Drifter

by Shane Griffin

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the entire bottom five decks of the ship are packed full of every weapon imaginable, including two huge atomic cannons and the strangest looking fusion bomb I have ever seen. That’s what I was looking at when you called me.”

  “Does it have a big automated laser drill attached to the top of it?” asked Tom alarmed.

  “Actually yes! Have you seen one before Captain?”

  “Yes, it’s a core implosion device. A bomb designed to bury itself deep enough into a planet’s surface that when it goes off the planet’s core implodes and goodbye planet. I want you here fast Jimmy and I mean it!”

  “Aye…Captain!” Jimmy was already puffing.

  #

  “OK Jimmy beam the scan results up here to the search module and then come on up yourself for some food and rest,” said Tom as he tediously swallowed the last of his own dinner. He hated eating in zero gravity, especially when he was starving and wanted to get his food down quickly. He looked at the mission clock, they had 28 hours and 5 minutes left, and then went to wake Tumbar.

  About half an hour later Tumbar was looking at the scan results in disbelief.

  “A warship?”

  “More than just a warship, it has a stealth drive,” added Jimmy.

  “Well, no wonder it was never found until now. The stealth drive must have switched off when it went into orbit,” suggested Tom.

  “That’s what I thought, but if you look at the flight recorder data, this ship arrived at its destination and was headed home!” said Jimmy excitedly.

  “Well that’s strange. You’d think a warship would be sent for a reason, but this thing doesn’t look like it’s been in a fight,” mused Tom.

  “Maybe whoever they were supposed to fight was gone or dead by the time they arrived,” offered Tumbar sceptically.

  “What does the mission brief say?” asked Tom.

  “It doesn’t have one,” replied Jimmy scratching his head.

  “It looks like the only way we are ever going to find out what is going on is if we get this ship back to base and revive the passengers. That means we better get to work on those engines,” said Tom, already out of his anti-grav seat and floating towards his security suit.

  #

  Tom walked alongside the hundreds of deep space hibernation chambers in eerie silence, except for the clinking of his mag-boots along the steel floor. Hibernation chambers always made his skin crawl if he looked inside for too long, the people in them looked too similar to corpses. This time however he looked into each and every one.

  Things had not gone well during the attempt to start the ship’s engines. Not only had they blown up the power regulators, but his diagnostic as well. This had left them with only one choice, which was to revive as many of the passengers as possible and squeeze them onto the search module and the mining scoop. This presented its own problems, the first and foremost being the fact that there were over ten thousand passengers on the drifter and only room for about two to three hundred on the search module and mining scoop combined. That meant finding the more important passengers to revive first and all within about 15 hours.

  Tom looked at the hundreds of chambers which stretched out into the distance before him. None of the chambers he had seen so far had any markings. How he was supposed to find anyone important he didn’t know. Just as he was getting fed up with looking something stopped him dead in his tracks and made him look twice. Soon Tom was running, as best he could in mag-boots, along the stacks of chambers and sure enough there were more of them.

  “Captain, guess what I just found,” Tumbar’s voice blared at him from his communicator.

  “Empty chambers, I know, they’re dotted around everywhere,” replied Tom grimly.

  “I haven’t seen any empty chambers Captain, but I think I did find the command crew,” said Jimmy cutting in.

  “Good. Tumbar go back to the search module and ensure the medical system is ready in case we have any problems. Jimmy, I will come to you. Then we’ll seal the section off, do a viri-scan and try to revive one of these fellows. Now tell me exactly where you are…”

  #

  Tom gingerly adjusted the thaw controls on the hibernation chamber. Although he didn’t have much choice he was not happy to be reviving someone himself. After all it was Suzie’s specialty and she hadn’t lost a patient yet.

  The readout started to flash yellow indicating that the thaw was starting to move too rapidly and he adjusted the infusion rate of the biochemical igniters into the fellow’s bloodstream. He was an older man, with greying hair, a dignified look about him and hopefully the captain of the ship.

  Tom breathed a sigh of relief as the chamber readout turned blue again and then finally flashed green to indicate the end of the thawing. The fellows own metabolism started to kick in and Tom watched as his critical biochemical pathways came up to speed and stabilised.

  “Double check your security suit is sealed Jimmy. I am going to open up the chamber and I don’t want to leave anything to chance. If this crew really did reach its destination there is no telling what they could have been exposed to. As soon as the chamber is open you run the viri-scan. If it’s clear I’ll bring him around.”

  “Aye Captain, ready at your command,” replied Jimmy after a considerable amount of time nervously checking and re-checking his suit systems.

  Tom activated the chamber and the poly-glass liquefied and ran back into its reservoirs in the interior of the chamber.

  Normally they would have done the viri-scan using the chambers own medical diagnostic systems, but Tom was not inclined to trust anything on this ship anymore. Since he only had the portable viri-scan to work with Jimmy had to lean right into the chamber to enable its sensors to get close enough for an accurate full body scan.

  The viri-scan whirred away and Jimmy watched the readouts intently as he moved the sensors from the man’s feet up towards his head. Everything appeared to be normal much to Tom’s relief, right up to the point that the scanner reached the top of the man’s head.

  The man in the chamber suddenly lurched up and grabbed Jimmy just as the viri-scan started to sound its alarm.

  Before Tom could even react the man had Jimmy in a bear hug and was pushing his face hard up against the visor on Jimmy’s helmet.

  “Captain!” yelled Jimmy in panic.

  Tom quickly jumped to the chamber controls and tried to sedate the man using the chambers systems, but to no avail.

  “Damn it! Tumbar get down here now and come armed!”

  Tom grabbed at the man’s arms and tried to prise them loose, but he was strong, much stronger than he should have been.

  “Oh my god Captain, get this thing off me!” screamed Jimmy a new level of fear in his voice.

  “Try to stay calm, I’ll get you out.”

  With no weapon the only thing he could do was try breaking the man’s arms. As he searched around for something to us as a club Jimmy let out a horrible terrified scream that turned into a muffled gurgling sound. He started to thrash his legs about frantically and then his whole body started to convulse.

  Fear now gripped Tom in a way it never had in his last 20 years of service as a ship’s Captain. His first instinct was to run, but he had to try to save Jimmy so he found himself hitting the man in the side of the head as hard as he could, given the confined space and awkward angle.

  That was when he saw the tentacle that was projecting from the man’s mouth through the visor of Jimmy’s helmet and into Jimmy’s mouth.

  Worse still Jimmy was still alive and trying to scream. His eyes were desperate as he looked at his Captain.

  Tom hit the man in the side of the head with as much ferocity as he could. It was enough because the man’s eyes suddenly rolled back into his head and the tentacle snapped back inside his mouth, his arms dropped and suddenly Jimmy was free.

  Jimmy coughed and sputtered, but managed to roll out of the chamb
er and heavily onto the deck.

  Tom quickly activated the chamber again to put the man, or whatever he was back into stasis.

  “Are you OK?” demanded Tom standing back from Jimmy warily.

  Jimmy was unable to speak because he was too busy violently vomiting. After a effectively emptying his entire stomach contents onto the gantry he slowly rolled over and sat up.

  “Oh my god that thing was in my mouth! I thought it was going to kill me!”

  Tom grabbed the viri-scan from the deck where it had fallen with Jimmy from the chamber. He looked at it intently. There was some type of organism imbedded in the man’s brain, in some parts seemingly merging with it.

  Tom took several wary steps back as Jimmy suddenly started screaming and then violently convulsing on the floor again. It lasted only a few seconds then stopped. He stared up at Tom, now looking calm and relaxed. Almost as though nothing had happened he brushed himself off and stood.

  “How about you sit back down and rest there Jimmy.”

  “It’s alright Captain, I’m fine now. It’s not that bad once you let go. Actually it’s really wonderful, I understand so much now.”

  “You’re sick Jimmy now sit down that’s an order.”

  “They have existed for millions of years, they have seen civilisations come and go. When they found us they made contact, but we came to destroy them. They are not angry, they have seen it all before, it’s why they made contact. They can make us better. It will be wonderful.”

  “Tumbar where the hell are you?” demanded Tom urgently.

  “Two minutes Captain what is the situation.”

  Jimmy suddenly disengaged his mag-boots and leapt from the deck and floated at speed up along the stacks of chambers where he deftly initiated the thaw sequence on chamber after chamber as he went. Tom watched stupefied, no normal human being could do that so fast.

  “The situation is that two minutes is too long!” yelled Tom.

  Tom disengaged his own mag-boots and started floating as fast as he could towards the nearest internal safety door to escape. He was almost there seal when Jimmy plummeted down to land on the deck with a heavy thud and block his way. Behind and above him on both sides hundreds of the passengers were already out of their chambers and floating towards him.

  #

  Bui was poised at the flight controls of the Southern Cross. He did not want to waste even a second after the vortex jump was complete. As soon as the ship dropped out into real space he gunned the sub-light engines and headed in hard and fast to the drifter. It was already dangerously close to the belt, but if he did not get down and grapple fast the whole ship would be lost and he did not want to face the Captain if that happened because he was late.

  As soon as he was in distance to start grappling the search module moved up to dock with them.

  “As soon as we have docked I want this ship towed out to a safe range Bui,” requested the Captain, his voice unusually placid.

  “Aye Captain. Suzie please prepare the airlock.”

  “Already on it Bui,” replied Suzie. She was keen to get down to the passengers of the drifter and check their health.

  #

  Suzie waited for the airlock to go green and then opened it from her side. She smiled happily at the sight of the Captain, Jimmy and Tumbar. The Captain floated over to her directly and put his arms around her in a hug.

  “Just relax, it’s not so bad once you let go. I understand so much more now.”

  She looked at him strangely, then fearfully as his grip tightened and his mouth opened to reveal a tentacle that snaked out towards her.

  End