Discovery (Terran Chronicles)

by Jackson, James

  Glancing around the bridge he feels a little unsure, he had expected more, he is actually a little disappointed. On a hunch he touches the band where it’s lit. The lighted area increases. As he runs his finger further up, the lit section expands. Looking up he can see that the stars seem to be shimmering.

  Andrew looks back and forth between his laptop and the alien console. He leans to Joe and exchanges quick whispered words. Not feeling very confident, but wanting to report something he sounds out. “If I am reading this correctly, Mars is approximately twenty minutes away.”

  Cindy raises an eyebrow. They are flying to Mars in less time than most people spend getting to work.

  “John, take us in slowly, let’s play it safe,” she smiles, “this time.”

  John slides his finger down the lit area and watches the band shrink down. He looks over to Andrew, questioningly.

  Andrew taps commands into his laptop, touches a symbol on the Gamin console, then beams a massive smile. “A bit over an hour now, say seventy minutes, give or take.”

  Cindy relaxes a little, still a quick trip.

  Joe has been busy verifying Andrew’s data whilst monitoring the twenty nuclear reactors. “This ship seems to have built in capacitors for every system, as though the ship needs vast amounts of power for brief periods of time. I don’t get it, we’re running this ship on two percent power, what on Earth do the Gamin do with the rest?”

  Though it was not really meant as a question George answers. “This ship is missing main shields, weapons, and who knows what else.”

  Cindy frowns a little at this. “So we don’t have shields?”

  George replies in his usual manner. “No, well yes, well it’s complicated. We have navigational shields which deflect particles and provide data for the various systems that control gravity and inertia. Without those systems we would not be able to accelerate or decelerate at these rates.”

  Something about this bothers Cindy, but she puts it out of her mind. Later she will wish she had studied this whole process much more in depth.

  She asks the obvious question. “Am I to assume that the main shields are for combat?”

  George is receiving a lot of data as he is laterally monitoring every system. “Yeah, and for deflecting larger objects.”

  Joe has been watching power reserves and also starts to understand how the ship’s power grid and various capacitors work. “This ship is designed to have an intertwining power grid. Even if one section were damaged, the various systems could probably still draw power. It’s like a city’s power grid really, very hard to knock out, and even if you did, just about every system has a built in battery backup or capacitor, or whatever it’s called.”

  Cindy considers this carefully as the minutes fly by quickly. Such redundancies would only be needed on a combat vessel, surely. She looks over toward Peter, he is obviously deep in thought.

  John surprises all of them. “Coming up on Mars, disengaging sub-light engines, entering orbit.” Looking down he sees a planet like symbol, it is unlit. He has no idea what it does, but it appeared once they achieved orbit over Earth, vanished during the trip, then reappeared as they approached Mars.

  They all stare in awe at the scene before them. John has once again shown his piloting prowess giving them an exceptional view of the planet. Cindy finds the view odd, almost unsettling. They are either flying upside down, or the planet is above them, either way the view is filled with the red planet, Mars.

  The bridge speakers blare into life. “Someone had better come down to deck, um,” The sound of someone throwing up can be heard during the pause. “Oh, uh deck eleven, forward section.”

  Cindy is concerned and alarmed. “What is the problem? And who is this?”

  “This is Patrick, we met in the mess area once. You could send a medic, but there is nothing...” The voice cuts off, but not before the sounds of heaving and splashing can be heard once more.

  Cindy looks around the bridge then points to Radclyf. “Go, and get Henry. I will meet you there. I want to see what this is about.”

  Cindy, Radclyf, and Henry look upon the grisly scene in dismayed shock and horror. Nearby Patrick is leaning up against a wall, he is splattered with gore, and quite pale. Cindy staggers away, adds to Patrick’s contributions on the floor, then quietly leaves.

  Henry looks up at the ceiling, the walls, and the floor. All are just smeared with a slimy red goo. Some of it drips to the floor in long disgusting tendrils. Radclyf has seen some ghastly combat scenes, but nothing he knows of could do this to a person. There is just nothing left but smudges and puddles.

  Henry takes a step forward and points at one particular blob. “Look, even the bones are pulverized.”

  Radclyf looks over the scene as detached as he possible can. “This is not from an explosion. Looks more like compression damage.”

  “I saw something like this once.” Says Henry in surprise. “Guy’s chute failed, he landed on an airport runway. But even then he was still mostly recognizable, mostly.”

  “Look where we’re standing.” Radclyf says as he gazes downward, suddenly aware of how light he feels.

  Henry looks down at the deck plates, those installed on Earth by various welding crews, there are no alien gravity plates in this section. The hairs on the back of his neck lift up. Both he and Radclyf bolt for the Gamin flooring. Radclyf looks around in alarm. “We need some answers, find out who that is, was. I am going to the bridge. Patrick you’re with me.”

  Patrick holds up a hand. “Three, there were three people with me.”

  Both Radclyf and Henry look back at the bloodied area in disbelief.

  On their way back to the bridge, the pair detours, allowing Patrick to grab a quick shower and some fresh clothes. Radclyf tries to do some rough calculations, then gives up, too much of the ship is missing gravity plates for him to figure anything out. Once showered, Patrick follows him silently to the bridge.

  Cindy looks at Patrick with compassion. “We need to know everything, so we can prevent this from happening again.” She is so glad he showered, the smell and splattered blood were way too much for her.

  Patrick’s once sparkling eyes now greet her in a vacant stare as he intones. “We were all walking along. Ya have to be careful when stepping onto our own plating, sometimes ya feel normal, sometimes lighter or heavier, ya just hurry across. Once I was weightless, it’s weird.”

  She does not interrupt his ramblings, but rather encourages him, “go on.”

  His stare gains some life as he recounts today’s ghastly event. “I dropped my tool belt, as I bent down to pick it up I got splashed, like someone was throwing something on me. I looked up and they were gone; just gone. I was too scared to move. The stuff was just everywhere.”

  Cindy feels the man’s distress. “Who were they?”

  “Ya met ‘em. Ralph, Darren, and Richard, we’re welding contractors. We should not have stayed.” He shakes his head in resignation as he lowers his eyes.

  An image of the men playing cards, comes to her. More deaths, and these men died on my watch due to my negligence.

  She thought something was odd about the gravity plating earlier, and is berating herself for not thinking it through. Something else about the gravity is really bothering her now. “George, or Joe, why is there any gravity at all on the deck plates that we installed?”

  George and Joe look at each other silently. Finally its John who ventures an answer. “Residual gravity effects.” He shrugs his shoulders. “There is gravity on the decks above and below, besides as long as there is no speed or course correction you’re fine.”

  Cindy looks a little confused at the answer.

  John holds up his hand. “Imagine my hand is moving at a set speed. Any object on my hand will stay there. Now if I make small moves, anything in my hand will wobble. But a sudden change, and well, whatever that speed change is, will be the speed of the impact against any object in the way.”

  Cindy puts a hand to
her mouth. “So those three people hit the wall at half the speed of light.”

  Peter has been quietly listening, then adds his council. “Cindy, you can’t blame yourself for what happened.” He can see that she is deep in thought. “Don’t try to wrap your head around it either I am sure theorists will have a field day with this. Some will undoubtedly tell us that what happened is impossible.”

  “This tragedy was so avoidable, if only we had thought about it first.” She pauses as she feels the responsibility of their deaths weighing even more heavily on her. “This won’t happen again. I want all of the decking that is not Gamin gravity plated painted a bright color. I don’t care how we do this. I also want some warning lights, or something installed.” She looks around the bridge, her face a stern mask.

  George considers her orders. “I shall get Olaf to assist, our suits will provide us some protection. Once it’s safe enough the maintenance crews can take over.”

  Cindy’s mouth draws into a determined line. “Each time we plan to make any piloting changes I want everyone to be safe.”

  Location:

  Starship Terran

  Mars Orbit

  With the joy of arriving at Mars being overshadowed by these deaths, Cindy decides to wait for a day before scouting Earth’s nearest neighbor. She wants to offer her respects to the dead. She orders the crew to get some rest as the following days may see them quite busy.

  This pause ends up being quite fortuitous for other reasons. Radclyf’s and Hayato’s combat teams have been methodically searching the ship for anything unusual. There is a lot of unused space onboard, this extra day means that all eight of them are out scouting. It is Chokichi who discovers the group of stowaways hiding out in a forward section of the ship. He slinks away undetected, then reports his findings to Hayato.

  Enlisting Joe’s help, Hayato and Radclyf pull up deck plans of the Terran. The stowaways have been quite clever in their choice of hideout. With nearby exits to decks above and below, and three side branches, they almost got away without being detected at all. While the combat teams discuss options, Joe surprises them with an idea of his own, and they like it.

  Radclyf and Hayato debate whether or not to tell Cindy, they finally decide that she should know. Not wanting to alert anyone else to their plans, it falls on Peter to inform her.

  Cindy, still sleepy from being woken up, looks blankly at Peter.

  “Stowaways? How many? What kind of stowaways? What are you doing in my room?” She asks, already sure she knows the answer.

  Peter grimly replies. “The kind with weapons and the desire to use them. We don’t know exactly how many, but quite a few according to Chokichi.”

  Chewing on her lower lip for a second she suddenly stops, her eyes narrow as an unusually cruel thought comes to mind.

  “I would like you to interrogate any survivors.” Her voice is devoid of emption.

  He is not used to witnessing this side of Cindy, the tough calculating side, he thought her to be soft. “Yes ma’am.” His respect for her just went up another notch. She cares for her crew deeply, but oh, to be her enemy is a dour mistake.

  Peter casually makes his way to the mess area, grabs a drink, then yawning wanders off. Inwardly he smiles, the others should be in position soon, time to join them.

  Laying prone on the flooring Radclyf glances downward. The access way is clear, he gives Peter a thumbs up. With each side passage being covered by two men, it leaves the lower path as the only unprotected egress. Peter looks at his watch and waits as the seconds tick by. The instant the minute changes muffled gunfire can be heard from below, a bedlam of fire from many directions. Almost immediately additional gunfire can be discerned coming from different weapons. The terrorists are firing back, and by the sounds of things it’s all getting a lot closer.

  Radclyf snaps his head back, unclips a grenade, then counts to three. He drops the grenade to the deck below with devastating precision. The four men huddled there are all looking outward and caught totally off guard. The powerful blast hurls them into the walls or onto the floor, none survive. The grenade’s effects wash up the access way to where Radclyf and Peter were laying just a split second before.

  Sporadic gunfire shoots up this access way, then a grenade pops up into the air, and bounces onto the deck. A second later it too detonates with resounding force, but no one is hurt by the blast. Cautiously, a man enters the access way between these two levels, he blindly fires upward into the darkness. The ricocheting bullets cut the man to ribbons. The hatch overhead has since been closed.

  Joe listens carefully then closes three more access ways, corralling the survivors downward and forward. The stowaways retreat only to discover previously open corridors are now closed off as well.

  The two combat teams press onward as the withdrawing terrorists haphazardly return fire. Leaving a trail of bodies, they fall back more and more, until finally they are at the very end of a corridor. With all avenues of escape gone they have nowhere else to go.

  The remaining group of terrorists hunker down and lay an impressive barrage of fire back the way they came. Hayato’s team is in the lead and holds back, waiting for the trapped men to exhaust their ammunition. Realizing their fate, one of them opens up his jacket and removes a small bottle. The swirling gasses within this sealed container are a magnificent green. With his other hand he pulls a grenade from his belt.

  It is at this time that Hayato sneaks a peek around the corner. His eyes widen at the sight of the green material and the man’s crazed expression. His hesitation almost costs him his life. Akira pulls him back not a moment too soon, the wall where he was standing is pinged by numerous bullets.

  Hayato grabs Akira back. “They have more of that green gas. Everyone, RUN!”

  Akira’s mouth drops open, he is speechless. Radclyf’s catches up to the team just in time to see them all turn tail and run toward him. Without asking why, he also turns and runs.

  One of the terrorists loudly calls out. “Infidels, you all die now!”

  Hayato tries to ignore what is behind him as he sprints for all his worth. Up ahead is another section that can be closed off. All he has to do is make it that far and he will be safe. Radclyf is already there, a hand on his microphone. Joe is on the bridge listening, his finger poised over a control, awaiting the order to seal the section.

  Hayato is still sprinting as one by one his men join Radclyf’s.

  The explosion is truly colossal, much more than would be caused by a grenade or two. Hayato dives forward as Radclyf gives the order to seal the corridor. Joe does not hesitate, he touches the control. A wall section starts moving, narrowing the space just as Hayato’s arms cross the threshold. Friendly hands grab for him and hoist, pulling his legs clear of the fast closing wall section. The massive explosion strikes the far side of the door a split second later. Everyone can feel the floor vibrate as the force of the detonation expends itself fully against the closed off passage. It’s fury vented the team heave a collective sigh of relief as the doorway holds.

  Hayato gets up, and between gasps, gives Radclyf some unnerving news. “They had that green toxin with them.”

  Everyone stares at the doorway, hoping the explosion did not damage the seal.

  Joe waits for a few seconds then hesitantly taps his communication symbol. “Radclyf?” He says questioningly. “You there?”

  Radclyf glances around, everyone is accounted for and safe. “Joe, great work, everyone is fine. The explosion was contained, along with the toxin.”

  “TOXIN! What toxin?” Joe says in alarm.

  “Hayato and I have both had run ins with this particular group. They are, well were, in possession of a deadly toxin.”

  Joe looks at his console with dread. “I did not shut down the ventilation systems for that section, I just closed the wall off….” His voice trails off as he feverishly works to shut down the ventilation for the sealed area. As he does so, the life support symbol starts to flash. He is too late, s
omething has made the symbol flash. Oh that can’t be good.

  Radclyf, and those around him all start to look at the numerous ventilation ducts. There suddenly seems to be a lot of them. “Well, you did something, or we would all be dead by now.”

  Joe just stares at the Gamin console. “I did not get time to do anything effective.”

  Henry slaps his forehead. “Oh my, I wonder? I need to check something in the medical bay.” With that he jogs off.

  Radclyf is too curious to just stand idle, so he follows. The rest of the men break into groups as Hayato hands out assignments. The two teams have become so cohesive that even Paul and Jim follow his orders without question. Peter also walks off, he is going to report the events to Cindy.

  While the teams are cautiously scouting out the surrounding area seeking survivors, Henry gets to work. After a while it becomes quite clear that there is not going to be a quick solution. Radclyf leaves him to his work and heads to the bridge.

  Henry eventually has his answer and arrives at the bridge to find the crew all present. Cindy stands as John, Andrew, and Joe all turn to him. Even George and Peter are there awaiting Henry’s findings. Radclyf, with a slight nod, gives Henry the go ahead to report his findings to them all.

  “Well,” Henry begins. “We can thank George, or more accurately, whoever poisoned George, for our survival.” He offers a reproachful smile. “The suit neutralized the poison, then at some point in time updated the cure to the main life support system.”

  George frowns at the explanation. “But I was poisoned in Olaf’s suit and connected to the life support systems with mine. You know, when I replaced the core air sample.”