Submission

Jinx turned to look at the far end of the hangar, a good one and a half kilometers away. The ship stretched almost to the end of the huge open space.

She looked down at her PDA and scrolled through the pre-flight check-list she had bullied the hangar supervisor into giving her. The engines and fuel delivery entries were next, and there was absolutely no way she was going to walk.

She picked a particularly colorful greeble as a land-mark and teleported to the rear of the ship.

Immediately, alarms sounded, and red lights lit up along the length of the hangar. Jinx looked up and spotted a security camera floating nearby. She took a few steps towards the drone and waved.

The red lights and alarms continued as a squad of troopers in hard-suits approached. Jinx decided that putting her hands behind her head and smiling was probably the smartest thing to do.

As two troopers dropped on one knee and pulled up shoulder-mounted rail-guns, their sergeant approached her with obvious caution. Walking up to her carefully, he poked her in the left shoulder with a baton.

He spoke to her through his voice modulator. "Please refrain from teleporting in the future."

She looked into his helmet. The band of black plastic at eye level had two luminous eye-spots that regarded her with a stylized expression of disinterest. She wondered how frightened the trooper was.

"All right. Can you turn off the alarm?"

"Of course, ma'am." Even through the hard-suit, she could see the posture of the sergeant relax. He waved to his colleagues. "All clear."

The alarms stopped, and the red lights stopped pulsating. Everyone, Jinx included, breathed a sigh of relief. She lowered her arms and decided to push her luck.

"Can you guys get me a cart or something?"

"Yes, ma'am. I'll requisition you one immediately."

Jinx smiled as sincerely as she could. "Thank you."

The trooper and his colleagues loped away in their powered armor.

She grabbed a transponder and pointed it at an exterior airlock on the gigantic vessel. The red lights marking the corner of the exterior door blinked twice as she pressed the "unlock" button on the small black plastic device, and the door opened automatically.

She entered the airlock and closed the exterior door. The displays warned her that the interior was filled with pure xenon gas, and she had to confirm that she was willing to enter the compartment without a breathing apparatus. Further warnings reminded her of xenon's anesthetic properties, that the reactor was active and producing a hazardous neutron flux, and that the reaction chambers included fusion catalysts with very low nuclear binding energy. The ship's computers briefly considered her reckless disregard for her own safety, and asked her for a final confirmation, absolving the systems for any responsibility in the event of a fatal accident.

Jinx agreed. The interior door opened, and a few lights turned on, illuminating a hallway upholstered in orange, padded carpeting with ladder-like handholds in each corner. As she walked on down the hall, blue lights flashed inside her eyeballs. Evidently the computer wasn't kidding about high neutron flux.

She stilled her reflex to breathe. She was good for a few hours of activity in this environment, but it was ugly and oppressive enough that she wanted to get the check-list done as soon as possible. She worked quickly, and checked the pressure readouts. Stage one deuterium-tritium flow nominal. Stage two di-lithium flow nominal. Stage three carbon ion flow nominal.

She left, and the airlock decided not to give her any trouble on the way out. As normal pressure returned, she started to breathe again.

An old man sat in the passenger seat of the cart waiting for her as the exterior doors opened. Most of his mane had fallen out long ago, and his fur was streaked with gray. Nevertheless, he looked unnaturally energetic and trim. He smiled broadly at her, and spoke.

"Pleased to meet you! You are my pilot?"

"Yes, Magus Graves. The pleasure is all mine." She sat down on the driver's seat, and turned the cart back towards the habitation modules in the middle of the ship. She looked at her passenger as they drove towards the bulky structure.

"Have you ever been in deep space before?"

"No, ma'am, I haven't."

"Ah." Jinx thought that explained a lot. "This ship is an old long-range survey model. We can stay out for a couple of years with a full load of fuel and bio-mass."

The old man chuckled. "Too much is better than not enough."

Jinx couldn't think of anything to say in response. He continued to speak.

"I'm glad they picked someone competent to bring me out. You have my life in your hands."

"Thank you, Magus--"

"Call me Jack. I will be requiring assistance for a number of the experiments I wish to run, and I think you will do very nicely."

Jinx's copy of the mission briefing had not included these minor details. "What did you have in mind?"

Jack smiled beatifically. "We're going to resurrect dead gods."

Jinx was again at a loss for words, this time because she had too many questions that needed to be asked. She picked the best one.

"Why would you want to do that?"

"The Corporation needs to find a way to re-connect to our history, especially the period before the rise of the Reyll Theocracy. By studying ancient god-forms under controlled conditions, I hope to make a map of our deepest needs and desires, as expressed by our pagan pantheons."

The old man paused for a minute, and looked at Jinx intently. "It's art, for art's sake, and the culmination of a life-long dream."

Jinx stopped the cart in front of the habitation modules. However much she wanted to run away, she realized that this was something she wanted to see for herself.

She also knew that this mission was pretty much guaranteed to end badly.