The Dead Room Trilogy

by Stephanie Erickson

  However, sitting behind the controls of the ship as she had done day in and day out for the last twelve years, five as a captain, she found herself…well, bored.

  The airships never went anywhere. They simply hovered above the clouds, taking care to make sure they were in constant access of the sun’s rays during the day to ensure a full charge of the ship’s batteries. In the three and a half centuries since the ships had been launched, their mobility had grown progressively smaller and smaller.

  The ships used to go all over and rendezvous with each other, or so she’d read. But with more efficient modes of transport available, the bigger airships stayed put more and more. The colonies had shuttles for trading goods and people back and forth, leaving the ships totally stationary above the clouds.

  “Ma’am, we’re drifting six degrees to the south/southwest,” one of the controllers informed Vega.

  She walked over, coffee in hand, to the lower level, and peered over the young man’s shoulder at the instrument panel. Vega knew her actions were making him nervous. She was once green like him, eager to please her captain. She also knew that moment would be the most exciting part of her day.

  “Set course correction to zero zero six northeast,” Vega commanded.

  She was answered with furious typing, and then silence. The correction was so minimal that they didn’t even feel the ship move.

  With that, she turned, sipping her coffee, and climbed the two steps back to her workstation, which was just a glorified desk raised up so she could see and talk to everyone who was doing the real work. She did have controls at it—a yoke, instruments, those kinds of things—but she never used them. Never needed to.

  Lowering herself into her chair, she looked out at her workspace. Two rows of people staring at their computer screens sat below her. Beyond them, massive floor-to-ceiling windows revealed the great beyond. It was getting dark out, and the sky had taken on a deep purple color.

  She knew her relief would come soon. Vega pondered what she would do with herself once her shift was over. She could go get drinks with her best friend Jo and the others, but even that was feeling boring lately.

  Shaking her head, she decided she was in a mood. Her life was good. She had everything she needed, and she should be more grateful. Taking another sip of coffee, she scolded herself as she nodded resolutely. Maybe she’d go to the observation deck. That always helped her regain her sense of self and center.

  She was deep in thought when the major walked up behind her.

  “Captain, might I have a word with you?” he asked.

  Max Burridge was a formidable man. The silver look he’d acquired in his old age gave him an authoritative and sophisticated air. Vega had always wanted to please him, although she was no stranger to his disappointment.

  She set her coffee cup down abruptly, nearly spilling some of it on her hand. “Certainly, sir.” Standing up eagerly, she followed his gesture to the back of the flight deck.

  “Follow me to my office.”

  “First Officer Yelch, your controls,” she said as she moved to leave the deck.

  “No, I need you too, Yelch. Put the ship on autopilot. Come to my office if there’s a problem,” Major Burridge instructed the others in the room.

  “Aye, sir,” the senior controller responded.

  The two pilots didn’t speak as they followed the most senior authority on the ship down a long, metal corridor to his office.

  Vega made the FO go in first, and she took a deep breath outside the large door.

  What could this be about? she wondered. I’m not getting fired. I haven’t done anything wrong. I have nothing to worry about. Once she’d reached that conclusion, she wondered at the other possibilities. Could they be telling us about a change? Maybe a promotion or a shakeup in the hierarchy? Are we going to land? Maybe go out into space?

  Often, Vega had watched the stars from the observatory and fantasized about them. She knew centuries ago, before the nanobots had eaten the world, man had gone into space quite often—even landed on the moon. She’d watched the old video more times than she could count. And as she watched the moon rise and set most nights, she found herself imagining what it would be like to go there. Just as foreign as it would be to set foot on the face of the Earth, she supposed.

  As she walked into the major’s office, she discovered all ten captains in attendance, along with their first officers. They’d been paired off early in their training, matching personalities to create as ideal working conditions as possible. They had alternates, just in case someone got sick, but because the schedule was so rigid, and time off was planned in advance, Vega had hardly worked with her alternates in all of her years flying. Yelch was her wingman.

  She spotted him making his way to a seat around a big oval-shaped conference table. Vega had only been in the room once before—to receive her assignment when she’d become a pilot.

  Each year, hundreds of people applied for the pilot program. However, they were lucky if even one person was selected. They already had twenty qualified pilots to fly the airship. There was no need for more. The controllers were a little more open to new crewmembers. And typically, those who applied were controllers. She had been. Vega had done that for three years before she’d gotten selected to train. Even then, she’d been lucky to move up within the program.

  She took her seat next to Yelch. He wasn’t much older than she’d been when she started the first officer program. Maybe in his early twenties. With almost ten years between them, there was an odd shift happening. They weren’t close, or even what Vega might call friends. He was still partying hard by hitting the ships clubs with his friends regularly. While Vega enjoyed a drink after work, she never got drunk anymore. It wasn’t worth the hangover that seemed to take longer and longer to get over as time marched on. Often, she found herself having trouble relating to him. He was a good pilot, though, reliable and intelligent. And that was all she needed in an FO.

  “What do you think this is about?” Yelch asked her as she settled into the seat beside him.

  “Not sure. A change of some kind, I’m sure. But what, I don’t know.”

  “When was the last time they changed something?” he asked, and she could hear the nerves making his voice shake.

  “Not sure about that either. No sense in panicking until we know what’s going on. I have no reason to believe something bad is coming, so cool your jets, Yelch.”

  He nodded, but he didn’t relax. His back remained rigid in his seat, and she could see his tie bob as he swallowed hard. His hands gripped the armrests as if the chair would float away at any given moment, and she stifled a snort.

  Ah, to be that young again. Vega remembered getting flustered about the major when she was still green. Meeting with the major was rare. Although she had a lot more contact with him as a captain—at the end of every shift for reports—she still remembered what it felt like to be in the presence of the one who was in total control of the ship. It was difficult to find words, sweat seemed to spring to the surface of its own accord, even if she wasn’t hot, and her body could never decide if it wanted to be a limp noodle or as stiff as a board, much like young Yelch beside her.

  She was glad she’d gotten over that. As she sat surrounded by her colleagues, she couldn’t help but feel excited. Change was coming. She could feel it. More than that, she needed it.

  It took several moments before Major Burridge was ready to begin. In that time, a low murmur had filled the room as the pilots occupied themselves with speculation.

  “Thank you for coming on such short notice,” Burridge said, bringing the hushed voices to a quick end.

  Burridge stood straight in front of them, his white uniform pressed so stiff Vega wondered if that was what was holding him up. His black tie fell away from his shirt as he leaned forward on the table, bracing himself with his hands.

  “I’m afraid we have a problem,” he said, his tone grimmer than Vega had expected.

  That wasn�
��t right. There wasn’t supposed to be a problem. None of the instruments or daily activity logs had indicated that there was anything wrong. This…whatever it was…it should’ve been an exciting announcement. Something saying that the sedentary lifestyle of the occupants of the ship was over. That new horizons were coming.

  Vega had trouble shifting gears. Accepting the new reality of what Major Burridge was saying to her wasn’t easy.

  “We can’t go on the way we have been anymore. The last three and a half centuries have been hard on our ship,” the major said in a serious manner. Vega followed his line of sight to the rear of the room, finding the head of the maintenance department standing in the back. She didn’t know what the woman was doing there, but it couldn’t be a good sign.

  “The director of maintenance has informed me that we cannot keep the ship aloft indefinitely.” The major hesitated, seeming to weigh his words before going on.

  Vega held her breath, knowing what was coming, but not wanting to hear it. Or maybe a small part of her did want to hear it. She’d been right, after all, just for the wrong reasons.

  Major Burridge’s dark brown eyes were filled with something she’d never seen from him before. Just the barest flicker of fear. His next words caused Vega’s heart to leap—in terror or excitement. She wasn’t sure which.

  “We need to find somewhere to land.”

  Three

  A collective gasp spread like wildfire throughout the room, and Major Burridge worked to regain control.

  “People, this is not the time to panic. I haven’t even gotten into the reality of what this means for us. Many of us have never considered going to the ground. We’ve spent our entire lives aloft. We, along with generations before us, have never seen the face of the Earth in person, and none of us have seen what it used to be—lush, green, and full of life. Make no mistake…that’s not what we’re going back to.”

  “Explain to me why we need to land,” a pilot in the back corner demanded of Selam, the director of maintenance.

  Vega looked over at Selam and felt a rush of sympathy for her. She wasn’t well liked among the men Vega worked with, but Vega liked her. More importantly, Vega trusted her with her life, as well as the lives of everyone on the ship. There were personality clashes, but she was good at her job, and that was what mattered.

  “Because the parts that need to be replaced must be stationary in order to do it. While the Perseus has some redundancy, this particular part requires the engines to be shut down. All of them. It’s a flaw I don’t think the founders foresaw,” Selam announced.

  A silence settled heavily on the room, and Vega felt like all the air had been sucked out of her lungs. Land. They would have to land. It was a death trap.

  Major Burridge stood straight, hands clasped at attention. A holographic screen popped up in the center of the table, displaying what the Earth looked like at that very moment. It was an ashen wasteland. There was no way it would support life of any kind. Vega could tell that with one look, and she wasn’t a botanist or a farmer.

  “Clearly, we have some obstacles to overcome. Landing on Earth is nothing short of dangerous.” The image of the Earth changed, and Vega recognized it immediately. She tried to look away from the crash of the Orion, but the image was so large that it was hard not to see it. In that moment, she was thankful there wasn’t any sound to go along with the video.

  “Many of you have seen this tape before, in some cases multiple times.” Burridge’s eyes went to Vega, who frowned at him, so he fast forwarded to the end, something only a select few had seen in its entirety.

  Slowly, but distinctly, the huge ship disintegrated before their eyes. Every scrap of metal, every engine, every wing, and every floor of habitat on the Orion was consumed by the bots.

  “This is what awaits us on the face of the Earth,” the major said ominously, as if foreseeing their fate.

  “So why go back?” Vega found herself asking. She had to resist the urge to slap a hand over her mouth. She wasn’t one to question Major Burridge. Ever. But this felt too much like a suicide mission. Not just for her, but for all fifteen thousand souls on board.

  Their population remained steady for the most part, and they didn’t regulate it, much anyway. They had plenty of room for everyone at the moment. And if they did start to feel a sense of overcrowding, it seemed a sickness or some malfunction would weed out a few hundred people, giving them some breathing room. Still, fifteen thousand wasn’t a small number.

  Apparently, about a century ago, the population boomed, and entire families were sharing rooms that Vega had to herself. That was when the great plague had passed over. They’d had to sterilize the entire ship, killing even more people with the harsh chemicals, and making it difficult to conceive. Only in the last few decades had the population recovered to a more respectable amount.

  They were one of seven airships still aloft. The Orion had gone down before it had even gained much altitude, but most of the others had gotten up without a problem. Europe, South America, Australia, Russia, and China all had ships still aloft. One ship, belonging to Africa, had gone down about a hundred years ago, after being struck by a meteor. That left seven. And if their ship went down, it would reduce the population of the world by one seventh. It felt like a tremendous loss. Not to mention the fact that Vega had no intention of dying such a horrible death any time soon.

  “Captain Fowell, we have no choice. The parts on this ship have been taxed way beyond their original intent. Our maintenance team has been amazing about keeping us in the air as long as they have,” Selam said, her expression deadly serious.

  “Perhaps Earth isn’t quite as inhospitable as it once was?” another pilot suggested. “After all, that video is from the height of the apocalypse. The bots may be dormant by now. Or maybe they have even eaten themselves. Who’s to say we can’t make a gentle landing on the surface, and then just keep living on the Perseus indefinitely? Or even use the resources here to spread out? Start fresh?” He sounded so hopeful. It was hard not to get excited with him.

  Vega even found herself nodding along as he talked. That could certainty be a possibility, couldn’t it?

  “In all likelihood, the bots are still down there, ready to eat anything that comes into their path. They’re machines, not living beings. They also don’t require a lot of maintenance. So, if we land with the hopes that the bots are inoperable, we will probably go to our deaths. I can’t say that with one hundred percent certainty, but it is the most likely outcome.”

  The silence that descended upon the room was deafening as a ringing sound started in Vega’s ears.

  “Do we even have a landing procedure?” one of the younger FO’s asked, his face pale with fear.

  “Yes, we do. Your captains will know how to proceed. Whomever is chosen to execute the landing will be briefed on the various possible scenarios and the outcome with the most chance for success,” Burridge said, as if that was supposed to be reassuring in some way.

  “And how about the contingency for the bots? We’ve been aloft for so long, you can’t tell me no one is working on a procedure to deal with the bots,” Vega blurted out.

  Major Burridge turned his eyes on her and sighed as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “You know, there was a whole team assigned to that in the beginning. As years passed, and things seemed stable up here, more and more of the team was reallocated, particularly during the plague last century. Seemed like focusing on life at that moment was more important than thinking about going back to the ground. Now, there’s no team, no department, nothing. We’re on our own.”

  This can’t be the end, Vega thought. Her life had been nothing special, not at all like she imagined it. She’d be damned if it ended by being eaten by Ashby’s demon bots three hundred and fifty years after the idiot died.

  “Enough with the bleak, Major Burridge. What are we actually going to do about it?” Vega burst out, looking into the major’s usually confident eyes and wavering when she found
uncertainty there.

  Before he could answer, another pilot piped up. “So if the problem is the bots, what can we do to shut them down? Ashby used an EMP, right? We have the technology here. Why not land and set off an EMP to keep ourselves safe?”

  It was then that Selam chimed in again. “An EMP is indiscriminate. Even if we set it off after we land, which, in my opinion, would be too late, it would still sentence at least half the ship to death by nanobots. If it actually worked, it would disable all electronics on the ship. Our crops would die. Air circulation systems, medical assistance devices, ship controls—everything would be destroyed. The Perseus would become a giant metal shack where we could take shelter. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  Well, don’t sugarcoat it for them, Selam, Vega thought dryly. I should really help her with her people skills. Not that Vega was much better. With very little tact and no filter, Vega wasn’t sure she was the right person to teach Selam to make friends among her colleagues.

  Before the pilot could argue, Selam went on. “And really, if you want this to be a viable option, you should set the EMP off before we land. The bots will be on us like Mendi to a cure for cancer as soon as we were close enough for them to reach us, which is before we even touch the ground. So, if you do that, you’ll sentence us to a crash landing. Either way, people die. Our people.”

  Selam continued when no one else spoke besides a few gasps and whispers. “Additionally, building something that would prove to be effective, and would harm the bots as well as us, would take a massive amount of time and resources. Time we don’t have.” Selam folded her arms over her chest and leaned against the wall behind Major Burridge. Apparently, she’d said her piece. If they left it to her, an EMP was impractical and off the table.

  “So, which outcome provides the least loss of life?” the pilot asked, as if he were considering the scenario. He’d clearly missed her entire point.