Chapter 8. Crossroads.

Dressed once again in the full regalia of his office, the Reverend Lon Kalopello rapped at the door of the Star Cult's escape pod, and said, "Technical Sergeant, I would see a status report on your progress."

He could hear noises coming from inside the pod, but they were muted. "I shall return shortly," he said to one of the nearby guards, and opened the door and entered the escape pod.

What he saw was beyond his imagining.

The inside of the pod had somehow been transformed into an analog of the Science Lab 40-3. Panels had been pulled out of their mountings, hanging from gaps in the wall by bundles of cabling. The two front chairs had been removed from their positions and partially disassembled. A few screens were active, running through diagnostic cycles, failing at random points, and restarting. The air had a stronger acrid smell of burnt wires. And a trunk line of cables hung down from one of the several access panels in the ceiling, sparking periodically.

In the middle of this disaster zone, seemingly oblivious of all that was going on, sat Technical Sergeant Jenkins, using a polygrip to open an access panel in the floor. Jenkins mirrored the disarray of the inside of the pod. He was filthy, looking like he had spent the last 3 days here, rather than at most 6 hours. Underneath the pall of carbonized plastic hanging in the air was the subtle smell of body odor. His uniform was frayed at the edges and had tears and a few burn marks, as if he had accidentally walked into the sparking wire multiple times over the course of the last few hours.

He looked up from his mayhem, slack jawed. "Oh... hello... this...this job is a bit more complicated than I thought. I had to take the... the..." his voice trailed off in a sea of acronyms as Jenkins attempted to explain how his quest to track down the short-circuit had led both him and the escape pod to their current state of disrepair.

"You little shit," Lon said with disbelief. "OK...we need to get you up and moving. Maybe getting some food into you will get some sense into you."

"What?" he said vacantly. "Huh. I just have a few more things to do before I...before I..."

"Before you have this whole fucking pod disassembled. Come on, stand up. Stand up!" he commanded.

The words and voice were so commanding that almost independent of his own will, Jenkins tried to stand, though rather pathetically. Then he looked back down and rapped his legs with the tool a few times. It was likely that he had been sitting in that awkward position for over an hour.

Lon stood behind him, grabbed him by the elbows and pulled him up. He was prepared for Jenkins teetering around and stabilized him while the feeling in his legs and feet slowly returned.

"Oooh. Ow. Ah...yeah...I guess I must have been sitting like that for... Um." Apparently much of the pins-and-needles effect was muted. But he was still unsteady on his feet.

"Come on. Let's get some food in you. Some coffee. Maybe you'll remember what you did. If we know where the short is, even not exactly, we could just disable that system. We don't need to find the problem, we just need to isolate it. Come on, it's not that hard. I'm no tech and even I know that."

Jenkins raised a hand and opened his mouth as if he were about to speak, then stopped, with a quizzical look on his face, closed his mouth and shook his head. "Forgot what I was going to say," he said quietly.

"Guard," called Lon out the door, "I'm going to need you to give me a hand with the sergeant here until he can walk on his own."

****

Two figures walked down a hallway, continuing a quiet conversation.

"You didn't used to believe."

"Clearly not."

"Yet you were never into the whole grand X vs. Y thing either."

"It seemed like an artificial separation. Our distinctions magnified because of our similarities and similar heritage."

"Yet neither the X'tonu'u or Y'valatic had any significant quarrels with their common ancestor. So you rose above it all?"

"Hardly. It simply carried no weight with me, and I saw opportunities for personal profit. Any instability would perturb the system allowing well-placed parties to benefit, when the tide moved either way. I suspect you were similarly motivated: personal profit."

"But I'm not wearing a robe now."

"No, only a stolen uniform. Yet you are here on the same ship. You are trapped—I am here by my own choice."

"So when the 'Neutron Star' said he would stay here for some time..."

"That title is to be used only by the Children. But in any case, there is no choice, we stay."

"And if he said he was going to leave."

"He has indicated that very thing. Then, we leave."

"And if there aren't enough escape pods—and I'll tell you, there aren't—then what do you do?"

"Whatever is the Will of the Stars."

"Let me put it this way: in the end, do you obey The Stars or the Neu-...your reverend leader."

Silence for a few moments.

"I believe I understand your question. But to answer what you are really asking, I do believe our leader IS following the dictates of The Stars. But their path is what we ultimately follow."

They continued down a hallway.

****

"Every time I thought I had the short traced, it seemed to move to someplace else. It made no sense." Jenkins was more coherent and able to walk on his own. He and Lon walked down the corridor alone.

He continued, "I ran isolation tests. I pulled out what seemed to be faulty units, replaced them with working units...ones I had verified on a test-bench. Then either the fault would show up in the exact same place on the new unit or someplace else. So I started pulling the units to see when the fault would go away. But it kept moving. It was a game of cat and mouse. But I wasn't going to let that gremlin get away."

"And the seats?" asked Lon.

"What about them? Oh...you mean the ones I took apart? They've got wiring in them, sensors, activators, things like that. They can adjust themselves and measure health and stress levels of the occupants. Pretty simple stuff, but I wanted to make sure they weren't the problem. I wanted to eliminate everything that wasn't the cause." He stopped walking for a moment and thought. Then said, "You know, the other three passenger seats do have health sensors in them. Not as likely but just to be thorough, I should..."

Lon grabbed his arm and gave him a tug, interrupting him with, "Come on! Keep moving! First we make sure you get and stay rational. Then you can go back to the shuttle."

They walked on in silence for a bit then Lon asked, "OK, I can see your general approach, but what about that trunk of sparking wires and all of those burn marks on the walls?"

"That. Oh, well..." Jenkins put his hand on his forehead and slowly slid it backwards, as if trying to draw a headache away from his brain. After a moment, he continued quietly, "...I got a little angry. I figured I'd show it what a real short looks like. That was probably what took out the nav and system monitoring components. Might've done some other damage too. I was getting real angry."

Lon stared at Jenkins in disbelief as they walked. Jenkins always had been unstable as long as Lon had known him, but the results had generally been worth the rough spots. The corridor curved then continued on straight as they approached a four-way intersection. Just beyond the intersection, two figures were walking towards them, quietly talking. Out of the corner of his eye Lon noticed the two, one in a brown robe and one in a gray jumpsuit, but was more occupied with trying to manage Jenkins.

Just before reaching the four-way intersection, Lon realized one of the approaching figures was Brother X'til. He stopped as X'til approached him, bowing his head and giving the traditional X'tonu'u gesture of respect.

Jenkins did not recognize X'til, as his attention during their previous encounter had been focused on the two Brothers who were physically restraining him. But when he saw Officer Kless he became concerned. He hadn't seen Kless since he had given him the galley log yesterday. And when he learned Kless' "distraction" had been to release almost 500 violent prisoners throughout the ship, he began to fear his partner in crime. On several occasions in the last day he had been blindsided by newly freed prisoners. A few had thrown a punch or two at him, but most saw his gray jumpsuit and immediately lost interest. One or two had said a word or phrase in a local dialect, but quickly realized he understood none of it, he was neither X'tonu'u or Y'valatic and not worth a second look. Even the tools on his belt were not worth stealing, as they would make poor weapons. But his general sense of safety on the ship had plummeted to new lows.

"Neutron Star. What is your will and the will of the Stars?" said Brother X'til softly.

But before the leader of the Star Cult could reply, two groups of former prisoners converged on them from both cross-corridors, armed with knives. Two immediately threw Kless against the wall, pining each arm, while a third held a knife to his throat. Another waived a knife menacingly at Jenkins who crumbled in a corner. The rest formed a shrinking circle around the two Star Cult members.