by Todd Mcleod
“Excellent work, Cadet,” Captain Stevens said as he walked out of the train, “You took what was less than an ideal situation and made out better than could be anticipated.”
“We’ve lost a lot to them. I was just glad to be able to score a little victory, no matter how small.”
CHAPTER 2
Most of their journey was underground. It was hard for the aliens to track the train, as it was not part of their initial invasion. It also had a device that made it harder to track. It was part of the maglev technology that was meant to shield the electro magnetic interference against messing with other craft, but in this case it served to mask the train from being picked up by the aliens.
The entire crew was on edge as the train exited the underground for a rather lengthy stretch of above ground track. Cadet Barick came to the bridge, and the tension around was palpable. A small group of people manned the controls, many Barick imagined weren’t fully trained for it. The Sergeant stood with the Captain as they looked ahead.
“There’s some kind of ion storm raging topside,” a man at the controls said, “It seems to be natural, but it makes visibility bad.”
“This is less than ideal,” said Captain Stevens, “We won’t be able to see any obstructions coming.”
“That will also make it hard for the aliens. They will not be able to see us.”
“Either way we cannot stop, Sergeant. We have to keep moving.”
An ionized lightning bolt struck the train, the force shaking the long vessel as it moved long the magnetic track. The main lights went off, replaced by red emergency lights.
“Are we still online?” Stevens asked, “Is the mag engine still running?”
“The main power is mostly online,” a crewman explained, “Though it seems that the buffer system is offline with the non-essential power.”
“Go to the mid bay where it is housed. Take Cadet Barick with you, and get it back online.
The young crewman nodded slowly. “Yes, Sir, I will go at once.”
“Consider it handled,” Barick nodded, “We can’t afford to be without any advantage we have against the aliens for long.”
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Stevens agreed, “Please make haste.”
Barick walked with the young crewman, careful to keep a hold of bars on the walls when the train pitched against the storm, as though the dampeners that kept the hovering train stable were also off. It made it a bumpy ride; something not helped by the rough winds battering it. Energy sparked on displays, causing the lights to dim and go off and on. As they got deeper down the train and toward the inner workings, it became much less glitchy but still shaky, the train’s heaving to and fro more pronounced. It was as if the remaining emergency dampeners fighting to stabilise the ship were working overtime and taxing the train’s inner workings. Two armed guards, as well as Vi and Brendan were in Engineering, stationed to protect the engine.
“Oh, Elvin, there you are!” Vi looked up from a console, “How are things going up on the bridge? We got hit pretty hard.”
“Not ideal, Vi.” He went over to a console and brought it online, “The train has been through worse. I don’t think we have anything to worry about. Assuming we can get the dampeners and the cover systems back online.”
“Oh, that’s a relief. I’ve had no luck getting the main computer or the wave controls online.”
“What if the emergency dampener system fails?” the young crewman asked, “If we stop we’ll be at the mercy of the aliens. We cannot fight them!”
“Okay, calm down!” Barick interjected, “How about we stop talking about the worst-case scenario and just try to relax. Well, as much as we can with the pitching and rolling.”
“Cadet Barick is of course right,” Vi replied, “There’s much work to be done, and it is all for naught if we panic.”
“We’re all here to do precisely this,” Barick added, “We knew there would be a pretty decent chance that we’d encounter resistance or things we could not predict. I’m rebooting the main computer and going to manually force the computer to reinitialise. There are no dedicated engineers onboard, so we’re it. Vi, you know how this works, so I want you to help me reset the systems one by one. Do not touch the essentials. They will not go offline even with the reset, and with hope they should stay on as well as the main reactor the whole time. The rest of you, go to a console and monitor everything else. If there’s a potential problem that I am not predicting, we need to be alerted the second it shows its ugly head.”
“On it.” Brendan nodded, and the others moved to the consoles. He began manually resetting the system breakers, “In the meantime, let me tell you a little story, something that might help people understand what is going on. I was on a flight once, a simple rotation jump to this planet, routine, and one we thought to expect nothing out of the ordinary. We jumped out to the supply route outside the Earth system to where an unstable asteroid belt was beginning to collide with each other. A couple of asteroids struck one another, and we were not sure of their composition, but they emitted a powerful electromagnetic field. Our drive was not adequately protected, and it knocked everything out.”
“I think I have heard of this situation,” Barick said, “I remember reading about it.”
“Indeed,” Brendan continued, “We didn’t have gravity or life support. Air was our first concern, but it actually takes some time for Humans to deplete the oxygen in a confined space. We had over an hour before air and carbon dioxide became a problem. The big issue was temperature. I don’t know if you know this, but a ship in space has about fifteen minutes before it grows too cold for Humans to function and bodily systems begin to shut down. Aside from oxygen, and the protection against special radiation, temperature is the most important factor. Within moments we could literally feel the ship grow colder and colder. We managed to open the doors manually, which is hard in zero gravity. We went down and realised that the magnetic main generator would have to be primed and restarted from scratch.”
“Not an easy task,” Barick agreed as he worked, “That is why we perpetually leave them on. There are literally hundreds of small things needed to restart it.”
“Indeed. This was exactly the situation we were facing…floating around with nothing but flashlights in a ship rapidly growing colder. Also, we could hear small asteroids striking the outer hull, so it was a matter of time before one punctured the hull and caused explosive decompression.”
“I cannot imagine the fear,” Vi added, “This situation is not good, but we always have the option of stopping and getting off.”
“It is said that when people are faced with their own death so close that they are beyond fear. We were faced with a myriad of possibilities, and they were all so terrifying that none seemed to be bad enough to hold above the others. In that case it was infinitely easier to ignore the fear, ignore the almost certain death, and focus on the tasks we knew how to do. The onboard techs and myself knew precisely the restarting procedure, and we instructed the rest of the crew to help us. We worked as it got colder and colder. I worried that my hands would freeze before they finished resetting the computer. As the reactor came back online, we almost feared it was too late. We told the computer to worry about nothing at first except for heat, blasting it into the compartment and the rest of the ship. Air came with it, but we hardly noticed, the heat feeling like it was a gift from God…or at least science.”
“It’s amazing how much you can miss a thing when you have it withheld from you.” Barick cycled the computer and waited for a response, “Clean running water and electricity, basic necessities used to be very hard to come by when I was young. Sometimes when I am surrounded by all of this I marvel on having seen the stark contrasts of one and then the other.”
“I have seen much evil in the eyes of men deprived of such things,” one of the guards added. He was a large man with a neatly cropped black beard, “I have seen the worst of man up close.”
“What do you mean?” V
i asked.
“I was once a soldier in the Inner Core Defence Corps. I was sent in a unit to a small colony where their economy, government, and pretty much their entire planet fell apart. There was a provisional government, but they seemed to be more occupied with securing their power that they forgot their people were starving. We were stationed there as mostly a safeguard at first. But the leadership decided they would start to ration what food they had left. People get crazy when they’re hungry enough, and all semblances of logic and restraint disappear. Though more food was on the way, and the end to the situation politically not far away, the people had grown desperate.
In one of the colony hospitals a virus broke out and needed vital medical supplies. We had to take a convoy out, and even though we assured the people it was not food, they still came after us. The riot broke out faster than we even could imagine, and though we managed to get the convoy to the hospital, the masses descended upon it with furious rage. It was just a battalion of armed soldiers and me between a hospital full of the sick, and an angry mob that would tear everyone inside apart when they found no food.
We warned them as much as we could…but in that crowd was a collected mania that scared me down to my soul. They charged forward, and though I abhorred the idea of opening fire on civilians, I had to. That’s the evil I spoke of; the choice between life and death to kill those who are desperate to save those who are more desperate.”
“I have seen something similar but not as bad. On my home colony we didn’t yet have full atmosphere, and one of the smaller work biospheres malfunctioned. It began to vent the breathable atmosphere, and there was nothing that could stop it…rescue was the only chance. There were fifteen workers and three spacesuits. There were many ways they could have used to determine who got the suits, but it all descended into violence. The men literally killed each other, leaving the last standing too injured to get into the suits so none survived. I was on the emergency team that showed up to patch the dome, and when we arrived we saw the worst of mankind.”
“The system is starting to cycle and is searching for the manual systems to come online,” Barick interrupted them. “It’s already detecting the systems that you are restarting, Brendan. Why don’t you tell me what happened next on the crippled ship? Please tell me it has a better ending other than the evils of humanity. I am understanding of what you both witnessed, but I think we all need a little bit of positivity right about now.”
“Of course.”
Brendan continued his work, showing the same detached repetitive work as his story had described.
“As the heat came back on and the air improved, we started to allow ourselves to react. However, with every triumph we saw an equally disastrous setback came into view. Once systems came online and gravity kicked back in, we realised that the small asteroid problem was much worse than we thought. The outer hull was damaged, and there were countless asteroids. Also, two more asteroids were moving toward each other, and their collision would dwarf the shockwave from the first one. We had to get the shields online to protect against the smaller asteroids, just to buy us enough time to get the jump engines online, and get out before the massive collision. We managed to do it, but we felt the asteroids hit just before we jumped. You have no idea how much you notice the small details of life after surviving a disaster. Everything feels hyper realistic, and you appreciate everything all the more.”
“I have been through a few life and death situations myself,” Barick added as he waited for computer came back on, “They all have given me a greater appreciation for the people and things around me. I think the computer is coming back online. That’s funny.”
“What is it?” Vi asked.
“There seems to be some kind of program running. It might not have been the strike that turned off the cover system.”
Suddenly, the train pitched to the side violently, the floor going to a forty-five-degree angle. The lights fluttered off, and the emergency lights struggled to take effect. Even with the systems coming back online, the storm was becoming more and more violent, and threatening the vessel on its fixed path. Barick grabbed Brendan, who was closest to him and held onto a nearby bracket bolted to the floor. The train pitched again backwards and to an angle the other way. Barick and Brendan’s bodies were flung around, but Barick managed to hold his grip. The train righted, the lights came on, and everyone struggled back to their feet.
CHAPTER 3
“Is everyone okay?” Barick asked, “That was a close call, but it seems we are still intact.”
“The cover system console is gone!” One of the guards was looking over at a pedestal off to his right.
“Could it have fallen off?” Barick said as he looked around.
“It was rigged to have to be manually detached. Also, it seems the alarm has been disabled.”
“Disabled? That should not be possible. Why would someone steal the cover system console?”
“I’m not sure. But without that device we’re sending out a signal that if the aliens have not detected it, they soon will.”
“But who would take it? Could there be an alien onboard?”
“Wait, where’s my partner?” The guard looked around, “He’s gone.”
“So is the young crewman,” Barick said, “Everyone look around.”
Vi came out from where she had grabbed the support strut, and the small group began to search the hold for signs of the cover console and the two missing people. They called out and checked everywhere they might have gone.
“The door to the compartment is still shut,” Brendan commented, “Where could they have gone?”
“We need to find them,” the guard said and walked over to Barick, “There’s no end to the bad things that will happen if we don’t get the cover system running again.”
“Can we get it running without the console?” Brendan asked, “Maybe we can reroute it?”
“It’s possible, but it will take a lot of time,” Barick replied, “We need to find them, and fast. Call it plan B. We’re still in a crisis situation, with a storm that might knock out the systems again.”
“Well, Brendan and I will monitor the system,” Vi suggested, “We’ll do what has to be done, and see if we can also reroute the over system and get it online.”
“Good idea. Can we radio the train’s bridge?”
“It’s currently offline,” Brendan replied, “We have some systems back online, but other ones are still going on and off and struggling to reboot. We’re on our own.”
“All right,” Barick replied with a nod, “I’m going to go after whoever took the console.”
“I am at your disposal,” the guard stated, “Just give me orders.”
“Okay, something definitely happened when the train pitched and the lights were out. I doubt everyone was involved, but we need to go after them and figure out what they did.”
“Then there is no time to waste,” the guard insisted, “We need to find them before this gets worse.”
“Yes, and we’ll not have much time to do so. Every moment we have is a gift.”
“Can we not stop and power down until we have fixed all of this?” Brendan asked, “To buy us more time to search for the culprit and the cover console. With the engine powered down, we’ll be harder to detect.”
“No. We have no way of knowing if the aliens have not detected us, and the storm might overtake us if we stop. We have to keep moving forward and fix what we can. Without orders from the bridge at the front of the train, we have to make our own decisions and stick by them.”
“Agreed,” the guard said, “I trust you, Cadet…you are a good man that has done well for his unit…we must use the time as best we can to turn this train upside down.”
“Okay, you two stay here as suggested.” Barick turned to Vi and Brendan. “Make sure the train’s systems continue to come back online, and combat any problems as they come up. Leave the search to us.”
Vi nodded and went back to work on the ship�
��s computer to monitor the reboot. Barick and the guard went to work. They started at the back of the engineering area that was not sealed off and worked forward. The train was big but not big enough for anyone to easily get past Barick and the guard with the main door closed. There were a lot of places to look, and they knew that they might need to get lucky. There were not many people to be seen, most were either on the bridge or the back of the ship with the wounded. The pair reached the communications area and found the doors locked up tight.
“Excuse me, have these doors been opened recently?” Barick asked a crewmember that was rushing to check everything was still intact in the back of the ship.
“Not since the power outage, Sir. Not since the situation started to get bad. Comms are down, but even before that, all non-essential communications were locked out.”
“Is there any way to know that for sure?” The guard was understandably suspicious.
“Yes!” The crewmember pointed up to a red light over the door, “This means that the compartment has been sealed. It’s not as secure as an emergency bulkhead, but any doors, panels, or vents that are opened would cause an alarm to blare, and it has been on since we started the jumps.”
“Thank you. That helps us a lot.”
The crewmember went back to his work. The guard looked around. “So, one less place to look, right?”
“Indeed. Though I fear the cover console is much too small and easy to hide in a train like this. It is ultimately locatable, but I fear not so easily with the time that we have remaining.”
“I understand. What would you suggest?”
“Well, we’re looking for something small, but there is also something big we could be tracking. We cannot find one, but perhaps we can find the other.”
“The culprit and the missing people?”
“Precisely. A small portable console would be easily enough to hide in a train such as this…a bunch of bodies…unconscious or otherwise…not so much.”