“Hey, what’s up?” Donny greeted Logan and Drake.
“How are you feeling?” Drake asked.
“Cold and man my shoulder’s killing me,” Donny responded while he gazed over at his injured shoulder.
“We had an incident earlier,” Logan added. “Some crazy bastard let loose some shots, and one of them pierced your chamber.”
“I missed some action,” Donny replied. He caught sight of the downed Lieutenant. “Shit, what happened?”
“Our castaway from Hell killed the Lieutenant in cold blood.” Drake shifted on his aching left leg and tossed over a water bottle to Donny.
“Why?” Donny’s eyes welled up with an emotional tide of confusion.
“I don’t know,” Drake responded. “But, I know we are all fucked if we don’t find a way to keep this guy contained.”
“I agree.” Logan headed over to check on Tommy and Sammy.
“How are they?” Drake asked while he sipped from the water bottle.
“Alive. They will come to shortly.”
“That’s great news. And, in the meantime?” Drake pushed for an answer.
“We have to regenerate the ship’s power and facilities. You and Tommy head back to the cockpit and start everything back up. By the Lieutenant’s calculations, we should be right outside Jupiter’s front yard and nearing Europa.”
“We’ll eat some grub and then head for the cockpit,” Drake offered up a plan. He dug around the backpack and tossed a few granola bars over to Logan and Donny.
“Once Tommy revives, we’ll let him get his legs back, and the two of you can embark onward to the cockpit.” Logan chewed off a piece of the Quaker chocolate chip granola bar, wedging a piece in between his teeth.
“Man this feels good.” Drake sat down and snapped off a piece of his own bar, banana nut crunch. “I’m so hungry.”
“Oh man, where am I?” Tommy stirred about. “Logan is that you? And the scientist dude?”
“Yup, it’s us,” Drake raised his bar in affirmation. “Did you hibernate well, Sleeping Beauty?”
“Drake,” Logan interceded.
“Oh, calm down Junior,” Drake insisted. “Tommy and I have a bond now. Ain’t that right Tommy Boy?” Drake asked the dazed pilot.
“Whatever you say.” Tommy attempted to stand but fell on all fours once he realized his body refused to gather up enough strength to walk.
“I heard that,” Logan quipped back, fully knowing what was going through Drake’s mind.
“Stop, I wasn’t thinking that,” Drake rebuffed the medic.
“I’m going to need you and Drake to get this bird powered up again,” Logan stated the plan of action to Tommy.
“Yeah, we can do that.” Tommy ran his fingers over his suit rubbing frantically. “Jesus, I’m really cold.” He moved over close to Donny. “We need to hug. You know for body warmth.”
“Drake.” Logan again looked over at the scientist. “Stop thinking.”
“What?” Drake had a goofy look on his face. “I was thinking I needed a hug as well.” He stretched out his arms and looked over at Tommy. “Come here, Tommy,” Drake encouraged the pilot.
“It’ll wear off,” Logan added. “It’s only a temporary thing.” He shook his head at Drake’s request.
“What happened to the Lieutenant?” Tommy’s demeanor became irritable at the sight of the Lieutenant.
“He’s dead.” Donny placed his hand on Tommy’s shoulder.
“Who did this to him?” Tommy became protective.
“He’s a survivor from Earth.” Drake glanced around the room. “And, he’s in the kitchen,” Drake replied with a raise of his eyebrow.
“The kitchen’s on the way to the cockpit,” Tommy cut in. “I say we make a pit stop.”
“Uh,” Drake began.
“Don’t interfere with me Mr. Drake.” Tommy addressed him.
“How’s your condition?” Logan stared at Tommy.
“Better. I’m getting warmer thanks to Donny,” Tommy said with a cracked smile. He stood back up, balancing himself carefully against the wall. “Are we ready Mr. Drake?”
“I guess so.” Drake also stood up. His left leg still cramping, he reached for his makeshift walking stick.
“You still need that?” Logan quizzed the scientist.
“Yeah, I’m not getting any younger. Actually, I think I aged four years since Earth’s departure.” Humor was Drake’s fall back, using it as a rainbow in a thunderstorm of trouble.
“What happened?” Tommy wanted to know.
“It seems when you chucked Kennison in the pod, the force cracked the outer shell, and my mist leaked out causing the natural aging of my body. I definitely feel fifty today,” Drake’s sarcasm was evident in his response.
“You’ll be okay?”
“Yeah,” Drake said while he rubbed his left leg.
“Are you okay?” Tommy repeated looking down at Drake’s leg.
“Yeah, they’re new. I’m pushing mid-life crisis and learning how to walk all over again.”
“Bummer.”
“You can go first,” Drake ushered Tommy ahead of him.
“Why?” Tommy asked unsure of Drake’s intentions. “Are you going to bring up my rear?”
Drake was thinking ladies first, but didn’t let on. That is until Logan again opened his mouth.
“Drake, stop with the thinking process.” Logan had pegged Drake’s internal mechanism for busting Tommy about his sexual preferences.
Logan simply shook his head, closing the door behind the departing members.
Riley crawled about the floor and attempted to withdraw enough water from the crushed bottles to wash away the bleach from his eyes and skin. “It burns,” he growled, pouring water over his entire face, and then rubbing off the stained residue. His mind raced with what he wanted to do with the rest of the crew members, especially Nolan Drake. His mangled hand reached for a limp towel on the floor, and dried off his face. His eyes still stinging from the bleach, Riley was temporarily unavailable to visualize his surroundings. He fished about the suit for anything to shield his eyes. His vision blurred and grizzly, he attempted to unzip the lower right pouch and after a few minutes of scrambling about inside the pocket with his fingers, he came across a pair of black Ray-Ban sunglasses. Sliding the thin frames over his eyes, Riley crawled over to the doorway and waited patiently for the approaching footsteps. “If I can’t get back to Earth, then I’m going to bring everyone down with me,” he muttered reaching inside his pocket for the grenade. He extended the right index finger through the small silver pin, and took a deep breath, patiently waiting for his chance at revenge.
Beacon
Tommy and Drake made their way down the corridor, nursing their respective setbacks. Drake’s left leg had declined, leaving the scientist hobbling to gain distance on the fast-paced pilot. Tommy consistently slowed down to allow Drake to catch up to him.
“Man, are you slow.” Tommy turned around and clutched Drake’s right elbow with his left hand. “Let’s go, we need to power up the ship’s mainframe.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Drake stubbornly insisted that he was doing just fine.
Riley waited impatiently for the approaching footsteps. His hearing became his main weapon right now, while his eyesight dampened by the corrosive contents of the bleach. He momentarily lost track of the collection of footsteps, quickly learning they turned down the other corridor.
Drake and Tommy inadvertently sidestepped Riley’s desperate trap. Both men approached the cockpit and peered around checking for any further activity.
“Is that Jupiter?” Drake gazed out across the front windshield of the spacecraft. A scientist with limitations on Earth, Drake took a moment to marvel at the intimacy of Jupiter.
“Yeah, ain’t she a beaut?” Tommy asked.
“I’ve only seen her in images and once through a telescope,” Drake stated. “This definitely is cooler than any textbook back in the classroom.�
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“The ship’s orbit has been maintained by Jupiter’s gravitational forces. Once we switch out of autopilot, we will encounter some minor turbulence before our shielding dampeners revive,” Tommy brought Drake up to speed on the plan.
“Cool. And Europa is where?”
“Right around the corner,” Tommy said. His eyes scanned over the keyboard, and then glanced over to the plasma screen. He traced his fingers over the screen, bringing up a grid like format.
“What’s that?” Drake noted of the specialized grid.
“This breaks down the area in four quadrants, and will help us in our journey to New Earth.”
“Is Europa a dead issue?” asked Drake. “Why the infatuation with this New Earth?”
“The government received a series of disturbing distress calls from the Abraham Lincoln International space station right before she lost power. We think something, or someone compromised the stations power supply.”
“And, we think whatever survivors that were left headed for New Earth?”
“Precisely.”
“And do we know what exactly happened?”
“We do now,” Tommy said while pointing to the grid.
“What?” Drake strained to see what Tommy was pointing at.
“Do you see all the debris floating by?” Tommy waved his hand over the lower right quadrant.
“Yeah. Isn’t it just space junk?” Drake asked.
“That space junk cost NASA over one billion dollars.” Tommy tapped the screen.
“You mean that debris is the remnants of the space station?”
“It sure does look that way Mr. Drake.” Tommy zoomed in on the quadrant, allowing richer detail to materialize. A section of the space station, a elongated whitened piece doused in black burn marks, bore a fraction of the station’s name.
“So, what the hell happened out here?”
“Something big enough to take an entire space station.” Tommy analyzed the screen. “I mean, fuck, a nasty explosion took down this station, or some hell of a meteor impact.”
Drake studied the floating debris. “All those burn marks indicate an explosion of some magnitude. The questions definitely are left unanswered for now. It looked to be one hell of a battle.”
“And, what’s that down there?” Drake asked, stepping closer to Tommy’s right side.
“Easy Cowboy.” Tommy joked.
“That tiny red dot down in the lower right quadrant,” Drake said pointing to the screen.
“Where?” Tommy strained to see the red dot.
“Right there.” Drake impulsively took Tommy’s hand in his, pulled out Tommy’s index finger and planted it directly on tip of the dimly lit blinking red dot.
“That’s a distress signal,” Tommy stated. “Someone may still be alive out there.”
“What can we do?”
“It’s not that far away. Only a few hundred miles,” Tommy added while he zoomed in on the quadrant.
A small detachable box flashed across the screen.
“Yeah, I’d say someone’s still alive in there,” Tommy said. “This looks to be some sort of bay, or cargo hold?”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Do you see that window?”
“The small one on the left side?” Drake asked. The magnification was brilliant on the cargo bay. Drake could even read the ship’s name on the side of the cargo hold: THE ABAGAIL. Drake looked in closer, noticing the faint shadow of a man lurking around inside. “Is he alive?”
“Only time will tell,” Tommy slid his hand over the virtual keypad and brought up a mechanical arm onto the screen.
“What does that do?”
“That helps fix or bring in damaged material or fragments of the space station.”
“And we’ll use it to retrieve the stranded cargo bay?”
“Bingo. In a few short minutes we will have the cargo bay in our docking station.” Tommy engineered the mechanical arm to execute the daunting exercise.
Both men watched in amazement on the screen as the arm slowly latched on the hull of the cargo bay and pulled it into the ship’s docking station.
Riley continued to press the issue on revenge and for the moment released his trigger finger on the grenade pin. Tears poured from his tear ducts, redness swallowed his cornea in a blanket of irritability. Blinking frantically, Riley failed to adjust to his new situation. Riley couldn’t reignite his iron-clad stronghold that he had on board the ship. Riley’s slow downward spiral left him slipping towards a maniacal state of unrecoverable insanity.
Flashbacks of Antarctica returned, swamping Riley’s chaotic mind:
His men were tired, even lethargic from the sinister cold front that had the Antarctic region clasped in its dangerous claws. His fractured pocket of survivors had made the dangerous trek from the States to the South Pole in order to gain a ride aboard the last remaining ship. He knew that with Earth already experiencing implosion from volcanic activity, that their chances of survival remained dim at best. Crossing over the frozen landscape, he slowed up to allow several of his rogue squad to catch up.
“We will not let that ship depart without us,” former Sergeant Dunward Riley blasted his fractured rebel survivors. A disgraced Sergeant, Riley‘s frequent mood swings, left him on the verge of being court-martialed. “We’ve crossed over this icy terrain under the security that the United States Government will deliver us from this fiery Hell, and in the waiting arms of Athena.” The middle-aged Sergeant knew his chances were slim of catching up to the Senator before they had reached the underground base. Riley had to act fast and came up with a plan.
“We are a few yards away from an abandoned security post for the underground Naval Base. We will load our men into the Snow Cats and gain a significant edge over the Senator.”
Riley eventually came to the vacant post, rummaging through the supplies looking for one last stash before departure.
His men began to surround him, lending their support.
“Here,” Riley ushered his men into the deserted post. “Take these,” he said scooping up the weapons left behind by the guards. He tossed the Glock pistols in the direction of his men. “If the Senator doesn’t comply, shoot him on sight.”
“We don’t understand why,” one of his men questioned Riley’s decision.
“Excuse me?” Riley countered. He had picked up his own Glock and clicked the safety off and expertly hid the weapon behind his back.
“Are you going insane?” The young man again picked away at the Sergeant’s philosophy like a dog gnawing away on its favorite bone.
“I am the Sergeant here,” Riley quickly withdrew his Glock from behind his back, steadying it directly in front of the sub ordinate’s chest. “Where’s your library of wisecracks now Sonny?” Riley’s loomed with an impending rage. His finger toyed with the trigger and delivered his sinister credo with a bullet tearing into the soldier’s chest cavity.
The soldier staggered in shock clinging to his with both of his hands.
“Speechless?” Riley aimed for another shot.
The soldier’s fingers became soaked in a darkened red cranberry colored blood, his body teetered about ready to collapse on the frozen ice. “Please, don’t,” he begged Riley for mercy on his soul. “Don’t take it personally.” He rocked left to right on his dry knees, aching for another breath.
“It’s all personal,” Riley seethed while pressing the trigger once again sending the succession of bullets pounding into the soldier’s chest. “Anybody else who wants to defy my authority?” Riley asked the stunned survivors, watching the dead solider fumble on the ice, staining the white landscape with streaks of maroon blood.
Riley stared over his silent squad. “Wise choice.”
“What direction are we headed?” Davis asked the slick Sergeant.
“Davis, we are headed towards the underground Naval Base. We will follow the Senator’s footsteps in the snow. He won’t get far,” Riley fed another clip into the bas
e of the Glock as the emptied round crashed to the ground below.
Riley slipped over his protective goggles and saddled one of the idling snowmobiles. “Are ya coming?” He whistled over to Davis. “We have a ship to board.”
The swirling pockets of snow limited distance but not Sergeant Riley’s determination and slowly cracked psyche. The slick Senator had gained serious ground on the stranded Sergeant. Riley gathered his fractured rebel army and jumped on board the Snow Cats and headed straight for the Senator’s position.
“What will we do once we board Athena?” Davis tapped Riley on the shoulder. Davis had hitched a ride with the Sergeant.
“Kick back and drink some Mojitos,” Riley snorted, adjusting the Snow Cat’s steering to follow the Senator’s tracks.
“Why would they leave without us?”
“It’s all political.” Riley throttled the engine, allowing the snowmobile to increase its speed. “I was promised by the Senator that along with my men, I would be boarding Athena. And believe me, I will make him a man of his word.”
“Won’t he try to deny it?” Davis countered with his own argument.
“Likely, he’s a worm like all the other politicians in Washington. Well, used to be. Washington D.C.’s underneath a mountain of ash and lava as we speak.”
“I see. We will have to take the Athena’s crew by surprise and force our way on board.”
“I like the way you think Davis,” Riley responded with a slick grin. Using the military issued Goggle Scope, Riley was able to gain a fix on the Senator’s trail. The new toy of the U.S. Government used a mixture of thermal scans, detailed maps of any terrain {downloaded from the Pentagon}, and a sensitive compass built to read exactly from the Earth’s core. “I can see them straight ahead. That scientist’s slowing them down with his wheelchair.”
Riley closed the gap and departed from the snowmobiles in an effort to take the Senator
by surprise. One of his men however, became anxious and addressed the Senator.
“We are going with you!” The fractured group shouted out to the befuddled Senator.
“On second thought,” Senator Perry reached inside the elevator and punched the red button initiating the elevator’s doors to close. He then pressed the basement button. “It looks like you will be going on a one-way ride Doctor.”
Wrath of the Carnelians (Europa) Page 8