Ghosts (Gauntlet Prime #2) - Barry Solway Page 0,1

would likely have arrived at the closest inhabited city on Agprith hours ago. I confess I’m not sure who they would call in this kind of situation. Hijacking a spaceship is basically unheard of. But I can easily fake the ship’s records, so they won’t know it’s us when we get to the gate.”

Hijacking the ship had been easy because Anna was an advanced AI that was more than a match for the technology of the alien federation called the Order. Mel pondered Anna’s statement that she didn’t know who the architects would report a stolen spaceship to. She had come to think of Anna as omniscient. It was both a relief and unsettling that the artificial Anna didn’t know everything.

Another hour before they could get to a hypergate that would allow them to travel through hyperspace to another solar system. Away from Kathor and away from the architects. The first step to figuring out how to get back to Earth.

Anna had been surprised to find out the architect’s ship didn’t have an interstellar drive. Kathor’s ship, the Insight, had one, and Anna had assumed any large ship would. That had nixed their original plan to use this ship to get back to Earth.

That’s when Anna had informed them that hypergates were typically used to travel between solar systems. Ships had to request permission to jump from one place to the next and it allowed the Order to track and control travel. The next question was whether there was a hypergate near Earth. Anna doubted it, because she couldn’t find any evidence anyone but Kathor had been to Earth. Mel was concerned that their plan to return home had already run into such a major obstacle, but she pushed that worry aside. There would be other challenges, they would just have to figure out how to solve them one at a time.

“Wait a second. What’s that?” Jon said. He pointed out the window at a light in the distance. Glowing like a star, it moved sideways with obvious speed.

“Hmm,” Anna replied. “It’s a ship. It’s not close, but appears to be heading towards us. Let me see if I can identify it.”

“Why didn’t you see it coming?” Jon asked.

“I was talking to you and Mel,” Anna snapped. “And forging new identification codes for the ship. And actually flying the ship and thinking about ways to get back to Earth. I’m sure that’s hard to imagine when your idea of multitasking is to slouch in a chair and scowl at the same time.”

“Why don’t you stop telling us how amazing you are and figure out who’s chasing us?” Jon retorted.

“She’s trying to, Jon,” Mel said. “And we don’t know they’re chasing us.” Jon was being an ass, but Anna’s reaction surprised her.

“Thank you, Mel,” Anna said. “It’s a government ship. I don’t recognize the class. It’s not covered in this ship’s onboard library or the public databases I’ve looked at in the past.”

“I’ll bet money they’re chasing us,” Jon said. “We stole a ship and killed at least one of the architects.”

“It was in self-defense,” Mel said.

“Bull. It was in the act of stealing a spaceship. Self-defense wouldn’t fly on that even in Florida. Stealing a spaceship has got to be on the same level as hijacking an airplane. At least. These people don’t know anything about us, except that we’re armed and we’re okay with killing people.”

Mel gave Jon a weird look. “Who said we’re okay with killing people?”

Jon rolled his eyes. “They think we’re gladiators. Of course we’re okay with killing people. That’s all they know. Unless Kathor told them something worse.”

Jon was right. She had thought many possible things about what contacting aliens aside from Kathor might mean, but she hadn’t thought about how this would look from their perspective.

“Anna, any luck figuring out who they are or what they want?” Mel asked.

“I’m getting better visuals and I’m trying to do a complete scan. I think I’ve found the band they are transmitting on, but it’s heavily encrypted and they’re using a channel-hopping algorithm. I should have the sequence—”

“Jesus, Anna, no one cares,” Jon said. “You already know it’s a government ship. We know what they want. Are you going to wait for them to blow us up to do something?”

Mel really wanted to tell Jon to go somewhere else, but she didn’t want to get into an argument with him. “I care,” she said. Rather lamely, she thought. “Um. Look, Jon, getting angry at Anna isn’t helping,