Chapter 8: Chapter 7 – The First Sights Of A New Earth

Edward’s head pounded as the fleet slipped out of hyperspace, dragging itself out of the portal to nothingness like a pig stuck in mud. Then finally the Sheffield pulled it’s entire mass out as everyone let out a sigh, the RADAR screen flickering to life as one by one the contacts of the rest of the fleet registered.

“Report, have we all gotten through and the status of the other ships?”

A long pause followed, Edward keeping his eyes locked on Alex as they ran down their checklist with the other ships. Their hand ticking off each box on their note pad.

“All ships have responded with no issues so far, all IFFs are present.”

And with that Edward’s heart could finally rest, his arms losing their tension as he smiled.

Everything in the CIC was returning to their normal state in fact at the news. The various departments were chatting between each other as David directed them all in concert. The orbital map of the system was filled as the navigation computers talked with the satellites around the planet and looked through the optical systems of the ship, placing each planet into place.

Down on his command desk the maps of the planet downloaded, Caelypsus now available in full high definition for him to admire and for the scientists back home to marvel in turn.

They sat there, staring at him. He couldn’t resist it. Opening the visual map, a rectangular projection of the entire planet unfurled in front of him. The cold planet was covered in ice and tundra to a much lower latitude than on earth, with yellow and white desserts a rare sight along with lush rainforests. Instead, the most common sight on the planet were mountains, lush rolling hills, prairie, green grasslands, temperate forests, and moorland.

It was… Beautiful…

He could only imagine going down right now and walking in those fields, sitting on top of rainy moors and looking out on the landscape, sailing in a ship down one of the many rivers…

And two moons! Two bloody moons like mars! They were around an alien planet like that had only before been seen in films and 3d renders!

The poor Si-Fi obsessed admiral’s heart was fluttering at the sight of it all. It was all just so majes-

“Sir!” They called, eyes looking inquisitively at the entranced admiral.

He sighed, “What is it?”

Well uh- It’s just that the infiltration agents on the planet want to talk with you soon! They apparently haven’t talked to anyone from command in-“

“Look, just tell them I’ll get to them at the end of the da-“

“It is the end of the day for them though sir.”

“Then- You know what I mean, our day! When are we syncing our times again?”

“We’re doing that tomorrow as per your orders Edward.”

“Oh… Right.”

“Edward,” David started to ask, his voice gaining its characteristic edge when he was going to start begging to be on some sort of operation, “I could talk to them, save you all the trouble and give you a report later on it if you want?”

Edward considered this for a moment, knowing that giving him this responsibility could be a terrible idea, but also at them same time it could be perfectly fine, and he’d get a highlighted and filled report by the time he went to bed. So, the choice became rather straight forward.

“Alright David, go ahead.”

“Nice, but uhh, you will have the con while I’m gone, but don’t worry, you won’t have to deal with this for too long.”

Ah, that’s the catch. To be honest it wasn’t really a catch but common sense, but at the same time everything could be a trap when given to David who was now smiling as he practically skipped out of the door. Presumably to ask what sort of guerrilla activities the cells could partake in. It now seemed in hindsight that this may have been a bad idea.

Well, it shouldn’t be too bad, and he’d just gotten the notification that the Zulu with Captain Elizabeth was moving ahead of the fleet into low earth- Well, low Caelypsus orbit to search for wreaks. Hopefully they’d find something, anything really as so far he was blind to the origins of the people who may be his enemies and it was disconcerting to him.

 

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The Valkyrie crept closer to the drifting wreak. From it’s chin it’s gun had been lowered with the searchlight on, casting light onto the dark thing. Two kilometres… One point nine kilometres… One point Eight kilometres…

The sun was slowly rising over the horizon of the planet, a few beams of it’s rays casting across the derelict.

The sight was of a mournful vessel. It was surrounded by various bits of debris ranging from chunks of machinery to an infinite field of paint and insulation flakes, the metal skin of the vessel ripped and torn from a blast that nearly split the ship into amidships. Across it’s length were various other blast holes from the hull violently decompressing, rooms bursting open into the void like an air filled bottle placed into a vacuum. Though that wasn’t too far from the truth.

The search light drifted across the dark side of the vessel, scouting for a proper entrance at the aft of the ship. As they searched, they saw something. There was a spot along the ship with drifting wiring that was pocked with micrometeorite impacts where once it’s name stood, illuminated and in bold letters, but nothing remained.

The ship was a fine example of a new series of auxiliary vessels, with this being one of the refinery ships that was going to fuel the fleets of humanity. However, this particular ship’s service had been cut short, it’s record unknown until now.

The Valkyrie started to stop itself and turned, it’s rear ramp opening to reveal a huddled set of figures in hard suits, their headlamps on with their faces shielded from the blazing sunlight by the body of the wreaked ship.

Slowly, slowly the shuttle edged itself towards a blasted-out airlock, RCS thrusters firing as gently as the pilots could to not rock the now standing passengers too much. Slowly it lined up and one of the figured reached up, firing a tether into the hull of the ship.

One by one they attached themselves to it and slowly shimmed along the wire, the only thing keeping them flying off in the moment as they made their way to the hulk. One by one they grabbed onto the ship, slipped off the tether and floated in.

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Inside the craft, the sights weren’t much better. By the entrance everything was sun-bleached, wiring floating out of broken panels, and debris chocking the air. Everything was coming apart in its own way. But in little cracks some of the original colouration remained, where sunlight had not touched it in since the ship had been made…

It was surreal to be there in those suits which were chronologically made only a few months apart from this ship, but now one had been around for hundreds of years longer, abandoned and languishing with it’s crew dead.

The explorers moved onwards, their magnetic locking onto the floor with each step, the metal clanks resounding in their suits and in the frame of the ship. The only other noises they heard was their own laboured breathing and the occasional squawked message from the Zulu.

The group reached the main corridor and split, one heading to the aft, boxes filled with survey equipment and the other team heading to the fore, salvage tools instead in hand.

The salvage team’s light flashed down the corridor, searching for whatever signs were still left. Occasionally the lead explorer would look down and brush some of the debris off his wrist to look at his map of the ship.

Now he pointed to a door as another one moved to wrench it open.

Light blasted into the corridor as the door opened, nearly blinding them as they flicked down their sun visors. Inside the room however, once their eyes had adjusted, was a sight far worse than any they had seen so far.

Bodies, several of them.

Most of them were curled up, probably trying to keep warm as the ship grew cold and the air became stale. One was slumped on a control console in front of a window that looked out onto the wreaked refinery. And finally, was one was curled up next to a series of tally marks, the lines becoming shakier the further along they were before they finally stopped at seven. A morbidly remarkable feat. It would be a closed casket for all of them as well. All the bodies had been mummified, their skin wrinkled and dried in the cold vacuum…

It was hard not to gag. But the sight would become all too common once they passed through the parts of the ship beyond the refinery and they’d be there in any room that could have been sealed from the void. Dead men who tried to stay alive even as situation became inescapable.

Now was the crossing.

They opened the other door out into the blasted refinery and turned their boots off. This is what they had been saving their propellent for. One by one they turned their packs on and pushed themselves into the massive section of twisted metal.

They drifted through it like a paper boat cast out to sea, only deviating in their path to avoid the occasional chunk of metal or plastic floating in their way. The refinery was for a fuel called Yaspyx, an incredibly volatile but powerful propellent that fuelled every ship in the fleet. This ship therefore was a reminder to everyone about what could happen if a bit of oxygen mixed with the liquid fuel in the tanks and why the precaution around the tanks were so necessary.

The botched hyperspace jump must have wreaked the machinery of the ship and soon after entering orbit, a failed valve may have spurted oxygen into the argon filled refinery chamber and a leaky seal on the refinery itself may have led to the blast.

But thinking about that was unimportant now as the explorers slipped through the bulkhead on the other side, moving into a corridor with more dust, more debris, and more bodies. All of them in similar states of preservation, crawled up near doors in various rooms, locked out as other sealed them away from their refuges.

They pushed on, further and further along, stepping over corpses and through warped metal corridors until they came to it, the bridge, right at the very front of the vessel.

Yet again one of them went forward and wrenched the lock open, the door opening and this time the explorers had put down their sun visors.

Inside what greeted them was a surreal sight. All of the windows were broken, and sunlight had filled the room, casting long shadows where it met consoles and bodies. Everything inside was covered in a fine layer of powder and had been poked with micrometeorite impacts, mummified bodies and consoles merging together into a moonscape.

They walked in, dust cast up into the air with every step as they began to search the bridge, looking for one thing in particular.

One of them knelt by the front console, wiping the dust away from a panel and unscrewing it, finally lifting it up. There lay the black box, sitting there in once piece, still plugged in with now ancient wires. On it, letters read “No# 01 Production Number A1013, Siemens Circa 2025.”

“Salvage team to Zulu, we have the black box.”

 

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Edward stared at it. The black box of the refinery ship was sitting on a table, plugged up to computers and laptops strewn about the improvised clean room aboard the Zulu.

The sight was serine, thinking about the age of the chunky block in front of him… It humbled him as much as the first sight of the earth from orbit did.

“Did you get anything useful from it?” He asked, his eyes not drifting from the box.

Captain Elizabeth re-adjusted her glasses as she huffed, “Unfortunate not much sir. Most of the techies have told me that the majority of the data is corrupted but they’re trying their best to shift through it.”

“Do we have a date for when they arrived?”

“We think… Whatever dates we could retrieve and the analysis of the box itself we’ve done… It points- It points to it being over five-hundred years old.”

“Holy…”

“Yeah…”

“Did… Did you find anything concrete in the records? Anything that might be out of the ordinary either?”

“No. Not currently sir, well I can tell you if we find anything like that but I’m not sure on the chances of getting a legible sentence, let along enough words to make a full report with.”

“Well, tell me if you find anything about it and follow standard secrecy procedures with, got it?”

Her brow furrowed, but she did not question it. It was probably above her pay grade if she wasn’t getting any specifics.

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