Chapter 02 - Escape

A rumble from outside woke me up. Yeah, I had spent over 100 years sleeping and managed to doze off again, such was the boredom I was enduring. The sound seemed to come from the external surface of the chamber, but since everything was made of metal, the direction of the sound could easily deceive the senses.

It would help a lot if the chambers had windows. But ironically, I was one of the engineers on the team that wanted the capsules without windows. The argument was that: Since whoever was inside the capsule would be sleeping during the trip. The only benefit of a window would be for an emergency situation. And since in an emergency situation the chance of survival was minimal, it didn’t make sense to spend precious kilograms on such windows. I should have imagined that one day I would be inside one of these capsules, awake, with someone making noises outside.

After some taps, bumps, drags, and what sounded like hammering, I began to hear a noise similar to a drill. It was clear that someone was trying to open the capsule. It would be much easier if they let me open it from the inside, using the terminal, as it had been designed open. However, the fact that they were clearly going through a lot of trouble to open the capsule makes me believe that this wasn’t the GIX crew. They would know how to open the capsule from the outside in an emergency situation. I thought about preparing for the worst, assuming a fighting stance or something like that. But I soon surrendered to the fact that I was trapped, and whatever they wanted with me, for better or worse, I wouldn’t be able to defend myself.

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Finally, they finished loosening all the screws. This time there wasn’t even a chance to take a third nap, the drill wouldn’t stop disturbing me. The front part of the chamber began to move, very slowly. Before I could see anything, the intense light from outside penetrated through the cracks and almost blinded me. I instinctively put my hands in front of my face.

“Hello? Who’s there? What’s happening?” I inquired like a machine gun of questions.

“Calm down, Mr. Almeida, don’t make sudden movements, everything will be alright.” A male voice came from outside, it had a familiar accent and sounded like someone younger than me.

“How do you know my name?”

“It’s written on the outside of the chamber. Are you feeling well, sir?”

“I just went through almost 3 g’s with muscle atrophy and high on cryogenics.” I didn’t intend to be rude, but I must have sounded like an ungrateful grumbler.

“Yes, I’ll ask you to forgive us for the stress we caused. We’ll explain everything to you soon, but for now, we need to make sure you’re fit to evacuate.”

The chamber lid was almost completely removed. I was amazed by how quickly pupils can adapt, it was already possible to render an image of the subject in front of me. Round face, with arched eyebrows conveying a natural sympathy. I couldn’t imagine how that face could express a feeling of sadness or hatred with those eyebrows. His skin had the hue of autumn leaves, a warm blend of bronze and deep gold.

“Why are you wearing a spacesuit?” I asked.

“I know you have many questions, and believe me, I’m eager to answer everything, but now is not the time or the moment,” he said in a hurry. “You seem to be well recovered. You’re formulating sentences well and appear to have control over your limbs. We need to get you out of here as quickly as possible, do you think you can get into a spacesuit?”

“I can” I replied promptly, I really wanted to ask more questions, but I understood that this was an emergency.

He began typing some commands on a screen on his wrist. Soon after the chamber began to deflate completely, releasing my legs. I was betrayed by the expectation of supporting my weight on them. Having been tied to the chamber, I had forgotten that we were in 0 g.

“Easy, take it slow,” he said.

“I don’t seem to have many choices.” I tried to be funny, but I must have sounded like a grumbler again. “Where’s the suit I should wear?”

The young man turned and pulled out a black suit, with red details and a logo showing a red star and seven planets.

image [https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/081/118/500/large/rklehm-symbol.jpg?1729441459]

“TRAPPIST-1?” I inquired.

“Yes, we are from the Alliance of United Trappist Nations, or A.U.T.N for short.”

“Wow, nations?” I thought. I had left the solar system to start colonization, and they already had nations in TRAPPIST-1. I definitely wanted to ask him many things.

“Here, this is an emergency model, it’s supposed to be one size fits all and should adjust to your body.” He finished.

I took the suit and began the procedure of putting it on, using what I had learned in my training. Which proved to be completely unnecessary, putting this thing on was as easy as putting on pajamas before bed. Taking advantage of the lack of gravity. I threw my legs through the upper opening, pulled the suit up to my waist and put on the arms. There were several loose areas, but this problem was solved when the young man pulled a strip from the outside. The inner fabric stuck to my body. The hinges for elbows, knees and shoulders self-adjusted to my dimensions and stiffened. I was impressed with such technology, much better than spending long minutes carefully adjusting the dimensions of the “fits-all” we had on the GIX.

“Perfect, now put on the helmet.” He said.

I put it on, it was a glass dome with reinforced material on the back of the head. I tried to rotate it clockwise, as usual, but without success. The young man noticed my failed attempt and helped me screw it counterclockwise.

“Can I at least know your name?” I asked, not knowing if he could hear me properly because of the helmet.

He put on his helmet too, took my left hand and typed some commands on the wrist screen, then I heard a hiss in my ear.

“Ready, from now on we’ll communicate by radio. What had you said?” He asked. We were using a radio, but it sounded like he was literally right next to me. Finally someone had solved that horrible static.

“I asked your name, I don’t know what to call you.” I repeated the question.

“First Lieutenant Gulliver, but for now you can just call me Gulliver.”

“Lieutenant? First Lieutenant?” I thought. These were military ranks, we had abandoned military ranks in the Genesis missions, they no longer made sense for civilian ships. I thought it best not to question, clearly there were a lot of things different from when I left, I just nodded.

Now that I could take a calmer look at the room we were in, I could recognize the environment. It was the GIX’s decompression chamber. I couldn’t say for sure if it was the front or the back, but that didn’t matter much as Gulliver was already reaching for the decompression button. Red lights swept the interior of the chamber in a rotating motion. My suit showed an interface projected on the helmet visor, indicating a sixty-second countdown.

“What happened to the rest of the crew?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Almeida... But you’re the first we’ve been able to rescue alive.”

“But what happened? Are there still people inside the capsules?”

“There was an explosion in the ship’s spinal column, where the cryogenic chambers were located. We tried to get here before that happened, but we arrived too late.”

“But then we can’t abandon the ship yet! There are still people alive in there, damn it!” I shouted angrily.

“Calm down, please stay calm. You’ll see, we have three other rescue teams operating here. But unfortunately each team can only rescue one person at a time,” he tried to explain. “Please understand, we don’t have much time and more explosions will happen at any moment! You are the first we’ve managed to rescue. The more time I spend explaining things to you, the less time we’ll have to rescue the others.”

He was right. I was in good physical and mental condition, it wasn’t fair that I spent rescue time satisfying my curiosity.

“How are we going to move out there? I don’t see any kind of Extravehicular Mobility Unit.” I inquired, resolutely, but with a lump in my throat from this whole situation.

“We won’t need an EMU, we have cables anchored between Genesis IX and the Peregrina. we’ll tie our lifelines to the anchorage and climb.”

“What is Peregrina? I’ve never heard of it.” I commented. It wasn’t just curiosity, I was about to perform a climb in the vacuum of space, this was crucial information for the briefing.

“That makes sense. She came into operation about 20 years ago, she’s a Freedom-class light frigate of the Trappist Alliance.” He explained.

The ship’s nomenclature left no more doubt, he was talking about a military vehicle.

The countdown reached zero. The hatch in front of us began to open slowly, converting the confinement of the metal room into an immensity of stars in the black void of the sky. I had more than two hundred hours logged in Extravehicular Activities, or EVA for short. I was already a seasoned veteran. However the first few seconds when you’re completely loose in space are always nauseating. Our brain is used to the parallax effect, when objects that are closer seem to move faster than those that are very distant. The thing is, in space there’s nothing close, everything is very, VERY distant, this ties our neurons in knots.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

I followed Gulliver out of the GIX and attached my lifeline to a support on the external surface. As soon as I left the decompression chamber, I had a vision that seemed to have come out of some distant future space opera. Four black-hulled ships were anchored to the GIX by a steel cable about two or three kilometers long. My suit’s onboard computer identified the ships and created a pop-up with a zoom on them, revealing that they were covered with what looked like metal plates forming an armor. The ships’ hulls were angled like those of a tank or warship. Two articulated turrets were fixed on each ship, one on the top and one on the bottom, in addition to various antennas and gadgets that I couldn’t say what they were.

image [https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/081/118/516/large/rklehm-showdown-alpha.jpg?1729441489]

“Okay, do you see the anchorage point?” Gulliver asked, pointing to a steel ring near one of the cables leading to the ships.

“Yes, I do.”

“Perfect, we’ll need to move over there and then we’ll climb to the Peregrina, agreed?”

“Understood.”

“Do you feel secure enough for us to make this crossing separately? It will be much faster this way.”

“We can go.”

Gulliver made an “okay” sign with his hands. Attached the lifeline to a ring and headed in the direction we needed to go, I followed right behind. I was amazed at the agility of this suit he gave me. I had practically the same mobility as if I were wearing heavy cold weather clothes, which is excellent when compared to the suits we had on the GIX. Honestly, even if I had never had any experience with EVAs before, I would still make this crossing easily.

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We reached the steel cable that led to the Peregrina. Gulliver and I followed the plan, attaching our lifelines to the anchorage cable and began climbing. Well, we were using the term “climb” for lack of a better verb, in space there is no “down” and no “up”, we were in free fall. All it took was a few pushes and the laws of physics would do the rest—Newton’s first law of motion; “A body remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line, except insofar as it is acted upon by a force.” As there was neither gravity nor air resistance, there was no external force, with each stroke we gave on the cable, the speed only increased.

When we gained some altitude in the climb (again for lack of a better term), I could have a better view of the GIX. It wasn’t intimidating like the war bricks that were tied to it. Quite the contrary, the external surface was white and with some points covered by insulating materials. The two gravitational rings were right in front, just behind the dust and deep space radiation shields. At the back, a column made of truss steel separated the habitable part from the fuel tanks. Right behind the fuel tanks was another shield, this time to protect the ship from the radiation produced by the engine. All this I was already used to seeing. Now what gave me chills and made me freeze for a few moments was the number of holes it had in the hull. It looked like the poor thing had been devoured by moths. In addition to the thousands of holes, the metal panels of a good part of the spinal section were torn off. Probably due to the explosion that Gulliver had mentioned.

The speed indicator already marked fifty meters per second, more than ten times the normal speed of an EVA. When I saw Gulliver stop getting momentum I felt relieved and stopped too. I took advantage of the fact that I wasn’t making any effort and took a look at the stars. TRAPPIST-1 was relatively close to the solar system, so most of the constellations were still recognizable. Not that I knew them by heart, but at least I remembered the most famous ones; Southern Cross, Orion, Canis Major and Aquarius.

As I always lived in South America, I’m used to having to identify the shape of the constellations upside down. However, at that moment this would be a little more complex. I didn’t know my orientation relative to earth’s equator, so the constellations could be in any random orientation. I was looking for the constellation of Aquarius, in which I knew TRAPPIST-1 would be nearby. I wanted to see how close I was to my final destination.

It wasn’t a difficult task. I found a red-hot point of light, shining very brightly, and that I had never seen before in the sky. Soon after I could recognize the constellation of Aquarius rotated about forty-five degrees from what I was used to observing it. Without a doubt that red-hot point was TRAPPIST-1, a low-luminosity red dwarf. Which means that the only explanation for me observing it so intensely is that I was very close to it.

“We need to hurry, let’s get more momentum!” Gulliver spoke over the radio while giving a few more pushes on the rope.

“Wait!” I shouted, but tried to keep up with him so as not to fall behind. “We’re already going too fast!”

“I know, but we need to get out of here immediately, we’re out of time!”

“And the rest of the crew?”

“Mr. Almeida, I’m sorry, but there’s no more time, we need to get out of here now!”

I seriously thought about turning back and trying to go back to save the rest of the crew. But when I looked back and saw GIX in that state, I forced myself to make a logical decision. I didn’t know what was about to happen. But if Gulliver was willing to risk his life to get off this cable like that,then it must be something very bad. I’ll never know if I would have made any difference if I had gone back.

I tried to keep up with Gulliver’s pace, but he had an impeccable physique. Each push he gave had almost twice the momentum of mine. We continued to stroke like two Olympic swimmers, Gulliver noticing that I wasn’t able to keep up slowed down a bit. When I looked at the Peregrina, my suit’s onboard computer projected a target on the ship’s hull with a label.

[IMMINENT IMPACT - LETHAL RISK]

Relative Speed: 136.7 m/s (492.1 km/h)

Distance to Impact: 831.4 m

Estimated Time to Impact: 6.1 seconds

“Let’s start braking! Hold the steel cable with the palm of your hand.” Gulliver shouted.

“Are you sure? Won’t that destroy the suit?” I questioned.

“This suit you’re wearing is much more resistant than those on the GIX. But yes, you’re right, the suit will be destroyed, and we have no other choice.”

I grabbed the steel cable with both hands and pressed as hard as I could, it wasn’t enough to match Gulliver’s grip. He was braking much faster than I was, which made me bump into him. Apparently, he was already expecting something similar. He was in a posture that allowed him to absorb the shock. From that moment on we started to brake as one, I continued squeezing as hard as I could. But I barely could see any debris coming out of my gloves, whereas Gulliver’s were turning to dust. If we continued at that pace, soon he would be breaking with his own flesh.

I pulled myself close to the cable and passed it under my right arm, wrapping my arm around the cable to maximize contact area. Immediately, I began to feel the vibration and heat burning my arm. Clearly, the rest of the suit wasn’t made to withstand as much friction as the palms. I achieved a better braking coefficient than Gulliver. Most likely because he was reducing the intensity of his grip to avoid losing his hands. I started to fall behind since I was braking more than him.

“Squeeze harder, I’ll hold you with my legs,” I said.

I could see another jet of debris being expelled from his glove, which was enough for us to collide again. This time, I was prepared for the encounter. I had raised and opened my legs, forming a sort of clamp. When we collided, I locked my legs around his waist and intertwined my arm with the steel cable as much as I could.

We crashed against the hull of the Peregrina at about five meters per second. It was quite a shock, and I’ll surely have many bruises the next day, but what matters is that we were alive.

“My suit is screwed, I’m losing one-tenth of a percent of oxygen per second,” I said.

“I’m more screwed than that. Let’s get inside quickly,” he replied.

Now looking at the Peregrina up close, I could estimate that it was about twenty-something meters long and four or five meters wide. Judging by all this stuff on the outside, I imagine the usable space inside is tiny. My suspicion took even more shape when I saw the airlock hatch—it was a hole less than a meter in diameter.

“The airlock only allows one person to enter at a time. In normal situations, I’d put you in first and go after. But I’ll be out of oxygen in a few seconds, so you’ll need to memorize the procedure,” he said, clearly out of breath.

I observed carefully, it wasn’t difficult: Turn some locks, pull the hatch, enter the chamber, close it, and exit on the other side. Well, I had to trust what he told me about the last steps since I couldn’t see anything after he closed the hatch. My oxygen levels were low, but I still had a few minutes left. I waited patiently for the indicator light to turn green before starting the procedure.

It turned green, I entered the chamber and was surprised again by the size of the ship. It’s a good thing I was in 0 g because it was only about one hundred and twenty centimeters tall. There was no way for an adult to stand up there.

The chamber filled with air and I opened the inner hatch. As soon as I poked my head inside the ship, I could see its entire interior. It was about the same internal space that the pilots of the Apollo missions had when the modules were docked. It was hard for me to understand why. After all, the GIX seemed like a five-star hotel compared to the so-called futuristic Peregrina.

That’s when I remembered that Gulliver had mentioned this was a light frigate. They probably crammed it with weapons, missiles, and who knows what else. And forgot they’d need humans in here to operate all this stuff. A terrible example of military engineering, I hated it.

“Welcome aboard the Peregrina,” Gulliver greeted me, extending his hand with the completely destroyed glove.

“Thank you,” I tried not to seem ungrateful again.

“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Almeida. I’m Cirakari, the Commander of the Peregrina,” introduced a woman in her forties. Her skin as pale and dry as a sheet of paper. A sharp face with prominent cheekbones, whitish blonde hair, and eyes as black as obsidian. I had never seen a human with such a distinct appearance, but not in a bad way—she had an exotic beauty, similar to an elf from Tolkien’s novels.

“Pleasure, Commander,” I replied.

“I apologize for the circumstances, but we need to hurry. Please, secure yourself to one of the stretchers on the rear bulkhead. We need to get out of here as quickly as possible,” she ordered, pointing to the back of the ship.

“With all due respect, Commander, but what about the rest of the crew? We can’t abandon them,” I pleaded.

“If we don’t leave here within the next thirty seconds, not even we will survive. We don’t have time to save anyone else. Please, hurry.”

“Thirty seconds?” I thought, a knot forming in my throat.

The stretchers were clearly improvised, tied to questionable support points. From back there, I didn’t have much of a view of the control panels. But I could see that there were four officers distributed among five seats forming a circle. Imagining the ship as a two-story house, I was lying on my back on the ground floor, and they were “laying” in seats with their backs towards the floor on the second floor, with the ship’s engines in the basement. The design made a lot of sense. When activating the engines, the acceleration produced by them in this orientation would simulate the acceleration of gravity on a planet. Eliminating the need for gravitational rings while the engines were running. The only downside to this whole story is that it’s practically impossible to keep an engine with decent acceleration running for a long period of time. At least that’s how it was in my time.

“Everyone ready?” Cirakari shouted from her seat.

“Yes,” we answered in a disorganized and unsynchronized chorus.

There was no further warning, not even a phrase; she simply touched the panel. A noise of pumps, actuators, and whatever else took over the interior of the Peregrina, and as if in an explosion, we began to accelerate. I have no idea how many g’s we were accelerating, but without a doubt, it was more than the 2.7 g’s I felt inside the cryogenic chamber. At least this time I was lying down; my only job was to keep breathing and not pass out.

I couldn’t understand exactly what was happening. The four officers were fiercely exchanging information in a language full of military jargon. The ship was accelerating in intermittent bursts of very high-g. Additionally, the crew occasionally subjected us to equally high rotational acceleration, as if they were dodging something.

“We were in combat…” It striked me.

I was trying to find some way to understand what was happening when I found a slightly reflective metal surface. It reflected enough for me to see the image of the GIX on one of the crew member’s panels. In one frame, it was there, damaged, but graceful and elegant as it always was. In the next, a barrage of projectiles turned it into a grave, shattered into a million pieces. I’m not very religious, but whatever deity governs our universe, I ask that it have mercy on all those who couldn’t be saved.