A sci-fi adventure by hackaday.io

He slowly got up, walked over to the door, and poked his head cautiously out into the passage. Was that it? They just set him free and walked away like nothing happened? And what reason could they possibly have for sticking him on a military ship? Something didn't add up, but thinking back things hadn't been adding up for quite some time. His thoughts were interrupted by the man standing behind him who had removed his restraints. He was impatiently patting his thigh waiting for Lee to leave.

"Where's deck C?" Lee asked over his shoulder. The man sighed and rolled his eyes.

"The ramps are that way." he pointed down the corridor to the left before edging past Lee and setting off in the opposite direction. Lee shrugged and stepped out the door. His legs were still getting used to the reduced artificial gravity and without concentration his steps turned into a bouncing gait that had sent him tumbling into walls more than once.

After more than a little exploration Lee finally read the words "DECK C" painted on the wall over a small but detailed map. Now that he was here he realized he still had no idea where to go. He didn't have to think about it too long.

"Ensign Cossat." A low voice called behind him. He spun around, the unexpected motion causing him to grasp at the wall for stability.

"Lieutenant..." he tried for an awkward second to remember the name.

"Simpson. Here, this is yours. We've been waiting." He said pushing a large pack into Lee's arms. One nice thing about reduced gravity was that everything felt light, though he could tell by its substantial inertia that it was not.

"Follow me. Captain Myles is ready to set off." Before Lee could say anything he found himself struggling to keep up with the Lieutenant, who was clearly more adept at moving in artificial gravity. Eventually they came to a low door. Lieutenant Simpson held down a couple of buttons on a panel beside the door. With a brief hiss the door began to slide open revealing a second door sliding upward. It was a docking hatch. For a moment he could read the words on the door, "CS Hammer." It was the same ship that had picked him up, though he had no memory of it, and apparently it was where he'd be spending the foreseeable future. The oddness of the situation washed over him for a second. Then he ducked down with the pack in his arms and half stumbled through the hatch onto the ship.

Lieutenant Simpson slipped through beside him and pressed more buttons next to the door causing them to slide shut. His expression suddenly relaxed and he spoke in a noticeably less rigid voice.

"Welcome aboard. I guess we should go find the Captain." He paused and looked at Lee for a moment. "If you have any questions..."
Lee couldn't hold back an abrupt laugh, but stopped when the Lieutenant's brow creased sharply.

"Sorry. It's just... Well, why am I here?" he asked. Now it was Simpson's turn to laugh.

"Isn't that what they've been trying to pry out of you since you arrived in your one-man luxury vessel?"

"No, I mean what am I doing on this ship?... in the navy?" Lee asked. Simpson took a deep breath and looked at him for a second before answering.

"I don't know." he said calmly. "You'll have to ask the Captain."

Lee had considered several possibilities about how the company would react once they discovered what he'd done. None of them bore any resemblance to reality - the geosync platform wasn't at all what he remembered. When the science teams had arrived there had been life here, a semblance of normalcy. This was a military operation now; for all that Lee could see, Future Worlds Corp had ever even set foot on this station.

Not until this morning anyway. Day after day Lee had been subjected to questioning by military personnel, horrible insinuations and even worse accusations. Within hours of his harrowing escape from the surface, Hab-3 had been destroyed in another explosion. Kenta and the others, gone.

Unsurprisingly, he'd been treated with a great deal of suspicion but despite everything, Lee had maintained his innocence. The investigation hadn't found anything that implicate Lee aside from his odd escape strategy. And now Bart Fullerton, VP, Terraforming Operations sat across the interrogation table waiting for an answer. The choice was simple; join the Service or spend the next few decades on a penal colony. The company considered Lee's hijacking of the SRC outright piracy. It was recovered but damaged and without the thermogel protection, none of the samples had survived.

"Officially you're offworld on temporary assignment now," prompted Bart. "Sign and your contract becomes null and void when the crisis is over. Otherwise you're fired, effective immediately. Either way, you're doing time: that stunt you pulled was absolutely reckless. Hell, it was straight up madness. You're a dangerous liability Lee, even if you're not a damned terrorist. Why Myles wants you on his ship is anybody's guess but at least he'll have eyes on you."

"Last chance."

With a sigh, Lee leaned over and awkwardly picked up the pen. A few short strokes later he became an Ensign in the Navy. Better than being a convicted pirate.

"Very well. You'll be transferring to the Commonwealth Ship Hammer tomorrow, under Captain Myles' command. Lieutenant Simpson on Deck C will get you provisioned. Try not to get anyone killed."

Bart left without another look as Lee's restraints were removed, absent-mindedly pressing the cufflinks of his suit jacket as he left the detention facilities.

He started to feel a chilly stream of cold liquid going from his back into his boots, and he knew exactly what had happened. Due to the position he was in the pump was obstructed, and could not fully pump the gel around. Due to pressure a seal broke, causing it to leak everything inside his suit. Under normal circumstances this would not have happened, but because Lee was in such a tight position the thermosuit could not expand and certain areas were squeezed tight. Lee knew that he had to get out, but before he could act another noise was heard, this time from the detachment couplings going off, bringing him into space.

Lee was in a bizarre but also dangerous position. He was now getting lifted up by the balloon while the thermogel was filling in his suit. There was nothing he could do now. Either he would be lucky and get picked up in time, or he would get frozen to death by the thermosuit, or he would get choked to death. Either way, he was strapped in for the ride of death. Lee was totally focussed on surviving. The cold liquid started to get higher and higher, until it was on his waist, and then he felt a heavy shock of the rockets igniting and suddenly he was pushed towards the floor together with the cooling liquid. The liquid dropped from his waist to his ankles for a couple of seconds, before everything started to float. "Zero gravity" thought Lee, before he felt the cold goo going up his ankles again, but this time it was more dangerous, since the liquid could obstruct everything else. Lee began to freak out.

The crew aboard the "CS Hammer" had no idea that they would find a human aboard the SRC. Especially not someone who was still alive. Big was their amazement when they opened the tube and a blue droopy liquid came out, together with a spacesuit containing Lee. It looked like a scene from a horror movie, where a human was put in an egg. They quickly notified the doctor aboard the geosync platform, and the crew managed to revive Lee, who had seem to have swallowed a lot of the thermoliquid. When they finally reached the geosync platform, the doctors took over and transported Lee to a medical bay.

Lee keyed in the launch authorization code and set the countdown timer for 3 minutes. That should be just enough time to finish his preparations while minimizing the likelihood that someone could walk in and catch him in the act. Once he was away, there was no going back; no way anyone could stop him. Unless... No, that didn't bear thinking about. This was his only shot, now or never.

He donned his makeshift spacesuit. It was a cobbled together affair, one part pressure suit, one part aerogel thermal regulation underwear, one part underwater welding mask, and enough struct-tape and hope to hold it all together. There was a CO2 filter he had made on the Electroloom along with some of the spare Nitrogen/Oxygen canisters for the occasional underwater assigments they had to deal with. He checked and rechecked his gear for what had to be the thousandth time. The balloon would be ready for liftoff shortly. No one would know he was gone until he missed his end-of-shift check-in, hours from now. By that time he would be hurtling towards the geosync platform at a few times the speed of sound, alive or not.

Lee took one last look around, feeling a strange mix of nostalgia and finality. He squeezed into the SRC through the tiny hatch that was never meant for human ingress. He had to crouch on his knees with his arms tight to his chest in front of him to fit. It was cramped, but it would work for the short time he needed it. Luckily the door was slaved to his terminal, so he just had to push a button and it closed and sealed behind him. He checked the countdown: Sixty seconds until release. Everything was goimg according to plan. Then he heard a sound that chilled him to his core.

He went through his morning routine just like any other day. After rehydrating and consuming his breakfast, Lee logged into a work terminal and briefly skimmed through the day's tasks and project updates. Words flew by on the screen in front of him, but there was only one task he was interested in.
[Inspection and Maintenance of Sample Return Craft] rolled up the screen. He had scheduled the last minute inspection himself, but still felt his heart rate jump at seeing it.
"There's my ride up." he whispered to himself. The SRC was little more than a metal cylinder and wave drive booster tethered to a high altitude balloon. When it reached the upper atmosphere the booster kicked in and took the cylinder the rest of the way up to the geosync platform to be collected by the supply drop craft. But it was never intended for human transport. It lacked any life support systems, and when it reached its destination there was still the task of getting out of the cylinder and into the platform in the vacuum of space.
With a flick of his finger Lee sent the task up to the top of the list. He took a deep breath and started gathering tools for the job. Everything had to look normal. Nobody would be suspicious of a quick inspection before the scheduled launch that afternoon, but Lee's heart was still pounding. He hefted the tool chest in one hand and set off for the vehicle lot, stopping by his room to quickly stuff the suit into the bottom compartment of the chest.
When he arrived at the hangar where his unsuspecting escape vehicle awaited its voyage, nobody was there. Everything had been loaded and prepped on the previous cycle, and since the launch was almost entirely automated only one person would need to be present for the event. Lee had arranged to be the launch overseer that day, which meant there was little chance anyone else would be coming. But that small chance was critical. If someone did come it could put an end to everything. He didn't know what the company would do to him if he were caught, but again the message from Jim came back to mind.
"... There's something really strange going on here, but everyone's ignoring it. Everyone I ask just tells me to drop it. What's the company trying to hide? Tomorrow I'm taking this data to the Hab manager."
That was the last message he or anyone else got from Jim. His company profile now read "Temporary offworld assignment", but everyone knew that wasn't true.
Lee walked up to the dull grey cylinder, just slightly larger than himself, and set his hand on the cool metal.
"Don't kill me, now." he said in a calm voice.

Lee allowed a small smile to creep onto his face after that joke. He was going to need more than a broken nose for the corporation to clear the expensive shuttle extraction. Kenta stood with her hands tightly clasped together, biting her lower lip below eyes deep with worry.

Lee let out a small sigh for her benefit. "It's alright Ken, that was a mad idea. We are almost halfway through this contract anyway." Kenta smiled in relief, "Yeah," she replied, "Almost halfway." Lee regretted telling her the truth. She would be keeping a closer eye on him from now on. He would need a way of doing this without anybody noticing. Lee met Kenta's gaze as he slipped his laser drill out of the toolbag. It fell with a clang on the dish below distracting Kenta from the confirmation beep of the resonant injector.

Lee spent the next 3 cycles doing what he was supposed to, but the doubts were always with him, the strange history of the planet, there absence of deep water life after the gamma burst, terraforming permits should have been illegal here and how did a company with no terraforming experience get the rights or the resources to claim this planet but Jim's message was the most worrying, the explosion at Hab-5's greenhouses had an unnatural radioactive signature. It was no pocket of methane, like they had been told.

Lee woke up anxious the next morning. He was sleeping uncomfortably on top of the aerogel lined suit he had made in the Electroloom. He wished he could just send the transmitter up with the weather balloon but the signal could only be encoded by the quantum tag in his arm. He had to go up with it. Lee took a deep breath and slipped off the warm gel bed...

Lee looked at her in amazement. "You dont mean that ... "

"Yes. I tried getting off this planet. I tried getting the hauler back to life. I did not want to tell you before, but something is broken and I don't know how to fix it. I opened it to investigate, and it looks ancient. I cannot build the parts using the 3D printer, we need someone who can build these types of machinery. We are stuck Lee, and unless you know a way out of it, I am afraid there is nothing we can do about it."

Lee looked at her with a gaze of disappointment. He wanted to get off this rock as soon as possible, but without getting close to that shuttle there was no way they would get off the planet. "Well, seems I have to go for plan B: Hack ourselves a space suit." Now it was Kenta's turn to look at him in amazement. "You don't mean that..." Lee nodded yes. He knew exactly what they had to do to get off this planet. They just had to be sure that the pencil pushers did not find out what exactly they were going to do.

"You don't mean that you are going to use the Electroloom to create a space suit? You must be mad! That thing is designed clothes, not a space suit. Let alone the parts required to give yourself enough oxygen to reach the platform. You are out of your mind, you know that?" Kenta looked at him like he had really gone mad this time. Normally she would think he was just insane, but now she knew he really was insane. "I would rather break your nose so that they would send the shuttle, than letting you out there so you can freeze to death."

"Kenta, you know those accidents on the far side were far more than what they showed in the official reports. I kept in contact with Jim, from the recent Hab 5-"

"I know what you're going to say," Kenta interrupted, "and I've heard the rumors myself. Nobody wants to think about it, but so what if it's true? What can we do about it? We still have another 150 cycles on our contract before the taxi gets here to take us back to Pleiades Station."

"There's the medical evac shuttle on the geosync platform," Lee stated.

"And it will only move if the pencil pushers send the signal."

"That's my area of expertise. I recorded the signal last time it was used, then used a rainbow table to decrypt it, shift the phase-cipher blocks, and re-encrypt the next code in the rolling sequence. Problem is, I'm going to have to be very close to the shuttle for this hand transmitter to even seem like it is coming from one of the deep space relays."

"So how are you going to get up there?"

"The old hauler is still 10 klicks to the east, I'm sure we could convince it to rise from the dead," Lee said, referencing the original payload shuttle that had dropped supplies well before the human staff had even landed.

"And by we, I assume you mean me..."

"Yeah, you are about the only one on this rock that could ever get it going again."

"There's only one problem with that," Kenta said, a quiver entering her voice.

Still muttering, he hefted himself over the lip of the dish and slid down it's interior slope, ducking quickly into the relative shelter of the antenna array. A quick dig through the tangled wires revealed the home-built resonant injector spliced into a communication line - his secret link to the orbiting station and the key to his escape plan. The screen lit up as he placed his hands on the control points, but before he could begin a sharp voice rang out. "Lee? What the hell are you doing out here?"

"Kenta?" he asked, and was answered a moment later as she squeezed into the tight space beside him. With one glance Kenta took in the glowing screen, the pile of tools and Lee's terrible attempt at a poker face. "You're up to no good - better start talking fast. The egg-heads expect me back soon, and I'm sure they'd like to know what you're doing tapping our coms!"

Lee considered his options. Trying to lie his way out was likely to fail - Kenta might not have his knowledge, but unlike the rest of the team she would not be thrown off by some meaningless techno-babble. He didn't have it in him to hurt her, and running away was utterly pointless on this empty planet. Coming clean was the only other choice. While he didn't relish the idea, the long months in close proximity with Kenta had convinced him that if anyone else could understand it would be her. Taking a deep breath, he began:

Turbulent wind whistled around the base of a large dish pointed almost directly upward. Somewhere up there, far above the roiling atmosphere of this nearly lifeless planet, a crude docking and communications outpost stood seemingly motionless in its geosynchronous orbit. The cold silence of space seemed like paradise compared to the endless dust storm down on the surface. At least that's the way Lee felt about it.
He had been living there for only a hundred or so solar cycles, which accounted for less than two years of his life, but he had long since tired of the bleak, dusty landscape and the isolation of the terraforming research settlement where he worked as the systems engineer. Lee's coinhabitants, the only remaining animal life on the planet, consisted of 17 other people. They were mostly botanists, chemists, and other academic types. There was also a structural engineer, Kenta, who shared a habitation with Lee. While Lee was in charge of keeping electronic and mechanical systems functioning, Kenta was responsible for the immense, sprawling vegetation shelter in which they were trying to nurture a variety of hearty grasses. The hope was that a spreading plant ecosystem would stabilize the climate and make the planet more suitable for human settlement.
Although the planet was astonishingly similar to Earth, and even developed a breathable atmosphere thanks to the evolution of oxygen releasing life forms some billion years prior, it was now nearly devoid of life. Before any organisms had a chance to leave the liquid water oceans a nearby gamma ray burst drove almost all to extinction. Now with the intervention of humans it would have a chance to become green with life, though not of its own origin. When Lee was offered a position on this terraforming mission, he jumped eagerly at the opportunity. Now he was starting to regret his decision.
With a grunt, he yanked a heavy tool box from its rack on the sand rover. He slung the wide strap over his shoulder and began climbing a short ladder up to the large dish that was their link to the rest of the universe.
"I gotta get out of here." he muttered, trying vainly to shield his face from the swirling sand.