“It’s a gold mine,” Freenan said. His usual overly eager smile was gone, replaced with a look of awe. He was overwhelmed. “That small piece of scrap there.” He pointed at a torn and twisted piece of metal. “That alone is worth an absolute fortune. But it, and all the material wealth just lying about, are mere footnotes in this roguish expedition…”
There were more pods to be seen before they reached the wreck. Most were partially buried in the ice, but a few were upon the surface. More than a few of those were torn open, their occupants flung free. Though no one mentioned it, the frozen body of at least one former pod occupant was clear to see in the distance. Snow tried with difficulty to keep her feelings about the tragedy at a distance, as a disaster that happened to other people. Tragic, but remote.
When they finally reached the wreck of the starship, they were surprised at its size. They’d landed further away than it first seemed. The wreck was huge.
They found a hatch, buried halfway into the ice. Max was clearly pleased to have a use for the stone axe he had been carrying all these weeks and got right to work hacking his way through.
While he worked, Snow and the others looked around the immediate vicinity. Much of the debris closest to the wreck was at least partially buried in the ice. The ice must have melted into water for a short time during the crash, flooding the area before freezing once more. There were few items above the surface in close proximity to the wreck, and all of those were low density. Plastics and the like.
The sound of chopping stopped, and Max announced on the radio that he had finished digging. Everyone gathered around and Max stepped aside to let Snow take the honors of opening the door. She grabbed the ancient handle, the same design used on Icarus. She twisted it all the way around and a small blast of air released as the lock inside emptied. She looked meaningfully at the group, then pulled on the handle. It didn’t budge.
“One second,” Max said. He whacked the edge of the hatch with the back of his axe. Tiny slivers of ice fell from the space between the door and the hull. He indicated that she should try again and stepped out of her way.
She pulled again. Again, the door resisted, but this time it gave slightly. She redoubled her efforts and Max joined in. Suddenly the door popped open, dumping the pair of them in a heap.
The airlock inside was vast in comparison to Icarus’ airlock. There was space for all four of them with plenty of room to spare. They piled in and closed the door behind them.
“Power,” Freenan said, “Look.”
A green indicator was glowing on the airlock control panel.
“Here goes,” Snow said. She pressed the unlabeled button and the room began to fill with pressure. When it finished cycling she twisted the handle to the inner airlock door and pulled. Without effort the door opened, revealing a hallway that was strangely familiar. She had been in it, or ones like it.
“Sensors indicate the air is breathable Captain,” Max said.
She looked at him, he was holding up one finger and waving it around.
“It’ll take more than that I think…” Bob said.
Snow reached up and gave her helmet a twist. Slowly she lifted it up. She breathed in a shallow breath. Then when she didn’t choke, she took a deeper one. Soon she was breathing normally.
“Seems alright…” she said.
When she failed to die after a few minutes, they each took off their helmets and began to explore. From the outside, the ship looked large, but inside there were few corridors. Some were crew cabins, with multiple bunks that were spread out on the ‘back’ wall. In one particular cabin, Snow’s memories were as close as they had ever been, but still they evaded her conscious grip. She was sitting in the room, struggling to remember, when Freenan called, announcing he had found something. Max was still with her and he led the way. They found Freenan nearby, in a large room with a thick window at one end, half-blocked by ice outside. The other half showed the terrain to the front of the starship. It was a command bridge similar to Icarus’ bridge though far larger. Freenan had managed to pull up a map of the ship on the huge monitor, still in operation through the centuries, or millennia. The map indicated that a great deal of the ship was no longer pressurized, though much of it was otherwise still intact. He was trying to draw her attention to something on the map, but something else had drawn her attention.
A photo booth like machine was tucked away to one side of the command room. Ignoring all else, Snow walked straight to the machine. Inside it had a chair with a round dish hanging from a low ceiling. She reached for her pendant and was forced to remove her glove to reach it inside her suit. She pulled it out with two fingers then sat down in the machine. She placed her head inside the oval shaped dish at the top of the chair. She was about to place the pendant into a small slot in the panel of the machine, but paused and turned to Max.
“This’ll take a while,” she said, adding when she saw the look of concern on his face, “I’ll be fine. I’ll be better than fine… I’ll be…” she looked up at him from the machine, “whole.”
“So, will I be calling you Warda when you pop out of that thing?” Max said, “Or will you still be Snow?”
“I don’t know,” Snow said.
“If I had to bet—”
“Good idea. A bet,” Snow said.
“I bet you’ll still be Snow,” Max said.
“I guess we’ll find out…” Snow said and lined up the pendant with its corresponding slot in the machine.
Max grabbed her hand to stop her from putting the pendant into the machine.
“No, I have to do thi—”
He leaned in and kissed her.
“Okay, Snow White,” he said, ending the kiss as abruptly as it had begun, “You do this super dangerous thing with the machine all by yourself. I’ll keep my eye on ding-dong-one and Freenan.”
She nodded at him, smiled, and pushed the pendant into the slot before either of them could second guess her. The machine came to life.
Chapter 62
“What has she done?” Freenan said, his voice carrying a note of alarm.
“It’s her memories,” Max said. “In her pendant.”
“Her memories? In the pendant…” Freenan said stupidly, “Of course. They carried their memories around their necks.”
“But no one could remember what they were, so they didn’t know to try and get them back,” Max said. He thought of the pendant he’d seen in the museum, the one that had survived the centuries on the surface of Grailliyn. He’d seen it there when he was younger. No one had known what it was.
“Surely they must have prepared for such an eventuality?” Freenan said. “They were obviously aware of the memory loss problem…”
“I don’t think they planned to crash land on two different planets. The ones who were awake, flying the ship, they must have all died in the crash,” Max said.
There was silence, while they considered it.
“So… it’s probably going to take a while for this memory thing to finish?” Bob said, breaking the silence.
“I would imagine it will, “ Freenan said, “A lifetime of memories…”
“Okay then let’s go check out the DWJ1. While we wait,” Bob said. He shuffled impatiently.
“What’s that?” asked Max.
“Oh, it’s on the map here, you see?” Freenan said. “It is within one of the depressurized areas of the ship, but it seems to be a craft of some sort. Perhaps we could use it to move about the wreckage and examine the uh—”
“Loot,” Bob said.
“Artifacts I was going to say,” Freenan corrected him. “Obviously, you should stay here and watch over Snow while we explore the area,” he said to Max.
“No,” Max said.
“Well, I’m not sure that’s for—” Freenan said.
“I’ll come with you,” Max said. “Snow knows what she is doing.” Did she? “And yes, it is for me to decide. You two are experts along for the ride and to give advice. But this is my su
rvey. Mine and Snow’s.”
Bob looked amused.
“Yes, well, I suppose that is technically true…” Freenan said.
Bob’s expression said, What? Really? His mouth said, “What? Really?”
“There are rules for these things. I know them quite well. After all I am the coordinator of—”
“The point is that we will all go check out this DWJ1 thing. We should stick together,” Max said.
With their helmets back on and suit systems lit green, they passed through one of the internal airlock strong points keeping the ship airtight. The state of the depressurized ship varied. Some of it was in as good shape as the bridge, minus the air. A bit of a mess here and there—debris set loose during impact—but generally solid. Some passages however were in very bad shape. Twisted, crushed, and some filled with solid ice that had breached the ship as liquid water then solidified, stretching and tearing the structure further as the ice expanded.
They were forced to backtrack twice and to squeeze through a crushed hall on all fours, but they eventually made it to their destination. The door to DWJ1 was still powered and it opened for them as they approached. Their suspicion that it was some sort of surface craft now seemed unlikely. DWJ1 was positioned deep inside the ship, far from any doors or hatches and there were no launch tubes or the like.
But the object inside the circular room did have the appearance of a small vehicle. There were two seats behind a segmented clear view screen. Bob eagerly stepped through the door and approached. Max and Freenan followed. The craft had hatch-like doors to either side and Bob was already opening one of them. He slid inside and sat in one of the seats. It was far less roomy than Icarus’s bridge, and there was little room to spare after Bob, and his helmet and backpack, were in the seat. Max was reminded of the vehicle the Tawnee patrolmen had driven. Freenan opened the other hatch and sat beside Bob. Max, last to reach the craft, was forced to look past Bob to see inside. A simple-looking control panel lit up, consisting primarily of a wide screen with small buttons surrounding it. One bigger mushroom-shaped red button, just like the one in Icarus, sat in the bottom center of the panel.
Chapter 63
The sensation was peculiar. Her memories were being reconnected, though not in waves, as she’d imagined. The memories were returning at random and with a resolution that was the opposite of how her memories had ever been before. They started somewhere in the middle, then worked forward and backward until the memory chain was complete. Some popped back quickly, as though the neurons had only been disconnected, not lost, and so a single re-connection could reestablish a whole line at one time. Others needed more work. New neurons were coaxed to remember things that had once been the job of others, now lost.
Another memory popped back into place and there was Dougie. Her best friend. He’s nice. Oh wait, no. Dougie’s gross. Still her best friend, but only because..? Cute little Dougie hurt himself, tripping on the grav deck. The adults help him up. They smile like they think they are supposed to, but they have work to do. And Dougie is a disappointment. No that is later. Dougie is a teenager. He can’t be trusted to do his duties, not like Warda. But they’re still friends. They have no one else their age. They are told there have been others but they’re all sleepers now. Warda and Dougie are lucky. They were born just in time to see the new home. The Message is played, as it is every ‘morning’, to remind us all why we are here. She hates the Message. Everyone does. It tells us to stay at home. It tells us that to jump will bring destruction to earth. And that They will know. They will know if we jump. Warda knows what jumping is. You’re not allowed to do it on the grav decks. Later she knows the other kind is also forbidden. Forbidden by the ones who send the Message. The jumpships and the Message are connected, they use the same technology. Back on earth, when they discovered the particle that would allow jumping technology, they also discovered the Message, carried by that same particle. It had been there all along. No one knows how long, maybe millions of years. Or billions. Others have traveled the cosmos long before us and they don’t want to share. We traveled on Longissima for almost two thousand years to get here, to the new world, to fight back. Really? Warda is twenty years old now and she has some ideas of her own. Earth will be safe if they fail. Probably. But was it worth it? To spend millennia traveling in space and to waste all these lives? What chance did they have against an established galactic civilization? Shouldn’t they just settle down and start a colony that didn’t intend to commit suicide? Wouldn’t that be a win? But none of the duty crew waver in their conviction. They have all chosen, except for Warda and Dougie and some others that were sleepers now. They have all chosen to come here. To do this. If it hadn’t been for the loss of the Earth Laser, she wouldn’t even have been born. Not on the ship in any case. She was allowed because of a need for additional duty crew. The extra fourteen hundred years of travel meant tripling from twenty to sixty years of on duty time for duty crew, and that wouldn’t be enough, so children were the answer. Add a few children and they could bridge the gap. Add more and the original duty crew could survive all the way to the staging colony. And so, they did. Dougie the disappointment is a sleeper now. So are Warda’s parents, first generation Starborns, having finished their extended shifts years before. And the rest of the duty crew, though old, are mostly still kicking. Though not literally. Kicking is also against the rules. Most of them are sleepers now anyway.
There is a great deal of excitement as the Longissima finally arrives at its destination. The twin planets pose a conundrum. Long ago when it was realized they were headed not to a single planet but a pair, it was seen as an opportunity. But now there is a decision to make. One planet, Alpha, is rich in the materials needed to push the plan forward, but it has a cold, thin, nearly useless atmosphere. The other, Beta, has a thick, breathable atmosphere. Oceans. Life! It seems like paradise to all aboard. But there are almost no building materials on the surface. The decision is made. They will head to the lifeless planet for materials and once established, they will then colonize the paradise planet.
The coordinates are set, the course changed, then disaster. Almost as if intended, Longissima’s massive and powerful gyroscopes activate at maximum power, twisting and bending the ship in half. Explosive bolts break Longissima in two. The bow is doomed to collide with Alpha. But the stern, with the main engines still operational, adjusts its course to orbit Beta. If they can land on the planet with a breathable atmosphere they might still salvage their lives, maybe even the plan. Warda and all but a few of the duty crew are placed in sleep pods, the safest place in a crash. The last face she sees is Rebecca Day, her favorite Earthling, as Warda’s pod is sealed.
More and more memories are stitched back into her mind. She remembers her birth, and her first memory back up shortly after. Barf.
The machine sang a friendly beeping tune indicating it was finished restoring her neural map. It seemed to be a good sign, that things went well. Snow climbed out of the machine. She was Snow now. Warda was in there but Max had been right, that was her former name. Though she made a mental note to inform Max of the error he had made in mixing up his fairytales.
She looked around and saw she was alone. For a moment she was annoyed Max wasn’t there, to share in her victory over the forces of forgetfulness. Then she remembered it was she that asked him to stick with the others. There was a noise from the radio in her helmet, on the floor where she had left it. She picked it up and put it back on her ear.
Faintly, the voice of a computer said, “..ger. Danger. Please evacuate the jump room. Darkwave jump is imminent.”
Chapter 64
Words appeared on the screen, ‘Darkwave Jumper ONE, First Recon, HQ Earth Forces Auxiliary’. Max eyes widened in shock. Earth. The ship was from Earth. Earth was real. A synthetic sounding female voice greeted them, not from within the craft, but elsewhere in the room.
“Weelcome baaack.” The voice stretched random syllables as it spoke. “It has been eighteen hundred
forty-eight yearrrs, sixty-eight dadadays, four hours, twenty-three minutess and three seconds since yoour last visit Misteeer Cooper.”
Max looked around for Mr. Cooper, but it was only the three Grailliyns present.
“Wha-wha-wha—” the computer voice tried to say. There was a clunk, clunk, noise, and the computer lady spoke again, her voice tinged slightly with an electronic buzz, “Sorry about that. I haven’t spoken in a while. Some of these circuits are a bit wonky. No worries, I—Wait. You’re not Mister Cooper.”
“True,” Max said. “I’m Max.”
“Hi, Max,” said the computer, “That does make more sense though. I was a little surprised that Coop was still around. Happy. But surprised…”
“Ya. I guess you would be,” Max said, at a loss. He’d never spoken to a computer before. What was the protocol? He decided to assume the computer was a person. What would he say to a person? “Ah… in the thingy there, (he pointed at the machine where the other two sat) that’s Freenan and Bob.”
“Hello, Freenan. Bob. Let’s not touch anything in there, guys—”
A new, male voice, from within the machine, cut her off then. “Required last mandatory operation start date has expired. Mandatory operation will begin now.”
The hatch Max had been leaning against closed, as did the craft’s other hatch on the other side.
“That’s not good,” said the computer lady.
Bob tried to open the hatch from inside, but it was sealed tight. Max gave the door a try, but it wouldn’t budge for him either.
Max ran to the other side of the craft and tried again, but his attempts to open the hatch failed there as well. Freenan was pressing buttons and tapping the screen rather than trying to get out.
“Ah, computer, we ah… we could use a little more time to prepare for the… operation,” Max said.
Starship Relic (Lost Colony Uprising Book 1) Page 29
