“That’s half, now to the forward sections. You alright David?” Reggie tried to be consoling, he wanted just as badly to return home to earth. The free floating in space for the past three months had gotten to him as well.
“Six months of travel for eight hours of work, worst commute ever.” David had taken the travel to the Lagrangian building area especially hard. His wife had left him only a month into the trip, and his teenage daughter had disappeared for three weeks before being spotted by a friend at a party. Information and communication was limited but David suspected drugs. The pressures of being away from life and responsibilities on Earth weighed on him like a brick hung around his neck.
“We will be done soon, imagine being the first to see this thing light up under its own power. We are going to see history a full fifteen minutes before the rest of the world!”
“Uh huh. Save me the recruitment speech. Let’s just get this over with.”
The walk from the aft sections to the front of the ship was a difficult one; the spinning fuel rod in the core of the ship created an artificial gravity and made the occupants of the deeply shielded suits feel the full weight of the 200 pounds that encased them. The remaining four reactors waited for them at the other end.
A voice chirped at them about halfway through the corridor of carbon fiber that they clung to, “David and Reggie, this is Simon Tehom. We are getting good readings from the four reactors you just installed. Green lights all around, nice tight solid connections, well done. This message will of course take the full fifteen minutes to reach you and the reply the same. We all just wanted you to know we are proud of you guys down here, and you are making history with every step in those heavy suits.”
“He ain’t fucking kidding is he? Who designed these things?”
“Careful with the language David, this is a family show!” Reggie and David laughed heartily and it lightened the mood.
“Mr. Tehom, it is good to hear from you. We will have your ship up and running for you shortly. We both expect a six pack of a beer of our choice waiting on the tarmac for us when we get back.” David patted Reggie on the back and they both took slow steps toward their goal.
Each step wore the two men out and several breaks were needed in their progress. The vast cloud of stars stretched all around them wrapping them in a blanket of the infinite.
“Why do they need eight of these damned things anyway? One of these things can power a small town.” Reggie retracted his arm out of his sleeve and wiped his face with a rag from inside his suit.
“Yea, but this small town has air filters, a garden, a farm and moves at almost a third of the speed of light.”
“Seems like a lot of power. Not gonna strap me to this thing.”
“Remember the world is listening.” Chided David, beneath his troubles he was at his core a company man and loved the Consortium.
“I know. We are almost there.”
The two men moved quickly and slid the remaining four reactors into their cradles, making the initial connections. As David turned to briefly admire the darkened ship before they lit it up, Reggie blocked the view of his work with his body and purposefully reversed the connection on the final reactor and tightened it into place.
“Come on, it’s only ten minutes to the on switch grab the box and lets go.” Reggie grabbed his partner and they resumed climbing this time around the circumference of the ship instead of down the smooth corridor lengthwise.
The on switch and power box were two components that told all eight of the reactors to boot up at once, providing a smooth startup. The daisy chain of wires and reactors reacted with the various ports and sections providing a smooth and uninterruptable power stream throughout the ship. Without the power box, the on switch had no energy to pass the message to the ship and once turned on there was no off switch.
“David. This is Simon, play it cool. Do not talk, just listen and do not react or make is seem like anything is out of the ordinary. We are having to patch through Chinese military SatCom to get you this message faster than normal.” David resumed walking; the message was being patched directly to him cutting Reggie out of the loop. “Reggie reversed the polarity on reactor eight while you had your back turned. He did it on purpose! If you turn the ship on, it will explode. We are searching Reggie’s house, and looking for an explanation. Whatever you do, DO NOT POWER UP!”
David was stunned; surely it was a simple mistake. One they could go back and fix. David and Reggie had been partners for three months, and trained together for half a year before that.
“Hold up, I need to rest.”
“Give me the box; I’ll do it you can wait here. It’s only another hundred feet.” Reggie seemed insistent.
“I’ll be fine, just give me a minute. I didn’t travel three months to have you do my job for me.” David tried to act normal.
The two men sat in silence for a couple minutes, Reggie was visibly nervous even from inside his suit.
“Alright, lead on, let’s get this done.” David pointed his partner forward and they resumed climbing, David made sure the power box was secure under the frame where he placed it and left it behind separating the pair from danger, at least for the moment.
The pair stuck together closely, but David let Reggie set the pace so that he was always in the front.
Before long Simon again chirped into his headset, “David it’s Simon. We searched Reggie’s home here in the compound, he wrote a suicide note. Some sort of manifesto about the dangers of technology and the evils of spreading the virus of mankind onto other planets. We have traced several incidents of sabotage we thought were the Chinese back to Reggie. You need to stop him. Get him off my ship!”
The flood of betrayal took David totally unprepared. He had still believed that the mix-up was been a mistake.
David looked behind him one last glance at the power box before he acted, “This whole time. This whole time, the nine months since we met you have been planning on murdering me?”
Reggie turned, his shielded glass screen which hid his face mirrored David’s and they reflected back at one another in masked reverberation. “It wasn’t about you, Humanity is not worthy of spreading amongst the infinity of creation. Someone had to stop it.”
“I’m not going to let you destroy everything we have worked for. This is almost a century worth of work.”
“It never should have been allowed to come to pass. It’s only been through blind luck and the misguided vanity of the Tehom’s that this has even come this far. I am the instrument of God; I will destroy all of this. We were placed upon the Earth, given dominion over it, not over the whole Universe.”
“Do you hear yourself? Are you insane?” David flinched at the sudden and paradoxical shift in the man he called his partner.
Reggie glanced around in a sudden panic “Where is the power box?”
“I tossed it into space, safe from you.”
“Lies, the artificial gravity would have brought it back down in a hurry. You’ve just hidden it. It’ll be easy to find” Reggie took an aggressive step forward from within his massive shielded spacesuit.
The two grappled with one another, falling into the openness of space for a brief moment before they crashed back into the frame of the ship. Brief moments of weightlessness followed by a painful crash back down against the carbon fiber pipes and containment cells. The two wrestled and fought, but could do no harm to one another.
For each blow of violence one placed upon the other the massive suits both slowed down their offence and armored them to the point of invulnerability.
Reggie backed off and reached for the heavy and massive wrench from the tool receptacle. The massive tool caught David in the ribs and knocked the wind out of him but did no serious damage. Reggie came crashing down with another blow and connected with the reinforced face shield cracking the first layer of UV shielding. Another crushing blow was deflected by David’s forearm dislocating his elbow and left him screaming.
&nbs
p; In a fight for his life he lunged toward his opponent, the two of them crashed into the cache of tools sending them all over the skeleton of the ship. Another strike crashed down upon the back of David’s head for a moment providing a loss of pressure in his suit, he vented a small tuft of atmosphere before the vacuum closed the membrane. Reggie raised his weapon for another attack.
David knew he was about to die, for the brief moment before Reggie hit him again he thought of his wife who he had left alone for so long in training for the mission, his daughter whom he had virtually allowed to raise herself and had faltered in the task.
At their feet a long slotted screwdriver had fallen from the crash of tools, made for deep channel screws the tool was nearly a foot long. David lunged for it and grasped a hold of it in his good arm just as Reggie’s attack landed on his shoulder.
The pointed piercing action provided by the weight of David and his suit combined easily passed through reflective coating, fiber insulation, three layers of protective shielding, gel filled membrane and cotton, then through Reggie’s flight suit uniform, his skin just between two ribs, glancing off one chipping the bone. It then passed through muscle, the walls of one lung and finally punctured the heart; Reggie started to convulse and the face shield in front of him clouded with blood he unwillingly aspirated from his breathing.
David stood, cradling his arm and looked upon the fallen man through his cracked face shield. The vacuum of Reggie’s suit collapsed in and shrunk around him before finally the pressure from within crushed the glass dome over his face and exposed his lifeless face to the nakedness of space.
“I’ve lost too much, my wife, my family… I won’t let you take this away from me, or the company.” David said as he turned away, knowing that in fifteen minutes the entire world would witness what had just happened directly from the point of view of the two men and the cameras in their suits.
The climb back down to the hidden power box seemed short, even his useless left arm hindering him he was able to retrieve it on the way back to fix the reversed cabled on reactor eight.
“Witnessed what just happened David. I’m sorry. You did what you needed to do. We all hope that you are alright up there.” Simon once again chirped in his ear. David didn’t respond.
The charging port connected to the power interface David paused just for a brief moment to take in the view of the lifeless ship before he brought it to life.
“David, you are five by five. All reactors report ready, computer analysis reports you are green for primary power and computer startup.” Simon cleared the action.
He grasped the crank servo and rotated it for the charge five times till the lighted button turned green in what was later to be to be the bridge of the ship. The button pressed, David was the first to witness the steady vibration of the frame and the lighted sections one by one power on starting at the middle and working outward to each end.
A single light peered into the empty helmet of the corpse that was once Reggie Kennedy, David tried not to look at it.
“Earth, this is Tehom One. Primary power is online and the systems are active. I’m tired, can I come home now?” David hoarsely clamored into his microphone. He did not wait for a response.
Chapter Twelve: The legacy of David Rush, Hero
David Rush arrived home a hero. His battle had been shown live to the world and replayed nightly to a building fervor. The worldwide excitement over the construction of the Tehom One Generational Spacecraft called “TOGS” by the news outlets had only boosted David’s name recognition. In the three month return voyage he had received hundreds of video mail messages from fans, distant family and anyone who thought they could make money off his rise to celebrity.
David didn’t want any of it. He wanted his wife, his daughter and his life back. None were waiting for him when he landed on the tarmac in West Texas. When he appeared on television and ran the talk show circuit, neither of them called to talk to him. By the time the torrent of press had abated he had become a token of the celebrity culture that was still very much alive in the world. He attended parties, award ceremonies, and sports events as a special guest. The crowds always cheered and met him with glorious praise.
To the world he seemed a rising star pushed into the limelight by both chance and ability. Within himself David Rush was a mess. He had gained everything his generation had been taught to desire, celebrity, fame and fortune. Not a shred of it made him happy. True family and friends dried up quickly and devolved into creatures of greed and jealousy.
“I want to speak to Colleen.” David barked into the phone receiver.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you David, and neither do I.” His estranged wife Beth answered back, instantly aggressive.
“Why? What have I done? I don’t understand.”
“David, we have a new life now. Between the mission and the training you were gone over two years, people change.”
“You got a new boyfriend you mean.”
“That’s not fair David.”
“Damned right.” He growled and slammed the phone down, frustrated that every attempt to talk to his wife or daughter ended in the same way.
In truth nothing reached Colleen Rush, a rebellious teenager with her mind on boys, freedom and in a hurry to live her life. With her mother Beth too occupied with the boyfriend of the season Colleen found herself left mostly to her own devices at a dangerous time in her life. Inside she felt just as lost and abandoned as her father, something she would never admit or show outwardly. Instead she drowned herself in the vices of the day, parties, loud electronic based music of debatable artistic merit, social media, alcohol and whatever drugs she could find. None of it filled the hole within her with meaning or did anything but delay her crash of hopelessness. Colleen had lost control of her life, herself and gave a bit of both freely to anyone who struck her fancy or could distract her for even a shred of a moment.
When her father David jumped from the thirty fourth floor of a Dallas high-rise his death was captured on camera and again his image and tragic story flooded the news and television, a final exploitation of his ruined life. It was widely reported that before his demise he had written a simple note to his daughter.
The words ‘I have lost you. Do not lose yourself.’ Burned into her and rocked her to the core. The glass house of her life collapsed around her and Colleen nearly shattered with it. Her hateful screams seemed to last for days as she lashed out at her mother in hate and disgust. Although her words were directed outward, a large portion turned inward. The little girl filled with teenage angst and hate slowly died and a young woman was born.
Colleen Rush walked out of her mother’s house, a bag under her arm and a newfound determination to make something of herself. Disgusted with being a throw away girl of the day, Colleen Rush refused to be a little girl anymore.
The emptiness within her finally abated, the hole she had tried to fill with vice and self destruction filled instead with a desire to build a life instead of simply live it. A distinction she marked every day she walked the stairway to her apartment above the coffee shop where she worked.
The death gratuity from the Tehom Consortium was unexpected but welcome; it had allowed her to open Tea Rushes, a simple tea and coffee bar just inside the fence of the Tehom Consortium compound.
The little tea and coffee shop instantly found itself a success; it was frequented by hundreds of Tehom employees daily, Simon and Liberty Tehom among them. No shortage of deliveries to be made to those employees of The Company too busy to come in, no shortage of customers or of caffeine to be dished out. Colleen joked to her close friends she had traded one drug for another, the whole world seemed to run off caffeine. The little shop opened at 5am and closed at 10pm every day, and never locked its doors. Even after she turned the lights down and made her way upstairs a few people would still sit in the dark, their faces lit by their computers as they finished up the work that never stopped. Colleen loved every second of her long hours and lack
of sleep.
***
Simon Tehom entered the shop with his family near to closing one evening; Eleanor Tehom at thirteen had taken a liking to the sweetened green tea that seemed a favorite for many.
“Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. Tehom what can I get you tonight? Hello Eleanor!” Colleen waved to the young teenager that came calling often, with and without her parents.
“Some of that sweetened green tea for me. Simon?” Liberty looked at her husband.
“I can’t believe you two drink that stuff, it tastes like fresh cut grass.” Simon shook his head playfully, “I’ll have a coffee, black.”
“Black coffee at ten o’clock at night?” Colleen shook her finger at him in jest.
“Late night, we are organizing the lottery this week. Things are chaotic.” Simon ran his hand through his hair while eyeing up a fat piece of chocolate cheesecake within the glass case at the counter.
Colleen made the drinks and handed them across the counter to the waiting family. Simon and his family made their way to an out of the way table toward the back and sat talking quietly while she counted down the register and cleaned up for the night.
From the corner of her eye Colleen watched Liberty and Eleanor kiss Simon and wave to her on their way out. Simon remained his face buried in a stack of files and papers. Colleen smiled, and took the large piece of cheesecake out of the cabinet and brought it over to him.
“I saw you eyeing this, thought you would enjoy it after that bland tasteless coffee.”
“It’s not about the taste it’s about the effect, there are times I would drink gasoline if it would keep me awake. So much work to do.” Simon glanced at the oversized slice and smiled.
“I am going to bed, morning is going to come early. Flip the light on your way out will you?” Colleen took off her apron and hat and turned around.
Tehom: The Tehom Legacy Book One Page 10
