“I look ridiculous.” Nate grumbled as he pulled on his white scientist shirt.
“Don’t say that. Site likes decorum, and we are scientists. As such, we should dress as scientists. He insisted we wear them.” Dr. Gestalter answered him with a smile on his lips.
The two men were standing in front of the tourist ship. They looked quite small in front of the large structure having taken them half a decade to build. Site, their employer, had named it God’s View. They hadn’t finished the paint job, the arrival of water for the swimming pool was expected one month later, and they hadn’t received the authorizations for the exotic fishes yet.
Nate, with the help of his mentor’s equations, had created an incomparable engine, but he wasn’t reassured either way. They were not going to meet with fellow scientists today, they were meeting the space tourism company’s shareholders.
The hangar usually only housing him and the professor was already overtaken by cooks, servers, and even a sommelier. Most of them were working inside the ship already, but two technicians were using their high-end builder-robots to carry boxes full of appetizers…Nate hated to see his robots used that way.
The light on top of the hangar door started blinking.
“Get ready, here they come.”
Nate sighed, the day would be long and his fake smile put to the test.
Nate turned on his mic. “Professor, they broke the internal temperature regulator in the kitchens!”
“Calm down Nate, those are easy repairs. Smile instead! Site was ecstatic! As soon as our non-disclosure agreement will be over, we'll be famous. Your mother will be overjoyed.”
The young man was finding it hard to smile. He could not be as optimistic as his mentor. It was his invention; he had named the engine; he was proud of it. But he was also terrified of it.
If he based his expectations on the professor’s equations, they had only scratched the potential of his creation.
The sound in his headset turned on again.
“Nate, were we waiting for anyone else?”
The young man rubbed his temples, as his headache had been present for at least two hours. In London, it was three in the morning.
“No, the last tech guy left with his boxes an hour ago. They’re getting the leftovers out tomorrow morning.”
“Well, there is someone waiting inside the hangar airlock. Can you get it open through the main bridge control panel? I can’t get up, you know, my knees.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
He climbed the many stairs slowly. He was too tired to think about who could be coming at such an indecent time. Why even think about it? It was almost certainly Site; the CEO of the company was more than eccentric.
He took large leaps towards the main seat of the command room. There were no openings or windows in the room, except the one above his head showing the reactor. Except it was currently shielded by the lead and reinforced tungsten curtain.
Nate pushed a few keys on his keyboard, and the computer showed him a dozen camera feeds, some from inside the ship, others from the hangar. He saw who was currently in the airlock.
They were dressed and armed as military, and Nate saw a lunar police insignia on one of them.
“Erm…yes?” He asked in the intercom.
“Lunar police, we have identified a potential gas leak inside your hangar. Open the door please.”
A gas leak?
“We only use hydrogen and oxygen inside; this is private property. Do you have a warrant?” The clouded mind of the young man cleared up through the sudden adrenalin.
One of the men raised a paper in front of the camera.
Nate didn’t have the knowledge to verify the document’s authenticity, but to his eyes, it seemed official.
“Please wait.” He closed the intercom and spoke directly to the professor. “Erwin? Those are policemen, they apparently have a warrant, but their story is complete nonsense. What should we do?”
“It must be a mistake, don’t worry about this. Let them in, I’ll talk to them.”
“You sure? What about your knees, I can go down …?”
“No no, my knees are a bad excuse, you know it well. That is the sad thing about lunar gravity, soft on the knees.”
“As you wish.” He reopened the comms to the men, just now noticing the American flag on their clothes.
“You can come in, Dr. Gestalter is coming to answer your questions.”
As he pushed on the button to open the door, Nate had a terrible feeling. He looked through the feed at the six men enter the hangar, instantly raising their gun forward. Like one man, he saw them take aim, straight at Dr. Gestalter. The old man watched them with a smile on his face, an expression that quickly disappeared to give way to stupor.
On three different screens, Nay saw them open fire on the poor researcher, who, without even a shout, crumpled on the ground, leaving a thick pool of blood under him.
“NOOO!” He screamed, tears rising in his eyes. He heard the echo of the shots in the fuselage of the ship as he shouted.
“Atmospheric leakage.” The automatic hangar security voice spoke emotionlessly.
The soldiers were wearing adapted masks, and they did not bother about the air escaping through the holes they had created. They moved towards the ship.
Nate was crying, but above sadness, it was anger that filled his lungs. He tapped some keys, and the ladders joining the ground to the entrance airlock withdrew.
“Get those ladders back down.” He heard the voice of the one claiming to be a police officer through the mic of the hangar.
“You think I’m going to listen to you!? You’re not human.”
“…get the charges out we’ll go through the greenh…” He heard the soldier say before being cut off from the communication.
“Why…?” Nate didn’t understand…he looked at the sky…no, he understood very well. “I see. If you want to use that, then you truly are monsters.” He thought about his sister Sky. She had lost her father when she was a baby. What would happen to her if she lost her brother as well?
He opened the files of his online memory bank and deleted them completely. Even if they managed to get some of the results back…they had just murdered the only person who had the equations to interpret them. No, not the only one.
“I hope you’ll understand.” Nate opened the screen control panel to his engine. He removed the link with electrons and changed it with the hydrogen reservoir. On the frequency option, his finger stayed hovering for a few seconds. He finally decided to put it to the maximum setting. Then he gazed at the launch button.
He had no idea what would happen next.
He would definitely not survive.
His finger clicked on the left button of his mouse.
He heard the loud thud of the Hadron collider turning on.
“Impact.” Said the onboard computer with its suave and feminine voice.
“Impact.” It repeated.
“Impact.” It said faster.
“Impa-Impa-Imp-Im-IIIIIIII.”
“Mom I love y…”
PRESENT 2095 AD
“Well you blew up our ship, so I don’t fucking care. He just shouldn’t have shot at us!” Shiina responded to Nate’s accusation with anger.
“What? He shot at you? You’re absolutely mental, is that the excuse you’re going to use, really? What are you…?” He stopped, suddenly looking shocked. “You’re a girl.”
“You think that’s going to stop me from blowing your brains out?”
Tess intervened, flying slowly towards them. “Calm down Shiina, he’s unarmed.”
Nate looked at them, even more surprised. “You…you’re flying.”
Shiina met the eyes of her commanding officer. “He lost his marbles.”
The captain raised an eyebrow, the young man seemed confused to her, not crazy.
“That is exact.” She answered him.
“You’re both women, there were no women…Who are you?”
“We’re the crew of the Saviour, ship your friends happily destroyed with their railgun.”
He blinked wildly. “This doesn’t make any sense. I’m dead.” He began moving to remove the harness holding him in place in his seat.
“What do you think you’re doing, exactly?” Shiina reminded him of the gun pointed at his face by wiggling it closer to him.
“You shoot me you lose the blueprints. I deleted them from my online drive. And you already shot down the doctor. So go on. I blew up the reactor so you…” He looked at his screen. “No…no I destroyed it!” He suddenly seemed distraught.
“Captain? Shall I knock him down? We need access to the commands.” Shiina asked.
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But Tess felt that something was amiss.
“My name is Tess Foncet, captain of the Saviour, and this is Shiina, my spacewalk specialist. Was Dr. Gestalter part of the mining vessel crew?”
“What? Mining vessel? I…my name is Nate. I’m in zero-g…where are we?”
“Lower your gun Chi.”
“Really? He’s lying to us!”
“You think?”
Shiina examined the confused young man, then holstered her weapon as she grumbled.
Nate looked at his screen, incredulous.
“But that’s…Jupiter? What does…Oh my god. What’s the date!?” He asked in despair.
Shiina looked at him. She turned her head to Tess, who didn’t exactly know what to do either, before she decided to answer him. “Twelve of December.”
“The year, year!”
“2095.”
Nate crashed on his seat; eyes wide open.
“No, no, no, no no no…”
“Sorry, Nate is it?” Tess asked him calmly. “Our friend, Shiina’s uncle here, was hurt. He’s bleeding and with zero gravity, his blood cannot clot. We need to activate artificial gravity. Can you help us?”
Tears were now falling from the young man’s eyes, but before Tess decided to get him out of his seat, by force if necessary, he responded with a clear voice.
“Yes. I should be able to do that.” He pushed some keys on his keyboard, and a camera surveillance screen showed Oliver and the two Clarkes in the reception area. “I see him…you’re obviously not the…how is it possible? The acceleration alone should have killed me…I’ll turn on the engine, tell them to prepare. Also, please, turn around?”
“I’m sorry?” Asked Shiina with suspicion.
Despite his tears, the young man’s gaze was more than determined. “I will not activate the engine if you look at me.”
“Who do you think we are exactly…”
“Leave him be Shiina. He’s unarmed and we’d hear it if he tried to move.”
“He’s preparing something. His friends tried to kill us!”
“I don’t think he’s got anything to do with those that attacked us.”
After a few moments of silence, the two women finally decided to turn around.
“Where do you want to go?” Nate asked.
“Earth.”
“…the map is not updated…of course…the computer will take some time to calculate the correct trajectory, but I’ll get us out of Jupiter’s orbit in the meantime.”
Tess spoke inside her mic. “Climber?”
“I followed the conversation captain. Are you sure we can trust him?”
“Yes.” Her instinct was shouting it to her.
“We’re set.”
Nate, unaware of the conversation happening behind him, spoke to the captain once more.
“Is everyone ready?”
“Everyone is ready.” She answered him.
“Initial trajectory encoded.” The ship began to spin, pushed around by its retrorockets.
“Engine turned on.” Nate continued. “No Hydrogen this time,…mh…mh…aaaand launch.”
A deep thud went through the ship’s fuselage, it was coming from the weird structure at its very top, above their heads.
Shiina couldn’t stop her shout of surprise. “That’s not a fusion reactor.”
The ship’s computer, with its seductive female voice, began to talk.
“Impact.”
“Impact.”
“Gravity established.”
And suddenly, the ship began to accelerate, pushing its inhabitants to the ground.
“Holy sh…” Shiina shouted, landing on her feet, but almost stumbling on the armchairs under the control panel area. “Ok…ok.”
They heard the noise of a harness getting unlocked. Shiina turned around, hand on her gun.
The young man wasn’t threatening to say the least. Actually, he seemed sad. He rose from his seat with not even a look for the two women. He passed next to them walking normally.
“If you’re looking for me, I’ll be at the bar.”
Tess should have stopped him from leaving, but strangely, she didn’t.
“Captain?” Shiina was asking herself that same question.
“Leave him, I... do you understand what happened to him?”
The young woman blinked. “That’s pretty unusual, you asking me advice.” She shut up, thinking about it. Tess saw her shudder.
“Yes?”
“I…no. That would be…I want to talk to mom, see how’s my uncle.”
The captain nodded.
In the reception area
“Where is our strange stranger?” Asked Oliver at the two women going down the stairs.
“Didn’t you hear?” Tess answered.
“I was helping Sam.”
“He’s in the bar, how’s Honey?”
“We’ll need some explanation, Tess. You were right to trust him, but why?” Nonetheless, Oliver wasn’t expecting answers right now, and he sidestepped to give way to Sam, cleaning her bloody hands on a piece of fabric.
“It’ll be fine. If we maintain Earth gravity for a few hours, even half of that if we can maintain it for a day or two so it can coagulate…We’ll need antibiotics and disinfectant though, I had to stitch him up with the things we found lying around, chances of infection are high.”
“Understood. There should be a med bay somewhere.” The captain deduced.
“I looked on the lower floor, but I didn’t find anything. I didn’t want to go on my own too far so there are still two more floors I haven’t explored.” Oliver informed them.
“Uncle is going to be fine, right?” Shiina asked her mother again.
“Yes, I think so.”
The young woman then stayed silent while the other crewmembers talked of their next moves.
“I’ll ask Nate if he knows where the med bay is.” She finally decided.
“Nate?” Her mother immediately asked.
“The guy we found upstairs.” She explained.
That didn’t seem to please her mother at all.
“Are you sure that is a good idea?”
“He didn’t seem dangerous, really. In fact, I think that…” Shiina hesitated. “Captain, I would like to ask him a few questions.”
“I thought you wanted to talk to Sam?”
“What about?” Her mother asked.
“I changed my mind.”
The captain examined her youngest crewmember. She was someone influenced by her feelings, five minutes earlier, she could have shot the stranger because of her hot-headedness. Despite that, since gravity had been back and Honey more or less out of the deep woods, she seemed pensive, calm.
“Watch him, and find us that med bay.” Tess decided.
“Understood.”
Sam didn’t look happy about that, but she didn’t comment.
Oliver was trying to connect to the onboard computer through a reception terminal placed between the two stairs, and as a result, he was swearing like a sailor.
“No way through, the system is completely incompatible with mine! The map you piece of shit!”
A seductive voice answered him, with inflections undeniably robotic.
“Welcome to God’s view. You will find rooms to visit on the floor above, as well as a bar and an assortment of wines and liquor chosen by the famous sommelier Rordon…
“Shut the fuck up! I heard the first six times!”
His earpiece turned on.
“Captain?”
Tess, sitting down on a couch, elbows on her knees, rose back up. “Yes, Shiina?”
“There is a med bay on the first floor, that’s two down from where you are. Left wing…it’s just right of you when you take the left…no right stairs downwards. Is that it?” She was not asking the Captain. “Yeah, so right stairs, go down two floors then the first room on your right.”
“Perfect, thanks Shiina.”
“There isn’t any blood for the transfusions, but Nate tells me they have all the basic medicine available…”
“…If they’re not expired.” Nate finished with sarcasm.
“Mh, Mh. Understood. See you soon.” Shiina looked at the young man again.
He had a glass of red wine in hand, a beautiful bottle of St-Emilion placed just in front of him. It was barely touched; he was drinking slowly as he watched Jupiter behind him. It did not seem to be moving, but considering their acceleration, Shiina knew they were getting away from it faster and faster. The young man was sitting down in the corner of the bar, little alcove she had missed when passing through the room ten minutes before. The gigantic glass bay was continuing the whole way, even curving to let the onlookers gaze at part of space behind the ship, where currently stood the greatest gas planet in their solar system.
“My name is Shiina.”
He sipped on his glass before smiling sadly.
“I was certain I was dead, and you came to pick me up. But I must admit, I did not imagine angels aiming at me with a handgun.
Shiina, not ready for the sudden pick-up line, blushed slightly.
“I would like to ask you some serious question, could you be honest please?”
Nate arched an eyebrow.
“I don’t see why I would lie. What would be the point? I have nothing left to lose.”
His answer made Shiina slightly uncomfortable, which the young man realized.
“Take a glass, sit with me. Please. It would make me…happy?”
Shiina sighed, and she went to look for a glass in the counter area. All the bottles were solidly fixed on the wall through metallic rings, but most of the glasses had crashed on the ground due to the sudden gravity. She did her best to avoid walking on them; she was not wearing any shoes. She took an intact glass…only slightly cracked she corrected as she examined it, and went to sit down in front of the young man.
He filled up her glass to half-full. “It’s fifty-three years old. But I think you will only taste ten. I’m not an expert.”
Shiina placed her lips on the red alcohol.
It immediately made her feel relaxed. She could feel the grape explode in her mouth, permeate her mouth with dozens of aromas she didn’t have the experience to comprehend. One after the other, they came and left, clear and precise.
“Holy shit.” She said as she moved the nectar away from her.
Nate wasn’t looking at her, he was witnessing Jupiter.
“I’m the first man seeing Jupiter up close.”
Shiina took one more sip of her wine. “I don’t think so, no. Rodrigo Perez and the Gigantic mission were the first.”
“Which year?”
“Erm…2063? 64?”
Nate laughed, but he didn’t sound happy at all.
“My name is Nathanael Lloyd, happy to meet you Shiina.”
“Shiina Clarke.”
“Clarke? In space?”
Shiina sighed. “It’s a common family name. Some astronauts are bound to have it.”
Nate didn’t mock her further, he bowed in a sign of apology.
“Nate…or Nathanael?”
“Nate is fine.”
“Can you tell me what you’re doing here?”
The man met her gaze, then drank some wine.
“Not really. If you tell me what happened to you, I could have a better picture.
“We received a distress signal from a ship, this one, I think. Apparently, another ship was already around it, it shot us. We abandoned…” She swallowed. “Captain Foncet, the woman who was with me on the main bridge, decided to ram them. We left the Saviour before it crashed and sought refuge in here. You’re alone on the ship?”
“Mhhh.” Nate did not answer her. “How long did all of that take?”
“One hour or two.”
“And despite that, between the moment I saw…It took minutes. I am missing something. If only Erwin was there.”
Shiina drank some more wine. She felt weirdly calm.
“Chi?”
“Oliver?” She answered in her mic.
“We found the med bay. Honey is good, as long as gravity is on. Can you ask our host how long the ship can hold one g?”
Shiina looked at the young man. “How long can we hold a g for?”
He was evasive in his answer. “A long time. You don’t need to worry about that the…fuel canisters are full.”
“Okay…He tells me it’ll hold long enough.”
“I’d like something more precise than that.”
“Well, you’ll ask him yourself.” She shut off the comms.
“Who are you, Nate Lloyd?”
The young man gave her a sombre look. “Even if I told you, I don’t think you’ll be able to…”
She shut him off before he could go any further. “I’ve had a pilot, soldier, and astronaut training. I am going to space since I am fourteen. I can understand.”
“Fourteen?”
“Yeah okay, it wasn’t exactly legal. Tell me.”
He lowered his head, then rose it back up, smiling sadly.
“You’re really cute, but I don’t believe you’ll be interested in a seventy-year-old guy, would you?”
She stood there, speechless. Not because she didn’t understand what he meant, but because of exactly the opposite. He had just confirmed her doubts.
“Oh my God, you…what happened?”
“Cute and smart…” He sighed. “I wanted to destroy the reactor by overloading it, apparently, I simply went really, really fast. But…”
“If that is true you should be much further away than Jupiter…”
“Exact. Forty-three years of temporal dilation in a few sec…Anyway. You get it.”
If what he said was true, and in Shiina’s opinion it was so crazy it had to be true, then he had managed the feat of going at a speed close to the one of light itself. This would also explain why there had been a camouflaged mining vessel with governmental weapons around. They had probably been looking for him for years, had tried to catch up with him for decades. But as it was physically impossible, they had simply waited for him to slow down. It also made the absurd readings of their scanners much less surprising.
“You said they killed the doctor…”
“Gestalter. My mentor. I’m the one who built the reactor, but he provided the equations to successfully create it. American soldiers, they had the accent and the flag, came to visit us after our first demonstration. I suppose they wanted the technology for themselves before it went public. They…they shot him down before he could even understand what was happening. I should not have listened to him. It was too weird, opening the hangar airlock…that old carefree fool…he always only saw the good in the world.”
“You need to show me that engine.”
The atmosphere in the room changed radically. He was now looking at her with suspicion.
“No. I understood the first time. It’s too dangerous. The energy provided by my engine is too great. Idiots will want to test it as a weapon, just like the Hydrogen bombs. They could have burnt the sky, at the time. This time, it’s everything that will burn.”
“I…” Shiina began.
But the young man picked a smartphone out of his pocket.
“I don’t know yet what I’ll do with you and your crew. I think I’ll just drop you off in the Lagrange station, if it still exists. Then I’ll destroy the ship.”
She now stood perfectly still.
“If I press this button, the ship will go at dozens of g in a direct collision course with the sun. If I die, same thing. I have complete vocal control over the ship, so no funny business. I know you’ll have a hard time understanding why I’m doing this but…”
Shiina didn’t react as he had expected.
“No. I do understand. If what you are saying is true, I agree with you. I will even help you. But blowing up the ship? Stopping progress? That does not work, it has never worked. Someone else will discover what you discovered, and I doubt very much he will be as honourable as you are. My friends will understand. We will find a better solution. You would not have created this engine if you thought it would be bad, didn’t you?”
He paused for a bit, looking for signs of a lie.
“How can you say that? You have no way of knowing.”
The young woman stood back on her feet and held out her hand. “Because I think you and I are the same. We’re idealists, we want to change the world for the better.”
Nate looked at her in silence for a few seconds.
“I…I simply wanted to help my mother, my sister. I’ve been dead forty years in their eyes.” He disagreed.
“How happy will they be when they see you again?”
He sneered. “You don’t know my sister.”
“And you don’t know me. And I don’t know you. But I swear I want to help you.” She pushed her hand forwards.
He looked at her. “You remind me of…” He scoffed. “I’m truly weak against optimists.”
He put his phone on the table, then shook her hand.