by Paul Rix
"Scorpion will soon be out of tracking range. Once we switch on the cloaking field, no one will find us. I have personally plotted the course. We'll intercept the PEA in a little over three days."
"Excellent. The sooner you can remove the inconvenience, the more comfortable I will feel. There's far too much chatter about how wonderful Earth must have been for my liking. It's imperative we don't provide the public with what they want."
"Then do something about it, Mother. Quash any chance of an uprising. What if another PEA arrives and the opposition discovers it before we can neutralize the threat?"
"It's not that simple. I don't command enough military units to control the masses. The planetary governors wouldn't allow it anyway, as you well know."
Delta knew it only too well. Each Federation planet had its own governance and a perceived level of independence that they would never voluntarily cede to the president. The situation had been a massive frustration for the president for most of her tenure.
"Does your team know what the mission is for?"
"Only Commander Stone for now. I'll brief them once we are in deep space. The commander trusts every one of them, but you can never be too careful."
"Absolutely right. Will you be disposing of them?"
"I don't think that will be necessary. They're a loyal team of men and women, and it would be difficult to replace them."
President D’Angelo nodded. "I'll leave that matter to your discretion."
"Thank you, Mother. If you have doubts in my ability, then maybe you should have chosen Frederick."
"He's just a boy. I don't believe he has the stomach to carry out the tough decisions."
Delta knew that was true though it was always a thrill to hear her mother compare her favorably with her brother. Each time she heard Frederick being denigrated, it felt as if her position as natural successor seemed more cemented. But Frederick had his skills and was easy to mold. He would be a useful tool when she became president.
"I'll ensure there are no loose ends."
"I know you will."
"Commander Stone did raise an interesting question. He asked what we should do if we discover the PEA is still functional. The odds of that are minimal, but the commander wanted to be prepared for every eventuality."
"I've heard he's very dedicated," the president said with a wry smile. "What did you tell him?"
"That it wouldn't change our mission, of course. As you commanded, there has to be no evidence that the ark arrived in the Stellar Cluster. If any of the cryo-stasis systems are still operating, the people inside them were declared dead two thousand years ago. No one will miss them, and I don't believe the courts will prosecute for murdering a corpse."
"Exactly! Now, get on your way. Keep me informed of progress and if you run into any difficulties."
"Yes, Mother."
The conversation was becoming tedious. Delta was keen to be on her way and didn't require last-minute advice. She leaned in to kiss her mother's cheeks again before striding the final ten steps to Scorpion's loading ramp. She glanced at her mother, but the president was sauntering in the opposite direction and didn't turn around.
With a small sigh, Delta climbed into her ship as the ramp closed behind her. Commander Stone was waiting for her as she made her way to the bridge and he saluted and stood stiffly to attention.
"The president was here several minutes ago."
"Yes, I know," she replied, irritated at his ability to state the obvious. Frederick's comments about him being a simple commoner came back to her.
Stone appeared to be oblivious to her temper. "Are there any changes to the mission parameters?"
"Nothing has altered. The president simply wanted to wish us luck."
Delta waited for Stone to respond, but he continued to stand rigidly still. Her irritation grew, although she wasn't sure why. The commander's attitude was often detached when he knew his team was close by. It was the reason their affair remained undiscovered.
"Are we ready to depart? Time is critical."
"Yes, Your Grace. Now that you're on board, we can leave. We have priority clearance to depart Constance II."
Delta carried on toward Scorpion's bridge, with the commander marching in step behind her. "Outstanding work. Let's get out of here. I want to brief your team as soon as we've left the Constance system."
"I assumed you would. I have directed the team that we will operate under comms silence for the duration of this mission."
"Very impressive, commander. I know you'll be just as efficient in completing this mission."
Chapter 8
Garrett keyed the access code into the keypad next to the airlock and waited. A green light confirmed the system had accepted the code. Tiny flakes of dust and ice floating effortlessly away from the rim were the only clues that the hatch's locks were now released. Holding onto a thin metallic grab rail for leverage, he exerted pressure on the hatch with his free hand. Slowly, for the first time in over two thousand years, the airlock hatch slid smoothly open on its hinges.
“That was too easy,” Garrett said as he suddenly had access to Britannic.
His first impression once inside the airlock was that it was tiny for a vessel of this size. He estimated it could hold no more than ten people in spacesuits. Probably fewer with the bulky spacesuits available when the ship was built. There was no lighting other than from his helmet and the cramped, dark airlock was oppressive.
Once he'd replaced and sealed the outer hatch, Garrett tried the control panel on the wall. After pressing several buttons and flicking three switches, it was apparent that there was no power to pump air into the airlock.
“There has to be another way.” He turned his attention to the inner hatch, which was operated by a simple mechanical lever. To his continued surprise, the hatch opened as easily as the outer one.
The spotlights on Garrett's helmet penetrated the gloom beyond the hatch, revealing a narrow tubular tunnel, its walls bare of any controls or obstructions. He knew from the downloaded schematics that the access tunnel was approximately thirty meters long and opened onto a central corridor that ran almost the full length of the PEA. He gently pushed off with his legs into the darkness, using his hands to guide himself along until he reached the opposite end of the tunnel, which was blocked by yet another hatch.
He quickly spotted another release mechanism on the wall, identical to the one in the airlock. His supply of good luck had run out though. The release lever was recessed into the wall and, at some point, had become jammed tight. The glove of his spacesuit was just too cumbersome to reach behind it and prise it away from the wall. It probably required a special tool. But Garrett would not be stopped so easily. There was no alternative but to remove the glove of his artificial hand and hope that the suit would provide an adequate seal for the rest of his body. Carefully, he released the clips holding the left glove in place and twisted.
His ears popped as the suit adjusted to the sudden drop in pressure, but the suit's atmospheric integrity held. The nano-sensors in his hand registered the freezing atmosphere but were unaffected. Garrett slipped his hand behind the release mechanism, took a firm grasp, and pulled with all his strength to free up the lever.
Replacing his glove, Garrett braced himself as best he could and exerted pressure on the hatch with his shoulder. He was rewarded with movement as the hatch smoothly swung open on three large hinges. Without hesitating, he pulled himself through the hatch and into the central core of the Britannic. This was the main passage that linked every section of the ark.
"What the…?" he uttered as soon as he had cleared the hatch. He’d expected the corridor to be pitch black, as the airlock and tunnel had been. Instead, he was met with a seemingly endless series of dim orange lamps leading off into the distance in both directions and spaced every ten meters. With his eyes already accustomed to the dark interior, the lights allowed him to make out some details.
Emergency lighting and a transmitter. So there
must be a working power source somewhere. What does that mean for the other onboard systems?
He looked around, trying to find his bearings. The emergency lights were just powerful enough to give him a sense of the scale of the corridor. It was square and roughly three meters on each side. The hatch he had come through was on one wall although, in the weightless environment, it was impossible to differentiate between walls, floor, and ceiling.
A narrow track, maybe fifty centimeters wide, running along the floor (or was it a wall?) from one end of the ship to the other indicated there was a transportation system to move around. Sensible when the ship was so long.
"Okay, computer, where's the control deck?"
The heads-up display inside his helmet showed where he needed to go; another hatch on the opposite side of the corridor. Next to it, there were many instructional signs written in six different languages including English, Spanish, Russian and Chinese. They contained directions to different sections of the ark, and safety notices printed in large red letters reminded people to avoid injuries in zero gravity.
A large floor-to-ceiling poster caught Garrett's attention. He floated across for a closer look. It appeared to be blank until he was within two meters. Then he could see the poster contained multiple columns of people's names, all written in English. Some surnames were the same, helping him to surmise that the list must be the roster of the colonists who had boarded the ark for a better life.
Poor souls!
Garrett supposed that archaeologists and historians would find them still in their cryo-chambers. He wondered what the effects of two thousand years in space would do to human bodies before realizing he didn't want to find out. Even though he'd experienced plenty of death during his career in the Marines, and less so as a bounty hunter, he imagined the one thousand corpses somewhere close by would be far more gruesome than anything he'd seen in battle. Out of respect for the dead colonists who had risked their lives, he would not enter those areas of the ark containing the humans.
Garrett continued his search, leaving those dark thoughts behind him. He could hardly believe he was inside an original Project Exodus Ark. He was filled with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia, tinged with sadness for the people who had come aboard with courage and dreams for a better future. They would never know they had failed, or how close they had come to success. He hoped the experts would be able to retrieve useful information that would make up for the colonists' sacrifice. Anything less would be a tragedy.
Despite the vessel's immense size, the central core felt compact, almost claustrophobic. He knew it made sense; humanity had to stock the ark with as many supplies as possible to give the colonists the best chance of survival. It made him wonder why the designers hadn't used the core for storage. Although it was narrow, it did benefit from being almost several kilometers long.
Other than the large number of signs, the walls, ceiling, and floor of the central core appeared to be smooth and featureless, except for the occasional conduit or box which he remembered contained tools and emergency equipment.
Garrett cautiously propelled himself in the direction suggested by the computer, floating effortlessly along the central core. He couldn't help but be impressed by the technical craftsmanship used to create such a vessel. It would have been a superhuman feat of engineering two thousand years earlier, with relatively primitive equipment and little experience of space travel. Having the ability to witness the achievement close up and being able to touch history was an immense privilege. He doubted the interior of the ark looked any different from when it left Earth’s orbit; the cold, dark vacuum of space had ensured the perfect preservation.
The further into the ark Garrett moved, the more uncomfortable he was becoming. I shouldn’t be here, was his overwhelming thought.. But he couldn't shake an eerie feeling that he was about to bump into one of the original crew. The sensation was irrational.
They're all dead.
He passed more printed signs, these reminding the crew of safety measures against a range of potential incidents from fire to loss of pressure. Another sign reminded crew members to hydrate before boarding the landing craft. The writing was still crisp and clear, the instructions simple and almost naïve.
The hatch to the control deck was now only five meters away. Garrett used a grab rail to slow himself to a stop, his spotlights clearly picking out the bold letters printed on the wall above the hatch. The hatch itself had a small oval viewing port and Garrett peered in but the lights on his helmet could make out only gray shadows inside.
Garrett found a keypad that looked identical to the one on the hull of the Britannic. He touched it, smiling as the numerical buttons emitted an orange color. The smile disappeared when the combination he'd previously used failed to get a response. He tried again without success, although the buttons were now glowing red. "Computer. Give me the Britannic codes to access the command deck."
This time, the keypad turned green. He pushed on the hatch, using a grab rail on the wall to give him enough leverage. Despite its size, the hatch opened as easily as the others and Garrett pulled himself through, eager for his first look at the Britannic's command deck.
The room was smaller than he'd expected for what should be the nerve center for the entire ship; ten meters long and five meters wide. One large console, with three workstations, was located in the middle of the room, helping to indicate what was the floor. The far wall and the one to his right were filled with floor-to-ceiling racks of ancient computers and monitoring equipment. It was like stepping inside a museum.
Garrett turned his head to the left, gasping as his helmet's lights glinted and reflected off four glass pods, each one three meters long and one meter wide. Inside each of them was the unmistakable shape of a human, wrapped in a black leather cocoon. The Britannic's officers. Each pod appeared to be fully intact, although the closest one had a pale milky residue on the inside of the glass.
“Computer. There are four stasis pods. Do you know who was inside?”
“Names?”
Garrett was intrigued by the pods, as carefully stroking one of them, he considered what it must have been like for the occupants to have gone into cryo-stasis. The process had not been used for over one thousand years following advances in propulsion technologies. But he remembered reading that cryo-stasis was not a pleasant experience and occasionally resulted in permanent physical damage or even death.
Patting the glass one last time, he returned his attention to the main console. The controls were unfamiliar and basic. However, each of the workstations was helpfully labeled and controlled life support, propulsion, communications, and command.
It was the final workstation that grabbed Garrett's attention. If there was still power to operate the hatches and emergency lighting, then it could be possible to access Britannic's computers. Perhaps there was a ship's journal that would explain what had gone wrong and caused the ship's journey to be extended.
Without fully thinking through the consequences of his actions, Garrett pressed down hard on the red button in the center of the workstation. Although he expected nothing to happen, his hand gripped the corner of the console as he waited. Against his best hopes, the panel in front of him flickered slowly to life. The buttons lit up like a Christmas tree and a small flat screen began to glow and hum.
As power coursed through the console, he felt small vibrations through his gloved hands. It was as if the ship was coming alive.
Have I done the wrong thing?
It was too late to go back now.
Garrett blinked from the glare of two overhead lights that suddenly illuminated the command room. His eyes took several seconds to adjust to the painfully bright lights b
ut as his eyes focused, he could get his first real appreciation of his surroundings. He found a pair of cloth foot restraints on the floor in front of the workstation he was hovering over. By twisting his body, he could secure his feet in the restraints. It was far easier than having to cope with the unnatural sensation of weightlessness.
Too much was happening that he didn't understand. While he was grateful to see the systems powering up after their extended hibernation, he could only stare in consternation at the rows of data scrolling up the screen of the monitor. They meant nothing to him. He hoped Raptor's computer was downloading the images from his helmet-cam. He glanced at the other workstations, only to find that they too were powering up.
It was then he saw the hatch to the central core swing slowly closed.
“No!”
He pushed away from the console, hoping to reach the hatch, but his left foot became tangled in the restraint. He looked on forlornly as the hatch shut tight, with a red light appearing on the wall above it. Releasing himself from the restraint, he vainly tried to pull the hatch open, but it was sealed. He entered the code on the keypad mounted on the wall but that had no effect either.
A knot of fear was forming in his stomach. What if he was trapped inside the room? No one knew he was on board Britannic. In fact, he doubted anyone knew of the PEA's arrival in the Stellar Cluster. Checking his head-up display, he still had almost eight hours of oxygen in his suit. The key was not to panic, otherwise, he'd consume the oxygen at a much faster rate. There had to be a logical way out of the room. The PEAs were never designed to be prisons. Or tombs.
He returned to the console. There must be something that could release the hatch or, at the very least, pause what was happening to the computer equipment. But as he looked at the ongoing streams of data and various dials slowly creeping from right to left, there was no obvious means of control.
