Sunspots and Forever Dark Omnibus

by Gary Martin

  “I think the ships were designed and built prior to artificial gravity generators being invented. Imagine how easy it would have been getting up and down without gravity. Everything else would have been loaded on through the airlocks on each level, much like they are now. Or, then, I suppose. I can’t imagine much else will ever be loaded aboard her now,” he says looking down at the deck plates, looking melancholy. “I’m gonna miss this ship. Even with all the awful memories. She’s basically been my home for ten years.” I put my hand on his shoulder.

  “I sort of know what you mean, but I don’t think I was on here long enough. All I have are those awful memories. Now and again a happy one pops through, I smile, but then remember that the person I’m thinking about is now dead.”

  I realise how depressing that sounds and quickly change the subject.

  “We should have a really clear view of the Skylark cruiser by now, let’s get to the bridge and check it out,” I say.

  20

  The shape in the forward viewport blocking out the Earth is now pretty much blocking everything out; a massive metal structure unlike anything I have ever seen. At its centre is a massive sphere, with hundreds of tiny rectangles, lights and pylons all over it. Attached to the sphere on either side, and all around its centre, are massive arms with long thin seemingly sharp strips of metal all the way along that follow the top of the sphere’s shape, but in more of an elliptical way, and attach to some of the pylons on top. The whole thing seems to be kilometres wide. It’s fucking terrifying to look at. Robert takes a step back.

  “John ... that’s not a cruiser. That’s a bastard war ship.”

  I look at him. He looks genuinely worried.

  “If we were in a war, I might be a little bit scared. But we’re being rescued. It’ll be fine,” I say, mainly to reassure myself. The Zeus’s bow starts to move upward, exposing its underside and the few ships docked to it.

  “That’s where we’re headed then,” I say.

  “Oh shit, I didn’t tell them that we have no way of stopping,” Robert says, looking slightly panicked. He grabs the radio from his belt.

  “Zeus, this is Sunspot Two, please be aware that we cannot stop, nothing is working. We are basically flying on our own inertia. Retro thrusters are not functional. Do you copy, over?” No response.

  “Oh fuck, are we going to crash? Again?” I ask, with fear beginning to bubble to the surface. Robert sits down in Mark’s seat.

  “I guess so. And you know what? There’s not a damned thing we can do about it.”

  “Maybe I could do a spacewalk to the hangar’s thruster control?” I ask.

  “No time. We’ll hit before you even get a spacesuit on.”

  I stare out of the forward viewport as the underside of the Zeus slowly gets closer and closer. Then, one by one, I see four flashes come from the lower half of the sphere.

  “Robert ... I think they’ve just fired at us.”

  Robert stands up and moves next to me. He then points.

  “There, can you see? Four objects hurtling towards us. Yep, we’re totally fucked,” he says.

  “You know what?” I ask no one in particular. “I wanted to be rescued. I didn’t want to be blown out of the stars. I’m really disappointed. Really fucking, pissing, cunting, twatting, shitting, bollocks-ing, titting, bloody, bastard-ing disappointed.”

  I sort of stomp around as I say it. But there’s no getting around it, I really am all of those things. Robert smiles at my futile display.

  “Hold on to something John, they look like they’re going to hit the hangar.”

  I grab a hand hold and watch as the projectiles head toward us. One by one they hit the hangar, with nothing more than a gentle vibration throughout the ship. I see some debris fly up as a few solar panels get smashed off but nothing more. I look at Robert who shrugs his shoulders. I then notice that there are four swaying lines attached to the hangar, heading back to where they were fired from. They start to glow blue. I hold tightly to the hand hold until my knuckles are white, expecting us to explode, but nothing happens. The blue lines start to straighten up and then our momentum starts to slow.

  “We’ve been harpooned, like a giant metal Moby fucking Dick,” Roberts says and laughs. I let out a sigh and let go of the hand hold. The radio comes to life.

  “Sunspot Two, this is the Zeus, sorry about the non-response before, we were busy getting the grappler ready and aimed. We are now safely pulling you in. Copy, over.”

  “Copy that Zeus. Sunspot Two out.”

  “Pricks,” I say.

  “Yes, very much so,” Robert replies.

  As we close in to the bottom of the sphere, I see the umbilical cord moving out from next to the four blue grappling lines that are steadying and pulling us in. Like a giant, glowing yellow snake it heads for the starboard habitation level airlock below the bridge. Every few metres on its long body there’s a small black concertina with flashing red and green lights around it. Its bow is larger than the rest and looks like a head with a giant round mouth. I can see a pilot looking out of a small window, so the thing isn’t automatic. Robert and I climb down the ladder to the habitation deck. Rupert is still leaning against the wall unconscious, and there is no apparent smell.

  I close the lower hatch, and Robert moves the section of ladder out of the way. All that is left to do is wait for the umbilical to connect and Sunspot Two will be nothing more than a horrible memory. There is a loud clank as the umbilical hits the airlock, followed by a violent hissing. The light on the keypad turns from red to green and there’s a clunk as the airlock unlocks itself. I type in my code and the door slides open. Robert pushes Rupert into the airlock and I follow. This next part always makes me apprehensive. When the inner doors close you hope the pressure is equal to that of what’s beyond the outer doors. If you’re not wearing a suit and the airlock isn’t sealed properly, or it’s just exposed to space, you pretty much explode. Maybe not quite explode but a lot of things that should be on the inside of your body end up on the outside of it. I cross my fingers but all that happens is the gravity starts to dissipate, and the three of us start to float. As the outer doors start to open, six red handles push into the airlock from the umbilical tube.

  I look at Robert, unsure of what’s happening. He looks down and makes sure he has a firm grip of Rupert’s sack truck by flexing his left hand on one of its grips, then grabs hold of one of the red handles with his left hand. Without a sound he is quickly pulled through the tube, round a bend and out of sight. I’m now in the annoying position of not quite being able to reach the handle and nowhere near anything to push off of. I hate zero gravity. It’s really fucking annoying. I start flapping my arms while still awkwardly holding onto my bag, knowing it won’t help, but at the moment there’s not much else I can do. I’m so close to being rescued, everything is finally starting to go my way and like an idiot I’m stuck. One of the red handles starts to move towards me, so I grab it. I see a small camera in the centre of it and realise that whoever is on the other end probably saw me flapping my arms. I drop my head and feel slightly embarrassed but don’t have much time to think about it.

  With a jerk, I get pulled through the umbilical tube at high speed. I look downwards and through the windows on each section of tube as they fly past me. I see an almost animated Sunspot Two slowly getting further away. It looks in alright shape from this distance. The hangar is bent down at an awkward angle, but other than that it looks okay. I look upwards and away from what has been my home for the last seven months and it feels like I’m going head first down a huge, slightly terrifying water slide. I’m glad when the momentum starts to slow as I reach the green tinged exit. The red handle finally stops in its groove and I see a light green force field pop up behind me. The gravity slowly kicks back in and gradually I land back on my feet. With a tiny buzz, the force field in front of me turns off and I apprehensively step onto the immaculate deck of the Zeus.

  21

  I’ve only ever
been on two spaceships in my whole life. Sunspot Two and the shuttle that took me to Sunspot Two, which may have had a name but I never bothered to find out. Both are battered and old and in dire need of a fresh coat of paint, inside and out. From that viewpoint, I pretty much assumed all spaceships were old and knackered. Not the Zeus, oh no. I’ve never seen anything so pristine. The walls in this… I guess it must be some sort of docking ring area look like brushed aluminium with shiny silver highlights around all the doors and panels. The deck plates are a glossy dark blue and match the doors. I feel terribly out of place and underdressed in my unwashed dark green uniform.

  “Fuck me,” Robert says looking around in awe. “I don’t think even the QE7 was this clean. This place is spotless.”

  Almost on cue, something liquid and horrible smelling starts leaking out of the bottom of Rupert’s right trouser leg.

  “That’s horrible, for fuck’s sake. I am never wearing that uniform again,” I say and walk away far enough that I don’t have to smell it. Robert holds his nose, quickly leans Rupert against the wall next to the umbilical tube and follows me. He then smiles.

  “Good job that didn’t happen in the umbilical tube. I’d have been okay because I was holding Rupert behind me, but you ...” he starts to laugh, and he laughs hard. I think it may be the first time I’ve heard Robert belly laugh in over seven months. He holds on to his stomach and breathes heavily trying to compose himself.

  “But you ...” He bends over and laughs again. “... But you would have been speeding through a huge shower of shit.” He then let out a long and exaggerated sigh.

  “Better?” I ask.

  “Much,” he replies, still breathing heavily.

  I hear a swishing sound from behind me and turn around as an important looking woman with scraped back black hair, bright red lipstick, and wearing a long grey jacket is walking towards us from the door that has just opened. Either side of her are two dark grey uniformed guards holding rifles against their chests that are pointing upwards. They stop in front of us. Her pale eyes look me, Robert, and Rupert up and down. She then looks back at me and squints her eyes for a second. I’m beginning to feel awkward. Finally, she smiles and holds out her right hand to me and I automatically take it, shaking it with a firm grip. She winces almost imperceptibly, but I notice and realise I’ve squeezed too hard. After all these years of having to shake hands with people, and being told it had to be a firm shake otherwise you look like you don’t mean it, I still can’t get the pressure right and always over-compensate. I can’t stand doing it, the thought of where some peoples’ hands may have been. Seeing people leaving toilet cubicles and then walking straight out of the rest room without washing their hands, as if that’s an okay thing to do. It’s just really greasy and nasty. I’m sure this pet peeve has gradually got worse over the years.

  I let go of her hand.

  “Sorry ... I may have squeezed too tightly,” I say. I see Robert roll his eyes at me.

  “That’s okay, it shows character,” she says, with no emotion showing on her face. I’m not entirely sure what she means by that. If a friend introduces you to someone new and refers to them as a bit of a character, it normally means they’re a bit of a cunt. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t mean that. Well, not yet, anyway. She moves to Robert, shakes his hand and then stands back.

  “I’m Captain Josephine Baseheart, welcome to my ship: the Zeus. She is part of the Skylark fleet. As I guess you probably know by now, Earth as you know it is gone. It is now a frozen wasteland. This is a brave new world we are now living in. Seeing your ship on our sensors was quite a surprise. We thought we’d picked everyone up,” she says.

  “Then maybe we’re the last. I’m John Farrow, I guess I was in command of Sunspot Two. This is Robert Bell, the head engineer, and against the wall over there is Tim ...” I suddenly realise I never knew Tim’s fake surname, so I have to quickly make one up. “... Oppenheimer, he was the payload specialist. His spine is snapped. We didn’t have decent medical facilities, a doctor, or pain pills to treat him with. We did the best we could with him under the circumstances. You are looking at the only surviving members of the crew and we are very happy to be here. Permission to come aboard?”

  I flash a dumb grin at Captain Baseheart, drop my makeshift bag and raise both my thumbs, instantly regretting it. From the corner of my eye I see Robert put his hands over his face and shake his head from side to side. Captain Baseheart’s expression doesn’t change. Stern. In charge.

  “Would you follow me, please, we’ve assigned you quarters and you’ll need to be debriefed. But first, I’d imagine you’d like to get cleaned up a bit. We’ll take your friend to the sick bay and see if there’s anything we can do for him,” Captain Baseheart says with the authority of someone who actually knows how to run a ship.

  She turns on her heel and heads back to the door she came through. I look at Robert, he looks at me, then at her, shrugs his shoulders and we follow.

  22

  The doors open revealing another green force field. I was expecting a corridor or an elevator maybe. But beyond the transparent green is what appears to be an elevator shaft with six of the same red handles from the umbilical tube dotted around the inside. Captain Baseheart walks through the force field and grabs hold of one of them. Clearly there’s no gravity as she appears to now be floating. Robert slowly walks through the green after her and grabs the handle closest to him. I follow. I’ve never done anything like this before. There is a slight resistance as my hand goes through, and a feeling of static electricity where the force field touches my body, the sudden weightlessness makes me feel slightly sick.

  “Deck seventy-three,” Captain Baseheart says after pressing a button on the handle and up she goes. I look up the shaft, it seems to go on endlessly.

  “Deck seventy-three,” Robert says and he’s gone too. Why am I always the last to catch on?

  “Deck seventy-three,” I say, and once again I’m speeding through a tube. There are no windows in this tube, just a display that follows my eyeline letting me know what deck number I’m passing. At seventy-five it starts to slow, and at seventy-three it stops and something behind me pushes me through the green force field, where Captain Baseheart, Robert and a new guard are waiting for me. I guess he must have been guarding the elevator.

  “You, ensign. Take these two to one of the vacant quarters in the red section. Red twelve has been recently vacated I think,” Captain Baseheart barks at the guard. She then looks me and Robert.

  “Someone will be with you in a couple of hours to take you to be debriefed and then assign you duties.” Without waiting for any sort of reply, she quickly turns on her heel, goes back to the shaft and in seconds she’s gone.

  We follow the guard silently through the gun metal grey corridor, this level isn’t anywhere near as spotless as the docking ring area. There are tools and cleaning equipment just left on the deck, half wiped off graffiti on the walls, water marks coming from the ceiling, and the seams between the bulkheads appear to be slightly rusty. After about five minutes of walking through the maze of corridors, I notice the tubes running just below the ceiling and the metal coving have been painted red. The guard then stops and opens a door.

  “Here you are, red twelve. As the captain said, someone will come and debrief you soon.”

  “Are we going to get a full tour? I’ve always wanted to see the inside of a destroyer,” Robert asks the guard.

  “Just stay here until someone comes to get you. Your quarters will have everything you need,” the guard replies and then turns around and walks back the way he came.

  “I guess not,” I say.

  We walk through the door into the thick darkness. After a few seconds of patting the wall trying to find a switch, the lights automatically flicker on. The room is a reasonable size, gun metal grey with a red band near the ceiling and around the door, twin beds and a short corridor that I assume goes to the toilet and shower. A bit like a shit budget hotel. I thro
w my make-shift sack next to the bed closest to the door and jump face first onto the mattress. I bounce more than I expect and almost hit my head against the metal wall. I turn onto my back and Robert is still standing up, looking at me with concern on his face. The last time I saw that look was when Sunspot Two’s engines had been sabotaged.

  “What do you think she meant by you’ll be assigned duties?” he asks.

  “I dunno, I guess they expect us to pull our weight. Which makes sense I suppose. I’d rather do something. I don’t just want to get everything handed to me on a plate. Actually, I don’t really have many principles, I don’t even know why I’m pretending. In all honestly, I’d probably be happy with that. I’m quite lazy.”

  “Something feels off, that’s all.”

  “Maybe it’s the fact that we’re lying about Rupert?”

  “Possibly. But it’s only a half lie. Tim was his name when he came aboard,” Robert says and moves across the small room and sits on his bed. “I just can’t shake the feeling that we’re never leaving this place.”

  “There’s nowhere else to go, you’re probably right.”

  “That’s a depressing thought.”

  “Here’s a less depressing one,” I say. “Once we’ve been debriefed, we’ll try and find out if anyone we know has survived. They must have a list of all the people they’ve picked up on a database somewhere. There may even be people we know on the Zeus.”

  I’m hoping, and also dreading, that Ez might be somewhere on board. And my child.

  “My dad would have survived, being head engineer on the QE7, he would have been in space when the shit hit the fan. I wonder if it’s anywhere near?”

  “What shipping company was the QE7 with?” I ask.

  “She was part of the New White Star. The flag ship in fact.”