Fan Fiction ❯ Titan ❯ Top gear ( Chapter 8 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

A woman glided slowly along the corridor of the Martian G-O shuttle as y two class 3 fighters moved silently across the viewing window of the ship. She was eighteen years old with a very oriental look about her and very pretty. She wore a emerald flight suit and a zero gee belt. On the belt was a number of odd looking instruments and a magnum. She reached an airlock and her hands closed around the rails to stop herself from drifting into the wall. The girl pressed a button and the metal door slid open. She flew into the cockpit of the small craft and strapped herself into the co-pilot seat next to an ageing man. He had a short beard and goggles and he was wearing a violet flight suit. When the woman had clipped all the restraining belts into place she turned to him.
"Hi Tom. How are we doing?"
"Morning. We're almost there."
"How is Sky taking to the enhancer?" she asked him.
"He seems fine with it. He's practicing in the gym." he answered without looking away from the gargantuan bulk of the space station ahead of them.
"What is he up to now?"
"Tables." the old man told her.
They sat in silence for a while. The young girl pushed a button on the wall next to her and a spherical robot glided quickly into the chamber. It used it's thrusters to orientate itself towards her. She looked into the lens that was trying to focus on her.
"Go and tell Sky to suit up. We have about fifteen minutes until we dock."
It hovered for a moment and then sped away. She produced a shuttle console from one of her belt pockets and began to type in commands. Something on the computer panels infront of them moved aside and a terminal rose up. She entered some more commands and an image of a strange alien creature appeared before them. It was humanoid but it only had three fingers on each hand and three eyes above three, drooping tendrils. Both of them watched it.
"Check this out." she said with a smile as she tapped a key.
The alien's arm reached out of the holographic window and returned holding an ancient instrument called a banjo. It struck a string and then began playing furiously and sang a comic song in a squeaky high pitched voice. The odd figure danced humerously across the control panels, singing too quickly for the watchers to make out what it was saying. Eventually it stopped and took a bow before fading slowly.
The man who had been reffered to as 'Tom' grinned and looked back towards the station, drifting slowly through space. He fiddled with the controls and adjusted the course of the shuttle. He pressed a button on the wall, there was a 'whoosh' and a panel slid away to reveal a compartment in the wall. He reached inside and produced a wrapped sandwich which he ate ravenously. The japanese girl smiled at him and pressed another button on her console. This time the holographic terminal lit up with a model of the Sol system. The image flickered as she reached out and touched the hologram of Saturn. The planets zoomed away as saturn grew larger, filling the picture with it's rings and moons. Again, the teenager stroked the light and again the balls of light drifted away. She stared down at the remaining globe, Saturn's fifteenth moon.
Philip stood outside Titan Mission Ship A and placed a cigarette between his old lips. He had been VIP loading supervisor for almost fifty years and he had never really minded standing around and repeating the same instructions to people who all looked the same in the same place every single day. But what he hated the most was latecomers. In all his years in this job there was never a single launch where someone wasn't late. A trio of colonists came jogging down the boarding ramp, however they didn't seem like VIP's. One of them wore a space suit with the double helix symbol that was the marking of a Geneta biologist. The next one wore a military environmental suit, one of the special ones with the active camouflage. It sported the letters 'MI ' indicating they were a mobile infantry unit. But the third person wore a purple high tech plated suit. The helmet was an elaborate array of equipment. Strange glowing tubes indicated that the person inside was subject to some very special requirements. The old supervisor didn't recognise the unit badge. It resembled a burning hand. He strode up to them.
"Excuse me sirs, please present your I.D's."
The scientist passed him a card. Philip noted the double helix and name before running it through the computer and passing it back.
"Next please?"
The infantryman handed him another I.D card. Sure enough there was the letters MI , printed neatly below the name. He ran this through the computer too. It seemed that these two were classed as VIP escorts, meaning that this unrecognised class of colonist must be the important one.
"Card please sir."
The indigo clad colonist handed him a small piece of rectangular metal. Philip looked down at it. He stared for a while and then handed it back, a look of shock on his face.
"Just.... just go right ahead. No..... no need for a scan. Just head on in sirs. Have a good trip." he stammered.
"Thankyou" replied the metallic voice of the biologist as the colonists walked past into the ship. Philip leant against the guard rail and took a long drag on his cigarette. His wife would never believe this. The kindly old man then took a swig from a hip flask and a few deep breaths to calm himself. Not your ordinary latecomers.
Dan lay back and squirmed to get comfortable. He set the console to run an automatic scan of the data he had been programming and hooked it onto his belt to wait for it to finish. A lot of people were done boarding now, he could see them on a small screen in the corner of the room. It flicked randomly through the security cameras to show the VIP's what was happening around the launch bay. He glanced at the empty tube next to him and wondered about who was supposed to be in it. He lay and thought for a while, not about what was going on around him, but as always his thoughts were possessed by neat little rows of letters and numbers, computer codes and algorithms, all lined up neatly. That was how the world should be, calculable, something that could be tied up and prodded and figured out in a logical way. Of course, it could, but not in a way that humans could understand. The rules were so numerous and so hard to pin down, every bit of everything was affected by every little natural law all the time, nothing could figure all that lot out. Maybe there was only one rule which governed everything. Maybe on some scale too small to be discovered, particles were all being run by one single law, one unarguable fact that ran the entire universe. He wondered if humanity would ever discover it and what they would call it if they did. The meaning of life perhaps? Well no matter. There was no way it would be seen in his life time, maybe no way for it to be seen in a lifetime of the universe itself. So no reason to worry about it. He checked the timer on his console and then returned to his state of philosophical wonderment. Something was nagging at him. He closed his biological eye and rewound the last few minutes of his vision. Then he saw it. A purple outfit. He had seen it on the cameras. He zoomed the image in closer and enhanced it. My god. They were putting one of THEM on this mission. He had seen some powerful gear go onto ship C but this was insane. They were unstable. Dan always thought of THEM as being to humans what energy weapons were to projectiles. Theoretical, badly understood and most of all, bloody dangerous. Then it struck him. He looked very slowly at the empty tube next to him. A thin bead of sweat dribbled down his forehead as he realised what was going to happen and he came to a conclusion. Well sod that. He yanked his own tube shut and hit the button on the wall. The last thing he saw in Martian space was the ice of the preservation frost.
Titan spins slowly around the equator of Saturn. For seventy four years no human effort had been made to visit the tiny world, after Huygens everyone lost interest. No life existed on Titan and the chances were that it never would. When Huygens trundled across it's surface and discovered a bare stone awash with liquid methane the last hope for life in our solar system vanished, along with all thoughts of the moon. Now most of humanity never gave it a moments thought, on occasion some hopeful would look back through the pictures first taken on the 14th of January 2005 certainly, but they soon gave up and lost interest. Indeed it seemed all their efforts had been in vain, Titan really was a desolate rock. Only now in the year 2079 has an interest begun to rekindle, but not an alien interest. Now one of the biggest human companies in the system, a corporation that practically owned Mars, had turned it's eye on the distant world. The amount of natural fuel there, just waiting to be refined and sold was too great to be ignored by such a faction as Geneta. But even this wasn't enough to have suitably been called 'interest'. It was merely an acknowledgment of a large source of money, the moon itself was a vague notion that swum briefly through the heads of those who stood to profit from it. Only very few people felt a genuine attraction towards the drifting mass. One of them was just strapping himself down as the launch siren began. His purple uniform clanked quietly as he clipped the harnesses into place. Then he lay back. Violet was listening to some form of rock and roll so loudly he could hear it even without her speaker switched on, the music reverberating around her helmet like an enraged spirit trapped in a prison too small for it. The only sound coming from Tom was the gentle sound of ice cooling as his tube misted over with frost. The purple man listened to the siren and let his mind wander. The technicians were retreating from the machine. Only a single airlock remained open now that the vehicles had moved off and people filed through it quickly. The narrow window encompassing the launch bay was brimming with faces, eager to see their handiwork take to the cold void of space. There was a great sense of awe at the sheer scale of the craft that they had built. Outside the station a gigantic airlock opened and ship C was flung towards it's destination. After a moment the man envisioned it's engines kicking in and the tower of metal speeding away into the blackness. He felt a rumble and knew that ship B had launched after it's brother, carrying it's cargo away into the darkest pit. Again the image of the engines firing swam through his head. The final airlock in the room sealed and the sea of faces held a collective breath as they anticipated what was to come. Time held still for a single moment that lasted an eternity and then the entire floor vanished and the ship fell. The bulk of the cylinder fell from it's captivity and spiraled away into space, the gigantic station plummeting away as they left for their six year journey across the solar system. As the jolt of the engines hit Violet screamed in delight as she stared at the onboard camera displaying the space station and the background of black space and red planet. The picture spun as the ship left the world of it's creators. An enormous sense of serenity blanketed him as infinity took them and carried them on their voyage to what seemed like the end of the universe itself. He felt Violet slip away as the coldness stopped her body in a pocket of unchangeable time and he smiled to himself. As the engines ceased and silence came he unhooked his harness and drifted into the cold room. Now he could begin.
In the year 2086 on the 21st of May three cylinders glided into orbit around Saturn. The old machinery inside made no sound and produced no light or heat. dust motes floated through the darkness, settling on the dormant computers. The air was still. Nothing moved. The silent corridors were illuminated by a thin shaft of sunlight that glimmered off the dull, lifeless metal. Then suddenly a tiny light flashed in the perpetual blackness, a red gleam of activity that broke the eternal night. A quiet beeping echoed through the long dead passageways, sounding in time to the flashing light. Somewhere in the mass of machinery were the hibernation tubes, the protective glass coverings glistening white with the ice of deathlike sleep. A small hiss forced it's way from a single tube as the frost began to liquify and trickle down to form a pool around the preserved occupants. The expanding steam finally broke the seal and the tube lid powered up with a bang of escaping gas. A pair of eyes opened behind a frosted faceplate. The stiffened body shot upright and began choking. Arthur fought to get up before smacking a control panel. The harness disengaged and he slumped forward out of the tube and lay gasping on the floor as the artificial gravity kicked in. When he had gotten his breath back he checked the environmental dial to make sure the rooms environment was able to support him and then wrenched off his helmet and threw up on the floor. After a few minutes he got shakily to his feet and struck a button to heat the rest of the craft to a survivable temperature. He tottered towards Dan's tube and hit the revival button. Then he slumped into a seat and tapped a holo-terminal into life. A holographic computer display lit up and he brought up Dan's vital signs. He adjusted drug levels and very slowly woke him from his sleep. He didn't turn when he heard the seal blow and Dan yawn loudly.
"Well that was pleasant." Dan announced. "Lovely, restful sleep."
He looked around and climbed out of the tube.
"What year is it?"
"2086 Dan." Arthur said with his eyes closed, a hint of irritation in his voice.
Dan looked intently at the puddle of stomach acid on the floor.
"Feeling that good eh?" he asked with a chuckle. "I'll just activate a cleaning robot, shall I?" he said with a smile.
Arthur was already resuscitating Liz and deep into the process of ignoring his friend. He felt terrible. He despised automatic awakenings, it was like drowning and then waking up again. He tried to ignore his retching stomach and spinning head and get on with bringing the desolate cruiser back to life. This place would have to serve as home for a fortnight. By tomorrow everyone would be awake and getting on with their jobs of preparing for the landing. A hovering robot skimmed past his head and set to work cleaning up his mess.
"Dan get all the robots and computer systems running, I want this place purified from top to bottom and artificial environment systems working in an hour. Oh and when Liz is up get her to organise the crew and set them to work. And tell her to get a security team going first thing. And get Bradford online. And for god sake get me something to drink."
"Aye aye captain." said Dan jokingly and popped Elizabeth's tube. She jerked upright and started coughing.
"Wha...... what...... happening?????" she asked in a panic.
Arthur turned around in his seat.
"DAN!!!!!! What are you doing? She wasn't ready yet, she's only half functional."
Dan laughed and patted her on her black clad shoulders.
"Wakey, wakey. Eggs and bacey." he said and stood by the door whilst it repressurised and the gravity set in. He was out of the room before it had heated up properly, he still had his environmental suit on.
Liz sat shivering in her tube.
"Jackass...." she said, the half melted ice oozing off her suit.
Arthur got unsteadily to his feet and wandered over to his partner. he unstrapped her and helped her out of her helmet. Then he sat on the edge of the tube and rubbed her back to try and ease the sickness she would be feeling. She leaned right forward with her arms wrapped tightly around her body, his free hand in hers, and heaved gently. she wouldn't be as bad as he was but it still wasn't a pleasant feeling.
"Feeling any better?" he asked.
She nodded with her eyes shut and leant even further forward, still clutching his hand. He set up his suit to sync with the active terminal and ordered the robot to fetch some food and water. The computer display showed that three rooms were now inhabitable, but it was also flashing a small warning light. Arthur wrinkled his forehead as he wondered what it was. He leant down to Liz to check she was alright and then walked over to the terminal. He tapped the image of the warning and a map of the ship appeared, most of the rooms were shown red except for the three green ones that were ready for occupancy. Small blue dots indicated life signs. Yes, there was himself and Liz in the VIP chamber and there was Dan opening another airlock as a new room became active but there was another one with a label hovering above it. It was in the main shaft near the control room and was moving around the ship, but the label told Arthur that this person was 'EXPOSED ' to the environment. And that was impossible. no one could survive without air, pressure or heat for much more than about a nanosecond. The robot glided to a halt grasping a bowl of soup and a glass of water, which Liz gratefully took. Arthur stood up straight and turned to Liz.
"Hey Liz, I have to go and check something out for a moment. Are you going to be alright?"
She looked up from her food and nodded before returning to the meal. Arthur grabbed a handgun from his belt and latched his helmet back on. Then he adjusted his suit to 'SPACE SURVIVAL' and headed off after Dan. He ran though the doors until he reached his friend who had just opened another airlock. He ducked inside and stuck his head back out.
"Just give me a second before you come in ok. I'm just going to the control room."
Then he shut the door again. He opened the next airlock and got dragged in with the air as the pressure equalised. Then he closed the door behind him and opened the next one. He carried on like this until he reached the main shaft. There wasn't any gravity generators here so he grabbed the hand rail and pulled himself towards the control room. It was still very dark so far, the generators had to warm up before they could dish out enough power to run more than one room. Something swirled away in the darkness ahead, the dust motes swished around as something disturbed the still air. Arthur turned on his helmets small torch and shone it ahead of him. Again something moved out of his field of vision, it darted away from the wall and vanished into the darkness. Arthur moved after it but every time his light came near it the being had moved away. It shot into a side passage and he dragged himself up towards it. He poked his head cautiously into the tunnel and shone his light around. It seemed to be gone. He moved into the passage slowly and pointed his gun this way and that. What was going on? Something touched his shoulder and he spun around quickly. A bit of debris bounced off a wall and floated away into the ship. The scientist breathed out slowly and turned around. The last thing he saw before fading into unconsciousness was purple.