The Arwen Book two: Manifest Destiny

by Timothy P. Callahan

  “Nothing that’ll help us at the moment. How’s the ship?”

  “We’re going down,” The Commander said, “slowly but that’ll change very soon. We’ve hit some pockets of unstable air.”

  “Can we do anything to control our decent?”

  The commander shrugged his shoulders. “Not without engines.”

  “Communications, can you contact the Chief?”

  “I think so,” the communication officer said.

  Captain Cook walked to her chair; each step was slightly harder than the step before. It felt as if she were walking through some thick mud which was holding her down. She grabbed onto her chair and pulled with great effort just to lift herself up a few feet. When she sat down it felt better on her legs. The chair squeaked under her weight.

  “I have him,” The communication officer said.

  “Chief, what’s happening with our engines?”

  “I have a team working on it,” he said. In the background, she heard people yelling orders and running around. It sounded like total chaos with a dash of desperation mixed in.

  “We’re going to need them now.”

  “Captain, even if I could get them working now it’ll take thirty minutes for them to start up. I’m also worried about the fuel. The extra weight of the planet is compressing the ion gas. I don’t know what that will do to the engines when we start them.”

  “Okay, I understand. What’s the status of the shields?”

  “I have another team working on that. We might be able to get you partial shields in a few minutes.”

  “I hope it’s soon, if we’re going to crash into the planet we’re going to need some sort of heat shield to protect us. Captain Cook, out.”

  Commander Pippleton walked over to the Captain and, in a hushed voice so no one else could hear, said, “Captain, things aren’t looking good.”

  She felt a sense of annoyance at the Commander for stating what was obvious to anyone who listened. When she spoke she did nothing to hide her contempt to the question. “Do you have any suggestions?”

  He shrugged his shoulders in what Marjorie interrupted as no, he didn’t have any suggestions.

  The hum started low and just on the edge of her hearing. It grew louder as the seconds ticked by. Marjorie felt the air move across the bridge and knew life support had turned on. A monitor in front of her blinked into life a few seconds later. It was the shield indicator, and it showed the shields active and at ten percent. Can we survive with only ten percent shields?

  The force field was a bubble of malleable energy that placed the object it was surrounding into a protective cocoon. The power for the shields were located deep inside the ship near the main reactor. It passed its power to the ship's skin through a series of ducts, tubes, coolant pipes and a maze of wires. It was a very complex system but one that made high speed space travel possible. Even the smallest particle of dust was vaporized when it touched the high-energy shield. Right now, that technology was going to be the only thing which could save the Arwen from burning up.

  She leaned forward; it felt as if someone had placed a hundred-pound weight on her back as she did so. She brought up a program which would allow her to manipulate the shields, pulling and stretching them around the ship to form different shapes.

  The Commander looked at the screen. “What are you doing?”

  “Working with what we got.” Marjorie swiped her fingers across the screen, pinching with her finger and thumb, pulling with both her hands, sweeping them from one side to the other. “If we had full shields a plunge like this wouldn’t be a problem, but with only ten percent we need to find the best shield formation to protect us.”

  The bridge shook forcing the Commander to grab on to Marjorie’s chair. The others on the bridge grabbed onto their computers as the rattling continued.

  “I think we’re starting our descent.” Marjorie said. “Communications, can we talk to the entire ship?”

  “Yes,” he said, “Connecting you now.”

  Marjorie took a deep breath. “Buckle down everyone; we’re entering the planet’s atmosphere. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. We’ll do our best on the bridge to make it as painless as possible. Be ready for any order I may give. Be careful and don’t do anything that would endanger this ship or yourselves. Captain Cook, out.”

  From the back of her chair she pulled out a series of safety belts which she wrapped around her shoulders and connected to clips next to legs. The rest of the crew followed her lead and strapped themselves into their seats. It wasn’t something she did often, most of the time she needed to be able to jump from her chair to a station without being restrained but this time it was needed.

  The first thing she seriously noticed was how quiet the bridge had become. Everyone had clamped down, there was nothing more they could do but ride it out. They would either survive, or not. That kind of certainty was, in a strange way, comforting.

  She felt herself being pulled down; her stomach did a flip flop when the Arwen hit another pocket of unstable air and twisted. She looked at the shields to see they hadn’t kept up with the sudden movement. She pulled herself forward and with a swipe of her finger across the screen readjusted the shields. There was an indicator on the screen showing the shields were holding. It crept down from ten percent to nine. The journey had just begun and they had lost one tenth of their shields.

  The ship started to buckle again, objects that weren’t secured fell hard and fast to the ground, slamming into the floor loudly. A plaque celebrating her twenty fifth year as the Arwen’s Captain fell with a crash, splintering into several dozen wooden pieces.

  Captain Cook’s feet were planted to the floor. She did an experiment and tried to lift one foot but wasn’t able to get it more than a few inches off the ground. The shaking vibrated through the floor and into her chair. Her body shifted in the space between it and the arm rest. She felt her hips bruising.

  She looked at her computer to see the shields at less than seven percent and dropping fast. A sensor turned yellow, then red, giving a warning that the outside temperature was about the exceed tested limits. They continued to fall deeper into the thick air. The ship once again took a turn, and violently pulling her back into her seat. Everything that fell off the wall's slid along the ground and toward the back wall.

  The weight of the Arwen’s engines flipped the ship over. Sparks of electricity arched across the shields as they folded and touched. Captain Cook struggled to keep the force field from folding, there were now uneven gaps of charge that rippled through the shields. Waves of energy crashed down onto hull breaking off armor panels that the force field destroyed as if they were incoming enemy missiles.

  The Arwen continued on its pendulum like rocking as it blasted through the cloud base. The heat stored in the shield evaporated any cloud nearby. The ship cut through the atmosphere like a meteor. The force field held enough heat now to cause the air around it to burst into flame. A long tail of fire was followed by an even longer stream of black smoke. It streaked across the planet, moving through white clouds and darkened storms.

  It passed over the colorless ice cap as it approached the equator and open ocean. Its shadow stretched across the bleached surface for many miles. Once it passed over the ice sheet, there was nothing in front of it but open water.

  The ocean below approached fast as the Arwen surpassed the speed of sound. The rumble of its decent vibrated across the surface disturbing the water as it passed. Huge waves spread out in every direction. For a second it skimmed the water, and then the stern crashed into the ocean. The heat from the shield flash boiled any splash into a white cloud of steam.

  Captain Cook felt the crash undulate through the bulkheads. The fragile computer screens exploded into pieces of plastic as the wave hit them.

  The Arwen’s bow pointed to the stars and its stern to the bottom of the ocean. That was about the change as the second heaviest part of the ship, the Particle accelerator located near the front cone,
succumbed to the pull of gravity flipping the ship once more. A giant wave of water pushed outward as the ship cut through surface tension. The increased gravity pulled the ship down quickly.

  “Captain, we’re sinking!” Commander Pippleton yelled.

  There was a shot of adrenaline through her system when she heard those words. The Arwen was going to sink. She couldn’t see through the cracked and destroyed monitors to see how strong the shield were. She had to do something. She couldn’t let the Arwen survive the fall only to be destroyed by the ocean. She spun her chair around looking for a computer that wasn’t damaged. She found one to her back. With a swift finger movement, she pulled up the emergency procedure menu. With a press of a button she activated the emergency fire suppression system.

  The fire suppression system opened several vents to the outside. The sudden drop in air pressure could be felt even on the bridge.

  The Commander looked at his monitor and even through a large crack, could see what was happening. “We’ve stopped sinking.”

  “Good,” Marjorie said. Her head pounded as the rush of fear ebbed away. “Get the crew together; I want to know what the damage to my ship is.”

  “Captain, may I ask why you active the emergency fire system?”

  “The emergency fire system opens the vents to the outside. It’s used to put out any fire that’s out of control. We have our shields up, the air had nowhere to go but between the ship and the shields giving us some buoyancy.”

  The Commander gave an impressed shrug. “I’ll get the crew together and give you a report shortly.”

  Captain Cook looked around as her crew attempted to clean up the mess. They were brave, young and strong, but even they would eventually succumb to fatigue. She had to figure out a way to get off the planet or else everyone would die.

  ****

  “Arwen, this is Professor Ricter, can you read me? Arwen, this is Professor Ricter, can you read me?” The Professor kept repeating the call. He had his head placed on top of his hand. His elbow lay on the computer consol. There was no hope of him contacting the Arwen, not like this anyway, and he eventually gave up.

  Staring out the window her remembered watching in horror as the Arwen fell. How clearly the ship parted the clouds and how it seemed to titter to and fro before losing sight of it has it passed over one of the ice caps. A sea of clouds obstructed his view of the ocean where he thought the ship would have crashed. He was alone and feared he would not survive any rescue attempt the Corp might launch. It was the feeling of helplessness that angered him.

  He needed control. He needed to do something that could be useful, even if he didn’t know exactly how useful it would be. If they found nothing but a rotting body inside this shuttle, he at least wanted them to know what happened so it wouldn’t happen again.

  Everything on the shuttle seemed to be working fine now. The ships systems had all reset and all the data he gathered, save for the last few seconds before everything shut down, could be retrieved. He let the data flow across his screen. He studied it, looking for something helpful. Thoughts and questions passed through his mind as he gathered the information. He had a nearly perfect memory, so there was never any moving back to check the data.

  Through his searching he discovered strong magnetic pulses had been registered in this area before, but it was always thought it had been produced from the star. No one would have thought it was a planet. He looked at the data hoping to see some sort of pattern. Nothing matched. The pulses seemed to be random. There was a nagging feeling in the back of his mind that it wasn’t indiscriminate. The odds of a haphazard electromagnetic discharge hitting the Arwen a few hours after it arrived seemed so vast he decided not to even try to calculate it.

  Could it be someone on the surface who attacked? He looked at the planetary scans and found it inhospitable to any life. The atmosphere was made up mostly of nitrogen with very little oxygen. There were faint traces of ammonia and sulfur. If someone could survive the little amounts of oxygen they would surely be poisoned by the ammonia and sulfur. The first scans showed no life. Every planet with life on it had complex ecosystems which were easy to find even without a computer. This planet had nothing but water.

  The facts didn’t add up.

  The computer chirped. Professor Ricter looked over at the alert, hopeful that it was the Arwen but knowing in his heart it probably wasn’t. When he looked, he wasn’t surprised at what he didn’t see, but found himself shocked at what he was seeing. On the very edge of his sensors the computer detected a ship. It wasn’t the Arwen. It wasn’t a ship the computer recognized.

  Professor Ricter looked over the readings trying to decide what to do. He could send a sensor sweep toward the ship but doing so would alert the ship to his presence. He suspected that they would have probably detected him by now if their sensors were as powerful as his. He sent the sensor sweep and waited to see what would happen.

  After several moments, the computer organized the information and placed it on his display. The ship didn’t react to the sweep and seemed to be adrift. It was too far away to detect any power source, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. It could be too weak for the sensors to detect from this distance.

  What do I do now? Professor Ricter though. I should wait. I should sit here and do nothing and hope the Arwen comes to my rescue. If the Arwen doesn’t I could always wait until the Corps comes. The shuttle had food and the air was constantly being recycled. With proper rationing I should be only halfway starved before they find me, maybe a little dehydrated but I’ll be alive. And that ship will still be there. Whoever comes to rescue me could send a team over to examine it. Yes, I should really just stay here and wait.

  He stared at the sensor dot on his computer screen. “Who am I kidding,” he said to himself then told the computer to set a course toward the unidentified ship.

  Chapter seven

  Captain Cook, Doctor Lipton, Commander Pippleton and Chief McFerren all sat uncomfortably at the table. It had been an effort of strength and perseverance to make it but the meeting had to take place. On her way there, Captain Cook had to stop several times to yell at crew members who had simply stopped working. The conditions were harsh, she understood that, but she needed everyone to work hard to get them out of this situation. She showed them strength in times like this. If she could work through it so could the people who were almost half her age.

  In truth the only thing she wanted to do was lay across her bed and rest. Her joints felt as if they were on fire. Her muscles screamed at her with every step she took. Breathing was labored and painful.

  The Chief, who had been running around more than she had, looked worn out. Nevertheless, like her, he didn’t let it show to his team. The Commander seemed to be faring much better; he could thank the Ulliam’s strong and compact body for that. Doctor Lipton was the worst off. She wasn’t used to hard labor, not like this, and it showed. She shuffled herself into the room, her feet never leaving the ground. She smiled weakly when they looked at her. “Seemed easier this way.”

  Once seated, Fran relaxed. She placed her computer on the table with a loud thud.

  Captain Cook looked at the Chief. “Is there any way to adjust the gravity plates to compensate for this?”

  He shook his head. “No. They weren’t designed that way. The gravity plates only produce gravity in weightlessness. They can’t counteract the effects of gravity.”

  “But we can adjust them to make them heavy or light.” Captain Cook said.

  “In a zero-gravity environment. The only thing they can do now is add more gravity, which is something I would not recommend. I turned them off to preserve power. They’re last on my list of repairs.”

  “Okay,” Captain Cook said confident the Chief knew what he was doing. “Tell me this: can the Arwen hold up under these conditions?”

  “If we lose the force field I can’t promise anything but with the force field up and at nearly full strength, it’ll be able to withstand the
water pressure. The increased gravity will affect a few systems; life support is working hard to keep the heavier air circulating, but it shouldn’t fail.”

  “That leads me to my next important question. Can we get off this planet?”

  “Our engines are strong enough to get us into orbit. I have some concerns about fuel compression but I’ve talked to my engineers and we all agree it's not a big enough risk to abort.”

  “When can we give it a try?”

  “I need about thirty minutes.”

  That was the best news Captain Cook had heard all day. “Good.” She turned to Fran and asked, “Doctor Lipton, what else have you discovered?”

  “Nothing much,” she said. “I was hoping to get permission to send out a probe to get a sample from the water. It would mean lowering one part of the shields for a second or two but I think we need to do it in order to get a better understanding of the planet.”

  “What are you hoping to accomplish with a sample?”

  “I believe there’s something in the water that was reacting to the planet’s magnetic field, and I think that caused the pulse.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “It’s the only thing that made sense once I looked over the readings. I’m actually not sure what I’m looking for but hopefully when I have the water in front of me I’ll find something interesting.”

  “Okay, get your team to work with the engineers to find the best way to get a sample. Chief, have the engines ready in thirty minutes, Commander it’s time to head back to the bridge”

  *******

  Captain Cook sat in her command chair exhausted. Every movement felt as if a 100 pound weight were strapped to whatever limb she was trying to move.

  The Commander seemed almost spry as he moved from one station to the next, checking the readings, making sure everything was ready for liftoff. She knew the Ulliam were a strong and powerful race, but she never suspected they would adapt so quickly to this kind of environment. “Captain, everything is ready.”