Europa (Deadverse Book 1) (28 page)

- Charles –

He had missed it all. After Gary’s death, Charles had secluded himself in the crime scene, and to not be disturbed, he had taken the comm ear piece out, and set it on the bench in the makeshift med bay they had carved out of the ice. Hours had passed as he took pictures and wrote down details of the attack and murder. It was a grizzly scene. Gary had been stabbed twice, but Charles wasn’t sure with what. His brain had then been removed after the skull had been cleanly cut into. There was almost no mess, just a hole in the man’s head and a gap where the brain used to be. It was too clean.

And so time went on without him noticing. He didn’t see how Emir could have done this, but the more he looked at the terrifying images, other ideas began to take shape in his mind. He wrote down many notes, trying to piece everything together, but every time he looked back at the countless sets of words, they rarely made sense. He was easily startled then, when Thomas walked into the room.

“Man, you missed it all.”

Eleven days had passed since the attack. There was still no sign of either Emir, Glorin, or the Aliens. Thomas didn’t have enough parts to repair the rover, and a walking trip out to the alien vessel was too far on their limited tanks, not to add that the ice fields, their only throughway to the ship, was now, for all intents and purposes, a wall. Charles, in part to pay for his ignorance, and also because he had nothing left to do, sat at the monitors, watching them intently for any green sphere to come spilling over the top of that wall.

Paul had survived his heroic encounter with the alien beings. He had several broken ribs and he looked like he had been painted in black and blue, but he was alive. Jenna had taken it as her own personal duty to watch over him while he recovered, that is, until it was her time to head on up to the Odyssey.

Connie continued with her flights. All of the essential gear was now on board except for one last shipment of plants, which would be the final items rocketed off into orbit. In the meantime, she continued her one every other day trips into space, now hauling the hydrogen fuel that would propel them home. Twice now, she had nearly suffered a catastrophe and Ben had been very vocal about their process, but they had no choice. They had to get the fuel on board before time was up, or they would be stuck on Europa.

Not that it wouldn’t be a bad thing. In those many hours in front of the monitor, Charles spent his time thinking about his likely lost family. He sunk into depression, which was further exasperated by the fact that nearly no one else on the base talked to him anymore. Jenna, the only one, had already left for the ship and Ben, his friend, had lost too much respect in him. He was ostracized, not only for his badly mistaken assumption of the murderer, but for having missed the battle, or at least helped. Charles had one job on this mission, and he had failed at it as plainly as anyone could see.

Today he had been lucky. He coordinated some of the communication dishes with Joyce to see if they could pick up anything from the alien vessel. In that capacity, she had spoken to him. It was easier for them to speak to him, for they hadn’t been down here. Still, he could feel that they had lost their respect for him as well. Word passed quickly when grave mistakes were made.

There was nothing going on with the vessel. Connie had taken one descent that put her nearly over the ship, much to Ben’s disagreement. The pictures showed it still hovering above the ice, unmoved and unchanged. Green spheres sat in a giant circle around the entire ship, forming a two mile radius around it. It was a defensive measure, and Charles wondered if that was all the spheres had done. Maybe the humans were the threat. They had invaded into it, after all.

He ate less and slept more. He avoided everyone else as much as possible, mostly because he was ashamed. Therefore, he was utterly stunned when the door hissed open and Paul walked in. He limped over to him, deep purple marks still evident on his neck and face, and sat down on the chair next to him.

“We need to setup some kind of defense,” he started, “in case they come back.”

The soldier had been up and about now for two days, after spending a lot of time in bed.

“They’re not coming back,” Charles said.

“How can you say that?”

“Call it a hunch,” Charles said, turning his view back towards the monitors.

“Some might say your hunches aren’t that good,” Paul retorted.

Charles gave him a side glance but didn’t reply.

“Then why stay here and keep an eye on the screens?”

“I have nothing better to do,” he said.

“You do now,” Paul said, standing up. “There are three working plasma drills. Let’s see what we can do with them.”

“You will find Thomas a much more eager follower,” Charles pointed out. “Besides, he actually knows how to use them.”

Paul looked down at the man who was, by all means and purposes, his superior. He saw a defeated man.

“So, you’re just going to sit here until we go home?”

Charles spun his chair around and looked right up at the young man. He knew the pain of battle, he had covered himself with the marks of war. They were all badges of honor, but there was none left in him.

“There is no home,” Charles said, turning back towards the monitors.

Paul shook his head, and left the room. Charles cleared his mind when the silence returned. He knew full well what the messages from Earth meant. He had studied the capacity the nations of Earth had for war. He already could see the sky filled with the warplanes, flying by themselves. Hundreds, if not thousands of factories on the ground would continue to church out bombs and guns. Long after the cities were desolate and destroyed, the mindless machines would continue to drop hellfire on targets that no longer meant anything. Even if they could return to Earth, they would drop out of the sky into a war that would fight just as easily without their governments, without their masters. If there was anyone alive, their lives were barely worth it.

There was no Earth worth returning to.

- Horace –

After he spoke to both Paul and Ben, it was decided to keep a close eye on their former chief of security, lest he harm himself, or worse, someone else. Horace felt a tinge of regret. He had always admired Charles, but clearly saw in him the signs of a meltdown, a mental break. How the well trained man would react when that break came was unknown to him.

Paul, on the other hand, he was having a hard time reading. The soldier had come through his ordeal against the foreign attack like he expected, with the stoic behavior to match his wounds. Still, in the few talks he had with him, there were hints of fear. It was the kind of fear one goes through after dealing with something completely unknown, and after the ordeal, still not understanding it. He was confused, maybe even a bit alarmed that he had survived. He spent many hours talking with Jenna, and while he was not allowed to monitor such conversations, it was probably a good thing that he was at least opening up to someone.

The one good thing that came from the fight was a slight feeling of safety. Paul had, along with Charles, set up some kind of defense system with the plasma drills, the machines that had worked so effectively on the alien sphere. It had become a bit of a ritual to watch the replay of the battle in the evenings, and everyone would cheer and holler, except for Paul, as the two diatomic warriors dueled on the surface of the moon. It had become a matter of legend in the short time since it actually happened. It was a false safety, for sure, but sometimes that feeling was better than none.

Ben continued to be on edge. He was losing weight, eating very little and sleeping even less. In the grand scheme of things, there was little left to do. Connie continued her flights into orbit, but only taking the fuel for the return trip. The hydrogen was collected automatically by Thomas’ machines, and so everyone waited. No one knew anything about Glorin or Emir, much less the alien ship. There was nothing left to do except wait and hope.

Horace was scheduled to head up to the ship in two days, where the women working on the ship were in far better morale than anyone on the surface. That was the advantage of continuous work, a schedule.

Horace sat down at his desk and began typing up what he considered his final override order of the mission. He was going to send Ben up to the ship next instead of him. Taking over the preparations of the return ship would do him good, and he could keep his eye on the surface just as easily as if he was here. Horace would take the following trip up, and the schedule would remain the same. Jenna would be next, then Thomas. Susan would return on that trip to prepare the remaining plants. Then Charles would go up. Finally, the last trip would have Susan and Paul go up together on the last flight off the moon. It would be cramped, Connie had explained, but doable, especially since there would be no cargo.

There had been some debate among the crew as to whether they should blow the base once they were gone. It could be easily done, just by overloading the hydrogen reactor to go off a few days after they had left orbit. The damage would be surreal, and, Thomas hoped, maybe it would even impact the alien ship.

The ship, the vessel. It remained out there, a terror behind the wall of ice that barely kept them separated. Horace had taken a moment to look at the pictures Connie had taken in her last fly by and he’d been there for the sphere attack. The deepest fear everyone had was the ship would come after them, destroy them in flight away from Europa. The shrink admitted to himself that the thought terrified him as well. It was for that reason that he also advocated the destruction of the base.

Susan was the only opposing voice. Horace knew why, but let her make her claim that the destruction served no purpose, and that in fact, if it didn’t destroy the alien vessel, it would certainly confirm their own destruction when it retaliated. The matter was put to a vote and there was a resounding yes for the explosion.

No one really expected to see Glorin or Emir again. Horace felt sad. Neither were ever loved by the crew; one was an outsider by choice and the other by his decisions. Whether Emir was the deranged killer or not, no one seemed to care anymore. The deaths of two of their comrades seemed to have been put far in the past, especially with the prospect of annihilation by the alien ship. Everyone simply assumed that Emir was either dead or just assimilated, or was always alien, or possessed.

And as far as Glorin, most viewed his demise as the result of his own delusions. As Connie had put it, and most seemed to agree, he died doing exactly what he wanted, exploring an alien artifact.

Horace sat back in his chair and put his feet up. He couldn’t remember the last time he had done that. He pressed complete on his order and knew he’d hear about it from Ben soon, but he didn’t care. Maybe, truly, Ben wouldn’t either.

A thought came to him, suddenly. He reached out to his ice desk, with the three metal drawers built into it, and pulled one open. Sitting at the bottom of the drawer was a red and white box with a deck of cards in it.

They needed a game night.

- Ben –

The calm before the storm. That’s how it felt. What it really was were a series of storms, and the calm before each one was numbingly boring.

For the first time in as long as he could remember, Ben had not argued an order he didn’t agree with, and off to the Odyssey he had gone. Looking back, he now understood the wisdom of Horace’s actions. Up here he was busy, he had order, a schedule, and as Jenna like to joke, people to boss around. But the calm was unnerving.

Nearly two weeks since the alien attack, or reprisal, or whatever everyone debated it was, and nothing else had taken place. The work had continued and even Ben had taken part in some of the extra vehicular labor work. Ben wasn’t an astronaut, nobody on the mission was, but it was truly something else, breathtaking, when he floated out, under tether, of course, into the nothingness of space. For hours on end, he and Jenna had worked on the large chunks of ice Connie had brought up with her from the surface. Three large plasma drills had worked nonstop to keep shaping and reforming the ice until they had made their own debris shield, covering the entire front and sides of the return ship. Jenna claimed she didn’t have the expertise that Emir would have used, but the end result was solid. Jenna had the foresight of attaching plenty of extra ice to the ship itself to act as extra radiation shielding and as extra ice for the shield, should anything happen on the return trip.

All the fuel was stored away in the large pods that lined the entire drive. The AI, Hammy, had run the calculations over and over again, and they had ample. Inside, the crew members had converted the ship into a living vessel, with Susan’s touch for zero gravity hydroponics a wonder. Each room was a floating jungle, with the plants growing better and faster than ever. Within two weeks of her work, they were already harvesting roots and leaves they could eat. Ben was amazed.

And that’s why he was afraid.

The entire mission had fallen under that pattern. Wonderful achievements followed by incredible calamity. There were two days left. Nearly one hundred days ago, they had opened up the alien vessel, to what they considered either an amazing discovery, or a truly horrific disaster. What had seemed impossible then, was on the verge of happening.

Home.

Of course, what would home bring? Charles was also on board the Odyssey, and doing better. He helped out where he could, and seemed, in general, more upbeat than he had in a while. Still, any talk of Earth left him without words, and the few he did speak were rarely any good. Ben talked to him, and Charles understood, the morale of the crew was essential, and so Charles never spoke about it, and no one asked him. But that shadow lingered.

They had nine months to deal with that. Joyce was certain that once they got closer to Earth, within four months distance, that she would be able to pick up different transmissions. There was no way that, even in a nuclear holocaust, every single human being on Earth was gone. Hiding, underground maybe, but not dead. They would have time to prepare for that eventuality, and if, in fact, it was as bleak as Charles expected it to be, then so be it. At least they would be home.

Still, there was something melancholy about leaving the tiny frozen moon. For two years this crew had lived and worked there, struggling through the low gravity, the lack of bright sunlight, the cold. And yet, it had become home in its own fashion. Some of them would remain on Europa forever.

There was a tiny cabin in the bridge of the Odyssey. It was intended, although rather without true purpose, as the captain’s quarters. Of course, the Odyssey didn’t have a captain. It never needed one. Still, the tiny room existed, and so Ben, under the insistence of everyone else, had taken possession of it. It was barely a closet, with a bed, a sink and a toilet. Everything folded up if he wanted space to do some exercises, but otherwise, barley a room. Instead, he would descend from the tiny cabin and sit on the bridge itself, as if it were his personal office. He knew better than to touch anything. At this point, no one did. The AI would fly them with just minimal supervision by Connie.

From here though, he had one of the few views out the front of the ship, and the incredible ice shield they had created. Ben wondered, as they approached Earth, would they appear as a comet in the sky. The shield was bound to sublimate, just like a comet would, just at a far lower rate. Both Jenna and Thomas seemed to think so. Emir would have known.

It was six AM by his EST watch he still kept. It was the time they all kept. Thankfully, there was no real day or night on Europa, or its orbit. He had finished his exercises for the morning and felt invigorated. Two more days.

“Good morning Odyssey,” he spoke in a deep voice over the ship’s comm. It was the real reason he liked being on the bridge; the ship broadcast channel. “I do believe breakfast this morning will be roasted vegetable omelet. Yes, I did dig up some of the eggs to use and don’t worry, we have enough for a few more times in the next nine months.”

Ben floated down the right lateral shaft down the Odyssey towards their designated mess hall. Susan was the real cook among them, but Jenna had taken the over the duties while on board the Odyssey, at least until Susan joined them by the end of the day. The air filtration system was working wonderfully on the ship, almost too well. Ben was sure he would get a whiff of the food as he pushed himself down the zero gravity shaft. In and out he passed the spinning rings, feeling a slight tug as he passed each one. But as he got closer, he still couldn’t smell anything, until he reached the mess hall. Then the smells overwhelmed him.

Everyone else was already there, and eating too. Someone laughed as he came in. Ben had made it a point of being the first one at breakfast, and here everyone was.

“Funny,” he smirked, grabbing a plate.

The gravity of the spinning rings felt good, although there was something almost hypnotic about sleeping in zero gravity.

He felt good.

They talked about what little work they had left, some plans for music that evening, but mostly, about the food. Somehow, it always came back to food. The morning hours started to wiz by when Ben noticed something was missing. He checked his watch, and it was already nine AM. The base below had not called in at eight as they were supposed to, and how they usually did. While the rest of the crew cleaned up the mess hall, Ben took out his tablet and linked it into the Odyssey’s short range communications.

“Base, this is Odyssey,” Ben started, “did I miss your call this morning?”

He waited a moment. Only Susan, Connie and Paul were left down below, and they were all linked to the main comm by their earpieces. Even if they weren’t in the control room, they could still answer. But as the minutes ticked by, no one answered.

“Odyssey to base. Please respond,” Ben continued.

Nothing.

“Joyce?” Ben called over. She came to him. “Any issues with comms this morning?”

Her head shifted back. “Not that I know of. Hold on.”

She took out her tablet and began going through her own apps. She gave the readings a quizzical look, then looked back at Ben.

“These,” she started, then stopped. “This is odd.”

They continued to tap on her tablet.

“What’s going on?” Ben asked.

“Crysta,” Joyce called over, ignoring her commander, “can you have Hammy run a sync with base?”

“Huh? Why? We don’t need any more syncs.” Crysta asked from behind one of the cooking tables.

“Just do it. I don’t have access,” Joyce said. The look on her face betrayed her concern.

“Yeah,” Crysta replied, taking out her own device and tapping it once. The results were nearly immediate.

“No link. Dead.”

Joyce looked up at Ben.

“Get to the comms now. You get me something on the base, anything. Ears, eyes. Anything. NOW!”