Yet, it always rang true.
They continued to drive through the ice field, going slower than he used to on the open ice plains. He had to slow down a lot, turning through the columns, often coming to dead ends. He was so focused on driving that when he exited the ice shafts, what he saw next failed to register in his brain. He heard Susan gasp in his com link and he turned to look at her. Her eyes were dead set ahead of her, and he turned to look ahead and that’s when it hit him. Ahead of them, the familiar ice plains were contrasted heavily by the gargantuan shape of the alien vessel sticking out of the ice like a beached whale. About a third of it had come out of the ice, and it had bent, contorted, or melted, onto the ice plains while the rest of it remained under the ice. It was a green mountain against the white field.
“Susan, get the camera,” he shouted out as he continued driving. He slowed down a bit, though. Susan reached back behind her and turned on the front viewing camera. Two green lights came on the small black device.
“Ben, come in,” Thomas said, pulling up the base’s com link on his tablet.
As they continued to drive towards the vessel, they could make out the small entrance shaft about a mile away, along with the elevator crane and the lone rover.
“Thomas, I’m on. Are you there yet?”
“You need to turn on the camera link to the rover. You have to see this.”
Silence.
They approached the shaft and stopped the rover twenty feet away. As they got out to walk towards the equipment, Ben chimed in again.
“I can’t link the feed, Thomas. What are you seeing?”
Thomas laughed.
“It’s the artifact Ben. Its, well, something happened, the quake maybe, but it’s out of the ice. Not all of it, but…” Thomas stopped to look in the distance again. Jupiter was there, as it always ways, day after day. But even the gas giant seemed insignificant compared to the alien vessel, a mountain of gleaming green, towering over them.
“The quake?”
“That’s what I thought too, but, I don’t see any other damage to the ice out here.”
“We don’t know enough about the tidal forces on this moon to know how it all works.”
“I agree, Ben, but if you could see it, it looks like it just…melted out of the ice.”
Thomas reached the shaft and the crane equipment and looked down. Pitch darkness stared back at him. The equipment around him was fine, no visible damage was seen. The plan had been to descend into the shaft and retrieve the drone soldiers, but if the alien vessel had moved this much, the entire entrance area might have been compromised, along with the soldiers. Just going down into the shaft could be a death sentence.
“Thomas?”
He turned to look towards Susan. She was over by the rover, on the far side of the vehicle.
“Come here, uh, now, please, quick.”
Thomas hopped over as quickly as he could, grabbing a hold of the rover to pull himself around faster than his legs could get him there. On the frozen ice floor, next to the rover, was one of the drone soldiers. It looked dead. It was entirely possible, as they hadn’t brought out any oxygen for two days. Thomas reached down and touched the control panel on its chest. It flipped open revealing a small screen. Thomas tapped the screen and it came to life. Data began to fill the screen and Thomas read it over.
“Looks like he’s still alive….” Thomas started, before falling back in fear.
The drone had jolted and moved.
Susan stepped back and as Thomas got up, they both watched it wriggle and seemingly convulse. Thomas reached back down and looked at the screen. He reached down and tried to hold the drone still so that he could read the screen.
“It says he still has enough air, we should try to get it back on board the rover and get it back to base.”
Thomas continued to try to tap at the screen to get more information when he remembered a conversation he had once with Bobby about the drones. He stepped back and brought his wrist tablet up and began tapping. He had to dig through the programs, but found the AI app and booted it up. He watched as the program counted up as it loaded.
“Maybe we can talk to it and get it to calm down, or whatever. Bobby showed me.”
The app loaded and came up. One signal was available. Thomas assumed it was the drone on the ground. He tapped on the signal and the signal linked with his tablet. His helmet was instantly flooded with shouting.
“HELP! HELP! GET ME OUT OF THIS THING!!”
Thomas took a step back.
“Susan, he...he’s alive! We’ve got to get him back. Help me!”
Thomas reached down to try to pick the drone up. Even in the lighter moon gravity, the drone was still heavy. He waited for Susan to appear to help, and when she didn’t, he looked back.
She wasn’t anywhere.
Thomas stood up quickly, and scanned the horizon. Susan was running and bouncing as fast as she could towards the alien vessel.
“Susan, what the hell are you doing?” Thomas shouted into his comm.
She didn’t answer, but stopped for a moment. Her arm went up and she waved back, then turned around and continued to run, bounding in small leaps, towards the vessel. She was already too far away to do anything, and he watched for a moment as she reached the vessel and vanished. It was quite a ways away, and he wasn’t sure if she had gone into it, or if he just couldn’t see her anymore.
“Umm, Ben, Susan just went AWOL on us.”
Thomas reached back down and tried to get the drone to stand up. He had muted the screaming coming from inside the mech, but noticed on the data link that he was silent. He opened the link again, and spoke.
“Can you hear me in there?” Thomas asked. He felt awkward talking to it. From everything Bobby had told him, that never happened. It was never done.
“Yes, sir,” came the male voice.
Thomas nearly laughed.
“Thomas, repeat? AWOL?”
“Ben, you’re not going to believe what just happened.”
- Ben –
There was a loud hiss, and the door failed to seal. The light was green, but there was a steady stream of air coming through a hidden crack somewhere in the wall. Ben rushed over to the visible air geyser streaming out into the vacuum and began feeling around with his hands. He moved the hands around the surface of the wall until the spitting air suddenly stopped.
“Ok, found it.”
He reached down towards his feet and lifted up a small gun. When he removed the hands from the wall, the stream of air began again, sending ice crystals bouncing off of his suit. Ben pointed the gun right up against the tiny leak, pressed a button, and coated the wall with a black gloppy substance. He then reached into a small bag on the ice floor and brought out a small disk, which he tapped onto the adhesive glob. His hands pressed on it, and the glue oozed out of the edges of the disk, sealing hard.
“That was close,” Ben breathed heavily into the comms.
“Yeah, that stuff hardens in a hurry.”
Cary was on the other end of the access hatch.
“I’ll try to reseal. Hold on,” she added.
The outer door sealed again, and they knew it worked as they had tested it a few times. Air flooded into the small chamber and in twelve seconds, Cary gave the thumbs up through the small window. Then he looked back down and reversed the process. Ben stood back and watched with his own gauges. They had nearly lost a whole dome when their consoles on the inside had indicated the hatch was sealed when it was not. They had enough bad luck, they didn’t need any more stupidity on their part. Now he watched as the gauges told him the air was being drained out of the outer hull. When the green light came on inside the access room, he looked back down. He waited a moment, looking around the wall to see if there were any additional leaks. He counted seventeen other disks all over the wall. There were some serious issues with the digital readings all over the base. The main computer system was mostly useless, except for the communications. Crysta
had managed to get the digital coms running again.
Ben took one last look at the gauges and smiled in satisfaction. One small battle won, for now.
“All good in there?” Thomas asked.
“Yup. Let’s open her up and get Thomas back in here.”
A second light turned red, then began blinking. The blinking lights traced a path towards the outer door until they reached a large green light above the main access door. That light blinked into existence and the door began to slowly rotate open. Ben walked over quickly; the magnetic floors worked here. Odd, that they worked erratically all over the rest of base. As the door rolled open, Thomas was there in the rover, waiting. On the back of the rover was the large mech, laid across the back seats. Ben waved Thomas in and slowly, the rover came across the ice inside the dome, spinning a few times on the smooth surface. Once inside, Thomas jumped down and reached under the rover, dragging out a long cable. While Ben closed the outside door again, Thomas plugged the rover back into the power supply.
“Help me with this guy,” Thomas barked. He was tired, haggard and pissed off.
Ben didn’t quite know what kind of relationship Thomas and Susan had, whether they liked each other or not, but he did know that Thomas didn’t like things getting out of hand, out of control. The thought of Susan just bounding off after the alien vessel was sure to have set him off. Ben had more to deal with than just a broken base. There were many broken people within the base, but he wasn’t sure he could help any of them. To make matters worse, both of his doctors were unavailable.
Rushing over, he helped Thomas stand the mech up on its metal and carbon alloy legs. It stood up, almost gingerly, before stumbling a bit. Ben watched as the light turned green, and just for safety sake, he checked his gauge again. It was one hundred percent breathable air. They pushed through the small hatch one at a time, helping the drone soldier through. Thomas explained how nearly all of its internal sensors and displays were down, so they were essentially leading a blind giant robot through the base.
“And Bobby?” Thomas asked.
Cary sealed up the hatch and came walking behind them.
“We still haven’t found him. There are sections of the base that are buried under tons of ice,” she replied. All three still had their helmets on. That was one order Ben insisted on, almost maniacally. They could refill on air all over the base, so they didn’t have to lug around tanks of air, but he still wanted the helmets on. The base was just too full of holes, he said.
“Crysta is working on trying to access the databases and find the files Bobby used for the drones,” Ben explained as they struggled to move the unwieldy mech drone down through the clutter of crates and broken structure inside the engineering dome. They had repaired the outer hull and the coating of ice was nearly finished. A tiny moment of safety they desperately needed.
“Crysta?” Ben shouted over the com.
“Yeah,” came her reply, “I heard you guys. I’ve found the files, but I’m trying to find any information on, well, pulling a guy out. Honestly guys, I don’t think there is any. There were no plans to pull a guy out.”
“Keep looking,” Ben ordered.
“Yeah, of course,” Crysta replied.
Cary pointed over to a large ice table that had remained surprisingly intact. She ran over and began brushing off pieces of plastic and shards of ice off the top until the smooth cold surface shone through. Thomas and Ben managed to get the mech over to the table and slowly laid him down on his back, pushing him all the way up onto the table.
“Can you hear me still, soldier?” Thomas asked into the mech’s data line.
“I can. Getting kinda stuffy in here though.”
Thomas looked over at Ben who ran over to the mech’s chest plate display. Ben looked down and then back up, shrugging his shoulders.
“He has enough air,” the base commander said.
Thomas repeated what Ben had said to the soldier. “It might be the anxiety, or just the work up from all the moving. Try to relax a bit. We are working on trying to get you out.”
“Ok.” Thomas could hear the heavy breathing through the comms. “How long have I been in here?”
Thomas looked up at Ben. The commander could hear the soldier’s transmissions, but he couldn’t reply to them directly.
“Oh, a day or two. Not sure when you, uh, woke up.”
There was a pause before the soldier replied. “I think I’ve been in the suit longer than that.”
“Oh. That.” Thomas hesitated for a moment. “Honestly, uh, guy, I have no idea. We don’t have that kind of information here.”
“Where…” the soldier began to ask, but there was a gasp in his voice. “This isn’t my scheduled release, is it?”
Thomas had to think about what the drone soldier was talking about. When he realized the confused nature of the soldier, he looked back at Ben. The commander just nodded.
“No. It’s not.”
“Am I a prisoner?”
“Oh, no, we’re Americans. We’re trying to get you out of the suit.”
“An accident?”
“You could, umm, say that.” Thomas wasn’t sure what to say.
Cary walked up with a spare suit and Crysta came online on the data link.
“Ben, I’m sending you the files, but I see nothing in here. We’re gonna have to crack him out the old fashioned way.”
“I was worried about that,” Ben said. “Thomas, you better let him know.”
“Ok,” Thomas looked down at the data link. The soldier’s vitals were all showing OK. “Listen, soldier, we need to try to get you out of the suit, but we aren’t quite sure how to do it, and really don’t have the right equipment here, so just be ready, OK?”
“Where exactly is here?”
Ben swallowed. “Get ready for the shock of a lifetime, kid.”
“We are on Europa, a moon around Jupiter,” Thomas announced.
There was a small pause before the soldier replied.
“Say again?”
- Joyce –
It was her turn to watch them and it was a welcome break. For days now, Joyce had spent every waking hour she had trying desperately to link up in any way possible with anyone at all on Earth. First it had been a connection with Indy, but after exhausting all methods there, she tried other American com bands, military or otherwise. After she exhausted those options, she tried any band she could think of, analog or digital, all over the world. And yet, she kept coming up blank. Nothing was being pointed up to them, and she certainly didn’t have the power in their little base to send blank SOS messages to Earth in the hopes the random band browser was listening in. Still, nothing. They were dead in the water, and as far as she knew, so was Earth.
War.
She trembled a bit as she thought about it. They had yet to go to Ben with it; only she and Crysta knew the decoded messages the Captain had received from Earth. Nuclear war. A holocaust that had been a nightmare to those living on Earth nearly a hundred years in the past, but was a faraway possibility now. And yet, something had happened.
But what?
On the far bed was Horace Tarner, the base shrink. He had suffered a really bad head contusion, or trauma, or something. He had hit his head hard. She didn’t know. Whatever it was had been bad enough to keep him out for a day. Thankfully, he had woken up a bit this morning in utter shock. His first words were “I’m not dead?”
He had managed to drink a little, Cary had told her, and look around for a bit before going back to sleep. They really needed Gary to know if he had some kind of internal bleeding, or head injury they didn’t know. All of the medical equipment was apparently destroyed, but even if it wasn’t, no one there really knew how to use the really complicated stuff. Everyone had first aid training, but head trauma was something Gary had to deal with.
On the second of three available beds was the soldier. She had watched on the video as Ben, Thomas and Cary had cut away into the mech suit to tear the guy out. Ba
ld and pale, but with bright blue eyes, the guy looked like someone who had been living in a cave. Essentially he had, and for how long no one knew. His name was Paul Gore, an appropriate name for a soldier, she had first thought. Joyce didn’t consider herself a pacifist in any fashion, her ex-boyfriends could attest to that, but she wasn’t a fan of the military either. Few people really were, but they just held too much sway any more in America. And just how could you be a fan of a mindless drone that could kill you in sixteen, probably seventeen, different ways.
Asleep just a minute ago, Paul sat up in the bed. Joyce started up in reaction.
The guy sitting up on the bed didn’t look like a killing machine, though. That was always the stark reality, that no matter how much you wanted to hate the military, it was still made up of men and women, just like you. Stupid reality.
“You OK?”
The light glimmered off the bald head, although, it was already starting to grow a gaunt layer of fuzz.
“No one could really tell me how it was to wake up from the drones. No one had woken up when I first went in.”
“And?” Joyce asked, curious. “How is it?”
“Like waking up from a serious bender, but without the hangover. Also, I expected to wake up in someone else’s house, not on someone else’s moon.”
Joyce almost laughed.
“Also, I feel…really light.”
“That’s the gravity on the moon. Takes a while to get used to,” Joyce pointed out.
He swung his legs around and reached for the floor, touching the icy surface with his bare feet, and instantly recoiling. Joyce reached a bit, lurching forward, then stopped when the soldier recoiled back onto the bed. He held his hand out, palm out, stopping her. He reached out again with the feet and put them fully on the ice floor. He sucked air in through his teeth, hissing loudly, then tried to stand up. Surprisingly, he stood straight up.
Europa (Deadverse Book 1) Page 9