Chronicle of Nautilus

Chapter 27: A Short Break

After the incident in Ermac’s base Tom had had enough, he would not allow Outsider to get ahead of him again.

 He sent his trusted people to the base of the new Navigator, checked the security systems inside, restored them and upgraded to the limit, he put four of his deadliest agents as the front-guards, two by the two entrances of the place, increased amount of drones inside the base, put a few more plasma lasers and installed an insta-zapper in the place where the brainwashing trap once was. All people he put to assist Ermac had combat training. He provided them the prohibited military equipment used back at the earlier years. He added additional tools to the chambers from which the new Navigators would come – auto-guns with facial recognition systems in every corner of the place. They would put anyone down who would try to walk there uninvited.

 He visited the engines and increased the security levels.  No one besides the chief engineers was allowed to touch any of the cooling control panels. He added two of his men for each of the engines – totally sixteen. They would do random checks on workers and investigate their reliability. The keycard system was switched to the DNA scanners.

 He double-checked security locks of the doors on the city’s perimeter and added cameras to scan all trespassers.

 He picked the city map and looked at all vents or smaller doors leading to the outside. Different sensors and booby traps he put were to tear the Outsider to pieces if he attempted to take a sneaky route.

 And finally, he decided to start the search for Usher. He even went so far as to put Glen’s picture on the media. Although in his gut, he knew that the search was not going to give positive results, but he could always hope to get lucky.  Unless he himself started shaking the city’s underground, Usher would stay hidden.  Glen had too many tricks and contacts hidden under his sleeve. Perhaps his face had already been changed. Even undergraduate medical students could do plastic surgeries with primitive equipment these days.

 Tom understood that stopping the Outsider for now was beyond his reach. All he could do was to stall him. He got himself a modern pocket holographic computer and had all the sensors he put on the City’s perimeter connected to it. Be it a rat that gets close to the restricted area, Tom would know it instantly. Two cabs were always on standby for Tom to use.

 Tom was forgotten by everyone – Claire avoided him, she had a task to establish the new prison and used opportunities to get out of the office as soon as they appeared, perhaps it was for the best for now. Her husband was silently repairing the reconditioning devices. No word came from him after the encounter with the clone. With Stacy gone, Tom was no longer questioning the man’s loyalty. Cyrus could be a great candidate for an ally. And Glen… Glen was never coming back.

There was Julian Shaw, the man Tom put his hopes in. From the ex-librarian’s reports he understood that great progress was made in just a few weeks. Tom did not want to visit him and put unnecessary pressure. The man would invite him when he will be comfortable. Tom had no doubts about it.

 Everything besides the Outsider’s ruckus went normally. During the forty years on the ship and flawless work from Landau and the Government, people had learned to trust in the first citizen and their representatives. All the explanations of the explosions and the chase satisfied the public, if there was anyone to try and dig deeper, the person would quickly hit the wall. The information on the Outsider was highly classified and accessible only to Tom’s most trusted people.

After Tom figured he had done everything in his power to defend the vital ship’s ‘organs’ from the Outsider’s attacks, he decided to take a short break at the restaurant on the highest floor of a tall office building close to the city’s center.  The building was forty floors high – highest on the ground level, it held offices of many engineers and inventors. Unofficially, people called this place ‘The Tower’.

It was a beautiful early morning. This time Tom was the first client. The bartender already knew what Tom’s breakfast would be and prepared it in a minutes notice. Tom sat by a long tall table on the farthest corner from the entrance. He sipped a cup of coffee and enjoyed the view through a crystal clear window.  The central park with all rivers going down the whirlpool was clouded by a light fog. The streets below were empty, only a couple of joggers could be seen. A frozen lake far far away reflected the sunlight and hid a large portion of the horizon. He looked up at the circles in the sky, no matter what time of year it was, a green color dominated them.  While looking at the city Tom wondered if he could preserve this place and keep its balance unbroken for the centuries to come.

What would happen if he sacrificed his life for this place? Would another copy of his emerge from some secret chamber, similar to the one of Ermac? There were many questions unanswered about his identity, but he did not bother to investigate his past, not yet, probably there were no answers to be found on the ship anyways. Now he only tried to imagine the unlimited unknowns waiting for him in the future.

Sometimes he wished he could close his eyes. Have a moment of rest.  Free his head of thought and walk the dark void of the dreams.  Dreams were not the only thing to remain a mystery to him. He was never going to know what it feels like to be a common man. Love, compassion, desire, hate, pain, fear – the main human traits and feelings were beyond him. Yet somehow he knew what it means to be human, he could easily understand all people and even predict them, although he did not remember ever studying human psychology. He had already got used to knowing things without learning them. Everything he did – piloted a cab or accessed complex computer systems came naturally.  

Tom’s thoughts drifted back to the mysterious Outsider. How much did that thing know? How sinister his plans truly were? What about the blackout? The blackout… Old Ermac himself did not understand its causes and features. But the event must have had something that could be used to give an edge over his opponent. The Outsider must have used a lot of energy to get here from the planet far away in space and time. Energy, Tom thought, if the creature emitted it, it could be sensitive to some sort of its form. As the idea sparked in his mind he picked his comms device and called to one of the physicists he knew and asked him to look into the matter and identify the type of waves that struck the ship during the incident. He called Ermac to provide the physician with the required data.

Then, Tom looked at his empty cup of coffee, turned to the window and understood – his exciting break was wasted on business talks, talks that could have waited.

To fix the situation he went to the bartender and asked for another cup of coffee. This time he would not waste the moment, this time he would enjoy it to the fullest.