“But, Knower,” protested the hairy image, “we want to be there with you. To witness your glory!”
“It would be remiss of me to put you in harm’s way unnecessarily. Hold position off the station, I’ll contact you if I need you.” Orson pressed the switched to shut off the communications system. He leant back in the chair, his hands resting on his head.
“They’re eager, I’ll give them that,” Nguyen said, a tablet in her hands. “Marines are reporting ready, sir.”
“Not a sir anymore, Nguyen.”
“Feels weird to change a habit, sir.”
“Fair enough. I must say, I expected… more, for our efforts. People have been waiting millennia for this Knower figure, I assumed we would get a lot more interest. Some kid shouts the claim in a fucking gladiator pit and people believe him. I do something actually impressive, take something from the Council, and barely anyone bats an eye.”
“Know your audience, sir. The Council has held these people in their thrall for thousands of years. It’s going to take a lot more to stir the people up. The crowds on Ossiark were free people. Pirates maybe, but they aren’t the same as your average Council citizen.” Nguyen tucked the tablet beneath her arm. “You’re looking for freedom fighters amongst people who don’t know what freedom is. Not really.”
“You’re real good at your job, you know that, Nguyen?”
“I thought that’s why they picked us, sir. The Council that is, for the ship. First human ship was supposed to be the best of the best.”
“Supposedly,” Orson said with a smirk. “That means we would have to trust the Council has our best interests at heart. I don’t know about you, but I find that hard to believe. Honestly, I worry about Earth. It’s only a matter of time before gloves come off.”
“We’ll get there, sir. It’s a little bit at a time, right? Constant growth. This will be the third comms station passing on our message, and it’s taken a fraction of the time it took to do this between our first two. It’s all exponential, isn’t it? The more we spread our message, the more recruits we have. The more people we have, the easier it is to spread our message.”
“Well then,” Orson said, standing up from the comms station. He stepped across the bridge, taking his seat in the captain’s chair. “We better get to work.”
The image of Michael filled the ship, a blue hazy version of him appearing on every corner and by every doorway. Across the entire flotilla, his picture was being displayed by screens and communications holograms. The image fidgeted with its jacket nervously.
“Hey there, it’s me, Michael. Obviously. Some of you call me the Knower of Truths. Some don’t. That’s fine, you do you and all that. So, it’s been, well not a blast exactly, more of a tolerable family visit, if I were to rank it on how good a time it’s been. Not that you’re my family, but-”
There was whispering from off-camera.
“Right, sorry, sorry. I can ramble a bit. I’ll cut to the chase. We’ve come out of the jump tunnel. We don’t know exactly where we are yet, apparently, navigation software is struggling a little bit. Something about not detecting pulsars. Honestly, all this space stuff is new to me, so I haven’t got a clue. Either way, our intention was to save who we could from Cortica, and now we’re all out of jump, you’re obviously free to do what you like. Head back to Council space, go somewhere else, we’re not going to stop anyone.”
The image changed, shifting from Michael to the object hanging in space, a whole world stamped to one side.
“I’m sure you’ve all seen this by now. Now, like I’ve mentioned, I’m no space expert. Being lost and ending up next to a strange structure seems highly coincidental. Suspiciously so. So, we’re going to go poke around. And by we, I mean volunteers. There’s a whole planet down there, and if we’re right about it being linked to the navigation problems, it’ll take a long time to explore it without help. I can tell you from experience that going to weird unknown alien places is dangerous.”
The image shifted back to Michael, the planet-like construct fading.
“That’s all I wanted to say really. I know some of you think a lot of me, and I thought it was worth reaching out, well not in person, but close enough. The quicker we get this done, the quicker people can get back to their lives.”
Chapter Three
Michael hoisted the bag over his shoulder, grunting under the weight of it. When the flotilla had formed, not all the ships were capable of making the long jump journey, and their contents were transferred over to the Sword. The bag had been salvaged from the pile of assorted junk that had worked its way into one of the Sword’s cargo holds. It looked like it was leather, but had a strange texture to the touch, softer than Michael would have expected. It had been sat in a pile for nearly three months, so Michael considered taking it for himself was fair gain.
Within the bag, Michael had packed everything he could think of that might be useful. Packed food, canteens of water and two separate sidearms. He still wasn’t sure on using them, it felt wrong to hold a gun in his hands, and he was a rubbish shot. It seemed like a good idea anyway, memories of pirates, gangsters and monsters still fresh in his mind. So far, the galaxy seemed like a dangerous place.
Michael turned and looked at his reflection. There was no mirror in the room, but if you got close enough to the metal walls you could see yourself in the shine. The room itself had started near empty but had slowly over the months become filled with stacked dirty food trays and half-eaten lunches. Michael wasn’t the cleanest person to live with, and he had somehow proven that despite the situation making it almost impossibly difficult.
Michael stepped carefully over the stacked pile of rags on the floor Michael had been sleeping on. The ship was full of rooms like his, hundreds of them, each a large chamber with multiple beds set into the wall. Each of these was raised off the ground, designed for Merydians, the race natural climbers. They were too difficult for Michael to climb into, and even if he could they were two small and any mattress that had once been there had long since dissolved into dust. It wasn’t ideal, Michaels back ached constantly from sleeping on his pile.
Trays clattered as Michael knocked a stack over, grey mushroom remains splattering over the floor. Michael sighed loudly, even he had his limits.
“Clive?” Michael said. He waited a moment, allowing the image of the AI to form. It wasn’t strictly necessary, Clive was fully capable of projecting his words through the invisible swarm of nanobots that filled the ship. Taking a form like this seemed to please the AI though, and the crew encouraged it, preferring this option to hearing a disembodied voice.
“Yes, can I help, Michael?” Clive’s image was less glowing than usual. The AI seemed to be tinkering with his appearance constantly. Tweaking it until he considered it perfect, though that seemed to be a never-ending chase.
“Does your, uh, offer, still stand?”
“It does. You’re finally looking at taking it up?”
“I suppose,” Michael said, as he looked around his room mournfully. “I’m not going to be on the ship, so it seems like a good a time as any.”
“And you’re sure? You were very resistant to the idea when I brought it up.”
“Yeah, yeah I am. I just don’t like people touching my stuff, you know?”