Lost in Magadan: Extraterrestrials on Earth

by William Lee

  The shuttles did not “take off” so much as they were catapulted along a very short track. After being ejected from the hanger, the shuttle would travel under its own power. As Stella and Forte walked down the center aisle, they saw a man crawling out from beneath one of the jump shuttles. Stella instantly recognized the man as Chief Belois. Belois stood up, his dark blue uniform, face and hands covered in a black tar like substance. As he walked from the front of the shuttle towards Stella and Forte he said, “Commander Forte and Captain Stella, I was not expecting you for another two hours.”

  Forte Smiled, “No problem, Chief. We are a little ahead of schedule on the pre-entry systems check.”

  The Chief, whose primary responsibility was to maintain the jump shuttles and hanger bay, shook his head in disgust, “I got three jump shuttles that won’t clear the hanger.”

  Captain Stella asked, “What seems to be the problem? Will the hanger bay doors not open or the blast shields not close?”

  Chief shook his head, “No, No, nothing as simple as that. The jump shuttles are not lined up on the tracks properly. If launched, the shuttle would get hung up on the track and not clear the hanger.”

  Stella looked puzzled, “So they would launch half way and get stuck. How would we retrieve the crew and cargo with the hanger bay door open and the shuttle stuck partially out in space?”

  Forte interjected, “We would have to send several crewmen out in space suits; it would take hours to retrieve the crew from a failed launch, as Chief describes.”

  Chief said, “I don’t think we can fix it before we reach Earth.”

  “Do your best to get the shuttles back on track, I’m sure it won’t matter. I don’t think there has ever been a time when we deployed all the shuttles at once. Anything else to report?”

  “No Sir!” The Chief snapped to attention and placed his hand over his chest, the equivalent of a military salute on Earth.

  Forte moved his hand to his chest and nodded at the Chief, the Chief disappeared beneath the jump shuttle to continue his work.

  Stella touched Forte’s elbow and smiled, as if to steer him further down the aisle of jump shuttles. Normally, she would not show that much affectation in an open space, but she knew no one else would be in the hanger bay. “Shall we continue our pre-entry inspections?”

  Forte grinned, relationships were not illegal aboard long-distance cargo ships like the Impegi, but there still had to be a decorum. They had to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Forte believed that most of the crew was oblivious to their relationship; at least, he had never mentioned it to anyone. “Shall we move along to the antimatter reactors?”

  “We shall, Commander,” she drew out the word commander and intentionally twirled her long silky blonde hair.

  Forte knew what tonight’s activities would consist of, but for now, there was work. “Shall we take the stairs down to the reactors?”

  Forte and Stella walked to the other end of the hanger bay, past the shuttles, and entered the stairwell, which they knew would be empty. Two levels down, not even half way to the reactors, Forte grabbed Stella by the arm and twirled her around. With his left hand he pushed her back up against the metallic wall of the stairwell. He moved in close, dropping his hand towards her waist, tracing her curves and cupping her ass as he pressed his lips against hers. She relaxed, placed her arms around his broad shoulders and slid her tongue into his mouth. They continued to kiss for a few minutes, until Forte pulled away.

  “What was that for?” Stella asked, with a smile.

  “Just a preview of what’s to come,” Forte glanced down at her form-fitting uniform. Even after 70 years he still enjoyed spending time with Stella. To be fair, many of those years were spent in an LTS chamber. He wondered if he would feel differently if he had been with her for all those years. Vitahicians liked to think they were greatly superior to humans, and in many ways, they were. Yet, Vitahicians, like humans, have emotions. They feel, to a lesser degree, emotions like love, hate, desire, and greed.

  “I can’t wait,” Stella smiled as she shook her mane of blonde hair and adjusted herself, “have to keep up appearances.” She winked at Forte.

  Forte and Stella continued down the gray, dimly lit stairwell until they came to the reactor level. As they approached the thick, metal door that lead to the reactors, it slid open with a faint, soft whirring sound.

  The reactor room was one of the largest spaces on the Impegi, second only to the massive cargo hold. The cavernous space housed six antimatter-injected nuclear fusion reactors. The six reactors were stationed three on each side of the large room. Each power plant was the size of a large house. There was a metal deck running down the middle, separating the two rows of reactors. Beside each reactor was a smaller antimatter container that was about the size of a travel trailer. The entire reactor room was pristine, not a speck of dust or smudge of grease. A stark contrast to the rest of the Impegi, which was a cloudy gray color, the reactor room was bright white.

  Stella and Forte meandered down the center aisle and walked up to the display monitor in front of the reactor on their right. Neither of them were physicists or nuclear engineers, but they each had sufficient training to read the display well enough to be able tell if there was a problem. The sensors were indicating that all systems were operating within allowable tolerances.

  “Hello, Commander. Hello, Captain Stella,” a voice cheerfully echoed from directly behind them.

  Forte immediately spun around, startled by the intruder that had so quietly approached them. He instantly recognized Commander Furier, the ship’s quartermaster. On a cargo vessel, as large as the Impegi, it was common to have a quartermaster that was responsible for keeping track of the 270,000 tons of materials and supplies. The materials contained in the cargo bay would be worth trillions of dollars on Earth. “Commander Furier, what brings you to the reactor room?” Forte inquired.

  “I’m just checking up on Captain Manabus,” Furier replied. Standing at five feet eight inches, Furier was short for a Vitahician female. She had shoulder length, straw-colored, curly hair with natural streaks of platinum blonde. Manabus was the Impegi’s Chief engineer, who should be somewhere in the cavernous reactor room.

  “I just came from medical, and they told me that Manabus had not yet received his stage three vaccination,” she continued.

  Forte frowned, “That’s not like him. I wonder what’s holding him up.”

  Manabus appeared from behind one of the house-sized reactors waiving a sensor devise in one hand and small display screen in the other. “I’ve been busy down here reviewing the antimatter containment system. It seems we have a weakness in one of the containers.”

  “How bad is it?” asked Furier.

  “Not bad, looks like the container is holding at thirty percent strength.”

  “Thirty percent? That does not sound good,” Stella remarked.

  “It would be concerning, if we were just starting our journey, but we only have three days until we arrive. The reactors and containment fields will receive a complete overhaul before being reassigned to the far less strenuous duty of maintaining a stationary moon base. I will continue to monitor it,” said Manabus.

  “First, you need to go up to medical and get your last vaccination,” Forte insisted.

  “Okay. I’m going now,” Manabus said dramatically, and headed towards the elevator that would lead up twenty-two levels to medical. Manabus understood the importance of getting the vaccine. Without it, the Vitahicians would be susceptible to all kinds of Earth-borne diseases and illnesses that humans had developed immunity to over the last several thousand years. However, stage three of the vaccine was to protect the humans from diseases that the Vitahicians could carry, to which humans had no natural immunity.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Commander Forte stood in the center the helm with Captain Cordatus and Captain Pilosus. There were a dozen officers and crewmen at the helm, all at their stations processing data and working together
for the final minutes before arriving. The plan was to bring the Impegi into a geosynchronous orbit with Earth and then allow smaller ships to dock and offload the cargo. After all the cargo was offloaded, then the Impegi would land on the dark side of the moon, where it would be repurposed as a Moon Base.

  Commander Forte and the others stared out of the helm’s panoramic window; they were approaching Earth at 400,000 miles-per-hour.

  Captain Pilosus said, “Look, there is Earth’s moon,” as he pointed at the window. Captain Pilosus was the oldest officer at the helm. With over 200 years under his belt, he could have easily served as the commanding officer. Pilosus stood six feet nine, and the only hint of his age was a few specs of gray hair and crow’s feet creeping up in the corners of his eyes.

  Commander Forte nodded and replied, “Yes. For many of us, that will be our new home.”

  Captain Cordatus said, “We should slow down. We are on a direct intercept course with Earth.”

  Commander Forte called out, “Reduce speed to 40,000 miles per hour, relative to Earth’s speed.”

  “Yes Sir!” Forte heard the eager reply of the young officer he’d met earlier. The lad was clearly motivated to do good work and wanted to make a positive impression on the more experienced officers. It was too early to tell whether he would be successful.

  “Bring us into a geosynchronous low Earth orbit,” instructed Forte.

  A few minutes later, Captain Stella, having returned to her post as chief navigational officer, announced, “We are approaching a geosynchronous orbit.”

  Suddenly, a deafening explosion rocked the Impegi throwing everyone to the deck. Forte’s ears were ringing as his eyes darted around the helm. Crewmen were sprawled all over the large command center as if they had been tossed about like rag dolls.

  Forte yelled out, “Report, report! What just happened?”

  Officer Caelum was crawling back up to his station and frantically operating the display monitor. “It appears that one of the antimatter reactors failed!”

  “How is that possible? If an antimatter reactor failed it should have vaporized the entire ship,” Forte questioned.

  Pilosus was just standing to his feet as he responded, “No, this was a one-way mission. There was only enough antimatter to get to Earth. We had nearly depleted out antimatter reserves.”

  Forte yelled out, “I need a damage report now.”

  Lieutenant Mare, who had a bloody gash on the right side of his forehead, said, “It looks like we are venting atmosphere from fifteen decks.”

  Captain Stella interrupted, “We have a 275-foot-long breach on the starboard side.”

  At that moment, the ship shuttered, violently thrusting half the crew back to the floor.

  Cordatus said with confidence, “That was the remaining antimatter reactors being jettisoned from the ship.” Forte knew that in the event one antimatter reactor had a catastrophic failure, the others would be expelled from the ship. He had never heard of it happening, though. He guessed no one had ever survived the first reactor exploding. The theory was, if one reactor explodes, jettison the others so you don’t have a chain reaction and can possibly save the vessel.

  “Commander, without the antimatter reactors we have no propulsion, no thrust,” shouted Captain Stella over the rising noise of frantic crewmen.

  “It gets worse, we were approaching a low Earth orbit when the reactor blew. The explosion pushed us out of orbit, and we are losing altitude,” insisted Lieutenant Mare. “At our present trajectory, we will crash in eight minutes.”

  “Eight minutes?” Asked Forte. “Is that right?”

  “Eight, maybe nine,” answered Captain Stella. “But, we don’t even have that much time. Once our orbit deteriorates to the point that we are in free fall, we will no longer be able to launch the jump shuttles.”

  Officer Caelum, who was now wiping blood from his eyes, said, “We have three minutes of power left in the reserve batteries.”

  Captain Stella objected, “True, but without the reactors we have no propulsion; we cannot steer the ship.”

  “But, we could use the three minutes of reserve power to activate the antigravity field,” Forte suggested.

  “What? Who cares? We have an eight-minute fall. What good is three minutes of antigravity going to do?” Shouted a panicked Stella.

  Ignoring her, Caelum added, “We can also use the three minutes to power the plasma shield. It won’t save us, but it will greatly lessen the impact so that some of the cargo could be recovered by the humans.”

  Forte was reminded that he was lucky to have a team of such clever officers. Now all he had to do was make a decision, for better or worse, he started barking orders over the chaos, “Commander Furier, send a message to the Moon Base advising them of the situation; then, get to the shuttle bay. Stella, divert all helm’s command and control to Jump Shuttle 135, where all commanding officers will gather. Captain Cordatus, make an announcement to the crew that we are abandoning ship and to rush to the shuttle bay. Everyone else evacuate, leave now!”

  Just as he finished shouting orders, a warning light materialized on his display: Optical Stealth mode had failed, they were now visible to anyone on Earth that wanted to look up into the sky.

  “Life support and ship functions are still online. Everyone board the elevator to the shuttle bay,” Cordatus commanded, stepping up to lead the evocation efforts.

  Forte knew that life support, lights, ships artificial gravity, communications, radar, LTS chambers, hanger bay doors, and the Jump Shuttles all ran off a different power source and would continue to function for hours after loss of the reactors. Still, it did not seem prudent to take the elevator. “Are you sure about the elevators?”

  Cordatus replied, “We don’t have time to run down twelve flights of stairs and launch the shuttles. We have to risk it.”

  Forte knew he was right. They had to risk it. As the elevator whizzed down twelve levels to the hanger bay, Forte thought to himself, “Well, this really changes my plans - for the rest of my life.”

  No time for mourning the death of his future dreams of constructing an annex Moon Base, work had to be done. As he entered the hanger bay, it was complete pandemonium. Crewmen were rushing back and forth between the jump shuttles making sure they were all ready for launch. Others were running around trying to load up equipment and boarding shuttles. Commander Furier was directing her crew to load important cargo onto the jump shuttle’s small cargo holds.

  “All command officers on jump shuttle 135, we are two minutes to launch,” yelled Forte into the crowd of crew frantically running from place-to-place. “Everyone else, get into a jump shuttle now. Now, now!”

  Forte ran up to quartermaster Furier and shouted above the deafening sound of the ship tearing through Earth’s atmosphere, “What are you doing?”

  “I’m the quartermaster, and the ship is going to be obliterated! I’m trying to salvage as much of the cargo as possible!”

  “You have forty seconds to secure your cargo on the jump shuttles; then they all launch!” Forte screamed over the roaring noise ripping through the ship.

  Forte ran through the center aisle, shouting the count down and telling people to secure themselves in the jump shuttles. As he reached shuttle 135, he climbed aboard from the rear, all command officers were present except Furier. “Everyone buckle up, this is going to be a bumpy ride. Transfer control of the helm to me, Pilosus.”

  “Yes Sir,” Pilosus complied with the order. “Ship’s command is on your display.”

  Forte made the appropriate adjustments and brought up the helm and hanger bay on his handheld display tablet. Looking across the hanger bay through the open rear hatch, he saw most everyone was settled in to their shuttles. Furier had just secured the last load in shuttle 135 and was climbing in to sit next to Captain Stella. Forte peered out the hanger and all the shuttles’ entry hatches were closed. Forte slammed the lever that brought the hatch down on the rear compartment of his shuttle.
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  Taking a deep breath, he entered the command code to open all the hanger bay doors. What if they did not open? What if there was a power failure right at this moment? It would not be hard to fathom such a failure, seeing that the ship was plummeting to Earth at over 10,000 miles per hour. All twelve hanger bay doors slid open; Earth’s atmosphere crashed into the hanger bay with a deafening roar.

  Forte did not want to launch all the jump shuttles at once, for fear that they would slam into one another upon exiting the hanger bay. They were not designed to be ejected while free falling through atmosphere. Forte pressed the button on his display screen that would launch two shuttles that were on opposite sides of the ship. Immediately, his hand-held display monitor flashed an ominous read caution light. He looked around and noticed the shuttle next to his only partially launched and was stuck halfway out. The wind was exerting tremendous pressure on the front portion of the shuttle that was extended beyond the super structure of the Impegi. Immediately, Forte remembered the Chief’s words: ‘I don’t think we can fix them before we arrive at Earth.’

  Forte had a sinking feeling in his stomach, there were two more shuttles full of people that were going to fail to launch. Forte looked over at the shuttle next to him, they were freaking out. He saw though one of the portal windows, it was the eager young officer, he was sitting still as a stone with a blank stare on is face. Forte knew this was his fault. In the pandemonium, he had forgotten that three shuttles had malfunctioning tracks. Thirty people would die for his carelessness.

  “We have to launch the other ships now! there is nothing we can do; five minutes to impact,” Cordatus urged him.

  Forte knew Cordatus was right. What if launching his own shuttle was futile? Maybe the next button he pushed would be killing him and the others in his shuttle. It would be what he deserved, punishment for his sin of neglect. Forte launched two more shuttles from opposite sides of the ship. No red lights. Both successfully launched.