Absolute Zero

by Phillip Tomasso

Through the front windshield, Weber saw the ice crack. It spider-webbed out from underneath the rover and extended beyond.

  “What do we do now?” Bell asked.

  Weber knew what he was thinking. The rover was going to drop into the ocean. There was no way around that. The back tire wasn’t going to lift free now. If anything, if Weber applied the gas, the traction would more than likely chew away at what little ice remained. No. The rover was as good as sunk.

  “We’re going to each open our doors and get out of the rover,” Weber said. “Slow like. No fast movements.”

  “And then what?” Bell had one hand on the door, the other still planted on the dashboard.

  “Climb out. Easy does it. And move slowly toward more solid ground,” Weber said.

  “The ice splits, we’re on opposite sides of the ocean, Web.”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  “And those things are out there,” Bell added, needlessly.

  “One problem at a time,” Weber said.

  “How about this one, I climb out of this rover, and I’m going to fall. The ice is already cracked. I can’t go hopping on one leg. I’ll pogo-stick myself right through the ice.”

  Weber knew Bell was right. “Lower yourself out of the cab, Mur. Nice and easy. I’ll climb out and come around to your side. We’ll do this together.”

  Inside the rover, they heard what sounded like something breaking open. They knew exactly what the sound was.

  It was the sound of more ice cracking.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The four of them moved together in smooth, tight fashion, as if they’d been part of the same platoon for years. Anara Meyers insisted on taking point. If they came face to face with anything dangerous, she would be the one to square off. Behind her was Danielle Rivers, Adam Stanton, and in the rear, Angela Ruiz.

  Green sight laser from the four blasters cut through the dim amber glow along metallic hallways. The beams flashed over nooks and crannies. Should they encounter another one of the Neptunite monsters, the laser would help lock onto the fast, slippery targets. Meyers explained the scaly shell might not be bolt-proof, but hitting the back of the head through the inside of an opened mouth worked wonderfully.

  “Aside from that guy’s hand in the storage area, has anyone seen any sign of anyone else?” Stanton asked.

  Meyers shot a look over her shoulder.

  “I’m just asking. There was supposed to be like thirty-five people down here. We’ve come across, like, one hand.”

  Rivers said, “The hand’s all I’ve seen.”

  Ruiz added, “Same.”

  “Best chance of finding survivors, if there are any, is going to be the north end of the compound,” Meyers said.

  They weren’t moving fast, but they maintained an almost shared singularity among the four of them.

  “Why the north end?” Ruiz asked.

  “Two reasons I can think of,” Meyers said. “That’s where the food is, and that’s where the communications room is.”

  “That’s all well and good, in theory,” Stanton said. “But, if the communicators are this way, then why hasn’t anyone reached out for help? The trouble alarm was activated months ago. We all know Euphoric tried unsuccessfully to reach a live person for details, and when they couldn’t, we were deployed. I’m hoping you’re right, Commander, and when we get to the north end of the colony we find them, all thirty-five alive and well.”

  But he would be surprised if that was the case, Stanton thought, but left it unsaid.

  “Thirty-four,” Rivers said.

  “We found a hand,” Meyers added, without missing a beat. “We don’t know that the man who lost it is dead. We just know what we know at this point. But I’ll tell all of you this. Me? I’m remaining optimistic.”

  Stanton didn’t think the commander sounded it. He, internally, applauded her every effort at staying positive. She had the right approach, regardless of the surrounding crummy circumstances. He knew a good leader when he saw one. “I’m with you, Commander. Let’s get where we are going, help those who need rescuing, and get off of this planet.”

  Meyers caught his eye. Stanton clearly caught the moment that passed between them, and when she gave a slight nod, he knew he’d earned her approval. He just hoped she knew she’d in turn had also earned his.

  A few more yards down the hall and Meyers stopped. “This is the communications center,” she said. The top half of the door was thick glass. Communications stenciled in black. Meyers tried the handle; it was locked. She cupped her hands and peered into the room.

  “What do you see?” Rivers asked, her back to the door.

  Stanton noticed Rivers stood in a ready-position. Her knees were bent and her eyes continued scanning up and down the hallway. She silently asserted nothing would sneak up on them if she could help it.

  “Dark inside. I don’t see computer lights or anything,” Meyers said, as she entered the door code to access the room. “Everyone, stand back. Blasters ready.”

  The door opened. Commander Meyers stepped into the room. Her green laser passed across the empty area. “Lights,” she said.

  The light fixtures stuttered, and then came on.

  Meyers pointed left and then right. Stanton went left, Ruiz and Rivers went right.

  “Clear,” Stanton said.

  “Clear,” Ruiz said.

  Meyers closed the door, lowered her weapon so that it dangled from the strap around her shoulder. “Ruiz, stand guard. Nothing gets in here. Got it?”

  “Aye, Commander,” Ruiz said.

  “Okay.” Meyers made her way around the room. She pulled out the chair by the communications equipment. She looked over the system in front of her as she sat down. “Let’s see if we can get this communicator up and running.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “We are going to do this real slow, but not take all day about it,” Marshall Weber said. The rover was stuck in a hole on the ice, and the ice was cracking. In moments he knew the rover would plunge down through the ice and into the toxic ocean. He and Murray Bell were moments away from an almost certain death. They needed to act fast, but slowly. “Okay? Slow, but fast. Am I clear?”

  For several long moments, they sat motionless in the rover while Weber talked through the plan.

  Bell said, “As mud, lieutenant.”

  Weber smiled, despite the situation. “Okay. Good. Just sit there, okay. I’m going to get out of the rover.”

  It didn’t even matter how lethal the water was. Once underneath the surface, the current would grab them. They’d be pulled under the ice still intact and trapped until they drowned. The ammonia, well, that just made a bad day worse.

  Reaching for the door with his left hand, Weber sat as still as possible. He didn’t even turn his head. Eyes forward. His fingers found the handle. He lifted the lever. The lock disengaged. The door popped open a fraction. Easing the door outward, Weber let his left leg slide down from the driver’s seat. The toe of his boot touched the running board. He shifted his weight onto his left leg.

  The ice moaned in protest.

  “Web.”

  “I know. I know. Stay still.”

  “I’m not moving, Web. Barely breathing over here.”

  Weber continued to climb out of the rover. Time was running out. The ice wouldn’t support the weight of a rover much longer.

  Once both feet were out of the rover, and he was firmly on unstable ice, he allowed a short sigh. Relief washed over him. “Halfway there,” he whispered.

  “Says you,” Bell said.

  Leaning back, Weber maneuvered himself out of the way of the door as he brought it around to close it. Standing on the ice, he felt exposed. Vulnerable.

  He wished he had eyes in the back of his head. His mind convinced him those things were slithering up to him, coiled, about to strike.

  He resisted the urge to spin around. If he didn’t get Bell out of the rover before they fell through the ice, it was over for the both o
f them, regardless of the creatures. If one of the creatures attacked, it was over. The creature had become just one of far too many variables. Weber kept his palms on the rover and sidestepped around the front of the vehicle.

  The likelihood of them surviving this was closer to zero than Weber was ready to admit.

  Breathing slow and shallow breaths, Weber found himself where he needed to be, on the passenger side of the rover. A second, equally satisfying wave of relief came along and Weber inhaled it with relish.

  Bell pushed open his door.

  Weber was on the wrong side. “Whoa, whoa, Bell!”

  Bell pulled the door closed. The door slammed shut.

  Weber saw Bell cringe inside the rover.

  “It’s okay, man. It’s alright,” Weber said, speaking softly. He knew Bell could hear him just fine inside his helmet. “Relax. Breathe easy. In. Out.”

  “I am relaxed. My breathing’s fine,” Bell responded.

  “I’m talking to myself, Bell. Not everything’s about you,” Weber said, grinning. Did he have any regrets? Or many?

  Weber’s mind spiraled. The past raced directly at him. It wasn’t the time. His body demanded his attention. His memories were winning out. Regrets. That’s what came to the forefront.

  K.C. and he had been together close to a year, had met after he’d completed his service with the NAAA and just started working for Euphoric Enterprises on the Nebula Way Station.

  One morning, he saw in the wastepaper basket in the bathroom a home pregnancy test. It was positive. She was going to have his baby. Like a coward, he’d left for work—a menial security detail for Euphoric consisting of hours locked in a room watching rows of monitors from closed-circuit cameras stationed around the home office—and spent the next several days avoiding her calls.

  When she demanded they talk, he ended things with her over the phone. Explained how things just weren’t working out. That the problem was him and not her. A cliché he tried his best to make sound sincere and authentic. The key was he never gave her a chance to share her news with him. This way, it looked like he’d broken things off before ever knowing she was pregnant.

  After a week apart, he realized his mistake. He did, in fact, love K.C. Leaving her had been a bad move. The idea of being a father at such a young age terrified him. He was barely making enough money to take care of himself. How was he going to support three people? Regardless, he knew he’d been wrong and wanted to make things right.

  K.C. agreed to meet for drinks.

  She agreed they could get back together, give things a second shot.

  And he waited for her to tell him she was pregnant.

  And waited.

  After two months passed and she didn’t show any sign of a baby growing inside of her, had never mentioned the pregnancy test she’d taken, he was compelled to bring up what he’d found, what he’d done, and how he was thankful she’d taken him back.

  K.C. listened without saying a word. Her eyes welled up with tears, though.

  “Baby, what’s wrong?”

  Then she told him what happened in between the days they’d been apart. “I was scared,” she said, her lower lip trembling. “I made an appointment with my doctor. I had the baby removed.”

  Weber felt his heart crushed inside his chest.

  She kept apologizing.

  It wasn’t her fault. It had been his. All of it.

  Making matters worse, he joined with Euphoric’s patrol, assigned to work under Commander Meyers and deployed on the Eclipse two weeks later.

  Again, he left K.C. with no real goodbye and no explanation.

  He knew she blamed herself for everything that went wrong. It was because he could no longer look her in the eyes; because he no longer felt good about himself that he had to leave this time.

  Shame.

  He despised himself.

  “Web? Web, man? You in there?”

  Weber shook his head, doing his best to clear the pain from his heart and the horrific memory from his mind. “We’re going to do this,” he said.

  There was no reason K.C. should give him a third chance. He didn’t deserve her love nor her forgiveness. If survived this predicament, though, he was at least going to apologize. Again.

  He wouldn’t tell her that he still loved her; wouldn’t tell her that he missed her; wouldn’t tell her that he thought about her all of the time.

  She didn’t need to hear any of that. It would only confuse things. He’d already done plenty to mess with her life. But an apology, she deserved at least that much.

  Weber opened Bell’s door, reached into the cab …

  Below them the cracks in the ice spread, and resembled a bizarre frozen lightning storm underfoot.

  The back end of the rover fell through the ice. The front end lifted into the air.

  Weber gripped Bell with both hands and yanked him out of the passenger seat just as the cab door swung closed.

  The rover’s front grill pointed toward the sky. The vehicle bobbed on the space of ocean occupied. Some ice still surrounded the back end of the rover, wedging it somewhat in place. The hold wouldn’t last.

  Weber knew they were still on an unstable surface. He got to his feet, spun around, reached down, and picked up Bell’s right leg near the ankle.

  And then, as best he could, he ran.

  The cracks in the ice grew longer, deeper, and raced after them.

  There was an area of diamond shaped mountains. If they could just reach them, reach that area, Weber suspected they’d be safe.

  Dragging Bell on the ice was much easier than the two of them trying to hobble toward safety.

  Chancing a look back, Weber caught sight of a block of ice rolling. Reminded him of film he’d seen on icebergs in the Antarctica, long before the massive bodies of water began drying up on Earth.

  The rolling berg toppled down on the rover and pushed it underwater.

  They’d reached what could quite possibly be land, and even if it wasn’t, Weber could not do anymore. He was winded and the muscles in his legs burned.

  The cracks in the ice stopped ten, fifteen yards behind them.

  The rover was gone. Submerged. And now either sinking to the bottom of what must seem a bottomless ocean, or was being swept around the planet on some unnatural, and foreign current.

  Weber laughed. Slow, at first, and he ignored the way Bell stared at him. As his giggling escalated, Bell finally joined in.

  “We made it,” Weber said, over and over again.

  “I can’t believe we didn’t drown inside that thing!”

  “I know, right? But we didn’t. We made it. We got out of there!” Weber could hardly wait to get back to the Eclipse. He resolved to record an apology video. He’d send it on ahead of their return to Nebula. It wouldn’t be perfect. It would not repair a single thing. K.C. deserved that much, and maybe, just maybe it could be a start.

  “I’m just amazed! We’re still alive!”

  “Nothing can stop us now, Bell. You hear me? Nothing.”

  Something snarled. A low groan grew into a terrible growl.

  Weber patted a hand against his thigh. Slapped a palm on the ice.

  He panicked, thinking he didn’t have his blaster, that he had left it inside the rover.

  The growl came again. Only this time it was closer.

  And the sound came from behind them.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Commander Anara Meyers fit a bud into her ear, tapped the end. It glowed a soft blue. Then she blew into the microphone in front of her. She looked around for a way to transmit, and touched the microphone base. Nothing.

  Danielle Rivers pointed underneath the table. “You use the foot pedals. Press down on it when you want to talk. Lift off when you are done.”

  “Seems a bit archaic. Have you done this?” Meyers asked.

  “First degree I earned was in communications and broadcasting,” Rivers explained.

  Meyers stood up. “Please. Have a seat. See if
you can reach the Eclipse.”

  “Aye, Commander.” Rivers sat down. She typed on the keyboard. Lights flashed on the system in front of her. “This is the transmitter over here. It turns electrical signals into radio waves with an antenna. The radio waves can travel indefinitely.”

  “Do we have an antenna?”

  “Saw one outside. Noticed it when we were getting close to the colony. It was actually one of the first things I saw. That’s good news,” Rivers said and tapped more keys. She twisted knobs, repositioned herself in the chair, and adjusted the bud she placed inside her ear. “It was there. Standing tall. One less thing we have to worry about. Okay. Let’s see what we can do.”

  Meyers nodded. “Ready when you are.”

  Rivers depressed the pedal underneath the table. “This is Lieutenant Danielle Rivers, trying to reach the Eclipse. Eclipse, come in. Over.”

  _____

  Officer Nathaniel Gaines stood up. “We’re being hailed.”

  Mark Windsor, who’d been pouring over every detail of Officer Mandy Kadera’s report, looked up from his pad. “Say again?”

  Gaines pointed to his ear and was smiling. “Solid signal. Coming from the colony. It’s Captain Rivers. She’s trying to reach you.”

  “Have you replied?” Windsor set aside his pad. “Never mind. Put them through.”

  Gaines nodded. “And go.”

  “This is First Officer Mark Windsor. Captain Rivers, do you copy? Over.”

  Those on the bridge watched the officer, hope on their expressions. Eyes wide.

  “Officer Windsor. This is Captain Rivers. How are you reading me? Over.”

  “Loud and clear,” he said. “Over.”

  “You’re loud and clear, as well. I am here with Commander Meyers, Captain Stanton, and Lieutenant Angela Ruiz,” she said. “We’re inside the colony, in their communications room.”

  Windsor felt a knot twist in is gut. “And the others?”

  “We have a confirmed fatality. Lieutenant Gordon O’Hearn. Lieutenant Murray Bell is with our shuttle. We broke through the atmosphere and were side-swept by a storm. It took our shuttle and the starfighters down. Our medic, Lieutenant Weber, is en-route to pick up Bell at the shuttle and retrieve O’Hearn’s corpse,” Rivers explained. “We’ve not heard from pilots Reilly or Jane Cornwell. Over.”