Beast

by Patrick McClafferty

  At that point, he realized in order to get into the evacuated compartment, he would have to evacuate the compartment he was in then hope air could be restored before he suffocated. He took several deep breaths, flooding his blood with oxygen, let out his breath to prevent his lungs from exploding, and hit the Override Open button. The hatch slammed open, and Solomon shot like a cork out of a bottle into the evacuated room. His head struck the far wall in a burst of stars, then he floated for a second or two, stunned, before heading for the hull breach. The patch went on as advertised, and Solomon exited the room hastily, sealing the door behind him. He floated there, listening to the hiss of air pressure returning and waiting to pass out. He was still waiting forty-five seconds later when the red vacuum warning light went out. Taking a deep breath, he was surprised he didn’t feel particularly winded from the ordeal as he turned toward engineering.

  Life support required that the breakers be reset, but it came on without a complaint when that was done. Solomon reveled in the blast of warm fresh air and the shipboard lights. The ship’s AI, housed in the center of the ship for safety, was another matter and required several hours of running new power lines from engineering before it finally reactivated. As the sensor stations activated, Solomon decided that a little help was in order and went to find Elora.

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  Solomon started violently, banging his head sharply on the metal hatch he was attempting to float through. “Fuck! Owww, my damned head.” He rubbed his forehead and swore again.

  “My apologies, sir,” the voice, a calm slightly English-accented baritone continued. “My name is Gibbs, and I am the artificial intelligence for the Lost Horizon. Can you, perhaps, tell me who you are and what is going on? I cannot seem to establish contact with either crew or command module.”

  Solomon drifted, still rubbing the knot on his head. “My name is Solomon Draxx, and as far as I can tell, the Lost Horizon hit something. As you can tell, the crew abandoned me and the rest of the colonists. When I awoke, life support was out, so I had to repair the hull breach and restore life support… and you.” He continued to drift upward. “Now I’m going to revive some human help.”

  He drifted in silence for a moment. “Where did you get the EVA suit to perform the repairs in the evacuated compartment, if I may ask?”

  Solomon snorted a laugh. “You may ask, and I didn’t have an EVA suit.”

  “Ohhh.” Gibbs sounded taken aback. “If you have no objection, Mr. Draxx, I will begin to stabilize the roll of the ship, and determine just where we are and what our current condition is.”

  “Be my guest,” Solomon replied dryly. “Could you please tell me where Elora Fontaine is located?”

  “Yes, sir. Take a left at the second intersection, and then your next right. Her module is number one twenty-two. Shall I provide you some light?”

  “Thanks, Gibbs, but I can see just fine.” Solomon hesitated. “On second thought, turn on the lights. Elora can’t see in the dark, and I don’t want to frighten her.”

  “As you wish.”

  The lights slowly came on.

  “I see on the addendum sheet that you have been added to the bottom of the official chain of command for the starship Lost Horizon. I will enter your name as captain, Mr. Draxx.”

  Solomon sighed. “Please, call me Solomon.”

  “Solomon then.” Gibbs paused. “Tell me, Solomon, are you human?”

  Solomon blinked. “My DNA is not entirely human, or so I’ve been told. Does that bother you?”

  “No, sir, but then again, I’m not human, either. I would like to scan you, however, when you have a moment.”

  “Feel free to scan anyone you wish to, Gibbs, especially if it will help us to survive.”

  “Thank you, sir. You are coming up on module one twenty-two on your left. I should tell you that preliminary sensor readings indicate that we have power and air to last thirty days. The water will run out somewhat sooner, as will the food. I could cut back on power usage and extend our power life, but the point would be moot. What is left of this ship was not designed to handle an ambulatory crew over an extended period.”

  Solomon grunted at the depressing thought that he only had thirty days to live. He spun the manual lock, pulling open the hatch. Unlike Solomon’s chamber, Elora’s was lit with a soft blue glow. He pushed a covered red button labeled “Emergency Awaken.” The small control screen below the lid showed the single word: AWAKENING. Next to it, a string of numbers counted down. When it reached zero, three minutes later, the lid opened with a hiss. A second, much shorter, string of counting numbers appeared. According to all the data Solomon could read, Elora was alive and well. When the new digital counter hit zero, Elora opened her green eyes and smiled up at Solomon.

  “Are we there yet?” Her grin was impish.

  Solomon tried for a confident, reassuring smile… and failed. “Not quite, my dear.” He helped her out of her coffin. “It seems that the ship was damaged and the crew saw fit to set us adrift and abandon us.”

  She smiled and held on to his arm. “I have every confidence that you will get us all out of this current situation.”

  He shot her a curious look then looked at his watch. “You’re in an odd mood this morning.”

  She shrugged, causing her feet to drift off the deck. “It’s starting out to be a moderately odd day.”

  He motioned to the long wide tube connecting the cold-sleep caskets with the rest of the ship, and she followed him gingerly down into the crippled Lost Horizon.

  “Gibbs,” Solomon said as he pushed the last hatch closed behind Elora. “I would like you to meet my sister, Elora Fontaine.” He waved a hand to the air around him. “Elora, this is Gibbs, the AI of the Lost Horizon. Located in the heart of the ship, Gibbs was also abandoned by the crew.”

  “Hello, Gibbs.” Elora’s voice was whimsical.

  “Good morning, Miss Fontaine,” Gibbs returned politely. “I hope that you slept well.”

  Elora’s whimsy turned to delight. “I did; thank you for asking.” She turned to Solomon. “That is an artificial intelligence?”

  Solomon grinned. “That’s what he tells me.” Solomon was about to begin going into detail about the ship’s condition when Gibbs derailed his train of thought.

  “Excuse me, sir, but you introduced Miss Fontaine as your sister. After scanning the two of you most thoroughly, I’m afraid to say that you are mistaken. Your DNA and that of Miss Fontaine are completely dissimilar, even removing the odd alien changes to yours, Solomon.”

  Elora gave Solomon a long look. “Now it all makes sense,” she whispered. “All the little comments Giuseppe has made to me over the years, and especially since you arrived on the scene. You are the son of Julia and Guiseppe Fontaine, while I am the daughter of Lucinda and, I just found this out recently, Thomaso Strangini. After Thomaso died and after I was born, Lucinda married Giuseppe, who adopted me while Lucinda was pregnant with his first daughter, Novalie. That explains why Giuseppe insisted that I go with you. He knew we were brother and sister on paper only.”

  Solomon looked back at Elora for a long moment, and he felt a rush a deep affection for her adopted father. Giuseppe had given Solomon his most precious gift: his daughter Elora. That, if nothing else, told him that Giuseppe thought of Solomon not as the Beast, but as his son. A longtime loner, he found the whole concept of having a mother and father, as well as brothers and sisters, unnerving.

  Elora was suddenly standing nose to nose with Solomon, looking up onto his gray eyes. “That means we can get married, legally,” she said in a no-nonsense voice.

  Solomon snorted. “You’re putting the cart before the horse, aren’t you? You seem to have forgotten our little predicament that we have to set to rights before we can begin to think about romance, let alone marriage, and you also seem to have forgotten the fact that I’m engaged to someone else at the moment.”

  Glancing to a low couch that ran the length of the crew’s mess, she
continued undeterred. “I haven’t forgotten a thing.” Her voice was slightly husky, and Solomon raised his eyes to heaven, wherever heaven was in space.

  “Teenagers!” he groaned.

  “Perhaps the two of you should sit down,” Gibbs said in his calm unruffled voice. “I’ve stopped the spin and have reestablished communication with the command module.”

  It should have been good news, but Solomon felt a flash of dread as he and Elora drifted to the couch and “sat.” Before them hung a large viewing screen. The camera zoomed in to show the crumbled remains of the command module and landing shuttle floating at a distance of several hundred kilometers. The micrometeor shield that had been attached to the nose of the ship to protect the crew quarters and landing shuttle from micrometeorites had been reduced to twisted and torn scrap metal that hung to the side of the command module. The front half of the landing shuttle was still attached to the command module, while the stern half drifted one hundred meters away along with a significant portion of the command module. The surrounding cloud of frozen gasses, water, and other things continued to expand. He purposely refrained from asking Gibbs to zoom the camera in. It was a little early in their adventure to have Elora see the bodies of crewmen killed by decompression.

  “After a data dump from the command module, I was able to determine that the captain, first officer, and two other crewmen of the Lost Horizon were killed in the initial impact. The second officer, a former fighter pilot, determined that he could fly the command module out of the debris field without navigational assistance, simply ‘by the seat of his pants,’ I believe he said. I was disabled at that point and unable to provide precise navigational references. As you can see, the second officer was wrong; the debris field was too dense for the small, lightweight command module to traverse.”

  Solomon stared at the screen. “What did we strike in the first place?”

  “That is an oddity, Solomon. It appears that we arrived at our destination a full three astronomical units away from out intended goal. Our programmed course took us through the very center of a debris field that was known to exist by Terran astronomers, but was poorly charted by previous unmanned expeditions. The fact that the debris field was completely artificial in nature was either conveniently ignored or unknown. We entered the debris field while we were engaged in our last turn around, allowing strikes along the entire length of the hull. We are very lucky no strikes penetrated the cold-sleep ring.”

  Gibbs was silent for a moment.

  “If I had some warning, I could have accomplished turnover earlier, and I would have had the opportunity to do a full sensor sweep and discover the debris. My communication log records an in-flight navigational change to our course two years into our journey. It now appears that we were meant to arrive exactly where we arrived, but not to survive.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Do you have enemies who are trying to kill you, Solomon?”

  He thought for a second or two. “Not me, particularly, but the Fontaine family. Can you tell me what sort of debris we arrived in?”

  “It appears to be spacecraft debris, Solomon. If I were to guess, I’d say that several thousand ships died here, a very very long time ago.”

  “Define ‘long.’”

  “I would guess sometime in the mid-Pleistocene epoch, between the Gelasian and the Calabrian ages. Approximately half a million years, Solomon.”

  He stared at the screen. “Since your sensors are working again, are any of the floating wrecks under power of any sort?”

  “Eight seem to be under power of some sort, Solomon. Of those eight, only two seem reasonably whole.”

  He leaned forward, ignoring the fact that he was drifting off the couch.

  Elora reached out casually and pulled him back.

  “Show me. Gibbs. Show me the closer of those two.”

  The camera swung. The first wreck, a lean barracuda-like vessel, was missing the first fifty meters of its bow, along with a significant bite taken out of the ring that encircled the aft quarter of the ship. Gibbs explained that the ring had projected a warp in space time before the ship, to allow faster-than-light travel. Great divots caused by weapon strikes dotted the deep-red-colored hull. At first glance, the damage looked too great, and Solomon shook his head. “Next.”

  The next wreck, fuzzy in the screen from the distance, was massive. Strangely alien, it had neither the smooth graceful white hull of Terran ships, nor the sleek likes of the first wreck. This ship resembled a seed pod, with a half dozen heavy engines ringing the rear quarter of the vessel. One engine was damaged so badly that only a stump of alien machinery was left. Antennae and strange towers swept out of the dull gray-green hull at odd disconcerting angles. It was difficult for Solomon to tell the original finish or color because the entire hull seemed to be coated with a fine talcum-like dust. The ship carried the feeling of great age with it like a miasma.

  “What a monster!” he commented to himself. “How big is that thing? I don’t have any frame of reference.”

  “The vessel is 5.827 kilometers,” Gibbs answered, unconcerned.

  Solomon’s eyes narrowed. “And there is power on in there, somewhere?”

  “Correct.”

  “And would you also be able to assume that in a craft that size there is a hangar of some sort that might even be able to accommodate the remains of the Lost Horizon?”

  “Perhaps,” Gibbs said.

  Elora was staring at Solomon, her eyes wide.

  He grinned at the shocked woman. “Last trick question, Gibbs. Does what’s left of the Lost Horizon have the ability to move?”

  “I believe I see where you are going with this Solomon. What is left of the Lost Horizon has maneuvering thrusters that would, in time, allow us to reach the wreck. I would like to point out that utilizing the thrusters in that manner would probably exhaust them, and the odds of finding a useable shuttle aboard the wreck are small.”

  Solomon’s jaws tightened. “Tell me this, old friend. Do you have a better plan?”

  The computer was silent for some time before it replied. “There is no better option, Solomon. I could, of course, put you both back into cold sleep in the hopes of rescue, but because someone wants you dead and is willing to sacrifice two hundred thirteen innocent people to get the job done, it is unlikely that they would mount a costly rescue mission to Proxima Centauri b. I will begin preparations to move the ship, Captain Draxx.”

  Solomon rubbed his jaw in thought. I’m going to actually have to start shaving with a razor again. He shuddered slightly. “Do you have an emergency pod to be released in the event of mission failure?”

  “I do, Captain. It will arrive at Terra in only three years since it has no cargo, and its message can be broadcast to ground receivers as it races by at a significant fraction of the speed of light.”

  “Send it out, and tell the people of Earth everything that happened up to the time of my awakening. Let them think that their plan was successful. It will buy us some time.”

  “The pod is being prepared, Captain.”

  “Thanks, Gibbs.”

  Elora raised a single eyebrow. “Captain Draxx?”

  Solomon sighed. “It seems that your father had my name inserted into the actual chain of command on this ship. Since the rest of the crew are dead…”

  “I hate to bring up unpleasantness, Solomon.” Gibbs said. “But how are you going to explore the alien vessel with no EVA suit?”

  Solomon grinned. “The same way I repaired the leak in our hull, Gibbs.” He turned a very pointed look on Elora who was drifting beside him. “Since it would be better for both of us, I’d like to recommend that I share a shadow creature that’s living in me, with you. It seems that when I was in the Martian desert recently I, ah, picked up another hitchhiker.” He gave her a gentle smile. “I will do everything I can to ease your transition.”

  Elora’s face went the color of chalk. “You want me to become the Beast also?” She twiste
d away from him, the motion causing her to float slowly across the compartment. Her voice rose a full octave. “Are you totally crazy?” Her green eyes were wild.

  He sighed. “I’m saying that I want you to have every opportunity for survival that I have.”

  She made swimming motions and backed away from him until her shoulders struck the nearest bulkhead.

  He sighed and gave up. He couldn’t force her into it. “Have it your way then. Gibbs, how long until we reach the wreck?”

  “Two days, Solomon. There are a number of large pieces of wreckage for us to dodge, and our micrometeor shield was mounted on the command module.”

  “Are you absolutely sure that the landing shuttle couldn’t be salvaged from the wreck of the command module?”

  “Solomon, you yourself saw that the landing shuttle is in two pieces. Even if we were to somehow retrieve the pieces and connect them back together, in less than a month, there is no fuel left on the shuttle. Sensors indicate that the fuel tanks, along with air and water, were ruptured.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “If you are up to it, Solomon, my ventral thruster was damaged and should be repaired, if possible, before we move.”

  Solomon shot a quick glance to Elora, who was conveniently looking the other way.

  “There is a small short-range com unit you can wear stored back in engineering.”

  Solomon chuckled, aware now that even AIs could make mistakes. “Gibbs, in space, no one can make or hear a sound.”

  Solomon heard a faint but profound sigh from Gibbs. “With the bone induction speaker, you will be able to hear me. To reply, you will use a simple click code. Tap the unit twice to tell me you’ve received the transmission, and three taps to have me retransmit.”