CHAPTER 6
2237
Aboard Keravnos
Superhighway Manifolds
It had been fourteen hours since they abandoned the Titan II space station, leaving two thousand of its inhabitants to fend for themselves against a horde of vilis. A voice from the speaker repeated the same message every hour.
“… one thousand times the speed of light, thirty-four hours away from the planetary system codenamed, Titan S. The planetary system has seventeen planets, three of which are…”
As soon as the Keravnos escaped Earth’s orbit, most of its passengers asked to be put to sleep until they arrived at their destination. Flying at a faster-than-light speed was causing severe nausea and disorientation in many of the crew. Only the control personnel, a handful of soldiers, and some civilians remained awake for the journey. Everyone on board had been on Titan II for at least twenty-seven years, and some, including Anderson and many of the soldiers, had been there for far longer. However, none of them had ever journeyed out into space before, let alone at their current speed.
Bethany had been violently sick for hours. Despite Ethan’s repeated requests to put her to sleep, she refused. She was sitting in the restroom, her face buried in her palms. The feeling in her stomach was indescribable. It was a combination of rumbling, swirling, twisting, pulsing, churning, and any other negative word for sensations in the stomach. She rushed into a cubicle, fell to her knees, held onto the toilet, and retched. Minutes passed without any sign of respite. Finally, it stopped and she got up, flushed, and staggered out to a washbasin. She flicked water onto her face, drank some, then washed her face again. Bethany looked up and stared at her reflection. The color had drained from her face and her eyes were red. She took deep breaths and tears formed in her eyes. Her hands and lips were shaking and she couldn’t stop them. She gritted her teeth as she looked at her reflection, then punched the mirror, trying unsuccessfully to break it. Her knuckles slid off the surface. She closed her eyes, feeling the pain, then took another deep breath and walked out of the restroom.
Isaac entered the mess hall. Its design was very similar to the one on the station but naturally smaller. He dragged his feet as he walked to the reflective, rectangular hatch on the wall. He stood in front of it and a device scanned his face. A female voice came from the device.
“What would you like, Isaac?”
Isaac was taken by surprise and stared at the device for a moment. He opened his mouth to speak but changed his mind, and instead touched the small screen on the machine. It turned on. Isaac navigated to drinks and chose bourbon. The machine whistled quietly for a few seconds, then stopped. The door opened, and a bottle of bourbon was inside, with a tumbler next to it. Isaac took the bottle but left the glass. He set the bottle on the bar and stared at it as he sat down on a stool. He looked around the room, as though hoping someone would come in and stop him, but nobody appeared. There was a smudge on his glasses. He removed them and wiped them clean with his sleeve. For the first time, he noticed how much his hands were shaking. The glasses fell from his hand and the left lens cracked. Isaac clasped his hands together firmly and swallowed a lump in his throat. He stared down at his glasses on the floor but didn’t pick them up. His attention returned to the bottle. He unscrewed the cap and took two deep gulps before he stopped. He winced and almost dropped the bottle as he tried to place it back onto the bar. Isaac lowered his head until it was touching the bar surface and mumbled quietly to himself. He sat up again, picked up the bottle, and took another gulp.
In the reactor chamber, the quantum bubble swirled around the core, functioning perfectly. However, unnoticed by the crew, the other components that made up the reactor core had started rapidly rusting and breaking apart.
Four hours later, the rods housing the boson rings in the reactor core were completely worn out and tore. The rings released all the energy stored inside them at once. The temperature spiked to extreme levels as the energy burned into the field surrounding the reactor core. The positively charged particles became negative. The entire system imploded, shrinking the core into a small ball of metal, kept afloat by the electromagnetic shielding protecting the reactor. As the quantum reactor failed, the power was lost throughout the ship. Fortunately, the backup nuclear reactor took over, restoring the ship’s power. An automatic slowdown burn was engaged; the nuclear reactor couldn’t fulfill the ship’s energy requirements while traveling at superluminal speed.
The ship’s passengers were safe, thanks to the AI-controlled gravity drive, which adjusted the gravitational flow to reduce the amount of g-force when the ship suddenly dropped out of superluminal speed. It reduced the impact but it was still felt by the active passengers. Isaac and his bottle of bourbon fell to the floor. His head struck the metal and he stayed there. His access card beeped. He pulled it out of his pocket and tapped it on the floor. A message played from the speakers in the room.
“Doctor Isaac Clarke, report to the control room immediately. There is an emergency and you are needed as soon as possible.”
Isaac closed his eyes and pushed himself to his feet. He picked up the bourbon and quickly drank the small amount that was left inside, then dumped the bottle on the bar. He scrambled around on the floor and found his glasses, before putting them back on. Isaac made his way to the control room as quickly as he could, supporting himself with the wall. By the time he reached his destination, his eyes had cleared. Bethany was already present, standing before Captain Anderson, along with another man in a similar uniform to Isaac’s. He must have been a scientist, yet Isaac had never seen him before. As far as Isaac was aware, he and Bethany were the only scientists on the Titan II station.
“We’re operating on backup power,” said Anderson. “You three, get the main reactor up and running.”
Anderson sat down in the captain’s chair at the center of the room. Isaac looked around the control room for the first time. It was highly sophisticated. A holographic hub sat at the center of the room in front of Anderson’s chair. There was a large, tinted viewing screen, looking directly out into space, and various workstations with complex interfaces, controlled using holograms or touchscreens.
“You look like shit,” said Bethany, snapping Isaac away from his tour of the control room. She walked past him, and the other scientist followed.
"Thanks. You too." Isaac replied as he followed Bethany into the hallway. “What’s happening?” he asked. “And who is he?”
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“Name’s Pete Asgard,” said the man, offering his hand, “you can call me Doctor Asgard.”
Isaac shook Pete’s hand with an unenthusiastic smile.
“He designed the ship’s quantum reactor,” Bethany added.
Pete smirked. “Not quite. I didn’t design the quantum drive; I merely integrated it into the ship.” He looked at them with curiosity. “I thought you two designed it. I was told as much.”
Bethany was walking so quickly that Pete and Isaac had to jog to catch up. “We developed a quantum drive,” she said, “but not this one. Best we ever achieved was ten percent of light speed.”
Pete frowned. “Well, that’s strange.”
Bethany pressed the elevator button and they stepped inside. Pete selected the engine room. The elevator descended briefly, then stopped and began moving horizontally toward the back of the ship. It soon stopped again and the door opened. They walked down the red-lit hallway until they arrived at a blast door with a reinforced glass window. Pete walked to a terminal by the door and swiped his card over it. The door buzzed open and they walked inside. Several plastic suits were hanging from the wall. Pete took one and put it on over his uniform.
“If I’m getting this right,” said Isaac, “you two are saying the Keravnos, which we’re standing in right now, which moves faster than the speed of light, is running on our quantum drive?”
Bethany answered “No.” as Pete answered “Yes.”
Isaac looked at the two of them. “If you didn’t make it, and we didn’t, who did?”
“Gear up Isaac, that can wait.”
They put on the protective suits and moved to the main door. Pete entered a code into the keypad next to it and the door opened. They walked inside and were greeted by another two doors. Pete walked to the door on the right and pulled a thick lever. The door clanged, then opened. They could finally enter the quantum reactor chamber. There were two giant magnets on opposite sides, and a metal ball the size of a melon floating between them.
Isaac fiddled with his glasses. “That’s the reactor?”
Pete shook his head and walked to the other side of the electromagnetic field. The field deactivated and the metal ball fell to the ground with a loud thud. Bethany checked a small device attached to the sleeve of her suit. The radiation level in the room was spiking.
“Well,” Bethany started. “What are we looking at, Pete?”
“I’m not sure, but I think the reactor melted and this is what’s left.”
“How could that happen?”
Pete shrugged. “I don’t know, I’m just speculating. It doesn’t matter now. What’s important is that there’s no fixing the reactor, which means no more superluminal speed.”
Anderson’s voice came in through the comms. “What’s your status, Pete?”
“The quantum drive is gone, sir"
“Gone?” Anderson barked. “What the hell do you mean gone?”
“We’ve lost the quantum drive. It’s gone.”
“Are you telling me we’re stuck in the middle of space with no way of getting where we’re going? Fuck!” Anderson turned off the comms.
Isaac knelt beside the ball and reached out to touch it.
“I wouldn’t do that,” said Pete.
“Why?”
“I don’t think we should stay in here. The gamma levels are extreme. I know the suits are designed for it, but there are no guarantees.”
Bethany looked around the room. “Is there a camera in here?”
“There are.” Pete pointed at few.
“I need to see the recording.”
They left the room and sealed the door behind them. Once they were back in the changing room, they stretched, and their protective suits expanded and dissipated into the air. Pete took out his tablet and opened the video feed from the reactor room. Isaac and Bethany stepped closer to watch.
“That’s the reactor?” Bethany gasped. She looked at Isaac. “What the hell is that?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” Pete answered. “The whole thing was strange. It was unlike any technology I had seen before. I still don’t know what materials the components were made of. The only parts I worked on were the boson rods and, even then, I only followed the instructions I was given.”
“Given by who?”
“Take my advice. With Titan Corporation, it’s best to not ask questions you might not like the answers to. I have my guesses but it’s probably best to leave them as theories.”
The three scientists returned to the control room. Pete showed Anderson the video of the core decaying and then imploding. Pete claimed he had a working theory on what happened to the reactor. Anderson didn’t seem interested; unless they could get the reactor working again, that information was useless. A control operative approached Anderson.
“The nearest habitable planet is eighteen parsecs away,” said Anderson, “and going there isn’t an option.”
“What else can we do?” Isaac asked, adjusting his damaged glasses. “We have to start thinking about rationing our supplies.”
Anderson scoffed. “We barely have enough to last us a year. This wasn’t supposed to be a long trip.”
Isaac shook his head. “So you’re saying we’re trapped in the middle of nowhere, with no hope of getting out? That we’re going to die here?”
Anderson frowned and looked at Bethany. “Exoginos.”
Isaac was concerned. “Exoginos? You said you don’t know if it’s habitable.”
“I know what I said. If Riley’s there, and he’s still alive, we have to assume it is habitable. If we travel at maximum speed on the fusion drive, we could reach the planet in several months, a year at most.”
Bethany was also unsure. “Is it safe?”
“All we know is that one of us is on the planet. We don’t know how he got there, or why.”
“I saw grass through the breach,” Bethany remembered. “It was blue, but it at least means there’s some vegetation on the planet. If Riley’s still there, how long has he been? Twenty-seven years?”
Anderson exhaled loudly. “It’s a risk, but the only option we have right now.” He turned to the control operatives. “Set course for the rogue planet, Exoginos.”
“Yes, sir,” the control operatives replied.
Anderson turned to Bethany, Isaac, and Pete. “You’re dismissed.”
They started walking toward the door but Bethany stopped and spoke. “You shouldn’t burn at maximum power. We can’t afford to lose the fusion drive as well,” she advised and continued out of the room.
The journey to the planet took eight months and twelve days. It was a difficult time. The Keravnos was a large ship, but life on board was less comfortable than it had been on the Titan II station. The space was limited, which meant there was never quite enough room to move around comfortably. When they finally entered the orbit of Exoginos, everybody on the ship was excited. Whatever was waiting for them on the surface, the thought of leaving the confines of the ship was cause for celebration.
The Keravnos circled the planet a few times to gather data. After hours of observation produced inconclusive results, Anderson was furious with the science team. Isaac suggested sending down a reconnaissance probe and Anderson agreed. They prepared twelve scout drones and deployed them to the planet’s surface. As soon as the drones descended into the lower atmosphere, they went offline. They sent twelve more drones and the same thing happened. Before the second batch of drones went offline, they sent a piece of vital information: the exact location of Riley’s Vindex in Machina mech and a human life sign. Anderson assigned a team of seven soldiers and a scientist to take the jump ship down to the surface, find Riley, and report back to the Captain. Bethany volunteered to join the team but Anderson insisted Pete should go instead.
Each member of the team was fitted with an exo-suit and assault rifle. The jump ship departed and successfully entered the atmosphere. As they descended to the surface, they encountered a type of storm and lost control of the jump ship, which spiraled off course before the Keravnos lost contact.
The Keravnos waited for ten hours, trying to re-establish communication with the scout team. With each attempt, concerns grew that they had lost the jump ship and its crew. In addition to the potential loss of life, it was the only jump ship they had. Anderson decided the only remaining option was to take the Keravnos down and land on the surface. All active passengers were ordered to get in their seats and buckle up. Hours later, the ship began its descent. As they descended, there was a sudden loss of power as the nuclear reactor went offline. There was no other backup power to create thrust and the ship began to freefall. The crew desperately tried to save the Keravnos and themselves, attempting to restart the fusion drive. The ship was struck by a spiraling storm of diamond pebbles, which tore through the hull like bullets. When the ship hit the ground, it had already broken into three large pieces, landing hundreds of miles apart.