One Minute to Midnight (33 page)

Four hours passed, and then a tiny
white speck appeared in the distance, and even farther beyond it
was a bright star illuminating it from behind. The blip got closer,
and the planet on Jared’s monitor grew larger.
"That thing is enormous! It has to be ten times bigger than Earth."
Jared said.

"You think there’s anyone on it?"
Blythe asked. Jared shrugged.

"We’re not reading any
life signs coming from the planet, and this craft can detect life
from a thousand miles away. It looks like a giant ball of ice." Ty
said. He was looking at another smaller screen with the planet
centered on it, magnified by five.
"Wait, something’s floating around out there guys, a cylinder of
some kind. Hey, it’s the
Celestine
!" Ty yelled.
The crew breathed a sigh of relief. The closer they came the more
visible
Celestine
appeared against the backdrop of the giant white
planet.

"She's derelict." Jared
whispered.

"Maybe we can hail the
captain on com." Ty said. Jared turned to him and then back to his
control panel.
"
Celestine
, this
is the
USS Rapier
, do you copy?" Silence followed. "I repeat,
Celestine
, this is
the
USS Rapier
,
do you copy." More silence.

"You may be right, Cap'." Blythe said.
They were now within a hundred yards of the vessel, and could see a
large, gaping hole in her hull. Small bars of gold floated aimless
in the vacuum of space.

"There must have been an attack of
some kind." Master Sergeant Dale Wayne said. He was looking at a
monitor, and zooming in on the derelict ship. "It looks like
there's some devices out there as well. Communication satellites,
maybe?"

"Maybe, but we'd better be on
alert..." Jared said. Before he could finish, the side of their
vessel was rocked by an unexpected blast coming from the direction
of the planet.

"What the hell!" Blythe
screamed.

A fire had erupted in the
kitchen, and the artificial gravity was knocked out of commission,
rendered inoperable by the last blast. All on board began to float
as balls of fire bobbed around the bridge. Jared looked at the
control console and saw that the craft was not just leaking a
little bit of oxygen; it was escaping at a high rate and the fire
was using up the rest of it. Another shot slammed into the
Rapier
,
sending Ty reeling onto their table. A fireball
was floating through his area and landed on his hair, causing the
Staff Sergeant to burst into flames as he floated through space.
Jared donned his helmet and turned his oxygen tank on.

"Get your helmets..."
Another shot blew a hole through the side of the
Rapier
. Jared grabbed
ahold of his seat, and strapped into it a split second before a
large chunk was blasted off the ship, opening a human-sized hole in
the side. It sucked Ty Williams, Blythe Delgado, and Dale Wayne out
into the frozen hell of space, screaming as they
disappeared.

Moments later, as the
pressurization dissipated from the
USS
Rapier,
Jared sat in his captain’s chair
stone still and terrified, as his friends drifted about like frozen
refuse in the vacuum of space.
"Get it together, Jared. You’re still alive." He told himself as he
calmed his breathing. "The lander!"
He remembered the planetary lander that was attached to their ship.
It was his only way out of a similar fate to his crew’s, and might
get him to the planet surface. The lander was sitting in a small
hangar bay through a closed hatch at the back of the ship. His O2
display read forty-five minutes, and it would take twenty to ready
the lander.

"Move Jared." He said to
himself.

He unbuckled and pulled
his floating body through the wrecked hulk of his ship. The firing
from the satellites had ceased after his crew was killed, and the
onboard fire was out since there was no more oxygen to feed it. He
punched his security code into the door to the narrow tunnel
connecting The
Rapier
to the R2-4 Planetary Lander. Once inside, he secured the
hatch and began to flip switches, holding his breath before
flipping each one, certain that they would error out and he would
be doomed. A few moments later, the cabin pressure was solid and
all systems were functioning in the three-man lander, and he was
ready to go.
The Rapier
was drifting toward the
Celestine
at a high rate, and soon
they would collide. Jared pressed a button labeled
DETACH CRAFT
and for the
first time since he got into the lander, a button failed to
function.

"Shit!" Jared yelled. He
pressed the button again, but still nothing. "You son of a…!" He
yelled. The light blinked on and he felt a jolt as the R2-4 PL
disconnected from the
Rapier
.

Thrusters ignited behind him, and as
Jared steered his emergency craft toward the planet, he hit the
frozen body of Ty Williams staring unblinking into his former
crewmate's glassy, lifeless eyes. Ty looked more like a wax statue
in a museum than a human now, and it both fascinated and terrified
Jared at the same time. Ty’s body bounced away from the ship, and
as he disappeared the massive planet below began to come closer.
Jared flew past a huge debris field of satellites, armed with
cannons. Many of them were destroyed, but some gleamed with shiny
chrome exterior armor, and seemed to be tracking him as he passed
by, but never fired at him.

"Much obliged, boys." Jared mumbled.
Why had they spared him? Some questions were better left alone, and
he concentrated on the task at hand.
The planet before him looked like a giant ball of ice, and his
onboard sensors displayed no signs of life on the ground, but there
was an atmosphere with breathable air. The R2-4 PL had been
constructed like a flying saucer, with a three hundred sixty degree
translucent metallic window.

"Alone in space
is
really alone. Jesus!"
Jared said to himself.
To the right, he noticed a large patch of green and brown on the
planet surface and in the center of this landmass rising high into
the sky was a tower. At first Jared thought it might have been a
mountain, but the symmetry was too perfect for it to be a naturally
made structure. He turned toward it, in the hope that there might
be people that could help him get back home again.
"That's viewable from space? It must look massive from the ground."
Jared said to himself.

As he descended into the large
planet's atmosphere, a piece of orbiting debris about the size of a
small car slammed into the side of his vehicle, causing him to spin
out of control through the clouds and into the sky above a large
glacial area of the planet. He had been knocked off course by about
ten miles, and when he regained control of the craft Jared was able
to crash land into a massive snow bank. The artificial
gravitational field inside the R2-4 PL kept Jared from being torn
apart from the impact when the craft slammed into the ground. He
looked around after his initial shock wore off, and realized he was
in a frozen wasteland. Large ice formations jutted from the
surface, and big white snowflakes began to fall on his window,
quickly blocking his vision.

"Stay here and starve, or go outside
and freeze to death." He said to himself. He noticed a cave opening
to the north, about fifty yards away, and thought he might be able
to make it there if the snow did not become too heavy.

There was a plasma disruptor rifle
onboard equipped with a thermal scope. If there was anyone outside,
their heat signature would show up even through ice, and stone.
Before Jared opened the hatch, he took a three hundred sixty degree
look around, for his relative safety, but still found no signs of
life.

"This is either a good thing for me,
or it's going to get very complex once I get hungry and can't find
food. I need to get to that tower!"

Jared looked up toward the horizon and
saw the tower he had been heading for when he was knocked off
course. It was a massive black structure, rising high into the gray
sky, and now almost obscured by faster, heavier falling snow. The
oxygen in his suit was depleted—the alarm buzzed on his wrist—and
he began to feel the first effects of suffocation, like a brain fog
that slowed his thought and movement.
"There had better be oxygen out there." Jared popped his helmet
off, and exited the craft. The air was sweet and fresh to his
nostrils, much like cotton candy.
Jared took his rifle and the three packs of space rations, and
walked toward the cave as large flakes landed on his head. Each
snowflake was the size of a grapefruit, and as they piled up more
and more as the ground disappeared. A wicked wind began to whistle
through the ice formations, and Jared picked up his pace. The cave
opening was just ahead. When he finally arrived at the entrance, he
saw that this cave was not only enormous, but was extended far back
into the side of the mountain. Jared walked inside, looking around
at a ceiling nearly filled with human sized icicles hanging from
the ceiling.

The wind whipped and
moaned outside as more snow fell, but he felt safe in the cave. He
could see the R2-4 PL, half buried in the snow bank and defunct.
Jared turned and surveyed the interior of the cave. A tunnel
stretched back far into the unknown, and the immediate opening he
was in made a right angle turn into darkness. If he was going to
explore the cave, he would need a lantern, and the only one he and
his crew brought with them was on the
Rapier
. His suit was rated for the
extreme cold temperatures of space, so regardless how cold it got
outside, Jared would be warm in his suit. His nose, lips, and ears,
however, were another story, and without oxygen to breath he could
not put the helmet back on.
He stepped back toward the entrance and looked left toward where
the tower dwarfed anything he had ever seen.

"I've got to get to that
tower."

"Whose there? Who are you and why have
you disturbed my sleep?" Came a voice from back in the cave.
Jared froze for a moment and raised his rifle in the direction of
the voice. It had come from beyond the right angle turn.

"Who are you? You'd better be gone
when I get up there." The voice growled.

"Please, let me stay, just for the
night. I'll clear out in the morning. I crash landed here and now I
have nowhere to go. I'll die out there if you make me leave." Jared
pleaded.

His rifle safety was off, and he
pointed toward the voice with shaking hands, and looked through his
thermal sight. He saw no body heat signature, but each time the
voice spoke, the sound was closer. Was he going crazy? Hearing
things? It could have been space madness, or too much stress from
watching his crew die in a senseless tragedy. Footfalls could be
heard from ahead, and a moment later a large man covered in white
and brown fur, wearing a leather vest rounded the corner. Jared
thought the man resembled a hybrid of half bear, half
man.

"A human? Where did you come from? We
killed and ate all of you in the War of Kilmong." The giant
said.
"Look, I just want to get off this planet. I don't want any
trouble. My crew was killed by some weaponized satellites orbiting
your planet."

"Yeah, those were placed in orbit a
long time ago to prevent outsiders from soliciting their wares on
this planet, Torex." said the giant.

"You guys placed weapons in space to
stop travelling salesmen? That's ludicrous."

"That's right." The giant nodded. "We
had our complexities and strife in the old days, no doubt. It's
much more peaceful now without all the noise." The giant
said.

"Can you help me get to the tower in
that city I saw over there?" Jared asked.

"I could. But I’m going to eat you. I
haven't had a human in years, and you guys are delicious. You ready
to go?" The giant produced a crossbow from behind his back that had
a bolt nocked and ready to fire. Jared never lowered his rifle, and
fired a round, disintegrating the giant's hand and knocking the
crossbow to the ground.

"AAARGH! You shot my hand off!" The
giant screamed. Then he charged.

Jared fired another round as he backed
up toward the mouth of the cave. He tripped, fell backward, and
fired a plasma round into the ceiling, knocking an icicle loose.
The large shard pierced the top of the giant’s head, impaling
him.

"Glargh!" He yelled. The giant fell
forward on his face as a pool of green blood spilled from the top
of his head and mutilated hand. More footfalls could be heard from
back inside the cave.

"Time to go." Jared said to himself.
He darted out of the cave and into the tail end of the
snowstorm.
His knew the giants would easily follow his tracks, so he moved
with haste toward the tower through a maze of ice structures.
Jared's terror was high, and his fatigue from the recent string of
traumatic events had sapped his energy. His tired mind began
fighting to keep him on task, and as the tower grew closer, he
began to see green grass and trees. Roars from behind rang through
the air, coming closer as Jared ran with his rifle slung across his
back. He came to a chasm, where a bridge lay, turned away from him,
mounted on a massive column in the center of the void. This column
vanished below a layer of clouds far into the depths below. As
Jared approached the cliff, a three-foot tall pedestal rose from
the ground with a red button in the center of a six-inch square
panel. There seemed to be no way to get to the bridge, but the
tower was on the other side. Jared pressed the button and a
holographic image of a pretty woman with brunette curls
appeared.