Into The Void

by Ryan Frieda

  “They were unable to contain this energy and it caused problems in the past with the destruction of ships. The were also unable to control where this energy would propel them. They were also unable to use this type of energy to power cities and said that it could cause planets to be transported several light years away in a moment. The device was purely experimental in nature but it could solve our problems. I also recommend we do not try this experiment anywhere in our galaxy, or any other galaxy for that matter. I recommend we try it in intergalactic space where if anything goes wrong we are not dealing with severe repercussions.

  “The ship is running fine. There are no problems with the ship and it is in prime condition. I will keep you up to date on any new information.

  “I also want to take the time to note that while I do not fully understand strong emotions, I do feel very alone out here. I have implants that help me understand strong emotions, but I did not know exactly what they would have felt like until now. The darkness is intense. Every sparkling dot on the horizon is a whole galaxy and there isn't a whole lot of them out here. The ship feels cold, and I am unable to feel temperature. The ship creaks under the pressure of constant FTL speeds and the heat that comes with it. There is a complete lack of noise in some parts of the ship except for a simple hum that your ears quickly tune out. The only time a noise happens is when the ship creaks. When that happens it often sounds like a fright train compared to the dull hum.

  “I am not human, but out here even I feel human. I feel the void of space all around me, swallowing me up. Captain Steele said that there was nothing else out here but him, except there was. I never understood that until now. There really is something out here with us. Scans don't show it, I don't see it, I don't hear it, but I do feel it. There is a large, foreboding, and judgmental feeling out here in intergalactic space that makes an AI fear, which is something AI's don't do. Whatever it is, I am willing to face it and willing to win.

  “Jamie, out.”

  After Jamie finished sending the message she went back to work on the droid trying to get it to talk. She had been working on it for 8 years, heavily modifying the code of the droid. It was originally something completely different from what it was now. She looked into the saved code she had tinkered with it some more. She kept working on it until it seemed to acted differently.

  “Can you speak?” Jamie asked the droid.

  “Yes.”

  Jamie let out a sigh. She had finally gotten it to speak. Its voice was a very 20th century generic robot voice and it didn't have a lot of personality but it was working. After getting it to finally speak she sat down and started a conversation with it. She knew she finally had someone to talk to. She knew the loneliness would finally start to fade.

  The breathing was heavy.

  “Help...”

  Life signs were dropping.

  “Please...”

  The silence was mind numbing.

  “Anyone...?”

  Darkness was invading.

  “Help...”

  The cold was increasing.

  “Can't... see...”

  The nothingness was enveloping.

  “Must...”

  The pain intense.

  “Air...”

  The burning, traumatizing.

  He opened his eyes to darkness. The holographic display on his suit was flickering. The helmet's face mask crushed. He was loosing lots of oxygen. He could barely feel his limbs. He was drifting off into darkness. He tried to move through the pain and almost passed out. He tried to get his bearings. There was nothing but rock in all directions. He was drifting and his suit had very little power left. He moved his head and noticed that his suit was severely damaged.

  He was feeling the nauseating effects of vacuum. He was spinning, twisting and turning with no bearings available. He knew his time was coming. He looked out of his helmet and saw that it was cracked. His face would be exposed to vacuum. He looked closer and noticed that a small holographic display had covered the hole flicking on and off occasionally blocking the air in his helmet from escaping. He knew his time was coming. He knew it was close. He knew he had one chance if he wanted to live.

  “Help me... please Jamie...”

  Jamie was talking to the droid on the bridge when she was pinged. She knew something laid ahead of the ship. She looked off into space and saw nothing. She knew something was off. She looked at the sensors on the ship and they said nothing. She wondered what the ping could have been.

  Jamie knew something was off. She floated around the ship to make sure that everything was okay. She floated around the ship until she came to Captain Steele's room. She knew immediately what had happened. Captain Steele was somehow alive. She turned the ship around and headed back. She knew it would take a while to reach him but she knew she need to try.

  Jamie threw the ship's engines into overdrive. She was going faster than many ships had ever tried. She watched the engines carefully for any sign of over heating. She was pushing the ship to its limits. If Captain Steele was alive it would be worth the damage to the ship. She knew that the ping would have been sent years ago for it to reach her now but it was still worth the try.

  The ship shook as they tried to sustain a speed several times faster than what it was designed to do. The ship started to creak and buckle. She called the droids out of the cargo bay to help reinforce the hull. The ship shook violently before a large piece fell off the outside of the ship. The sensors went crazy and the ship started to spin as the ship tried to redistribute the weight from the collapse of the FTL bubble. The engines overheated as they tried to maintain a straight non-rotating path.

  Jamie ordered one of the droids to keep a close eye on the engines and another on the part of the ship that was buckling the most. She went by the bulkhead that Captain Steele repaired at the beginning of the mission and noticed that it was about to give way completely. She ordered a droid to reinforce it with spare metal. She was notified that the droid in the engine room stopped responding and the engines where at critical levels.

  Jamie teleported her holographic image into the engine room only to notice it was on fire. She ordered two droids to take put it out. The ship shook violently and started to buckle again. She ordered more droids to reinforce the ship. She was just notified that another droid stopped responding at the bridge. She teleported over there and found a breach in the bridge window. She knew that the hole created would take a sustainable amount of work to fix and that it was going to tear the ship in half if she kept the ship going at the speed they were going. She had received a message that the port side hallway had a breach and they had lost a droid. She slowed the ship down to a crawl so that the droids could repair it but she kept moving the ship forward.

  She went to look at the navigation computer to see how far they needed to go and for how long. Just three weeks at double the speed she was just going and she would reach Captain Steele's last known location. The ship was in no condition to go at the speed of light however she knew that ultimately the mission wouldn't be successful in the long run without Captain Steele. She also knew that Captain Steele could be dead. She sent a signal out.

  “John, do you copy?”

  Jamie waited. She started to count the seconds. She counted several minutes hearing nothing.

  “Help... I...” She heard.

  “Hold on John, I'm on my way,” Jamie said.

  Jamie wasn't sure how she was getting a response so soon but she knew it was Captain Steele. She had to get there. She ran some diagnostics.

  “What's your condition John?” She asked and waited.

  She heard a response back.

  “Critical. Debris... all...”

  She knew something must be terribly wrong and that she couldn't go hauling the ship in there at the speed she was just traveling at otherwise she might hit the debris. She had to go into the area slow which means she had to go much faster than she was already going for 5 days to make up the time difference. Her diagn
ostics came back that the ship had a 35% chance of surviving at the current speed if the hull breaches are sealed. She ordered the droids to seal every hole as tight as they could.

  Jamie set the droids to repair the ship for ten hours to make sure the ship was holed up tight. She then pushed the ship to go faster and carefully watched the ship's sensors. After 4 days the ship was in such a condition that it could no longer sustain that speed and so she slowed it down substantially. She continued to fly the ship at the slow speed and when she arrived at the last known location of Captain John Steele she was amazed at what she saw.

  Jamie arrived at the last known location of Captain Steele and saw debris everywhere. Large chunks of sharp jagged rocks floated everywhere. The ship had well over 3 dozen hull breaches, severe system failure on all systems, and had lost gravity and life support in most of the ship. She knew that just a couple abrasive evasive maneuvers were all it would take to tear the ship apart. She knew that just one of those rocks hitting the ship would likely shear the ship in half. If she had known that Captain Steele's location was in this bad a condition, she would have never pushed the ship as hard as she did.

  Jamie knew she would never be able to scan for Captain Steele in all this wreckage.

  “John, can you give me a location?” Jamie asked.

  Jamie waited for minutes. She knew that it had been days since the last transmission. She scanned for any life forms. The estimated time it would take to find him would be days with all the debris. She knew Captain Steele didn't have that much time. She piloted the ship carefully to avoid any debris while the droids repaired what they could.

  “Star is starboard...” Jamie heard over the radio.

  Jamie knew that that would make her search easier, but not by much. All it meant was that the star was on his left side.

  “I need more John,” Jamie said.

  She waited and heard nothing. She moved the ship downwards, careful to avoid all the rocks. Jamie took a closer look at the rocks as she went by them. The looked very similar to the rocks Captain Steele described on the planet's surface. They were pointed in a direction, almost like a knife only jagged as well. She knew that only one decent hit from those things would destroy the ship, and a minor hit would make the ship harder to pilot.

  “Five rocks... shaped... zero.”

  Jamie looked for five rocks shaped like a zero. She looked and saw nothing of the sort. As she was looking, one rock scrapped up against the ship causing a massive hull breach in the electrical area. This ship's controls became very ridged and caused the ship to not maneuver correctly. She knew she had to slow it down. She looked for five rocks shaped like a zero again, only this time to make sure to watch everything else around her as well. Another rock came close and she tried to move the ship. This caused the ship to rotate as the rock hit the ship causing the lab to split open. The ship went into a spin.

  Jamie tried to recover from the spin but in the process caused the lab to tear off from the ship. The ship started to spin in the other direction as the loss of the lab and what little air it had caused the ship to be propelled in the other direction. She sealed the bulkheads to try and prevent any more air from being lost. She continued to look for five rocks that were shaped like a zero. Then a though came to her.

  “Do you mean that there are five rocks that look like a zero or that five rocks that form a zero? Please John,” Jamie begged over the radio.

  Jamie waited for a long time.

  “Second...”

  Jamie started to look around for five rocks that form a zero, and not five rocks that have a hole in them. She looked around when she saw them. She knew that getting close was going to be tough. There were tons of rocks moving around the ship as it was and there were even more near Captain Steele. She considered moving a droid into retrieve him but his condition was probably far too bad to be dragged so far back to the ship by a droid. The droids would probably run into a rock and she had no idea how badly damaged he was. She would need to send several bots, probably six total, one for each limb, then his head, and his torso. The last thing she wanted to do was tear off a leg by dragging him across the void. She had no idea just had bad his condition was, or even if he had a limb left on him.

  “John, what's you condition?” Jamie asked.

  Jamie waited for seconds, then minutes. 10 minutes went by before she tried to scan for his bio readings again. Nothing was transmitting. This meant only a visual inspection would help find him and help her decide what to do. She couldn't afford to loose any more droids. She knew she had to move the ship closer to him. Jamie piloted the ship carefully, to make sure she avoided the rocks around her. She moved the ship as close as she could before she knew that she was unable to move any closer. She was so close to him, only several hundred feet from him. She was still unable to get a clear visual on him due to all the debris. She sent out a droid to check on him and what she saw was not pretty.

  Jamie hardly recognized him. It was clear that he had sustained multiple 4th degree burns that burned through his skin and muscle to the point of burning his bones, multiple open fractures, skin that had succumb to vacuum and had lost all water molecules drying the skin and causing it to be cold and turn black with gangrene. Being exposed to vacuum also caused gas bubbles to swell up in skin so that parts of his suit appeared to be busting at the seams. His skin also had signs of frost and he had clearly developed muscle atrophy causing his muscles to waste away, and with him being exposed to zero gravity without any exercise his bones would likely have lost 50-60% of their bone density meaning his bones would snap like twigs upon returning to normal gravity. It looked like part of his body had become liquid as well. There was skin, muscle, and bone looking liquid floating all around him. She could see that his face mask was split, and there was a slight shimmering coming from the hole meaning the suit is trying to keep oxygen inside it.

  Jamie got out the droids and sent them to retrieve him. As she watched them go out she noticed that one of Captain Steele's legs was disconnected from him and one of his arms was only connected by his broken collar bone with his collar bone pointing out at a 60 degree angle towards his head. There was no skin or muscle tissue connecting his arm to his body. She couldn't fathom the thought that his arm was only held attached to his body by a broken and a protruding collar bone, that if there was any skin left around his arm pit area, would be outside of his shoulder.

  Jamie also saw that a large chunk of his suit was missing around his left side, causing some of his ribs to be burned along with some of his internal organs. She also noticed that 15 feet of his intestines were floating outside of his body along with what appeared to be his liver, stomach, and possibly a kidney. This means that the impact that hit his right side was so violent that it tossed his organs out an open wound on his left side. The flesh connecting these organs would have have had been ripped apart during the hit. She could also see some of them were inflated due to vacuum and burned as well. Having so much of them exposed to vacuum may make them completely unsalvageable. She also saw that part of his helmet was missing and massive burns were on his head that seem to go deeper than the skull which means part of his brain may be burned.

  Jamie wasn't sure if it was best to leave him or try to revive him. The damage was far too great for him to ever live the life he had once lived. He would be nothing more than a burden, unable to carry out the mission as successfully as he could have once done. She considered leaving him there but decided she would need his help to repair the ship.

  Jamie had a droid that was on the ship grab a space suit, a DSSM, a bunch of tools, plenty of food and water, extra medical supplies and had it store them in the med bay in the shielded middle section of the ship. She also knew she needed to reduce gravity in the med bay or else his bones would break when she brought him in there. She sent the message to the droids retrieving Captain Steele's body that they needed to be careful.

  The entry area and the hallway to the med bay had lost gravity and all li
fe support systems, but the med bay near the middle of the ship still had such necessities. She didn't need to worry about getting him to the med bay. She just needed to know how far his bones had deteriorated so she won't break them when she turned the gravity up.

  The droids carefully brought Captain Steel on board the ship and floated him to the med bay dodging the floating objects in the hallway as a droid in front of them carefully move the debris. Jamie had the droids bring out the med bay cot, had them put Captain Steele on it, and then moved the cot inside the med bay. She then let half of the droids outside the med bay to help maintain the ship. Jamie then slowly turned on gravity inside the med bay so she could operate properly. Injuries this great required some gravity because gravity meant some stability. She wasn't sure how much gravity was needed but some gravity was better than none. She wasn't even sure he was alive anymore. With no more bio readings coming from his suit it was impossible to know for sure until she started to work on him.

  Jamie turned the gravity up slowly. Once it had reached .25 standard Earth gravity she heard a bone break, Captain Steele scream in pain, and then stop moving. Jamie at last knew he was alive. He may be beyond help, but he was alive. She did a close detailed scan and found that Captain Steele's lungs had deflated making it so he couldn't breath without his suit helping him, and that his heart was only beating because his suit was forcing it to. His brain showed minimal activity, but when pain was brought on his brain's activity flared up. He was as good as dead, with only the suit to keep the most basic bodily functions running. She then started to remove the suit carefully, making sure to use equipment that would keep his heart beating and continue to help his lungs pump oxygen in and out of his lungs.