Nik Latesa had the bad habit of almost dying.
Nik could breathe success into any job he pretended to do, and though he navigated his first run as a refuse hauler, he had mastered control of his decommissioned carrier ship with relative ease. The over-sized elongated hunk of metal, much more than what was needed for hauling non-recyclable garbage, lumbered through deep space. The costs proved cheaper to retrofit an old piece of machinery than melting it down and starting from scratch. A massive ghost ship equipped with escape pods for a non-existent crew and dozens of solar powered single pilot fighter shuttles built for outdated space dogfights.
His hauling hunk of trash entered orbit around NGS-92364, a young, small black hole he had unaffectionately nicknamed Ex, inspired by his ex-wife; Nik strapped himself into the virtual control sphere and waited for the turbulence to subside. Three minutes and his ship would initiate the dump sequence, spilling the contents of his load into a slow orbit around Ex, eventually consuming the matter with calculated efficiency.
The black, swirling void hovered in space, an illogical dichotomy of stillness and motion, a freezing, haunting reflection of the loneliness stirring with constant motion, hungering to consume all who might succumb.
Nik lifted his right hand and his fingers performed, adding a few lines to his poem in progress for his daughter.
A warning light flashed through the spacecraft like a rock concert on psychedelic drugs. The stern laden ellipsis of a ship grinded and halted, vibrating to the limits of the hull’s capacity, and Nik gripped the cushioned arms of his command chair with his massive paws, the veins below his tattoos bulging against the shadows of splintered light shimmering in the control area; his mind shifted gears.
Nik shook his long brown hair out of his face and shouted at his onboard computer A.I., “What is he screaming about, Janz?”
Janz ordered an exhaustive list of monitor functions to appear in lifted holographic images for Nik to examine. He scanned quickly the length of the carrier and pointed, “What is that? Purple? What does purple mean?”
Janz’s programmed voice mimicked Seanly Coors, a massive 200-kilogram brown humanoid musician with a deep raspy voice, the power of which could scare a man out of a coma, “Purple is designated for energy and/or matter unable to be quantified in the known universe.”
“What are you bobbing on there about, Janz? I’ve never heard of such a thing!”
Janz projected a short definition of the code color purple toward Nik’s face. Nik didn’t bother reading it. “Did we pick it up when we initiated sequence? Why is it highlighting the entire load?”
“No, this has been with us from the beginning.”
“What! Why didn’t you tell me? What is this about? How could something so glaringly obvious go undetected this entire trip!”
Janz projected an image of Seanly Coors face on the raised holographic monitor. “You never asked.”
Nik slammed his fist into the mostly broken spherical play bot about the size of a soccer ball. It sparked and crackled beneath the force of Nik’s blow, the remaining plastic eye shooting across the floor. “You ton of collective calculating crap, are you going to answer my question? What does our load have to do with my ship altering course? Look at him! His butt’s sliding into the hole like a greased up gimp. What’s going wrong? How do we fix it!”
“My calculations can’t formulate a solution utilizing an unknown factor. Our load is interacting with the gravitational pull of Ex’s system in an unquantifiable way.”
“So, dump it early. Dump protocol along with it! Who’s gonna stop us? I’m not gonna get sucked into Ex’s gravitational grip, do you read me?”
Nanoseconds later, Janz growled, “The mechanical wings and arms aren’t responding. There is an unknown error.”
Nik clenched his fists. He pushed open his fingers wide and breathed deep. Stay calm. Think this through. What are my options? “Show me what you know about this purple stuff.”
“The stuff isn’t purple…”
Nik cut him off, “Show me the stats on the unknown mass.”
Nik recognized some of the chemical structures as it scrolled in front of him. Gold. Radiation. Unknown variables creating a string of formulas saturated with missing data. Maybe they could get the advanced tech built into the monitoring satellite station to fill in the missing gaps. “Can we upload the info to Station thirteen and get its A.I. trink to figure it out?”
“The message would be either delayed or derailed because of the Station’s current position and the gravitational pull of NGS…”
Nik chopped off the numbers. “How much time do we have until this pile of dung pulls our donkey hides into Ex oblivion?”
“Approximately fifteen minutes based on the current calculations of interaction which doesn’t account for…”
“Shut up.” He needed to understand his load. Nothing substituted for good ol’ fashion human eyes. Two minutes to suit up, a minute to run down the corridor and get himself through the compression threshold, enough time to analyze what he discovered, take a sample, two minutes to get back to the bridge, analyze it and ten more minutes to figure out a solution.
Ten minutes until the massive force of a pissed off Ex would suck him into the crazy and forever squeeze the life-force out of him.
As he suited up, his thoughts returned to his daughter. One last load, and he could pay for her entire schooling. The time differential and years he would spend in space would rob him of twelve valuable years estranged from his daughter. It had been a painful choice, a choice he thought about every day. Every time he woke up on his ship without being able to see her smiling face, feel her soft cheek against his as he hugged her tight, his insides shivered. But, the difference between a Stroghan University education on planet Harjiine at the center of political power and social structure within the inhabited system, or a useless life of poverty couldn’t compare. His daughter would hate him for leaving, but the education she would receive would teach her to appreciate his sacrifice and they could possibly enjoy an adult life together in comfort and security.
If he could live though this.
Nik sprinted down the half kilometer corridor, counting the flashes of red sparking out of the transparent sensors, absorbing the seconds ticking by on his visual display, acknowledging to himself he had miscalculated the distance as his heavy steps echoed. Panting, exhausted from compensating for the gravitational shifts and the ship’s propulsion gyros straining under the pressure from the black hole, he whipped inside the transitional chamber, flicked commands at the raised holographic images like a drunk orchestra conductor, and braced himself for the pressure change.
Nik leaped inside the tightly packed indoor stadium, bracing his mind for anything. The radiation concerned him, but he could fix the problem later, if later happened. Radiation poisoning might be fixed, but retrieving his specific atoms from inside a black hole would be impossible.
His stomach churned and he retched; an avalanche of shockwaves crushed against his chest. He pressed his gloves up against his helmet as he attempted to process the vast amount of dead human and humanoid bodies lining the container like piles of strewn hay. “Janz! What is this? Why are we hauling dead bodies?”
“That is classified.”
“Classified! Whose side are you on, Janz?”
“It is classified, as in, I don’t have access to the information.”
“Tell me what you know. And for the love of all things hot and holy, why are the bodies glowing? What kind of radiation are we dealing with here?”
Nik crouched and crawled across the corpses, his helmet scraping the ceiling, and through his sensation transmitting gloves found their bodies to be stiff and rigid. All the bodies, human and humanoid, glowed a steady yellowish orange. The systems maintained the container at a reduced atmosphere and he could think of no explanation as to why the bodies were not in a state of advanced decay; instead they were Jenga mummified in a perpetual Rigor mortis defying logic.
Nik’s gut grew gaseous as his mind released the chemicals screaming the obvious at him. What a massive cover up!
Nik ripped off the arm of a nearby corpse using the hydraulic acceleration program attached to his suit. He rolled sideways across the tops of the bodies, climbed down the death pile and raced out of the room, ordering Janz to close the access gate.
Nik didn’t acknowledge the burning heat in his lungs as he sprinted down the corridor, heading toward the engineering room. He slapped the yellow arm onto the operating table and accessed the scanner program.
Nine minutes.
Nik kept himself suited up, since he didn’t know the level of contagion, how the contagion transmitted itself, how it caused death, and a hundred other variables. He ran diagnostic after diagnostic, pouring over the readouts, screaming at Janz.
“Dumb it down for me!”
“Take your best guess, idiot!”
“Don’t analyze that, it is unimportant!”
“Janz, speak my language and use some intuition, facts aren’t our only concern!”
Two minutes and thirty seconds later, after Nik had gripped the side of the ship as a loud metal crunching screech echoed down the body and slammed into his suit, he had found the solution, no thanks to Janz’s inhuman mind. Gold. Radioactive gold. But, the nature of the element rendered the gold unique. According to their rushed calculations, the gold would lose all its radioactivity due to an accelerated half-life within ten years, and what would be left is an element of gold, with an atomic weight twice the natural state of known gold; an unknown in their universe. In the last fifty years, scientists have been speculating in accord with their current understanding of mathematics, certain planets contained elements with a direct connection or link to alternate universes which would display unique properties in ours.
They carried a radioactive goldmine.
But, it was killing him. The radiation rad levels absorbed by him while living inside the ship had affected him. Two months ago, he went through an unexplained two-week sickness. Someone had concealed the obvious truth from his A.I. by labeling all events related to his load as ‘Classified.’ He suspected the dead bodies had been doctored with a preserving process preventing decay, though it could not block the radiation.
He didn’t want to analyze the damage to his body at the moment because Ex screamed like a banshee at him and the radiation wouldn’t matter if he couldn’t free himself from her unmerciful grip.
“Janz! This is part of our problem! In our universe, the weight of our cargo is five million kilos, but according to these readings, the gravitational effect is 2.52 times greater than what the mass actually should be. Recalculate the thrust to compensate for the increased weight.”
Why hadn’t the extra mass shown up on his fuel gauges? His stomach solidified into a lump of coal. “Janz, display actual, not projected fuel supply!”
Janz’s digital voice emitted confusion, which only occurred when Janz retrieved contradictory information. “I can’t determine our fuel supply, there is unknown error.”
Exactly.
This entire trip was a setup.
Nik wanted to analyze and figure out who and what agency had done this to him. Suicide mission. Cover up. Compromised A.I. The bodies provided evidence of a horrible accident by some agency desiring concealment. What fat cat grew rich from harvesting this new metal, potentially readjusting the wealth of the inhabited system?
Nik didn’t have the precious time to assemble the jagged puzzle pieces together. He had to figure out how to get out of this alive. Even if he could escape Ex’s gravitational pull by burning up extra fuel, his supply had already been depleted beyond what he needed for his return home.
No time to worry now.
“Janz, how are we doing?”
“Our current level of thrust will not overcome inertia, though we have slowed our approach by an additional four minutes. A rough estimation shows we have ten more minutes before we will be unable to escape the gravitational pull.”
Ten minutes. Plenty of time.
Nik’s first idea involved using explosives to blow a hole in the chamber and let the vacuum of space release the load. Would the loss of mass balance the force of vacuum?
Why would he expel trillions of credits onboard his ship and dump it all into the unforgiving Ex? Such an action defied logic. Should he send out an SOS and expose the cover up to the inhabited universe? Who would intercept the distress signal first?
If he could survive, he would have more money than the gross national product of most inhabited planets. He could take care of his daughter, she would be set for life, and she would love him forever.
Did he have time to figure this out?
“Janz, you’ve got to give me options! Play it out for me.”
“I’ve been searching my commands and located a repetitive string structured similar to a virus. But, after the fifteen-thousandth attempt, I reanalyzed it utilizing restructured parameters and discovered an encrypted message. The code surfaced when you accessed the load. Would you like me to open it for you?”
Nik kicked the wall of the ship. “Play it!”
A grotesque glob of a hideous bureaucrat humanoid with a bald head and bloated body appeared in the raised holographic image and sputtered saliva, “Listen here, Dave. The only reason you would get this message and the ship defaults into autopilot is if you somehow discovered the nature of your cargo. They assure me there is less than a one percent chance given your personality matrix, but they insisted on this recording as a failsafe. Can’t have this knowledge wandering out and about in the universe.”
Dave? Nik had almost forgotten about manipulating his way into the job under an assumed name. His criminal background barred him from all transportation jobs, especially work involved with refuse detail. But, his career specialist A.I. app had insisted using a false alias paved the simplest path to continue employment, rather than trying to redeem his record. Synapses sparked. His alias had intentionally been generated as a dimwitted imbecile with the inability to conjure up one original thought, but would followed orders to the level of perfection. They must have chosen him to haul the contaminated load based on his profile. Brilliant government at its blinding best, unable to perform basic background checks.
The bureaucrat wiped at his saturated forehead and continued to talk at ‘Dave’, the perceived moron. “The people who died because of this accident became victims of a great tragedy, but don’t think their families weren’t compensated handsomely. Their loss will be forgotten, but the knowledge they uncovered will spur us on to greater and grander things, leveraging us in the sentient community with a new and important role in intelligent history. Yes, we sacrificed you, but it’s for the greater good. Your name will continue down in history as a hero. We have set up a trust fund for your next of kin.”
Lies. They didn’t do enough research to determine their fabricated ‘man’ had manipulated his way on board, and they had no true account for his next of kin. This message would only pacify an idiot. As the bloated bureaucrat babbled justification nonsense, Nik crammed details from the playback images into his memory palace. The particular fact jumping into his consciousness appeared at the top right edge of a still image above the bureaucrat’s head. The recording had only captured the small corner, but it provided enough information for Nik’s trained memory to leap to a connection. He had only come across it once before. A government issued safety video he had been forced to watch during training for his current assignment. It may not be much, but he probably could use it to trace back the origin of the recording. The cover-up must have been devised in a frantic frenzy, a short recording created in haste for a mad attempt to cover contingencies.
What else had they done in a sloppy hurry? He didn’t want any more surprises.
Nik waived his hand and halted the playback. Why would they choose to electronically document an admission of guilt? “Can we make a digital hard copy of the message?”
“No, the encryption allows it to be played three times before the virus unravels the code.”
He needed to preserve this evidence! How could he…
His synapses screamed.
The play bot!
The ship groaned in protest and threw Nik across the examination chamber. He stumbled into the control room and embraced the ominous image of an angry swirling Ex as it whispered his name. He ignored her nagging and grabbed the round play bot he had carelessly thrown into the corner. He ripped off his gloves and working as quickly as his thick fingers could manipulate the positively charged strips of command prompts, he reassembled the pieces requiring it to function.
He flipped his hand across the sensor, and the one working eye flashed an angry wink. Good. “Janz! Restart the nonsense, and I will imprint it on the play bot’s playback memory. Hurry!” He flopped the spherical bot into the command chair, strapped it in with microfiber strands, and set it to record.
Now, the most important question. How could he save the gold and escape Ex’s velocity?
As his mind pounded the options he removed his suit and entered the decontamination chamber. The electron dispersing spray disinfected his body, removing every single minute hair from him, including his full beard. He examined the display of his results.
Contaminated. Radiation saturation showed toxic levels and estimated days of life: forty-five. Not nearly enough time to travel home, even if he could escape Ex’s clutches.
If he didn’t return, why would they pay him? If they didn’t pay him, how could he enroll his beloved Sarah into the University? He would have to flush this entire trip. He must have the payload! Ten years, and he would have a unique gold worth trillions of credits.
He would be dead in less than two months.
If Ex had her way he would be dead in less than five minutes.
He had to think!
He was too heavy. The weight from the saturated dead bodies had burned up his fuel supply, the butt of his ship now dragged down into Ex chaos, and his radiation soaked body wouldn’t survive a return trip home even if he could find a way to fuel his ship. How could he flip this into a win? How could he salvage his pot of gold and bequeath it to his daughter?
The escape pods.
Of course!
“Janz! How many bodies and how much time would it take to fill up the escape pods and launch them out into an escape velocity.”
“You could fit a quarter of the load inside the escape pods, it would take you about an hour of work, and it would burn up every last drop of fuel we have to make it happen, assuming my calculations are accounting for the correct amount of fuel. Suicide mission.”
Nik cracked open his gritted teeth and laughed out loud. “Janz, you useless piece of imaginary thought, we are ON a suicide mission. Fill up the pods and burn the rest of the fuel!”
The pain Janz chose to inject into his digital voice was uncanny. “Burning the fuel.”
Nik didn’t bother suiting up. He sprinted down the hall, his body bouncing back and forth across the corridors, bracing himself against the trembling force of Ex beating against his ship. You will not win, Ex. You will not win.
The QR-A3A destroyer, a decommissioned carrier from the old war transformed into a refuse transporter, its entire crew replaced by the advanced A.I., awaited its final commission. Twenty-five escape pods remained staggered across the ship like the bumps on a cucumber designed for an antiquated crew no longer needing them. One by one, Nik grabbed corpses ranging from 50 to 150 kilograms and dragged their rock solid bodies to the escape pods. One by one, ignoring the burning flames licking at his muscles, he man handled the gold payloads and threw them into the escape pods. One by one, Nik assembled the fortune he hoped the knowledge of would reach his daughter in time.
Fifty-five minutes later, all of the escape pods dangled in space, packed solid with radioactive dead bodies, worth billions of credits each.
Exhausted, his muscles screaming alongside the straining of his ship, he executed the escape sequence for each pod. One by one, he watched as the pods ejected, burning up fuel to escape the gravitational pull of the black hole.
The pods would slide into a quickly calculated orbit around Ex, hopefully maintaining their trajectory for the next hundred years. He initiated an encrypted message designed specifically for his daughter to receive. In addition to his visual stamp, he included the calculations Janz had compiled to retrieve and refine the radioactive gold.
Nik cleared his throat.
“Well, babe, I guess this is it. Your Daddy finally got himself into a situation he couldn’t get himself out of. But, like I’ve told you a hundred times, every setback is simply a hidden opportunity to be found. When you receive this message you will be fifteen, probably angry with me for leaving you since teenagers are always looking for excuses to be pissed off at the universe.
“The important thing to remember, is not how you don’t understand what I did, or how my leaving affected you. I’m sure your mother, knowing how she is, didn’t paint a realistic picture of who I am or why I did the things I did.
“I know you love your mom and are loyal to her for raising you, and you should be. I understand I have my flaws and could have done better and don’t expect you to forgive me or agree with my choices.
“But, in the years to come, when you become a parent yourself, and you understand how it changes your world view, maybe you will find it in your heart to forgive me.
“In the meantime, I have a gift for you. I know it doesn’t make sense and you may imagine a hidden motive. There is no hidden motive. I landed in a tough place, tried to figure out how to make the best of it, and there you have it. I would have loved to come back and spend time with you as an adult. Listen to how your sweet laugh sounded as a grown woman. Meet the man you fell in love with. Argue with you about your political views.”
Nik paused the recording, coughed, and sucked in a deep breath.
“The thing is Sarah, I love you. Love is a weapon and a curse. A force to be reckoned with. A precarious road designed to destroy the smartest and most powerful person. Love moved me to travel 35 light years in the opposite direction of the only person who mattered to me in the known universe. Love moved me to do everything I can to make sure your future is secure.
“These coordinates are your future. Please don’t ignore them. This account number will give you access to my funds. It’s enough to pay for a manned trip to pick up the payload. If you aren’t sure how to proceed, hire a lawyer, and use my money to pick up the payload. It will take you twenty years to complete. Don’t underestimate this opportunity. I guarantee you, you will not regret it.”
Nik stopped recording, the ticking away of seconds poking holes through his soul, as he followed on the display the pile of dots of escape pods sparkling at him like a drunk blind date.
Nik cleared his throat. He resumed recording. “Baby, um, I know this is the last time you will ever know my thoughts. All I can say is, please don’t take anything I did personally. I’m my own man, an important point your mother could never accept. My actions have nothing to do with you. Don’t define your life by the choices I have made. The universe is yours for the taking. It is harsh, evil, selfish, and cruel. I didn’t create this life, but I did create yours. If you remember anything I tell you, remember this:”
Nik paused the recording.
What did he want to tell Sarah?
Ex waited for him, swirling in darkness, bending light to its will, screaming his name, the radiation poisoning his senses and his soul.
Nik waived his hand and resumed recording.
“Sarah, my love, my daughter, my life, my purpose, my reason for breathing. I don’t want you to follow my example. I’ve done many things in this life I’m not proud of, and though I’m good at solving problems in a pinch, there is much more to life. You are good, like your mother, and though she hates my guts, I don’t hate hers. Like me, she only wants what is best for you. What is best for you is not my example. But, maybe my words can help. The only thing you have is your heart. Your heart is pure, and beautiful, and innocent. Your heart leads you in the right direction. I didn’t know how to follow my heart. I followed my gut, my instinct, my intellect.
“It drove me away from my family.
“But, let my death mean something. Don’t forget about me. Don’t hate me because your mother does. Learn from me. Take my gift. Let me live in your memory as a welcome friend, a flawed man, with love and intent.”
Nik paused the recording and grabbed his chest.
He had two minutes left. The gravitational forces were about to overcome his ability to transmit his message.
What left to say?
“I live with regret and will die with regret. Don’t spend your life regretting your choices, or what could have been. The memory popping up into my mind right now is one you may or may not recall. When you were seven years old, you brought me your broken Boofer, a small furry animatronic animal Grandpa had bought you. You asked me to fix it, and I procrastinated. For weeks you asked me about it, but I just kept it in the corner of my bedroom, avoiding the fake toy’s gaze as I flopped my sorry donkey hide into bed. It took me six months to finally get around to fixing your toy. It took me five minutes. One loose wire and screw, and a ten minute autocharge, and it worked as good as new. I was so excited to give it to you. But, when I did, I will never forget the look in your eye: pure unadulterated disappointment. You had outgrown the toy. Six months at seven years old is an eternity. You didn’t care about the toy anymore, but you had learned a valuable lesson. You couldn’t count on your Dad.”
Nik stopped the recording for a few seconds, sucking in the tears with his sheer angry will.
“Baby. I’m your greatest fan. Don’t forget about me. Remember, above everything else, I loved you. I’m sorry I failed you. I know this money doesn’t make up for my absence. I just hope you will use this money to educate yourself and build a foundation for a better future. You are an awesome angel deserving so much better. I love you.”
Nik stopped recording and almost dispatched the encrypted message into space.
Awesome Angel? Nik shook his head quickly as if nuts and bolts had detached themselves and were rattling around inside his head. The fighter shuttles! Why had he stopped thinking?
He might be able to make it.
Nik jumped upright and screamed at Janz, “Tell me the SR-13.5 fighter shuttles have fuel!” He refitted his suit.
Janz’s response calculated hesitancy, “Yes.”
Did Janz lie to him? Could the A.I. be programmed to lie? “The truth, now, you stupid trink!”
“I thought the moment a human faces their death…”
“Shut up, we have no time!”
“The fighter shuttles are solar powered, but their back up fuel supply hasn’t been replenished for decades. They are not connected to the ship’s frame like the pods, so even if the ship had any fuel left, I couldn’t refill one. It is improbable the batteries or the solar power units have an energy left.”
Not what he wanted to hear. Think! He needed to pilot one of the fighter shuttles to the surveillance station. If he could get to the station, he might be able to hijack the A.I. and pilot the station about a light year away to the Sharfin system, the closest outpost with an advanced enough radiation center, where he might be able to treat his radiation poisoning. If they knew enough about this kind of radiation to save his life.
The pile of bodies in the butt of his ship made him pause.
“Janz, scenarios! How do I fuel the shuttle to use it to get to the station?” He waived his hand and downloaded his message to his daughter into the play bot. He snatched it out of the command chair, and tucked it under his arm as he bolted down the corridor, heading towards the center bottom of his beast ship.
“You can’t charge the solar engines from this position; the black hole’s gravitational force prevents a recharge. You would be required to break out of orbit and alter your trajectory arc in order to intercept the electromagnetic energy it funnels from the neighbor gas giant star, Suvran. There are no options, you would have fared better to save one of the escape pods. Of course, trying to pilot an escape pod towards the station would have resulted in a spectacular explosion.”
Janz spoke truth. He might have had a fighting chance with an escape pod, but he hadn’t made the connection he could possibly hijack and pilot the station back to civilization. He visualized his pod exploding as Ex pulled him apart trying to pilot the pod around, with minimal fuel to burn.
Explosion.
Nik slammed to a stop, his boots screeching across the metal, and he grabbed the wall like a starving monkey. A crazy, suicidal maniac idea exploded inside his mind. Quickly, quickly, the details coalesced as he manipulated the scenario. “Janz, you stupid, brilliant trink! I love it! It’s gotta work!”
Nik spun a one-eighty, set the play bot down, and sprinted back in the direction he came. As he ran, he shouted, “Initiate the self-destruct sequence.”
Janz’s dry voice grumbled, “That is pointless. We will be destroyed rather…”
“You didn’t let me finish! Don’t set it on a timer. Calculate the force of the explosion and determine the trajectory needed to use the explosion as propulsion for the shuttle. Obviously, you are going to have to line up your ship behind my shuttle so the force will be enough to overcome Ex’s gravitational pull. It won’t be a lot, but just might be enough…”
“Got it,” interrupted Janz. “What are you doing?”
Nik had stopped in the lower level engine room and using his accelerated power suit, ripped an electric power cell out of the encasing. Grease and sparks showered him as he fumbled with the 95 kilogram cell, gripping the ridged poly-metal cylinder like a desperate mother. Nik growled, “I’ll explain later. How much time do we have?”
“Our fuel has been depleted, the ship is in an irreversible descent into NGS-92364.”
Nik exited the power room, running down the corridor, swaying his body back and forth in rhythm with the weight of the power cell. When he reached the waiting play bot, he heaved the cell over his right shoulder like a gunny sack, kneeled down for a split second and scooped up the bot with his left hand.
He sure wish he hadn’t destroyed his hover scooter the night he got drunk.
He crashed through the open door of the docking bay, scanned the room for the correct shuttle, found it sitting in the third row back from far wall, and groaned with every stumbling step as his body suit groaned under the extra weight.
The sleek bird, with a soft metallic sheen, resembled a fat bullet with six fins. A small fighter craft designed for maneuverability and equipped with solar replenishing lasers; they could do a lot of damage before energy fields rendered their laser technology obsolete.
Nik hoisted the power cell with all of his remaining strength into the back of the cockpit. He placed the bot inside a holding compartment next to the control panel. He reached out and rubbed the etched words on the side of the craft: Awesome Angel. He smirked wickedly, gulped down a rising bubble of fear, and pulled himself inside.
“Janz, how are the calculations holding up?”
“Still at a 45% probability of success. There is only about three minutes left before the maneuver will become obsolete.”
Fifty-fifty odds? Better than Vegas. Nik strapped himself in, closed the hatch, and waived his hand at the access door below his fighter craft. “Janz, did you already shut off the shield?”
“Yes.” Emptiness.
Could Janz feel his own loss? Nik didn’t know enough about A.I. technology to know with certainty. Normally, Nik didn’t allow himself the luxury of caring about anyone’s feelings, especially an electronic construct. But, Janz had been his constant companion for a long time and to ask Janz to destroy itself to save him seemed like a new low, even for him. “Look, Janz, I just want to say…”
Janz cut him off. “Save your breath. You still have to trust me to calculate the timing of the explosion down to the correct nanosecond.”
“Okay, you stupid trink, I’m only saying this cause you about to kill yourself for me. I love your cold, metal heart.”
Nik blinked a few times, tapped the lifeless fighter craft, and waived open the hatch below him. With the field deactivated, nothing besides the hatch separated himself from the violent vacuum of space.
What seemed like a thousand decibels of sound and a million g-forces slammed at him with the subtly of a death metal concert. The ship dropped/pulled through the hatch, banging against the side with a grinding grunt, and fell into space, spinning wild. Nik waited a few seconds, hoping the spinning would stop, but it never happened. He hadn’t counted on the out of control rotation, because he still needed the time to try and hot wire the shuttle. He hadn’t bothered to tell Janz his plan, since it would have calculated the million to one odds and advised him against it. The power cell, a back-up plan in case the explosion didn’t occur as calculated, gave him an added boost of courage. He hoped the energy released from the explosion would give the solar absorbers a quick trickle charge, enough for him to divert power from his cell and keep the shuttle operative until he intersected with the energy from the gas giant.
It was probably impossible.
The spinning never stopped. Nik threw-up inside his suit several times, smearing vomit all over the visual field of his faceplate and saturating his eyes. He worked furiously, hijacking the energy found inside the power-cell and fusing it with the control panel, trying to remember all the necessary rules on how to run electric current and not fry the entire onboard operation assembly.
He blinked his vomit crusted eyelashes and decided not to second guess himself.
He had been so focused on the makeshift energy rewire, he had forgotten to pay attention to the timing of the explosion.
Janz stayed true to his word. The massive carrier ship, a small pencil dwarfed by the massive gaping black hole, ripped itself apart, section by section, piece by piece, as the explosion tore its way through the hull of the ship, spraying debris and particles in every direction. First came the short delay; the force and light energy reached his small shuttle, plunging it into the dark abyss opposite his Ex.
The spinning wouldn’t stop.
The g-force threatened to rip Nik apart. Though he continued to retch, his empty stomach contained nothing left to expel. He couldn’t discern his direction; he didn’t know if the force had been enough to overcome the event horizon. He kept his eyes glued to the instrument panel registering the possible trickle charge it could have received from energy released in the explosion. He had hoped the gauge would register automatically without having to turn on all the systems. Every bit of energy would be needed to start the engines, which would in turn connect with the power cell, which in turn would power the engines. Unfortunately, he had a make shift generator designed to operate like an alternator with no battery.
He closed his eyes. He flipped the panel switch.
Nothing.
He forgot to turn off the safety.
He flipped the panel switch again. This time, the lights blinked. Would it be enough? Could it have absorbed enough power to start the solar engines?
He placed his five finger tips across the contact points and lifted the green display screen forward.
Nothing.
He did it again.
He held his breath.
He panicked for a slick moment, the ship spinning and spinning, his equilibrium now adjusted to the unnatural momentum, and he resisted a strong urge to slam his fist into the panel.
He was dead.
He tried again. And again. And again.
He was hypnotized. If he didn’t stop spinning, he couldn’t get his bearings, and he had no idea if he had entered an orbit around Ex, if his ship fell toward her, or if he had escaped, but now headed too far away from the gas giant to recharge.
The seventh time, the miracle ignited.
The solar engines fired up. The gauge for the charge read less than a tenth of percent. He turned around and gripped the sides of the power cell, willing it to work.
It would either charge the ship, or possibly explode.
The power cell worked. The gauge moved up: .1 percent, .2 percent, .3 percent…
Nik stopped watching the gauge. He gripped the controls with his finger pads and slowly adjusted the spin. He didn’t want to stall the engines by trying to force the correction. He didn’t know how much power the cell would have and he didn’t want to waste energy until he knew for sure he could get a charge from the gas giant.
Fifteen minutes later, the shuttle leveled off and he determined his bearings.
It would take him two days to readjust his trajectory and find a safe location to recharge. He watched the power cell’s depletion level, computed the math, and knew he had just enough. He now needed to maintain his course, recharge, plot a course toward the station, monitor his oxygen levels so he didn’t waste it, board the station, hijack the station, pilot the station to the nearest inhabited star which would take about thirty days his time, and find a way to stop his radiation poisoning.
Piece of cake.
Nik sighed and collapsed. He thought about Janx, and the sacrifice the slave A.I. had made for him. He wept. He wailed. He sobbed. He couldn’t stop the eruption of pain reverberating through his body.
When he couldn’t cry anymore, he flopped his head to the side and watched Ex out of the corner of his eye. Speaking into the void, he cried, “You didn’t beat me. Not this time. You didn’t win, you pathetic excuse for a life. I’m better than you, do you hear me? Do you hear me!” He screamed until his voice turned hoarse and he choked on bits of dried vomit.
He flopped his head forward, too tired to care about anything. The play bot swayed back and forth near his right foot, wedged into the side of the ship like a forgotten ball; the one working mechanical eye staring back at him.
He would live to greet his daughter once again. They would be rich. And they would take down the disgusting scum attempting to cover up this horrendous crime.
But, wait! Could he possibly take on the most powerful government in the inhabited universe? Would he be able to keep his illegally confiscated goldmine?
A small curl formed at the edge of his lip and he shrugged into the darkness.
No worries. He’d figure something out.
The End