Waiting

Gary
Weston

Smashwords Edition

Dedication.

My humble way
of dedicating this book to those who put their lives on the line to
protect us all in these dark and troubled times.

Waiting
© 2015 Gary Weston

All
rights reserved

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This ebook is a work of fiction. The names, characters,
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have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real.
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Chapter 1

Jarvis Jacobs,
captain of the Goliath, hated it when gravity suddenly disappeared.
His sleep was rudely interrupted when his head collided with the
clothes locker as he floated across his room. He pushed himself
away from the wall with his feet, overdid it and crashed his
shoulder against the opposite wall before he could wave a hand over
the com sensor.

'Sam, you jerk.
How many times do I have to tell you about this? Hey? Hey? People
could get hurt. I could be hurt. Sam? Are you...?'

Satellite Chief
Engineer Sam Clifton chuckled unapologetically. 'I had it all under
control, Jay Jay. I would have let everyone settle down nice and
gently when I'd finished. Besides...Oh, what the hell. My memo?
About the monthly systems check? Did you bother to read the bloody
thing? No. Of course not. Naturally, everyone else out of their
pods strapped themselves in, but not you. So pull your stupid head
in and I'll ease you down. Ready?'

'Wait. Ok. I'm
almost over the bed. Nice and...' Jacobs landed with a bump
face-down into his pillow. 'You call that easing me down?'

'Stop
complaining, you old buzzard. Nobody else is. Then unlike you they
read the memo.'

Jacobs sat on
the end of his bed. 'Is that it? You finally done messing
about?'

'Messing about?
Here I am trying...cobbling this damn thing together...'

'With chewing
gum and bits of old wire. Yeah. You really need to get new sayings.
Ten years of the same old crap gets damn tedious. I'm coming
over.'

Clifton didn't
need that. 'Go back to sleep, Jay Jay.'

'Not now I'm
awake. Get the coffee on.'

In the two
minutes it took Jacobs to weave his way on a scoot through the mile
and a half of the vessel's corridors and levels, Clifton had his
feet on his consul and two coffees ready to drink. Jacobs got off
his scoot and sat in the fixed swivel seat next to the
engineer.

'How are the
systems?'

'Good,' said
Clifton with a shrug. 'As good as we could expect. Heck. I wouldn't
be surprised if there's a few original parts still working on a
ship this old.'

Jacobs sipped
and winced. 'Never mind the ship. This coffee tastes like it's ten
years old.' He arched his back to ease his spine. 'Just two more
weeks. I am so tempted to miss a pod shift.'

Clifton ran his
fingers through his long grey locks. 'You'll do your pod shifts
even if I have to strap you in personally, captain or not.'

'Yeah. I'm
just...'

'Getting old
like the rest of us. Don't mess with what works, Jay Jay. Two
hundred and nine of us survive ok the way things are. I'm not about
to recalibrate pods just so people can be out of them like they're
on vacation.'

Jacobs sighed,
the rebuke from Clifton totally expected. 'I said I was tempted,
not that I had any intention of doing it. What's our position?'

Clifton stroked
a yellow sensor and the screen became live enough to have the two
men almost believe they were looking through a window, not an image
magnified a hundred times.

'Our usual slow
course for Spero. Looks pretty, doesn't she, for a tiny speck?'

'In a deadly
sort of way. That storm could be concealing anything. I wouldn't
bet on any probe surviving going through it. Any change in the
atmosphere?'

Although
Clifton knew Jacobs could read the figures as well as he could
himself, he patiently went through the analysis.

'No increase in
the oxygen level. Still at sixteen percent. Nitrogen at seventy one
percent. Argon one point three percent. Carbon dioxide point zero
four percent. Various trace elements such as hydrogen sulphide,
methane etcetera making up the remainder.'

Jacobs said,
'Compare the figures to a month ago.'

'Jay
Jay...'

'Humour
me.'

'Ok. For all
the good it'll do.' Clifton put not only the figures from the
previous month, but the previous ten months also.

'No significant
change. Except...'

'What?'

'That volcanic
eruption upped the overall carbon monoxide level up from point zero
three percent. Also, the water vapour released and the unusual
storm activity partly caused by the heat emitted from the volcano
has created that blanket of fog. Any rain would be acidic caused by
the sulphur dioxide. Not unexpected. I said that might happen.'

'We couldn't
have predicted the volcano erupting. The terraformers should be
compensating for the carbon monoxide increase by now.'

Clifton agreed.
'Should be, I know. But there's certainly no significant
reversal.'

'Very
disturbing. They have to have stopped working. Send the results
back to Earth. They need to know.'

Clifton pressed
a button in a bank of similar buttons. 'Done. For all the good
it'll do. Jay Jay. You'll have to tell the others. Most already
suspect the truth.'

'We don't even
know what the truth is. There could be a hundred reasons why we
haven't had any response from Earth for the last few months.
Technical issues for...'

Clifton cut his
captain's speech short with a glare. 'Bullshit, Jay Jay. Please
don't insult me by trying it on me.'

'Oh? It's
strange how you still can't give me an alternative reason.'

'Not one you'd
be prepared to accept.'

Jacobs said,
'Not without something to back it up. I'm not going to tell our
people that it's possible we are unable to contact Earth because of
the situation back there.'

Clifton rolled
his eyes to the ceiling. 'Situation. Right. East and West slugging
it out. Again. For all we know, they have already killed off
Earth.'

'Exactly. For
all we know. But we don't know. I'm not ruling it out, but there's
no point in worrying everyone unnecessarily. Damn it, it's hard
enough maintaining moral on the Goliath as it is after a decade in
space on a ship.'

'But it's
perfectly acceptable to lie to everyone instead? Jay Jay. The crew
are highly educated, very bright individuals. Most of us have
doctorates in one field or another. And like everyone else, if they
know something is wrong and what they don't know for sure, they'll
speculate on. That's just human nature.'

'We haven't
lied. They all know we have been out of touch with Earth for weeks.
They don't know why, because you and I don't know, either. Same for
the lack of progress on the terraforming. That's controlled from
Earth and all we can do from here is monitor it.'

Clifton
shrugged and replied, 'Which ties in with the hostilities on Earth
hypothesis. If the war has knocked out Base Command, it explains
why both communication with Earth is out and the loss of control of
the terraforming.' He looked at his old friend and captain. 'Come
on, Jay Jay. When are you going to accept the inevitable?'

Jacobs stood
then sat on the scoot. 'I'll not accept your version of the
inevitable until you or anyone else can verify any of it with
facts.'

'Fine. So come
with me in the shuttle and check it out once and for all. We
probably can't land but we'll be able to see for ourselves what the
hell is happening just outside of atmosphere. It's time to face our
demons, Jay Jay.'

For almost two
months, Clifton had been urging Jacobs to go with him on a
reconnaissance mission rather than just sit it out waiting and
hoping for Earth to get back on-line to tell them what was
happening.

'Ok. But we'll
keep it low key. And we'll take Doctor Lee. She's already up to
speed with the terraforming status. Make sure she understands the
need for discretion.'

'She's on her
pod shift.'

'So wake her
up, damn it. No point going without her. Let me know when you are
ready.'

Before Clifton
could reply, Jacobs pulled back on the scoot's accelerator and the
door slid aside to let him out.

Clifton watched
the captain ride along the corridor as the door slid shut again.
'You've finally got your blinkers off, you old fart.'

Clifton closed
his eyes and made a long mental list of all he needed to do to
prepare for the trip in the shuttle, then he stood up to get on
with the task, the door sliding open then closing again as he
passed through it.

Chapter 2

Sam Clifton
pressed the sensor that opened the heavy double sliding doors and
stepped inside, the lights responding to his presence. To call it a
room would have been an understatement. Taking up the whole of the
third level of the ship, it was a hundred yards wide and one mile
in length. And yet, despite its phenomenal size, like everything on
any ship, no single inch was wasted. He walked along the central
path, hardly glancing at the rows of faces staring sightlessly up
at him, a sequence of numbers and letters lit up for each person as
he approached it. M P D 0 9. That told him he was up to a male in
pod D row zero nine. He continued, finally stopping at F P G 0 3.
The face looked up at him with a contented smile on her full
lips.

'Ah! The lovely
Anne. Doctor Anne Lee our chief biologist. Sorry Anne. He who must
be obeyed, otherwise known as Jay Jay, insists I wake you up for a
little ride outside the ship. Wakey wakey.'

Flipping the
safety cover off the control sensors, he poked the code into the
panel. Nothing happened at first, and he resisted the temptation to
re-boot. Beneath his feet he could feel as much as hear the servos
and drivers separating the hermetically joined seals and the cover
to the pod slid forwards to disappear under the floor beneath him.
One by one, in a specifically controlled sequence, the numerous
tubes and electrodes disconnected from the ports along the woman's
legs and arms, locking into the sides of the pod. Lee's eyes
opened.

'Don't ask me
how I know,' said Lee, accepting his hand to assist her out. 'But I
suspect my pod shift has been interrupted?'

Clifton
grinned. 'On the money as usual, Anne. I finally talked sense into
Jay Jay.'

Lee had no need
to stretch her limbs, even after two weeks in the pod, but she did
so anyway. 'Good. Because if you hadn't managed it, I'd have beaten
it into his skull.'

'I've no doubt
you would. But do us all a favour, hey? He's still convinced we
don't realise this is more than some technical problem. He doesn't
want us going insane with the revelations of what's really going
on.'

Lee walked
along with Clifton to the exit, indifferent to the rows of faces
either side of her, serene expressions on the faces of her
colleagues. 'Don't play into his hands by voicing opinions
unsubstantiated by facts?'

Clifton
chuckled. 'Too late for that, I'm afraid. Oh, I'm sure he thinks
it
is
the bloody war, same as
everyone else. Just give him the chance to break it gently to us,
if you know what I mean. Ok. I've prepared the shuttle for the
three of us, and we'll be looking at a three day trip to the
Spero's outer atmosphere, say a full day of orbiting and observing
and taking readings, then three days to return here.'

Lee pulled up
at the door. 'Any intention to land?'

'I couldn't
entirely rule that possibility out, but this is Jay Jay we're
talking about. Caution personified. I guess it depends what we find
when we get there.'