be Salvage Merc One, but I’m also Joe Laribeau. And Joe Laribeau is a go-with-the-flow kind of guy. He’s not a hate-his-best-friend kind of guy.”

“Best friend?” Mgurn asked. “Joe, that is such a nice thing to say.”

“Hey, it’s true, buddy,” I said. “I’d be a lost soul without you around…”

I froze. I didn’t move, twitch, think, do anything. The answer was right there, and I was terrified that I was going to scare it away.

“Joe?” Mgurn asked.

“Shhh,” I said and held up a hand. The revelation almost slipped away from me, but I forced myself to clarify and my mind snatched it back. “Lost soul.”

“What?” Mgurn asked.

“Lost soul,” I said. “That’s what I’m supposed to salvage. Alya Horne had the artifact in her. For whatever freaky reason, when she was supposed to transition into Boss Five—”

“Boss Four,” Mgurn corrected.

“Boss Four, right,” I said. “When she was supposed to transition into that, things went bad, and instead of becoming a Boss, she was turned into Naked Snake Lady. That is messed up in so many ways, but most of all, it meant her soul didn’t transition the way it was supposed to. The Bosses are dead, we know that, so what are we interacting with every time we meet with them?”

“The physical manifestations of their souls,” Mgurn replied.

“Bingo!” I cried out and snapped my fingers at him. He jumped a little. “Sorry. But, yeah, that is totally right. The physical manifestations of their souls. But Alya Horne’s soul never got to manifest that way. Her soul was lost. Forced to become some semi-erotic monster.”

“Semi-erotic?” Mgurn asked.

“You had to see her,” I said. “Yes, there was the snake part, but there was also the naked lady part. Boobies and all that.”

Mgurn sighed. “I will never understand why some of the races are so fixated on mammary glands. Leforians are not affected the same way humans are.”

“That can be good and bad,” I said and shrugged.

“So you need to salvage her lost soul?” Mgurn asked.

“I need to salvage her lost soul,” I agreed.

My body went rigid, and I gasped. My quarters disappeared, and the images of a hundred star systems rushed through me at light speed. It was as if I was navigating trans-space, but without being inside a ship. I was getting my Salvage Merc One on.

Everything slowed, and a system coalesced before me. I could see a multitude of planets orbiting a single, massive, bright red star. The planets were of various sizes and colors, but all were in perfect synch with the star. No strange elliptical orbits. They rotated around that big red ball of fire in an obvious order.

Then, bam!, I was back in my quarters.

“Joe? What did you see?” Mgurn asked.

“I know where to start,” I said. “AI?”

“Yes, Salvage Merc One?” the AI responded.

“I need to you to find a system for me,” I said and described exactly what I saw.

“A system with a giant red star and all of its planets in perfectly synchronic order is easy to narrow down,” the AI replied. “You are looking for the Daedalus System.”

“The Daedalus System,” I said and grinned. “Mgurn? Time to pack.”

Five

There was one major stumbling block with getting where we needed to go. There weren’t any wormhole portals in the Daedalus System. Without a wormhole portal, there was no way to travel using trans-space and arrive directly in the system. We had to find an alternate route.

We planned and plotted through the night. By the time we’d figured out our route, and how we’d approach the Daedalus System, I was exhausted to my bones. I barely was able to stumble into my room and collapse onto my bed before sleep took me. I slept in my uniform and didn’t give a crud.

I assumed Mgurn slept also, but there was no way to know for sure. Either way, he was chipper as all hell when I finally dragged my butt out of my room and into the kitchen.

“Hello, Joe,” Mgurn beamed at me. “I took the liberty of preparing you breakfast. I have made you an omelette.”

“No Leforian ingredients, I hope,” I said as I sat down at the table and picked up my fork. The omelette smelled incredible, but I eyed it warily. “If I find something wriggling in here then we are going to have a problem.”

“Shitake mushrooms and gump cheese,” Mgurn stated.

“Oh, cool, that sounds great,” I said. I took a bite, and it was delicious. “Oh, man, why haven’t you made breakfast for me before?”

I chewed and swallowed, took another bite, then stopped mid-mastication.

“Mgurn?” I asked.

“Yes, Joe?” he replied.

“Do you have bad news for me?” I asked. “Is this a bad news omelette?”

“I would not call it bad news, precisely,” Mgurn responded.

“What would you call it?” I asked and set my fork down. “Out with it.”

“After you went to bed, I did some research on the Daedalus System,” Mgurn said.

“We both did some research last night,” I said. “I thought we found all the info there was on that system.”

“Official information, yes,” Mgurn said. “But I had the AI search for anecdotal information. I wanted to know if perhaps there were any ships’ logs from others that had visited the system. That way we could get some first-hand information from beings that had been there.”

“I’m guessing the logs you found didn’t exactly paint it in a good light,” I said. “More than a couple bad reviews?”

“That’s just it, Joe, there are no reviews,” Mgurn said. “None at all.”

“Well, sometimes if you don’t have anything nice to say…” I trailed off. “That’s it, right?”

“No, that is not it,” Mgurn said. “There are hundreds and hundreds of ships’ logs going back millennia that mention intended trips into the Daedalus System. But there is not one log entry that describes coming back from it. All of the logs end with them entering the system. There are no further entries after that.”

I pushed the plate away. The smell of the omelette was turning my stomach. Pretty much everything was turning my stomach.

“Hundreds and hundreds of ships went to the system?” I asked.

“Yes,” Mgurn answered.

“But none of them came back?” I pressed.

“None of them came back,” Mgurn stated.

“That’s not good,” I said.

“That is not good at all, Joe,” Mgurn said. “It is quite alarming.”

“And you thought an omelette would help make it better?” I asked.

“I did not think anything would make it better,” Mgurn admitted. “But a delicious omelette could not hurt.”

He was right on that one. I looked at the plate with longing. It had been a good omelette, at least the first few bites had been before my gut sank down to the floor.

“Did the logs at least notate the routes the ships took to get to the Daedalus System?” I asked. “Are our calculations in line with theirs?”

“They are exactly in line,” Mgurn said. “Which is really the bad news. I believe if we follow the route we have planned, we will suffer the same fate as the other ships.”

“Then how do we get there?” I asked. “We went over this all night. This route is the only one that won’t take forever. Without a wormhole portal, we’re already looking at three weeks of lightspeed travel just to reach the outer edge of the system.”

“That is true,” Mgurn said. “But I think I have found the answer.”

He stood up and waved two of his hands in the air. A holo of the Daedalus System came up, and I was once again staring at the orbiting planets that circled the huge red star.

“There is a pattern to how they orbit,” Mgurn said. “Watch this.”

He waved his hand again, and the rotation of the planets slowed to a crawl. After fifteen minutes of staring at the planets, I was about to get impatient. Then it happened.

“Stop,” I ordered. The holo stopped. “Go back.”

The holo reversed.

“Stop right there,” I said. I studied what I saw then got up and clapped Mgurn on the back of his carapace. “Good work, buddy.”

“Once during their orbit, all of the planets align in a perfect row,” Mgurn said. “It happens for exactly one second.”

I pointed at the holo. “Except for this planet here. It is off to the side, almost perfectly perpendicular to the line of planets. Why?”

“Because that is not a planet,” Mgurn said. “It is a wormhole portal that looks like a planet. There is a way into the system. Only one way into the system. If we’d gone our original route, we would have been lost forever. But if we figure out how to use this hidden portal then we can punch into the system safely and navigate the space between the planets before their orbits send them in different directions.”

“Now we have to figure out how to get to that portal,” I said. “It’s not on any of the charts, so it won’t be in our ships’ navigation protocols.”

“It won’t be in my ship’s, no,” Mgurn said. “But you have the former Salvage Merc One’s ship. Perhaps it is in there.”

“Not if he hadn’t gone to the Daedalus System,” I said.

“I have a theory,” Mgurn said. “It wouldn’t make sense for every Salvage Merc One to start from scratch each time the artifact jumps to a new host. That would be highly inefficient. I believe the answer to our problem is sitting in your ship’s navigation database, just waiting for us to ask.”

“Then let’s go foing ask it,” I said.

“Yes,” Mgurn nodded and smiled. “Let’s.”

Having kick-ass quarters wasn’t the only perk of being Salvage Merc One. I also had my own private hangar for my ship. Well, not just my ship. Mgurn had his ship docked in the hangar too.

That isn’t a normal thing. Mgurn was the only assistant in the SMC that had his own ship. He got my old ship when I took on the Salvage Merc One ship. It actually made things a lot easier. We didn’t get on each other’s nerves when we traveled, and we had double the firepower if we got caught in the crud. It also meant that we could cover more ground, or space, when we were searching for whatever I needed to salvage.

But it was my ship we concentrated on when we walked into the private hangar.

“All fueled up and ready to go, sir,” a tech said to Mgurn.

“Both ships?” Mgurn asked.

The tech frowned. He looked at me, looked away quickly, then glanced back over his shoulder.

“Oh, right, that one,” the tech said. “Yes, that one is fueled up and ready to go as well. I almost forgot about it, but you had said to put it on my agenda. Glad you did.”

“I am glad too,” Mgurn said. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” the tech said. He smiled at Mgurn, frowned at me, cleared his throat, then hurried off without another word.

“Why don’t we use bots for this?” I asked.

“Because even the SMC bots have a hard time keeping track of you,” Mgurn said.

“Right.” I smirked. “I forgot.”

It was my little joke I said every time I stepped foot in the hangar. Mgurn’s lack of enthusiasm was his little joke.

The rear ramp of my ship lowered as we approached. It was obvious why Salvage Merc Ones handed down the same ship to each other over and over. The ship remembered me without even a problem.

“We will want to go to the bridge,” Mgurn said. “We could access the navigation system from a port in the hold, but I have a hunch we will find more information if you are seated in the pilot’s seat.”

“Why do you think that?” I asked as we made our way up out of the hold, along the corridors, and up the decks until we reached the bridge. “The ship knows my signature. It should give me the same info no matter where I log in.”

“A hunch,” Mgurn said and gestured to the pilot’s seat.

I shrugged and sat down. The console in front of me came to life, and I felt a vibration and heard a slight hum as the ship started warming up.

“Navigation?” I asked. “Show me a route to the Daedalus System.”

The view screen in front of me switched from the image of the hangar to an image of the Daedalus System. There were so many orbiting planets that it made me dizzy to watch. Before I could start feeling nauseous, the view pulled out and became a macro map of the galaxy. A bright red line connected the various wormhole portals we would have to go through to get to the system. It didn’t take me long to see that it was the exact same route that Mgurn and I had plotted the night before.

“No, not that route,” I said. The bright red line disappeared. “Show me a direct route through a wormhole portal.”

“There is no wormhole portal to the Daedalus System,” the navigation system’s AI responded. It had the exact same androgynous voice as the SMC headquarters AI. “Closest wormhole portal is—”

“I know where it is,” I interrupted. “I just don’t believe it. Show me any hidden, off-grid wormhole portals.”

“There are no off-grid, hidden wormhole portals in the Daedalus System,” the navigation system stated. I could have sworn there was some snark happening with that voice. But I could have been wrong.

“Ask it about the planet,” Mgurn said. “Ask it how to get to that specific planet, not the entire system.”

I zoomed back into a direct view of the system and isolated the planet. I froze the image so that all the orbiting and spinning stopped then I tapped on the specific planet.

“This one,” I said. “How do I get to this one using a wormhole portal?”

“You do not,” the navigation system stated.

“Then how do I get to this planet at all?” I asked.

“Please state the password for access,” the navigation system said.

“Well, that’s foing new,” I said.

“It has never asked for a password before,” Mgurn said.

“I know, buddy, that’s why I said it was new,” I responded.

I thought for a long while then said, “Minotaur.”

“Invalid password,” the system replied.

I thought longer, took another guess, was shot down, thought even longer, said another guess, got shot down there, then just started rattling off every single word that came into my head. Mgurn joined in after I had blurted out the fiftieth or sixtieth attempt.

Finally, I leaned back in my seat, my hands firmly planted in my lap so I didn’t punch something, which was a distinct possibility as I felt the angry bull part of me start to get snorty.

“I could ask the Bosses,” I said.

“They will not answer,” Mgurn said. “They made that clear in the holo. This is for you to figure out.”

“How the hell am I supposed to figure out some random password?” I asked. “There are infinite possibilities. You’d think they’d make it easy. It’s not like this ship can be taken over or hacked by someone else. It’s dialed in to my biometrics only, same as with all the Salvage Merc Ones before me.”

I thought some more and almost gave up. Almost.

“No,” I whispered. “I swear, if this is right I’m going to punch a Boss the next time I see those asshats.”

I cleared my throat and in a clear, distinct voice, I said, “The Password.”

“Thank you,” the navigation system responded. “Full access granted.”

“Son of a gump!” I yelled with a mix of triumph and frustrated rage.

“What would you like to see?” the navigation system asked.

“A direct wormhole portal to the Daedalus System,” I said.

“There is no direct portal to the Daedalus System,” the navigation system responded. “But there is a quantum backdoor.”

“Yeah, I have no idea what that is,” I said. “Mgurn?”

“I am at a loss as well, Joe,” Mgurn said.

“Nav system, please educate me on what a quantum backdoor is,” I ordered. “Make it the least wordy explanation, please. I’m not in the mood for a bunch of technical babble.”

“A quantum backdoor uses the infinite possibility that if you want to get somewhere then perhaps you are already there,” the navigation system said. “This is close to impossible to achieve.”

“Then why suggest it?” I asked. Bull man was getting grumpy. I felt a heat rise in my chest. “Just tell me how the hell we get to that planet in the Daedalus System before I smash your cybernetics to pieces.”

“There is one planet in the galaxy that appears to be highly susceptible to quantum mechanics and its effects,” the navigation system said. “There is no logical reason as to why, but more occurrences of quantum backdoors have occurred on this planet than anywhere else. Ever.”