Europa (Deadverse Book 1)

by Flunker, Richard

  Always an outcast. Whether on Earth, or on Europa.

  He heard the voices edge him into the ship. They said he would be safe. They told him to find the heart and he would find peace.

  That’s all he wanted, so he stepped through, and as he did, the voices fell silent. It was as if he had walked in through the front door of his father’s house. The smells, the sounds, a sense of familiarity, all of these overwhelmed him, and he let himself drift in.

  - Thomas –

  He hated the creepy old man. Paul and Thomas had waited for nearly thirty minutes until the billionaire showed up with his gear, which apparently meant every single piece of invented equipment the guy had brought with him from Earth. Three plastic crates full of odds and ends. The guy even had carbon steel tubes where he kept all sorts of super-secret scrolls from ancient China, or Egypt. He wasn’t sure which. He didn’t care.

  As the rover sped off towards the alien ship, he sat in the back seat, squished between the two crates next to him. It was hard to see through the helmet visor, but Thomas had glimpsed a few odd smiles that had disturbed him. He just didn’t like the guy.

  Paul hadn’t said a thing. He had arrived with his guns and waited silently with him. Thomas was the kind of guy that put everything out there, so to be sitting with the crazy old coot and the silent soldier type was driving him insane. He wanted so badly to blurt out just how great it was going to feel to finally catch the creep and put him down. But, he didn’t.

  As they cleared the ice spear field and came out into the wide open ice fields, it became quickly apparent that something was different. Where the alien vessel had once been just a third of the way out of the ice, it was now nearly three fourths of the way out.

  “Uh,” Thomas said, opening the channel back to the base. “Ben, are you seeing this?”

  “Negative, rover. We are getting really bad interference on the video. Audio is still fine.”

  Thomas described the ship and its apparent change from the last time there had been there. Ben didn’t immediately respond, so Thomas waited. When he came back, he explained he was checking in with the women up in the Odyssey. The return ship didn’t orbit directly over the alien vessel, so they never got a good look at it. Connie had showed them some pictures of what appeared to be someone by the alien vessel, but the image wasn’t clear enough. Thomas never understood why Ben had brushed aside that incredibly clear piece of evidence.

  Thomas didn’t understand why anyone did what they did anymore. Everyone had lost their minds, or were on their way to doing so.

  The rover came to a stop well before the alien ship, but the vessel still towered over them, hiding most of Jupiter behind it. Paul got off and started to slowly make his way around. Thomas could only assume he was scouting, so he did the same, back towards the opposite direction. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, other than Emir, but everyone assumed he was inside of the ship.

  “Nothing here,” Thomas spoke into his helm comm, not even knowing what ‘here’ actually encompassed.

  “We won’t find anything out here,” Paul replied.

  Thomas turned and searched for the soldier. He was several hundred feet away from him, slowly bouncing around the terrain, looking down. Before he could reply to him, Thomas noticed Glorin. The old fool had unloaded the three crates, and had attached sets of wheels to them and was pulling them in a wagon train towards the alien vessel.

  “Um, Mr. Ignacius,” Thomas started, “what are you doing?”

  He didn’t reply, but just kept moving towards the ship. Thomas began to bounce his way back towards the rover, which was easily over three hundred feet away. He hadn’t realized how far he had gone during his ‘scouting’.

  “Glorin,” Thomas barked, “we’re not ready to go into the ship just yet.”

  Far behind him, he could see Paul was already on his way back to the rover as well, bouncing too high up into the European gravity. The soldier just wasn’t used to walking around on the low gravity. Thomas kept moving himself as quickly as his forward jumps would take him. He watched as Glorin got to the edge of the ship and quickly lifted off one crate and threw it into the hull, where it was engulfed.

  “Stop. What are you doing?” Paul’s voice echoed over the comm.

  In one quick motion, the old fool threw the two remaining crates into the hull where they vanished as well. Even on the moon’s low gravity, the two large crates would have been unwieldy and indeed have some weight. Everyone had watched the old man slowly withering away the past few weeks. Susan could barely remember when he actually came up from his deep dungeon to eat. But there he was, effortlessly throwing the crates in.

  “STOP!” Thomas shouted one more time, his visor fogging up from the sweat that was pouring off of his face.

  He half expected the crazy old man to turn and give him a wild grin before he disappeared into his little expedition. The idiot considered himself an Indiana Jones, and was clearly delusional. He was going to get himself killed by Emir, and while he didn’t like Glorin, Thomas did not want to see anyone else die. He jumped forward and as quickly as he could, but was too far away. Glorin took one more step and vanished into the ship.

  “Dammit,” he shouted. “What the hell is wrong with him?”

  “Did he even have his oxygen tank on him?” Paul asked.

  Thomas reached the rover and looked down, seeing the small cylinder lying next to the rover on the ice. He looked up and saw Paul just one hundred feet away.

  “No,” Thomas said, “the fool left it behind.”

  “Ok, then grab yours,” Paul ordered. “I’ll grab both mine and his and let’s get in there after him.”

  Thomas reached into the back bed of the rover and grabbed his tank. He reached behind and felt it lock easily into place on the small pack of the suit. He began walking towards the hull as Paul arrived, so he pointed down to where Glorin’s tank was.

  “Ben, you getting this?” Thomas said, waiting for a reply.

  There was none.

  Thomas checked the channels and the link was still there. The boss must have been busy with something else. Paul walked past him and Thomas reached out to stop him.

  “Hold on. I have to let Ben know what’s going on,” Thomas said.

  Paul stopped, and Thomas waited a moment. “Ben, you there? Base?”

  Again, there was no reply.

  “We don’t have time Thomas,” Paul said. “If he’s already in there, who knows how time is changing for them or us.”

  Thomas tried to think back to how it had happened the first time they had gone into the ship, but Paul brushed past him headed towards the hull. Thomas just followed, hopping along.

  “Wait,” Thomas said, reaching out for Paul again. “I think we will be fine.”

  Before he could get him, Paul had already leapt forward into the hull. The jump sent him soaring twenty feet above the ice. Thomas followed suit, but with a strong jump forward, just feet off the ice. He watched as the soldier soared over him, airborne cavalry, charging into the battle. The scene would have been majestic, had Paul not crashed into the side of the hull.

  The thud resounded through the helmet comm, along with a loud grunt of pain. Paul floated down the side of the hull towards the ice, landing on his feet just as Thomas reached the hull.

  “That,” Paul started, “um…”

  Thomas reached out and touched the hull. It was solid.

  “Oh, boy,” he said quietly. “Ben? You there? You hearing any of this?”

  “Did we just get locked out?” Paul said, reaching out again to feel the side of the hull. He had never seen it that close, but had heard about its liquid state. He watched as Glorin had hefted the crates right into it, and the old man himself had fallen into the ship as if he’d jumped into a lake. Paul put both of his hands on the hull and pushed hard. His feet gave way under him and Thomas was surprised to see droplets of liquid water float up into the air, quickly freezing.

  Then he felt the tremor.r />
  It was nearly invisible, and most people wouldn’t have felt it, but this was his area of expertise. He’d felt it many times before.

  “Paul,” he shouted, “get back now, jump, as far as you can.”

  Thomas turned and jumped as high as he possibly could, launching himself nearly fifty feet into the air. Paul looked down at his feet and saw them began to sink. He quickly turned and followed suit, producing a jump that launched him higher and further than Thomas had mustered. The soldier landed next to the rover. Lucky, Thomas thought, as he repeated the jump a few times.

  “We have to get out of here now. The ice is melting underneath us. No way of knowing how far the melting point will go.”

  By the time Thomas reached the rover, Paul was already sitting in the driver’s seat. The engineer took one quick look back at the ship when he saw the picture of confusion on the soldier’s face. He recognized the steam geysers that were erupting all along the ship’s hull, shooting crystals of ice high into the European sky. He looked up in horror as he realized the entire alien vessel was rising to the surface.

  “Go. NOW!”

  “What?” Paul asked, hesitating.

  The rover was built with driving columns on either side of the front seats. Thomas reached forward, switched the command over to his side, and stepped on the accelerator pedal. The rover spun out in reverse, its clawed wheels digging into the ice and throwing shards up along the side of the rover. He spun it around as fast as he could and put it into forward and sped off. Paul turned to look at the alien ship, and the further they got from it, the more apparent it became that it was rising out of the ice.

  “Ben. BEN!” Thomas shouted, but while the link continued to be open, there was still no reply. “Dammit.”

  The rover continued to build up speed, going nearly fifty miles an hour, a speed that could prove dangerous if they lost their grip on the ice. Thomas sped them towards the ice spear field and finally slowed down. The ship was now several miles behind them, hopefully safe enough from the melting ice. Thomas jumped out of the rover and looked back at the ship.

  “It’s…” Paul started, but couldn’t finish his thought.

  Thomas couldn’t even reply. The ship was entirely out of the ice, and floating there, maybe just a few hundred feet above the surface, which had already frozen over. Its long shape reminded him of an Idaho potato, long and lumpy, except for the bottom or what he thought was the rear of the ship. From there, a clean angled fin, pointing down towards the ice. Where once it had lost its shape, now it had completely reformed into the long green alien vessel they had seen on pictures.

  Paul stepped forward, scanning the horizon.

  “What’s going on? What do you see?” Thomas asked in the private channel. He was still trying to get a response from the base, but to no avail.

  Paul reached back into the rover and brought out a small tri-pod. It took him just a few seconds to set it up. The camera at the top of the tri-pod began feeding video into his helmet.

  “There is something coming out of it,” Paul replied, focusing on the video stream inside his helmet.

  Thomas strained to see off into the distance, but the contrast with Jupiter behind it prevented him from seeing anything other than the large green ship. What he could see were the lumps on the hull changing shapes, likes waves over water.

  “Something is dropping out the bottom, like drops of gelatin. Right under the ship. No clue what they are, though,” Paul said.

  “What about those?” Thomas said, pointing.

  Small drops were being shot off the top of the ship and were flying off into the distance. Paul stopped looking at the video to see what Thomas was pointing at.

  “Looks like,” Paul said, straining to see the small objects flying off the hull of the ship, “looks like the same thing.”

  “They’re going all over,” Thomas said. “No way that can be a good thing.”

  “And those,” this time it was Paul pointing towards the vessel, “those are coming this way.”

  Thomas looked and watched as several of the globs didn’t seem to be going anywhere, but were increasing in size.

  “BEN!!!” Thomas shouted, again, to no avail. “We have to get out of here.”

  The first object landed on the ice just a hundred or so feet away from them. It was of the same consistency as the hull of the ship, before it had hardened. Instead of crashing into the ice, it flattened, then began to fill up back into a sphere. Paul and Thomas jumped back into the rover and began to speed off through the ice spear field. As ice spun out behind them, Paul took a look, and two more of the green globs had landed. The first sphere was starting to spin and come towards them.

  “Go now!” Paul shouted. “FAST!”

  Thomas would have wanted to, but it was impossible to go fast through the spears. The ice was uneven, and every time the rover’s wheel didn’t catch on the ice, it would spin out and slow the rover down. Thomas had to continually go in and around the towering spears of ice, leftovers of the ridge of ice that sheltered the base. The whole time, he continued to try to reach the base over the comm, shouting. His face plate fogged up and his thermal regulator kicked in, blowing cool air at his face. It was all he could do to keep a good view while driving.

  Paul looked behind, and through the sides of the giant ice towers, he saw the first sphere, now spinning quickly. Its shape had elongated, and it looked like Saturn, a sphere with a small ring around it. It spun on that ring, and as it slammed into the sides of ice spears, it absorbed the impact harmlessly and smoothly, maintaining an even speed. Paul reached down and pulled out his first gun, aimed, and fired twice.

  The MR-22 was a side arm specifically engineered for space combat. It didn’t require combustion in an atmosphere, so it could fire its shots in a vacuum. This was the first time the weapon had been fired outside of Earth and its test vacuum labs. Used to the loud noise of gunfire, Paul recoiled in shock of the utter silence. The bullets sped into the green sphere, tearing small chunks of its ‘flesh’ but not slowing it down at all.

  Within moments, Paul had unloaded the nine shot clip and was already aiming his other weapon, the equivalent of an assault rifle, modified for vacuum combat. The rover continued to speed as fast as it could around each tower of ice, throwing Paul back and forth on his seat. He unclipped himself and moved to the rear seat, set his legs forward to pin himself against the rear of the rover and took aim with the rifle. Multiple shots began to fly off towards the approaching sphere, once again, to little effect. Each bullet splashed against it, splattering small green globs against the ice. As Paul unloaded one clip, he reached down to get the next one and saw the two others spheres spinning some ways behind the first one.

  “This isn’t good,” Paul muttered.

  “Don’t say shit like that.” Thomas said, not daring to take his eyes off the ice and towers in front of him to look.

  Paul clipped the next mag in and took aim, when he noticed what looking like a tentacle forming out of the spinning orb.

  “Yup, that’s not good either,” he grumbled again.

  There was a white flash and a three foot shard of ice smashed into the side of ice just as Thomas turned the rover right, nearly missing them. The impact exploded shards of ice that splashed all over the rover.

  “What the hell was that?” Thomas shouted, his heart racing.

  “It’s shooting back at us,” Paul said.

  He took careful aim, and fired his shots, this time trying to hit the ice firing weapon.

  “Shooting?” Thomas asked. “Oh great.”

  “Just keep driving, and turn in and out of as many of those ice towers as you can.”

  There was nothing else he could do. The ice tower field didn’t clear up for nearly another six miles. Shards of ice continued to explode around him as he turned. Thomas shouted in surprise every time. Paul tried firing at the tentacle like weapon, but the bumpy ride never allowed him to get off good shots.

  “At least t
hey aren’t catching up on us,” Paul said, emptying his last magazine.

  “Oh, yeah, good for us,” Thomas replied.

  Paul attempted to set the rifle down, but a small bump launched it clear off the rover. The soldier watched in dismay as the weapon floated off and was then gone behind a tower. He shook his head and reached down for his last weapon.

  “How far are we from clearing the field?” Paul shouted.

  Another ice shard slammed into the ice cliff. A fist sized chunk of ice splintered off and hit Thomas directly in the face plate, nearly knocking him off the rover. He pulled hard on the wheel to keep himself in the rover, but in turn, spun the vehicle nearly into another tower. Paul was thrown sideways and nearly lost hold of the small cylinder he was holding. The rover smashed off the side of the tower as it kept driving.

  “There,” Thomas shouted, pointing. “There’s the base.”

  Then it dawned on him.

  “Oh shit, did we just bring them straight to the base?”

  Paul pressed two buttons on the cylinder and looked back at Thomas.

  “Just tell me the moment we clear the field.”

  Thomas saw a direct path through the next couple of ice spears and pressed down on the accelerator. The small rover picked up speed, barely hanging on to the ice. It exploded out of the ice field like a bullet.

  “CLEAR!”

  Paul pressed a third button and then threw the cylinder as hard as he could out of the back of the rover. The black cylinder bounced off the side of an ice tower and landed with a soft floating thud on the ice ground. The green glob was just behind it.

  “That should do…” Paul started to say when the explosion lit up the dark moon night.

  The alien object vanished in a flash of blinding white light and the whole line of ice towers began to crumble. The power of the bomb was far greater than even Paul had expected. The concussion ripped up a layer of ice ten feet deep and sent a shockwave out towards them. The wave of ice hit the rover, launching it off the ground. As it flew into the sky, it spun, throwing both of the men clear of the vehicle. In slow motion, the two men and the vehicle went flying off in opposite directions, crashing nearly five hundred feet from where the shockwave had hit the rover.