TRAITOR - Book 1 Warlord and Multiverse Series

Chapter 8

The Cruiser

Jason cheerfully followed Cherry Singh to see where she had entered his part of the ship. Singh began muttering, saying that she couldn't see the door where she expected to be and began feeling along the wall. She muttered that she had found it, and that an accursed hologram had obscured the door.

Jason carefully inspected the hologram projector which was a small sphere on the floor next to the wall and saw that someone had turned it to project panels that looked like wood over the door. The general officer's sections of the ship looked quite luxurious, with holographic wood panels, velvet panels and even expensive-looking art and sculptures. None of that existed other than in holographic form except in rooms near the bridge and in the top-level wardroom's. Jason thought it was a great idea and it made the ship look sumptuous, rather than the formidable but bleak warship with Spartan accommodations he expected. The holograms could also be used to hide doors he realized.

This was again evidence of subtle sabotage. It prevented him from finding the marines. He would have seen the door and explored beyond.

They passed through the bulkhead and joined the intelligence, cyberwarfare, and communications team where Cherry Singh introduced him as the battle's supreme military commander. Jason smiled while wondering if she was serious or pulling his leg.

"Sir, may we ask some questions of the admiral before we begin?"

"Sergeant McAndrew please save the questions for afterwards. Our commander has led us to believe that he has no rank and wishes to be addressed as Jason and if any rank is to be used he refers to himself as 'the accidental commander,'" said Maj. Singh as the audience tittered.

"Thank you for your introduction, Major Singh."

Jason went on to explain what he had told the others about the passwords before continuing his later findings.

"I discovered disruptive and wasteful subroutines hidden in many of Ship's programs. They seriously interfered with Ship's efficiency. I used my modified hacking routines to search for reports and emails and to look for passwords to try and switch off the interference at top-level. I found that everything that I did, some scumbag program reversed. I tried to find the superordinate program that controlled the sabotage, but without success. I found critical system passwords, but I couldn't find the highest-level program that switched it all on and off.

"I have the greatest difficulty working with trans-dimensional programming. This means I couldn't achieve what I had aimed at doing," said Jason sadly.

He looked around at the group and noted most of the thirty people in this group were women. He saw that there were only four males.

A tall woman stood up to ask a question. "What crystal do you have, and what is the nature of the difficulty that you are experiencing?"

"I have no crystal. While it's true that my family comes from the Empire, University education on Earth didn't include trans-dimensional programming. Trans-dimensional programming was an unknown concept on Earth. We knew about different dimensions from mathematical predictions, but had no way of using or working with them. Therefore, we know nothing of crystals and so nothing was obtained on Earth.

"I was exposed to the concepts of trans-dimensional programming for the first time on the ship. I used the learning machines to understand the fundamentals of programming in the Empire. I know about the importance of crystals but I've not acquired one. I couldn't persuade Ship to allow me to enter a trans-dimensional space to get a crystal."

"You can't do trans-dimensional programming without a crystal. Were you born with one?" she asked, looking at him quizzically with her head tilted to one side.