Into The Void (15 page)

              “I can still flush you out of the air lock and let you die if you wish John.”

              “You can't do it. Face it, you love me and that's why you came back. Besides, you need me. You really couldn't make it without me.”

              “Our relationship is strictly platonic John.”

              “Keep dreaming bot, you know it's true,” Captain Steele said.

              Jamie sighed.

              “How have you ever had any romantic relationships with all the insults you throw around?” Jamie asked.

              “I'm just good. There was this one lady. She was a fine soldier and a finer woman. We met at training and all the stuff we did... wow! This one time we-”

              “Yes John, I understand,” Jamie interrupted.

              “Snuck into our commanding officer's-”

              “Yes John, I heard you.”

              “Quarters and we-”

              “Okay Jo-”

              “Got into his bed-”

              “Shut up John! Just shut up and suit up and help repair the ship,” Jamie interrupted.

              “Jealous?”

              “No,” Jamie quickly and sternly replied.

              “I thought so,” Captain Steele said.

              “Suit up already! Your starting to annoy me.”

              “Fine, I'll put on a suit and go help,” Captain Steele said, “But we both know it's true.”

              Captain Steele put on the DSSM suit and asked Jamie to open the door to the rest of the ship. When she did he felt the rush of air leave the med bay and the sound of silence that accompanied vacuum, as the coagulated fluids slowly spilled out into the hallway. He always loved that rush of air leaving the airlock, then the quick sound of nothing that followed. The only thing he could hear was his footsteps from his magnetic boots echoing throughout his DSSM suit and his breathing from inside his own DSSM suit. He did not, however, enjoy it this time. It was far too similar to what happened on the last planet he set foot on.

              The hull breaches were all over the ship. The ship looked like it was about to be seared in half. Every section had a major hull breach where he could look out into the emptiness of space, except there were debris all around him. He could see objects in the ship floating due to loss of gravity on the ship. As he walked by them he would gently touch them and they would float off away from him, maybe even bounce off of a wall then come back towards him. It was eerily peaceful, unlike his journey to the last planet he was on.

              Captain Steele went to the storage room near the back of the ship and grabbed some repair parts and headed to the bridge. He started to repair a hole in the bridge when he realized the navigation system was offline.

              “Jamie, did the navigation system go down during your return?” Captain Steel asked.

              “Yes it did John.”

              “And how the hell are we supposed to go anywhere then? We don't know where we are or where the Milky Way is or anything else!” Captain Steele said.

              “I can repair it. I have the general idea of where we need to go.”

              “We are about a decade behind schedule.”

              “When have you ever cared about schedules and time frames John?” Jamie asked.

              “I just want to get this mission done, that's all.”

              “Are you alright John?”

              “Yeah, I just want to move on from this place.”

              Captain Steele proceeded to repair the hull breaches by wielding them together with spare parts and was able to repair most of the electrical systems. He knew he need to get the lab back on the ship but it was going to be hard. The first thing to do is to find the lab in all the wreckage.

              “Jamie, can you scan for the lab?”

              “I have been trying but there is far too much debris everywhere.”

              “Then let's take it slow and go look for it.”

              Captain Steele stood on the bridge looking out and occasionally wandered to where the lab use to be so that he could try to figure out a plan on how to get it get it attached to the ship again. He would need to wield it from both the outside and inside and get the electrical systems hooked back to it. He had only started repairing the ship and much was still needed. The ship had almost been ripped in half. He was grateful for Jamie's quick rescue. He still wasn't sure what kept his suit functioning for as long as it did. Jamie told him that he was practically dead and beyond any medical treatment and yet he was repaired in a ship out in the middle of intergalactic space.

              Captain Steele looked out and thought he saw something.

              “What's that out there Jamie?” Captain Steele asked.

              “Still scanning.”

              “Bring us closer.”

              Jamie turned the ship toward the object and Captain Steele saw it was the lab. Some of the equipment was missing, but for the most part it looked like most of it was there.

              “That's it Jamie. Bring us in close and try to rotate the ship as the lab rotates.”

              Captain Steele knew that it was going to be almost impossible to wield the lab together with the way it was rotating. It was rotating upward with it bottom rotating up end over end but was also rotating backwards so that the back came around to the front and the front came around to the back. The end rotating upward was going much faster than the end that was rotating backwards to forward.

              “Do you think we can sync the rotation of the ship around the 'Y' and 'Z' axis at the same Jamie?”

              “It is possible, but it will be very difficult. If we are not careful we could do more damage.”

              Captain Steele weight the options. Don't attach the lab and close the bulkhead doors that separate the lab and main ship and hope that the weight distribution won't cause any more problems as they run FTL, or try to attach the lab possibly causing more problems in the process but not have very many problems with traveling at FTL speed.

              “You think we should just continue without the lab Jamie?”

              “I can help repair it,” the droid said.

              “No. Go away,” Captain Steele replied.

              “I recommend we reattach it but first let's fix a lot of the ship. This ship is in a bad enough condition. I understand that it's important to attach now because the longer we let it sit out there in the debris field the greater chance there is of it being destroyed by the debris,” Jamie said.

              “Your right, let's fix what we got to fix now. It will take a week or two, but I believe we can do it.”

              Captain Steele went back to work fixing the bulkheads, holes in the hull, the electrical systems, working on the engines, and building a plan to attach the lab back to the ship. After several hours of work, he would go back to the med bay and sleep. Day after day the ship had more and more gravity and life support restored.

              For once, Captain Steele was happy to be on his god forsaken ship.

Chapter 13

Cataclysmic Changes

              Captain Steele could feel his skin being burned and his bones burning. He felt his skin starting to liquify. He could hear the screams in the distance. He knew that it was just seconds away. The pain became more and more intense, the burning more and more painful. He wished the screams would come already, he wished the darkness would fall. Everything hurt, and he could feel that he was starting to become liquid. He knew that if he could just hold on for a just a bit longer than everything would be better.

              “Just a couple more seconds,” he though.

              He tried everything he could to tolerate the pain and when he though he couldn't take anymore it hit. The darkness. He was completely covered in the darkness. He breathed out as if he was going to sleep and he felt like he was becoming stiff and then nothing.

              Captain Steele awoke later. He tried to move but couldn't. He felt as if his mind was awake and his body was not. He thought carefully. He tried to remember what had happened. He remembered that he was on a planet. That something was coming for him but he couldn't remember what. He moved his eyes and saw nothing but darkness.

              “Am I blind now?” he thought.

              He was only able to move his mouth. He spoke to see if he could hear himself and he could. He wasn't sure if he was in his suit so he tried to activate the suit to see if he could get any readouts and he didn't. What was he running from? Screaming. Darkness. He remembered now. He was on a planet and something happened. Darkness and screaming. Weather that caused all matter to fail to exist.

              “Am I dead?” He said out loud hoping someone would answer him.

              He waited a long time but there were no other sounds. He tried to move his body again but couldn't. How long ago was that storm? A couple of days or weeks? Maybe it was more. He wasn't sure, but he knew he was tired. He knew there was nothing he could do, so he decided to take a nap. He would worry about it when he awoke.

              After sometime Captain Steele awoke again. He was still confused about what happened and where he was. He tried to think about how he was in the place he was at. He remembers shooting rocks and mercury came out. Mercury came out... came out of the rocks. He remembered stepping into the waterfall of mercury that came out of the rocks. He remembered being burned. He remembered it so clearly that the emotions of what happened came back to him.

              “No! No! Not today!” He yelled.

              He tried to move. His breathing became heavy. He struggled to move but he had no luck. He tried to move and gave it everything he had but the pain became too intense. He then became tired and fell asleep again.

              Captain Steele awoke again, this time in lots of pain. He though about what happened and wondered if he was standing or laying down on the ground. He though he was standing but he couldn't see or feel so he wasn't sure. He tried to move his legs but he couldn't. He tried his arms, tried turning his torso, tried move his head but it was all a failure. He became depressed, and wished that the darkness had taken him. He wished the screaming had taken his life. If he had known he would die alone, unable to move, from starvation and dehydration he would have let the darkness take him. The pain of death from being dematerialized was much better than this hellish place.

              He was alive but nothing he could do would help him. He couldn't eat, drink, move, or count how much time has passed. He felt stuck in limbo with the end result being a slow, agonizing death. He though about how he foolishly thought this would be like being preserved like a fossil only he would be alive but unable to do anything, even think. In this case he can not do anything but think. All he could do was think about his life and his failures. He wondered if he could have done anything different and he knew the answer. He knew deep down what the answer to that was. He knew but it was already too late. It was too late to redo his choice. He was filled with grief and became tired so he went back to sleep.

              Captain Steele awoke again and tried to move again. He was still unable to move. He wondered if this is what it felt like when they were testing the failed cryosleep projects. Able to only think and not able to move. The was a significant difference and that was that there was no one who could get him out of it. He still didn't know what was going on. He became tired again, and decided to take a nap hoping that he would never awake again.

              Captain Steele awoke to a very loud sound. He finally heard something. It was very loud. It sounded like an old fright train. A very large fright train. He heard something burning. Something was clearly on fire. He then heard a very large explosion. He wasn't sure where he was at this point. Was he still on the planet? If so what would be making those explosions? What could have started that fire?

              There was another explosion and he felt a large shock wave hit his body. Another major explosion and shock wave followed shortly after.

              “Is this how I die? Unsure of what is going on?” He thought.

              Another explosion, another shock wave. He heard something big rumbling overhead. It was massive. More explosions and shock waves. He then heard the largest explosion yet. He felt a massive shock wave that caused his body to be thrown against more rocks resulting in him being able to see out of part of his helmet due to part of the mercury rocks that covered him breaking off.

              He remembered it all now. The mercury froze him when the darkness came encrusting him in rock. He was part of the rock wall and the last shock wave separated him from it. His body was still covered in cooled mercury but he could see out of his helmet and what he saw scared him.

              He looked out and could see a massive rock falling down onto the planet. The debris trail was very long and was raining down upon the planet. He tried to move his body and he couldn't because it was still encrusted in rock. Another explosion and another shock wave followed by several more. He could see the massive rock burning up upon entry. He knew that it must be a comet because of its shear size. He knew that if it hit the planet he was a goner. He tried to move his legs but couldn't. There was another explosion and another shock wave that caused the rocks along his right arm to crack enough so he could free his arm.

              He could see the comet burning up upon entry. It appeared to be tearing the atmosphere open as it entered. The massive amounts of energy entering the atmosphere was warming the planet ever so little. A couple more explosions and shock waves and he was able to free himself from most of the rocks that clung to his suit. He started to move, unsure of where to head. He just knew he needed to get away from here. He needed to put as much distance as he could between here and the comet's location. As he tried to get up he fell down. He forgot how bad his condition was. He looked at himself and knew that he wasn't able to run. He decided to try and hide behind a rock.

              He moved around the corner onto a smaller ledge. He looked for a cave and saw one about 300 yards ahead. He started to move as fast as he could, using a combination of crawling and standing up and and taking a couple steps before falling down. He looked back and saw that the comet had clearly entered the atmosphere. He had 100 yards to go. He kept pushing forward going as fast as he could. He was only dozen yards from it when he looked back and saw a large explosion, followed by an deafening sound, followed by a massive shock wave that caused the tectonic plates of the planet to break upward causing him to fly high into the air.

              All around him he could see rocks floating into air as the tectonic plates were ripped apart. He must have been 1,000 feet up. A secondary explosion and shock wave caused by part of the comet caused the rocks that were in the air to fly away from the epicenter of the collision. The shock wave caused him to fly away from his location. His DSSM turned on at that moment and read that he was currently flying at close to 5,000 miles per hour. He braced for impact when a third explosion and shock wave caused the tectonic plate below him to fly upward, along with large amounts of liquid mercury from the planet's core. The tectonic plate flew up and he hit it at an angle causing him to bounce upward. Another explosion and shock wave caused him to fly away at speeds close to 6,000 miles per hour.

              Captain Steele braced for impact when the rest of the comet that had broken off landed on the planet. This explosion resulted in an explosion 15 times the size of the one that killed off the the dinosaurs on Earth: equivalent to 1,500 teratons of TNT, which was about 120 billion times stronger than each of the bombs that hit the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War 2.

              The resulting explosion caused the planet to break apart. The tectonic plates were sheared into pieces and all the sharp jagged rocks on them were broken off and let loose into the sky. The entire atmosphere caught fire and started burning causing Captain Steele to catch on fire. He already had exposed skin and bone because of the liquid mercury burning through his suit and this just added to his injuries. The shock wave of the explosion caused him to fly at close to mach 25, or 17,000 miles per hour. His suit caught fire as he was propelled several times faster than the speed of sound. As he was propelled around in the air he ended up circling the planet as additional shock waves propelled him like a metal ball in a pinball machine around the burning atmosphere in all directions. He was moving up and down and around so much that he couldn't keep track of where he was.

              He was bouncing off rocks and tectonic plates, causing the rocks to shatter as he went through them. He bounced around in all directions like a pinball in a machine, hitting everything which caused his bones to break. His DSSM suit was doing everything it could to stabilize his rotation but he was flying too fast. As he was flying around he would occasionally fly through floating streams of burning hot liquid mercury as it shot up from the planet's core when the tectonic plates split violently. Before long the planet's entire atmosphere had consumed itself in fire, the tectonic plates had broken off and shattered, the core of the planet had cooled off and been broken apart, and the comet was broken into pieces and was mixed along with the rocks of the planet.

              Due to the amount of mass on the planet, there was a large amount of gravitons, the particle responsible for creating gravity, and when the planet started to tear apart the gravity of the planet tore in multiple directions as well. This caused him to be sling shotted around, in and out of vacuum and zero g's as explosions and shock waves pummeled him. He could hear his bones snapping and shattering each time he smashed through a rock and as he was violently jerked around by the gravity of the remaining tectonic plates.

              Captain Steele was being thrown around at mach 25, smashing into rocks that were thrown up from the planet, exposing the boiling hot mercury inside them, then bouncing off tectonic plates, all while on fire from the atmosphere burning, while being sling shotted around from different gravitational forces pulling him in multiple directions, and into and out of vacuum and zero gravity, all while surviving the intense pressurized void created by the destruction of a planet. Eventually the planet's tectonic plates broke up so much that there was nothing but debris all over. Each time he smashed through a rock his bones would crack or break, the molten mercury would burn his already exposed skin, and every time he was thrown into vacuum he could feel the effects of it causing the water on his skin and blood in his veins to boil because of the lack of pressure. He knew that unless he got a message out to Jamie, he was going to die. He tried to send a message but he hit another rock causing him to pass out.

              After 10 days of repairing the ship Captain Steele went back to the bulkhead that seals the lab.

              “Open the bulkhead Jamie. Lets get the lab back.”

              The bulkhead opened and Captain Steele saw the lab rotating around the “Y” and “Z” axis. It was rotating sideways from bottom to top, and spinning backwards from front to back at the same time. The lab was so big that trying to stop its rotation was going to be hard. If he pushed it too hard in one direction it would continue to rotate in the direction he pushed it in. He was never going to get the lab to completely stop rotating, all he could do is help stabilize its rotation. There was also the problem of all the damage. There were so many parts that had holes in it and parts of the hull were jutting out to the point where they would need to be cut off. If he didn't cut the parts off well enough it could hit the ship causing it to rotate away from the ship or even tear the ship.

              Captain Steele weighed his options. He knew that the weight distribution of force on the ship brought on by the lab being in place was needed for proper stabilization of the ship in FTL speeds for the FTL bubble to maintain it's integrity. Without the lab traveling at FTL speeds might be a problem. He knew he would need to attach the lab to the ship. He thought about it and made his decision.