by Greg Remy
“Well that’s obviously natural, let’s move on,” said Zoe, rolling her eyes.
Darious pointed. “Look beyond it.”
As the ship came closer, revealed behind the structure was a vast array of small circular dishes, all flush with the ground, probably 200 or 300 in number, and arranged as a geometric pentagon.
“Oh my!” said Zoe. “A genius indeed.”
She commanded her ship to slow and stop, hovering high above the complex. At their height, the horizon of Iros carved out a perfectly pale semi-circle into speckled space. Everything looked so washed out, so desolate, and yet so pure, as if the sands of this moon were hallowed ground; an aggrandizement of thurible ashes shot into space and coalesced at this final destination.
Zoe flipped on the close-range scanners and adjusted their parameters accordingly. Silence came back. The ship could not recognize the building from the natural lunar surface. Perplexed, Zoe rescanned twice more but, to the ship, it was just a normal patch of soil on the satellite. Nevertheless, there the structure obviously stood.
She turned on the microphones and initiated an open broadcast on all shortwave channels. “This is Zoe of the ISS Caution.” She shrugged at Darious, recognizing the tacky choice of name. “Anyone there? We require assistance… our oxidizing manifold… system... is leaking.” She waited a moment. “Okay, I can see your base. We’re right above it. You called us 13 days ago.”
The other end suddenly picked up. “Don’t...don’t...,” the voice stammered, now much clearer than before, though sounding just as afraid. “Don’t co... come any closer. Le... leave!” There was such fear in his voice; to Zoe it rung of a tone not just terrified of them, but of every particle in the universe.
Darious quietly muttered, “PTSD.” Zoe waved him off with her hand.
“Or what?” she asked into the microphones.
The voice on the other end attempted to articulate something but failed miserably. It began again, “Or… or...” The line hung up.
Zoe knew that was not good. A phrase she had once heard suddenly popped into her mind: Don’t poke the bear. Though she had never seen a bear in real life, she knew plenty about them. This man was no bear on the outside, but on the inside—his precocity—there was the bear and she had just disturbed him in his deep, dark lair. Zoe raised defenses to maximum and strapped herself in.
“Darious, ignite the main thrusters!” A momentary pulsing static resounded from the ship’s speakers and the main console flickered and died. “Crap” she muttered. All the lights went out and the ship plummeted.
Chapter 14
A Bear on the Moon
Straining against the enlarging downward G-force, Zoe swung her fist with all her might toward the left wall of the cockpit, aiming for a mechanical pushbutton. She had just barely managed to tap it, shutting off all systems for a complete reboot. Darious had not been so quick as to belt himself in and had been flung upward into the air, smacking against the ceiling. The downward acceleration of the ship continued. Zoe’s whole body felt as though it should belong on the ceiling where Darious lay sprawled. She yelled, gathering her vitality to hit the red button again. With another punishing stroke, Zoe hit it on the nose. The ship suddenly roared to life. Its automated systems all turned on at once: gravity power, engines, on-board lighting, controls, and defensive and offensive systems. Darious fell from the ceiling and landed hard on the floor. Zoe instantly began engaging multiple commands on the newly lit console. The ship shook wildly as all thrusters fired, working to counter the free-fall.
The ship finally came to a stop. Zoe was panting and could hear Darious groaning behind her. Layers of error messages were popping up all over the console. Zoe paid them no mind and rushed to Darious.
“I am okay,” he said as he slowly sat up and put a hand to his head. “I think my face absorbed most of the fall.” He made a small smile.
Zoe helped him to his feet and went back to her chair. She whooped as she looked out of the cockpit window. The ship had settled just several meters above the ground. Dust, kicked up from their decent, was settling all around them. Looking out, just about 20 meters to the front was the structure, now standing tall and mighty before them. Zoe grit her teeth.
Onscreen showed an alert of an incoming call. She could feel Darious grip her seat. Zoe opened the call with a snarl. The voice on the other end seemed more tremulous than before.
“Th… that craft you… you have. It’s… it’s... fantastic.”
“Thank you,” said Zoe flatly, still slightly panting from exertion.
“You... You’re the first ship I’ve ever seen sur... survive a neutrino C pulse.”
“You’re the first to have disabled my ship so,” replied Zoe. She then lost her cool. “And what the hell! What did we do to you!? And what the hell was that? A ‘neutrino pulse?’ How can neutrinos do that!? Damnit!”
“Ye... yes. I am Doctor E... Earl... Doctor Earl… Docto...”
“Damnit!” she cut him off, “You stuttering idiot! You almost killed us!” Zoe was fuming. Darious placed a gentle hand on her shoulder which cooled her red-hot spirits. His hand was warm and comforting. Zoe sighed. The voice on the other end had gone quiet. “Look Doctor, we are not here to hurt you or anything, just to ask a couple questions.” The stuttering man did not speak. “That array you have and the trick of utilizing a Fubier harmonic. It was—”
“A bub bub bub bub” interrupted the other line. “Sh… shhh!” Th... they are always listening. Always... always.”
“This is a short-wave transmission Doctor. Who is—?” Zoe began to ask.
“A bub bub bub,” he interrupted again and abruptly ended the call.
Zoe threw her hands up. “What the hell is this guy’s problem?”
Darious gave a similarly perplexed look. “Do you think he will call back?”
“He would be so lucky if we answered.”
Zoe initiated a ship-wide diagnostic to see what had been damaged from the fall while elevating the ship to get a better physical view of the complex.
‘Call incoming’ displayed across the main screen. Zoe picked up the line.
“Hello,” she said robotically.
The doctor began to speak, “Th—”
“I’m sorry; you have reached the answering machine of Zoe and Darious. Please leave a message after the beep.” She paused and yelled “BEEP!” into the closest microphone and ended the communication. She continued tinkering with the ship’s systems. After a minute the screen notified: ‘Tele-call incoming.’ “Ah,” Zoe perked up. “That’s more like it.”
She opened the call. Her main screen projected a gaunt man standing and facing them with a laboratory in disarray behind him. “Why can’t scientists ever keep a clean workspace?” Zoe muttered. As she eyed him, she noted he was indeed very skinny, to the point of malnourishment. He had an unkempt beard and drooping facial muscles. His plain clothes looked as if they had not been washed in years. It was as if his entire being was the product of a lifetime of tribulations. In her intense scrutiny, she suddenly realized he looked to be no more than 40, or perhaps 45 years old. He lifted a shaking hand toward the screen and slowly waved.
“He... hello.”
“Hello there.” Zoe made a small obligatory smile. “I am Zoe, and this is Darious.” He looked them over. Zoe could tell he was eyeing Darious in particular.
“You... you’re an interesting looking fell... fellow.”
Darious’ eyes wavered and fell to the floor.
“Doctor,” Zoe said, regaining his attention, “we have traveled quite a ways to talk with you.”
“Who... who are you?” he suddenly asked.
“Err, excuse me?” She then articulated, “I am Zoe. And this is Darious.”
“Yes... bu... but are you... you? Who... who sent you?” He began to jitter, and his composure turned sour. “I... I warn you I... I... have killed before!”
“Wow. Wow. Doctor, no one has sent us. We come of our own f
ree will.” Zoe and Darious exchanged quick worried glances.
Dr. Earl made a quick incoherent sound and shut down the call. Zoe wasted no time and put the ship in full reverse, establishing a good distance between them and the doctor.
“Okay, maybe a little PTSD,” said Zoe.
The pair peered out of the cockpit window toward the structure, expecting the worst. Then, they observed the top bay door of the hangar open. It retracted into the building, exposing a dimly-lit interior of grey walls. Zoe and Darious braced themselves.
A blue glow appeared and sparked several times, multiplied by reflections on the interior walls and then, with a speed so fast it was hard for her eyes to follow, a ship no larger than her own, burst out and off, straight up and away from them.
“Damnit!” Zoe shouted and pulled open all thruster menus, setting all to maximum. Darious smartly strapped himself into his seat. Her craft rocketed upward, following the rogue ship. Zoe winced as the stabilizers fought hard to even out the force of their ascent. She spiraled the ship upwards through the thin atmosphere, weaning off drag. “Darious, track that ship!”
“Aye captain!” he yelled back through the chaotic reverberations and thundering engines.
Chapter 15
Cheers, My Friend!
As soon as Zoe’s ship broke free from the bounds of Ios, she set the engines to overdrive. “Hold on to your butts,” she said and pressed ‘Enter.’
Zoe and Darious were both instantly halfway devoured by their seats while their muscles, both physical and mental, endeavored to perdure working. The Doctor’s ship continued its unrelenting acceleration ahead of them. Now long behind, the moon of Ios became an afterthought as both ships rocketed into the night of space.
“200 kilometers distance!” yelled Darious. Zoe snarled; the chase was on. The great thrusters of her ship were working harder than they had in a long time and she could feel it. Everything in the cockpit was rattling, even her digital display. “Heading: 501C by 14.02. He is headed clear of the system. Current linear destination: let me see...” Darious’ fingers fumbled as his hands shook over his console. “Port Silenus in 3.1 floating-parsecs.”
Darious had been sending a continuous stream of tracking dialog to Zoe’s main screen, which she input into the steering system. Dr. Earl’s ship seemed to have that same non-existence thing as his lunar lodging and Darious was only able to track it thermally from the thruster’s exhaust, but even those readings were sporadic.
Finally, her ship’s stabilizers overcame the initial leap forward and the pursuers eased in their seats as all was calm again. Zoe’s scrunched face did not allay. Try as she might, she could not close the gap between the two ships. In fact, she could see the Doctor’s ship becoming smaller.
“Distance increasing,” Darious stated as if reading her mind. “250 kilometers and growing.”
“Noted,” Zoe responded through grit teeth.
She was manually tweaking the engines to pinch their acceleration curve without overheating any drive components. Her ship’s bow gravity fields were working hard, having to shoulder every cosmic pebble, each with the potential impact energy of a world-ending asteroid. They soon crossed through the heliosphere of the solar system and entered into ethereal space. The two ships were reaching inimical speeds; a lesser ship would have been excoriated at the seams. Like a banana, thought Zoe. She was starting to have trouble compensating the many strains on her ship.
“It might get a little bumpy!” she shouted over her shoulder.
The Doctor’s ship was now just a bright blue dot, its main features obscured by distance. Zoe could feel him slipping away, despite the prodigious speed of her own ship. She quickly set up a zoomed-in view in the lower corner of her screen to visually track his ship and pushed hers further into overdrive. A low gurgling started from the bowels of the craft. Vibrations from its center resonated outward and rattled the entire ship. Zoe did not yield.
Suddenly, Dr. Earl’s ship made a sharp turn, veering to its left. Zoe altered her own trajectory with a stiff drift, outdoing her ship’s stabilizers from the immense force, flattening herself and Darious to the sides of their seats. She whipped the stern-side out, directly lining them up with the Doctor’s new course and sending piqued shrills and alerts throughout her main console. Their speed was insane; the two ships were passing entire star systems in mere seconds.
“New course heading plotted!” yelled Darious. “Heading 739 by... oh!” Zoe’s eyes darted out. Far out in front of them, though quickly enlarging, she could see an oncoming globular region.
“I see it!” Zoe yelled back.
She recognized it as a nebula by the bright hues of its gasses, but was not sure of the dark specs all over it—thousands of menacing dark specs. Darious shot over a summary to her display. Indeed, as she had surmised, stretching for nearly a parsec, this region of space was a primordial soup of newborn stars, densely packed with planetoids and marked as an absolute ‘No Fly Zone.’
The nebula soon filled her ship’s view with its immensity, stretching from edge to edge, as far as the sensors could reach. Looking into it, Zoe could not see through to the other side. Those oncoming dots were rock debris, most sized between Earth-1 and Jupiter, scattered like a galactic minefield. Zoe saw the Doctor’s ship pass into the nebula and its bright peripheral rockets flickering as it began smartly maneuvering through the colossal obstacle course. Zoe’s mind was racing. They were traveling too fast; those planetoids were too big and too plentiful, but there was no time to go around or they would definitely lose him. No, she had to keep him within her sights. Zoe tightened her harness and called for Darious to do the same. Determination trickled through her fingertips as they jittered upon the console, initializing many predefined routines as her ship entered into the naissance grounds.
“Darious, prep bow thrusters! Fire 75 percent at my mark, every mark!”
From their first oncoming obstacle, Zoe maneuvered the ship upwards, bringing them low in their seats and curving alongside a planetoid until they had regained the Doctor’s trail. Warnings glared in bright red all over Zoe’s many screens. They jetted by the next rocky mass. The ship’s monitoring system was nearly overloaded with incoming object warnings. While maneuvering the ship with one hand, she flipped several switches with the other, disengaging all safety protocols and resumed two-handed control just in time to avoid two more calamitous asteroids. She dipped the ship low and arced around the next giant rock. There! Zoe spotted the Doctor’s ship, likewise weaving through the masses before disappearing once more behind herds of free-floating mountains. How was he—Zoe thought, as she wound up an oblong rock half the size of Earth-1 and gasped as an equally sized planetoid revealed itself just beyond it.
“Mark!” she yelled.
The ship rattled severely as it fired from both back and front. Zoe used this quick confused moment of inertial forces to make a dire course change and swung left of the oncoming mass. The perilous maneuver effectuated just a momentary lapse in speed and saved Zoe from sacrificing the finely tuned settings of the thrusters. She boosted again as the ship swerved back on course, sighting the Doctor once more.
Another dozen space rocks cannonballed by as Zoe’s ship pitched and rolled with all the agility its nimble-fingered aviatrix could command. Zoe and Darious were impelled in all directions and had to use their legs and elbows to stay in place whilst operated their consoles.
“Mark!” yelled Zoe and executed another harrowing maneuver, narrowly avoiding vaporization by way of ship—near-warp speed—versus planet. “Mark!” she yelled again, using the gained microsecond to roll the ship on its side and threading the fine gap between two enormous proto-planets. Darious gasped a string of vowels. Zoe rolled the ship back around, nearly grazing its belly upon the flat back of another rocky mass. Meanwhile ahead, Dr. Earl’s ship was cleanly avoiding all obstacles and continuing to distance itself from them.
The two ships were now completely engulfed in the gulf of yellows
and oranges. Classic space had all but disappeared, replaced by a dreamlike evening glow of a nightmarish cemetery; a birthing boneyard where each planetoid was an available grave with a complimentary tombstone to carve their fate upon.
“Craaap!” Zoe yelled as she reared up the ship to its physical limits, marginally clearing a dense string of asteroids.
She sent the ship into a mad spin, spiraling around the space rocks and then evening out into a transitory clearing, free of hazard. Zoe took the opportunity to draw in a much-needed breath. The entire universe seemed to slow in that moment and all of time exhaled with her. She looked out for the Doctor’s ship and spotted it just below her horizon, continuing to make mincemeat of the nebula. Zoe cracked her knuckles.
In the next moment, chaos resumed. Zoe piloted her tiny craft dynamically, only just being able to avoid rock after rock. “Mark!” The ship bounded downward and twisted through a maze of smaller asteroids, each whizzing by just shy of them. “I really do not like this guy!” she yelled and then gulped as they narrowly missed a mass shaped like one of her food packets.
“Nebula boundary in less than .01 floating-parsecs!” shouted Darious.
“We can make it!”
Zoe lifted the ship over a considerable planetoid and then weaved through the next group. The haze in front of them was clearing. She saw the Doctor’s ship burst though the nebula and rocket onward, free of the proto-planetary hindrances. In a moment, Zoe and Darious too surged through in a blaze of glory, spewing forth from the globular structure like a comet with a trail of shimmering dust.
Dr. Earl was now ranged at a quarter parsec and even on Zoe’s zoomed screen he was little more than a bright speck.
