“Ship safety isn’t our number one concern here, people. I don’t see how a naked flame or torch is more dangerous than that freakish alien creature outside. I don’t know if you are aware of this Captain, but sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. And let’s not forget, you were the one who decided to open fire on the creature, making it angry. But also, I don’t think bullet holes are healthy for a ship either. So let’s not be pedantic here. I’m trying to save our skin, while you’re trying to hold me back. As I said before, any attempt at stopping me from doing what needs to be done here will result in your ass being firmly kicked,” William said, continuing to wade through the materials. He heard a snicker from some of the crewmembers who were watching him. They seemed to be amused by the back and forth between him and the apparent ship’s Captain.
“Do what you want, I won’t stand in your way. But let me tell you this; once you go through that door, you won’t be allowed back in. So make sure you’ve got everything you need. I wouldn’t want you to fall short out there, and look like a fool, dying in the dark corridor, screaming for help whilst we listen from the inside, safe in this room.”
Commander Williams began to laugh. He stopped searching for the materials, and turned his head toward the Captain, whose expression changed from a grin to a worried look. It was obvious to Williams that the Captain was intimidated by him. And he had every reason to be. Williams was much bigger and he was much smarter. But, Williams hadn’t forgotten that if it wasn’t for this particular man, even if he was a belligerent asshole, he wouldn’t be alive right now. So he owed him. And he wanted to make sure that the Captain was aware of his gratitude.
“Look, I’m grateful for what you did. You didn’t need to rescue me, so I thank you for that. I’m afraid that is where my gratitude ends. I don't owe you anything. But, seeing that you helped me, the least I could do is help you. So I won’t ask you again, please, come with me. Don’t let you and your people die on this ship. Earth isn’t coming back for us. Trust me. I’d put my house on it. We’re doomed if we stay in here. I don’t want to die on a derelict and abandoned ship floating in space, millions of light-years from civilisation. I want to see my family again. I want to kiss my kids again and hug my wife. I don’t want to die here. And I don’t want either of you to die in here, alone, while I fight my way off this ship. Believe me, I’ll do this alone. But no one deserves to be alone… or die alone. So please, come with me.”
Williams locked eyes with the Captain. He could see that he’d managed to get through to him. Even if just a little bit. A slight glint was present in the man’s eyes. A sheen of moisture over his iris’s. But, the man’s face was no different than before. It was still stern and unmoving. Unsure and untrusting. And whilst his crewmates looked at him for his response, Williams knew deep down that the answer would be no. So he turned back around and continued to look for what he needed. He wasn’t going to waste valuable time on an already lost cause. Williams wasn’t stupid. He knew when to save his breath, and considering what he had planned, he was going to need as much of it as possible.
The man didn’t say much else. He remained silent and watched as Williams made two piles on the floor. By now, Williams had gathered enough flammable material. He then began to fashion torches out of those materials. Obviously not all of them looked alike, seeing that they were made out of different things. Some of them were made using pipes and clothing wrapped around them. Others were made from electrical equipment, but they were all working torches. All they needed was a flame. And Williams knew how to get that flame. It was simple really. He was never one for following the rules. And even though he was informed of certain protocols when it came to avoiding fires in space, he’d never paid much attention to them.
And unbeknownst to the people on Earth, the people that paid his wages, he always carried a zippo lighter. It was a relic from the past, but something that he always thought would come in handy one day. After all, Mankind was built on the ability to light a fire. Without fire, man becomes cold. And Williams never saw himself as a cold man. He reached into his pocket, and pulled out the lighter. A gasp fell across the room as the men and women watching realised what he had in his hands. He may have just as well pulled out a radioactive bomb of some sorts, because they all seemed to scarper into the far corners of the room, hiding from the tool in is hand.
“It’s just a lighter, and it’s our way out of here. I’m telling you, that thing out there is allergic to light. Shine a lit torch on its face, and it won’t go anywhere near us. My ship is docked in the yard, it’s only down the hallway through the atrium. We manage to get there and we get out of here. Simple as that. And then we use the Jump Gate to get back to Earth.”
The Captain looked at Williams and nodded his head.
“Okay, fine, have it your way. But let it be known that if a single drop of my men’s blood is spilt, it will be on your hands and not mine.”
Williams smiled, flipped the lid off his zippo and lit the first torch. A silent hush fell over the room. He turned toward the others and held the torch up into the air. Ash and flame particles gently glided off the torch, falling to the floor. By the time they reached the floor, they were extinguished. Some of the others were transfixed by the light coming from the torch. While others were still listening out for the sound of the approaching blackness that was patrolling the outside corridors.
Every now and then they could hear the slight murmur of its growl as it floated past the room. They had grown accustomed to that murmur. It was how they identified whether the creature was outside or not. They had been in that room for a very long time. A couple of days at least. And within those two days, all they had done was listen to the blackness outside. Listened to how it crawled and floated past the doors. Listened to how it scraped against the metal. It was as if the creature was trying to coax them out of their hole and pounce on them for trying to be brave.
But neither of them had attempted to be brave. All of them had decided to seek refuge in the room, their only source of company was a stack of bottled water. The bottled water would keep them alive for a while. That’s if they didn’t become insane. Because that’s what it was like, staying in that room, and waiting to die. It was insanity. The only reason that their Captain had left the room in the first place, was because he had heard the screams of others. At first he thought that one of his men had been left behind. But then he realised that maybe it was a rescue team. He had to act. That is why he saved Commander Williams. And that is why he was about to trust him to save his very own people.
“I don’t know if I’m going to have enough torches for everybody. But, I’ll try my best. Once all the torches are lit, we will get into a single file. And once we’re in a single file, we will leave the room and make our way back toward my ship. I came with a number of men, men that I am leaving behind. Not because I’m afraid of fighting the creature outside, but because I know that they are surely dead.
“When we get back to Earth, I’ll make sure that a team is sent down here to deal with this thing on the ship. And hopefully then I will be able to recover their bodies. Every Marine deserves a burial. And that is what I am going to give my men. I don’t ask a lot of you, but I do ask this; if any of you are familiar with communications on board a shuttle, I would greatly appreciate it if you could help me fix the comms unit on board my ship. It is because of that comms unit being down that we decided to board the Orion Traveller in the first place. We weren’t actually sent here to rescue you. We were sent here to rescue the pod ship that came from your ship and crash-landed on the planet below.”
The Captain frowned. He seemed confused. He walked toward Commander Williams and shrugged his shoulders.
“What pod ship? What are you on about?” He asked, his face lost within a thousand thoughts.
“The ship you guys sent down to the planet below. Remember? We received a last hail transmission from the ship as it entered the planet’s atmosphere. They said that they were sent by the O
rion Traveller to do a biological scan over the planet, but got distracted by the apparent presence of lifeforms below. Before they could pull the ship back up, they fell into the atmosphere. They breached it and apparently crash-landed onto the planet’s surface. We don’t know much else besides from that. But I assumed that you at least would know something.”
The Captain shook his head.
“No, I don’t know what you’re on about. We didn’t sanction any ships to scan the planet below. We were on a delivery mission. That thing out there is the result of that delivery mission. It’s a resource. A resource that Earth has been using to make technological leaps and bounds. But the resource is unsteady and volatile. We didn’t know it, but after a certain amount of time, the resource binds together and forms a cohesive bond. That bond then takes shape. And after a few hours, the creature is born. I have no idea how the people back on Earth plan on keeping this particular resource stabilised. But our job was to bring the resource back home. We didn’t know anything about the planet. It just so happens that our ship stopped working once we reached this particular point in the Andromeda Galaxy.
“It’s just plain luck that we happen to be above this planet that you are so interested in. But I can assure you Commander Williams that we have no stake in that planet. We did not send any men or women onto that planet. Each one of my men and women are accounted for. And the ship isn’t fitted with rescue pods. So I’m afraid I can’t help you. As far as I’m concerned, that planet has nothing to do with us.”
Williams stood there dumbfounded. If the pod ship didn’t emanate from the Orion Traveller, then where did it come from? Williams struggled to come to terms with the new revelations that were being dumped on him. There was no way that he could communicate with Earth, or the people in the crashed ship on the planet below. So there was actually nothing he could do. All he could do was get off the Orion Traveller and get back home. Once he was home, then he could begin to ask questions. But questions weren’t what he needed right then. He needed answers. Answers to a simple question.
How in the hell was he going to get these people off this ship? And more importantly, how was he going to get all these people on board the escape craft? The craft was only so big. It was a tight squeeze as it was with just five men. But this many people was going to be a struggle. A struggle that the Commander knew would cost lives. But it was the only way that any of them were going to get off this ship at all.
Chapter Three
Hutchison arrived at the dockyard. He was in awe of the sights and sounds around him. Hundreds of ships lay hovering in their docs, some of them being worked on by workers, others being boarded by passengers for long-haul flights. Virgin Galactic had a few routes through the dock. Hutchison remembered flying with them when he was a little boy. From this very dock he took off on his first ever family vacation. They went to see the springs on Venus. Back then, Venus was a big vacation planet. Virgin Galactic did a few package holidays to the wondrous planet. This was obviously before the big financial crash. The crash that affected nearly every single being on planet Earth. From the livestock, to the wildlife, to the humans. Every creature big and small was affected by the sudden lack of cash.
Farmers went out of business. Cattle died of hunger. Children went barefoot to school. Parents worked three to four jobs to put food on the table. And things continued like that for a few years. And then out of the blue, it was all over. Hutchison remembers thinking how odd it was that life could change so dramatically within the blink of a few years. One minute; Earth had been prosperous. Next it had been blanketed by a financial crisis that affected every single person on the big blue planet that they called home.
And then it all went back to normal again. Things were different this time. It was the complete opposite of the financial crisis. It was prosperity on a level that Hutchison had never seen before. Suddenly, there was money. There were jobs. The minimum wage had gone up tenfold. Factories were hiring at an astounding rate. Ships needed more Captains and deckhands. Fleets needed more vehicles to be made. It was a prosperous time, a time that has gone on until now.
People wondered what had changed. Professional analysts were trying to point the finger of blame on the banks. The banks after all were usually the culprits of much of the world’s poverty. But the thing the analysts found harder to believe was the fact that there seemed to be no more poverty. It had vanished into thin air, much like the steam coming out of one of the many new factories being built on the free land that remained.
Steam held the secret to the world’s prosperity. The thing is, Hutchison nor the rest of the world were quite aware of the reasoning behind Earth’s newfound riches. Nobody knew about the resource. The so-called blackness. And for the past fifteen years, the world turned a blind eye to their new found luck. Luck that had made many millionaires. Luck that had made all the other people on Earth wealthy enough to afford anything they could ever need or want.
People were paid well now. It was like a switch had gone off. A switch that reset everything that society since the dawn of man had gotten wrong. Now there was no wrong. Crime was at its lowest. People were happy. But Hutchison couldn’t help thinking that there was more to it. More to it than the eye could see. But he went on with his life as normal. He didn’t question anything anymore. But that was until he became a selected member of The Company. And then everything became clear. He came to know about the resource. He came to know of the government’s willingness to make sure that every person on Earth was well off. That every person had food on their tables. A roof over their head. Clothes on their back.
Yes – that was what he was told, and that was what he was led to believe. And for a very long time, Hutchison believed every single word of it. Every syllable, every letter, and the spaces in between them. He believed in The Company. He believed in what they stood for. And he watched as the world became more powerful. Became that much more perfect. But then he dug a little deeper. He did some research. He started to scrutinize. To analyse. Because in Hutchison’s mind, there just couldn’t be this much wealth without there being some sort of downfall. The old adage says it all really when it comes to his stance on the progress that Earth had made.
If it sounds too good to be true, then it usually is.
And there was no mistaking that this all sounded too good to be true. There had to be some sort of collateral damage. You couldn’t go through life without causing any. It was just how the world worked. And it will always work like that. And sure enough, Hutchison was right. The Company hadn’t been forthright on the lengths that they had gone to in covering up the resource. A resource that apparently they saw as their own and their own only. Anybody that caught wind of their secret was quickly eliminated. Terminated. Silenced.
And it was this revelation that made Hutchison become distant from The Company and their cause. It was not what he signed up for. He didn’t see the point in murdering people just because they had become privy to The Company’s secret. It went against everything that The Company said they stood for. They couldn’t say that they stand for the people and the prosperity of Earth if they were going about destroying selective groups of their own. The Company was either good or it was either bad. It couldn’t be both. And Hutchison decided that it was the latter. Bad to the bone. Always would be. So, it was around that time that he made contact with an underground group.
And it was because of that underground group that he found himself in the dockyard, admiring the plentiful machinery around him. Some of it stationary - some of it airborne. It was truly a sight to behold. A sight that was secretly drenched and dripping with the blood spilt by The Company in the name of keeping the blackness at bay. But not anymore.
No more people would die on his watch. So he would make his way to the Andromeda Galaxy. He would save the people on Second Earth and the people on the Orion Traveller. Bring them back home. And he would destroy the ship carrying the deadly poison that was the blackness.
“You look a
little lost there pal, need any help?” Somebody asked, it was one of the workers, and Hutchison couldn’t blame him really, it was probably quite unnerving to see a man just standing silently, watching ships dock and disembark.
It was probably especially unnerving considering the fact that Hutchison probably had a scowl on his face. A scowl that was only growing deeper and darker as he thought more about The Company. So he decided to smile at the worker. It was best to put him at ease. People were sensitive these days. It was uncommon to spot a man that was unhappy walking the streets. What was there to be unhappy about? People had money. They had health. They had everything they could ever want. So he would play the part, at least until he boarded the ship.
“No, thank you. I’m just looking for my ship. I got assigned to it today. Names Hutchison,” he said, extending his hand toward the worker.
The worker shook Hutchison’s hand and smiled back at him. He had warm eyes. The sort of eyes that belonged to a man that was more than happy with his lot in life. Looking at is left hand he could see that the man was married. And judging by the discolouration around the ring, he’d been married for a long time.
“Oh, Mr Hutchison, I’ve been waiting for you! Your ship is just this way; your men are already on board. Here’s the itinerary and your documents. The flight plan is on page three. Hope you have a safe journey,” the man said, ushering Hutchison to follow him.
After a two-minute walk, both men finally reached the ship. She was a beauty. She stood tall and firm from bow to stern. The ship was maroon red, with lines of green and blue around its hull. She was a little bit of an eyesore, a bit garish, but she would do. On such short notice, his underground contacts had still managed to get him a military sized ship with weaponized capabilities. He couldn’t fault them.
Second Earth: The Complete First Novel (Second Earth Chronicles Book 1) Page 14
