Europa (Deadverse Book 1) (14 page)

- Ben –

“What am I looking at here?”

The mission commander was already dealing with the extreme pressures of the life and death situation he and his crew were stuck in. He knew his stress levels were far beyond anything that was healthy. Still, as he sat there in the darkened room, with Cary and Thomas leaning over his shoulder, pointing out the gruesome display on the screen, Ben knew then he hadn’t reached the ceiling on his stress tolerance.

Thomas had arrived a few minutes after Cary had called for him and had begun taking as many videos as he could. He had been frantic about not letting anyone else on base know about what they had found, to the point that he would make sure no one else would be scheduled to drive out to the reactor, only the two engineers.

A groan arose from between the hand on his face and his mouth, as the mission commander sat looking intensely at the images on the screen. They flickered a lot, and the camera work was unsteady. The sound was off and Thomas described to him what they had seen. Cary remained silent.

“Are we sure it’s the drone soldiers from the entrance shaft?” Ben asked, looking back at Thomas.

Thomas returned a look of disbelief. “Not many other humans here on Europa.”

Ben rubbed his eyes and he could feel the blood pumping through his temple, echoing in pain with every beat.

“So, what does this mean?”

Thomas began first. He was certain there was something else going on with the Alien vessel. They hadn’t seen a single body or remains of one, alien or not. It was entirely possibly, given that the alien vessel had already rejected human technology and the drone soldiers, that they had attacked and were sending everyone on base a signal. Ben shook his head.

“So, beings that can manipulate time and aren’t happy with us are, instead of just wiping us all out, giving us a warning?”

Thomas stood up in the darkness and said nothing.

“What else could it be?” he finally said.

“One of us, Thomas. Think clearly,” Ben replied, sitting forward and looking at the images again. The drone pyramid was indeed haunting.

“Gary said that Glorin was still acting weird from, I think he said, interfacing, with the alien vessel,” Cary brought up.

Ben shook his head, annoyed. Ever since the crew had returned from the alien vessel, his little ‘talk’ with the ship had made him just as annoying as ever. Everyone thought he was acting weird because of it. Ben knew better, that was how he always acted, he just had a bigger head now.

“What’s the doctor’s diagnosis?” Ben asked, willing to hear her out.

“Just that both he and Emir needed to be tested for AEC.”

Artificial Enhancement Control, a relic from an addiction of decades ago.

“We need to bring Charles in on this,” Ben added, “this is one of the reasons he is here.”

“NO!” Thomas jumped in quickly. “We can’t let anyone who was on the ship know we found it. We can’t trust any of them.”

“Seriously, Thomas?” Cary asked.

Ben nodded. “I’m a fan of conspiracies too, Thomas, but that is just a bit too much. Besides, that means Connie could be one of ‘them’ as well.” Ben was sure to add quotation marks with his hands around the word ‘them’.

That was enough for Thomas and he stormed out of the room.

“That man is under a lot of stress,” Ben said quietly.

“We all are,” Cary said with a moment of hesitation.

Ben pointed at the frozen image of the ice block on the screen. “How would you even do something like this?”

“Jenna or Thomas, maybe even Emir, might know how to,” Cary added.

“Yeah,” Ben considered his options. “Go after Thomas and see if the two of you can get out to where the shaft used to be for any clues. See if the angry man can come up with how someone could do that with whatever gear we have.”

Cary got up and walked slowly towards the door, but stopped short of it.

“What do you think we will find?” she asked, still looking right at the door.

“If we’re lucky,” Ben said in the middle of a deep breath, “that it was a freak random act of nature. I’m not sure I like our other two options.”

- Horace –

He was going to have that scar for the rest of his life. He could still feel it, raw and sensitive, as he moved his fingers across it. He half expected to take his hand away and see blood, but there was none.

“How did you get that?” a deep voice echoed across the room.

Horace was finally feeling like himself, except for the occasional headaches that still haunted him. He has glad, though, to be thinking clearly again. He had been quite surprised, though, to see the awakened drone soldier, Paul, sitting in a bed across from his. So surprised in fact, that he had at first attributed it to a hallucination. The fact that he thought it was a hallucination was a good sign for his mental capacities though, and that’s when he realized the soldier was in fact real.

This was the first time he had spoken though.

“This mess?” Horace said, pointing all around the cracks in the ice wall. “When the walls came crashing down I got caught up in it.

Paul grimaced a bit.

Gary talked with Horace just that morning, while the drone slept. The doctor had told him everything, the alien vessel, the aftermath, the damage, and of course, the drone soldier. Horace listened intently and frankly, quite curiously. During the training for the mission, he had undergone basic training on the drone soldiers, mostly as a backup for Bobby. Sadly, he had learned that he was now missing as well. The training didn’t involve any form of post awakening psychological assistance. He knew there were detailed journals and procedures for dealing with the possible side issues that came from waking from a twenty year slumber, but he hadn’t been privy to them. In fact, nearly all the materials that would have been useful now were still on Earth, in his office in Columbia, South Carolina.

Under nearly any other circumstance, all he would have had to do was request the digital copies. But yet again, in another incredibly depressing revelation, he now knew that Earth was no longer in contact, and for all they knew, barely a livable planet anymore. He had been knocked out by the ice having just lost a few friends, and he woke up to having lost his home. It was a tough pill to swallow.

“Honestly, I thought I was dead,” Horace said, going over his wound again with his fingers. “But here we are, right?”

“Have you been out of this room?” Horace asked.

“Not since they cut me out of the mech and brought me down here,” Paul looked around, “I’m not sure they know what to do with me…”

Horace stood up. “Let’s go show you around. At least what’s left of the base.”

Paul stood up quickly. “You sure that’s OK? I don’t want to anger anyone.”

“I have a certain level of authority here,” Horace said, smiling. “It’ll be OK.”

The new medical center was just under the central dome one of three fully repaired domes, and so they went without the suits. Horace knew that if Ben saw them, he’d throw a fit, but he was willing to deal with the old ornery commander, if it came to that. As they came up through the central stair case still riddled with cracks and missing chunks of ice and into the main dome, Horace felt a sense of relief. It wasn’t the wide open skies of Earth, but the larger room gave the human psyche a greater sense of freedom. He could tell that Paul instantly felt better, as well.

Within moments of coming out into the dome, Horace felt a tap on the shoulders. He spun around, nearly losing his footing on the magnetic floor but was greeted by the cheerful smile of Connie.

“My goodness, doc,” she said, reaching in for a hug, “it sure is good to see you up and about. Looks like you got yourself a nasty one there, huh?”

Horace reached instinctively for the wound on his head again, but stopped short of touching it.

“It’s good to be alive,” he said, looking around. “At least for now.”

“Ben’s gonna have your ass with you two walking around without a suit on,” she said, holding back laughter.

Horace nodded. Connie was only in part of a suit, and a helmet was nowhere nearby. He pointed at the folded over flaps of the lower part of the suit, and Connie just shrugged.

“What can I say?” she laughed, hugging him again.

“And this is the soldier?” Connie asked, extending her hand to Paul.

He shook it. “Paul. I don’t know if I qualify as a soldier right now.”

“We don’t qualify for much at all right now, all of us. Mostly just janitors.”

“We are up to walk around, stretch our legs,” Horace pointed out. “Where is it safe to go?”

“You need to get over to the green dome,” Connie pointed to the far side of the dome they were currently in. “We dug out a whole new corridor down to it, so be careful. It doesn’t have magnetic floors; just pull yourself along with the handles we put on the side of the hallway.”

Connie turned to head out towards the opposite side.

“Where are you off to?” Horace asked.

“I’m taking the Tin Can up for the last supply crate we know for sure is coming,” she said.

“Any word on if we can see the return ship?”

“Nope. We can’t see it at all on our scopes. We will have to wait another two weeks to see if it shows up in the skies above us.”

Horace nodded. It was a difficult place to be where you had to wait to see if survival was feasible or a dead end road.

The two men watched as Connie walked briskly down and behind a large ice wall at the far edge of the dome. Directly ahead of them was the small spire where central command was. They walked past the small tower which had survived the quake intact. They hit a few patches where the magnetic floor didn’t work, but they reached the corridor to the green dome fine.

Connie had not been joking. They had carved a new hallway in the ice, melting their way through to the green dome. They had installed no lights so the only light that reflected into the hallway were the ones on either side of the shaft. It had been crudely cut out as well, likely in haste. The walls were uneven and rough, as was the floor and ceiling. They pulled themselves along with small metal handles that had been frozen into the walls. There was no room to bounce around in the low gravity. So they made their way slowly through the rough corridor until they came out the other side.

“Is the whole base like this?” Paul asked.

“I honestly don’t know. This is the first time I’ve seen the damage and repairs,” Horace answered, pointing towards the hatch to the green dome above them.

Paul reached up and brought down the step ladder. It stopped halfway down as the mechanism was still bent a bit from the quake, but one good pull from Paul brought it down all the way. Horace reached up and pulled himself up through the steps, jumping a few steps at a time, right up through onto the main floor of the green dome. Paul followed up through the staircase and found himself in a small room, cylindrical in shape. Ice walls held two doors on opposite sides of each other. The room itself had no ceiling except for the clear dome a hundred feet above them.

Horace opened the first door and was instantly greeted by a blast of warm humid air that turned into a fog nearly immediately. Both he and Paul stepped through into the whole new environment, breathing heavy, but with a slight degree of familiar comfort.

“What is this place?” Paul asked, walking through the fog alongside Horace.

“It’s our own personal jungle,” Horace said, as they stepped through the initial fog and were greeted by a green mass of plants. Around a small table sat several of Horace’s crew members and as soon as they saw him, they stood up and began clapping and cheering. Jenna came running over and hugged him.

“It’s good to see you back, doc,” she said with her ever present smile.

“Didn’t know you all liked me so much,” he said, coming over to the rest of the group. One by one, he shook their hands and acknowledged them.

“You woke up at the best time,” Joyce added, pointing at the plates, filled steaming vegetables and the goop that has been their only course until recently. Several plates covered the table, as well as more pots with more steamed vegetables.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Horace said, grabbing a plate and handing it over to Paul. “Sure beats the paste I’ve been eating the past couple of days.”

Ben came up and put his hands on his shoulder. “Did Doctor Fletcher release you?”

Horace turned and raised an eyebrow. Of all the people on the base, Horace had the authority to override Ben. He knew it was a matter of safety, and not power, but he did joke about it with Ben from time to time.

“He did.”

“That’s good,” Ben said, stepping away. “You really should get a suit on, though. And find one for the soldier.”

“His name is Paul,” Horace said, introducing him. The young man sheepishly waved.

Joyce sat down next to the soldier and began dishing out food onto his plate. In turn, his eyes grew large, likely larger than his stomach. Horace had read at some point that awakened drones had incredibly elevated senses due to the drugs the mech AI used, and taste and smell would be some of those senses he was enjoying at that very moment. Horace took that moment to step aside and talk to Ben.

“He, Paul, needs some integration. The man is in great physical shape and mentally appears to be just fine,” Horace whispered. “He needs something to do.”

“You sure?” Ben asked.

“I am. Besides, it looks like you could use all the help you can,” Horace said. “That includes me. My head might still be a bit wobbly, but I can be told what to do.”

“No. Not you. You were barely alive days ago. You need more rest.”

“I can rest at night. Besides, the more I’m out here, among them, the better I can do my actual job,” Horace pointed out.

Ben remained quiet.

“You know I’m right,” Horace added.

“You usually are, you smug bastard. Fine, but for God’s sake, don’t overdo it. We might really be needing you in two weeks if that return ship doesn’t show up.”

“If that ship doesn’t show up, there will be nothing I can say or do that will change anything. Each one of us will deal with it as we see fit.”

“I hate the way you talk,” Ben said, walking away. Horace could only smile.

Looking back down at the small group eating, he saw smiles, laughter, and the weary sound of exhaustion. For now, these men and women were acting true to their expertise, experience and professions. They were working through the problems instead of panicking. Each and every one of these men and women had gone through a rigorous psychological evaluation, of which Horace had played a big part in. The biggest reason they had been selected was for their ability to not lose their cool. Those were his words. Besides, traveling three hundred and sixty five million miles from Earth had a certain element of suicide in it. Not coming home was a possibility every single one of these men and women knew intimately.

Some already were not coming home.

So he joined them and ate, because now, more than ever, he really needed to not ‘lose his cool’.