Chapter 20

As I turned to see who had attacked me, I felt a hand grab my head and slam it into the nearby door. As I fell to the ground, I felt the knife being pulled out of me and waited for the next attack but instead I heard footsteps rushing away as I lost consciousness. I awoke to find myself within one on the medical wards on the station. The pain in my head and lower back was faint but still noticeable, especially when I tried to move. I glanced around but saw that there was no one else in the room at the moment.

“Alta,” I called out. “How long have I been here, and do we know who is responsible for the attack?”

She appeared in a shimmer of light, “You have been in the Medical ward in Brown sector for the last few hours. Grent’ala has been tending to your wound and dealing with the effects of the blow to your head. As for the attacker, that is a slightly more complicated issue. It seems that whomever it was that attacked you, they were garbed in something that made tracking and identifying them near impossible.”

I sat up in the bed and replied, “What do you mean that it made it near impossible? Are you talking about a form of stealth technology?”

“It is the only thing that I can think of that would explain it sir,” Alta answered as she raised her hand and an image appeared.

It showed me approaching the doors of my quarters and then there was a strange distortion that moved quickly behind me just before I was stabbed. I watched this distortion slam my head into the wall and then it looked like they were about to attack again when they ran off. A few minutes later a crew member walked up to my prone form.

“If that worker hadn’t arrived when they did, I could have been in a lot worse shape than I am now.”

“The worker’s arrival is the only reason that you are still alive,” Alta said with worry in her voice. “I searched the security feeds for some sign of them, but I could find no distortion like the one that attacked you. If I were to guess, if the attacker moves slowly, there is no distortion wake. Perhaps fast movement is harder to contain within the field it created, hence the distortion. I was able to track them for a few minutes, but they vanished from all my internal sensors. They probably ran to an area that they deemed safe and slowed down their movements to be undetectable again.”

I pondered what she had said for a moment before saying, “Prior to their attack on me and running away you had not picked them up, so your theory does have merit. The distortion registered when they ran up behind me, stabbed me, slammed my head into the wall and then ran off. All those movements are rushed and impulsive, which would make it hard for a field to be able to properly compensate and conceal.”

Alta looked a little puzzled and said, “If they could have managed their attack without being seen, why did they take the risk to rush you like that?”

“Because otherwise they would have lost their chance,” I answered. “Once inside my quarters they would have had no way to reach me. Even if they waited for the next opportunity for me to leave, or the door to my room to open, Vish’ala and Ev would have been there. That would have made things far too difficult, so they took the risk. Given the nature of the attack, as well as the fact it happened only a few hours after running into that ship, it is safe to assume one of two things. The first is that the attacker came from the ship, so their attack was for revenge at their loss and possibly due to the fact I am human. The other is that it was someone here, who has been hiding behind a veil of friendship and cooperation. If that is the case, I would suspect someone who has worked on the alien vessel.”

Alta looked slightly confused, “Why would you think that, Sir? I would say it would be a surprise if it was one of the members of the station.”

“Not everyone was happy with me being in charge,” I answered, moving to stand up. “They may have been okay with the status quo as long as they didn’t have a choice. They found a way to make cloaking tech and waited for the right opportunity to present itself. Now, they could carry out an attack and try to make it to the other ship. All they would have to do is hide until they arrived somewhere that the attacker could disembark and then fade into the populace. Either way, this is a threat that has to be handled now. Contact the other AI units and have them start searching for the culprit. Checking for any hints of the distortion we saw, anyone coming out of a place they were never detected entering. Doors opening with no one around them. Reach out to the captain of the other ship, as well as the leaders of the triumvirate. I want everyone aware of what happened and the threat it poses.”

Alta replied with a ‘yes, sir’ and shimmered out of existence. I reached for my shirt and looked at the hole in the back. Whomever had attacked me wasn’t playing around based on the size of the hole in my shirt. If they had been given a chance at another strike, I would have not survived the encounter. In fact, it was sheer luck that had made sure the attacker hadn’t stabbed and severed my spine in the attack. I would have to get another shirt when I made it back to my quarters. Just as I had finished putting on my shirt, the doors to the medical bay opened and three women walked in. I recognized two of them as Ev and Vish, but I was drawing a blank on who it was that was with them. I assumed that they were Grent’ala, the medical person that Alta had said worked on me. They looked to be discussing something when they entered, until their eyes fell on me. I could see worry and happiness in the eyes of Vish and Ev, but Grent’ala looked annoyed.

“And just where do you think that you are going?” She asked, her voice sounding slightly gruff. “You still have some more healing to do before I will even consider letting you leave here.”

I gave her a smile and said, “I feel fine, doctor, so thank you for your concern, but I have work to do. I need to find the person responsible for the attack before they get a chance to leave the station.”

“Hugh, don’t be an idiot,” Ev said, crossing her arms. “I’m sure that you already talked with Alta about what happened, produced theories and had her go start tracking down leads. You also have a security force on this station that has been trained to handle this kind of situation. Even if the attacker is someone from the station, they were acting alone. If they had help, you wouldn’t have survived the attack. So let our people deal with it and you do what the doctor tells you. Trust in your people here and the bonds we have made.”

“Ev is right, Hugh,” Vish said softly. “I know for a fact that you have changed the minds of most of the people here with your dedication to improving the lives and futures of all those who live here. I have heard nothing but good things, but I am not blind to those who are bitter and a bit greedy. There will always be those who will believe they deserve better than they have, despite the fact they haven’t tried to better their situation. You can’t just go and try to right every wrong yourself. You need to trust in those who you are working with to do their jobs and simply step back and let them.”

I thought about what they both said, and they were right. I can’t just do everything myself and I can’t just become suspicious every time something goes wrong. I need to trust in those around me and give them all the benefit of the doubt.

I turned back to them and said, “You are both right, and I am letting my anger over the situation to cloud my judgment on the matter.”

“Good,” the doctor said with slight irritation still in her voice. “Then lie back down and get some rest. I will not let you out of here until I am certain there will be no complications.”

I nodded in agreement, and she assisted me in taking off my shirt and lying back down on the table.

“Since you need to lie here a while longer, I am going to give you a sedative. It will allow the nanites to work more easily, as our bodies do their best healing when we are at rest.”

I felt the injection before I felt sleep call to me. I didn’t fight the sensation, allowing myself to fall into a deep sleep. I didn’t expect to dream, nor did I expect to have a nightmare. One minute I was falling asleep in the med bay and the next I was walking in my quarters. I found it odd, given that I wouldn’t have been transported there before being discharged by the doctor, so I knew that I had to be having a dream, but there was something ‘off’ about it. There was a sensation that didn’t seem typical to any other dream I had ever had, even the lucid ones. I looked down to see that I was in my uniform, though I didn’t seem to be wearing my belt and looked around to see if Ev or Vish were in the room. I saw no clear sign of them, nor any hint of another person in the room. I moved over to the door and glanced over at where I normally stored my belt to find it gone. With no viable weapon to defend myself in sight, I went over to the fabricator, but found it inoperable. This put me further on edge and I walked over to the door to find it slightly opened, but with no power to it. I grabbed the door and pushed as hard as I could, opening it just enough to step through.

The emergency lights were flickering but illuminating the corridor. There was no sign of debris anywhere, but my mind couldn’t help but compare things to how I had found them when I first arrived. I called out for Tali, Alta and even Hobbs, in order to get some kind of situation report on what was happening, but there was no response from any of them. I realized that without any of them to assist, I had no tangible way of communicating with other areas of the station, or the ship. I figured that my best bet was to head to the space dock and try and see if anyone was on the Claw or the Obsidian. It would also allow me to pass through some high traffic areas and perhaps I would get a sense of what was going on. I ran as fast as I could to the tram, trying to hear any signs of weapons fire from the station’s defenses, or the sounds of people. There was no sound or sign of anyone and I found the tram to be unresponsive. I took off through the corridor trying to recall the path to the space dock as I went. Normally, the tram could take me right near it, but without the tram, I was looking at twenty to thirty minutes before I would arrive, if not more. It would all depend on how long I could run, which I had never really tested before. Hopefully, I wouldn’t miss any turns I would have to make, but I needed to hurry.

I sprinted off, a little surprised at how fast I was moving and how well I was able to focus on my surroundings. I made two lefts and a right when I had to stop dead in my tracks. Shock filled me as I looked at the damage in front of me. It should have just been one of many corridors, leading along the length of the station, but all I saw was open space. The emergency force fields were in place, but they looked to be losing power, given they were a lot dimmer than normal. I stepped up to the field and felt my blood run cold as I realized that over half of the station was destroyed. I didn’t even see the space dock, only pieces of debris everywhere that looked worse than how we had found the system. The reason I couldn’t reach Hobbs or Tali was because they were gone. I could see pieces of the ships, but whatever had attacked had obliterated over seventy-five percent of both ships. I staggered back and tried to calm my nerves as I took a mental note of all the losses we had suffered. There was no telling if Vish or Ev had been on either ship, but if we had been attacked, they would have been the first to ride into battle to protect our home.