The elevator was a mirror image of the port side. They descended and had a quick look round each level until they found the monorail system. It was a suspended design, three narrow, white but greying carriages hanging from six slender pantographs sat silently in a station designed to fit the length of the train. The tunnel disappeared into blackness either end of the platform in exactly the same place as the walkway was on the opposite side of the ship. The carriage doors were open and most of the lights were working on the inside, waiting patiently for passengers for seven thousand years.
There was a bit more dust here, and they all had to wipe their leaning posts before sitting.
‘The train got more use than the walkway then,’ said Andy.
‘Is it automatic?’ asked Ed. ‘Or is there something––’
Red lights set into the door frame flashed before the door slid down again, cutting Ed off mid-sentence. The short train whined electrically away into the tunnel, picking up speed surprisingly quickly. A few moments later, another identical, brightly-lit train sped past them going in the opposite direction.
‘Must be on a continuous loop,’ said Ed. He noticed that Pol seemed decidedly nervous. ‘What’s the matter, Pol?’ he asked.
‘If this is on a loop and only operates when people get on,’ she said, gazing forward anxiously, ‘then Ralt could have seen the trains moving and be waiting at one of the stations, weapon at the ready.’
‘She’s right,’ said Andy. ‘She might well have used the train to get down to the hangar.’
The train whipped into the next station, slowed quickly and stopped, the door sliding into the ceiling once again. They all peered up and down the platform, Ed sweeping his revolver around in a two-handed grip.
They gave a collective sigh of relief. Nothing moved, the station was empty and the train, sensing no passenger movements, closed the door again and moved swiftly off.
There was a cutaway schematic of the ship on the ceiling, showing where the train was within the vessel.
‘Is it the last stop we want?’ asked Andy, nodding upwards as a little blue line moved along the map towards the next stop.
‘It must be,’ said Ed. ‘The location Faith showed us was about as far back as you can go.’
They repeated the same nervous routine at the next few stops until they got bored with that and realised the two Moguls wouldn’t have managed to get to a hangar this far back.
They alighted at the fourteenth and last stop. Three doors led off the platform, similar to the ones into the hangars on the opposite side of the ship.
‘I’m going to try the rearmost door first,’ said Ed, walking in that direction.
‘I can’t feel the lock at all,’ said Andy, thinking towards the door with his DOVI.
‘You need to be right up close,’ said Ed. ‘Or the damping field conceals it. It’s certainly stronger here, so we’re definitely closer to the source.’
They stopped suddenly and Ed brought the pistol up quickly as the door opened when they approached.
‘Did you do that?’ asked Ed, side-stepping around so he could see through the gaping hole.
‘Wasn’t me, guv,’ said Andy, as they shuffled forward and checked for anyone hiding either side of the door.
Three unknown skinny Callametans stood stock still, staring at them. They’d been watching a list of information on a wall screen that continued to slowly scroll down.
‘Hello,’ said Pol, smiling and stepping past Ed and Andy. She pushed Ed’s arms down so the pistol was pointing at the floor. ‘Have you been woken recently?’ she asked.
One of the three nodded.
‘We’re trying to ascertain why,’ she said.
‘As we don’t appear to be at our destination,’ said the second. ‘Are you a colonist too?’
‘It’s a long story,’ said Pol. ‘Are you engineering crew?’
‘No – they seem to be missing,’ said the first. ‘We’re settlement engineers, the first to be awoken on arrival.’
‘But the planet below isn’t where we’re supposed to be,’ said the second.
‘Who are these aliens?’ asked the third one, pointing at Ed and Andy with one of her arms. ‘How did they get aboard the ship?’
Ed quickly holstered the revolver and indicated to Pol that she ought to do the explanation. He reasoned they might be more likely to believe the story if it came from one of their own. He stepped away and sat down on the floor and nodded to Andy to do the same. They were considerably taller than Callametans and sitting made them appear less threatening.
The three engineers visibly relaxed and turned to face Pol as she began explaining the present situation. Ed watched as expressions of bewilderment quickly became ones of shock as the timescale and predicament unfolded.
‘Seven thousand years?’ said the first one, her mouth hanging open. ‘That explains why some of our colleagues didn’t survive. The hibernation pods had a design life of around two hundred and fifty years.’
‘You didn’t wake us then?’ asked the second one.
‘No,’ said Pol. ‘It must have been an automated system triggered by the ship’s computer.’
‘So you’re saying that Captain Ralt and the rest of the crew abandoned us thousands of years ago and have only just achieved the means to return to the ship to plunder it for all its material assets,’ said the first, glancing wide-eyed at her two friends.
‘And what was she going to do with all the surviving colonists?’ asked the third engineer.
‘Send the ship off to its destination, where we now know it would have been destroyed by a particularly aggressive race called the Klatt who’ve claimed that planet as their own.’
‘And the captain knows that?’
‘She does now,’ said Pol.
‘But the plans didn’t change when she found out?’
‘Wouldn’t have made much difference, would it?’ said the first. ‘Without all the colony equipment we’d have been dead anyway.’
The conversation lapsed for a moment and all three of them turned their attention to Ed and Andy.
Noticing this, Pol explained her and the GDA’s role, instigated by Ralt and the Obsidian cult.
‘Our crew were Obsidians!’ exclaimed the first. ‘Well, that explains a lot.’
‘My name’s Pol, by the way – what are your names?’
‘Kwin,’ said the first.
‘Rialte,’ said the second.
‘Tocc,’ said the third.
Pol pointed to Ed and Andy, introduced them, and explained that Ralt had also disabled their ship too which was why they were down here in engineering.
‘So we need to disable the field generator, bypassing the main computer?’ said Kwin.
‘That’s correct,’ said Ed, speaking for the first time. ‘Ralt has instigated a programme called beta 99, that disables anything she deems a threat to her agenda.’
Rialte tapped away on the control board next to her and nodded.
‘It’s in section E4m,’ and getting encouraging nods from the other two, she added, ‘Follow us.’
They trooped through several huge equipment rooms, past large units of machinery, some silent, some humming, but everything on an industrial scale. Rialte led them to a smaller doorway off to one side of a larger chamber which had one of the hieroglyphic signs to the left of the door.
‘Are you able to read these signs?’ asked Pol.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Tocc. ‘Are you not?’
‘No, this language doesn’t exist in our world.’
‘It’s the language of the Handralle cult,’ said Kwin. ‘They built all the colony ships, one for each of the five cults.’
‘What are the other cults’ names?’ asked Ed.
‘Obsidian, Handralle, Quintic, Unin and we are the Wiele,’ said Tocc.
‘Did all five have Obsidian crews?’ asked Andy.
‘They did,’ said Kwin. ‘The Obsidians were the military wing, the first to venture into space, and had the most experience in space flight and navigation.’
‘They’d been defending us from the Blends for many decades,’ said Rialte. ‘So we kinda trusted them.’
‘Judging from Ralt’s comments, they didn’t like you much,’ said Pol.
‘No – each cult tended to specialise in something and with us it was politics,’ said Tocc. ‘We generally controlled the Grand Council budget and as with any military organisation, they believed their share of the funding was always too small.’
‘I think that scenario is repeated in every civilisation,’ said Ed, rolling his eyes.
They all turned to face the door.
‘We don’t have authority to enter this section,’ said Kwin, waving at the keypad with her two right arms. ‘Are you able to open this?’
Ed closed his eyes and quickly realised the field was almost impenetrable here. The Callametans all gave him a strange look as he knelt down and rested his forehead on the keypad.
‘He does know it’s designed for fingers?’ Tocc said to Pol, giving her a weird sideways glance.
‘Don’t ask me to explain it,’ Pol replied, giving Tocc an apologetic shrug in return.
The lock mechanism clunked and the door popped open slightly.
The Callametans’ eyes bulged and they all looked at Ed with renewed respect.
Ed pushed open the door and stepped inside. Lights in the walls came on to reveal a much smaller space approximately thirty metres square. The centre of the room was taken up by an octagonal control station with a leaning seat opposite each of the eight stations. The emitter that Faith had shown them hung above the unit and Ed realised now that the emitter wasn’t round as first thought, but was in fact octagonal too and matched the design of the control unit below.
He watched as the three Callametans picked a seat each and began touching icons, all sporting determined expressions. It didn’t take them long to begin scratching their chins, and the looks turned to scowls.
‘It’s an encoding I haven’t seen before,’ said Tocc. ‘It appears to be non-manual and can only be reinstructed by basic verbal commands through Hope on the bridge.’
‘Through who?’ said Andy.
‘Hope,’ said Rialte. ‘It’s the name of the ship and the semi-sentient computer on the bridge.’
Ed, Andy and Pol all exchanged a puzzled look, which wasn’t missed by Rialte.
‘All the ships were named,’ she said. ‘It’s what the bridge computers answer to.’
‘Not this one,’ said Pol. ‘She’s going by the name Faith now.’
This time it was the three Callametans that exchanged a surprised look.
‘That’s the name of the Obsidian ship,’ said Tocc. ‘The bastards have changed the name of our ship to suit them.’
‘Indeed we have,’ said Ralt, standing in the doorway, her weapon trained on them.