The Agathon: Book One

by Weldon, Colin

  “Boyett, you hear me?” he said over the comms. There was a momentary wave of panic, but her training kicked in almost instantly.

  “Understood,” she said. “Boyett out.” She closed the comm channel and focused the view screens in the direction of the forest. She looked at the bridge crew who were all clearly looking at her for guidance.

  “Lock the ship down,” she said, using the adrenaline that was surging through her veins. “No personnel off The Agathon until further notice. Sam, I need you in the engine room. Landon will be on his way there and we need to be able to lift off at a moment’s notice. Understood?” she said. Reynolds nodded without a moment’s pause and headed for the lift.

  “Boyett to medical bay,” she said, tapping the comms.

  “Medical bay here,” came a female voice.

  “What’s the status on Lieutenant Chavel?” she said.

  “Stable,” came the reply. “We’re just finishing up the last infusion. He should be up and about in the next hour.” Boyett sighed with relief.

  “Please tell him to report to me as soon as possible. Where’s Doctor Brubaker?” she asked.

  “She is en route with Crewman Llewelyn. I expect her here any... hang on, she just walked in,” said the female voice.

  “Brubaker here,” said the doctor.

  “Doctor, have you been made aware of the situation?” said Boyett.

  “Yes, Lieutenant, Carrie and Chase are with me now. You will have my report regarding the crewman shortly. I am returning Chavel to active duty shortly, he’ll be fine,” she said, sounding worried.

  “Keep me apprised, Doctor, and send Chavel straight to the bridge, please. Boyett out.” She turned her attention to the staring eyes of those on the bridge. She climbed out of the flight chair and stood in the centre of the bridge.

  “Condition one, people, this is not a drill. I want this ship ready to fly, so get back to work,” she said, holding their gazes.

  “What about the captain?” said Kevin Ferraté, a scrawny communications technician who always looked like he was about to cry.

  “You let me worry about that. Just focus on that telemetry,” she said sincerely. Leadership came easily to her and she was always ready for it when it came. She took a step up to the centre seat and tapped her access codes into the computer pad, granting her full access to the ship’s systems. She focused the ship’s sensors at the treeline and activated all airlock security seals. Her mind began to turn to the immediate problem of sending a team out to retrieve the captain. Dead or alive. She knew that he would probably object to that. It was a standing order, not only for John Barrington but also for any military situation, that if an immediate threat to the safety of a ship presented itself then the commander of that ship must remove the vessel from that threat. In other words, she had to start prepping the ship for lift-off. If Charly Boyett had run her military career by the book they would have been in the air already. Instead, she started making an inventory of the available fully charged pulse rifles and pulled up the scans of the surrounding area for up to fifty kilometres.

  Medical Bay

  Twenty-four days since departure

  08:12

  “Wake up, David,” said Carrie at Chavel’s bedside. They had just arrived in the medical bay where Brubaker was scanning Llewellyn. She was standing calmly in a diagnostic tube while a spinning medical disk mapped out her vitals. Chavel slowly opened his eyes and looked into hers. He seemed disorientated but smiled at her when their eyes met.

  “Any chance you can try and stay alive the next time you leave the ship, Lieutenant?” she said, forcing a smile. He raised a hand and brushed her cheek. The touch formed a tear in her eye that escaped down her cheek and onto the bio bed.

  “What’s happened?” he said, frowning. He raised his head off the bed and began to sit up, holding his side.

  “Did those things attack the ship?” he said. Carrie shook her head and looked deep into his eyes. She knew he understood.

  “Where’s the captain?” he asked. Urgency had begun to creep into his voice.

  “It took him,” she whispered. He took a moment to take it in, looking over to Llewellyn.

  “Jesus, Amanda!” he said out loud. Carrie put a hand on his shoulder and shook her head, trying to get his attention off her.

  “I need to see Boyett,” he said, clearing his throat and swinging his legs off the side of the bed.

  “Hang on there, soldier,” said Brubaker, catching his attention.

  “Doc, I’m leaving,” he said to her forcefully, getting to his feet with Carrie’s assistance.

  “Of that I have no doubt, Lieutenant, but not with a lumbar attenuator attached to your spine, you’re not,” she said. He looked around and saw a small tube attached to his back. “You pull that out now and your spinal fluid will drain out onto the floor and what good will you be to anyone then?” she said with her arms folded.

  “Five minutes,” she said. He nodded and sat back onto the bed. Brubaker walked over and started removing the various tubes attached to his torso.

  “I thought she was dead,” he whispered to Carrie, gesturing over at Llewellyn who was calmly sitting upright on the bio bed staring blankly ahead.

  “She appeared standing in the clearing, in front of the forest, unharmed but...” She trailed off, not knowing how to explain her insight into the blank woman standing in the medical bay.

  “But what?” Chavel pressed. Carrie let it go but kept a close eye on her distance from the young woman.

  “All done,” Brubaker said to Chavel.

  “Carrie,” she said, addressing her directly. Carrie felt great sadness in the woman and knew Brubaker’s heart was breaking at the thought of her father dying.

  “We’ll get him back, Doctor,” she said. It was the first time she had said it out loud and she really believed it. Chavel smiled at her assertiveness.

  “Yes, we will,” he chorused, making eye contact with Young who was looking grimly at Llewellyn. He began to dress himself and tapped a comm panel above the bio bed.

  “Chavel to bridge,” he said, fastening the top button of his jumpsuit.

  “Bridge,” came Boyett’s response. “You finished with your nap?” she said. He smiled.

  “I’m a whole new man,” he replied.

  “Great,” she said. “Now get your butt up here, we have work to do,” she said, cutting off the comms before he could respond.

  “Time to go to work,” he said to Carrie. She felt his confidence and fed off it. “Mr. Young, care to join us? I think we could use you on the bridge,” he said.

  “Not yet. I’d like to have a word with Llewellyn when the doctor’s finished with her, if you don’t mind. I’ll join you shortly,” he said, still fixated on the young crewman.

  “It’s your ship,” Chavel said, trying to lighten the mood. Young gave a polite nod and walked away from them. Carrie was beginning to feel a real sense of relief that Chavel hadn’t been killed.

  23

  Medical Bay

  09:34 Martian Standard

  “How are you, Amanda?” said Young. Llewellyn was sitting on a bio bed with Brubaker behind her, running a medical scanner along her back.

  “I’m fine, thank you.” The first time he had met her she had been in awe of him. He had grown used to some of the reactions the colonists and passengers had been giving him since he came on board. As CEO of Jycorp he had enjoyed the trappings of rumour and mysticism. He had not been seen in public in many years on Earth and had almost become a myth. He was surprised at how many feared him. He knew it was because of his father and had not sought to change it. It was easier to fit into that perception than any other and it afforded him the privacy to pursue his own interests. Llewellyn seemed to be one of these people. They had spoken briefly on the bridge and had a few awkward run-ins in the ship’s corridors, b
ut he knew a look of fear when he saw one and each time they had spoken he had seen a tremble in her fingers. Not now, however. Now she gazed into his eyes with the nonchalance of an emperor watching over her subjects. Her hands were steady as a rock. Brubaker continued her scans in the background as Young continued.

  “Amanda, can you tell me where you’ve been for the past day? We thought you were dead,” he said, trying to sound as friendly as he could. She looked him blankly in the eyes. Young had seen the hundred-mile stare before on soldiers and wondered if it was just a case of PTSD.

  “I was lost,” she said. Young shifted in his stool, clearing a stiff pain in his lower back.

  “You were taken, Amanda,” he said. “Don’t you remember? By the snake thing that came out of the lake?”

  “Snake thing,” she repeated.

  “Yes, the snake thing,” said Young. “The big black mechanical snake thing that grabbed you and pulled you into the woods. Where have you been and why aren’t you injured?” He hadn’t meant to inject force in his voice, but it had been unavoidable. Brubaker looked at him and frowned. He understood and raised his hand apologetically. Llewellyn didn’t answer.

  “I was lost,” she repeated.

  “Mr Young, she has been through a trauma and needs time to process what happened to her. I have to insist that you leave her be for now, until I can do a full work up on her.” Young looked at Brubaker and nodded reluctantly.

  “Okay. Amanda, we’ll talk later,” he said, tapping her knee. He gestured to Brubaker for a side discussion. They left the bio bed and stood in the doorway to her office.

  “Well?” he said to her. Brubaker sighed.

  “Physically she’s in perfect condition. Which in itself is odd. There’s no bruising or cuts associated with even a minor skirmish. She’s clearly having some sort of psychological trauma from what it was that’s had her for the last day, but aside from that she’s in perfect health. Mr Young, we need to get the captain back.” Young looked at her and envied the loyalty that Barrington had earned from his colonists.

  “Doctor, I know that, which is why we need to break through to Llewellyn. She knows what these things are. She’s seen them and my guess is that wherever they took her is where the captain is being held. Isn’t there something you can give her to make her talk?”

  Brubaker looked surprised. “I am not a member of the secret police, Mr Young. I don’t carry interrogation pharmacology.” Young sighed. He should have made more of an effort with the colonists back on Mars and Phobos. “Unless she shows me some sort of overt or dangerous behaviour, I’ll be clearing her for duty.” Young looked surprised at that.

  “Don’t do that just yet,” he said.

  “Why not?” Brubaker pushed.

  “I want Carrie Barrington to talk with her,” he said, looking at Llewellyn. Brubaker looked at Young and frowned again. He wished he could have some of that fear from Brubaker, but she was one of the colonists that couldn’t have cared less who he or his father was. She respected his technical achievements in the sciences, but he knew she thought he was just a spoilt rich kid playing on a name. He hadn’t the time to dissuade her otherwise right now, so he dropped his cloak.

  “Look, Michelle, we both know why I’m asking. The captain is missing and we’re on a planet that seems to have hostile life forms on it. Who knows when they’ll attack again? We’re a thousand years apart from what I can now only assume are two space stations carrying a few thousand human corpses through empty space and we have no idea where the hell we are.” He knew that his voice was beginning to harden and echoes of his father’s authority were spilling out of him unannounced.

  11:45 Martian Standard

  John Barrington’s eyes flickered open. He tried to move his head but he couldn’t. The piercing light that shone in his eyes prevented him from seeing more than a few inches in front of his body. He wasn’t lying down. Of that he was certain. The weight of his lower body told him he was held upright, but his feet were definitely not on the ground. His throat felt dry and his eyes burned. He coughed once, clearing something that was lodged in his mouth. The sound of his voice echoed enough to tell him he was in a chamber or cave. Around him he could hear the definite whir of machinery as it clicked and moved in deliberate sequences. His head hurt. He tried to reach up and touch it, to see if it had been cut or wounded in any way, but he was unable to move his arms. He tried to look down at his body, but couldn’t move his head. He could feel his limbs so he knew that they were still there, but he was confined, trapped by something. He tried to move his fingertips and toes but couldn’t. Every inch of his body was sealed tightly up in whatever had captured him. He ignored his racing heart and suppressed the adrenalin surge that was clouding his judgment so that he could focus on remaining present. He toyed with the idea of remaining silent to gather as much information as he could before whatever had taken him killed him, but it didn’t last more than a second or two.

  “Hello?” he finally mustered, to test out whether he was alone or not. His voice bounced off what sounded like metallic walls and reverberated in the darkness too coldly for comfort. The bright light blinding his vision went dark, leaving a hovering light spot. The source of the light withdrew somewhere off to the right. He closed his eyes to try and adapt quickly. He opened them and had to catch a breath, because of who was looking straight into his eyes. There, encased in some sort of clear, skin tight moulding was Amanda Llewellyn. Or what was left of her. Her glassy, lifeless eyes glared at him from the disembodied head that sat a foot above the rest of her torso. Each limb was neatly separated from the next and floating in perfect symmetry to each other, in what looked like some sort of plastic or polymer encasing.

  “Jesus,” he whispered to himself. He tried to fight his flight response to get his heartrate under control. She seemed to be on display. Mounted on a black smooth wall with thousands of fibrous cables spreading out in all directions. The sound of something small crawling towards him to his left made him draw his eyes to look. It seemed to be the only part of his body he was still able to move.

  Crawling up the wall towards what was Llewellyn was something akin to a millipede back on Earth. He was sure Carrie would have some sort of classification of arthropod, but millipede worked well. It curved gracefully across the wall and over the various encased limbs of the former crewman. It reached her head where it stopped and extended a single feeler, which pierced her left temple. The severed head seemed to come to life. The eyes flickered and the mouth started making shapes, as if she were mouthing along to a song being sung that only she could hear. The creature stopped what it was doing and withdrew its feeler from her temple. The head stopped moving and eyes went still. It scuttled off out of sight to Barrington’s left. The sound of his heart beating was hard to ignore and even harder to fight off, but he pushed his field of vision as much as could to try and see anything else.

  It was dark. He thought he could hear water in the distance but could not be sure. Dull thuds came and went and more scuttling of small creatures tickled his senses all around him. There was something else there with him. Unseen. A large booming underwater sound like a far-off whale. He had heard it several times. Power generator, he thought to himself. He shook off the suddenly horrifying thought that he too had been disassembled and was being kept alive through a series of alien cables, just like poor Llewellyn hanging opposite him. He strained his eyes downwards to try and confirm that he was still in one piece. Not that it matters, he thought. By the looks of things he would be dead soon. He hoped that Boyett had taken the ship off this planet by now and wasn’t attempting some foolhardy rescue attempt.

  He hoped Carrie wouldn’t miss him too much. He presumed whatever had taken him was somehow blocking Carrie’s ability to communicate with him. He was saddened that he wouldn’t see her again. Then a larger fear took over. The thing currently masquerading as Amanda Llewellyn was on board his ship. He had to
warn them. Before it destroyed them all. It was at that moment that he decided in no uncertain terms to do everything that he could to survive. Something touched his hand, which was freely moving from underneath one of the restraints. He tried to move his head to see what it was but couldn’t. It felt like a small insect crawling over the palm of his hand. It began to move up his arm. Looking across as the dismembered corpse of Llewellyn filled him with the quick thought that this was how it had begun for her. Whatever multi-legged thing was crawling up his arm had now reached his shoulder. He quieted his mind and prepared for death as best he could.

  The unseen creature made its way up his neck. The cold feeling of metal on his skin was almost ticklish. It made its way on his cheek and up and over his eye. He couldn’t see what it was but it seemed to stop over his right eye. There it stayed for several minutes. Just sitting there. A silent terror began to fill his lower body. The pain of white hot heat against his eye ball replaced it. He began to scream uncontrollably, as he felt as though a part of his face were being melted away.

  The Agathon Bridge

  12:33 Martian Standard

  “He’s not dead,” Carrie told Boyett, who was sitting in the captain’s centre seat. Her father’s centre seat.

  “I believe you, Carrie,” said Boyett. She was a little surprised by her reaction. She was about to make a counter comment when a sudden flash of pain bolted through her right eye. She had never felt anything like it. Her knees weakened as the sound of her father’s screams echoed throughout her mind. She grabbed her head for fear that it would explode with the intensity of it. Seconds later it was over. She took a deep breath as the muscle memory of the experience settled. Chavel’s hands on her shoulders brought her back to the moment.

  “Are you all right?” he asked softly. She cleared a tear from the side of her cheek and nodded. Something terrible had just happened to her father. She stood up and gave Chavel a nod of thanks.