Absolute Zero

by Phillip Tomasso

“The captain is most certainly relying on her global positions system. She’s most likely snow-blind. She’s drifting off course. Not much. But if she lands, they’ll never be able to walk even one hundred yards in the declining temperatures. The winds appear relentless. I’m afraid even in their suits they’d freeze to death before ever reaching the colony.”

  Windsor tried ignoring his rapid heartbeat. He stood up, and leaned on the rail between the tiers of the bridge. His white-knuckle grip did not go unnoticed by the crew. “Establish a link with the shuttle. I need to get a hold of the commander. I want to know what’s going on.”

  “Aye. Will do, sir.”

  Chapter Six

  Space Station Nebula

  Between Mars and Jupiter

  Crispin Gunther sat behind his desk. His office was sandwiched between floors of the Euphoric Enterprises corporate building. His position did not even allow him a window. Or a sofa. He had a desk, three chairs, which included his own, and the computer. Not much larger than a prison cell, Gunther did his best to make the office homey. Spending ten to twelve hours a day here, adding small comforts felt essential. Not least of which was his personal coffee pot. He drank coffee like water. For years, he took it with heavy cream, mounds of sugar. Once when out, and with no opportunity to immediately replenish supplies, he forced down cup after cup black. The acquired taste was developed, enhanced, and now he could not imagine drinking it any other way. Unless adding a shot or two of whiskey was an option. He could most certainly imagine drinking it that way. Whiskey clearly … enhanced the natural bean flavor. Everyone knew that.

  Employed with Euphoric most of his adult life, Gunther rose through the ranks. His initial position as an administrative assistant in Human Resources came at a perfect time. Fresh out of university, he dedicated himself to the job, menial as it proved to be. Showed up early, stayed late. He made coffee and copies. He coordinated travel plans, booking rooms and flights, and was eventually relocated from Earth to Nebula where his hard work paid off. At the time he was promoted to a Human Resources Representative, Euphoric Enterprises had begun phasing out the admin roles. The positions were filled by robots. Clanky, loud, and unreliable robots.

  Euphoric was determined to make the project work. Everyone knew they’d never admit failure, and eventually, as was mostly suspected, newer generations of the robots were released, improved, and made more dependable.

  Now, as a liaison manager, Gunther’s right-hand man was a robot, and he couldn’t imagine getting done the things that needed doing without him. “Egor?”

  Egor, a Euphoric Generation-12 Operations Robot, walked into the room. He was dressed in a solid blue suit. White shirt. Thin blue tie. There was a constant whirring sound—the fans keeping his computer systems cool were on the sides of his neck. “You called, Mr. Gunther?”

  “I want you to monitor any communications between the Eclipse and their shuttle.” He absently tapped a finger on his desk, knowing he’d need ducks in a row on this one. Getting the work done wouldn’t be the issue. It was the undesired media coverage he loathed. “All communications are then to be scrambled and password protected. For my ears only. Are we clear?”

  “Crystal.”

  “Can you monitor all mike-to-mike conversations. Start a log. Again, confidential. No one has access other than myself. Are we clear?”

  “Crystal.” Egor tilted his head to one side. “What is it we’re looking for, or hoping to hear?”

  Gunther pulled his chair away from the desk and sat down. “Key words will be anything that mentions or has to do with diamonds. But I don’t want it limited to that. Just highlight those portions of conversations. I want everything, every word spoken.

  “Won’t every transmission be automatically recorded by the ships themselves?”

  “I do not wish to wait until the Eclipse returns for the data, Egor. I want you recording a live feed, giving me, let’s say, hourly updates.” Gunther wasn’t at all comfortable with the new directive. It was far too easy working in an office, sitting behind a desk, to remove oneself from a situation. Thing was, he had a good job, worked hard to get where he was. If he didn’t do as directed, management could bump him down a peg or two. They could label him as insubordinate and fire him, even. He most certainly didn’t want that. What would he do then? Where would he go, back to Earth?

  The thought made him shudder. Earth was so desolate, so dirty.

  Gunther processed it all in his mind. He tried seeing both sides of the coin. Euphoric had a vested interest and wanted said investment protected. He understood that, and couldn’t fault the company there. It made sense. What they failed to grasp was the simple fact their change in priority affected lives and, in all likelihood, posed a direct threat to those the Eclipse was being sent to check on.

  No one knew for sure the status of the colonists. Those living on the planet the last several years might very well be alive and okay. That was what Gunther hoped, what he imagined everyone was hoping for. Or, perhaps, there was some kind of an emergency which could be easily rectified thanks to the resourcefulness of Eclipse’s crew. The problem became apparent when Euphoric didn’t plan on waiting for an assessment or report from Eclipse on how the colony was fairing, but instead went all greedy.

  Recover the diamonds.

  Return with the diamonds.

  Nothing in the new primary addendum mentioned the people of the colony; there was nothing about making contact or rescuing or retrieving the people. This made Gunther uneasy and led him to speculate.

  Did Euphoric know more than they were sharing?

  Did management know what had taken place on Neptune six months ago? Had they reassembled a transmission learning more about the situation? Were those living in the colony dead? Had something gone terribly wrong?

  Gunther could only surmise something had gone terribly wrong.

  Why else would they adjust the primary mission to focusing just on the retrieval of diamonds without any mention of saving lives?

  “Egor? I would love some coffee, please. I have a feeling we’re not going home tonight,” he said, taking a seat behind his desk. Resting his elbows on the desktop, he closed his eyes and let his thumbs massage his temples.

  Egor tipped his head slightly to the left. “I stay here twenty-four-seven. It is always a long night for me, sir.”

  Chapter Seven

  Eclipse Shuttle

  Neptune Atmosphere

  As the shuttle breached the planet’s atmosphere, Commander Anara Meyers lurched forward. Restrained, the belt across her shoulders cut into her neck and across her gut. When her head snapped forward, her chin slammed into her chest. The commander bit down hard on nothing but teeth, quite thankful her tongue was not caught in between the mashing collision. The muscles in her neck went taut, and as the shuttle stuttered, she banged the back of her head on the rest behind her. With a white-knuckle grip on the jump seat arms, and said, “Captain?”

  “We’ve dropped ourselves into a storm.” Captain Danielle Rivers held the control wheel in both hands. The yoke shook and rattled. Meyers watched the captain fight for control.

  “I can see that.” Meyers’ eyes were opened wide. Zero visibility confronted the tiny shuttle. The wind whipped. What looked like snow swirled all around them. The ship was tossed, turned, teetered, and tottered. Meyers couldn’t tell if they were right side up or upside down.

  “Losing altitude fast. We’re caught in a down shaft. Wind shear is near impossible to navigate.” Lt. Bell’s fingers tapped the control displays in front of where he sat beside the captain.

  Outside, it was whiteout conditions. They were in clouds. Something like hail pelted the shuttle. It reminded Meyers of an Earth-storm in early spring when cold and warm fronts crashed together. First thought coming to mind was of twisters in the mid-west of the old Americas. She cringed, realizing there probably weren’t many warm fronts passing along Neptune. They were inside a beast of a blizzard.

  The shuttle dropped.
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  The commander’s stomach dropped with it. She worried about their escort. The smaller starfighters would fair far worse in these conditions. “Was this storm on radar?”

  Lt. Bell shook his head. “No, Commander. It caught came out of nowhere.”

  That wasn’t good enough. Success depended on preparedness. A mission onto another planet’s surface would always present unexpected dangers. Weather should have been the one constant they could at least predict. And now they didn’t even have that.

  “Thrusters are jamming,” the captain claimed. She worked the throttle left and right. Her feet stepped on the rudder controls, to no avail. The shuttle barely responded. Instead, it tipped. With the nose up, wings listed to the left, and then overcorrected and tilted right. “We are going into a freefall.”

  Meyers felt helpless. She wished she were seated at the controls. Her faith was in her team, but she trusted herself more than anyone else. She trusted her training and reaction more than anyone else’s ability to respond equally. And yet, there was little she could do strapped into the jump seat behind the captain and co-pilot except trust.

  “Commander to the Eclipse,” Meyers spoke into the comlink on her wrist.

  The shuttle vibrated, and shuddered. She knew her voice was contorted with quakes and quivers. She only hoped the sound of fear wasn’t as apparent in her tone of voice as it was inside her chest. Her heart pounded. It was never becoming for a commander to display fear. The great leaders, although she knew they felt afraid more often than admitted, knew how to keep the reactions hidden from their crew. Reigning in her emotions, she tried contacting the ship mustering up a sense of counterfeit courage and authority. “This is Commander Meyers. Eclipse, come in. Over.”

  It was an order. She demanded Officer Windsor answer her.

  Only he didn’t.

  “The storm is blocking the signal. Any attempt at communicating with the Eclipse is jammed at the moment, Commander,” Lt. Bell said.

  The shuttle tipped forward.

  They went into the promised freefall, and spun out of control. Meyers yelled, “Captain Rivers!”

  “We’re in complete failure. Every system is offline. I have no way to steer or control the ship, Commander. Brace yourself. We’re going to crash.”

  Captain Rivers spoke in a matter-of-fact way that Meyers found unnerving. A chill raced along her spine. There was more to worry about than just the three of them packed into the shuttle cockpit. “Lieutenant Bell, hail the Beta Squad Leader.”

  Bell turned toward her, hands off the control panels, as if there were no longer a need for him to perform his job. “I don’t think you understand, Commander. We have no power at all. Must be a magnetic storm. It’s as if every system is as good as fried.”

  Just then, Captain Rivers pointed toward the front shield. “We’re out of the clouds!”

  They still fell fast.

  It was not necessarily good news. From clouds to the surface, cracks of brilliant white lightning shot forward. The sky split in all directions as bolts of lightning connected with the ice below.

  “We may have been hit by a bolt or two while inside the clouds,” Bell said, as way of an explanation on why the systems may have failed. “At this point, I really can’t be certain.”

  At this point, Meyers thought, the matter was moot. Knowing why everything was broken was not going to help them when it came to making a safe landing.

  “Captain Rivers,” Meyers said. “Will you be able to set down the shuttle?”

  It was the only thing that mattered at the moment. Landing. Crashing was not an option. The commander did not even want to think about what would come next, or after that, or how they would find their way to the colony—surely they were miles off course. Right now she needed to focus on one issue at a time. All that mattered was landing, and safely if at all possible.

  “The rudder and flaps are manual,” Rivers said. “Now that I can at least see where we are, maybe I can steer the shuttle somewhat. This is not going to be easy. It’s going to be a hard landing, at the very best, Commander.”

  The planet surface rushed toward them.

  Meyers could barely distinguish the sky from the ground.

  Most everything was blue, white, and blinding.

  The raindrops, or hail, were fist size. The sound of them smashing into the shuttle left no doubt the hull was, at the very least, getting dented from impact. “Those are diamonds falling, aren’t they?” Meyers said, talking to herself. The commander realized she had asked the question out loud. No one answered, though. It had not really been a question. It was not rain or hail. Diamonds.

  She had, overall, been skeptical of the claim. It did not matter a colony had been out on the planet for years mining for the precious gems. With minimal time on Earth over the last two decades, she just was not used to weather in general. Not with climate control on the Nebula Way Station. So the idea of …

  Diamonds did rain from the clouds on Neptune.

  Just below them a geyser gushed. The unknown blue spray rocketed toward them. With only limited navigation abilities, the most the commander could hope for was that they would miss contact. The captain threw her weight to the right, taking the yoke with her, sidestepping past the gushing geyser. The motion made Meyers’ breath catch in her lungs as her stomach lurched with the change of force and then a sudden sense of weightlessness ensued during the tail end of their fall.

  “I can’t see one fighter,” Lt. Bell said. “I can’t see a single one of them!”

  Chapter Eight

  Eclipse Bridge

  First Officer Mark Windsor, acting commander while Meyers was on board the shuttle, sat in the commander’s chair in the center of the bridge and watched the Eclipse crew profusely work at re-establishing communications with the shuttle and the starfighter escort. He leaned forward in the seat, an elbow on the arm of the chair while he talked with Officer Nathaniel Gaines. “Keep attempting to contact the shuttle,” he said, needlessly, “and Captain Rivers.”

  They had lost all digital and visual contact with the shuttle and starfighters, as well. Last images they saw on the porthole display depicted an out-of-the-blue storm. There were lightning flashes and then static before the connections were completely severed.

  “Aye,” Gaines said. “Continued attempts are proving futile at the moment, sir.”

  “Don’t stop trying.” Windsor felt panicked. The mission involved investigating the safety of the colonists. Initially, anyway. If the shuttle crashed, everything changed. No longer would they focus all they had on investigating the colony’s distress call. Instead, it would become a full-blown rescue mission. Trouble was, Beta Squad was unreachable, as well. Nearly half the crew would be in trouble. With limited resources, he would have to find a way to get everyone back on board the Eclipse. If the shuttle and Beta Squad starfighters were destroyed, then he was not sure how he would be able to save any of them.

  From where they were, the porthole revealed what resembled nothing more than a serene blue planet. The view was misleading, at best, and downright deceiving, otherwise.

  The bridge buzzed with activity.

  Aside from Gaines and himself, Conn Officer Robert Bachand was up and about, checking terminals at different positions on the bridge. “Commander,” he said, addressing Windsor. “Best I can tell from my readings, the shuttle is either without power, or the storm is blocking us from obtaining any kind of readings.”

  The shuttle was in trouble. That much they all knew. Windsor didn’t fault Bachand for the report. The officer was merely confirming what they all had suspected.

  “And the starfighters? Captain Stanton?”

  “Our radar is not showing any activity. It’s almost as if the five ships have vanished, the shuttle and all four starfighters.”

  They could have crashed. That was the reality of it all. The skeleton crew left on board the Eclipse may have to send a pilot on the remaining shuttle after the others. “I need better updates
on the weather conditions.”

  “Aye,” Bachand said.

  “Gaines, call down to the bay. Have them ready the second shuttle.”

  “Commander?”

  Windsor thought about the message he had received from corporate. Crispin Gunther. Their liaison. With the mission primary altered, the new instructions did not allow for this particular scenario. He considered that fact the perfect loophole. Orders might be orders, but saving his commander took precedent over not just the diamonds, but also the colonists.

  There was a chance his use of a loophole would be considered disobeying orders, insubordination, but working for Euphoric was not the same as serving in the North American Alliance Armada. Disobeying orders as an enlisted person carried a stiff prison term. Once sentenced to Mars, one might as well consider themselves forgotten. The barren wasteland of a planet was more of a drop-and-run, as opposed to a penal institution meant for the rehabilitation of the criminally convicted. Worse Euphoric could do was fire him, which was bad, but far better than serving a life term on Mars.

  Windsor said, “If they’ve crashed, they are going to need our help. We will have to go down there and rescue the crew.”

  If any of them survived.

  Windsor closed his eyes and mentally pushed the grim thought out of his mind. He had enough to worry about without letting negative thoughts impede his position, and his decision making.

  Someway, somehow, remaining optimistic was essential.

  Chapter Nine

  Cutlass Bridge

  “They’re in trouble. All of them.” Erinne Cohn shook her head. She watched the radar. Where there had at one moment been five blips on the screen, there were now none. She tapped the screen, wondering if it was a malfunction. Nothing changed. “Yeah, they’re gone. Just gone.”

  Aroldis D’Rukker said, “Got a blizzard taking place down there. Been raging on for a while.”