Europa (Deadverse Book 1) (6 page)

“Charles? You OK? Your vitals are spiking,” Ben chimed in over the speakers.

The captain took a deep breath. There was nothing he could do. Not now.

Not ever.

“Yeah, all good. Just exciting is all,” he replied.

There was a pause before Ben responded. “You? Excited, huh?”

That was all he said. Charles knew better than to say anything else.

Soon enough he would.

For a few minutes the drones worked on the hatch, trying to find any mechanism that could open it up. The professor was wandering around the hull, taking readings and speaking into his helmet, likely recording everything for research, or posterity. Charles walked over to the hatch and looked down, just to see if he could notice anything. The drones had far better eyesight than any human could, but he looked anyways. As they prodded with their fingers, Charles noticed it.

“Ben, you see this?” Charles said, focusing down on the hatch.

“What?” the commander replied.

“Look at their hands,” he said, pointing down at the hatch.

As the drones moved about the surface, they left no imprints. Charles looked down at his feet, and saw them slightly sunk into the hull, but when he looked at the drones, their feet stood completely on top of it. They were far heavier than he was, yet he sank, and they didn’t. Again, he looked at the hatch, and their poking and prodding were leaving no imprints on the surface of the vessel.

“Is that..? Hold on, I’m getting Cary in on this,” Ben said over the speakers. In the background, Charles could hear him yelling her name.

Charles ordered the drones to stop, and they stood up, erect and silent. Crouching down on his knees, the captain reached with his hands, slowly, and touched the surface. It didn’t feel any different than when he had first landed. He pushed gently on the area around the hatch, and immediately, his hand sank a bit.

“What the hell….” He whispered.

The hull began to ooze around his hands and he sunk them a little deeper. He pulled his hands free, and they came out clean. He turned his hands over and looked at them. There was no speck of hull matter on them. He looked back down in shock at the hull, just in time to see it smooth over where he had pressed his hands in. With renewed determination, the captain plunged his hands at the surface again, feeling the ooze give way to his force. He pushed down in right over the hatch area and felt his hands go up to their wrists.

“Amazing….”

“Captain Hoarry, this is Cary. Am I seeing this right?”

“Yeah. I don’t get it. I can push in, but the drones couldn’t. Look, right here, all I have to….”

Charles started falling in. He gasped and shouted, trying to grab on to anything, but it was a free fall. After all the time on Europa, and its fractional gravity, the full force of the gravity he felt now was almost as shocking as the sensation of falling. He was falling head first when he felt something grab him by his ankle. He tried looking up, but couldn’t see anything through the hull.

He was in it. Stuck in it, somehow. His arms could move freely, almost as if he was in water, but with less resistance. There was something there.

“Uh, guys, pull me out? Can you see this?” the captain’s voice was mixed with excitement and fear.

There were no replies. He swung his arm around and looked at his wrist pad. It was completely blank. He tapped on it, trying to bring it out of sleep mode, but nothing happened. He felt himself being pulled up as the drone that had grabbed on to him pulled him out. He keep tapping on the wrist pad until he was clear of the hull. No sooner than he was out, and he was cleanly out, the wrist pad came back to life.

“You OK, Charles?” Ben’s voice came screaming into his ears, heavily distorted.

Charles shook his head as the drone set up down upright.

“Charles?” Ben’s voice asked again, clearly this time.

“Um. Did you see that?”

“We did. That drone acted quickly. Thank god, too.”

“There’s, um….” Charles stopped, still looking at his wrist pad. It was currently displaying all of the drone information. He tapped one and it brought that drone’s vitals and camera up on display. He reached over to the hatch and sunk that arm into the ooze, just up above the wrist pad. It instantly went black. He pulled it back out, and it came back to life.

“We, uh, have a problem. I think. I think it’s a problem.”

Charles stood back up and looked around for the professor. He was nowhere to be seen.

“Oh, shit.”

- Ben -

“Cary, take those cameras and start looking now. NOW!” Ben shouted. “Geoff, get the EUAs back online.”

Cary rolled her chair over to the console, nearly lifting it off its magnets. She started linking in to all of the drone soldier cameras. “Bobby, take these. Susan, these.” The three of them starting going back over the video from the drones. Geoff rushed over to the consoles and brought up the data from the EUAs that were on the sides of the wall, frozen.

Cary looked back at Ben. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

“We were so busy with Charles we forgot to keep an eye on him.” Ben was visibly angry. He had lost himself in the moment, and now someone was missing.

“Ben, even the EUAs were on….oh. Here,” Geoff stopped short.

Ben ran over as fast as his magnetic boots allowed him to. They scanned the video back in reverse, starting from where they were focused on Charles being pulled out by his ankle. The EUAs focused their recorders on them, then in reverse, slowly panned out until they were taking up the whole cavern. Glorin was nowhere in sight.

“What? I don’t see him? Where and when did we lose him?”

“I’m not picking up anything on the network, no vitals, no data, nothing from his suit,” Crysta told them. “That shouldn’t be possible. I don’t think.”

Ben looked back from Crysta to Geoff. “So what did you see?”

The laboratory engineer slowed the video down. Again he played it in reverse as the screen zoomed out. He stopped the video and pointed. There, at the very edge of the screen, was the shape of a body, in the hull. It was a form, frozen in the hull. He played the video forward a bit, and it was clear the form was sinking into the vessel.

“He…..he fell through?” Cary asked.

“Or was pulled through,” Geoff said, quietly.

“Ok, we have nothing now,” Ben stood up and said with authority. He could already feel the tension in the room. “We need to move quickly. Charles, we need those drones now.”

Ben sat back down on his console and brought up the live camera feeds. Charles was seated on the ground, one knee up and the other leg stretched out. His arm was sticking in through the exact spot he had fallen through. He would pull it out then stick it in again.

“Ben, this hull, this, whatever it is. Well, it’s stopping my wrist pad from working. At all.”

Ben turned around and looked at Cary. She could only shrug her shoulders. They all knew that their first time down onto the hull of the vessel would be one of my surprises.

“Ok? And?” Ben was at a loss of words.

“Something is going on here. I fell in. The drones can’t. It’s… odd, Ben,” Charles’ voice regained its composure. “It’s almost as if it was blocking technology. I know that doesn’t make sense, but look.”

Charles gave an order, and one of the drone soldiers, number 7, reached down and pushed onto the hull. It remained completely solid, not giving any at all. Ben and the crew in command watched intently as the drone stood up and Charles reached down at the same spot and pushed. His hand vanished into the hull as easy as pressing on water.

“How is that possible?” Ben asked out loud.

Geoff almost laughed. “We’re on Europa, millions of miles from Earth, watching a video of someone on the surface of an alien spacecraft. At least, we think that’s what it is. Do we even have enough time here to find out what possible is?”

“Dammit, Charles. What about Glorin?”

“It would be stupid to go in now, even if I could take all the drones in with me. But, just me? Well, Ben, if you want me to, you know I will.”

Ben sat back in his chair, suddenly exhausted. He had expected many things to go wrong. This was not one of them. No one liked Glorin. They could barely tolerate with him. But they certainly couldn’t leave him down there to die, or whatever it was that would happen to him. They had to do something, and quickly.

“Charles,” Ben said into the mic, “Get back up here. We are going to work on something from this end.”

The mission commander could see Charles nodding in the video stream and begin walking back towards the entry shaft in the ice.

“Jenna, have you been following?” Ben brought her communication link online with the rest.

“I’m…, I’m here boss. I’m getting the winch ready.” Jenna’s usually upbeat voice sounded rattled.

“Just get him out of there.”

When all the soldiers, Charles and Glorin had free fallen down the shaft, Jenna had then lowered down a carbon silicate chain to serve as an elevator for them. It had just reached the bottom. Ben watched as Charles walked over to the robe, locked a cable onto his belt, and gave a thumbs up to the EUA watching everything.

“Go ahead, Jenna.”

In the video stream, Charles started rising up in the ice chamber, like a story out of the Bible. The EUAs followed his ascension up and into the shaft, then shifted their cameras back onto the top of the alien vessel. The drone soldiers were being left behind, just in case.

- Charles -

At the edge of the shaft, Charles took hold of the ice and easily shot himself out of the hole in the ice. He floated a bit in the air until a gust of vented gas pushed him back down into the ice. They were built into every suit to keep anyone who went outside grounded. It was highly unlikely anyone could literally jump off the moon, but there was a good chance of jumping very high, landing very far, and hurting themselves. Charles had been outside enough times to know how to land well after the gust. He stood up and began bouncing over towards Jenna.

The engineer tapped the side of her helmet, and they both changed to the one-on-one frequency.

“Captain? Are you OK?” her voice chirped over the helmet speakers.

If anything, he was disgusted. “Yeah, I’m fine. Not a thing wrong with me.”

He bounced past Jenna and up to the lone standing drone soldier. Looking down at his tablet, Charles brought up the specs for the drone and brought up the voice commands.

“Stay here with the winch. Report any movement or anomalies. Keep me informed with O2 supplies every ten minutes through the tablet.”

Charles looked up, half expecting the drone to respond. They weren’t programmed to. Instead, he looked down at the tablet and saw the confirmation the drone had received and understood his orders.

The captain continued on towards the moon rover and got in on the passenger side and waited. Jenna had been standing near the winch the entire time.

“Well?” Charles chimed in over the comm.

Jenna snapped up, nearly stumbling over. She was one of the few people on base that had real expertise driving the rover. She ran as fast as the moon’s gravity allowed her to, controlling the movements of her legs with the downward bursts of gas that kept her grounded. Those were part of the 02 reserves she had, so running on the moon was not something she did regularly. Once she climbed into the rover, she pushed the power button and turned the machine around. Small spikes erupted from the six wheels on the rover, keeping the machine hooked and dug into the ice, allowing them to traverse rather quickly across the smooth shelf.

Behind them, Jupiter continued its domination of the sky, the purple storm churning silently.

- Ben -

The entire crew of the Europa mission, minus Charles and Jenna, sat in the central command meeting room. It had only been used twice before, once when it was first built, and then for the one year anniversary. This was the first time it was used for an emergency.

“Well, from what I can understand, and from what I have read and learned, we can just tell the AI what to do, and it will run the drones through. It has more than enough leeway to make decisions along the way. We can watch everything from up here and guide them.”

Bobby was standing in front of the crew as they all gave their ideas on how to retrieve the lost crewmate. The real question was if they would send the drones alone, or if someone else would go with them. Most assumed Charles would; it was his job after all.

“Ok, are we really sending those guys to their deaths?” Susan asked.

“You have always been the soft one,” Cary smirked, although Susan smiled back.

“Isn’t that why they are here?” Crysta asked.

Ben nodded. He looked around and saw most of them agreed. Even the few that might not agree would easily agree that no one on the base, save for Charles, was trained in any capacity to deal with the alien vessel.

“Geoff, what are the current 02 levels for Mr. Ignacius?” Ben asked.

“Seventeen hours, give or take. It also depends a lot on the type of stress the abducted man is under.”

“IF he is still alive,” the chief lab engineer added.

“IF he is, or not, does not change what we have to do.”

Everyone appeared to agree.

“So what are we waiting for?” Thomas asked the obvious question.

A door hissed open and Charles strode into the little meeting room, Jenna quick on his heels.

“We can’t send the drones,” Charles said with confidence, tossing his suit’s tablet onto the table. The small device thudded heavily on the wooden table, one of the very few items made from an Earth tree to have been brought to the moon.

“Captain,” Horace interjected, “now is clearly not the time to get emotional about the drones. Were they fully aware, and still soldiers, we would still expect them to do their jobs.”

“Yeah, thanks, shrink,” Charles looked over at the station psychologist with a stern look. It was no secret the captain did not like him. “We can’t send the drones because they won’t work.”

“Um?” someone said, although it was a feeling shared by everyone.

“Ok, we saw a little bit about this before. Surely…” Ben started.

“There is something about that vessel that is blocking, I don’t know, technology,” Charles attempted to explain.

“Well, it can’t just…” Crysta started to expound.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s not that simple, I know,” Charles interrupted. “You have all seen the footage I’m sure. The drones worked and worked on that hatch and nothing. My arm goes through, and I nearly get swallowed up.”

“Maybe that is just how the entering mechanism works. You were all saying the hull was soft?” Thomas asked.

“I thought that too, until I stuck my hand in again,” Charles continued.

“I saw you doing that. What were you doing?” Ben asked.

Charles pointed at the tablet. “Every time I pushed my hand through, the tablet died. It went blank.” The captain looked around to make sure everyone was listening. “But the moment I pulled it back out, it was back on. Not like, turning back on, rebooting, nothing like that. It was on, just like nothing had happened. But inside the hull, or goo, nothing.”

Crysta and Joyce both reached out to grab the tablet, but Joyce came up short, and gave her friend a quick wink. The IT specialist instantly turned the tablet it on and began running diagnostic subroutines. She watched the data intently while Charles continued to talk.

“I was watching everything down there. The professor and I walked on the weird hull and it reacted to the two us us like that, all soft and oozely. But each step the drones took was on one hundred percent solid ground. Why is that?”

All he got were confused looks.

“So, the drones can’t get in.”

Silence took over the room for a few moments, until the captain’s tablet started beeping.

“This is…” Crysta started, still looking at the tablet. “Well. There were no overrides. No internal attacks. All the hardware checks out, no damage. Here is the weird thing. There is one minor data correction, but it’s done here,” she said, pointing at the tablet despite the fact no one could see, “where the tablet syncs back with the station time. There is no lost time, but suddenly it has to sync ahead six seconds. It lost six seconds, but it hadn’t turned off.”

“So WE,” Thomas started, looking around the room, waving his arm slightly around, “we have to go into that thing.”

“YAY!”

Everyone spun around towards the door, where Jenna stood with a giant grin on her face. Thomas laughed. Then all eyes were focused on Charles.

“I guess we go in, then,” Ben added, an air of defeat in his voice.

“There’s one more thing,” Charles said with a raised finger. “Anyone know how our 02 in the suits is regulated?”

Everyone looked around at each other, trying to figure out the answer, then they all looked at Geoff.

“What?” he shrugged his shoulders. “They’re just regulation 02 flows, run by the….” He stopped. Everyone realized it too, and heads turned towards Crysta, then down at the tablet she was holding.

“None of our gear is going to work in there. It’s all digital. Our air, our communications, we won’t have video, hell, we may not even have any light.”

If the air hadn’t gone out of the room before, it certainly did now.

“Time go pack up and go home?” Gary tried to joke.

Ben stood up and looked around. “Please, don’t look so helpless people. You are all the finest in their field on Earth. You’re telling me we can’t figure this out? We have seventeen hours, ladies and gentlemen. We need solutions. We need old school solutions.”

He turned around to start walking out of the meeting room before stopping short of the doors and turning to face the group again.

“NOW!”