Melinda's Dreams (The Advent of the Stars)

by Paul Harm

  “So, you want to drive to the Schwarzschild crater in order to find another puzzle piece to a riddle you two are trying to solve and you need me to get you a ride, am I getting it correct so far?” “Yes, that’s correct.” “Then why the fuck are you pointing this strange injection needle towards me, am I sick or something?” “It’s a...” “a psyblocker yes I heard you before. You know if you were alone here Joseph I would’ve checked you out but since both of you are acting like crazy I’m going to take you to that crater and now fuck off with this thing from me.” Mathilda wasn’t in the worst mood they had ever seen her but not in her best one either, neutral really. “So, you’re helping us?” “Yes, I’ll help you, just to show you that there’s nothing on the far side of the moon, well of course except the fucking moon. Don’t you think they checked the place out when we decided to build a station here?” “I think it’s well hidden.” “Of course, you think so because you’re delusional and delusional people try to keep their god damn story alive.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “But that’s ok for me because I’m done for this and next week since I have to wait for another lab double check and even though I would’ve liked to just write my reports in the meantime I’m happy to fly with you out to the god damn Weißschwert crater.” “Schwarzschild.” John dropped in. “Whatever. But I need a coffee before we go.”

  She stormed out of her lab and headed down the hallway towards the hail bringing coffee machine. “That went better than I expected.” Joseph started to smile as Claire said it. “Could’ve been worse, I agree.” After drinking her coffee Mathilda was kind of exactly the same person in exactly the same mood, just a little more awake. She even let them put the injection needle into her neck. “I think we can take one of the rover units. They should get us there but it’s going to take a long time.” As she finished talking the door of her office slid open and a familiar looking woman stood in the door. In her face was an expression of sorrow and joy as she spotted three people of which she only expected Mathilda to see. Mathilda jumped up. “Lucia what the fuck are you doing here?” Lucia could not even answer as Mathilda swung her arms around her and pressed her violently against her chest. “I’m sorry.” “Sorry for what?” John and Claire stood right next to them. “Didn’t you hear the news from about three weeks ago? Ruby station had a major fusion core malfunction and crashed into Mars.” Joseph was hit by an invisible punch to the chest as he staggered back falling into a chair as he did. “John.” He sighed, tears built up in his eyes, he pushed it away there will be time for the dead later now their lives are at stake he shook it off and got back up. The room was dead silent now and Lucia stood there with tears in her eyes. She wiped them away. “Yes, three weeks ago but that’s not all. When we headed for Jupiter we found that someone was stealing some chemical supplies and they EVA cross checked them. It turns out you can create a very powerful bomb with the stolen components.” “But that would mean it was sabotage. Has this ever happened in the last two centuries?” “That’s my point there’s something going on we’ve no clue about and I’m determined to get behind this.” Lucia declared fiercely. Joseph reached in his backpack and gave Lucia an injection needle which contained the chip while he put it on he described what it was for. They sat in the office for another hour catching up on their individual stories and tried to figure out a way to solve this mess they found themselves in.

  Even though the circumstances had been a mess it felt good to see each other and slowly they became the old youth gang and Claire fitted in perfectly. “So, you need to get to the far side of the moon. Well that’s going to take forever from Lunar Station in a rover.” Lucia pointed out as she rose an eyebrow. “That’s exactly what I said.” Mathilda took a victory sip from her coffee with which she had provided everyone with by now. “Well we have to get there.” Joseph reached into his pocket. “We found these.” He showed them the old memory storage units. “I think we find some technology there which can access them.” “We don’t know how else we should get there than in a rover.” Claire added. “Well fortunately I’m still captain of the biggest supply freighter in the fleet and we do have a couple of shuttles on board. Mostly for drop zone checkouts. They’re nothing but scouting ships really, but they’re small, and they’re fast.” Lucia opened her communicator. “Brian, report in.” “Hey what up Captain.” “How many people are on board the Cetacea now.” “Well it’s just me and some guys from the loading docks we’re almost done for today.” “Take them out for drinks I need the Cetacea empty.” “Anything I should know about?” Brian asked, and, in his voice, you could hear a smart man’s suspicion. “I don’t think you’d like to know about it.” The other three in the office were completely silent as they heard Brian sighing. “Well I guess I have my orders. Guys!” A mumble in the background started. “We’ve to get to a bar and get wasted, Captain’s orders!” The mumble turned into a laughter. “I guess that means yes.” Brian declared casually “Good luck Captain. XO out.” Lucia put the communicator back into her pocket. “We’d better get moving after everything you told me.”

  They left immediately and headed for the Cetacea. Lucia prepared two scouts since one of them carries two people at the most and they got into space suits just in case since they did not expect to find breathable air wherever they might end up. After spending an eternity at the control unit Lucia turned around and looked at them. “Ok Mathilda comes with me and Claire you can fly one of those things, right?” Joseph felt something like an insult and cleared his throat. “Oh, I’m sorry Joseph do you want to fly this spacecraft with your PhD in psychology?” Claire fought hard but, in the end, she managed to hold back the laughter. “I guess not.” “Would you mind then letting me finish the briefing. Very well. Claire?” “It seems to be running the starsailer operating system.” “Version 1.473. That ok for you?” “Should be ok last time I flew was 1.2 something.” “Almost the same.” Lucia ensured her with a tap on the shoulder. “You just follow my lead anyway. Oh, and before I forget this is a black operation no coordinates no anything that gives away our position. That includes navigation, communication and deep space thrusters. We go in stealth mode here maneuvering thrusters only, never go above 5 meters from the ground, we have to be silent as a mouse or they send ships after us. Since this is such a stealthy mission we’re heading east which will allow us to reach the far side in the shortest amount of time. Here take this.” She gave Claire and Joseph a transponder. “It’s a low range communicator, should be enough for us, but no one else can listen. When we reach the far side, we can accelerate and make haste for the Schwarzschild crater which is far north-west while we will be for south-west.” Nodding from all sides. “Before I forget, the scouts have an atmosphere if you leave the scouts use your helmets and activate the oxygen support.” Nodding again. “Well I’ll see you on the other side.” With that Lucia swung into the scout with a grace Mathilda could not keep up with. Claire and Joseph kissed before they got in and as the Cetacea opened the hangar doors the maneuvering thrusters of the scouts light up in a blue glare and off they were.

  As they passed into the dark side of the moon an almost threatening shadow descended upon them. “This is Lucia breaking radio silence.” Was the first thing Claire and Joseph heard when it became pitch black. “Claire here, we hear you.” “Alright Claire we’re going to spice it up a little since it’d take us hours to get there with the maneuvering thrusters and since we shouldn’t be gone for longer than a couple of hours we going to punch it, understood?” “Understood.” “So, what’s your combat G-rating Claire?” “Seven.” “Now that’s a woman you can be proud of Joseph.” Lucia stated as she laughed hard. “What?” Joseph replied with a question mark all over his face. “Claire you follow my tail.” “Ok.”

  A red glare illuminated the darkness and Mathilda’s and Lucia’s scout rushed away. Not a second passed by as Claire punched it too with 7 G. Joseph was pushed into the seat with an elephant on his chest, he had trouble breathing but it was s
till doable, kind of. He would have loved to complain but while breathing was barely possible speaking was not. Fortunately, after about 60 seconds the torture stopped right in time to prevent Joseph from passing out. “Holy crap.” Mathilda sounded broken mostly because her words missed the usual determination. “Well we should be there within the hour.” Lucia sounded satisfied. “Claire how are you doing?” “Five by five.” “Outstanding. Radio silence for now and follow my lead.” Claire switched her microphone silent and turned her head around as far as she could. “Are you alright?” “I’m alive. I think. What was that?” “That my long-loved husband was the force of 7 times the gravity of Earth. We’re now moving with 4116 km per hour.” “Oh no.” “What’s it Joseph?” “I just realized that if we accelerated this hard and we’ve almost no resistance in our flightpath like wind or atmosphere.” “Yes?” “Well shit Claire we have to do this again when we break don’t we.” “You pick up fast on physical facts Joseph, you sure you didn’t study the wrong subject?” She laughed hard. Joseph did not seem to be that amused as he tried to somehow get ok with being tortured again.

  “What do you think we’re going to find there?” Joseph’s voice was a mix of curiosity and tiredness. “Answers Joseph, we’re going to find answers.” “Yeah but to what question?” “Who’s Melinda Finch. Really. And why do we’ve to hide, from what exactly are we hiding.” “Akachi mentioned a telepath do you think that’s what happened to Eliah back in the desert?” “Even though I don’t believe in this kind of thing something definitely happened to him there and it’d have happened to us if it weren’t for those chips.” Joseph felt something warm dripping from his nose. Blood ran down from it, he whipped it away. “It feels uneasy.” Joseph pointed at the outside of the cockpit. “What does?” “The far side, it feels less like the moon and more like something else.” “Yes, I agree it does feel strange.” The strange feeling accompanied them for a while as they stopped talking. “Well, prepare for breaking thrusters in 20.” Lucia’s voice sounded pleasantly familiar. “Understood, are we going for a rookie friendly burn this time?” Claire asked assertively. “120 seconds three point five G as you wish.” “Thank you.” Mathilda’s thank you sounded unconvincing. Joseph watched as the other scout turned slowly around his own axis 180 degrees and soon they did the same, the breaking thrust was a walk in the park three point five G felt like someone tickles your belly compared to the elephant at seven G. “Well the coordinates you gave us are kind of at that hillock there. We’re going to circle it maybe we see an entrance or something.” “I don’t think we’re going to see anything just go for the exact coordinates.” “If you say so.” The other scout landed on top of the hillock. “I’ll see you on the outside, suit up.” Lucia declared as the scout landed on the hillock.

  “Well I’m not an expert, but this seems to me as moonish as everything else here.” Lucia kicked a very little moonrock as she spoke. “It must be here, are we at the exact coordinates?” Joseph searched the ground for a door a dock anything really. “Well we’re but maybe this archive is underneath us, but the entrance is somewhere else.” Claire pointed out looking into the grey rocky desert around them. “It’s spooky here.” Mathilda was not enjoying this adventure so far. “I agree it’s a strange place.” Lucia agreed vigilantly looking around. “Are you afraid a yeti shows up or what?” Claire boasted at them. It made them laugh. “Well he’d to wear a spacesuit, so we probably won’t notice him for what he’s in the first place.” Mathilda joined in. “Well I hope a yeti shows up maybe he knows his way around here and we could ask him where exactly this archive is.” Lucia was in as well. - Oh no they’re losing it. - Joseph though as he was kneeling on the ground. “Now that’s odd.” “What is it?” The women chorused at him. “Take a look at the dust here.” He pointed in front of him. “Yes?” “And now here.” He walked a couple of meters and pointed on the ground again. “Now that looks very different.”

  In an area of about two meters the dust looked the same, but it was arranged slightly differently something you would never notice with a satellite and even standing here you can barely tell the difference. Joseph fell on his knees and started to shuffle with his hands. He looked at them after a couple of seconds. “It’s smooth underneath here.” The women joined in and within a couple of seconds they cleared enough of the dust away to see a pressure seal. “No way.” Mathilda was thinking up to this point Claire and Joseph simply handled their midlife crisis poorly. “Can we open it from outside?” “Usually you can.” They did clear up all of the dust on the pressure door but could not find anything that resembled an opening mechanism. “Look!” Claire tapped Joseph’s shoulder as she pointed in the middle of the door. “Yes, we’re going in.” Joseph almost screamed. He ran back to the scout and brought a bag with him as he came back. In the middle of the seal there were three slots looking familiarly like the data sticks they found in the secret laboratories. Each one with a different color as they fit together with the slots in front of them.

  The door began to shake when they entered the last stick. A little slot opened underneath, and a hand gear appeared. Joseph used it and collected the data sticks. Slowly the door opened up underneath their feet, so they just jumped, and the moon’s low gravity got them back in time when they slid into the pressure chamber. The red blinking light stopped as the four were trapped into the 3x3x3 room as the seal above them closed. Even though they did not hear it in their suits a hissing sound of entering air and pressurizing the chamber occurred. On a display next to another seal into the compound a screen sprang from ‘DECOMPRESSION’ surrounded in red light to a nice and comfortable ‘CLEAR’ in green letters. “You can take off your helmets.” Lucia suggested while typing something in her suit’s side arm computer. They followed her command since it was more comfortable. Lucia drew her gun as she opened the giant metal door. They entered the corridor that led towards an elevator. Inside they found themselves astonished. “You got to be fucking kidding me.” Even Mathilda was shocked from the harsh words that left Claire’s mouth. “This thing has thirty floors? That can’t be right.” She clicked the first underground floor. ‘ACCESS DENIED’ The little red letters said. “Look we can use the sticks again they seem to be encryption keys or something.” Joseph plugged in the green one. On the seventh floor the number went from being as lifeless as the others to shining green. Claire pressed it and the elevator started to move.

  XXVI. A Ghost from the Past

  “I don’t like this.” Lucia grabbed her gun harder than usual. “I know what you mean.” Mathilda stood right behind her. “It seems to be odd that a place like this isn’t known. More though I feel like this place seems to be in good shape, I don’t think it’s abandoned at all.” “On the contrary, Lucia, I think it is.” Joseph answered as the elevator’s door hissed open and, in the chamber, ahead of them the lights went on. A room that reminded Lucia of her quarters on the Cetacea showed up. A terminal was blinking in the far end of the room and a keyboard lay nearby. “This place isn’t as big as it tried to look like but with all those strange keyboards I mean it must be like 300 years old.” “Everything seems to be abandoned on purpose here.” Claire stated heading for the computer. She tried to enter the same passwords they tried in the laboratories, but nothing happened. They looked through the room and found nothing of interest everything was empty, so they moved back to the elevator and inserted the next stick.

  The blue stick made the number 23 flare up in blue light and the elevator moved again. This time the door opened to what seemed to be a huge storage room, the lights went on as the elevator doors opened. “Did I mention that I don’t like this?” Lucia pointed out as she checked the room with her gun drawn. But again, this place seemed to be abandoned long time ago. The room was filled with stacked containers, making it impossible to have a good overview of the room. Lucia did not let go of her drawn gun. In the far end of the room a sound occurred as if an iron rod had hit one of the metal containers. The group gathered together; a
drenalin levels rose, as their pupils widened the lights began to flicker making it even harder to spot a possible attacker. The same sound appeared again just a little closer this time. They gathered behind Lucia who tried to push them back towards the elevator. Again, the iron rod hit a container at the same time a new sound appeared. Something like a rubber tire was grinding over metal footing. The lights flickered one more time as the sound appeared behind the last box in front of them. Whatever horror lurked behind that box, they were about to face it. Suddenly a knee-high silver robot drove out of the shadows of the container. “Greetings! My name is Gizmo. It’s a play on the word Gadget and my creator thought it was really funny.” The gun sank down, and the adrenalin still there changed place or rather mixed with the relieving effects of dopamine and other chemicals calming the group down. “How may I be of service?” Even though equally shocked Claire’s curiosity made her waste not a second. “What’s this place.” “Facility 275 the archive of the Grey corporation we store and provide information about the corporation’s activities.” “When was the last request?” “743 years 79 days 21 hours 45 minutes and 23 seconds ago.” “That’s quite some time ago.” Mathilda mentioned skeptically. Joseph pulled out the red data stick and looked at it. “Oh, this is unusual. That’s Alastair Grey’s key, I’ve never been to level 17 it’s strictly prohibited not even EVA can see in there.” Gizmo chatted away as he rolled towards the elevator. “Well let’s see what the rabbit hole holds for us behind gate 17.” “It’s a floor.” Gizmo babbled. “It was a figure of speech.” Claire replied to him in a mixture of grumpiness and astonishment. “Strange little robot that is.” “I can hear you.” They entered the elevator and Gizmo came along since he seemed to be curious about what was inside floor 17.