Second Earth: Part One (Second Earth Serial Book 1)

by L. D. P. Samways

  Williams smile faded and he put his hands on the controls. Without giving his crew any warning, he put the ship into manual mode and hit the thrusters. The nose of the ship pointed up as the Commander changed the trajectory of the craft. After a few seconds, the view from the outside changed. The planet dipped a little, and now all they could see was the bulbous tip of the blue planet. As they pulled up, a new sight greeted them. It was a ship. A large ship. But something was wrong. It was completely dark. No lights. No movement. Nothing. Just blackness, like the power was off.

  “Engine failure?” the recruit said upon laying eyes on the ship.

  “That thing is massive, there would have to be some catastrophic engine failure for it to just lose all power like that,” Williams said.

  “The Commander is right. A ship like that has many back-up systems in place. When one thing goes, another kicks in. That’s how they’re built. Plus, the ship’s power isn’t drawn from the engines. It’s drawn from the cells. I find it hard to believe that both of those systems could fail at the same time,” the coms guy said, fiddling around with his screen, swiping on various scanners while attempting to get the Orion’s vitals up.

  “Why don’t we hail the ship?” the recruit said.

  “I second that, and seeing that I’m the Commander, I thought of it first,” Williams said.

  The coms guy nodded and swiped some more on his screens. He then attempted to gain a connection with the ship in front of them. The blackness of it was truly frightening. It was as if the ship was covered in oil, but everyone on board knew that space was a dark place. So that must have been why the ship appeared to be so dark.

  “I can’t seem to get an answer, boss,” the coms guy said.

  Williams shook his head.

  “Why?” he asked.

  The guy did some more swiping and tried again.

  “Seems like the hailing system on both of our ships are being blocked by something. I don’t like this at all. Something just doesn’t feel right,” the coms guy said.

  “Shit,” was all Williams could say. Truth was, it was just that. Shit. They were in a galaxy that was two and a half million light years away from Earth. They had no way of knowing where the precise location of the pod they were sent to rescue was. And now, to boot, their hailing system was down. But there was more bad news.

  “I think our coms are fried,” the guy said.

  Williams turned around.

  “What do you mean fried? How can that be?” he asked.

  The guy looked nervous. A sheet of sweat was covering his face as his fingers tapped rapidly on the screen, trying to find some answers.

  “I don’t know, sir. Maybe the jump gate affected them somehow. Knocked them off sync?” he said, still scrambling for answers on the screen.

  “God damn it. If the coms are out, then we cannot call for backup. And if we can’t call for backup, then the rescue mission is at risk. Something happens down there, then we’ll be the ones needing rescuing! I just can’t let that happen,” Williams said.

  The crew mumbled amongst themselves until one of them spoke up.

  “Does that mean we ain’t going to shuttle down to the planet, and search for the survivors?” one of the crew members asked.

  Williams sighed.

  “We won’t be able to find any of them if none of our coms work. So we might as well sit on it for a while. Get things fixed, and then do what we were sent here to do!” Williams said.

  There was a brief moment of silence. And then one of them spoke.

  “But how do we fix the coms unit? We don’t have any raw materials. This was only supposed to be a quick mission. We haven’t packed accordingly.”

  Williams shook his head. He closed his eyes for a second and thought things through. His mind was racing at a million miles a second. His head felt like cotton. The commander was unsteady on his feet. All this pressure was starting to grate on him. This wasn’t what he signed up for. He needed to get a handle on things, or before he knew it, his crew would be climbing on the ceilings.

  “The ship!” he said, pointing out of the window toward the Orion Traveler.

  “What about it?” the coms guy asked.

  Williams turned around to face his crew, who all looked as if they were about to crack. The fear of not being able to contact home was a very real fear indeed. It was the sort of fear that would eat most men up. Consume them. Destroy them. And in space, contact was everything. Without their coms, they’d be destined for doom. The commander was sure of it.

  “We dock. Once on board the Orion, we can fix the ship,” Williams said.

  The coms guy stared at the Commander and frowned.

  “I thought we were here to rescue their crew members, not the other way round! Besides, the ship has gone dark. Something doesn’t add up. If the power isn’t working, then we won’t be able to dock!”

  Williams shook his head.

  “That’s what we’re doing, okay? If you have a problem with that, then you can hitch a ride back to Earth on the Orion,” Williams said. He turned back around and walked up to his controls. He turned the thrusters on, and realigned with the ship in front of them.

  The Commander had a knot in his stomach. His guts were churning, and that undeniable feeling of uneasiness settled in. His coms guy was right. Things didn’t add up. The lights on the Orion were off and the ship had no signs of life. God only knew what lay in wait for them in there, but it was the only choice the Commander had.

  It was that, or turn back around and leave both the Orion and the pod on the mystery planet behind.

  Williams didn’t make a habit of leaving people to their deaths. The ship slowly made its way toward the unknown. As the Orion became closer, the signs of danger became more apparent.

  “What the hell happened here?” the recruit asked.

  Nobody answered. There were no answers to give. Just questions. Questions that by the time this was all over and done with, would be answered.

  And sometimes, just sometimes, the answers beg even more questions.

  To Be Continued…

  *What dangers lie inside the Orion Traveler, and how can Williams and his crew get the ship patched up so they can rescue the crashed pod?

  * Will Gustoff survive his gunshot wound? And what consequences are instore for whoever shot him?

  And will the effect of that person’s actions be felt on Earth?

  Find out in two weeks!

  Part Two out February 15th 2016, exclusively on Kindle.

  If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review on Amazon. Your reviews help me sell books, which in turn helps me put food on the table, and a roof over my head!

  My readers mean the world to me. Thank you for supporting my work for all these years!

  Love Luis.

  Continue reading for a sample of Stasis, Luis Samways’ full length space thriller, out now!

  Chapter One

  My eyes opened wide as the sound of gushing oxygen woke me. At first, I couldn’t see all that well. After a few seconds, they focused and the the gushing sound stopped suddenly. An LED board flashed in front of my face. A heads up panel stated that the pod I was in was leaking air. Only twenty percent remained in the cabin. If I didn’t open the door to the pod soon, I’d run out of air. And once the air ran out, then I’d be a goner. But you didn’t need me to tell you that. And I didn’t need to think twice about what I did next.

  The pod was a tight fit, not leaving much wriggle room inside. After all, it was designed to house one man or woman for stasis hyper sleep. You didn’t need much room when you were away with the cosmic fairies. There was no tossing and turning in hyper sleep, so the pods weren’t designed with movement being a priority. As far as priorities go, movement was on the lowest end of the scale. That, and durability, which would make what I did next possible. I balled both my fists up, raised them over the LED board in front of me and pushed all my weight into the pod door, double punching my way out of the pod. After th
ree attempts, I actually managed to smash my way out of the capsule, tumbling onto the floor. I landed hard on the metal grating. The diagonal slats scored uncomfortable marks on my face. As I lay there shivering and naked, I heard the sound of more pod doors being smashed open.

  I tried to see what was happening, but I just couldn’t manage to open my eyes again. After a few more seconds of hugging the metal floor, I heard a thud. I opened my eyes and saw Second Commander Jess lying on the grates next to me. She was also cold. And naked. But I guess she looked better for it. Especially given the fact that she was probably the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. But that was beside the point. I wasn’t there to look or touch. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I was there for. I didn’t have any recollection of where I was, what I was supposed to be doing or why I’d just woken up from stasis.

  “Darn it’s cold,” I heard a voice say.

  Slowly getting up, I steadied myself against one of the hyper cylinders. The things that were supposed to supply us with oxygen whilst in Stasis. But seeing that I saw my entire crew sprawled out on the floor, naked as the day they came into existence, with their pod doors smashed open, I thought that the hyper cylinders must have failed on the journey we were taking. But where we were going or why we were going there was a mystery. It seemed as if I was suffering from some minor amnesia.

  “Darn!” I heard somebody say again. It was a familiar voice. A voice that belonged to my gunner Dale Dykstra. A big brutish man that had more muscles than I had brain cells. And I consider myself a smart person, so all in all, he’s a pretty big dude.

  “What in the stars is going on?” I heard another voice say. That voice belonged to my medic, Raj Habish. He was the resident doctor. He had more brain cells than I had…brain cells. You get the picture. Smart guy. Really smart guy.

  “I don’t know…Where are we?” Second Commander Jess asked as she got herself off the floor and stood with the rest of us. We were all naked, but none of the others seemed to notice or care. Maybe I was the only one that had noticed we were all in the buff. Maybe they were only focusing on my nakedness, but either way, I didn’t like the fact that I was naked. Don’t know if you can tell, but nakedness for me is a big no no. Probably has something to do with my small….

  “What the hell is this, Captain Flynn?” Dale Dykstra asked as he looked around in confusion. I could see that he was just as lost as I was. But being the Captain, I wasn’t about to tell my crew that I had no idea what was going on.

  “How the heck did we get here? Last thing I remember, I was sitting down at my bunk back at Sector Omega, and the next thing I’m here. Something doesn’t make sense,” Second Commander Jess said as she looked me up and down. I returned the favor. She didn’t appreciate it. But hell, if I was going to be embarrassed in front of my crew, then why the hell not spread it around?

  “Look, we all need to relax. Everything is going to be just fine,” I said, momentarily looking around at our surroundings. The hyper sleep room, or dream room as it was affectionately known to my crew, was dark and dingy. It didn’t hold much of anything other than the pods. The room was oval and the sleep chambers were built into the perimeter. They too were oval. Huge cylinders that stood at seven and a half feet tall. The pods were made out of a plastic/glass substance that was easy to smash, yet hard enough to withstand any bumpy flying conditions during hyper sleep. The dream room was more or less empty, except for the pods and the generators that stood next to each of them. The generators would feed us air, food and water during sleep. An IV drip hung inside each of the chambers and must have detached from me and my crew when we broke out of the chambers. But the question still remained, why on Earth had we broken out of stasis and why were we in it in the first place?

  “There must be some sort of explanation,” Dale Dykstra said as he started to pace a little, from left to right. As he did so, his rather large muscles bounced a little. The sound of his flesh bobbing as he paced made me feel a little uncomfortable.

  “We need to put some clothes on,” I said, walking past my startled crew. I could tell that they were in no way enjoying themselves. And that was a bad thing. You see, the Alpha Ship One crew, as we are known, is also known for being a rag-tag group of misfits. And when you have a ship worth a billion dollars, manned by a band of misfits, bad things tend to happen. Luckily for Pilgrim Tech, the company that finances us, they usually pay us well enough that bad things are far from the hearts and minds of the Alpha Ship One crew. That being said, I couldn’t really guarantee a melt-down-free zone on the ship at that very moment in time. Not when my crew of explosive personalities had no idea how they got back on the ship, or where the hell they were or why they were no longer back at base. It was then that I realized that I had my work cut out for me.

  Big time.

  “There must be some reasonable explanation as to why we all find ourselves here,” I said, walking toward the dream room door. I was about to reach for the biometric scanner to open the door when I noticed that the scanner had a red light above it. As the captain, I knew that only meant one thing; We were locked inside. But I wasn’t going to divulge that information to my crew. Not just yet, anyway. But before I could turn around and face them head on, Jess had sidled up beside me, looking over my shoulder at the fingerprint scanner. And judging by her facial expression, I could see that she also knew what the deal was. Being my second-in-command, I would expect her to keep the fact that we were all locked in the dream room to herself, to avoid a panic. But then again, I should have known better.

  “I cannot believe this,” Jess exclaimed as she turned her back to me and faced the rest of our crew, Dale Dykstra and Raj Habish. We usually have more of a crew, but they consist of troops mainly. Well, security. And they don’t tend to sleep in the same dream room as us. The Alpha Ship One had five dream rooms. Dream room one, where we were, was reserved for top ranking crew members. Basically, the four of us. There’s room for four more, but unfortunately, we lost the other four high-ranking crewmates over the years. So only the four of us remain. As for the other dream rooms, they’re reserved for whoever tags along on our missions. We usually hire twenty to thirty expendables as we call them. Men and women who protect us on our missions. And our missions usually consist of three elements.

  Money, minerals and power.

  The three cornerstones of the Alpha Ship One mission statement. People hired us to acquire those things for them. And we hired people to fill in those roles. The only recurring crew members were standing in front of me. And they looked pissed.

  “The damn door is locked,” second-in-command Jess said.

  “It’s just a glitch. I have an override code to unlock the the door,” I said, trying to reassure the others that I knew what I was doing. But I could see that they’d more or less lost faith in me. And as the Captain, that was the end of your career. Faith and trust in a Captain was not only paramount to a ship, but it was paramount to any mission. Not that I actually knew whether or not we were on a mission, seeing that I had no recollection of previous events. The last thing I remembered was being back at Sector Omega, in bed, winding down, like the rest of my crew.

  “How the hell do we end up in hyper sleep without knowing how we got here? It just doesn’t make sense. People don’t just wake up in a dream room, now do they?” Raj, our doctor said, who looked a little green around the gills. It was normal to feel woozy after waking up from stasis, but then again, it was also normal to feel sick when you didn’t have an inkling of a clue as to what the hell was going on.

  “Don’t worry guys, there must be an explanation,” I said as I turned back around and reached out for the fingerprint scanner. I put my index finger on it and waited for the thing to recognize who I was.

  “An explanation? We have no idea where we are, or how we got here! Surely that’s cause enough for alarm?” Dykstra said, I could hear him still pacing in the background. His large frame echoing off the dream rooms walls.

  I ignored the gum
flapping behind me and watched the LED screen under my finger as I waited for it to go green. But it didn’t. Instead, an alarm went of. Two buzzing sounds, followed by ACCESS DENIED from the small speakers next to the fingerprint scanner. I expected it to not recognize me anyway. The little red LED light on the top of the scanner gave that little nugget away. I feared that the ship’s computers were down and there was no way of me being able to either get control of the ship or right whatever course we were on before. At this rate, the ship could collide with a manner of things. Space, after all, isn’t as empty as people think. So I had to resort to plan B. I started pulling on the scanner, which looked a little bit like a computer tablet that was stuck to the wall. As I did so, I zoned into what the three of my crew behind me were saying.

  “It’s not the first time a crew funded by Pilgrim Tech woke up on a ship, not knowing how they got there, only to find out they were drugged, piled onto a ship and sent off on a dangerous mission,” Dale said, the sound of his feet thumping as he paced.

  “That’s horseshit. Why the hell would Pilgrim Tech send a crew out, without their consent, may I add, only for the crew to wake up and be able to regain control of the ship and turn back around?” Jess said. She was closest to me. So close in fact, I could feel her warmth radiating against my naked back.

  “It happens. Covert, black ops stuff. They send them out and once they regain control of the ship, it’s too late. They’re landing on some godforsaken planet, a message popping up on the heads up display of the ship, telling them that they were chosen for the mission and will be paid out of the ass for the completion of it.”

  I could feel Jess’s disapproval. She had the habit of shaking her head a lot when she was angry or unconvinced by something. I could feel a breeze hit my neck, so I imagined that she was in the middle of one of her violent head shakes.