by William Wood
Calvin took the stairs to the bridge. He entered casually yet confidently, even though he felt neither.
“Welcome aboard Lieutenant Range,” a voice said. At the back of the bridge, standing in a circle with three other senior officers was the Commander of the Sorenia, Captain Delik. Unlike Calvin, the Captain seemed fully calm and relaxed.
“Take your station, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir,” Calvin replied curtly and turned away. The room was not very large, all available space was taken up by computer equipment, controls and monitors. To make the situation worse, there were people everywhere; some under computer stations, others sitting at them trying to figure out why they wouldn’t work, and some were on tall ladders working above the ceiling plates.
Calvin made his way through the people and boxes of tools to his computer station.
In the front of the bridge was a large window. Right behind that there were two computer stations, facing forward. Those were for the pilot and the weapons controller. Directly behind those were four computer stations, two on each side facing sideways. Calvin’s station was second on the left.
“Come on people,” The Captain said loudly but calmly. “We’re on a schedule.”
Within twenty minutes the bridge and the rest of the ship was cleared of everyone except the crew. The last vehicles were driving away. The Captain was sitting in his chair while the section heads worked their way down a checklist.
Lieutenant Calvin Range input the coordinates for launch into the computer, which was then passed to the pilot. He had nothing to do now, but wait, and watch.
When it was time to start up the engines, there were the beginnings of a rumble, and then nothing.
“Engine room,” Captain Delik said. If he was getting upset, he was doing a great job hiding it. “What’s the problem?”
“Standby Captain,” a voice said. Calvin could only imagine the panic in the engine room. He’d have to remember to give Jax a hard time. Thirty minutes later, the engines roared to life. The ship shook, the air smelled funny for a second, like burned metal and plastic.
The communications officer requested clearance from the tower. The response was immediate.
“Sorenia, you are cleared for launch.”
Whether people loved it or hated it, Sorenia was lined up at the end of the runway and the entire planet was watching. Even those who were scared and wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening were unable to look away. The launch had become the center of attention on every continent. Nearly the entire planet stopped to watch.
Especially the group of ten thousand people gathered around the Space Center to watch the historic event. They were elated out of their minds. Thousands of cameras were there to capture it in vivid color.
Civilian flights in and out of the capitol were cancelled during a two hour window surrounding the launch. The skies were clear.
Calvin had nothing better to do than check the navigation computer. The captain ordered the crew to standby for take-off. Suddenly, the power on the bridge turned off and the sound of oxygen pumps ceased. Everyone looked at each other, and then back towards the captain.
Before he had a chance to say a word, the power turned back on, and Calvin could feel oxygen from a vent above him blowing on him again. Everyone went back to work like nothing had happened. Calvin hoped that wasn’t a sign of things to come.
Calvin looked out the front window, the long runway stretched out in front of them. The engines thundered and the ship shook. The noise increased louder and louder, until finally the captain gave the order, “Release brakes!”
The ship didn’t jump forward, as Calvin thought it would. Instead it started rolling forward slowly and increased speed gradually. Even though he knew the runway was one of the longest on the planet – nearly two miles long, it seemed to Calvin they wouldn’t get enough speed to actually lift into the air.
At last, when Calvin was certain they were about to run off the end of the runway and into the ocean, the nose of the ship rotated up and the Sorenia pulled off the runway and into the air, Calvin felt the elation and couldn’t help join the rest of the bridge crew in a cheer. Calvin looked back at the captain. He was sitting in his chair with a smile on his face; no sweat; the man was a rock. Sorenia climbed higher and higher into the atmosphere, without a break in engine noise. Once it was high enough in the atmosphere it blasted its way into a low orbit.
Throughout the launch, the Sorenia shook violently, creaked loudly, and smelled like burning metal, but the ship made it into orbit without any alarms going off.
“Navigator,” Captain Delik said. Calvin turned to look at him. “Set a course for the perimeter of our solar system.”
“Yes sir,” Calvin answered sharply. He performed the task quickly. He was nervous at first, and afraid of making mistakes, but he had memorized all of the coordinates of their system, and he programmed the computer from memory. Even so, he decided to double check his work, just in case. It turned out he didn’t need to—his calculations were right.
There had been some interesting moments on the first day. The ship’s sensors showed a very large object appearing and disappearing, somewhere out ahead of them. The captain said it was a sensor malfunction, and he assigned a work crew to fix it.
The most exciting and terrifying thing happened four hours into the mission. There was a power spike in the engine core and a frantic effort to contain an overload. Calvin thought he heard someone acknowledge an order to prepare the escape pods, and he was sure the mission was going to end in a ghastly disaster, but at the last second Jax repaired the computer and saved the ship.
At the end of the day Calvin went to bed, but he found it impossible to sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking about almost dying on his first day in space. Images of the flashing red emergency lights, the smell of smoke, and the panic on the faces of his shipmates played over and over in his mind. He was awake for a long time, wondering if the old ship could survive another four days in space. At some point during the night, he fell into a deep, restless sleep.
CHAPTER THREE:
ABANDONED
Lightning streaked across the sky. Calvin stood in the middle of a smoking battleground. Hulks of burned-out battle tanks and the ruins of destroyed cities surrounded him. He couldn’t move. A massive fleet of black spaceships circled overhead with laser guns pointed at him. A small group of people stood close by. They all looked terrified. Thousands of monsters with long fangs and jagged claws appeared on the horizon. There were so many they looked like a black cloud. They moved quickly and headed directly toward Calvin and the group of survivors. The monsters screamed as if they were on fire.
Suddenly a beam of light appeared in front of Calvin. It was a beautiful, pure light in the darkest hole in the universe. An old man and woman stepped in front of the light with a young girl. The light shimmered, flashed, and shot up into space. It looked like a bridge. The people walked into the beam of light single file and vanished. The monsters got closer, and the screaming got louder.
The man and woman walked toward the beam of light, but the girl didn’t move. She looked at Calvin and stretched out her arm toward him, beckoning him to follow. But the old man pulled her back and pointed his finger at Calvin.
“No!” the old man said loudly. “You cannot come.” The old man pulled the woman and the girl into the beam of light and disappeared, but the girl broke free of his grip and fell backward onto the ground. The beam of light disappeared. Darkness closed in around Calvin and the girl. She looked at him with tears in her eyes and said something in a language he couldn’t understand. The monsters were almost on top of them. There was no place to go.
* Calvin woke up terrified. Pain flooded his entire body, but his head hurt the most. The room was lit by a dim red light. It only took a second to realize how quiet it was. No deep hum from the engines or blowing from the oxygen pumps. The only thing he could hear was his own breathing. The silence was so loud it felt like it was crushing him.
Another disturbing thing was the strong smell of burnt plastic and metal. Suddenly a terrible thought occurred to him. The life support system was down! How long could he live without oxygen? He knew the answer—not very long.
Calvin slowly sat up. The pain in his head exploded, but he forced himself upright. For the first time he realized he was lying on the floor in the middle of his room. His blanket, pillow, and personal things were spread all over the floor too. The small gold medallion his father gave him was still around his neck. The emergency light above the door was on, but it flickered unsteadily.
Jax was on the floor under his bed. Only his legs were sticking out. Calvin grabbed Jax by the ankles and pulled him out. Jax was unconscious, and he had an ugly bruise on the side of his head. Calvin checked him; he was breathing, and his pulse was normal. Next, Calvin needed to assess their situation.
During an emergency, all crew members were required to report to their combat stations. As the ship’s navigator, his place was on the bridge. He needed to get there as quickly as possible and find out what was going on. Calvin quickly put on his uniform.
He tried to open the door, but nothing happened. He tried four more times—still nothing. There was no power. Why wasn’t the backup power working? He was glad he spent all that time studying the ship’s schematics. He knew what he was supposed to do. He pulled the manualrelease handle. There was a grinding noise, but the door didn’t move. Calvin looked around his tiny room desperately.
“This isn’t happening! I’m trapped in here!” He beat on the door and shouted for help. When there was no answer, he screamed. It was no good. He tried to pull the door open, but it wouldn’t budge. The door was too heavy. There was no way he could open it with his bare hands.
Calvin had to get out of his room. He was getting so upset he couldn’t think straight. He needed to calm down, but instead he paced back and forth like a trapped animal. He was about to sit down when he remembered that every system on the ship had more than one backup. He searched around and found a panel with a small rust-covered crank wheel inside. With each turn the door slid open with a loud grinding sound that echoed throughout the ship. When the door was open enough, he squeezed through.
Calvin cautiously stepped into the corridor and looked both ways. It was dark, lit only by the dim glow of emergency lights.
“Hello, is anyone there?” Calvin called. Something was seriously wrong.
“What's going on?” Jax asked. Calvin walked back into the room and found Jax sitting up, rubbing his head.
“I'm not sure,” Calvin said. “But it looks like we’ve lost power. Are you OK? You look pale.”
“My head hurts, a lot, but I’ll be all right. I need to get to engineering.”
“All right, I’m going to the bridge,” Calvin said. He passed several rooms on the way. They were all empty, and the floors were covered with clothes, blankets, pillows, pictures, and computers. Where was the crew? He should have seen or heard someone by now, but he’d heard no answers to his calls. He felt like he was walking in a dream, or a nightmare. He passed six more rooms, all in the same condition. Calvin was getting scared and thought he should stop making noise.
When he walked by the escape pods, he looked through a small, round window on the yellow and black striped door. He expected to see the interior of an escape pod. What he saw made his heart pound violently and his breath to come in gasps. The escape pod was gone. A wave of nausea washed over him. He leaned against a wall to keep from falling down.
“They left us. The crew abandoned ship and left us here. Why didn’t I wake up?”
Farther on he passed sections of the bulkhead that looked like they had been ripped apart and smashed back together. The emergency lights flickered and went out for a second. When they came back on they were noticeably weaker.
In the gloom Calvin saw something that scared him most of all. On a damaged section of the hull, there was a hole. The section he was in was exposed to space. He stared at it for several seconds, not sure why he was still alive and afraid to move.
After a moment he realized, “We’re not in space. This doesn’t make any sense." The lights flickered again.
Calvin hurried toward the bridge. That’s where he wanted to be if the lights went out.
All of a sudden a loud clang shattered the silence. Calvin spun around. It sounded like a hammer was dropped, and it came from outside the ship. The echo reverberated into the distance.
“Hello?” he shouted. “Is anyone there?”
He stood still and listened. There was no reply. Terrified, he ran the rest of the way down the main corridor, up the stairs, and onto the bridge. Calvin walked to the front and checked the pilot’s station. The computer was dead. He worked his way around the room, checking all of the computers. None of them worked, except for one. One small computer screen on the arm of the captain’s chair was still on. Calvin looked at it.
It displayed the following:
Main power: Offline
Shields: Offline
Engines: Offline
Main reactor: Offline
Life support: Offline
Hull breaches: Sections 1, 2, 3, and 4
Escape pod launch sequence: 100 percent complete.
Emergency power level: 2 percent
An icy ball formed in the pit of Calvin’s stomach. His fears were confirmed. The crew had abandoned ship and left them behind.
“What are we going to do?” He had a flash of insight. “The answer isn’t in here. We have to go outside and find whoever did this to us. This is obviously a mistake. We aren’t at war with anyone. If we talk to them, we can straighten this out and ask them to take us home. They have to be reasonable, right?”
He needed to see what was outside before going out. There were several windows at the front of the bridge, which were currently covered with a thick metal blast shield. Obviously the captain had ordered them to be lowered to protect the ship.
Power was needed to raise the blast shield. He looked at the status screen again. Emergency power was down to 1 percent.
He hurried to the windows, found the controls to raise the shield, and pressed the button. There was a very loud click that made him jump, and the shield slowly rose. Halfway up it made a loud grinding noise and stopped. Calvin heard a barely audible beeping noise coming from the captain’s chair. Emergency power was depleted.
Ignoring that for the moment, Calvin looked out the windows. He was more than a little disappointed.
“Oh, come on!” There was a large, dark shape in front of the ship, but it was too close to see what it was. He studied it for a while. He looked at it from every angle—standing up, lying on the floor, even upside down. It was no use. He couldn’t figure out what it was. Frustrated, Calvin left the bridge.
“Time to go outside.” He jumped down the stairs two at a time, but halfway down, in midstep the lights turned off. Calvin was enveloped in pitch-black darkness. Caught by surprise, he missed the next step. His foot slid forward, and he tumbled down the stairs.
He landed on his back. Extreme panic helped him ignore the pain. He quickly flipped over and frantically clambered back up the stairs. The red glow coming from the bridge was just enough to see where he was going. He didn’t stop until he was back on the bridge, where for the moment, he felt safe. His heart raced, and his breathing came in gasps. He stood in the doorway and looked into the blackness.
“I’m not doing this!” Calvin shouted. “There is no way I’m wondering around in the dark without a flashlight. I’ll have to feel my way on my hands and knees! I’ll never make it. Jax, can you hear me?” There was no answer. “Jax!” He wanted to call louder but was afraid to.
The emergency lights on the bridge were slowly dying. Soon he wouldn’t have any light at all. He had to act fast. Calvin hurried to the emergency supply cabinet at the security officer’s station. He opened it, hoping to find a flashlight. All he found was more disappointment. The cabinet was empty. The crew
must have cleaned it out. Then suddenly, his worst fear became reality; the lights on the bridge turned off.
Calvin stood frozen in fear. It was so dark he couldn't see his hand in front of his face.
“What am I going to do now?” He was afraid to move or make noise. "I need to go back and find Jax.”
Calvin was afraid of falling down the stairs again, so he got down on his hands and knees and felt his way forward. When he found the stairs he crawled to the bottom. He was terrified and thought he saw gray shapes lunging at him. He realized that his eyes were playing tricks on him.
When he got to the bottom, he stopped for a second. In the dead air his breathing sounded like gusts of wind. He crawled down the main corridor very slowly. He had to feel his way inch by inch. At times he thought he could hear Jax calling from far away.
“OK, they were right. We should have stayed home. The Dark Terror is real. It’s dark, and I’m terrified. Jax, if you can hear me, this isn’t funny. You need to get main power back online.”
After a while it seemed like he was getting a little used to the darkness. He’d heard that when someone lost his eye sight, the other senses compensated for it. He didn’t know if that was true, but at one point he could swear he heard someone walking around outside the ship.
Calvin slowly crawled down the corridor; the only things he was aware of were his own breathing, the stillness of the air, and how loud the silence was.
From the moment he woke up on the floor of his room he had been living in a nightmare. Everything was going terribly wrong. That’s why when he saw a light from far away he thought it was his eyes, or his mind playing tricks on him. But then the light got brighter, and it shined directly on him.
“There you are,” Jax said. Calvin stood up. “Here, I found these in engineering.” He handed Calvin a flashlight. Calvin felt happy for the first time today—happy to see Jax again, but deeply relieved to have some light.
“Did you find anything else?” Calvin asked.
