“Just a piece of junk floating in bloody space,” Williams said, feeling as if the shadows were creeping up on him, as if they were about to pounce, grappling him to the ground. But then he blinked. The shadows retreated. It was all just in his mind.
“A flashlight would come in handy,” Williams said to himself, immediately realising how silly he sounded, him being the only person in the room, talking to himself like an absolute madman.
There would be a radio check soon. And then he’d know his men were safe. For that was all that really mattered. The anticipation was really making him feel uncomfortable. Deep down, the Commander knew that he was afraid of the dark. But what he was more afraid of was losing a man on duty. He’d never done so before, and wasn’t planning on doing so now. So the radio check couldn’t come any quicker. But it wasn’t as if he could just do it willy-nilly. There were protocols to follow. And Williams was all about following the protocols. He needed to give his men enough time, enough time to search the ship. There was no use doing a radio check when there was nothing to check. The priority of the mission was still to get in contact with the crew members of the pod that crash-landed on the planet below. But a new mission directive had been presented to the Commander. An unofficial mission directive. Once their comms had gone out, it had forced Williams to go off the beaten track. He wasn’t much of a risk taker or a rule breaker, but today, right at this moment, Williams was all of those things.
But no matter what, there were some protocols that you just couldn’t break. And not leaving a man behind was one of them. It was a rule that Commander Williams took very seriously. The Commander looked at his watch, three minutes until radio check. Hopefully, by then, one of his men would have found the whereabouts of the Orion Traveller’s crew or its captain …
Somewhere on the third floor, in the east corridor of the Orion Traveller;
Teddy had the barrel of his gun pressed firmly against his right shoulder. As he walked, his back arched up, aiming down the sights, taking in his surroundings with caution. The red dot sight mounted on the top of the barrel was helping Teddy see better in the dark. But the shadows around him were playing tricks on his eyes. He was seeing things. Sudden movements. He was hearing things. Creaks and cracks as he walked down the corridor. The walls seemed to be closing in on him. The ground was a little uneven. His heart was thumping in his chest; his hands tightly gripped the smooth body of the firearm. The back end of the gun was weighty. His forearms were tense as he swooped his sights from left to right, left to right. But all was quiet. Bar the creaks and cracks, they continued. The pounding in his chest droned on. Yes, Teddy was frightened. If he’d been able to get the comms to work on the ship, then he wouldn’t be there now, walking down a deserted and darkened hallway, holding a gun, waiting for the worst to happen. But he wasn’t able to get the job done. And because of him and his lack of experience, he and his crew members, plus Commander Williams now found themselves on the Orion Traveller.
Teddy wasn’t stupid; he could tell something was going on. Something bad. Crewmembers didn’t just vanish into thin air. They had to be somewhere. And he knew that they’d find them. But the question remained, were they alive? Or had something gotten to them? Those were the two scenarios running through Teddy’s head. Those were the only fathomable options. The only fathomable scenarios. Teddy had had a few thoughts on the subject of the missing crew members on the Orion Traveller, but walking down the hallway, staying alive, was his only objective at that moment in time. And something was telling him, something deep down within his belly that staying alive would be the only thing that his crew and his Commander would be focusing on from now on. The shadows around him held many secrets. But Teddy was none the wiser to them.
The fourth floor, Research Room Seven, the Orion Traveller.
Sam “Samuels” Sampson was also feeling the pressure as he entered a room marked research room seven. He had his sidearm equipped. The gun was rattling in his grip a little. He was never really a steady shot. Back in training, on Earth, he’d been known as the kid that couldn’t hit a bull’s-eye from a metre away. Sam didn’t think highly of himself. He knew that he wasn’t that great at being a Marine. That’s why he failed the Marine Corps. But he was a great data analyst. And he did data analysing just fine. Better than anybody on the crew. That’s why Earth and The Company hired him. That’s why he got paid seventy-five-thousand credits a year. Fifty-thousand credits more than anybody else. Anybody else in his field that is. So even though Sam didn’t think much of himself, at times he was grateful for the gift he had. The gift of analysing data. The gift of subtracting and multiplying numbers. It was a gift that helped him see and read between the lines. And that’s what was needed on this current mission. The ability to be able to see the bigger picture.
That’s why Sam “Samuels” Sampson found himself in the research room. He’d spotted it on his way down a dingy and dark corridor. A corridor that had been filled with shadows. He’d grown too afraid to stick it out any longer. Too afraid to carry on his search and rescue down the dark corridors. There were far too many of them. He and his team had split up. But in doing so, all the pressure had also been split. Like atoms, splitting into millions and millions of tiny pieces, the pressure had been fragmented around the deserted ship. He was sure that some of his crew members would be dealing with the pressure just fine. Most of them would be excellent at dealing with and working with such pressures. The pressure to find the crew. The pressure to get the comms up and running on their ship again. The pressure to go and rescue the stranded pod crew members on that mysterious planet below them. All those pressures would be helping his team progress. It would be helping them succeed. But not Sam. Sam didn’t work well under pressure.
“Research Room Number Seven,” Sam said, turning on his dictation microphone that he carried around with him. He’d seen it in many Science Fiction films and novels. The member of the team that carried research equipment with them usually carried a personal recording device. Equipment to log every detail of every encounter and situation they partook in. Logging details and dictating what findings Sam and the crew came across wasn’t part of his job description. But it was something that Sam enjoyed doing.
Hopefully Research Room Number Seven would have something interesting in it. Something that he could log into his database. His personal database. The journal to the stars. There were thousands of log entries. Should make good reading when he retires. But retirement was a long way off. And judging by the shadows that seemed to be creeping up on him, he’d need to focus on getting off the Orion Traveller alive. Retirement would have to wait.
The basement level, communal shower rooms, the Orion Traveller.
Lucas enjoyed playing tricks on his crewmates. He was a boisterous type. He had no qualms about displaying his playful side. But as the mission continued, and the hours trudged away, evaporating into time like time so often does, Lucas’s playful and boisterous side evaporated along with it. There was nothing fun, comical or enjoyable about this mission. He was only a recruit. Commander Williams and the members of the crew had yet to call him anything different. A lot of them didn’t even know his surname. And for a second or two, as recruit Lucas walked down the basement level, he’d also forgotten his own surname. But it came back to him. Obviously, no one actually forgets their surname. Unless they’ve had some sort of head trauma. And the more Lucas thought about it, the more he likened his signing up to this outfit akin to suffering massive head trauma and blood loss. He must be stupid. A bump on the head surely explains his willingness to sign up to be a crew member of this rescue mission.
“Yeah, a massive fucking head wound, that’s what this is,” Lucas said as he stopped dead in the middle of the basement and looked at his surroundings.
Since he’d step foot on the Orion Traveller, there’s one thing he’d noticed; the whole ship was a ghost ship. Both in resemblance and metaphor. It looked like ago ship while walking through it. There wasn’t much li
ght. The only source of illumination was coming from the torches on their suits. Head torches. Shoulder torches. The Orion Traveller seemed to have suffered a catastrophic loss of power. The way the ship was just floating above orbit of the mysterious planet below was eerily similar to a horror movie. A planet that they’d been sanctioned to run a rescue mission on. A planet that supposedly had life signs on it. Satellite imagery of heat signatures. Organic life. A cluster of buildings. Buildings that resembled shelter. Intelligent life. That’s what the rumblings on the radio had contained. The radio that they’d listen to on the way to the planet. On the way to the Andromeda Galaxy. Lucas usually didn’t hold much credence to pirate radio, but he enjoyed listening to it as much as any other acting soldier. Commander Williams didn’t have a problem with Lucas listening to the radio on his augmented personal suit system. So that is what Lucas had done on the journey to the planet. He’d listened to wild stories of government conspiracies. How there were rumblings that the so-called habitat had been found. To this day, Lucas didn’t know where these pirate radio presenters got their material from, but nine times out of ten, surprisingly enough, they’d been right. Did that mean that they were right about this? Could it be that there was life on the planet below? And if so, how does that link with the missing crew members of the Orion Traveller? Had they abandoned ship? Would Commander Williams’s men find the crew members of the Orion Traveller on the planet below?
“I suppose that could be a possibility…” Lucas said, catching his breath whilst taking in the derelict and dark surroundings of the basement level of the Orion Traveller. Lucas hadn’t been paying much attention to the shadows on the walls. If he had been - he would have noticed that the shadows were forming a shape. A silhouette. A silhouette that was getting ever so close to Lucas.
And as Lucas stood there, twiddling his thumbs, looking up at the ceiling, admiring how it seemed to stretch and stretch above, the shadowy shape slowly floated toward Lucas. Inches away from Lucas’s back, the shadowy shape took form. And before Lucas could let out a whimper, the shadow had overtaken him. It wrapped its dark tentacles around Lucas’s neck. Before the young recruit could scream, he’d been dragged to the floor and the shadow now consumed him.
The atrium, mid-level, the Orion Traveller.
Commander Williams looked at his watch. Eight minutes had passed since his team had all gone in different directions. It was now time. He’d grown antsy in anticipation of commencing a radio check. For some reason, he’d had a bad feeling about all of this. A feeling that was becoming ever more apparent. The shadows around him seemed to be moving. At first, he thought it was just his mind playing tricks on him. But the more he studied the shadows around him, the more he became convinced that something was lurking within them. And Williams didn’t want to hang around to find out what truly fuelled the darkness that engulfed this ship.
He tapped the button on his PDA unit strapped to his arm. He pressed a green square that went red as he put pressure on it. The button he’d pressed was the communications button, a direct radio system that ran from his suit to each of his crew members. A pop-up floated across the screen. On the pop-up, he saw that he’d lost signal with three of his team members. The GPS system on their suits had gone awry. The blips that he was expecting to see vanished into thin air. His crew members were gone. All five of them. He tried to make contact. But all he was getting was static in his ears. Like nails on a chalkboard, reverberating through the middle section of his brain. Outwards, like ripples in the ocean. Waves crashing against him. Getting him wet with perspiration.
“Anybody read me?” The Commander said into his microphone. But nobody replied. The LED screen on his PDA system suddenly cut out. It went dark. The torch on his helmet started to flicker. As it did, the Commander looked up. In front of him was a door that one of his crew mates had walked through earlier. It was opening. Slowly. But nobody was on the other side. Just darkness. A dark hollow shadow staring back at him. At first, the Commander thought he was seeing things. But then he was seeing nothing. His torch went out. The flickering climaxed with a burst bulb. The sound of his torch fizzling out made the Commander jump.
“Hello?” Was the last thing that Williams said before everything went dark.
To be continued …
What will become of Commander Williams and his five-man crew? Will they be able to fight the darkness, or will the darkness consume them much like it has consumed many before them?
Will the people of Second Earth find safety underground? Or has the beam destroyed their chances of survival?
What lengths will The Company on Earth go to in covering up their secrets? And how many more people have to die before the darkness comes to light?
Find out on the 12th of March 2016, exclusively on Amazon’s Kindle.
Thank You for Reading
If you enjoyed this episode of Second Earth, please feel free to leave a review on Amazon. Your reviews help me reach more readers, which helps me earn a living and put food on my table!
I appreciate your time and hope to see you again soon in one of my books! I never stop writing, so there’s plenty of stuff out there to keep you busy!
Hugs,
Luis.
Second Earth: Part Two (Second Earth Serial Book 2) Page 4