K Gillenwater: The Man in 14C: A Collection of Science Fiction Stories

Contest:Written for @LayethTheSmackDown “Epic Tales From a Beautiful Mind” Challenge on Wattpad. It was included in the First Contact group of stories. K.J. had to write about a first encounter with an alien species and had to include certain items in the story: a reference to a fictitious brand of cigarettes, a reference to a graphic novel series, a reference to Star Wars (at least one), a picture of a dinosaur in someone’s backyard, and at least two sentences of dialogue used word for word.

An alarm sounded on the control panel. Our water hold had sprung a leak. Must’ve been that asteroid storm we passed through when Carlos accidentally turned us off course while I was asleep.

My training at the Academy kicked in. I flicked my fingers over the flashing alarm icon to read the rate of loss.

Hundreds of gallons leaked into space in less than a minute.

“Shit.”

I ran the numbers through my head. Our next resupply station was a several light years from our location. More than two month’s travel time. We’d left Earth with plenty of water for our mission.

I needed more hands on deck to stem the flow. A spacewalk would be in order to survey the damage, patch the hole. Hopefully, it was small enough to be patched with the meager emergency supplies we had on board or we were in serious trouble.

I waved my hand at the comms screen. Carlos slept buried under blankets in our quarters. “Wake up. We’ve got a massive water leak. I need you out there now.”

Carlos had dozens of hours of experience suiting up and working on the exterior hull of hauling vessels like The Gemini . His job as co-pilot was to act as relief captain, but he also pulled double-duty as the chief engineer aboard our two-person hauler. Well, two persons and a very aged ‘robotic assistant,’ as the company liked to call them.

“Carlos.” My voice grew sharper. “Get up. Now.”

The blankets stirred. Carlos sat up and hit his head on the upper berth – my berth – and swore.

The camera automatically shifted its focus to his face and zoomed in for the perfect shot of his red-rimmed eyes and messed up hair. He’d only gotten off his 12-hour shift a few hours ago. I wasn’t surprised he had been difficult to wake.

“What’s going on?” Carlos rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“Water leak. Big one. You gotta get out there. The airlock’s prepped. All you need to do is run down there and suit up.”

The Gemini was equipped with a lot of automated systems that could be run from the main deck with the wave of a hand over the right control. The automation allowed for a skeleton crew, which made space shipments much cheaper than 20 years ago. But some of the equipment had seen better days. The risks had grown greater each year the company decided to keep the same haulers working, rather than replace them with newer, more reliable models.

“Got it.” Carlos looked fully awake now. Aware of the seriousness of the alarm. He picked up his tool bag hanging by the berths.

The three things you needed to have in space: air, water, food. Without them, you were screwed. Carlos didn’t need to be reminded.

The cameras seeded throughout the ship followed his path. Out of the sleeping berths, down a stark white hallway, past the storage chambers full of equipment for Colony 427. Equipment to replace that which had been damaged by a magnetic pulse from a nearby pulsar. The colony builders had forgotten to move everything into a shielded bunker before a storm and had been laid up for months waiting for our delivery.

Didn’t bode well for the future of this colony if they could be so easily ruined through a bit of forgetfulness. But the company had plans. Big plans. Part of those plans was to extend its reaches further and further into space. Creating new outposts. Discovering new things including sources of energy, minerals and other necessary items for the ever-hungry Earth dwellers.

“Water stores depleting rapidly. Get out there, Carlos. Now.”

I waved my hand over another screen to my left. I immediately adjusted the water allocated per shower to one-third and daily totals to less than a quarter of what we considered ‘normal use’ in a given space flight. The regulated plumbing system would slow down our usage, but the calculations about how far we could travel before we ran out of water was still unknown.

Carlos would have to move quickly to keep us from ending up in a dire scenario.

The cameras tracked Carlos’s movements. Another hundred yards and he’d arrive at the air lock. His boots clunked heavily on the corridor floor. I wished he’d move faster.

The alarm increased its rhythm. I turned my attention back to the water levels. The pressure was looking bad. Very very bad.

“Shit.”

Carlos slipped into the air lock.

A loud boom echoed through the entire ship. Louder than anything I’d heard before.

Carlos shifted his gaze into the camera lens. “Did we lose it?”

The fear I saw in them was palpable.

The screen flashed at me. I read the news, “Total blow out. The hole must’ve been small. Pierced both hulls. All that pressure…”

“Mary Mother of God.” Carlos crossed himself.

The screens surrounding me, flashing their messages and streaming the camera signals from all parts of the vessel, disappeared. Tunnel vision set in.

We. Were. Screwed.

Carlos unbuttoned his chest pocket and pulled out a box of Ecrivain’s Specials. He fumbled for a lighter.

“Hey, we can’t smoke on board. That’s a code violation.”

He pinched a cigarette between his lips, flicked the lighter and touched the flame to it. “Screw the code.” He sucked long and deep. Smoke billowed out of his nostrils and into the closed air lock.

The computer systems on board analyzed our situation. The blowout had also caused a suction effect on our pipe system. The only water that remained was a gallon of drinking water in the storage tank under the galley sink and the brown water used in the shower system. Our filters would burn out before we’d get to Colony 427. I set aside my fear and waved my hand over the star map, touched our location – a flashing blue blip – and expanded the view so that I could see the possibilities that surrounded us.

Carlos entered the piloting deck. It had been built for one person to operate, so it was cramped. Screens surrounded me. Each one allowed a view of a different system: the cargo hold, the video projection, the map, the ship’s systems, the space view. I spun in my seat to face my partner.

Carlos had the cigarette between his lips. “You can rat me out if you want to, Lissa, but I’m not signing my own death warrant.”

“You mean the asteroid storm?” Carlos hadn’t been my best partner, but I’d never divulge to the company that his sloppy piloting may have doomed us. “We gotta find some water first before I worry about what the company thinks about the damage to the ship.”

He puffed on his banned cigarette, “As Han Solo said to Chewbacca, ‘it’s not my fault.’ Something went wrong with the display. I was given the all clear. You think I’d pilot us through an asteroid storm on purpose?”

I wanted to tell him no, but I knew better. A man didn’t choose this kind of job. He took it because he was desperate. I knew Carlos’s situation better than he realized. I’d heard scuttlebutt back at the launch zone. Other hauler pilots black balled him, didn’t want to work with him. He had a reputation for looking out only for himself, and on a long haul like this one, with only 2 crew members, you had to rely on each other, trust each other.