Second Earth: Part Two (Second Earth Serial Book 2)

by Samways, L. D. P.

  But there was no welcoming party. As the doors opened and the creaking echoed through the cleanroom terminal, nothing but darkness awaited them on the other side. Williams shook his head in disbelief. The outside of the ship had looked dark. It had looked deserted. Abandoned. But he didn’t think for one second that the Orion Traveller was actually abandoned. But on first inspection, it seemed as if his worst nightmares had been realised. Why else wouldn’t there be any lights on? Something definitely was not right.

  “Something fishy is going on here,” the recruit said, standing directly behind the Commander. His other men were less vocal. Most of them remained quiet as they cautiously stepped onto official Orion Traveller property. They were now officially on board. And as they stepped into the darkness, the door behind them started to close, shutting them off from the cleanroom terminal and their ship. But they’d be able to get back on the ship, all they’d have to do is find the controls and open the doors. But Williams knew that there was someone on the ship to do that for them. After all, they were there to plunder some supplies. Well, borrow some supplies.

  “It’s dark as hell in here,” one of the men said, standing next to the Commander.

  Williams nodded, reaching for his headset and flicking a switch on his helmet. The head torch came on. Now some of the room was illuminated. His men did the same thing, switching on their torches. What was dark before, was now just barely visible. The shadows were playing tricks on their minds. The walls seemed to be coming alive; stretches of black long dark shapes danced around the room. But Williams wasn’t there to pay attention to the shadows. He wasn’t there to be scared out of his mind. He was there to get a job done and that job was to make sure that he and his crew could fly back home.

  “What the hell happened here?” Somebody said, their voice sounding distorted in Commander Williams’s ear. Williams looked around, examining every inch of the walls, noticing a thick black substance dripping off the metal. The interior of the Orion Traveller so far matched the exterior. Williams remembered thinking as he approached the Orion Traveller how odd it seemed that none of the lights were on, and the ship was in total darkness. And now that they were inside the ship, he was thinking the exact same thing. But now he wasn’t only just thinking, his mind was racing. What on earth was going on here? Why was the ship dripping in a black substance? What was that substance? And was it dangerous?

  “I hate to break it to you, Commander, but I have a really bad feeling about this,” somebody else said.

  Williams and his men hadn’t really moved a muscle since entering the Orion Traveller. They’d just been standing there, gawking at the walls, and the interior. Williams didn’t know exactly where they were, he hadn’t prepped a schematic on his PDA systems, on account of the fact that he was never really planning on boarding the Orion Traveller, and now that he had no comms on his ship, the only way he was going to get a map for the Orion Traveller was if he searched for one himself. But there was just something about the walls that were putting him off. None of his inner suit systems were working. His scanners were being blocked by something. Something organic. And without his scanners, there was no way he was going to be able to track down any sort of lifeforms on the ship. Williams and his men needed to find the crew of the Orion Traveller. That, or they take control of the ship itself and fly back to the Milky Way Galaxy. That’s if the Orion Traveller’s communications are working, or they could be down just like their own ship. And if both the Orion Traveller and their own ships communications were down, then they were pretty much stuck in space.

  “What’s the plan, Commander?” The recruit asked, sidling up to Williams. For a brief moment, Williams directed his attention to the recruit. He smiled at the recruit and shrugged his shoulders.

  “I guess we split up, and look for the crew,” the Commander said.

  His men groaned in displeasure. Nobody wanted to be walking around in the dark, black ooze coming from the walls, searching for crew members on a derelict ship. Especially when the ship looked haunted. Not that any of the men believed in ghosts, but you didn’t need to believe in ghosts to know that something was wrong here. Very wrong.

  “You expect us to walk around in the dark?” The recruit asked, his eyes akin to the begging eyes of a puppy dog, as he stared at his master, Commander Williams. But Williams didn’t fall for that sort of tactic. He felt no pity or empathy for his men. They were soldiers. Their job was to risk their lives. Risk their lives for the lives and safety of others. So walking around in a ship that seemed to have had a power failure wasn’t warranting such feelings of empathy toward his men. In fact, he was feeling annoyed. Annoyed that his men were bitching and moaning about such a trivial thing as walking around in the dark.

  “Yes, you will walk around in the bloody dark. And you know what you’re going to be doing in the dark? You’re going to be finding the men and women who act as the crew on this ship. Once you find them, you will contact me, telling me their location, and then we will all congregate together, find out what the hell is going on, and then we’ll get our comms unit up and running, shortly after that, we’ll make our way down to the planet surface, rescue the pod survivors, fly back up here, and then back home. Sound good to you recruit?”

  The recruit nodded his head emphatically. He wasn’t used to making waves, so he just nodded and went along with whatever was planned. Who was he to question the knowledge or ability of such a high-ranking officer like Commander Williams? He knew his place. And his place was firmly at the ass end of the line. So that’s where he went, turned back around, and slowly dragged his feet toward the back of the line. As he passed his fellow men in arms, he heard various digs at his character. Some of the men were commenting on how short he was while others were commenting on how silly he was. But the general consensus was this, the recruit was a liability. He asked way too many questions, even as a newbie, questions that any person would know the answer for. Yes, this five-man team were at their wits end. And Commander Williams knew it.

  He turned to his men and raised his hands in the air. Like somebody would if they were surrendering to the enemy. And quite frankly, his men were the enemy. There were more of them than there were of him. So, sometimes you had to tread a little lightly. Especially when you were about to deliver some pretty crappy news.

  “Okay, we split up. Each of you will take one door, and then one corridor while fanning out in search of the crew. On the way, if you pick up or find anything of use, like a map, schematics, databanks, data sticks, memory sticks - you get my drift, then please pocket it and bring it back here. Don’t open the files, don’t do anything like that because most ships use encryption devices. Encryption devices that only people high up on the ladder can access. And seeing that I’m a Commander, I think it’s pretty safe to say that I’ll be able to gain a little access - if not complete access to the files on this ship. We’ll do some radio checks along the way, but I want complete and utter radio silence otherwise. If you do come across anything that looks suspicious, like a dead body with its throat ripped out, then please feel free to break radio silence,” Williams said, a smile creeping across his lips.

  The five-man crew looked at their Commander, sharing the same expression on their faces, and that was an expression of fear. None of them could believe that this was what the mission had turned into. Prancing around in the fully pitch-black ship, with black ooze dripping down the walls, no comms on their own ship and no way back home. This was turning out to be quite the rescue mission.

  “So, what are you guys waiting for? Get a move on,” Commander Williams said, flailing his arms slightly as his crew fanned out and took a door each. Before he knew it, they’d all disappeared. Williams was left all by himself, in what appeared to be the atrium. It was dark and dingy. No signs of life. No signs of anything other than that dripping black ooze on the walls. Williams didn’t dare approach the black gunk. He didn’t know what it consisted of. For all he knew, the black ooze could be the key. The key
to unlocking the mysteries of this abandoned ship

  ***

  Gustoff stared at the huge beam of light ascending above them, turning the usual blue shade of the sky into a crimson red. Randy’s heart was thumping in his chest, and Timson was finding it hard to keep his mouth closed as both men stood by and watched the beam stretching on for miles above. The pod was no longer there. Or at least, it looked that way. The light had consumed it. Metal, wires, fuel, glass … all gone, all consumed by the bright light.

  “What’s going on here? Is that thing going to blow?” Gustoff asked, overly aware of his tone. He sounded scared. Frightened. Unsure of himself. Three attributes that Gustoff rarely found himself acting on. He’d usually suffer those attributes in silence. But today, today was a different kind of day. The sort of day that you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.

  “It can’t be; they wouldn’t dare…” Timson said, stepping back from the beam. The light was making his skin glisten. A shiny and translucent filter seemed to engulf everything it touched. Gustoff noticed that the light - that the beam - was growing even more intense. April watched from afar, also taking a few steps back. She wasn’t no fool, and once she’d seen Timson and his crew begin to backpedal, she knew something bad was about to happen.

  Timson quickly turned on his heels and faced the massing colony people behind them. He could tell that they were freaked out by the beam. And he couldn’t blame them. If only they knew what sort of danger they were in. But Timson knew. His two crewmates knew. They knew all too well. The problem was, they didn’t have much time. Timson couldn’t just continue to stand there and gawk at the colony people. Not when the beam was growing. Not when it was intensifying. At any minute, the beam could give out. And they’d all be history. Permanent history.

  “Everybody, everybody needs to run,” Timson said, his hand shaking at his sides, rattling like hot metal inside a heat-sealed container. It felt as if the seal was going to break. As if everything he was feeling was going to explode from within his core, spraying the onlookers with dark red coagulated blood. But luckily, his insides didn’t come tumbling out of him. But his heart was still racing. His mind was firing on all cylinders. Pistons going up and down, up and down. The inside of his skull feeling like it was being violated by hot pokers. There was nothing he could do besides from breathe. The air was seeping out of his lungs, the sensation of choking was slowly crawling up his throat. But then, then he managed to catch his breath. But the people, the people of the colony kept staring at the beam of light, not heeding his warning. But they would heed it soon. Or they would die.

  “Everybody needs to run. That beam is going to blow. And when it does, it’s going to take everybody with it. The radius will be massive. We need to get out of here. Or we’re going to be eviscerated. Grab your loved ones and get moving!” Timson shouted. The people of the colony heard him then. There was no hesitation. Everybody began to panic. Everybody began to run. Everybody but Timson, his two crew mates and April and Gustoff. They stood there with the rest of them, staring at the beam, looking around as the colony reacted in an immediate and frenzied fashion. Gustoff turned to Timson and shook him out of his daze.

  “We need to get a move on as well, right? There’s nothing we can do here. Where do we go, there’s nowhere to run?” Gustoff said, his voice sounding shaky.

  Timson shook his head. He didn’t know his way around. He didn’t know how far the explosion would radiate. But surely Gustoff knew a safe place they could seek refuge in.

  “You said this place is an island, an island on a cliff of some sorts, right?” Timson asked.

  “Yeah, the cliff is far too high, there’s nothing but seawater below, that and a few caves,” Gustoff said, not taking his eyes off the beam that was growing in intensity as the seconds ticked by. They were running out of time.

  Timson stood there thinking for a few seconds. He watched as the frenzied chaos around him unfolded. People were screaming and shouting, grabbing at their loved ones, holding their hands, tears running down their faces. All the while the beam was growing stronger, and stronger. The intense heat coming off it was burning the back of Timson’s neck. He could feel the hairs on his neck being singed by the heat. There wasn’t much time left. They couldn’t just stand there hoping for the best. There was no way to disarm the beam. There was very little they could do but run.

  “Everybody, make your way to the edge of the cliff and start climbing down it. Make sure you hold onto the rocks tightly, and after scaling the cliff, try and make your way to safety, hopefully into one of the caves. You need to get out of the blast zone. If we are lucky, the blast radius will bounce off the ground and remain at a consistent level, missing us as we go below ground. It’s our only chance,” Timson said, watching the people of the colony run for their lives. He wasn’t sure if any of them heard what he’d just said, but there was every chance that at least somebody did. Somebody like a leader. They themselves couldn’t lead the pack from behind. By the time they began to move, the beam had turned into a solid red light. By Timson’s own calculations, they didn’t have more than a few minutes before the explosion. So time was of the essence.

  And that’s what Timson, his two crew mates and Gustoff and April did. They ran. At first, they were at the back. But as they gained pace, they ran past some of the frailer, less athletic colony members. Gustoff felt an immense feeling of desperation run through him. Desperation and guilt. He wasn’t fond of the colony members. But he didn’t want to see any of them suffer. So as he ran, he pushed and shoved some of the weaker colony members toward him. He grabbed one of the elderman by the arm, clinging onto his flapping cape, and dragging him toward the others. As they all ran, the colony huts started to become smaller. Dirt and dust was being kicked up by their collective running feet. Some of the dust was causing members of the colony to struggle for air. But the stampede of humanity managed to get out of the colony perimeter within thirty seconds. Now they were all running through the forest. Past trees and branches. Leaves and twigs. Bushes and rocks. Clunking under their feet. Rapid movements. Breaking twigs. Snapping heels. Wet feet. Through a stream. Over a hill. Another thirty seconds passed. The beam was still visible from behind. It was casting a dark shadow over the woods. The trees above became as red as the sky. Timson didn’t dare look back. He knew it was close. He’d seen it before. It was protocol. When a ship went missing or was captured by adversaries, then it would be blown up. The tech would have to remain safe. It couldn’t fall into the enemies’ hands.

  Second Earth was not a threat. The only threat at that moment in time was Earth. Earth were the ones responsible for the beam. They knew that Timson and his two crew mates were not dead. They would have seen that at the very last moment of contact that they’d been alive. They were supposed to send a team of rescue personnel to their location. But instead, they blow the ship up. Just shows how easy it was for Earth to kill. To kill their own. Just for the sake of saving face. And as the beam grew more intense, and the light became even darker, turning the sky above into a premature night, Gustoff, April, Timson and his two crewmates reached the summit of a medium-sized hill. After an exhausting climb, they reach the others. People were now disappearing off the edge of the ground. It was as if the ground had disappeared. Like it had broken off, an iceberg of some sorts. But this was no iceberg. This was a cliff. A cliff that stretched and reached for the skies. As Gustoff and Timson watched men and women slowly scale the cliff, disappearing from sight, Timson turned around and observed the beam of light. The beam had started to flicker. This was it. It was going to blow. Any second now, and the end would commence. Gustoff was the first of them to start scaling the cliff. Then it was April. And then it was Timson’s two crew mates. But Timson remained standing there, staring at the beam. He didn’t dare take his eyes off the wondrously dangerous light. A flurry of thoughts were rushing through his head. The most prominent one was a question. Why did it take so long for the ship, the pod they were on, to self-destr
uct? In the time that the beam had come into existence, Timson had managed to get most of the colony members to the edge of the cliff. The majority of them were now scaling the cliff. They’d had plenty of time to get away from the explosion. Usually, remembering the stories that he’d heard from other pod pilots that lost ships in the past, self-destruction switches didn’t usually take longer than half a minute to set off. But for some reason, this self-destruction switch was taking its sweet ass time. Maybe it was the distance between Earth and Second Earth, two-point-five million light years was a lot of distance after all. Plenty of real estate. Plenty of obstacles for the signal to bounce off of. A smile crept across Timson’s face. It was absurd. There he was thinking and analysing like a Captain whilst his life was in immediate danger. I guess my mind really doesn’t ever switch off, he thought to himself.

  He was just about to turn back around and make haste for the cliff’s edge when everything went bright. His vision was blurred. The beam had disappeared. The self-destruction switch had gone off. An explosion shortly followed. Timson dived to the floor. He braced himself for the inevitable. He felt something grab him. A hand. It was pulling him. But then everything went dark.

  As dark as the night.

  Chapter Five

  Commander Williams is nervously pacing up and down the width of the atrium. Plastic tubing hangs from the ceiling. He swats a PVC pipe away from his face as he holds his radio in his hands. The Commander is nervously looking from left to right. Williams didn’t like the dark. And this place was really dark. So dark, the shadows seemed to go on forever, blanketing the interior of the medium-sized room. The shadows weren’t covering up much anyway, seeing that all the room consisted of was piping and machinery. From what he’d seen of the Orion Traveller so far, granted he’d only really been in the atrium, the ship wasn’t much of a looker. Most Captains of fleet ships took pride in the way they presented their vessels. But for other captains, a ship was nothing to be proud of. It was just a machine. A machine to get them from point A to point B. And Commander Williams was willing to bet his mortgage that the Captain of this ship, wherever he was, didn’t take much pride in the Orion Traveller.