CH10

“What the hell do you mean by “You cannot go back”?!” I shouted, rising from my spot.

“I mean what I’ve said! And I would appreciate if you could stop threatening me! I’m trying to help you all, if you haven’t realized it yet!” Contrary to her courageous words, she looked pretty terrified by what was happening around her.

“Shut up!” Draco slammed his hand against the table. “Both of you!”

Grudgingly, I did all I could to restrain my anger. I knew it was not the time to succumb to it, regardless of how appealing that option may have seemed at that moment. I sat again.

“Explain,” I said, my teeth clenched.

“Just after we took the ship you were on, just after Teo found out about humans on board… Remember when I told you about this?”

That I did. I still had shivers when thinking about what would have happened if our cells were not so hermetic or if one of that gas injectors had torn the ships coating above our heads. Maybe that would have been better, though? Dying in my sleep seemed like a nice alternative.

“Listen, regardless of how Ares’ face looks, we are not that stupid.” Draco tried to calm down Ilmine. “So yes, we remember. And what does this have to do with anything?”

“Well, Teo was really, really scared at that time. He couldn’t think straight. He ordered the ship’s AI to make an immediate jump. And so, we’re not even in Sol System right now. We’re Outside, and shortly we will arrive to another star system. We can’t just turn back.”

The whole room submerged into silence.

“Ok. Ok,” I tried to wrap my head around the concept of us flying through the depths of cosmos. I failed. “So what’s the problem? We can just jump again, in the opposite direction this time, right?”

“Well, not exactly…” Ilmine made a face as if she was about to tell a child that his dog had died. “You see, there are two ways of moving from one Star System to another. First, you could use one of the gates. Every system being officially part of the Empire has one. That’s how almost all ships in the known galaxy travel. But there are also some special cases.”

“And, let me guess,” Draco interjected with a sigh. ”We are a special case, aren’t we?”

“That’s right. And that’s how we were able to get to Sol System, even though there is no gate there. The drive this ship has is remarkable. All it needs, is to have coordinates of a system you want to jump to, proper energy input and position and BAM! You can make a jump. I’d only heard of such ships, never seen one before.”

“So what’s the problem again? To make the first jump you would have had to have this fancy ship and coordinates, right? Are we missing something?” Was our friend trying to screw us over? Not nice.

“Yes, we are,” Ilmine looked around with exasperation. “How are we supposed to make a jump with the AI being offline? How are we supposed to do anything without the AI?! As for now, this ship is nothing more than a flying tomb!”

Ok, that could be a problem. I had no idea how much of what that redhead had told us was true, but there was also not much I could do about it. She was the only person at least remotely knowing what was going on. I almost missed my quiet prison cell.

…yeah, right.

“Than what can we do about this? Any ideas?”

“Well…,” she hesitated. “Like I’d said earlier – I’m neither engineer nor programmer. The only solution I can think of is to make a general reboot. To restart the whole AI system.”

Seemed simple enough.

“But…?” I could feel there was some catch. There always was.

“But if we do it, that would mean we will lose all the data the AI had stored. That includes the coordinates of every star system in the database, including Sol. And it’s not only about you going back to Earth! If the system to which we’re heading right now does not have a gate we can use, if Teo just picked some completely random system, then it means we will be trapped there!” she slammed her fists with frustration. “…I think Teo really wanted us dead.”

Eh, that is what I feared; nothing could be too simple for us.

Why? Why the hell it could not be easy, just once? Was I asking for too much? First, I woke up half naked on some shipwreck, then came aliens, more aliens with giant spider-drones, and then… No, scratch that. Killing that son of a parrot, Teo, and his fellow lackeys was actually quite fun. But that was not the point!

“How much time do we have before we need to decide?” I asked.

“When using this drive, the distance we cover in Outside space is irrelevant to the time we spend here. The jump always lasts a little over thirty eight hours. And we don’t want to arrive to an unknown star system without our AI, believe me on that.” Ilmine informed us, and knowing what I wanted to ask next added. ”The jump started six hours ago.”

Ok, that at least gave us some time for rest. I could work with that.

“Does anybody has anything else to ask? Because if not, then I would suggest that we all take a few hours of proper sleep and then discus it over again. It may as well be our last chance before we all die horribly, so I would advise you to cherish every second of this short nap.”

“I agree,” Draco said. “We could sit here, asking questions for the rest of eternity, and there would still be too much to learn.”

That was true enough. Personally, I would gladly hear more about that Empire she mentioned earlier, but we could talk about it later. We had enough problems as it was.

I turned to my sister.

“One more thing,” Blaze looked Ilmine in the eyes. “Why were you chosen for this job?”

The alien girl seemed confused again, but she answered without hesitation.

“As I already told you, I was hired to gather and analyze specific data about Ear—”

“No, no, no,” my sister shook her head. “That’s not what I’m asking. Why were YOU chosen for this job?”

“Oh…” Ilmine straightened on her seat and, for the first time, I saw her smile. “Well, first you must know, one of the most basic rules of modern cultural anthropology says, that to properly analyze and understand data acquired while studying another species the researcher must belong to a species as much biologically similar as it is possible. The correlation between this two is of utmost importance. Just look at that.”

Ilmine stopped talking and took off her gloves. She extended her hands for us to see, as if she was showing us something incredible. Well, it were only hands… Five fingers each, slightly bluish, but with pale palms. I could see delicate veins under her skin, only the pattern was a bit different. As if someone took a ruler and drew perfect lines on her forearm. Creepy.

“See that?! Its mind blowing how similar we are! Of course, it does not mean that our cultures are equally similar, but to some extent… Now, put it this way: if there was a Sa’der anthropologist in my place it would took him at least three times longer to achieve half of what I did, and even that data would probably be full of mistakes.” Ilmine seemed really proud of her work.

I looked at the alien girl with new appreciation. Was she that different? Sure, her skin and eyes disqualified her from any Miss contest, but that was not all. She seemed pretty reasonable and I met enough human beings to know how rare of a trait it could be. Hell, if I had met her on Earth and if she was not part of the crew of murderous midgets and if I was drunk enough…

Ok, stop right there! This was an undeniable proof that I needed rest.

Maybe if I could fall asleep, then after waking up I would find out that it was just some sick dream? That we were still as close to our sweet Mother Earth as it was possible?

Yeah, right. And the Pope is a virgin.