by T. S. Smith
“Nope,” he replied.
“You worried?”
“Can’t say that I am.”
“Then why this again?” she asked, moving her finger and pointing to the cigarette and glass.
“Can’t a guy have a drink?”
“Only a guy committed enough to sneak all these glasses on the ship.”
“Well, they were for a special occasion,” he said and drank. The alcohol burned down his throat. “I had the dream again last night.”
“You want to tell me about it? Or do you want to just sit here and bask in the agony of being a responsible first officer?”
“We were next to some boats, back home. We were talking about what happened, the accident, how I crashed the vehicle and she died. It happened because of me.”
“Who were you talking to?”
“It was my dad and I again. He told me I had to get over what happened to her and that I needed to forgive myself. Mears was there in the dream too but we didn’t speak. I hurt her, Susan. The alcohol got to me and I crashed and it killed her. My wife burned to death in that thing because of me. How can I forgive myself of that?”
“She died in the accident, it wasn’t just you, and there is no sense in continuing to dig it up and hurt yourself. You’ve had too much time to think out here, Roy. We all have but your father is right, you need to let it go. You can’t let it affect the mission. I don’t mean to be rude but this isn’t the time to be going on about all this stuff.”
“I need to let it go.”
She wanted to change the subject and get him away from these thoughts. “What else?” she asked.
“What else what?”
“What else is in that head of yours?”
He looked at her and relented. “A ship, the Athena II,” Holland said. “I’m thinking about a giant scientific vessel named the Athena. One conducting research on V616, the closest gravity well to Earth’s system. I’m thinking about the ship that is sitting right out there, port-side, unresponsive.” He took another drink, “What did we travel eight years to get out here for, Susan? Do you think the Confederacy sent us out here to bring a missing crew home? I have my doubts, it’s an easy way for two crews to end up dead in my opinion, there is a low probability of success. Too much jeopardy for that. Those bunch of secretaries didn’t send us out here to bring anything back and I know it. They sent us out here for something else.”
“What’s the something else?”
“I’m not sure,” he said and picked up his cigarette from his small-pop made ashtray. “Over my pay grade if you ask me, but I think the Confederacy knows what happened to that crew and I don’t think that it’s because that cruiser ran out of batteries and left them stranded.”
The Athena II glistened in the darkness of space. It sucked his attention to its hull and called his name, it was hard to look away from it. He shifted the drink to her but she refused.
“It’s a long way out,” she said.
“Not long enough.” Holland took a drink himself and dragged off the cigarette. He looked down at his lap, “You know, I feel different somehow out here, seeing the ship with my own eyes, being so close to it. Maybe it’s the black hole or the cruiser or something else, but I feel different. It’s like something inside told me to order the crew onto the Athena II, to find out what bullshit the Confederacy set us up for. I think we need to get this thing over and done with. The sooner the better. They’re trying to cover something up and they’re using us as the rug.”
“Could be or you could just be into some serious conspiracy theories built up over eight long years. I do wonder what they found out here though and there is something about this place that doesn’t feel right to me either.” Her chopped hair hung diagonal over her shoulder in long loose strands, some were tangled at their ends. Sometimes she just wished it could work between them, but he was just too distant, she wanted more. “I know what you mean, I can feel it. I wonder why they’re queit too.”
“Well, that’s what we’re here to find out,” he said.
“I’ve spent some time thinking up all the bad things that can happen to you guys when you’re over there.”
“I don’t care too much for thoughts like that. It’s just that we’ve got a job to do, find the chambers, pull any data, locate the crew, extract if possible. Get the ship back. Recovery: the golden word of the Confederacy. Sounds to me like they want their money back, buyer’s remorse. It’s about as far as I want to go with my thoughts.”
The conversation was growing stale for her.
“You know, eight years does a lot to a girl’s loneliness,” she shifted closer to him.
Her eyes stole his gaze from the Athena II for a moment and held them. It was beautiful but it was only a moment. Maybe it was the drinking, or the dreams, but anger flooded his face. He answered quietly, “Not the time. You understand that, don’t you?” he asked.
She hadn’t expected anger. “Yes sir, oh Captain, my Captain.”
“Don’t bullshit with me,” he said.
“I’m not, I’m just guessing the trip would have been easier if we could have been in stasis and not talked to each other at all. Instead, we got eight years together.”
“You need to realize that the more people go into stasis and put their bodies through that crap, they don’t come out again, there’s not some perfect science behind it. Protocol didn’t save Mears.” He looked at her and she was quiet. “Did it? I followed protocol then, didn’t I? Your Captain followed what I was supposed to do for those Confederacy nutcases. And Mears found out the hard way and you took his place. You can dream all you want about us when you’re in that fucking ice chest feeling your lungs collapse in on themselves like he did. They cancelled the stasis program because of what happened to him but we still needed to make it out here, eight years or not. Our job is out there, in the wild west of bullshit, and all these paper-pushers back in the Confederacy that make up this protocol don’t have one fucking clue what it is like in deep space. I have a job to do, we have a job to do, so return your attention to that ship, we board in fifteen minutes. Mind on duty.”
Fuck him.
“Yeah, I get it,” she said. She wanted to punch him in the face but thought it would be better to change the subject again. “Well, that was a gutsy call you made for us, to board the Athena like this. No response, no contact, no boarding. I don’t think the crew was too happy about it, except maybe Yolanda, she’ll love the action. She get’s off on it, a girl’s got to get her kicks in somewhere with no men around, you can understand something like that, can’t you?” She looked in his eyes and he was quiet. “Don’t put us all in danger, Roy. I’m with you no matter what your decision is and I want you to know that but to go out on that thing could cost everyone their lives.”
“It’s the right call.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
INTERVIEW: PART III
/declassified
/operation/action/event_horizon
/interrogations
end
Interviewer: Would you say that your relationship with the captain was personal in nature?
2nd Officer S. Roberts: No, it was a professional relationship. His only love was space and he made that very clear to me. I may have wanted something more for a time but it wouldn’t have worked in the long run.
Interviewer: Sounds bitter.
2nd Officer S. Roberts: It’s not.
Interviewer: Why didn’t the team come back, Susan?
2nd Officer S. Roberts: I’ve already told you, they were lost on the ship when it went critical. That is how it happened.
Interviewer: When the Poseidon went critical?
2nd Officer S. Roberts: The Athena.
Interviewer: The Athena or the Poseidon went critical?
2nd Officer S. Roberts: Both.
Interviewer: We received communication from the Poseidon’s guidance systems that the ship was set on a disastrous path with the event. Work
with me here, we need to get this straight. How do you think the public is going to react to this?
2nd Officer S. Roberts: Both of the ships went critical and they never fucking came back, do you understand me? I don’t give a damn about what the public thinks. My friends died out there.
3
The Poseidon had not received any communication from the Athena, no messages, no transmissions, nothing. Still the ship drifted radiant within the starlight juxtaposed against the event horizon of the black hole where it was passive to every one of the Poseidon’s inquiries. Susan looked at the ship and wondered what happened, her hands shook at the CCD, her hands always shook when she was anxious. Below the first deck in the bay the team entered the Transport Vehicle (TV-1a) and prepared the ship for departure. They suited up and wore the semi-transparent snakeskins, also known as clingers. Each had a face shield that had been polarized with a gold lace, which could be activated when needed, and an oxygen recovery tank. Near the mouthpiece on the lower part of the shield were two small inverted conical gas pipes that appeared to observers like fangs, hence the nickname snakeskins. The suits had been designed to regulate internal blood sugar levels and maintain bodily functions over long periods of time. The body's hydration levels, excrements, temperature levels, and energy would all be maintained for up to five days of heavy activity. The crew was ready for the mission.
After Holland had made the declaration to board the ship, the team had followed the order to break protocol but had done so with apprehension. Each member of the crew harnessed themselves in, pulling the straps tight through the loops of the snakeskin and then drawing in their breath. To one side of the bay sat Yola, Dettman, Boyer, and an empty seat for Holland in that order. To the other sat Michaels, Suk, Romavich, and Jax.
Boyer and Jax were the Confederacy’s military applicants whom were selected based on their outstanding qualifications. Boyer had legitimately placed high throughout his lifetime of service, Jax had done what was necessary to get to the top, it was a dog-eat-dog kind of world. They each carried a tank and a flamethrower in case the crew of the Poseidon ran into any unusual circumstances. Boyer had lost a younger brother in his early life and was left to be the golden child of his parents who could do no wrong, the only thing was, he had seen his fair share of trouble as a youth.
Michaels sat fingering the teeth of his shield. He had been selected based on his technical expertise, a mechanical engineer and computer scientist specializing in advanced control systems and dynamic analysis. Suk was the medical expert, Yolanda was a mathematician trained to pilot the ship and was assisted by Romavich. Dettman had been assigned to navigation and cruiser guidance systems while Roberts rounded out the nine-person crew as the communications officer. She would stay aboard the Poseidon stationed at the CCD during the mission and would wait to hear back anything from the team on the Athena. Holland was the first officer of the crew, a highly-credentialed individual throughout his life, he was also a closet drunk who was haunted by his past.
Holland floated into the bay and pulled himself into his seat next to Boyer, the stench from the alcohol and cigarette smoke was so apparent that the crew could smell it through their filtration systems. The captain strapped in, pulling the nylon cord hard against his body so that the back of his shoulder blades were tight against TV-1a’s padded transport seat. Yola pulled down the data pad from the side of the bay and it slid right into position over her lap. The pad showed a number of toggles, switches, and LED indicator lamps. She thumbed three of the toggles and then pushed the first switch down. The cabin of TV-1a pressurized and the revolving turbines of the Poseidon jettisoned the craft into space where it became buoyant among the stars, unsecured by the protection of the master ship.
With the mission live, the crew’s hearts throbbed and their bodies pulsed with the anticipation of their own success, or perhaps the beat of unforeseen disaster. It was a quiet moment between them, which was rare amongst the particular individuals that were aboard the ship. A dim red light illuminated the cabin and they saw each other’s faces frozen in fear as the craft moved toward the Athena. The feelings of dread and expectation weren’t completely foreign to them, but it was as if some external force had wedged its way aboard the transport vehicle and had begun to worm its way between the members of the team. They all felt it, it was quiet and invasive, inescapable, foreign, alien. Success seemed like it would be determined only by the execution of the team but there was something else. The cabin went black and Yola gazed through the starboard-side windows at the Athena as they approached the spacecraft’s hull.
“Now approaching,” Yola said as she looked at her data pad. “Vector normal, beginning reverse thrust.” She moved her hand to the metal control knob closest to the screen and pulled it back. Her suit strained from behind with the force of the craft.
“Course good,” said Dettman. “Keep her steady.” He smiled at her but she was focused on the direction of the craft and didn’t notice.
“We’re looking good,” Holland said. “Just like the training.”
Holland’s thoughts went to his old friend Mears who had lost his life in preparation for the mission. Engineers had praised the development of biological suspension, stating that it would lead to a cultural revolution with the terraforming of distant systems and allow for the first true expansion of the human civilization. But things hadn’t gone as planned during the preparation and the truth was that stasis was foreign and extremely dangerous. Holland had known it at the time and he had told them, but their instructors hadn’t listened. In stasis’s early stages, Holland found the project to be unstable and Mears, his friend, his only true friend, had been a casualty of their failure to anticipate the consequences of biological suspension’s effect on circadian rhythms of a human body. Protocol.
“You ready for this?” Holland asked of Boyer watching the Athena grow to their front.
“I guess so.”
“We got these babies right here if any dark little creatures decide to sneak up on us,” Jax said to Boyer while patting the flamethrower, his voice was muffled through the radio. “I hear the Confederacy got me and Boyer out here to protect all your little asses from whatever kind of creature is on that research vessel.”
“Leave aliens to conspiracy guys, it’s all bullshit anyways,” Yola said as she guided the ship. “And try to shut the fuck up so I can concentrate, we gotta make it on the ship first.” The red lights of TV-1a came back on and illuminated the interior of the transport vehicle. Guidance information splashed across the screen in an advanced dot-matrix processing format, Yola’s specialty.
She guided the ship’s descent into position against the Athena II’s Universal Docking System (UDS) and the craft slowly engaged with the port. All docking stations of the Athena-class voyager ships were engineered to receive spacecraft using the UDS. When the ship was fabricated in the upper atmosphere of Earth, it started from the docking hold out. It was a series of interlocking carbon-laced bolting mechanisms that would pull two free-floating ships in space together to form an airlock. Once the connection was established, the UDS would pressurize the airlock with oxygen, hydrogen, and other gasses in the exact proportions to duplicate those found in the atmosphere of Earth. The deployment of such a device was implemented into the Poseidon’s design, a ship specifically built to reach the Athena II and board her. The question was if they could get the pumps in the ship working to provide the same atmosphere when they went aboard.
The team was thoroughly prepared for this and every contingency had been accounted for. A plan had been created for every possible outcome of what was to be found on the Athena II. And as the locking mechanisms of TV-1a wound into the UDS, the general consensus amongst the Poseidon’s search team, with the exception of Holland, was that the Athena had lost power and an electrical failure of the oxygen pumps had led to severe oxygen deprivation for the Athena’s crew. After minutes, every living organism within the ship would have been dead. Holland hoped there would
be no need to use the flamethrowers and Jax and Boyer would be flying back to Earth as one bored pair. The red lights within the cabin of TV-1a turned orange, then yellow and blinked twice, then a light green.
As the innards of the UDS grabbed and locked TV-1a into place against the Athena II, the ship violently jolted, shaking the crew and making use of their harnesses. The metal groaned under the strain of the meshing gears and the inevitable beeping sounded out from the transport vehicle. The obese frame of the research ship wailed from the stress and strain while it deformed from the imperfect fit.
Damn engineers, Holland thought.
The wail ceased.
Condensed oxygen coated the ships floor and rose as the airlock sealed and the pressure inside the cabin equated with that of the Athena II. Unknown to the crew, due to the snakeskins, heat flooded from the large ship into the smaller transport and would have killed them all if not for the protective coatings that enclosed their beings. Holland detached himself from the cargo bay wall, floated to the control panel of the UDS, and opened the hatch into the larger ship. The mechanical seals broke and shifted apart for the first time in more than eight years, allowing the team entrance into the Athena. The air then twisted from extreme heat to deadly cold as was the nature of space, wild, unpredictable, and unforgiving.
***
There is something alive about V616 and I can feel it. It calls to my body and to my thoughts like a siren that finally has someone to listen to its song. It sings for me to come close, to guide us closer to the event, to abandon our resolve and relinquish our curiosities that hold our darkest secrets. It tells me that I have the power alone to do it, to help us. But I fear that if we are seduced by the enchanting mistress we will never return and I need to reject that. It tells me to do things, awful things, to give in to it but I cannot let that happen. Mears wouldn’t and I won’t. The melody that I hear is only the call of life, of the wild, of the mysterious frontiers that lay beyond the certainty of my knowledge. It is the call of adventure and of danger. It is the call of life and of death. It gently whispers into my ear to forsake the grief that I feel for my wife. You won’t feel them anymore it says. It tells me that this is my life now, a life amongst the frozen carbon tubes and gold foil wrapped cylinders. It’s a place where the lights pry into the darkness like outstretched fingers grasping for relief from the terrible things that have happened to me. This ship is completely silent, completely still, lifeless. The chill of deep space swells within my soul and I wonder if this is how Mears felt as the fluids filled his lungs? I wonder if this is how the others feel now? I wonder if the others hear the call as I do?