by Colin Weldon
The image flickered as all members of the bridge crew looked up at the small round object. It looked like a far-off planet of some sort. Barrington looked at the image and stroked the side of his face.
“Can we get in closer, David?” he said to Chavel.
“Hang on, let me try and boost the confinement signal,” Chavel said.
The image on the screen flickered and the round planet sized object doubled in size. Barrington stood from his centre seat and looked at Boyett who was staring at him mouth opened. There was a deathly silence on the bridge.
“Oh my God,” Leanne Ripley said from behind the captain breaking the uniformed silence.
The image on the screen was one they had all seen before. The huge metallic sphere had found them. This was not the replicated blue world they had first encountered. It was a deformed and twisted creation with huge jagged metallic edges and a gaping opening in its centre. Barrington looked at Boyett.
“Time to intercept?” Barrington said, his senses jumping into full command mode running every possible scenario through his head.
“Twelve minutes,” Boyett said.
Barrington looked at the killer planet on the main view screen.
“Everyone, be calm,” he said looking behind him at Ripley, whose face had turned a stone white, “Charly, fire up the FTL. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
He turned to the comm panel on his chair.
“Engine room, we need the FTL ring unlocked, we have incoming. How long until you can get that beacon launched?” he said.
“I’ll need ten minutes, Captain,” Tosh replied.
Boyett turned and looked at the captain and shook her head.
“You have three,” Barrington replied.
“But, we can’t activate the FTL ring until the beacon is clear,” Tosh said.
Boyett turned to the captain.
“Sir, all due respect, but we have to leave now. We can’t risk the safety of the ship to launch anything,” she said.
There was a silence on the bridge. Barrington thought about it. She was right of course, but if they left now and Carrie was to return, there would be no way for her to find them. His rationality began to waiver.
“She’s still alive, Charly,” Barrington said looking at Boyett.
Boyett took a breath.
“Captain, you know I’m right. I’m sorry, sir, but we have to leave,” she said.
Chavel turned around and looked at Barrington. He stood from his centre seat and looked around the bridge.
“I won’t leave anyone else behind, Charly, she’s still alive. We don’t have time to debate this. I have made my decision. If you wish to challenge that and relieve me of command, you would be correct to do so, but know this. I would not leave any of you out in the cold. It’s your call, Lieutenant,” he said calmly.
Boyett looked around the bridge.
“Trust me, Charly,” Barrington said to her, hoping she would not do what she was trained to do.
Boyett sighed and nodded at the captain.
“Tosh, you now have two minutes,” she said loudly and turned to her flight controls.
“Understood,” Tosh replied.
Barrington hoped that he had not just condemned them all to death.
The Unity
India pulled away from the airlock and slowly manoeuvred the ship around the umbilicus keeping a careful watch on The Kandinsky which followed closely behind, like a cat crawling towards a mouse. She took the vessel away from the main habitat ring of the Red Tribe and began to slowly get some distance from Earth One.
“Nice and easy, India,” Aron said to her from the seat beside her, “increase your speed to half sub light. The Kandinsky can follow comfortably, but do it slowly. I don’t want Escat getting spooked and firing on us in case he gets ambitious.”
“Yes, sir,” India replied in a rare show of protocol.
Aron had to admit, he preferred her when she addressed him by his name. It showed she was nervous.
“This won’t work you know,” Arturo said from behind them.
Aron had tied the chancellor up by tying his hands behind his back and securing a cable to one of the power conduits behind him.
“Be quiet, Chancellor,” Florence replied looking at him.
Aron had handed her the weapon to keep trained on Arturo. He was nervous about doing it at first. She looked unstable, but he gently and assertively pointed out that if she killed him prematurely, they would all be killed. So she had nodded and agreed to keep him in check.
“You ungrateful little bags of shit,” Arturo suddenly said forcefully.
Aron looked behind him and then towards Florence.
“Speak again and I’ll take my chances at sub light without you, understood?” he said.
Arturo just looked at him and growled. Aron tapped his comm pad.
“Engine room, you there?” he said.
“Go ahead, Aron,” Oliver replied.
“If you are finished with Vishal, I need him up on the flight deck,” Aron said.
Vishal had been in the engine room helping Oliver tweak the engines. Aron thought it a good idea to use the doctor while he had the chance.
“He’s on his way,” Oliver said.
The comm channel clicked off and there was silence again on the flight deck.
“Let me speak to them,” Arturo said quietly.
Florence stood up suddenly and pointed the weapon at his head. It looked like she was about to pull the trigger. “Wait!” Aron said, reaching behind his chair and grabbing her hand.
He looked at Arturo and got out of his chair taking the weapon from Florence. He had called his bluff. Aron was not going to shoot the chancellor and he knew it.
“Okay, Chancellor, let’s talk,” he said taking a seat opposite Arturo.
Aron looked at the man’s scrawny frame as he sat quietly with his arms behind his back. He smiled at him.
“Did you know, Mr Elstone, that it was a race of aliens that destroyed the Earth?” Arturo finally said.
Aron frowned and shook his head.
“That’s right. A thousand years ago we had the most beautiful planet in the galaxy and we were chosen for extinction. They wiped us out and we never even saw their faces,” Arturo continued, “never even saw their faces.”
“How do you know that?” Aron said.
Arturo smiled.
“I am the chancellor; I know everything. Did you ever hear of Sienna Clarke?” Arturo said.
Aron shook his head.
“Of course you haven’t. You see how ignorant you all are? The burden of knowledge I possess. She was the first chancellor when The Agathon abandoned us all to the depths of space and left us to fend for ourselves. She was assassinated when the civil war began. Before she was, she encrypted all of Earth’s data into a data block and hid it in the very walls of my office, deep within the metal walls. It’s still there you know. Behind the comm panel on the wall, I found it. I saw her desperate face as her reign over the colony crumbled beneath her feet. She spoke of the Signal Makers. Those that had destroyed us. She drones on somewhat in an over sentimental speech about finding our way and whatnot, but she also said that The Agathon had been lost while searching for another world. The world of the Signal Makers,” Arturo said.
Aron listened intently.
“The Agathon has a Faster than Light drive. But you already know that, don’t you?” Arturo said.
Aron did not reply.
“It’s been there. It has seen paradise. We must begin our race, pure of all that evil that the Signal Makers deemed so despicable. Don’t you see we are not meant to simply breed? We are meant to purify the human race and we cannot do that carrying the useless genetic baggage like we have been doing for so long. I had to act to save our race. You should all be thanking me. Grovelling for forgiveness for the life that I have allowed you all to have. If it was not for me, we would all be dead,” Arturo said.
Aron looked at the ground.
> “We would have found another way,” Aron replied.
Arturo laughed hysterically.
“How?” Arturo said through a fit of chuckles, “it was either we plug ourselves in or we die. There was no choice! And now look at us. Look at the ships we have made. The life we have led. We have food. Water. Air. And this is how you repay me,” he said trying to raise his arms behind his back.
Aron looked at him.
“Maybe you are right,” he said, “but you have tortured us.”
Aron looked at Florence who was staring out of a window.
“You have executed us, you have starved us, and made us into slaves. Maybe we should all be dead. Maybe that’s the way we were just meant to be,” Aron said.
Arturo’s features dropped and his eyes began to flicker.
“Set me free, you simple fuck!” he suddenly screamed, “you are all dead! The Agathon is mine and mine alone. I gave you life, you ungrateful little insects!”
Aron leaned back at the sudden ferocity of Arturo’s outburst. The door to the flight deck suddenly opened and Vishal stepped inside.
“You did this!” Arturo screamed at Vishal, “you did this!”
Vishal waited at the entrance and looked at Aron.
“Come in, Doctor, we were just having a talk,” Aron said calmly.
He looked at Arturo’s now red face and knew that there was something very wrong with him. There was duality about the man. He looked broken, but more than that, it looked as if there were two people in the one body. He looked at Vishal.
“Vishal, set up a link to the first buoy, let’s give the chancellor what he wants. I want to talk to The Agathon,” Aron said.
Arturo’s eyes lit up.
27
The Agathon
“Beacon is away, sir, four minutes to contact,” Chavel said.
Barrington looked at Boyett.
“Spin up the FTL ring, Charly, let’s get the hell out of here,” he said to her.
“Yes, sir, releasing now,” she said.
A slight vibration made the arms on the captain’s chair move, as the ships Faster than Light drive came to life. The ring that ran the length of the ship began to rotate. Barrington watched the view screen as it moved in front of the ship gaining momentum. He tapped his control panel activating the ships comm system.
“All hands, this is the captain, we are about to make our jump to hyperspace, secure all decks,” he said.
He was about to continue when a sudden jolt threw everyone into disarray. Chavel was thrown out of his chair and into Boyett’s. It was like they had been hit by something. A klaxon sounded and the bridge lights turned to yellow. Barrington could hear the sound of Leanne Ripley hitting a conduit behind him after being thrown across the bridge. The force of her impact drove the arm of his chair hard into his stomach knocking his breath out of him.
“Report!” he shouted at Boyett, “did something hit us?”
The g-force of the sudden jolt eased, as Chavel clambered back into his station.
“No, sir, hull is intact. No sign of impact,” Boyett said.
Barrington looked up at the view screen, it looked blurred and out of focus.
“Jesus,” Chavel suddenly said, “Captain, incoming object now ten thousand kilometres off the port bow.”
Both Chavel and Boyett looked around at Barrington.
Impossible, the captain thought.
“It must have made sub light jump within the system,” Boyett said.
“Status of the FTL ring?” Barrington said to her.
“Offline, sir, the impact or whatever it was, disrupted the magnetic attenuators. It will have to reset,” Boyett said.
“Time?” Barrington answered.
“At least twenty minutes,” Boyett said quietly.
Barrington looked at Boyett.
I’ve killed us, he thought to himself.
“Hard to starboard! Engage full thrusters,” he said, “David, get me a visual on that fucking thing on the main viewer.”
Boyett turned to her flight controls as Chavel refocused the targeting scanners on the object. The centre screen lit up with the visual they had all been dreading. A twisted planet-sized dark sphere grew in the view screen. It looked identical to the planet that had nearly destroyed them all and duplicated their bodies to serve its needs. The planet itself looked like someone had stuck a billion random engine components together.
“Sir, we’re not moving!” Boyett shouted from the flight chair.
“Cause?” Barrington asked.
“Unknown, it looks like there is an opposing force to our thrust, some sort of tractor pulse or something,” Boyett said.
It’s got us this time, you should have left, John. She’s dead and now you killed everyone on board, he thought.
“Bridge, this is the engine room. You better shut the engines down! We’re showing major red lines on the plasma coolant tanks,” said Tosh over the comm system.
“How long can you maintain full power?” Barrington asked him.
“Maybe a few minutes, John, but with serious risk to the core,” Tosh replied.
The captain looked up at the colossal creature that had taken his eye. It looked like its equator was splitting. The planet was opening up. It was happening again, only this time it had learned. It had them locked in and would swallow them whole.
“Hold the engines on full for as long as you can, Tosh, our lives are depending on it,” Barrington said.
“Understood, John,” Tosh said.
He was starting to feel regret that he had not started on the weapons systems for the ship sooner. He ran through his options. He wondered if the creature’s motives were simply revenge, or if it simply wanted to crush the ship into little bits with everyone on board. Then he remembered Llewellyn. This robotic alien planet wanted to replicate them. It wanted to dismember every life form on board his ship. It wanted to absorb them into its armies of replicated alien life forms. To take each of them apart piece by piece and use their replicated bodies to service its needs. That is something he could not allow. He was responsible for every life on this ship. Maybe it was time to be responsible for how they died. Perhaps it was the greatest responsibility in any commander. He could not let his crew suffer a fate worse than death. He tapped the comm system.
“Bridge to engine room,” he said.
“Tosh here, go,” came the reply.
Barrington took a breath.
“Tosh, what would we need to do to detonate the core?” Barrington said.
“Excuse me?” Tosh replied.
Chavel and Boyett looked around at him. By the looks of things, Boyett knew exactly what he was doing. It was probably something she was considering herself.
“You heard me,” Barrington said.
“Eh … If we engage the FTL drive and pull the coolant plasma from the core, it would cause a thermo nuclear explosion,” Tosh said.
Barrington looked around at his crew.
“How long?” Barrington said.
“Three minutes, more or less,” Tosh replied.
“On my order, I want you to do it,” Barrington replied looking at Chavel.
Boyett and Chavel looked at each other and turned back to their consoles.
“Understood,” Tosh said after a moment of silence.
“We will not be turned into those things, I won’t allow it,” Barrington said to his bridge crew.
“Options?” he finally said opening up his decision making process to his crew members.
Considering he was about to kill everyone on board, he thought it only proper to get everyone’s input.
“Captain, we have movement, the planet is pulling us inside,” Chavel suddenly said.
The image in the view screen showed the equator of the mechanical planet now completely split open. Its interior glowed red. It was about to feed.
“Sir, I have an incoming transmission from an unknown source,” Ripley said from behind him.
Her voice was
shaking. Barrington looked up at the monster.
“Let’s hear it,” he said.
The comm system crackled. Then they heard it.
“Tar … Gla ... Gdu!” said a low deep baritone mechanical voice.
It sounded like the growl of a huge animal. It sent a shiver up Barrington’s spine. The comm system clicked off. The bridge went deathly silent. He could feel the fear in his crew, as if it was part of the air itself.
“We’re being pulled in, Captain,” Chavel said quietly.
“Options?” Barrington said again.
The bridge went silent for a moment, then Boyett turned to him.
“Sir, we could vent the plasma from The Betty and detonate it with a directed burst from the dorsal thrusters. Maybe the explosion would disrupt the force of the beam,” she said.
Barrington smiled at her. She was nearly ready to captain this ship herself. Nearly.
“Nice try, Charly, but an explosion that size would tear a hole in the hull. And we’d lose our ability to jump to light speed,” he said.
Boyett looked at him.
“I don’t think jumping to light speed is going to matter, sir,” she said looking into his eyes.
She was right of course. Barrington thought about it for a moment.
Fuck it, he thought.
“Okay, Charly-” He began to say before Chavel interrupted him.
“Captain, I have another contact on the sensors,” he said.
Barrington looked over at the young man.
“What?” he said.
“Yes, sir, it came out of nowhere, looks like another ship of some sort,” Chavel said looking at his screens.
“Can we get a visual?” Barrington said.
The vibrations under his seat began to grow as the engines struggled.
“Yes, sir,” Chavel said activating one of the screens overhead.
The screen next to the one showing the terrifying planet lit up and showed the object gracefully gliding against a backdrop of stars. It was white and shaped like a perfect octahedron. It was huge. Its smooth perfect lines glistened in the light as it rotated on its axis.
“What the hell?” Barrington said to himself, “position?”
“It’s coming up fast, dead ahead, sir,” Chavel said looking up in awe at the strange craft.