Into Darkness

by Peter Fugazzotto

  His team took their fingers from the triggers, placed their rifles on the floor, and using their feet slid the weapons away, but not out of reach. Marley catalogued the mercenaries’ back up weapons: pistols shoved in belts, knives strapped to calves, torches and flash bombs on their belts. Those were what Marley could see. She imagined they had other weapons, more sinister killing tools, hidden from sight – choke cords, stilettos, razor blades – weapons of assassination and last resort.

  Things could still go bad. She needed to defuse the situation.

  Marley sidled up to Adams, slipped the gun from his hand, and unwound his arm from Finn’s neck. “It’s over.”

  The captain stumbled backwards, sobs bubbling out of his lips.

  An endless streamed of tears cascaded down Penelope’s cheeks, small rainbows reflected in each drop.

  Finn, rubbing his neck, turned back to Adams. “I’ll help if you’ll let me, Cap. I know I should be trying to bash your face in, but I’ll help. I can try to save Penelope.”

  “Everything’s falling apart,” said the captain. “Everything.”

  Orlov and Hendo picked up their rifles.

  Marley turned to face the mercenaries and the captain and let her hand fall to the grip of her gun. With her thumb, she slid off the safety.

  Gomez clutched his gun.

  The lights flashed yellow. A klaxon burst from the ship speakers.

  “We have now reached functional orbit,” Penelope said, her interface surging bright with color as if the purpose of the mission reinvigorated her. “Mining Colony TS 34, this is Deep Space Transport HDC-117 on official business of the Huang Di Corporation. Mining Colony TS 34, please copy.” Static washed across the room. Penelope repeated herself several more time. Then she changed tactics. “Ragnar, this is Penelope. Please signal to let me know you are okay.” The static surged.

  “Nothing,” said Finn. He slid into a chair and fired up his virtual monitor. He typed madly on his keyboard. “Not getting anything. No bounce back. Not a blip. It’s as if there’s nothing out there.”

  “Total darkness,” said Orlov.

  “And you want us to go in there?” asked Gomez.

  “You complain like this about all your missions?” said Marley. “Who the hell did I hire?”

  “I like to know what I’m getting into. Know what I’m facing. Better chance of getting out alive.”

  “I have nothing else to tell you. The colony is dark. We go in and bring it back online. And not get killed. Simple as that.”

  “Simple, huh?”

  Penelope continued trying to contact the colony. “Mining Colony TS 34, this is Deep Transport HDC-117. Please respond. Requesting permission to land at Alpha Port for visual inspection of facilities. Mining Colony TS 34, this is Deep Transport HDC-117. Please respond.”

  “We should go back,” said Captain Adams. “We should turn back to Orion 7.”

  “We won’t make it back in 52 hours,” said Finn, “and you know that, man.”

  “Requesting permission to land.”

  “It’s fucking dark!” said Gomez. “We’re not going to get a response.”

  “Then we’re going in,” said Marley.

  “Into the fucking dark? If the defense systems are functioning and we’re not authorized to land, they’re going to burn us to living shit before we reach the surface. Don’t be a fool, Marley! We should wait for a response and failing that call in reinforcements. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

  Everyone turned to Marley. She could see the looks in their faces. Gomez’s words had birthed fear. She was about to lose control of the mission. She needed to bring things back under control. In the long term, she was going to have to deal with Gomez. He was undermining the mission.

  “Penelope, bring up a visual of Alpha Port.” The map view of the planet surface raced to the northwest over mountains and valleys and then zoomed in on a dark cluster. “Show me the landing area.” The shot zoomed to several enormous rectangular buildings. Marley made out the shapes of the large unmanned ore transports, huge vessels manned by AI-controlled robots.

  “All those transports,” said Gomez. “Not a single one moving. It’s as if the whole surface is shut down.”

  “Bring us in further.”

  “Ghost town.”

  “There,” said Marley, pointing to a smaller vessel sitting some distance from the transports and the buildings. “The advance team’s vessel.”

  “Where are they?” asked Gomez.

  “They landed in one piece. Shows we can, too.”

  “You gotta be kidding me,” said Gomez.

  “Adams,” said Marley, “bring us down to the surface.”

  Eighteen

  ADAMS FOUGHT WITH the ship’s controls against the rapid descent. The control sticks rattled in his hands, suddenly jerking and threatening to tear out of his grip. He heard the groaning of metal from deep within the ship.

  “Cap, we’re coming down way too fast!” Finn hunched in the cockpit seat next to Adams, his palms planted against the control panel as if that could somehow slow the ship. His pimply face was lost behind the wide dark lens of the VR glasses. “Scaring me, Cap! You not a bit worried here?”

  “I know what I’m doing, boy.”

  Behind the cockpit’s closed door, the others rode out the landing in the deployment cabin. Like Adams and Finn, they had donned orange atmosphere suits. They waited with loaded weapons for when they reached the surface of Mining Colony TS 34. When the doors popped open, they would charge down the ramps and secure the perimeter.

  Adams stared through his VR glasses at the same manufactured image of them descending rapidly through the haze and towards the pocked, slate gray surface of Mining Colony TS 34. Finn was right. The surface approached way too quickly. If they hit it at this speed, they would not survive. At the right time, he would reduce the speed.

  But Adams had no choice. He had to push the ship to its limits. Penelope was dying. Marley demanded that he land the ship. So Adams was going to do that: as fast as he could. What Marley did not know was that once she and the mercenaries touched the ground, Adams was going to leave. He would break orbit and race back towards Orion 7. He would force Penelope into a hard shut down putting her into a form of AI stasis, and he would travel the month alone until they reached the way station. Huang Di 07 would help. She would undo what Prime had done. She would save Penelope.

  But first he needed to land the ship safely and get the mercenaries off his vessel as soon as possible.

  Suddenly a warning klaxon blared. He had waited too long.

  He yanked back on the sticks but his control panel showed no sign of the ship’s speed reducing. He keyed in a command on his mobile keyboard and a feed formed on a screen to his left. The vessel, a small oblong shape, descended against a stream of numbers indicating temperatures, velocities, and pressures. They descended way too fast. He pushed the ship too hard. He needed help.

  “Finn, grab the sticks in front of you and pull with me.” Finn leaned forward, seized the sticks, and leaned backwards. The sticks did not move in Adams’s hands. “Pull harder, boy.”

  “We’re not slowing down!”

  “Pull!”

  “It’s not working!”

  Sweat broke across Adams’s brow. He jammed his feet against the control panel and pulled back with his whole body. The stick did not move. He had no choice now.

  “Penelope,” he whispered. “Slow us down.”

  Static flooded the image in his VR goggles and when it cleared, the front of the cockpit was gone: the nose of their ship had been peeled back, the metal cut open, exposing Adams and Finn to the dizzying descent through the atmosphere. He could swear that he felt the wind tearing across his face.

  “Jesus!” cried Finn. “What the fuck?”

  “It’s not real,” said Adams. He wanted to lift his goggles to confirm what he just said but he was afraid to let go of the control sticks.

  Penelope had never don
e anything like this before.

  He knew it wasn’t real. It was the reality she generated. But still it frightened him.

  Penelope perched on the torn open nose of the ship. The wind whipped her dress about her bare calves, the gold hem undulating like a live wire. Her hair floated in a great swirling cloud.

  The planet’s surface rushed towards them at an unimaginable speed.

  “Surface coming awfully fast!” screamed Finn.

  “Penelope. Slow us down,” said Adams.

  He glanced again at the readout on the screen to his left. The numbers, previously green and yellow, had shifted to green, yellow, and red.

  “Penelope, please.”

  She stood arms wide, the wind rippling and snapping her dress. She did not turn to his request. She stared out over the slate planet.

  The numbers turned yellow and red. The metal shell of the vessel screamed and something further back in the vessel popped three times, loud and sudden.

  “Please!” Adams shouted.

  Penelope turned suddenly. The veil, a cascade of green code, hid her face. The edges of her body broke off, and flew into the sky like black butterflies.

  And then Penelope vanished.

  “Oh shit!” cursed Finn. “Oh shit”

  “What happened?”

  “She’s gone! Disappeared! Connect to the mainframe!”

  Finn madly typed on his mobile keyboard.

  “Code in ODY456. Figure out a way to direct power to the landing thrusters. We need to slow down.”

  “Fuck!” Finn’s fingers blurred. “Not responding.”

  Adams ripped the VR goggles from his face. The console flashed red. Thruster engines were failing.

  “ODY456. Keep trying! We need power!” Adams battled with the control sticks. The ship pitched forward. He glanced at the display. The forward thrusters were only outputting twenty percent of their capacity. Not enough to slow them down. If he did not get those thrusters firing, they would hit the surface hard. At the speed they were moving, they would not survive. The vessel would explode on impact.

  Marley shouted, her voice muffled through the door to the rear deployment cabin.

  “I’m in!” yelled Finn.

  ‘Thrusters!”

  Adams looked at the status screens. Everything blinked red. They had entered a catastrophe zone. Their speed exceeded what the vessel was designed to handle. Unseen metal sheared and bolts snapped. They had maybe half a minute before they would hit the surface, and probably only a matter of seconds before it would not matter if they got the thrusters on line again.

  “Penelope?” he whispered. “Why?”

  “I got it!” screamed Finn. “One hundred percent to the thrusters!”

  Adams slammed his fist on the big red buttons, and then grabbed the control sticks with both hands. The vessel surged. He pulled back hard again. The thrusters fired. The klaxon blared. He killed the rear thrusters, and pulled hard and steady on the control. The ship tilted then leveled. Then he powered all thrusters to full again.

  “Hell yeah, cowboy!” whooped Finn, both fists pumping in the air.

  Adams smiled.

  Then they hit the surface, and they hit it hard.

  Nineteen

  GOMEZ WOKE TO Orlov cursing.

  “Shit, fuck, shit, fuck.”

  Above the stream of her cursing, warning klaxons blared and the white smoke flashed with diffused red circles. His breath fogged the glass of his helmet. He ran his tongue over a warm gushing hole in his lower lip. Gomez swallowed blood.

  The smoke piled too thick to see beyond his extended hand. Even so he could make out the dented and torn metal walls of the ship. He must have been knocked out when they landed. He had no sense of how much time had passed, but it could not have been long. It did not matter. They needed to get out of the ship.

  He tried to rise but the seatbelt cut across his shoulders and hips. Pain surged. He lifted his arms and wiggled his hips. Nothing broken. He was going to be bruised. But better that than the straps failing.

  “Fucking pilot! Shit-ass planet! Son of a bitch!” Orlov was very much alive.

  He unlatched the belt and took several deep breaths before standing. His knees wobbled. A sharp pain burned from his lower back to his neck.

  The smoke surged, clearing then thickening. Saliva filled his mouth and he choked back vomiting.

  “Breathers on,” he said. He toggled the oxygen feed on the atmosphere suit. Supplemented air pulsed into his helmet. He winced: the acrid smell of the smoke filled his lungs. Heat, so strong he could feel it through his suit, flowed from another part of the ship.

  “Cock sucking ship,” Orlov’s curses streamed through the network. “Motherfucker!”

  “Orlov, you all in one piece?”

  “All good.”

  “Hendo?”

  The klaxon continued blaring.

  “Agent Marley?”

  Gomez stumbled forward, hands probing until he reached the wall of the cabin. He swatted at the smoke. He sidestepped until he found the door. He punched in the code and unsnapped the latches. He twisted the handle and pushed. It wouldn’t budge.

  “Where’s Hendo?”

  Orlov shook her head and then pointed her assault rifle at the door.

  “God, no! Don’t shoot!” said Gomez. “Get us all killed.”

  He cranked the handle again and smashed into the door with his shoulder. This time it flew open and his momentum sent him tumbling to the dust and stone surface of Mining Colony TS 34.

  Pain burned his hands. He winced. He pushed himself to his knees and then standing. Orlov gave a muffled shout from the wrecked ship. Smoke unfurled out of the open door.

  The sky shifted a murky gray. In the distance, a ridge of mountains smeared the horizon. Desolate. The hangars and facilities of Alpha Port squatted silent through gaps in the mangled landing gear of the vessel.

  Despite the self-regulating atmosphere suit, cold crept through to his skin. They needed to find shelter. The atmosphere suits would not power forever.

  No emergency vehicles raced out to come to their aid. No security teams broke from the main buildings. They had landed on a seemingly empty planet.

  About a quarter of kilometer away, the ship of the advance robotic team sat in the dust, its ramps unfurled to the ground, its interior dark. It looked like they had landed safely. But the ramps should not have been left open.

  “Boss man,” called Orlov. She dragged Hendo out of the smoking ship and down the ramp. Her small hands hooked under his arms and she staggered with his weight. “Help me drag them off the ship?”

  A quarter hour later, Gomez, Marley, Hendo and Orlov gathered outside the ship of the advance robotic team. Finn and Adams had been left with the HDC-117.

  “Sure this is such a good idea?” asked Orlov. She stood to one side of the ramp, staring into the ship. Her left eye was nearly swollen shut from where her face had bounced against the glass of her helmet. Other than that, she seemed fine to Gomez. Though perhaps a bit more surly than usual. If that was possible. The glass of her helmet fogged with each steady breath.

  “I would have preferred to have Finn here with us. My team complete,” said Gomez. He pressed against the ship and peered through the open door into the interior of the vessel.

  Marley was positioned on the opposite side of the door. “Right now we need to secure this vessel. It might be our only way out of here. Penelope’s ship is never leaving this rock.”

  Gomez nodded grimly. She was right. The HDC-117 had been nearly destroyed on impact. Adams had crashed them on the surface. It would never be able to fire up again and get them off the planet.

  They had left Finn and Adams behind to salvage what they could from their vessel. They had argued briefly about whether to remove Penelope’s brain from the housing. Gomez wanted to leave the AI behind. He had seen the machine’s erratic behavior and could only imagine it getting worse as the hours progressed. A half-crazed AI in their midst was the
last thing they needed. They had enough problems.

  In the end, the captain’s pleadings won Marley over and she let him and Finn crawl through the vents to reach the small chamber housing the AI.

  Another poor decision made by Marley, Gomez thought.

  Gomez scanned the interior of the advance ship through the scope of his rifle. Nothing.

  He figured they had one clear objective now that the mission went awry. They needed a vessel that could generate a breathable atmosphere. Mining Colony TS-34’s atmosphere’s low oxygen meant humans could not survive on the surface without supplementation, and the portable breathers built into the atmosphere suits would only last a few hours.

  Once they had a steady supply of air, they could figure out the next step.

  Marley counted down with her fingers and then gave the go signal. The team charged up the ramp and into the vessel. Hendo led the way, the assault rifle dwarfed in his hands, its floodlight sweeping across the interior of the ship. Orlov trailed at his heels and peeled off to the other side of the doorway, her light crossing his as she did a secondary survey of the deployment cabin.

  Gomez and Marley trotted up the center of the ramp.

  Gomez arced his light across the cabin. It was empty, indicator lights dark, the staging stalls where the robots had been housed unoccupied except for a few dangling cables.

  Static surged over Gomez’s comms channel. A wave of white noise.

  On either side of the cabin, there were two dull metal doors. One led to the cockpit and the other to the further reaches and holds of the vessel. The ship was a modified HD Deep Transport. On first glance, it looked like Penelope’s ship, but Gomez saw that the ship had been stripped down to bare metal parts. Robotic voyagers did not require cushioned chairs and overhead lighting.

  Marley’s voice fragmented through his comms channel. “…interfering with it. Not sure…on board or on planet.” The static lessened. “Let’s clear the cockpit first. Holster the guns. Blades and torches only.”