Captain Kohl had been looking
at the problem for a long while, but she wasn’t able to find a single way to
fix it without endangering her whole crew. She even imagined going outside the
ship and fixing the problem there, but there were already many problems with
the oxygen levels and walking outside the ship didn’t help fixing any of those.
She spent a whole night trying to come up with a plan, making drawing in paper
and then tossing it to the other side of the room. She forbid anyone to even
whisper around her.
The next day, Kohl ordered the
crew to gather in the main room. She also invited the guests they had received
from the military unit they rescued a few days back because, after all, what
was going to happen affected them too. She waited until they were all there and
when they were, she only faced a big screen and pushed some buttons. All of a
sudden, everyone could see themselves on the screen. The captain was recording,
so she put herself in front of the camera and tried to look as calm as she could.
The message was for Earth, so she
greeted her senior officers and chief of mission. She stated the current status
of the ship and also its location. She then proceeded to tell them about the
accident they had been in, just after rescuing the military personnel they had
decided to help. It had to be said that people on Earth had no idea that had
happened, so she was also reporting a number of deaths and injuries. She tried
to do it in a compassionate way but without really stopping too long to explain
all the details.
Kohl then did detail the most
important aspect of her message: the rupture of several solar panels as well as
the leakage in their main reactor unit. The chamber where it was housed was
already contaminated with radioactivity, which had forced them to evacuate half
of the ship, mainly engineering rooms that could be control remotely. However
the leakage was persistent and the risks had taken a more serious note. If it
couldn’t be stopped, the generator could explode and they could freeze to death
in minutes.
The crew gasped, as they had not
thought the problem to be that serious. They thought they could fix it but it
was clear that the captain thought there was no real chance of fixing the
problem. She did stated that she had tried to come up with a novel idea to
prevent what she feared most, but that she had concluded that it was an
inevitability. The reactor was going to explode and they could do nothing about
it. Before her crew could actually react to that, she declared to the camera
that they would evacuate the ship immediately and land on the planet below. No
one said a word, they didn’t even breathe.
She finished the video by stating
she would inform them of their success in a few hours. The captain then turned
off the camera and then turned to her crew. The most affected by the news were
the military, that tried to seem tough but they were visibly very close to
crumbling. Her actual crew, her peers, just looked at her in disbelief. Someone
asked if they really had to leave the ship, if there was really no other
option. And she just nodded and declared it had been a very difficult decision
to make.
The next few hours saw the ship
turned upside down. The captain had ordered everyone to pack whatever was
necessary and then transport it to the lander that they had in order to land on
asteroids. Because that was their original mission: they were going all around
the solar system gathering information about asteroids. They landed on them and
collected different kinds of data that could one day help understand many
mysteries of the cosmos and even some of the remaining mysteries on Earth.
So it was a priority to put the
samples gathered on the lander first, as well as downloading their main
computer into that vehicle. As they did that, the military people just stood
aside, gathering their very few belongings and watching silently, waiting for
the moment when they would be forced to jump on another transport in order to
continue their journey. It seemed to never end for them and they were getting a
little bit tired of that. They wanted to go home, some even obsessing with that
prospect.
When everything was almost ready,
Kohl asked everyone t o gather around near the lander. She would explain the
procedure to detach from the ship and then head for the planet they had nearby.
It was Mars and they knew very well it could be hospitable if they landed on
the right place. She was commenting this with her engineers and with the
biologists when, all of a sudden, a gunshot could be heard and everyone froze
on their spots. One of the soldiers, a man with very crazy eyes, was holding
the gun.
The captain turned to him and
ordered to drop the gun. The man didn’t obey. He seemed to be somewhere else,
maybe even high. The captain repeated her orders but the man ignored her,
telling his comrades that they needed to stay put and wait for the army to come
and get them. The other soldiers nodded, although some did look as scared as
the rest of the crew at the sight of the gun. It had been a very big mistake
not to check them before letting them in, but the situation had been so dire
that the thought had not crossed anyone’s mind. Yet, the situation had been
very strange.
The scientific ship had received
a distress call and, as they were so close, they had arrived in no time. The
place where the military ship was floating around was not a common spot for any
ships in the system. Actually, it was too far from any planets or moons and the
military were usually assigned to taking care of military bases on such places.
But there was nothing where they found them. Only the floating pieces of their
ship and a few survivors unwilling to tell the whole story of what had happened
to them.
The truth was that they had been
there to fulfill a secret mission concerning a very special kind of engine that
the army was testing in secret. They had been sent to that spot in particular
because they knew no ships would ever pass close by. It had been a miracle that
the scientific ship had been passing not so far from them. Or at least that’s
what they thought at first. Because with the firing of that gun, they soon
realized there was no coincidence in anything that had happened, except in the
crisis with their reactor.
That had been a factor that the
soldiers had not predicted. They did know how to hack unto computers, and it
wasn’t hard for them to make the scientific ship deviate from their usual
course into one that would put them directly on their path. That’s how they
were saved. They had done that after their tests had been successful and a
black hole had been formed artificially in the middle of nowhere. However, it
had not been a black hole in the typical sense of the word. It was more like a
portal, a door somewhere else.
Apparently, something had gone
horrible wrong with said portal. But the soldiers didn’t say another word.
Actually, they weren’t able. One of the engineers toppled the man with the gun
and a biologist sprayed the other military people with a special gas. The
fainted in seconds and were dragged onto the lander. The captain thanked them
for their bravery and kept the gun for herself, stating they had no idea if
leaving it there was the best idea. One never knew what could happen once in
the planet.
They left shortly after. They
landed on Mars about forty minutes after they had left, just on the outskirts
of an abandoned colony. They could make things work again and then maybe asked
for a rescue mission from Earth. It would be even easier than asking to rescue
them in space.
That night, they saw how their
ship exploded over the Martian skies. The debris fell far away. They all felt
strange, not only because it had been their home but also because they felt
something was still amiss. Something was not right and they needed to figure out what it was, fast. Before
it was too late.
