Titan: A Science Fiction Horror Adventure (NecroVerse Book 3)

by Aaron Bunce

  “After Emiko woke up, she looked after you. Said you fractured your skull, and not just a hairline, either, but a full ‘crunch’ variety. She just told me. I guess she was afraid of how Anna would take it and the way people were getting along, I can’t blame her. She was already freaking out bad as it was. Poole hadn’t been right either–stranger than normal, distant, and unpredictable, so we wanted to see if you’d wake up before adding to everyone’s stress. It makes sense now that he admits he was damaged or whatever. So…just tell me, because no one…well, I won’t blame you, at least. If you’re not right, not up to this, just let me know.” Lex nodded over his shoulder.

  “Me add to the stress?” he sighed, blowing out the words, because otherwise he would laugh and that would definitely send the wrong signal. “If we can just narrow the stream down a bit. Like, not have everyone come at me and talk at once, then I’ll be fine.”

  Fine. Ha!

  Jacoby turned, a solitary bank of lights ebbing brighter overhead. He spotted himself in the mirror over the sink. It was him, the unshaven, scruffy-faced reflection he expected. But not. He was black and blue around the eyes, like a racoon, the bridge of his nose and his lips swollen to almost twice their normal size. He looked like he’d gone one too many rounds with someone with lead fists.

  Almost done in by thrust gravity and a freaking seat frame. Oh, boy, how that would have looked on an obituary. Escaped the outbreak that killed humanity but killed by a freaking chair.

  “Damn,” he breathed and turned, reaching up to the back of his head. A jagged, bumpy wound marred his skin, just beneath a sizable chunk of missing hair. “That seat frame really kicked my…ass.” The phrase wasn’t entirely accurate but felt true enough. “Okay. I can feel it. Shit is bad. Hit me with it.”

  “I’d say have Lana tell you, but damn, she’s wound so tight a fart might blow her in half,” Lex said and turned, motioning towards someone, only for Anna to appear a moment later, twisting around and into their space.

  “He’s says he’s okay. But to take it slow. The fractured skull and mush for brains will heal in time.”

  “Okay. Wait, fractured skull and…” Anna gasped, moving, and speaking as if he might shatter into pieces. Her ghostly counterpart lurched forward and threw her arms around him, the glow temporarily washing everything else away. Was it what she wanted to do?

  But it was her words that hit him harder. It appeared that Emiko and Lex had kept his true condition from even Anna.

  “Sorry. Emiko’s call,” Lex shrugged, “take it up with her.”

  “I think I will,” Anna growled, her hands balling up into fists.

  “She was trying to do what was best for everyone. I don’t blame her,” Jacoby said, “and I don’t think you should either.”

  “Fine.”

  Jacoby knew Anna well enough to know that “fine” didn’t necessarily mean “okay”.

  “As you probably noticed, Coby, things are bad,” Anna said, after blowing out a forceful, almost angry snort. And not just between us…” She flicked her hand around to gesture to the people in the other room, “but the Betty, too. The A.I. originally copied itself to the navigation computer, as it is the thinking unit on the ship with the most memory. Killing the power isolated it there. Erik…well, Lana and I, too, we thought a power cycle would scrub it, since the system wipes the rewritable memory to save on boot cycles. Long story short, we isolated the navigation computer anyways, rebooted, only to find that we were still locked out. Erik and Lana traced it back to every supplementary and ancillary computer system on the ship, but it was…”

  “Everywhere?”

  Anna nodded. “Yes and no. We think it couldn’t fit its whole programming onto some of the smaller thinking units, stuff like the cabin heater controllers, so it copied in trimmed down versions of itself in some spots and completely different programs in others. Some were bots just watching and recording, while others were trojans designed to detect any possible intrusions or reroute attempts and funnel the data. Honestly, we’ve never seen anything like it. It is so intelligent, so adaptable. This program has essentially written itself onto every part of this ship.”

  “That all sounds…horrible,” Jacoby said, trying and failing to come up with a more colorful response. He just didn’t have it in him. “And that means we can’t make it to Titan?”

  “Actually no. That seems to be where this program wants us to go, if it is to be trusted or believed.”

  “Trusted,” Jacoby snorted and ran a hand through his hair, then scratched his chin. He watched Anna for a moment. Her behavior had already shifted from anger to guarded–the uncomfortable dance from one foot to the other and arms folded over her chest.

  She blames herself and is afraid that I do, too. I wonder how the others feel. Trust is a hard thing to earn and an even easier thing to lose. It was my mistrust of Poole and how he handled her whole situation that got us into this mess. Shit, it’s more my fault than hers. Poole, where did you go? I need to get my head sorted.

  “I heard enough out there to gather we aren’t all on the same page about going to Titan. The others want to slingshot and change course?” he asked.

  Anna nodded. “But there is no guarantee the Betty will get us anywhere at this point. We can’t consider an atmospheric entry a slam dunk, and with no engine, we’ve got no electrical generation and no life support. If we survive the entry, Titan’s gravity is light enough that we can descend with thrusters. But if we can’t find or get into the base, we won’t be able to break orbit again…the pulse engine simply took too much damage. Of course, if we burn up entry, everything after that would be moot, anyways.

  Straight from the frying pan into the ice box? When do the decisions get easier?

  “If that is Titan, what are our other options? What do they want to do?” Jacoby asked. He knew how Anna worked. She liked to break down an angle all the way, and only then analyze alternatives, and at the end, weigh the positive and negatives. They did it for pretty much every one of their major decisions. He rarely provided the analytical insight, but she always insisted that his non-mathematical thinking helped parse out the best course. That Jacoby was her sounding board and helped her see options not previously visible.

  “Bad, crap, and shit,” Lex said, before Anna could speak.

  “Yeah, they’re not great,” she responded. “One, we use a hardwired trigger to fire the pulse engine. We try to do the math on our own, based off the last trajectory and acceleration data we were able to pull from the computer. It won’t be accurate, however, as we have flipped the Betty for deacceleration. But on a positive, we’ve already wired in the trigger and know it works. In theory, we fire the thrusters again to flip her nose forward and, either our math and velocity is right, and the moon holds us long enough to effectively slingshot clear of the gas giant’s gravity well.”

  “If not?” Jacoby asked.

  “We skip right off Titan’s atmosphere and risk getting pulled into Saturn.”

  “And there is no way to scrub this artificial intelligence off the systems and safety reboot?”

  Anna looked to Lex, then to the floor, and sighed. He looked to Lex and then the chaos beyond the door, and not the people. It was the cables, the panels, and the conduit and junction boxes pulled free and hanging loose. While he’d been oatmeal-brained and hallucinating about wonderful fantasy lands, they had been pulling the ship apart and putting it back together in every conceivable way, trying to give them a fighting chance.

  “Erik and Lana can’t speak to each other without fighting and they’re the two people who should be working together. It’s driven them to work on opposite ends of the ship most of the time. Lana handles our software and computer needs while Erik sticks to everything structural and wiring. Poor Emiko tried playing the part of peacekeeper, but she’s so darn little and sweet everyone just walked all over her. This whole deal has FUBARed everyone’s working relationship and I don’t see how we can fix it anytime soon. Shane m
eans well, but Erik is strung out and hurting. If your buddy tells him to ‘man-up’ one more time, I’m pretty sure his head will explode, or he’ll just go throw himself out the airlock. We’re in our ‘shit or get off the pot’ window and legitimately have no plan in place, because people can’t get along long enough to form one or follow through. That is where we’re at and it pisses me off,” Lex said.

  “Man up?” Jacoby asked.

  “Shane called it ‘tough love’. Said it worked for his guys on the station, the ‘troublemakers’, but it feels like strong-arm tactics to me. And it only ever seems to lead to lots of screaming and threats of violence. Like a lot of threats,” Anna said, answering for her.

  “Have they…?” he started to ask and then had to wonder if Shane was talking about him. Did he consider Jacoby part of the problem?

  “Not yet. At least, not that we needed to break up,” Lex deadpanned, the muscles in her arms flexing. Jacoby couldn’t quite tell if she was disappointed or relieved. But realistically, any fight that broke out on the ship would inevitably involve her, and that fact might have been enough to deter them.

  “What about communications?” Jacoby asked, thinking of ways to calm nerves and bring everyone back together. He suddenly wondered if he’d looked at Shane all wrong. Was Poole right about Janis and the foremen working together to keep them content and working? “Are we close enough to establish communications with this Titan research facility? Maybe knowing for sure what we’re headed towards would help get us all on the same page.”

  “It’s like Planitex didn’t want the tugs communicating with anyone but the processing stations. Coms are proprietary laser. We’d need the computers up and running just to know where to point the thing, and then it would have to form a connection with the endpoint before we could even think about drafting a message. Stupid crap. Forget them being able to respond. But we do know this. The Betty has a narrow band receiver-transmitter used to communicate with drillers when they’re off ship, setting anchors. The antenna isn’t particularly strong, but when we get close enough to the moon, we can set it to scan. There is a chance we can pick up the station’s beacon.”

  “I feel more trapped than I did on the station,” Jacoby mumbled.

  “I don’t know. That place started to feel a lot like a coffin really quick. At least here we’re moving…making waves,” Lex said, then turned to keep someone from walking through the door.

  Something clicked in Jacoby’s brain, and he didn’t entirely know why. The connection was slow but solid. Then it hit him hard.

  “You said beacon, right? How long before we’re in range to potentially hear it?”

  Anna nodded, straightening against the wall. “It depends on the strength of their transmitter, but at our speed, we could technically already hear it. Why?”

  “Erik and the others. If we get close to enough to Titan and can find this beacon with the receiver. Prove that the station is live, active, and operational. Do you think that would be enough to convince them that this is a safe enough place? Would that be enough?”

  “I mean, he’s pretty freaked out about everything at this point. You heard him back there. If you need more proof, he’s against an entry at titan and pretty much every other plan we’ve come up with so far. Maybe, if it came from the right person, a hug instead of a hammer. I mean, it can’t hurt.”

  “The right person…”

  “I’ve yelled at him and threatened to kick his ass several times, so don’t look at me,” Lex said, barely hiding a smirk, “but, I think he’s got a soft spot for our resident hottie and former superstar Banjo Ball player. Maybe it’s the eyes. I don’t know. He hasn’t said anything, but I’ve noticed.”

  Jacoby immediately looked around, despite the fact they were in a small, dark room, and their former soldier was blocking the only door.

  “She’s in the hold. Barely comes out of there anymore, especially after you know, you trying to sacrifice yourself for the rest of us,” Anna said, quietly.

  “I’m going to go and talk to her. Maybe she can smooth out some of Erik’s fears.”

  “And then what?” Lex asked.

  Be the board, Jacky-Boy, the rigid but pliable timber that allows them to sway with the wind but keeps them from breaking. That is what a leader does, provides a workable framework with which to operate, not drive them into the ground like a forty-pound sledgehammer. Together, we are the leader these people need, Poole’s voice whispered into his mind, although he could just make out his dark form tucked away in the corner. Under these circumstances it was even creepier than usual.

  And you’re just going to pop back in like you never left? Where did you go? I’ve been trying to get your attention for a while.

  “There’s so much that has happened to all of us…and is happening,” Jacoby corrected himself, mid-thought, “but the problem is, we’re getting bogged down in it. You know? That feeling you get when you’ve got like a hundred things that you need to get done, but the weight of everything keeps you from even seeing a realistic place to start? And instead, you don’t get anything accomplished at all. The way I see it, we’ve only got one plan, one mission–to survive. And if you strip it all down to that one thing, it sounds like Titan gives us our best chance. We just need to accept it as our goal forward and work together. It is that simple.”

  “I love it. Simple, straight forward, logical. We really could have used you around here, Jacoby,” Lex said, throwing him a lopsided smile. “I’m on board, but what is your plan to deal with the whole infected navigation computer and torn up ship? How are we going to get this tub down to Titan? Or what happens if we get into range and there is no beacon?”

  “Okay. No beacon, we figure out a plan B. Maybe have Anna try to reason with the A.I. in the computer…”

  “Reason with it? I’ve tried, Coby,” Anna cut in. “Both the navigational computer and almost every ancillary system. It is maddening, kind of like you when you’re dead set on eating tacos, but I want sushi. That name, that Tal-Nurgal…whatever it is, this program is unflinchingly set on finding it and waking it up. Whatever that means. And since that message originated from Titan, that is the only place it will go.”

  “What if you talked to it again and told it about the beacon? If it knew there was no one down there, or maybe that we and it would be killed trying to reach the surface, would that at least force it to consider other options?”

  “I just don’t know, Coby. It would have to be the main program. The sub minds don’t usually respond, especially after we severed all the connections. Maybe…I mean, if we had data it could see. Data that would force it to re-evaluate and calculate a new direction or request.”

  “Okay, it’s an option. Or, maybe, options,” Jacoby said, then reached out and grabbed Anna’s hand. It felt like the first time he’d made contact with his friend since leaving Hyde. She smiled and returned the squeeze, a share of her anxiety releasing. He felt and saw it.

  “Okay, so what then? That doesn’t really answer the questions or solidify a plan moving forward,” Lex said.

  “Because whether we like it or not, we’re stuck in a broken tub with two options. We find a beacon, good. We need to find a way to get down there in one piece. If we don’t, okay, then we roll with plan B and get to work. Either way, we need people like Erik and Lana working together.”

  Jacoby rubbed his face and pushed off the bench. Damn, his head hurt. Just the idea of more talking felt daunting, and he had the idea that he had a lot more of that in his short-term future. Pull it together, oatmeal brains.

  “I’m guessing you have a strategy to get oil and water to mix,” Lex said.

  Jacoby shrugged. “Common ground. Shared interest. They seemed to work well enough to get us off the station.”

  Lex whistled. “I don’t know. Different kind of danger. Considering what I’ve seen, I think that’ll be a hard sell.”

  “It doesn’t have to be, Red,” Poole said cutting in, “you just need to make
sure they understand that this is the only way they survive.”

  0220 Hours

  Jacoby followed Lex out into the galley, the redhead serving as the tip of the spear that opened his walking path. Lana retreated, but Shane tried to route around her.

  “I need to get started on reconnecting wiring harnesses for, you know,” Anna said, giving his hand one final squeeze before moving off

  “Hey, man, are you all right cause like I said, there are some things I really need to bounce off you,” Shane said. His illuminated double jittered and moved but clung close to him.

  “Yeah…just give me a few. I just need a minute first.”

  “Do I need to remind you that it was your idea for me to take charge of this shit show? Everyone wants a leader to step forward but then all of a sudden they don’t want anyone telling them what to do? I mean, come on, man. What in the actual hell?”

  “Maybe sometimes they’d rather have someone ask, instead,” Lana snapped.

  “You need a minute?” Shane asked, ignoring Lana. “What were you doing in there? You act like we have all the time in the world. I can’t believe the balls on this guy.” Shane threw his hands up and backed away, but he didn’t shout. In fact, he barely whispered and yet Jacoby still heard his grumblings loud and clear.

  If we make it through this, I am finding a quiet cabin on some mountain, on some barely inhabited planet, and I’m staying there.

  “I know, right?” Poole echoed ahead of him, now perched on the top of the ladder. “Except, we’re bringing Red. I’d get lonely without her around.”

  “You going to answer my question yet? What is going on with my vision? Why am I seeing two of everyone?”

  Jacoby reached the top of the ladder, shifted his foot around onto a rung, and swung his weight into the well.

  “What are you talking about? Seeing double?” Poole asked.