Max sat on the built-in bunk, facing the door of his small room. Above him was a second bed, but he had the room to himself. There was a small closet next to a sink, and a pair of stools next to the door. The light overhead put out white light, hinting at blue-green. Most of the room was off white, with objects adding color here and there. He was reading from a tablet when someone knocked on the door.
Max opened the door to find one of Captain Sayle’s men waiting there; Max didn’t know his name. “What can I do for you…”
“I’m Jim, Mr. Bell, uh,” Jim spoke slowly, but not without confidence, “The Captain, uh, would like to see you in Astro.”
Max furrowed his brow, “Ok, lead the way.”
On the Tungsten Ferry, functions like telescope control and long-range communications were controlled from the bridge. The Fall Back had a design along a more recent trend. Navigation and piloting were handled on a flight deck, not much bigger than a cockpit. Everything else was in a separate location called Astronomical control; Astro for short. When Max arrived there, Mike Sayle and Lewis Branch were engaged in an argument with Julie Pearson, mostly, and Dan Hondle, the co-pilot.
“…this mission has been one disaster after another, and I will not permit you to put the company’s assets at risk again.”
“I do not need your permission for anything here, Ms Pearson.”
“Captain, we do have a responsibility to our current passengers,” cut in Dan Hondle.
“We have a responsibility to help if we can, Dan,” replied Lewis.
“And what if we can’t take them all in? that’s a space-liner distress call; this ship can’t hold a thousand people,” countered Dan, “are we just going to say hi then move on, leave anyone we can’t take?”
“At least they would know we’re sending help – and you don’t know they’re stranded, they might just need repairs –“
“I can’t even believe we’re having this discussion!” shouted Julie, “I’m saying no, no!”
Sayle glanced over and saw Max waiting at the door. They had been in space for three and a half days and Sayle hadn’t seen Max since their talk in the infirmary.
“Mr. Bell, I need you to weigh in on this,” Sayle motioned Max over to the argument. Max walked in.
“There is nothing to weigh in on, we’re done here!” shouted Julie with frustration.
Max gave her a look of total confusion that took her aback. “What is the situation Captain?” he asked.
“We’re getting a general distress call from a space-liner. It’s about a day away. If we start to decelerate in the next forty-five minutes, we won’t blow past it and have to come back. Problem is, we’ll use up three quarters of our reserve fuel, meaning no more stops on the way back. And like Dan was pointing out, we may not actually be able to do much for them.”
“We also run the risk of getting in trouble with whatever stranded them,” added Max, he was looking at the floor thinking out loud.
“Yes! See! We should stay on course!” Julie took up her argument again.
Sayle sighed.
“That’s all we know?” asked Max.
“That’s all,” confirmed Lewis. Sayle nodded.
“What does the telescope say?” asked Max. Julie had started pacing in place, exasperation flowing out of her ears.
“There is definitely something there, we’re not getting much more though,” said Lewis, "The suns at a bad angle."
“There’s twenty-three of your people onboard, this is your rescue,” Sayle was speaking directly to Max, “If you think the best option is to move on, we’ll send someone back once we reach earth…”
“I appreciate the consideration Captain,” started Max, “but I think we should help if we can. It’s your ship, I’ll defer to your decision.” He nodded at Sayle.
Sayle looked down, Even if I was conflicted on this, all I would need to do is look at who is arguing what side to know the right decision, He thought.
“Michael…” Julie started, with a scolding tone.
Sayle looked up at that, “Jim, Kyle, get her out of here.” He turned to the consoles and hit a comm button to call the pilot, “Val, set a course to put us at full stop next to that ship.”
Max and Lester were looking at the display for the telescope in Astro when Sayle came in. They were closing in, only about five hundred kilometers to reach the ship. Since the discussion, Max had spent a lot of time in Astro, trying to get more information. His efforts hadn’t yielded much so he pulled Lester in to help.
Max noticed Sayle right away, but Lester was fixed to the display.
“It’s a Zero Corp. space liner, I can see the logo on the side. Probably – oh! Hi Captain...” Lester trailed off when he noticed Sayle.
“Go on,” the Captain gestured.
“uh, right. Well based on the size I would estimate it holds about two thousand passengers and crew.”
“Is "Zero" the carrier?” asked Max.
“Yeah, and the manufacturer,” replied Lester
“I don’t know much about the company,” said Max. Sayle nodded in agreement.
“They’re huge! Ever heard of Yamaha?”
“Didn’t they make saxophones about two hundred years ago?”
“Yeah, but they also made motorcycles, speed boats, cargo ships. Zero Corp. is just like that except bigger, they build everything, toasters, spaceships, pharmaceuticals, television, “
“Yeah got it,” Max cut him off.
“Why is this important?” asked Sayle.
“Oh yeah, uh, those ships,” Lester pointed at the display, “are designed to take people on round about trips to the moon, or move big cargo or people between the moon and Mars. I can’t figure out what they would be doing out here; there’s no reason to move that many people out to anything beyond the Martian orbit.”
That left them in silence. They all turned to the display to ponder. The telescope could be used manually in case of emergency, but otherwise ran its feed directly into the Fall Back’s main computer. The display screen was about forty inches diagonal, at this range the space liner was clear, stretching across the screen. As they started at it, Max started to notice something wrong behind the ship.
“Are you guys seeing this…” he started to ask. Suddenly the display zoomed out, shrinking the freighter to about a quarter size in the lower right corner. They all three got a clammy, panic feeling as something three times the size of the space liner started to move away, from behind it. Max could barely see it, the ships computer started adding orange lines to outline it, the thing was so black, the computer hadn’t even detected it until it started moving.
Sayle felt a very primal sensation of fear, like a gazelle noticing the lion waiting just behind the grass. The thing accelerated smoothly; the auto track on the telescope had it for about one and a half second, before it picked up too much speed and vanished.
Semi panicked, Sayle rushed over to the console and started doing calculations based on the telescopes’ observation.
“Did you see how fast it moved, it must be ten times as massive as that space liner and it accelerated like a lifeboat.” Lester commented in a hushed voice. He and Max were both frozen, pale.
Sayle exhaled loudly and slumped over on the console. “What?!” cried Max with alarm.
Sayle leaned back, relief on his face, letting Max relax a little, “I just checked its trajectory, it’s moving away almost orthogonal to our trajectory.
“Yeah, but what was it?” asked Max, “and what was it doing to that ship?”
The computer had re-fixed on the Zero Corp. ship, it sat motionless on the display.
The Fall Back whirled around the space liner in quick, gentle arcs. They had made the stop and, without any sign of the phantom ship, decided to proceed with the rescue operation. The giant ship had scared Sayle and Max so badly, they decided not to make its existence public knowledge. They brought Lewis in and showed him the recording from the scope, to a similar reaction, and since then he and Lester had been taking shifts in Astro scanning for larger objects in proximity to their ship, in case it returned.
Max was sitting in the co-pilot seat in the flight deck, next to Val. Sayle stood behind them watching their progress. As they moved over the ship, looking for damage, they passed to the side that had been facing away from them on their trip in. Max and Sayle grunted in unison at what they saw; the ship had a gaping hole, scorched and scraped in a spiral like pattern around the edges. It looked like a fifty-foot leach bite.
“What,” Val let it hang, “is that?”
“I’ve never even heard of anything like this,” said Max.
Val took the ship in closer for a better look. The searchlights revealed big hunks of the decks missing inside the hole. As they approached, they could see bodies floating in the space around the damage.
“This is a huge ship, how are we going to find anyone left alive?” Max turned to look at Sayle over the chair.
“I’ve searched bigger before. We’ll take six teams of three and go deck by deck.”
“Ships like this usually have several docks we could use, hook the Fall Back up directly?” suggested Max.
“No,” rejected the Captain, “I don’t want any part of my ship connected to that thing.”
“Jake could probably land the lifeboat inside that hole,” suggested Val.
“Dan told me Jake had been giving him some relief up here,” said Sayle with a half smile at Val.
She turned back and looked out the view port, “Just thought it might be a good place to start.”
“Uh hu,” chuckled Sayle.
“Sounds like a plan to me,” said Max, swinging out of the chair and heading for the hatch, “See you in the hold, Captain.”
Jake brought the lifeboat gently to rest on the middle deck inside the hole. The deck above it had been torn away more significantly leaving room for an easy landing. The cargo doors at the back end of the boat opened like a clamshell, the lower forming a ramp. Led by Max and Sayle, the eighteen-man rescue crew piled out into the derelict space-liner. Jake and two additional men would stay behind and guard the lifeboat, just to be safe.
The team gathered back under the overhang of the deck above, stepping over debris and blackened wreckage to get there. Sayle stood discussing the plan with Max and Lewis. Once everyone was gathered Sayle turned to address the group over space suit comms.
“Alright, we’re looking for survivors here. Based on what we’ve seen so far I don’t expect to find much, but if that changes keep in mind, before you make any promises, the space on our ship is not unlimited,” he warned, “If there are too many survivors, I’ll have to figure something out to deal with any overflow. I’ll handle that if it comes up.
“Mission clock on this one is two hundred minutes; be back here by that time. As usual, the clock goes off if we find survivors. Stay with your search team, the leads know the plan, and call in as soon as you find anything.”
The huge space liner was twenty decks deep and about two hundred yards long. Each of the six search teams were assigned three decks to cover; the first done would pick up the remaining two, which were closest to the lifeboat. At mission clock 00:32:45/03:20:00, Max’s team were moving through their second deck. He, Ned Roberts, and Lester Bob had abandoned their orange suits for the illuminated yellow space suits from the Fall Back.
So far no one had found anything, alive. The ship was a disaster and Max was beginning to think bringing Lester was a mistake. After breaking from Sayle’s meeting, Max’s team had started looking for an intra-deck passageway, but on the way they had come to the first signs of conflict. As they neared the access tubes, located next to the elevator shafts, they noticed that the walls were covered with evidence of laser fire. A closer look would reveal a pile of bodies trying to get out of the elevator, dried blood turning the floor and walls brown.
Fortunately the tubes had been clear and the uppermost deck was basically empty. Max had never been on a ship like this one before; there were some astonishing things on the upper most deck. They began searching at the extreme forward end and worked backwards, starting with the bridge. It was a huge room with a giant viewing window and seats for a crew of twenty. Flanking each side were two giant reflecting telescopes with a view of about one hemisphere.
After that it was like any other ship; just a series of connected corridors and hatchways, except they went on and on, until they reached the arboretum. They opened the hatch to reveal a huge glass domed room. Below were five large trees bare of their leaves. It should have been extremely eerie, but the trees somehow comforted Max. He started walking over to one and felt a change in the ground under his boots. He looked down to find dead grass covered in thousands of brown leaves. Passing through the center of the little clearing was a little stream, about three feet wide, frozen solid.
Max put a hand on the nearest tree. The poor things had died with every other-exposed life form on the ship when the pressure and air was let out. But Max put that out of his head for a second and it became a winter clearing in a forest back on earth. The feeling gave him pause and brought back his calm after the horror on the first deck.
Now, moving through deck two, they were back into the bloody nightmare again, and Lester wasn’t taking it very well. There were far fewer bodies than Max would have expected for a ship like this, but any that you had to push aside to get down the corridor were too many. Most floated, spinning slowly in the dark, but occasionally they would come to one still rooted to the floor by its shoes, rocking like a dormant zombie.
For a while, Ned had tried to keep a conversation going, to keep them sane. That had died out quickly though. The empty ghost-like quality of the ship wasn’t conducive to a running dialogue. Max stayed tuned into the lead channel on the comms, mixing it with his teams so he could hear both. Apparently the whole ship looked basically the same as what they had seen: empty or bloodbath.
At 00:43:28/03:20:00 they were about twenty yards from the aft end of the second deck. They came around a corner and found the corridor filled with about fifteen bodies, floating lazily about. The floor, walls and ceiling were painted red with blood, dotted with black burn marks.
“Uh, Max,” uttered Lester, “I think I need to get back to the lifeboat.”
Max turned, got between Lester and the view and put his hands out on Lester’s shoulders, “You sure Lester?”
“Yeah, I just…” he trailed off, “I’m sorry boss, I just can’t be here anymore.”
“Hey, no big deal,” Max reassured him, “Let’s get you back down there. Thanks for letting me know.” In space, knowing your limits was one of the most important things a person could do.
The team shifted to a side corridor and started moving to where Lester estimated a lift tube would be. They cut out of what looked like a medical wing and came right out to the nursery in the maternity ward. Light poured onto the team out of a huge window. Max whipped around and found himself face to face with another, live man.
“We found some!” exclaimed Lester, practically hopping up and down. On the other side of the glass, survivors had somehow rigged emergency power and sealed in pressure. Max had already called in the find to Lewis and was trying to communicate with the trapped survivors.
There were between twenty and thirty people inside, but one man appeared to be in charge and was waving signals to Max. Unfortunately it wasn’t going quickly. Max pointed to his helmet to indicate radio, but the man shook his head negative.
“Hey, you guys got anything to write with?” asked Max. They all looked around, coming up empty. Before they could figure it out the man inside held up a sign, it read: “Rescue?” they all three nodded affirmative. The man smiled, then wrote “Are they gone?” and held it up with a frightened, pleading look.
Two other teams had shown up after clearing their decks. They brought spare suits and were rigging up a makeshift airlock to get them in to the survivors when Max got a call from Jim.
“This is Bell,” answered Max.
“Mr. Bell, this is Jim, I’ve got a big problem down here, I don’t know what to do.”
“Alright Jim, tell me what’s going on.”
“We lost the Captain.”
“Wait, what?”
“We were knocking on a sealed hatch when it opened and something pulled the Captain inside. We tried to get it back open, but it’s not moving.”
Max’s insides twisted up. “I’m coming down there Jim, where are you?”
“We’re about mid ship, seventh deck from the top, one up from the lifeboat.”
“Ok, get to a safe distance and don’t lose sight of that hatch,” commanded Max. He switched comm channels and started moving to the intra-deck tunnel. “Lewis, come in, its Max.”
“This is Lewis,”
“are you almost up to the survivors?”
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“We’ve got a problem with the Captain, I’m going to check it out. I need you to take over on the evac.”
“Can do, what’s up with the Captain?”
“I’m not sure, will advise when I’ve got more to go on. Keep it to yourself.”
“Rodger.”
“And please put Lester on the first boat ride back.”
Max walked up to Jim and Kyle with a twenty-pound sledge hammer over one shoulder. They were crouched down watching a sealed hatch about ten yards down the corridor. He crouched down next to them and tapped them on the shoulders. They had seen the light from his suit approaching, so they weren’t startled until they saw the hammer.
“Where did you get that?” asked Kyle.
“I made a stop at the lifeboat on my way here.” Max handed them each a handheld laser.
“Are you expecting trouble?” asked Jim.
“Max, this is Lewis, come in,” Lewis called over the comms.
“Jim hold on one second, I’ve got to talk to the evac crew,” he said, Jim nodded, “This is Max, go ahead.”
“I need to talk to the Captain Max, where is he.”
“He’s trapped down here, we can’t reach him. What do you need?”
“That’s, uh, ok well. There are more up here than we thought; thirty five in all,” explained Lewis.
“What is our limit?”
“That’s right on the border; the captain and I talked about thirty or thirty two before we left.”
“Is it a fuel problem?”
“No, I have one of the teams raiding this ships fuel reserves, we’re good there; it’s life support I’m worried about. It’s Sayle’s call , I need to talk to him.”
“Well that’s not going to happen right now. I’m making the call; take them all. Do you understand?”
Lewis paused for a second, “Ok, I understand, I will evac them all.”
“Ok, I have to get your Captain back, I’ll let you know when we’re done.” Max switched channels back to Jim and Kyle and continued from where they had left off.
“We already have trouble,” Max got up and walked over to the door, “and after what I’ve seen on this ship, I’m ready to shoot first and ask questions later.”
Max turned the mags on his boots up to full, and then took a stance with the hammer. The hinges on the hatch were on his side, and Max wound up to take a swing at them.
“Hey, what are you doing? That’s not going to work!” called out Jim.
Max brought the hammer down and sheared off both hinges in one swing. Kyle and Jim’s jaws were on the floor. Max took two heavy steps to beside the door and looked back at them. “When I knock this door down, whatever is in there is coming out, can you two handle those things?” he nodded to indicate the guns.
“uh… Yeah.” They backed up and crouched down to prepare to fire.
“Think he can do it?” Jim asked Kyle.
“No one can do that.”
Max took the hammer in two hands like a baseball bat, wound up and swung. The hammer hit like a car wreck, driving the hatch three inches into its housing and sending a shutter through the ship. He wound up a second time and struck. The door blew inward, tearing the locking out of the wall around it into the compartment.
Two beats passed, then they appeared. They were men wearing black space suits with fishbowl helmets. They were both carrying long laser rifles. Max caught the first man in the chest with the hammer, knocking him into a wall and busting his suit open; even so the impact was nothing like what he had done to the door. The second man was killed immediately by Jim and Kyle’s laser fire.
A third man pushed passed his dead comrade and shot Kyle in the shoulder before Jim shot him. Max set the hammer head on the floor and leaned on the handle while Jim helped Kyle get some speed tape over the hole in his suit. After about a second it re-pressurized.
Seeing that Kyle would live for the time being, Max motioned to the hatchway and said to Jim, “come clear this room. Jim jumped over and peaked inside, whipping the gun around.
“looks clear, and I see the Captain,” he reported and started to enter the room.
“Ok, hold on,” said Max, breathing very hard, “I’ll take care of the captain, you get Kyle back to the life boat, he needs attention on that wound.”
Jim nodded and went to help Kyle back. Max saw them disappear around a corner. Max collapsed, his vision going in and out with exhaustion. After about two seconds he cleared his head enough that he could move again and went in to check on the Captain.
Inside, lights were coming off a device, making blurred, flashing color swirls on the ceiling and walls as they mixed with the light coming off the two rescue space suits. The captain was resting against the floor to one side, obviously unconscious. Max looked and his O2 bottle was missing. He looked around, but didn’t see it anywhere. He sighed and repeated the procedure he had used on Lester back on the asteroid, and replaced the Captain’s air tank with his own.
Unfortunately the Captain didn’t start breathing right away. He had been in this room for fifteen minutes, if he had been without air that whole time, he wasn’t asleep, he was dead. Max started to get more and more worried. He started doing CPR through the Captain’s suit, but nothing happened.
Finally, Sayle coughed and started breathing again. Max fell back barely holding on with relief and exhaustion. He banged his helmet on the big piece of equipment and looked up at it.
“Lewis, this is Max, I’ve got the Captain.”
“Kyle and Jim just made it back to the boat. This is the last run and we’re waiting on you two.”
“We’re not coming, you need to go now. I’ll get us back another way.”
“No, we’re not leaving without the Captain, Max.”
“Tell Jake to get you as far from the ship as you can; don’t bother to dock for now, just move away.”
“Max, what is going on?!” Lewis almost shouted.
“I’m looking at a huge bomb, and there’s only seven minutes till it goes off.”
“Lester, I need you,” called Max over the comm, he was hauling Sayle down the corridors toward the hole.
“I’m here Max, what is it?”
“I need you to get to the hold, find one of the tether guns we used on the asteroid and fire it over to the space-liner for me.”
“Alright, I’m still in the hold, let me see if I can find it.”
“I don’t have much time. I need it to be just inside the hole on your right at deck seven.”
“Ok, I’ve got one. Max I’m not sure I can make the shot.”
“You can make it Lester, I know you can,” Max was seeing spots, hoping he wouldn’t pass out, “once you’ve got it fired, I need you to detach the line and connect it to one of the rings right outside the doors.”
“Max, what..?” stuttered Lester.
“Just do what I say and we’ll all get out of this. Now, once the line is secured I need you to close the hold doors and transfer me to Val."
“Ok, Max, I’ll do what I can.”
Max kept moving, he estimated two minutes had passed. He made a corner, then another, holding the Captain around the waist. Finally he emerged into the crater of the hole. Open space yawned away from the ship, giving Max a sick feeling. For a second he didn’t see the line and his heart skipped a beat. Then it came shooting in and drove into the wall two yards from him.
His heart was beating fast now, adrenaline was covering the pain and tiredness. He tethered the Captain to the line, and then attached himself. He locked the tethers down, so they wouldn’t move on the line at all. He reached back and put his hand on the manual release handle where it was attached to the wall.
“Punch it Val!” he yanked the handle down and the cable released, then they were jerked out into space away from the ship. Sayles body came back and hit him. Max pushed him off and they started rotating around the end of the line, being towed by the ship. Beyond the Fall Back; he could see the lifeboat still moving away. He held his breath, the hair on the back of his neck standing up, like waiting for someone to come up behind him who isn’t there.
Finally he willed himself to look back. he was relieved to see the whole ship in his view, which mean they were pretty far away already. Then the ship twisted in the middle, like a new balloon being blown up, the center expanded unwillingly, then shattered and the ship started to come apart deck by deck. Max didn’t see much more; the shock wave from the blast caught him and Sayle and threw them, spinning toward the Fall Back.