by Erik DeLeo
A Distant Moon
A Sci-Fi Novella
Erik DeLeo
Contents
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Units of Measurement
1. Trouble
2. Freefall
3. Stuck
4. Escape
5. Gravity
6. Upside down
7. Raul
8. Reboot
9. Awakening
10. Cover
11. Danger
12. Absent
13. Company
14. Host
15. Dreams
16. Rest
17. Recovery
18. Rolling
19. Bluff
20. Parts
21. Reunion
22. Square One
23. Fight
24. Injury
25. No Escape
26. Dead End
27. Chaos
28. Dogfight
29. Impact
A Note From The Author
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* * *
For a limited time, you’ll get the first five chapters of the upcoming novel in the Sentience trilogy for free, so you won’t have to see what happens after you finish A Distant Moon.
* * *
Details can be found at the end of A Distant Moon.
Units of Measurement
This is a galaxy not too far away. In it are a human analog known as “homins,” along with other races. Most races in this galaxy follow Galactic Standard Time (GST). The following are Basic Standard Units (BSU) for measuring that time.
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Sec—Equates to roughly one Earth second
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Mon—Equates to roughly one Earth minute
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Hor—Equates to roughly one Earth hour
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Rot (rotation)—Equates to roughly one Earth day
1
Trouble
“Dammit!”
Reg, his silvery-black hair disheveled, burst into the cockpit. He was greeted by chaos.
Almost every light on the ship’s control panel was blinking ominously. Multiple warning buzzers blared away. Through the front screen loomed a blood-red moon, MO-1038-5. Not exactly a memorable name. It was the largest of five moons orbiting the only planet in this system, a gaseous giant with the ubiquitous title of Planet 1-1038. And the Zephyr was hurtling straight toward it.
In a rush to sit down, Reg proceeded to smack his skull against a low-hanging bulkhead, and stars briefly floated in his vision. Once in the pilot’s chair, he grabbed the ship’s joystick. It was stiff. Not a good sign. It meant the old cargo ship was beginning to enter the moon’s thin upper atmosphere. The vessel had been on autopilot, but something went really wrong, really quickly. Reg’s thoughts were swimming as he fumbled with the seat straps to buckle himself in.
Is there a short? A blown fuse? What the hell happened? The ship just went through a full systems check last dock.
Reg scanned the control panel in front of him, now a rainbow of warning lights. The stabilizers were on the fritz. The starboard thruster wasn’t at full power. And the ship was about to lose its artificial gravity. It was a hell of a way to wake up from a nap.
Just then, the ship lurched, yanking the joystick out of Reg’s hands. The Zephyr and Reg were in for the ride of their lives.
Okay. Think. Don’t panic. Need to get power back to the thruster.
The ship lurched again. Reg grabbed hold of the stick with both hands, hard enough that it made his knuckles white. Once he felt the ship was momentarily stable, he furiously typed a series of commands into the ship’s main control interface with his right hand and then hit ENTER.
Come on, baby. Come on.
There was a beep, and a warning light turned from red to green.
“Yes!”
The light flickered for a second and then, once again, turned crimson.
“Gah! You useless pile of space garbage!”
Reg slammed his fist onto the control panel in frustration. The light stayed red. It wasn’t the first time the Zephyr had let Reg down. Although this time, it might actually be the last. He was out of ideas. Reg looked hopelessly at the moon, whose red surface took up the entire viewscreen. It looked eerily similar to the warning light.
Think!
As he tried to reroute power back to the thruster, Reg pressed a button on a small module attached to his utility belt. After a few more entries into the computerized command interface, he got the auxiliary power back on, which meant the artificial gravity would stay on. Small victories.
Behind him, the door to the cockpit opened, hydraulics hissing. Standing at the threshold was Reg’s robot. The RAUL unit (short for Robotic Assistance Unit, Limited) was a bare-bones model built by the Aval Corporation. Two arms, two legs, and a penchant for being in the wrong place at the wrong time during Reg’s various emotional outbursts. Reg had named his RAUL unit “Raul” because originality was not one of his strong suits.
Reg shouted over the noise. “Make your way down to the starboard thruster engineering interface and see how bad the mess is. I can’t do anything from up here. And hurry up—otherwise, both of us will be dead.”
Well, one of us, anyway.
Raul turned around dutifully and headed toward the engineering deck, the doors hissing closed behind him. Reg brought his focus back to piloting the ship, when suddenly everything went abruptly dark. The port thruster, still working up to this point, sputtered and stopped. And the cacophony of noise and lights in the cockpit was replaced by silence.
2
Freefall
I don’t mind the quiet. But, man, I really hate the dark.
The Zephyr creaked and groaned. Her hull was experiencing the first small tugs of gravity. Reg looked down at the powerless interface in front of him. The moon taunted him through the viewscreen, casting a dull reddish glow, faintly illuminating a myriad of objects floating around inside the cockpit. The artificial gravity had disappeared. Reg tried not to panic and pushed the intercom button on his belt.
“Raul. I need to get the auxillary batteries online. Keep moving to the engineering deck. When I get power back up, restart the thrusters!”
Reg grabbed the handheld illuminator under his seat and turned it on. Nothing happened. He hit the illuminator a few times, turning the switch off and on. Still, nothing happened. He threw it against the bulkhead in disgust. Reg had an artificial handheld light in his quarters, but it would take too long to get there and then get to the battery compartment.
He unbuckled his pilot restraints and floated out of his seat. Zero gravity was always an odd sensation. He liked being in space, but he certainly preferred it with two feet on something solid. Reg pulled himself up, a million mostly angry thoughts rushing through his head, and navigated his way around the seat. He pressed his hands up on either side for stability and hit the button to open the door. Nothing happened. Reg swore. No power. Right.
Holding himself steady with one hand, Reg opened an access panel to the right of the door. He released the manual lock and then tried to open the door with one hand. No luck. Reg maneuvered himself so he was able to yank on the door with both hands and push against the walls of the cockpit with his feet. The door stuck for a second then succumbed to Reg’s successive yanks.
Beyond the door, the darkness was thick, but years of military training had prepared him for this. Know the ship like the back of your hand, his drill sergeant had said. Be able to walk it forward and back. Reg had always hated that drill sergeant but was thankful for him in this moment. Fear gnawed at him, but he pu
shed himself out the door and plunged into the black anyway.
Time wasn’t on his side. Reg had to get down to the batteries, manually prime the charger, and then hope Raul could restart the thrusters when power was restored before the ship was too far into the clutches of the moon’s gravity.
Reg knew the ship blindfolded. But he knew it by footsteps. Now he was floating through the hallways and simply guessing at the distance he covered. It was 142 steps to the access port that led down to the auxillary batteries. They were in a shielded room located far way, which protected the batteries from electrical interference.
He floated forward, his arms outstretched, feeling with his fingers along the steel. Reg had to balance speed with caution. In his haste, he didn’t want to miss the access port. Reg counted two intersections he had passed. If he counted accurately, two more intersections and he’d be close.
Without power to supply energy to the ship, a whole host of things would go wrong, including burning to a cinder as the ship crashed to the moon’s surface—unless Reg froze to death first. But he tried not to focus on that and, instead, continued to push himself forward. The intersections were hard to navigate. He couldn’t see anything, and he had to make sure he didn’t lose his bearings along the way. Otherwise, he might end up going down a side tunnel and lose precious time.
After two more intersections, Reg’s hand’s finally located the panel for the access port to get down to where the batteries were. He carefully pried open the metal flap with his fingernails, pulled the release hidden underneath, and opened the hatch. With no gravity to deal with, Reg reached out and pulled himself down into the access tube, headfirst.
One after the other, he grabbed the metal rungs normally meant for feet, getting closer and closer to the bottom of the auxillary battery compartment. Once at the bottom, he righted himself, using the rungs to turn himself around. Now in a standing position, Reg would have to navigate the room based on memory.
The room was square and small, perhaps two arms’ width wide. Directly opposite the rungs should be the command interface and behind that the lever for manually charging the batteries. Reg turned around his back to the rungs and gently pushed himself towards the opposite wall. He held his hands out to brace himself.
His hands didn’t find the lever, but his nose did. Reg let out a groan and grabbed his face, which throbbed with pain. He reflexively curled his face toward his stomach, which with the momentum of the push, spun him head over heels in the zero gravity. He landed against the wall, upside down. At least he thought he was upside down.
Reg put a hand to his nose and felt a warm, slick wetness. He was certain his nose was bleeding and that slickness was little bubbles of blood. Whether it was broken, he wasn’t sure. He’d have to worry about that later. With each passing moment, the Zephyr got closer to the moon’s atmosphere—and with that came a decreasing chance that Reg would get out of this with his life and Raul would get out of this without being broken into little robotic bits.
Reg reached out with both hands, waving them around, slow enough not to hurt himself. His left hand hit the lever. He grabbed it and turned himself around in midair. He then used the lever to press his feet against the floor. With all the strength he could muster, he leaned into the lever and pushed hard with his legs.
It didn’t budge.
3
Stuck
Reg was covered in sweat. His muscles burned, and his hands hurt. The lever still hadn’t moved. He took a few deep breaths and tried to regain the strength that had been sapped from his legs. He focused and then pushed with everything he had left. He screamed as he did this.
First, nothing happened. A few more moments of effort, and finally, the lever started moving and then gave way. Catastrophically. It made a loud tang sound and snapped in two. Reg was propelled toward the ceiling, bumping his head. He swore in every language he knew.
He was going to lose his cargo. He was going to lose his ship. And, if he didn’t get moving, he was going to lose his life. The only option left was to get on an escape pod. Problem was, of the six on board, there was only one that functioned. It was a single pod, only big enough for one—either Reg or Raul. And Reg wasn’t going to sacrifice himself for his robot.
Reg brought his hand down to his belt and pressed the button on his two-way communicator.
“Raul, the lever for the auxillary batteries has been compromised. Make your way to the cargo hold. Get the escape pod ready. And hurry!”
Panic started to creep up inside him. Reg had been fighting against it since the Zephyr dropped out of autopilot, pushing it down. Ever since he was a kid, Reg was secretly terrified when the lights were out. Nightmares used to haunt him as a child, and his mom had always let him leave the power on to his spaceship toy in his bedroom. The toy, with a lighted cockpit and landing lights, covered his room in a soft glow. It had been his first love and fed his childhood dreams of becoming a pilot.
Of course, this was something Reg had never told anyone, let alone his drill sergeant. Back at the academy, he had to grit his teeth through all the darkened ship exercises. But Reg had never felt death was imminent before. Now he did. He swallowed hard and pushed himself, more carefully this time, in the direction he thought was up.
His hands found one of the rungs. The cold of the steel was reassuring. Reg pulled himself up the hatch, his feet floating in the zero gravity behind him. It was only a short way to the access corridor that Reg needed, where he would descend three more levels to the cargo hold.
Reg guesstimated he only had a few mons before the ship crashed into the red, dusty soil of MO-1038-5. He arrived at the access tube, undid the latches, and popped off the metal panel. Reg climbed into the cramped quarters and descended down the rungs headfirst toward the cargo bay deck, counting them as he went. Seventeen rungs per level. As he drew closer to the bottom, he slowed his pace, turned around, and lowered himself until his feet touched the ground. He turned around, fumbled with the interior latches, and pushed the panel out into the hallway.
Gravity had started to make itself known. Reg could feel a sense of his weight as he stepped through the opening, the first since the Zephyr lost power. If his calculations were correct, he was just outside the cargo bay. He could tell his vision had somewhat acclimated to the lack of light, because the bay was not entirely pitch black—there was a faint glow emanating from the back of the bay.
He made his way carefully toward the light and began to make out the unmistakable sound of hydraulics. RAUL. Technically, RAUL didn’t need light to operate (infrared optics were something Reg had paid a little extra for), but there was definitely a light source coming from somewhere.
“Raul!” yelled Reg.
The sound of hydraulics stopped for a second before continuing. Reg grew irritated, knowing precious moments were slipping away. He made his way toward the noise and the light.
After a few bumps and bruises, Reg got close enough to roughly discern what was going on. The largest container in the bay, one of the few Reg had secured before takeoff, was open. That was where the light was coming from.
“Why the hell are you messing with a grain container? Get the damn escape pod ready.”
The container was from Bentos V, a small farming colony he had a contract with to supplement his scrapper income. Reg could hear the whirring of Raul’s hydraulics as he walked to the rear of the large cargo container. As he peeked around the corner, there, just inside, stood Raul.
There weren’t any sacks of grain in the container. But there was a small scout ship.
4
Escape
“What the heck is this?”
Reg’s jaw was agape. He took one step forward and stopped. He looked at Raul, then at the stowaway craft, then back at Raul.
“Did…did you smuggle this? Are you smuggling things? Who told you to smuggle things?”
Raul looked blankly at Reg and continued to power up the ship.
“I’m supposed to know about
these things. And this? This, I definitely didn’t know about!”
Raul had gotten the anti-grav skids extended, and the scout was floating above the floor. The canopy was open, revealing seats for both a pilot and copilot.
“I don’t know if you’ve got some side business going on, or what exactly you think you’re doing, but this is the kinda crap I would pull. I like it.”
Reg picked up the closest object to him and threw it at Raul. Hard. It careened off the robot’s head with a loud clank.
“But don’t do it again. I’m the one calling the shots.”
Raul swiveled his head to look at Reg but said nothing back. That was only because Reg was cheap and hadn’t paid for a voice module.
“I always wanted a silent partner. Might have to reconsider.”
He popped his head inside the ship to check out the pilot controls. Reg had never flown this particular craft, but the layout looked pretty standard. He pulled his head out from under the canopy and turned to Raul.
“You’re lucky this ship is here, because I don’t think both of us would have fit in the escape pod. Anyway, we don’t have long. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to die. If you want to join me, go open the cargo bay door. I’ll finish powering up the scout.”