The Lifeboat

by Keith Fenwick

  The Lifeboat

  Part Three of the Skidian Chronicles

  by

  Keith Fenwick

  Copyright Keith Fenwick 2016

  All rights reserved

  The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system, or translated into any other language or computer language, in any form or by any means, whether it be electronic, mechanical, magnetic, optical, manual or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the author.

  Email: k.fenwickk@gmail.com

  PO Box 90312

  Auckland

  New Zealand

  Also by Keith Fenwick and available as a Kindle eBook and hardcopy:

  Skid-The First Chronicle- Book one in the series

  The Second Coming- Book two in the series

  The Colonist -Book four in the series

  Once again thanks to Mrs Fenwick for the support and encouragement.

  Introduction

  The Lifeboat is the third novel in the Skidian Chronicles series of science fiction novels.

  The inhabitants of Skid are in trouble because the factories producing the synthetic products they rely on for all their food supplies are failing after being devastated by a virus. The virus was introduced by an exiled heir to the leader of the planet intent on revenge.

  The artificial intelligence that should have dealt with the virus has suffered a glitch which has led to it making an error in judgement about its response to the attack. To make matters worse it has decided that the time is ripe for one its intermittent re-boots and self diagnostic checks to review why these problems keep cropping up.

  With the Skidians facing famine and the AI known as the MPU operating all systems in backup mode, a group of Skidians decide to take matters into their own hands and visit the Planet Earth looking for experts in organic food production to assist them in developing alternative food supplies.

  It will come as no surprise to anyone that the Skidians are not strangers to Earth, they have a long association with our planet in more ways than one.

  The first two novels in the trilogy follow the adventures of Bruce, a farmer from New Zealand who has been abducted by a bunch of aliens from the planet Skid, and Sue who was mistaken for an expert in organic food production techniques as she happened to be tramping through a forest at the time the Skidians stumbled across her.

  Bruce develops a New Zealand style grasslands farm, showcasing how the Skidians could easily go about overcoming the approaching famine. However, his is a step too far for most Skidians who simply cannot conceive of a solution that would result in them getting their hands dirty. With famine imminent he and a pregnant Sue are returned to their former lives on earth, albeit with a few unanswered questions bugging them.

  The Lifeboat takes up the story after Bruce and Sue have miraculously ‘discovered’ each other and are on their way to their wedding reception in a limousine, accompanied by Myfair, the alien pilot of the spaceship.

  A cast of characters can be found at the end of the book.

  Prologue

  Far out on the dark, frozen perimeter of the solar system a comet reached the outward limit of its orbit and began to blaze a trail back towards the sun. This particular body had never been recorded in human history or detected by any of mankind’s increasingly sophisticated astronomical instruments as it swung along its path. It was a rogue artefact. The kind of artefact that terrified astronomers because they appeared without warning and swung onto unpredictable orbits aimed in the general direction of Earth, because there was little anyone could do about them.

  Eventually the comet came to the notice of terrestrial astronomers and was designated Comet 2014D4, using the standard taxonomic system. Once the initial excitement created by its sudden appearance abated, Comet 2014D4’s course was projected accurately enough to suggest it posed no immediate threat to Earth, as was the case with the majority of celestial bodies they monitored. For a number of reasons, not least because people wanted to know whether these objects posed a risk or not to planet Earth, some were higher on the list than others in terms of importance and scrutiny. 2014D4 was well down this list, so initially nobody noticed a couple of unusual course changes which, on closer inspection, were difficult to explain.

  For a long period, nobody picked up on 2014D4’s changed trajectory. When someone did notice, there was some idle speculation between groups of astronomers who were interested enough in any outcome to discuss its probable route as it sped toward the Jupiter Trojans, as there was a slight chance the comet might collide with one of the asteroids in that cluster.

  Eventually 2014D4 ploughed into an asteroid called Automedon, knocking the asteroid out of its orbit. Automedon was then spat out toward the other side of the Trojans belt on a completely different trajectory to its original path, while Comet 2014D4 carried on its merry way, quite possibly never to be seen by human eyes again.

  Impacts of this type occurred regularly enough astronomers thought little of it at the time. Automedon bounced around like a big marble knocking other smaller asteroids out of the way and was then finally ejected from the Trojan field altogether. Astronomers monitoring the Trojans suddenly discovered Automedon was hurtling its way towards the centre of the solar system where it would either meet its end in a mighty collision with the sun or be flung outward again to continue its journey until it hit something else – or eventually sublimed away to nothing. By this time people on Earth were starting to pay some serious attention to Automedon.

  Well satisfied with their handiwork, the entities who now thought of themselves as Transcendents settled back comfortably to watch the events they had set in motion unfold. They were so relaxed, they might have been playing a great game of celestial pinball, not observing a process they believed was critical to their long-term survival as a species and the repopulation of their former planet with organic life forms.

  Part One

  One

  One moment Bruce was happily knocking back a nice cold beer in the back of the limousine as he and his brand new wife, and Myfair who for some reason had decided to join them, were being driven in some style to their wedding reception. The next minute he was dealing with an otherworldly entity that had started speaking directly into his mind. To cap it all off, Sue started screaming, screeching, like some crazed harridan.

  In mid-gulp, a row of dully glowing multi-coloured icons appeared before his eyes, somehow projected or projected onto his eyeballs. The icons momentarily mesmerised him, changing colour and twinkling in and out of existence.

  Hello Bruce, the voice said again. Can you hear me OK?

  Then Sue’s screams resonated in him as she turned and started yelling directly into his ear at close range. At first Bruce thought she was making a big deal out of him having another beer. She had been going on and on all morning about making sure he kept his drinking under control, today of all days, and not make a fool of himself at the reception in front of her family and her friends. Sometimes Bruce wondered what Sue saw in him. If he drank too much for her taste, then why had she ever asked him to marry her in the first place? Part of him wanted to knock back as many beers as he could on the way from the church to the hotel, just to piss her off.

  “Look!” she demanded pointing to the small television dangling from the roof of the limo, punching him on the arm to get his full attention. Given he had a new voice speaking directly into his mind he was not all that interested in what someone who looked like Myfair’s brother was doing in the United Nations General Assembly.

  “This is your fault!” she yelled at him. “You let this happen.”

  Bruce thought
this was a bit much really. “What do you mean?” he asked. Why was he getting the blame for the way things had turned out? How was it his problem events had gotten out of hand? President Mitchell was a grown man and should have been able to look after himself.

  Though he had to admit to himself that while it had seemed to be a good idea at the time to dump the deranged American President Mitchell out of Myfair’s space patrol ship and unleash him on an unsuspecting nation – and the world. On reflection, it might not have been one of his better ideas.

  He guiltily had another pull at his beer as the scenes in the General Assembly erupted into chaos until Arnold Rumbold, aka Myfair’s brother, according to Sue, was subdued and then quickly hustled away by a team of security guards. With a sudden start Bruce realised there was more than a passing resemblance in Rumbold to Myfair’s older, deranged, would-be coup leader, and now dead older brother Ediud.

  While all that was going on, the voice projecting into his mind continued to ‘talk’ to him – though Bruce was having a tough time focusing on what was being said with Sue going on and on in his ear. When he showed no sign he was paying attention to her, Sue started shaking his shoulder. She got even more agitated when it became apparent he was not focused on listening to her, or interested in what she was saying, whatever she did to gain his attention.

  Bruce continued to ignore her, which infuriated her even more, as he tried to concentrate on the voice speaking to him. Well, it felt like someone was speaking to him, but when Bruce had time to think about it afterwards it was more like the voice had insinuated itself into his brain, like someone had opened up a wireless internet connection directly into his mind. Anyway, that was how he described it to himself.

  I need your help, the voice insisted as Bruce reached forward and turned the television off.

  “What for?” Bruce asked, growing increasingly annoyed with Sue’s insistence he pay attention to her and the racket she was making. It irritated him no end and he fought hard to contain a sudden irrational urge to lash out at her physically for the almost childish insistence he speak to her and pay attention to what she was saying.

  “What do you mean ‘what for’?” Sue screamed at him. “This is all our fault!”

  I need your help to destroy an asteroid heading for your planet.

  “You what?” Bruce spat his mouthful of beer out against the back of the driver’s seat. There goes the cleaning bond, he thought.

  “Who is this? Is this some kind of trick? Is this you, Trev, and something you and your smartarse brother cooked up? You bastards! Who, what are you?” Bruce demanded as more icons blinked and flicked in and out of existence in front of his eyes, completely disorienting him. He put a hand out to steady himself against the back of the seat ahead of him and missed connecting with it completely, suddenly feeling a little giddy.

  “Are you OK?” Sue asked in mid-tirade, suddenly concerned for Bruce. He had gone as white as a sheet and his eyes had started rolling around in the back of their sockets, and his eyelids were blinking at a great rate of knots. “I told you, you were drinking too much,” she remonstrated with him.

  Bruce felt okay. He imagined his brain rebooting like a computer hard drive after a software upgrade. He could sense rather than feel there was some kind of indexing going on in his head.

  “Hang on a minute,” he muttered to himself as the icons blinked in an out of existence once again and then seemed to settle down glowing like the soft blue- green icons on his new ute’s dashboard.

  Bruce blinked, winked a couple of times to check he had regained control of his eyelids, screwed his face up in a grimace then rubbed his eyes. He tried rolling his eyes behind closed lids and then simply wished the icons to disappear. On cue, one by one they blinked out of existence, leaving only a red phone handset-shaped icon glowing at the edge of his vision.

  The icon turned bright green and the voice started up again, Bruce felt he was carrying on a normal phone conversation where two or more people listened, talked to and sometimes over each other, while all along Sue was still talking to him. It was some kind of extrasensory conversation where he was still fully aware of what was going on around him – far more powerful and meaningful than the simplistic conversations he had with his dog, Cop, using what felt like the same process. As he thought this, the dog sent him a black-and-white vision of his world and a wry ‘yeah right’ message, like a Tui billboard.

  “Oh my god, oh my god,” Sue wailed. “What’s going to happen to us?” She grabbed his arm tightly and shook him again in a further effort to get his attention.

  “What do you mean?”

  You have a lot going on in your life at the moment, Bruce, the voice told him. And there’s more to come in the next little while. But I do need your help, the voice repeated.

  “You what?”

  I’ll explain everything when I get a chance. I am just checking the connection works as it should; once the interface is fully set up, I will be in touch.

  “Bruce, will you listen to me?” Sue demanded. “And stop pretending you’re talking to your bloody dogs again.”

  “Hang on a minute,” he said, hoping to shut her up for a moment while he figured out what else was going on with this new voice in his head. “You’re just jealous Cop won’t talk to you unless he feels like it.” Bruce allowed himself a vision of the dog sending him a self-important sneer, and then ignored him.

  In a moment an off-world security team is going to stop the vehicle you are in, the voice in his head continued.

  Bruce tried and failed to place the accent. It didn’t sound like any artificial voice he had ever heard, but it was not quite human either. He peered out the window but could see nothing untoward.

  They plan to take you into temporary custody but don’t worry about – I have infiltrated their communications network and I will be monitoring the situation. I won’t allow you to be taken into any kind of permanent detention, the voice added.

  “What do you mean, take us into custody?” Bruce asked out loud. “I’ve got my wedding reception to get to.” If whoever it was had intended to make him feel better, it was making a pretty poor job of it.

  Almost immediately the limousine swerved to one side and then, with a squeal of tortured rubber, came to an abrupt halt.

  Bruce glanced out the window and saw they were surrounded by a number of large black SUVs spewing armed men and women in body armour out onto the street. They quickly surrounded the limousine at a safe distance, pointing an awesome array of hardware in his direction.

  We’ll talk soon. Don’t worry about a thing, the voice concluded and the phone icon went red, ending the call.

  Bruce imagined for a moment that he heard the dial tone as the caller rang off.

  “What the bloody hell’s going on here?” Bruce asked nobody in particular.

  “You know perfectly well what’s going on here. We’re being taken into custody as accessories to Arnold Rumbold’s attack on President Mitchell.”

  “Oh come on, Sue, you can’t be serious. How could anybody link us to that?”

  “The government can do anything, they have spies everywhere – monitoring our emails, our phone calls, everything.”

  It had never crossed Bruce’s mind Sue could be such a conspiracy theorist. But then how well did he really know her?

  He was fairly sure there was no way they could be linked to Arnold Rumbold and the president’s pretty public meltdown. Sure, some of those sneaky government organisations and the likes of Google, Microsoft and dozens of other private and public agencies, mined people’s online presence for all kinds of information based on keywords and search preferences. Just about any business anyone dealt with online harvested information for various marketing and intelligence databases. You only had to see how easy it was to set up a new mobile or computer to realise that. But, and it was a very big but, given the deluge of information flowing through online networks, you had to give the government a reason to watch you. You had to trip
some kind of trigger – like inciting violence, or participating in hate speech – and as far as Bruce could see they had not stepped over that particular line.

  They heard the driver’s door open as Bruce dropped the window between the passenger section and the front seat to see what was going on outside. He could see the driver with his hands above his head, and watched as the man eased himself carefully out of the car, catching a glimpse in the rear-view mirror of Bruce watching him. The driver glanced at the mobile he held in one hand on which, from the way he was looking at it, Bruce supposed the man was getting instructions from somebody. The driver’s eyes flicked nervously in Bruce’s direction, and Bruce detected a degree of sympathy there that confused him. Then the eyes flicked away towards someone or something Bruce could not quite see until he leaned further over the seat and caught sight of a policeman standing a few metres away at a hastily created perimeter. He had a mobile pressed against his ear with one hand and was beckoning the driver with his other.

  Bruce watched the driver scuttle away quickly towards the policeman who had now extended his hand in the driver’s direction to encourage him to make a run for it.

  “What’s happening, Bruce?” Sue asked.

  “How the fuck should I know?” Bruce responded, a little more sharply than he had intended. Then he relaxed a bit; he thought he knew what was going on. He had been wrong about not drawing attention to themselves. Obviously the game was up. Someone, somehow, knew all about their trips to Skid. Perhaps neither he nor Sue had been as discreet as they should have been. For someone with an enquiring and suspicious mind, there were a few things which did not quite add up in their lives, and he wondered if someone had put two and two together and advised the authorities. Sue’s doctor, for example. He seemed to think there was something unusual about their baby because of his rapid development and Sue’s relatively short gestation period. Not short enough to raise an alarm, not something completely unknown in the medical world. But babies born at the early stage little Bruce had been were normally not as healthy as he was, nor were their young lives lacking in any medical intervention to assist their underdeveloped organs to function. The doctor had decided Sue’s pregnancy and little Bruce’s subsequent rapid physical development had been a little uncommon and worthy of further investigation, which they had declined to cooperate with. This might have raised a few red flags.