Alone in the Universe (The Chronicles of Anna Foster Book 4) Read online

  ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE

  by

  Patrick Stutzman

  Alone in the Universe

  ©2014 by Patrick Stutzman

  Cover Art © 2014 by Tomomi Ink

  All rights reserved.

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material contained herein is prohibited without express written permission of the author.

  Dedication

  For Michelle, Alexandrya, and Rebecca.

  Acknowledgments

  Special Thanks to Laurel Kriegler for her superior editing skills, Cary Caffrey and T. K. Toppin for their valuable feedback, and all the participants of Science Fiction Fantasy Saturday for their continued support.

  Chapter 1

  “Tak! Tak!” Anna shouted into her wristcomp while crouched on top of the silvery roof of the main hall, the largest building of the colony. She glanced at the immense, hexagonal ship looming overhead. Her heart pounded in her chest, her voice frantic and desperate as she pleaded for the Altiki to have mercy on them and cease their hostilities.

  Her vantage point on the roof gave her an excellent but undesired view of the events as they unfolded. Lances of lethal energy burst from the behemoth, wreaking havoc and destruction with each shot. Settlers’ homes exploded all around her, and colonists flew uncontrollably into the air, soon dropping as dead weight to the ground. Fire spread between the buildings, fueled by the dry grass and a steady wind from the south.

  Despair descended further into Anna’s soul with each new shot fired by the Altiki. Shaking her head in disbelief, she opened the channel on her communicator again. “Tak, damn it! Tak!”

  “Anna!”

  Looking away from the ship toward the ground, she spotted her best friend, Danica, standing by the fountain, waving her arms over her head to get her attention. “We’re leaving! Come on!”

  Anna shook her head in disbelief at her friend’s sudden shift in tactics. Just minutes before, she had endorsed the colonel’s plan to attack the Altiki in an attempt to defend their settlement. Now the plan had turned sour, the colony’s governor sought to flee and save as many people as she could.

  “Hurry!” Danica called to her again, anxiety coloring her face.

  Anna waved her away. “Go on! I’m trying to stop the attack.”

  Cocking her head, Danica leaned toward her and furrowed her brow, straining to hear over the approaching sounds of death and destruction. “What?”

  The dark humor evaded Anna’s mind. She scoffed at her friend’s reaction and stood upright. “I said…”

  A flash of green light and the surge of excruciating pain in her chest interrupted her. As if in slow motion, she directed her eyes toward the gaping wound in her chest where her heart used to be. The energy drained from her limbs, and her knees buckled. Dropping to the roof, she rolled down the incline and over the edge. As the ground rushed toward her, she screamed…

  Anna bolted upright in the pilot seat of her starship, her eyes wide in fright as she slapped a hand over her heaving chest. Her heart beat against her hand, feeling as if it would burst through her skin at any second. The layer of cold sweat all over her body made her shiver as her gaze darted in several directions, trying to piece together her surroundings.

  As realization sank in, Anna forced herself to calm her breathing. She brushed a lock of hair back out of her face and combed her fingers through her hair. When she brought her hand back to her lap, she stared at it for a second before glancing at her chest. No wound was visible through the white tank top she wore. She pulled the cottony fabric away from her skin to look underneath to confirm her condition and breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Whew! Must have been a nightmare.” She leaned against the back of the chair for a second, relieved it wasn’t true.

  Only a scant few seconds had passed before she looked at her outfit again. The white tank top and green cargo pants were a drastic change from the savage-looking leather outfit she last remembered wearing. Her tool belt, a bit frazzled from overuse, rested on her hips, but a quick perusal revealed that some of her tools were missing.

  “What the hell?” Anna whispered as she rifled through her memories, trying to remember when her wardrobe had changed.

  “Oh, good. You’re awake.”

  Glancing over her shoulder at the sound of the light, feminine British voice, Anna spied Kate walking toward her.

  “Yeah, a nightmare woke me up.” Anna stood and stretched her arms toward the ceiling. “How long have I been out?”

  Kate paused to glance out the forward viewscreen. “You slept for a few hours. Do you feel any better?”

  Anna shook her head as she stifled a yawn. “Still a little tired, but I’ll be fine. I just need to wake up.”

  “We still have some coffee in the kitchen, if you want to brew some.”

  Nodding absentmindedly, Anna took a few steps aftward, then stopped. Her eyes shot open, and she turned back to the avatar. “When did we get coffee?”

  “You don’t remember. Do you?” Kate turned away from the starboard controls to look at Anna, who shook her head. “Then again, you have been having problems remembering things lately.”

  Furrowing her brow, Anna struggled to comprehend Kate’s observation. “What do you mean?”

  “Ever since you took that nasty spill a few days back, your memory has not been the best. What is the last thing that you remember?”

  “The last thing?” Anna pondered the question for a brief moment. “I remember the nightmare that woke me up. Before that, I…”

  A vacuous hole in Anna’s mind glared at her, almost daring her to delve deeper. Skirting past it, she sought the next memory to make its presence known.

  “Before that, I recall tending the crops at the crash site on Paradise. How did we get here?”

  Kate frowned. “It appears to be getting worse. I advise you to work on restoring the engines as quickly as possible, so we can get underway.”

  Catching the scene through the viewscreen, Anna balked at the sight of the night sky, filled with stars. She moved past her holographic companion to stand next to the center flight control display and stare outside. Not only did the starry sky dominate the view, but ground was nowhere in sight.

  “How did we get the ship off the ground?” Anna’s soft, distant tone presented her perplexed state with crystal clarity.

  Kate sighed and smiled. “The colonists helped rebuild the ship to allow you to leave the moon.”

  Anna scratched her head, her eyes darting about while she sifted through her memories. “What colonists?”

  Kate gestured an empty hand toward the bewildered technician. “See what I mean? You don’t even remember anything about the colony anymore. We need to get you to a doctor.”

  “I don’t understand. I’ve always thought my memory was really good.”

  “Don’t worry about it for now, Anna. We should leave that in the hands of the doctors.”

  Anna nodded as she gave in to Kate’s suggestion and walked into the engine room, rummaging through her tools as she moved. She stopped at the door and turned back. “Kate, what happened to the engines?”

  “We were in transit to our destination when a system failure interrupted our jump. We have been drifting ever since.”

  “And, how long ago was that?”

  “Three days, eleven hours, fourteen…”

  “Three days?! What hav
e I been doing during that time?”

  “You had been working on the engines, but you began complaining about headaches several hours before you went to sleep.”

  Anna shifted her weight onto one leg and stared hard at the avatar. “Did you think to check if I had a concussion?”

  “I did. You are not suffering from a concussion. That is why I let you sleep.”

  Looking at the floor for a few seconds, Anna nodded, acknowledging her friend’s decision. “Okay. Have I made any progress on the engines over the last three days?”

  “You said you had, but you were not specific on the details.”

  Anna pondered her statement for a few seconds, mumbling in the process. “Odd. That doesn’t sound like me.”

  With a shrug, she waved to Kate and ventured into the kitchen for a cup of coffee, which she brewed with ease. Sniffing the dark beverage as she poured it into the white mug sitting on the counter, she smiled as the aroma tickled her nose and studied the label on the bag with the coffee beans. “Dark roast caramel.” As if announcing the blend aloud invoked a magic spell, she took a deep breath and reveled in the sweet scent of the coffee in front of her before taking a sip. Grinning again, she licked her lips and finished the drink before pouring another serving into a travel mug and carrying it with her into the engine room.

  A couple of minutes later, Anna crawled through the maintenance hatch and turned on her flashlight, sweeping its penetrating beam of light across the complex machine. Frowning, she sighed and pulled up her wristcomp’s holographic screen after holstering her flashlight, its beam shining up her right side. She keyed in her search parameters for the engine’s schematics but found nothing. Taken aback, she poked her head out of the hatch. “Kate!”

  The avatar’s British voice echoed from down the corridor. “Yes, Anna?”

  “Could you pull up the engine’s schematics? I can’t find the file.”

  “Just a minute.”

  Confusion descended. “Just a minute? She’s never said that before.” She drummed her fingers on the deck, impatience taking over.

  A brief moment later, Kate appeared in the doorway to the engine room. “I’m sorry, Anna, but I cannot find the file, either.”

  Anna lay there in shock. “But…but, how am I going to fix the engines without being able to study the schematics? You know I’m not a starship engineer.”

  “I can look again, but I do not think it will suddenly appear.”

  “No, it won’t.” Anna paused, thinking. “Tell you what. Go ahead and search for the file. While you’re at it, run a diagnostic on every part of the computer system.”

  Kate balked. “Every part?”

  “Yes, every part.”

  “That’s going to take a while.”

  “Understood. It needs to be done.”

  “Okay.” The hologram sighed and turned to leave. As Anna dropped through the hatch, Kate stopped. “What will you do in the meantime?”

  Anna popped her head back up. “Me? I’m going to dig up what I can remember about drive systems from my college days and try to figure out this engine on my own, until the schematics can be found.”

  “That may take a while, too.”

  “No kidding.” The sarcasm in her voice was unmistakable. “But, the sooner I start, the sooner I’ll find the problem.”

  Kate nodded and disappeared from the doorway, leaving Anna shaking her head and wondering what had happened to cause her friend’s behavior to change. Unable to concoct an answer, she shrugged and returned to the engine.

  Hours later, Anna pieced together the assembly she believed to be the warp field generator with relative ease. Several parts lay scattered on the engine room floor, and she lay on her belly, struggling to remember where the curved tube in her hand fit on the mechanism. She felt much like a young girl working on a jigsaw puzzle for the first time.

  “Why isn’t this going in? I diagrammed the whole thing while I took it apart.” She released a long breath and let her arm go slack. As her hand hit the deck, she flinched when she banged it against another small part. Bemused, she set the tube down and scrubbed her face with her hands, smearing a bit of grime on her cheeks and forehead. Climbing to her feet, she made a beeline to the bridge.

  Kate sat in the pilot’s chair, manipulating the controls on the main holographic console, and did not appear to notice Anna’s entrance. Anna stopped mid-stride and stared, questions about the avatar’s recent behavior racing through her mind.

  “Kate, what are you doing?”

  Looking over her shoulder, the hologram smiled at Anna. “I am searching for the schematics, like you asked.”

  “Since when have you needed to use a holopad to search for a file?”

  Kate cast a glance at the controls floating between her and the viewscreen for a long second before looking back. “It must be the software upgrade I received shortly before we left Paradise. There must be a subroutine that makes me act more human and appear more lifelike.”

  Giving a slow, skeptical nod, Anna took a deep breath and moved toward the occupied chair. She stopped behind it and gripped the headrest next to Kate’s head. “So, how is the diagnostic running?”

  “It appears to be running smoothly.” Kate pointed to a small display showing the progress of the tests currently underway.

  Anna cocked an eyebrow. “Did the new subroutines allow you to stay online while the diagnostic runs?”

  “Yes. My personality matrix was moved to its own area separate from the majority of the files in the system. This way, I can remain operational when the computer system would otherwise be slow or inaccessible.”

  Scrutinizing the logic behind such a programming design, Anna saw the benefits of separating the avatar from the rest of the operating system. But, does that not cause other issues, such as the decreased or elimination of abilities to monitor the ship’s systems when the human crew cannot?

  She couldn’t keep quiet about her concerns. “Doesn’t that separation work against the primary purpose of having an avatar on the ship?”

  “I can still access the computer files, Anna. I am just using a different method of doing so.”

  Anna frowned. “I don’t like it.” She turned on her heel and strode toward the doors leading aft. “Let me know what you find.”

  Several hours passed, and Anna crawled through the maintenance hatch, her hair mussed into a mop of greasy tangles that framed her lubricant-stained face. Pausing for several seconds to take in several deep breaths of clean air, she dropped the spanner in her hand onto the deck, the clattering of the metal tool echoing throughout the engine room.

  Bracing her hands on the floor, Anna pushed herself out of the hole and moved to the main engineering console situated at the back of the room. She checked the power levels displayed on the hologram floating above the panel and toggled a few switches. A few seconds later, the engines throbbed a few times before humming a low, steady pitch. Smiling, Anna whipped around and strode toward the bridge.

  “Kate, I need you to pull up the navigational data.” Anna beamed with her announcement, her voice brimming with emotion. “We’re going home.”

  As the avatar produced the navigational display, Anna stopped next to the pilot seat and looked at the panel. Her smile faded after a few seconds and she turned to regard her holographic friend. “Where is the data?”

  Chapter 2

  Kate glanced at the screen for a second. “It should be there.”

  “Check it again.” Anna pointed a stiff arm at the display that showed a noticeable lack of information. “What happened to the navigational data?”

  The avatar searched through the files using the holographic interface, scrolling through lists of files and documents at a speed slightly faster than the rate Anna knew she herself could go.

  “And for god’s sake, Kate, use the direct connection. Your human-emulation programming is taking too long.” Anna stared hard at the hologram while tapping her foot.

  “I am sorr
y, Anna.” Kate waved the panel away and stood still with her eyes closed.

  While she waited, Anna paced the length of the bridge from the pilot’s chair to the airlock and back, glancing at Kate every few seconds, hoping she could find the star charts. She dreaded the thought of the files following the path of the ship’s schematics.

  The avatar opened her eyes a couple of minutes later, watching Anna as she approached. “Anna, I am sorry. The files are gone.”

  Stopping dead in her tracks, Anna’s mind weighed the hulking beast of a problem that stood before her. Despair had reared its ugly head.

  “How?” The whisper that escaped Anna’s lips barely reached her own ears.

  Kate leaned closer, acting as if she couldn’t hear. “I am sorry. What was that?”

  Anna traversed the space to the control panel with haste and rifled through the files. “It has to be here. You must have missed it.” She examined the file list, hoping that Kate had somehow missed the necessary file. Her eyes darted back and forth across the scrolling text, her vision heightened by the adrenaline now pumping through her veins, browsing the names with acute clarity. “It has to be here.”

  Kate remained silent for several seconds. “Anna, the file is not there. I have looked through the entire database twice and found no trace of the navigational information.”

  Anna didn’t look away from the display. “Perhaps it was renamed. Did you see if any of the files were recently modified?”

  “Yes, I did. And no, none of the files were recently modified. The data is simply not there.”

  “Do you have a backup anywhere?”

  “No, Anna. We do not have a backup.”

  The search continued for another minute, until Anna finally surrendered. Closing down the control panel, she stared out at the stars for several seconds in silence, until she spun on her heel and faced Kate. “How could you let this happen?”

  Kate shook her head, emphasizing her incomprehension. “I do not understand.”