The Ship of the Unforgotten

Chapter 29

Chapter 29

Main Computer Lab

UTS Rose Dawn

Jun. X, 2565 A.C.E.

Lieutenant Frederick Cobb ground his teeth in frustration. Where were they?

He’d been searching for what felt like hours. He’d had to fight his way past maintenance bots of all shapes and sizes, and not all of the fights had gone his way. He’d been forced to use up some of his ammunition, but he’d managed to save some of it. It had cost him though. One of the bots, something with a damned needle on it, had jabbed him and injected him with something. It hadn’t been a clean strike though, nor a full injection. That’d been the last one he had to shoot.

After that he’d wandered in delirium, fighting dizziness and the strong urge to pass out. He was pretty sure he had passed out, maybe more than once. From the state of his clothes, he’d awakened in a pool of his own vomit at least once.

He slammed a fist into a console, forgetting to brace. It took him several minutes to get himself back down to the decks; by that point he was seething in rage. He’d been blind to fall into an obvious trap like that; they’d pay for their crimes when he found them. They clearly weren’t here anymore; he was almost certain this was where he’d seen them last, the main computer lab that the cowardly one had been working on.

The traitorous computer—he knew the story they’d fed him about an AI hijacking it was a crock—babbled something to him, but he ignored it, leaving the offices behind. He drifted for a time within arms’ reach of the hatch in the main corridor.

Would they have gone the way he’d gone earlier? He knew they’d been there before; after all, they’d had everything set up to sabotage him so perfectly in the tundra biome. So no, they’d have gone somewhere else by now, he was sure. What was in the biome next to that one? He didn’t know, he realized. And that made it the perfect place to try and hide from him. Not that it’d do them any good. He could end them any time he wanted with his remote.

Once again the temptation came over him to tap the control, but he fought it down. Not yet. He had to confront them with their crimes first. He couldn’t let them off so easily.

The matter settled, he set off down the biome access tunnel.