9 The Call
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Deck 12 was beginning to look like a refugee camp as survivors from all over found their way to one of the few fully operational decks left on the ship. Soon after the first group of survivors from O-Deck arrived, Salazar ordered small groups to fan out through the ship and search for more. There were so many wounded that the medical personnel had to care for them in the hallways.
Jennifer, having given up her bed in the sick bay for the more seriously injured crew, made her way to the main conference room.
"You asked for me, ma'am?" she said to Salazar.
Peppered throughout the room were several guides, a handful of the ship’s military crew, and two others from Tech.
"Jennifer, yes." Salazar walked over to her and placed an arm around her shoulder. "Thank you for coming," she said as she guided Jennifer to the main table. "I have been told that you work in Tech."
"Yes, ma'am," she answered, "but I mainly work in Stasis." Nervous that she was about to be asked to do something that she wasn’t qualified for, she made her station very clear. "I'm not really familiar with ship operations."
"Actually, that’s perfect." Salazar removed her arm from Jennifer's shoulder and called a video feed up on the main monitor. "These engineers here tell me that there are some anomalies in the power draw coming from Stasis." She pointed around the room to various crew members.
She moved her pointed finger to the monitor. "I am also told that there appears to have been a breach in the stasis pod itself."
In view on the screen was a very large, blue, translucent membrane connected to a clean room with a control center on the other side.
"According to the data from the deck's sensors, both of the doors to the pod were activated twice after the explosions this morning." She swiped left on the screen to show several lines of data. "Coincidentally, we have no footage during that time." She looked directly into Jennifer's eyes. "Any idea why someone would have gone in there?"
Jennifer swiped away the data from the view of the pod and zoomed in to the clean room. "No, ma'am, I don't." She stepped back, beginning to worry that Salazar might be accusing her of something. "I do know something about the power, though."
“Show me.”
Jennifer used the monitor to pull up the video surveillance of the stasis deck from earlier in the morning. "About an hour before everything happened, my supervisor and one of the other techs noticed the same thing." She pointed to two men on the screen. "They sent me up to get Ms. Waverly."
"Interesting." Salazar remembered that there was a woman with Alexis when she emerged from the service crawl. "Oh... You were the one in the elevator with Alexis this morning."
Salazar grabbed one of the mobile tablets from the console and handed it to Jennifer. "I need to know two things," she said. "Why did someone enter the stasis pod?" She reached over and grabbed a piece of technical paperwork from the table. "And how long will it take to get every survivor back into Stasis and detach the deck from the ship?"
Relieved that Salazar’s apparent distrust of her seemed to have abated, she sighed a breath of relief and took the tablet, but before Jennifer could question her new tasks, Salazar received a ping on her communicator.
"Salazar," she answered.
"Guide Salazar." It was the same voice that had interrupted the ship-wide announcement earlier. "As I am sure you are aware, L’Dopterra is no longer under military or political control."
"Who is this?" Salazar demanded, her face showing a mixture of confusion and recognition.
"All that really matters at this moment is that I, and the rest of my crew, have been raised to power," he answered smugly. "I am aware of your position, and I’m sure that you have been using your considerable influence to get people much smarter than yourself to figure a way out of the mess you’re in." He paused for a moment. "Please hold."
Salazar looked around the crowded room. "Does anyone recognize him?" One by one, every person in the room shook their head. "I will not hold! Who is this?" She paused for an answer but realized she had another question she wanted answered. "What did you do to the ship?"
Less than a minute passed with no answer and Salazar was about to speak again when suddenly the voice returned.
"I'm very sorry for that interruption," he said.
"Is anyone going to figure out where this is coming from?" Salazar barked to the room, and everyone began scrambling to find the answer. She rolled her eyes, irritated that it took her questioning to get the room moving, and returned to the comm.
"I would like for us to come to an understanding. You have many members of the ship's crew on your deck and I wish none of them any harm," the man continued. "I have a plan to leave this ship before it's destroyed as it enters the planet's atmosphere. I would like to save as many of the civilians as I can."
"Save them?" she began yelling into the communicator. "Do you have any idea how many lives were lost this morning?"
"I do, and it is very unfortunate," the voice replied. "But now is your chance to save the few who remain. Send as many as you can. We will take those that can make the journey down to Agriculture with us. No military, no politicians. Only civilians."
"It's coming from Mechanical," a man announced from the back of the room.
Salazar nodded and then returned to the communicator. "You made it very clear in your last transmission that you're the reason that we are in this mess to begin with." She paused to collect a thought. "Knowing that, how can I be expected to believe that you want to save anyone, after having murdered most ship’s personnel?" She was visibly agitated. "On top of that, you are asking me to sacrifice even more lives in the process. Good people. People who have worked their entire lives to get us to where we are."
There was a long pause before the man responded. "Are you finished?" he asked with irritation in his voice. "Those are my terms. As long as you can set your ego aside long enough to agree to them, we will keep up our end of the bargain. You may even be remembered as a hero to those who survive." A distorted tinny chuckle leaks from the communicator. "Hell, they may even erect a statue of the two of us in a courtyard somewhere. The liberator and the savior. Make your choice. I will call you again in one hour."
Salazar's agitation rose to full-blown fury. She threw her communicator across the room, causing it to shatter into several pieces. She stopped and took a few deep breaths. "Someone sync me a new communicator, damn it!"
Salazar walked back to the computer console and brought up video surveillance from Mechanical. Her anger turned to confusion when saw what was on the other end of the camera. Not just one man with a communicator—there were at least a hundred people down there. And standing before them, at the head of the group, one man appeared to be giving a speech. She stumbled away from the console.
"Palmer?"
"As in Guide Palmer?" Jennifer quickly jumped in to get a better look at the image on the screen.
Salazar sat at the table as she worked to figure out what was unfolding. "I vouched for him."
"I'm sorry?"
Salazar looked back up at Jennifer with fear and confusion in her eyes, something not usually associated with her persona. "He was involved with the movement to stifle the relocation project."
"He's an Earther?" asked Jennifer.
"No." She shook her head. "He wasn't part of any religious movement. His people had different concerns about the mission. They thought it was rushed and the politics were muddy."
Realizing her response sounded intolerant, she calmed herself. "He changed his position once the nations voted, and I trusted him; we came up the ranks together. I practically begged the commission to have him included in this mission.”
"He called himself a liberator."
Collecting herself, Salazar straightened her back, resolve setting in. "He's obviously mad. We have work to do."
