James Scotson - Planets Falling

“Can we put everyone in the shuttle and abandon the vessel?” he responded quite audibly. Whispering was clearly unnecessary given the sauced condition of most of the crew, Iggy’s dormancy in cargo, and Fromer’s absence in command.

“The shuttle’s life support is limited. With all of us in there, we’d only last a couple of days at most.”

“What other options do we have?”

She sighed. “Well, I haven’t been able to identify how to get Mel hooked back up safely. We could just try plugging her back in again and take our chances. But the risk of her pulling out her drip and disconnecting again is high. Until I identify what caused her to disconnect the first time, we risk having it happen again. And we may not be so lucky the second round. She could go into shock, have a heart attack, or simply go completely vegetable on us.”

Grey did not relish the options of burning in planetary entry or being torn apart in a drop. “Do we have a final option?”

“Give me one more hour.” Adrenalin reincarnated her.

Fromer appeared from the command room; Grey announced the grim news to him. Fromer nodded his head and scratched his tuft of hair. “Gorian is in her element. She will solve the problem.”

Gorian was feeling less certain. The Raven’s programming was very complex. Unlike the Platform, she hadn’t surfed the vessel’s computer code recreationally for months. The Raven’s logic flowed in her brain and made sense, but there was so much of it to process. And even though her body was energized, she could feel her mind softening from exhaustion.

An hour and a half elapsed and the ship approached the rim of the atmosphere. The hull temperature rose slightly as the first atoms and molecules of the multi-hued gas giant started dragging along the Raven’s coal black exterior. Gorian inhaled deeply, the smell of sweat, brandy, and salt grasped her nostrils. She closed her eyes. Lines of glowing blue code branded her mind. An uncontrollable voice rose up from the depths and screamed: You’re going to burn Gory Ann . The code in her head darkened, turned to ash; her thoughts wandered in despair. Burn, burn, burn. She opened her eyes ready to submit to defeat, when a line of blue symbols reappeared before her on the screen — whether it was a coincidence or perhaps a gift from Melat she did not know. But it was now clear to her what she needed to do.

When the hull reached its critical temperature, sirens blared, causing the entire crew to jump into sobreity. Iggy stood up, startled from his torpor, her-his huge eyes staring at Gorian. “Gorian, what is wrong?” He asked.

“Not now Ig, I don’t have time.” Gorian knew that programming was as much an art as a science. Each programmer wrote code in a unique manner. When she opened her eyes, the signature programming style of the sabotuer that altered HM on the Platform was blinking on the Raven’s screen in its holy blue light. She had but to search for this signature pattern throughout the Raven’s programming, remove it, and then Melat could be rejoined to her mind. Gorian frantically wrote the algorithms necessary to clean the programming, checked them quickly twice, and told the HM to execute.

As Gorian waited for her program to run through the vessel’s trillions of lines of machine code, the temperature in the cabin became unbearable. The scent of melting plastic and ionized metal assaulted them. No one spoke — the tension permeated the air. Fromer stood at the entryway to the command room waiting for a cue from Gorian. The Raven shuddered violently. Gorian rubbed her slick fingers and the screen went blank. The logical side of her brain was not expecting this and thought: This is strange. The emotional side of her mind, usually tucked far away, screamed: We’re going to die. I have to get out of here.

Gorian slumped backwards. The crew closed their eyes, expecting a fiery end. The cabin would begin to melt around them. Air would superheat. And they all would understand what Fen and Grey experienced on the Platform.

“Well, here we go. I never thought I would bake like a turkey. Turkey sounds delicious right now.” Verat swigged from his bottle.

In her periphery, Gorian saw a faint pulsing of blue light. She glanced at it to see the words: Plug me in.

With no time to process it, Gorian turned to Fromer and nodded; he ran into the command and grabbed Melat from the floor. How light she was. With one swift motion, he threw her into the seat, aligned the web of light to her spine and head, and jabbed the needle into her vein, potentially killing the one person he cared for in a very long time.

Deep inside the ship Melat awoke. Seeds floated in the gentle breeze.

The Raven lurched and its ion thrusters fired. The air cooled and the giant planet shrunk to a dot. Within moments, the vessel was near the buoy — a blinking red light suspended in nothingness. The quantum drives thrummed loudly and the crew was twist, twist, twisting away.

Loping in the bowels beneath space were the lifeless ones. Eyes lidless, hands without fingers, minds without consciousness. They existed before the universe began and would continue after it was lifeless again. They sought light. Light was to be coveted and corrupted.

In the dim nether region of their dominion, ships traveled from that place of light. Beings, intelligent ones, had arrived and were burrowing through. In and out, weaving through the sanctity of the lifeless ones’ realm, mocking them. They must react. But how might they find the light?

In the shadows they saw the tiny tendrils — roots — open a narrow seam before them. Not large. But big enough to squeeze through if they really tried. The light was dim, clouded, brown and musty. But it invited them and they accepted.

Life was tepid and simple there. They touched it and it did not recoil. Rather, it embraced them and they grabbed, scratched, foiled, mangled it. Foolish beings. Easily manipulated. From here, they would multiply. And bend the light to their liking.

Excerpt from personal journal of Grey Commons:

We’ve arrived at Nine. I feel wretched. I’m unsure whether it’s Verat’s damn cold, the aftermath of my injuries on the Platform, or the malfunction during the drop. Probably all of them. About the failed drop — I never want to experience that feeling again. I remember reading about an execution method on old earth where each of a person’s arms and legs were tied to a rope and hooked up to a horse; the animals were then forced to run in opposite directions, tearing the victim apart. Being drawn and quartered it was called. I have a new appreciation for those poor souls. I’m already dreading the drop back to the Platform.

We all also had the strange sensation that the malfunction occurred before — that we all had this experience, although none of us have been involved in a drop malfunction. We’re wondering whether some temporal hiccup occurred. The time on the navigation beacon of the Raven read about 30 seconds earlier than the chronometer of the buoy network. It looks like we did skip backwards in time.

It has only been two days, but we all feel like we’ve been stuck in the Raven for a week or more. We still have a huge mission ahead of us. Yet, morale and energy is waning. I’m the supposed leader of this mission, so I need to talk with everyone about focusing on Nine. After all, we survived a near miss, are not dead or injured, and still have the opportunity to study a developing planet up close.

Gorian’s been tight-lipped about what exactly was the problem with the ship and Melat. Gorian spoke with Fromer at length about something in the cargo hold. However, when I asked her about the problem, she said it was a glitch in the programming. In her opinion, Melat’s brain reacted to the computer error as a threat and responded by having her physically pull her body out of the system. This is a known side effect of piloting and has caused accidents in the past. But Gorian’s a bad liar; I know she’s holding back on me. Given her fragile state right now, I decided not to push her. Fromer on the other hand will be hearing from me soon.