‘That is
not
going to happen’ stormed Aeniah. She began to pace
towards her control screen. Before she could get to it Sean, who
had been strangely quite throughout the course of events, stated,
‘she’s right Aeniah. I have been monitoring the ships systems. The
reactor is finished, it has reached its point of no return. We
should begin an evacuation.’
‘Right I’m off
to get Adrian and the doctor. I will meet you in the dock,’ my
voice announced, almost of its own accord. With this in mind I
began to get my things together.
‘Wait. I give
the orders around here,’ Aeniah asserted with a cold voice. ‘You
can go and get Adrian after you have been briefed as to our game
plan.’ She turned to Blue Dawn. ‘Can Ascension survive the nuclear
detonation of a Type 35 reactor.’
Blue Dawn
looked up for a moment as if there was some sort of information
tattooed onto her upper eyelid. ‘A nuclear detonation of a Type 35
reactor is equivalent to a two hundred and fifty megaton thermo
nuclear explosion. According to the original design specifications
of Ascension this is well within the tolerable range of survival.
However anything within a two kilometre vicinity of the explosion
will be heavily damaged. Unfortunately I do not currently have
sufficient resources to mass-transport all of you to a safe
zone.’
Aeniah paced
around, unsure of what to do. We all looked to one another, feeling
the same thing. The feeling of death’s cold hand on your should. A
shiver ran up my spine and the ship seemed to drop in temperature.
Then something occurred to me. Without hesitation I ventured my
ideas. ‘Sean, can the vessel be given autonomous pilot
instructions?’
‘Yes George,
once a course has been laid in the vessel will autonomously
navigate.’
‘Alright then.
What we need to do is to tell the vessel to disengage its dock with
Ascension five minutes before detonation and pilot itself at full
speed away from the station. That gives us ten minute to evacuate.
The vessel should be able to reach a speed of twenty six APU after
fourteen seconds of acceleration. By this logic the core should
detonate when the vessel is one hundred and ninety miles from the
station.’ I had yet again surprised myself. It seemed I was getting
ever more intelligent as time passed. With a start I realised that
I had been speaking in the units of the past. APU was a measurement
of speed that had been rendered obsolete after the loss of faster
than light travel and had never been picked back up after its
re-invention. Aeniah had given me a ponderous stare.
‘Alright now
that is a plan. George, you Sean and Knightly go and get Adrian. I
will take the remaining crew members to the safety of the dock.’
She began to input instructions into one of the consoles. The
device rang obligingly. We gathered ourselves together and ran out
of the CIC, my angel followed silently.
We managed to
get all the way to a maintenance shaft without any problems. We
soon emerged into the science wards without hassle. The infirmary
was within our sights. I hammered upon the access panel and the
door opened. In the darkness of the reception all I could hear was
a giggle.
I raised my
lancer. Looking through the screen I could make out a figure
carving up the dead nurses with a long knife. She was covered in
the blood and entrails of the woman beneath her. Suddenly she
turned her head in our direction. She barred her teeth and growled
at us. Without a moment’s hesitation I let loose with the lancer
and she exploded backwards against the sealed door of the infirmary
and promptly had the decency to die. I activated the antiquated
communication stream between the reception and the infirmary.
‘Adrian its
George. The ship’s reactor is about to go nuclear. So we are going
to get you out of here and into Ascension.’
Adrian’s voice
burst through the static of the comms stream. He sounded very
worried. ‘Please George, do it quickly. I don’t know how much
longer I can stay in here with them.’
‘What’s wrong
Adrian, what is going on in there.’
‘Just hurry.
Please hurry.’ In the background of the stream I could hear the
moaning of another person.
I quickly
turned my lancer onto its side. I switched its firing function to
beam-mode. I then rotated it back to its firing position. The
screen indicated a successful switch. On the menu options I
selection narrow beam mode. The device indicated its compliance. I
turned the power of the beam way down and a sliding bar descended
to highlight this modification. Raising the lancer to my shoulder I
took aim and fired.
Unlike the
spectacular effects I had seen previously, the lancer spurted out a
very narrow beam of light. It still hurt to look at but it did not,
at least, blow a hole through the wall. Instead the beam began to
melt the seal that had been placed between the doors two opening
points. The metal glowed a deep volcanic red as pieces of silvery
material dripped down onto the ground. I held my finger firmly down
upon the trigger for a little while longer until the seal between
the doors failed. I stopped the lancer.
‘Give me a
hand,’ I shouted to Knightly. He ran over to the other side of the
door and together we pulled against the centre. The door rang
loudly as it ground along its buckled edges. With all our might we
finally heaved the door open.
Out ran Adrian
with pace. He ran straight towards me and hugged me hard. Pulling
himself together he pushed me away and stood casually backwards.
But the others did not emerge.
‘Excuse me.
Ladies and gentlemen. The ship is about to go nuclear. C’mon
people!’ I shouted but still there was no sound. It seemed that
they were too worried to understand. Perhaps they were paralysed
with fear.
‘Alright Sean
I’m going in. Can you give me their positions?’
But as Sean
began to talk Adrian cut in. ‘No George. No! They’re not safe. They
just keep saying the same thing over and over again. I think
they’re losing it. I think they might be infected.’ Adrian
continued to pant.
‘Ok people,’ I
called, ‘You have five seconds to get yourselves out of here or we
are leaving without you.’ Still they said nothing. ‘Five,’ I
motioned for the others to gather their things. ‘Four,’ I backed
away from the entrance. ‘Three,’ I moved my hand to indicate for
the others to move outside and cover the entrance. ‘Two,’ I
gathered everything that I had together and began to walk backwards
and out of there. ‘One!’ and I ran out of there.
We ran down
the corridor desperate to get to the hangers and out of there.
There was not enough time to use the service hatches and so we had
to use the main route. With the elevators locked out we took the
large winding staircase down the floors. We had soon reached the
middle floor but we still had to get to the lowest and then to the
dock.
We kept
running down that stairs, one metal segment after another flying
beneath our legs. The columns that held up the stairs were
beginning to hum. Soon that hum had reached the intensity of a loud
whine. The resonance was almost deafening. By the looks on the
others faces as I turned around, they must have all realised the
same thing. That this ship was very close to collapse.
As if on cue
the staircase that we had just run down collapsed behind us,
falling with a crash to the very lowest floor. We reached that
floor seconds later and ran with all our speed through the archway
and onto the central corridor.
Our heavy
boots clunked along the floor as we ran full tilt along the deck.
The ship was making the most terrifying sound. We reached the
damaged hanger and ran through it, ignoring the bodies, ignoring
the destruction. Collapsing into the airlock Knightly slammed his
hand down on the access panel. A symbol dissolved into a green
arrow. The airlock began to hiss as it equalised the pressure
inside with that of Ascension.
A great
shaking beneath us and along the wall told me that the engines had
just begun to fire. The ship was about to leave. I could just make
out the sound of docking clamps being released. I screamed for my
life. ‘Hurry up. Hurry the fuck up.’ But the doors would not open
until the pressure was equalised. ‘C’mon!’ I could see Ascension’s
docks through the narrow window. They were magical. I could almost
feel the cool air of freedom.
The pressure
door buzzed and slid itself away. But the ship had begun to move. I
could hear Aeniah and the others screaming for us to jump. Adrian
looked at me, smiled and threw himself down. The others disembarked
very easily. Knightly looked to me and nodded. It was just me and
him now. But our problems were compounded because the vessel was
now accelerating away.
I threw myself
with force to the ground. I heard a whooshing in my ears before I
impacted heavily upon floor. Rolling to take out the force of the
impact I looked up to see Knightly, now very high, preparing to
jump. But the ship suddenly shook and he fell back into the
airlock. The others screamed but I was too winded to do anything
other than gasp. The ship had almost exited Ascension now.
Knightly’s
head was just visible as he walked to the end of the airlock and
made his next attempt to jump. Just as he was about to jump
Ascension’s membrane passed over the airlock and he was exposed to
the vacuum of space. The last we saw of him he was holding his
throat and gasping for air. Aeniah let out a moan and sobbed
gently, just for a couple of seconds.
The vessel had
now completely parted through the membrane that sealed Ascension
from the hells of space. The little vessel rolled onto its silvery
belly. It brilliant shine captured the light of the stars just
perfectly as they ran along its arching midsection. Spinning
gracefully it turned away from Ascension and bravely faced the
depths of space. Its engines fired in full and the ship burst
forward on a wave of blue light. The engine trail was now all that
was visible as the vessel continued on its journey to the grave.
The light was beginning to dim.
Then it
happened. A huge ball of light exploded across the night sky. The
stars were drowned out by its intensity. The little ship had become
a ball of pure energy miles wide. You could feel the warmth from
Ascension. I shielded my eyes from the brightness. In a matter of
moments it had faded and disappeared.
I turned away
from the light and walked over to the others. I could see Adrian’s
tall frame and dark hair. I looked towards him but he seemed not to
notice me. Instead of going over to him I walked over to Aeniah and
Blue Dawn. Sean was hovering above them in a distracted manner,
flitting this way and that between them.
‘So how the
fuck are we supposed to get out of here now?’ Aeniah asked.
‘That will not
be a problem,’ Blue Dawn returned. ‘These docks may be bare but I
assure you Ascension has many vessels that can be lent to you, for
the right price.’
‘Price?’ I
asked. ‘What price?’
‘Unfortunately
the amount of vessels I have at my disposal is limited. Therefore
what I ask is that you fulfil your mission, to destroy the
Artefacts and save humanity. Are you prepared to accept these
terms?’
‘Obviously,’
returned Aeniah. ‘But it would be rather nice to know how exactly
we can go about doing that.’
‘The answer to
that lies in the discovery that I made before I was taken offline.’
She smiled and prepared to continue her story. ‘You see after your
science team came and woke me up, I had a chance to properly
examine the Artefact. With so much damage my investigation was only
concluded after the suicide of that team. I had determined that the
Artefact was part of a series. That the Eye of Orion functioned as
one of many windows into the Promethean Layer. The window allows
some of the energy to escape into this plane of existence, what
Carvelle would have called “real-space”.
‘But there was
more. I finally confirmed my suspicions as to the Artefacts real
purpose and genesis. The components of the Eye of Orion could not
have been created by human hands. In short it is an alien
composition.
‘At first I
theorised that the effects of the radiation might have been
different to an alien. However an examination of the non-human
genetic modifications that Carvelle had used to create the
Ascension project did not match up to this theory. Neuro-cellular
degradation would also have occurred on all probable alien
physiology. I then theorised that it might have been possible that
there was a problem with the Artefacts, that somehow they had gone
wrong. But further examination proved that this was not the
case.
‘I then
focused my investigation upon finding a way of shutting the
Artefacts down. Using conventional technology I found no way of
destroying them. If a part of it became damaged it would simply
re-grow out of nothing. It is resilient in a way that is quite
frustrating.
‘I soon found
that the device gave off an interesting signature alongside its
radiation. Analysis of the spectrum revealed that the Eye of Orion
was transmitting some sort of communications stream. Using
Ascension’s powerful imaging systems I located the termination
point of the communication stream. It ended upon Hercula.
‘Within a
matter of hours I had sent probes to all of the colonies that were
plagued by the artefacts. Data analysis revealed that each and
every one of them was communicating with something on Hercula.
‘It occurred
to me that if the artefacts could not be destroyed, perhaps they
could be shut down by whatever it was that they were communicating
with. I began to execute a transmission back to Eternis Systems
central command. During my conversation with Sephra I was shut
down. I am still uncertain as to what was the cause of this, but a
diagnostic of my DCN’s showed no signs of damage. They simply shut
down all at the same time. One moment they were running perfectly,
the next they failed. I cannot account for it.