Chapter 1: Into the Unknown
"Do you think we’ll ever get to see the stars?" the little boy asked.
His younger sister shrugged and pointed up above, causing her auburn hair to cascade off her shoulders. "I don’t know what you’re talking about. I can see them just fine."
Both kids lowered their gaze from the night sky to look at one another. "No, Avi. I mean really see them, like dad has." The boy kicked at a loose rock imbedded in the field. He struck it several times, finally causing it to jar loose. Reaching down, he picked up the rock and rubbed away the dirt to see its glossy, black surface. "Don’t you want to be up there someday? Going on your own adventures?"
"I doubt your father sees the Signal Corps as adventurous." The two children turned to face their mother. Tiny strands of gray had crept into her long black hair, giving their mother a dignified air about her. Her slender frame eclipsed the light from the portable lantern she had set down. "Jonas, it’s getting a little late for stargazing." She knelt down to eye her children more closely, her tone was light. "Are you two up to something?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.
Jonas shook his head and answered for the both of them. "No, mom. It’s just been so long since we’ve seen dad…" he trailed off as his mother brought warm hands to his shoulders.
Avi sniffled and rubbed a sleeve at her never-ending running nose. "Does he miss us?"
Their mother smiled and reached out to embrace both brother and sister. "Of course he does, Avi. He misses us dearly, and believe me, he’ll be home soon."
Home soon….
Captain Jonas Relo inhaled sharply and jolted to consciousness. He found himself slumped in his command chair on the bridge of colony vessel Pioneer. Jonas rolled his head from side to side, as if to shake some sense into his skull, and he immediately regretted it. His hands came up to cradle his aching head, and he blinked several times to clear his watery eyes. The stink of burned electronics wafted into his nostrils and he coughed. Clearing his throat, he looked around the darkened bridge.
Half of his fellow crewmen were starting to wake, while the other half remained in the positions their bodies fell after traveling through the massive portal. The Portal. Jonas frowned when he recalled the last thing he remembered. We were brought here against our will. He abruptly sat up and searched for his Sensors officer amidst the burned-out consoles. "Sensors, are you functional?" he called out.
Jonas saw a hand reach up from a console and pull the bulk of a man over it. The officer gave a half smile and lifted himself up off the ground. "Sir, I’m somewhat functional." He paused and looked at his personal display. "But we currently don’t have enough auxiliary power to attempt a system restart."
Jonas nodded, doubting the man could even see his gesture. "Anyone else up and running?" he asked into the darkness.
A voice responded to the Captain’s left. "No one has power, Sir. Even the Climate Controller is inoperable. All we have is the Gravity Generator running."
Frustrated, Jonas looked down at his command chair to find none of the stand-by lights glowing. Frowning at the uselessness of the onboard equipment, he loosen his restraints and stood on shaking legs. "Anyone available, see if you can get a visual on Verra Two or our dropship." He likewise, made for the main viewport and steadied himself on the cool metallic handrail. His eyes panned back and forth, searching the blackness of space. The only light he could see was radiating from out of view off the port side.
An officer joined him and quickly spotted the fighter craft. "There she is, Sir. Twenty degrees and holding steady." He pointed to the right and held his arm still till Jonas nodded.
The Captain squinted and could just barely made out the sleek design of the Verra-class fighter. It remained pointing relative up to Pioneer’s current position with the cockpit facing away from view, revealing a charred keel.
"Captain, we have the dropship over here!"
Jonas patted the officer who had found Two on the back. "Keep an eye on them."
He turned and started for the left-most viewport. Faint blue light reflected off the windowpane, bathing the faces of the officers in a ghostly hue. Crewmen were jockeying for a view, but they soon parted and cleared a path for the Captain. A pale-faced officer peeled away from the viewport and started to say something, but merely pointed out the window. Puzzled, Jonas stepped down to the smaller window and his heart skipped several beats.
Holding steady a mere 500 meters off the portside, Harper and Hill’s ship was clearly seen. From what Jonas could see, the dropship looked to be intact with dimly-lit running lights signaling the smaller ship did have some sort of power. Like Verra Two, it remained motionless, but the stern was facing Pioneer, blocking any visual contact the two ships could have made. But what nearly took the Captain’s breath away was the backdrop. An enormous flowing disk glowed like luminescent water surrounded an emerald planetoid. He leaned in closer, not really believing what his eyes told him. The multi-colored clouds that arrayed themselves around the central object enhanced the beauty of the scene before him.
"What is it, Sir?"
Jonas had not noticed the now-crowed window until a crewman asked the simple question. "I’m not sure." He paused for a moment, then a thought clicked in his mind. "Does that look familiar to anyone else?"
"Yes, Sir. It kind of looks like the system Aegis that we were suppose to colonize," another officer answered.
And that it did. The awe of first coming into the Aegis system was the magnificent colors the nebulae offered. Jonas snorted. It seems like a lifetime ago, but it’s only been… He frowned momentarily. How long has it been? A week? A month? Traveling through that portal could have taken… who knows how long? He felt his face to find the length of his stubble the same as he last remembered. The distant constellations twinkled to mock him of his disorientation. He didn’t recognize any of them. He had studied countless star charts in preparation for entering the Aegis system, but here there was nothing to help establish a location.
Jonas shook his head to help clear his thoughts and turned around. "Anyone recognize these constellations?" he asked, as he encompassed the starscape with his hands.
The hum of inquisitiveness started, and then it ended in an awkward silence.
After a brief moment, the Sensors officer spoke up. "Orders, Sir?" His sour expression matched those of the bridge personnel.
All Jonas could feel was helpless. Throughout their recent exploits on the planet Passium, he found repeated instances where he had nothing to go on, nothing to bolster confidence in the crew. His company, the Hexil Corporation, had commissioned Pioneer to colonize the Aegis system, but what they found was a trap laid to use the colonist as lab rats in a neurological experiment Hexil had already stationed on the planet. The Captain and the crew had improvised tactics and equipment, and they successfully defended the civilians. Until that alien ship dragged us out here. Jonas immediately recalled in perfect detail the gigantic ship that blasted out of Passium’s depths. It’s black coloring would render it almost undetectable against the backdrop of space, but the shear size of the four-winged, rectangular ship would indeed be visible. Right? He turned back towards the viewport and searched for the particular outline of the unknown craft.
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Here, adrift in space under no propulsion, he was helpless. Inside the cockpit of Verra Two, Flight Officer John Thompson craned his neck to widen his view of the stars. His co-pilot, Victor Oskov, was still asleep with arms folded. John settled back into his seat after the latest futile attempt of seeing anything other than stars and blackness. The two pilots had agreed to take turns keeping an eye out for any signs of contact, while the other would sleep, helping preserve the oxygen left in the cabin. They had been at this same rotation three times in as many hours without any luck.
John sighed and quickly regretted doing so. Short, steady breaths. Now is not the time to panic. Once Two had pierced the Portal’s sphere, they instantly found themselves here with no electrical power whatsoever. John had assumed he must have blacked out because there was no way they could have traveled out of the planet’s gravity that quickly, but his vintage wrist chrono was still operating on its outdated, wind-up design. With nothing more than the hull of a ship and their brains, they were stranded. The two pilots had agreed they needed to get a better idea of their surroundings, so Victor had come up with the idea to move the ship sideways by rocking back and forth in their seats. After five minutes and no progress, they ceased and took to brainstorming in turns.
A grunt from beside John snapped him out of his daze. "You awake, Vic? You’ve still got 20 minutes left, if you want."
"No, no. I’m fine." The lanky, brown-haired man sat up and stretched his arms. "I think I’ve got an idea we could try." He leaned forward and his restraints stopped him short of touching his toes. Victor reached behind him and released the straps.
"Care to enlighten me?" John asked inquisitively. His co-pilot always had a quirkiness about him that seeped into his thick Siberian accent.
"Oh, yes." Victor turned around in his seat and reached for an overhead compartment. He opened the latch and started digging for something. "Since we have no electrical systems available, I figured the hydraulics in the landing gear would still be functional, provided there’s enough juice left in the capacitors to release them."
"Gotcha." John nodded and bent down to unfasten a control panel next to his left thigh. He pulled it open and laid the panel with the attached wires facedown on his lap.
Victor had finished his rummaging and returned to sitting in a normal manner. He held a metallic flashlight in his hand and uncapped the bottom to pop out the battery. He discarded the useless power source and recapped the end. He then proceeded to bang the blunt end of the flashlight on the metal bulkhead to his right.
John almost laughed as he watched Vic beat the poor flashlight senseless against the side of the cockpit. He had known Victor Oskov for nearly two years but had never spend much time with him, apart from the rigorous training on the newly designed Verra-class fighters. He found Vic to be a bit of a loner, and that fit the both of them just fine. Victor would often talk to himself and mutter under his breath, but it never made John question his sanity or companionship. Two introverts being trapped in a cockpit together was normally a dreary thing, so any amusement was met with gratefulness.
Vic finally ceased his incessant pounding and brought the deformed flashlight up for John’s inspection. He had formed the shaft into a flattened end that thinned out like a giant flat-head screwdriver. John looked down at the control board he had in his lap, looked back at the flashlight, and gave a wry smile. "So, are you going to loosen some bolts with that thing?"
The Siberian brought the flattened end of the flashlight to the middle of his flight jacket and a zipper rose up to connect with it. Victor wore a smug expression. "This is hopefully now magnetized enough to arch the current from unneeded capacitors to the ones we need."
John suppressed a laugh and pulled out an object from his left sleeve pocket. "Wouldn’t my knife do the same thing?"
Victor’s hands collapsed in his lap and he frowned. "Why didn’t you tell me you had that? Nevermind." He shook his head. "With the magnetized end, this will be more efficient."
John shrugged and angled the panel for Vic to have better access. John wasn’t exactly sure how the transfer would work, but his co-pilot was a smart man and took great lengths to remind John of his numerous university degrees. Victor found a wire and traced its path to a large capacitor. He then repeated the motion twice more till he found the routing that was needed. Vic extended his sleeve to hold the flashlight in a covered grip and held his breath. He connected the positive contact points of two capacitors and John nearly jumped out of his seat when the floor vibrated briefly. A smile crept its way onto Victor’s face. "You see? It is working." He bit his lower lip in concentration.
If John was tracking his co-pilot’s thought patterns correctly, all they needed was a large enough charge to the hydraulics of one landing skid to hopefully propel them in an axial rotation.
"One more should do it." Vic made one more contact and the moan of stubborn gears creaked audibly in the cockpit followed by the hissing of compressed air.
Outside, the stars rotated incredibly slowly, but John didn’t mind. Without any resistance in space, they were left to forever spin without an exterior force giving any sort of friction. Better yet, we won’t get dizzy.
The two sat eagerly for their view to adjust and when the change of scenery finally came, it made them gasp.
John’s jaw dropped. We are definitely not in Aegis anymore.
******************************************
"Sir! Verra Two is rotating towards us."
Jonas smiled and started back to the main viewport. He walked past a female officer’s console and appropriated a small vanity mirror attached to the side of her display. She opened her mouth in protest, then saw the Captain and thought otherwise. The small amount of light coming in through the window would be enough to reflect a visible signal. Hopefully.
Jonas gave a short chuckle when he saw a lone landing skid protrude from the underside of Two. Those guys are pretty inventive… for pilots. He waited till the top of the cockpit came fully into view and moved the small mirror back and forth, up and down, trying to judge the angle. Most naval officers still could interpret the ancient Morse Code, and he was betting Thompson knew it. He breathed in deeply and set himself to hail the smaller craft. In a combination of short and long bursts of light he inquired Verra Two. Jonas waited for a good fifteen seconds to go by and repeated the message. Halfway through it, a response came, and the Captain let another layer of anxiety lift off his shoulders.
[No power. Oxygen depleting. Approximately four hours left. Location: Unknown.]
Jonas frowned. We’re In the same boat, guys. He responded with confirmation and orders to standby. Despair began to eat at the back of his mind and Jonas was sure he would die out here.
The Captain Relo felt his legs wobble as a vibration rippled through Pioneer. Verra Two began frantically signaling him, but the message was hurried and jumbled beyond recognition. Just as Jonas was telling Thompson to slow down, a blur passed in between the two ships, momentarily cutting off visual contact. The Captain stood in amazement as a gigantic ship, the same as the one that brought them here, blasted from his periphery and quickly looped around to the left, diminishing in size off to port.
Jonas, along with several others, ran to and crowded around the portside viewport. Multiple giant black ships appeared around them and headed towards the central emerald star from all angles. The rumbling of the hull was replaced by the familiar startup sound of electronics. The bridge glowpanels turned on and consoles flickered to life as power to Pioneer was restored. By then, everyone was awake and active, returning to their stations and reporting unresponsive controls.
"Can you get me contact with our dropship and Verra Two?" Jonas asked, starting for his chair.
His Communications officer shook his head in helplessness. "Uh, Sir, my controls are locked. I cannot access any frequencies."
Relo frowned. "Helm? Do you have control?"
"Negative, Sir. I—" His words were cut short when the flight stick wiggled in his grip. He let go and raised his hands up. "Sir, something’s controlling the ship."
Captain Relo took his place in the command chair, as the bow of Pioneer began to vector in on the focal point of the alien ships. The engines came up to full power, emitting a shudder through the ship’s hull. Pioneer leaped forward and continued to accelerate. "Sensors, do you have our other two ships?"
"Yes, Sir. They’re vectoring in as we are." The Sensor’s officer leaned back in his chair with wide eyes. "That green planetoid is our collective destination."
Jonas nodded and set his jaw. "Hold on, it might be a bumpy ride."
The path Pioneer took was an elegant one, taking a lazy loop up and to the left, giving them a spectacular view from above of the rolling, blue plasma-like disk surrounding the central sphere. As they approached the aqua-blue light, thousands of tendrils, like ribbons from a young girl’s hair, reached out from the watery disk and caressed the outer hull of Pioneer. A soft buzzing sound could be heard throughout the ship as Pioneer slowly flipped upside down, still facing the planetoid. The onboard gravity kept the crew in place, and the turn gave the bridge an up-close view of the disk.
Jonas felt the hairs on his arm stand on end and a wave of heat passed over his body. The sensation, which was purely physical in nature, quickly passed, but Jonas felt something different about himself. He looked down at his hands and closed them. The usual tension in his joints was gone. He reached up to examine his busted lip, but he came away with flaky dry skin when he rubbed the smooth outer surface of his mouth. He stretched his right leg out, await the expected pop and pain of old bones . . . but it never came. He looked across the bridge to see others in a similar state of bewilderment.
One officer stood, took off his glasses, and blinked his eyes a dozen times. He nervously laughed and waved a hand in front of his face. He looked up at another crewman beside him. "I . . . I don’t think I need my glasses anymore." He gave a half smile and sat back down in amazement.
All across the bridge similar stories were told, and it gave Jonas pause. There must be some sort of healing aura generated by that watery substance. Jonas smiled to himself. In fact, I’ve never felt better.
Pioneer had finished its roll and was now accelerating towards the central planetoid, right side up. As the approach brought them closer, Captain Relo noticed he no longer had to squint to see the finer details. The emerald sphere was—in fact—translucent in nature; its surface pulsed with rippling, white-green waves.
"Captain, I’m getting the same type of energy readings as before." While his controls were still locked, he could still interpret the gauge readings. The Sensors officer scratched his head. "But they’re more subdued. Actually, the emissions are very similar to our own slipspace ruptures."
Jonas chewed on the inside of his lip for a moment. He glanced down at his comm unit built into his command chair and keyed it. "All hands, prepare for another jump. It looks like we’re headed for one more stop." His voice reverberated throughout Pioneer.
But something was different this time. No longer was the crew fearful of their lack of control over the entire situation. Everyone had excepted their fate as unmanageable and awaited the outcome.
Jonas sat up and stared into the green glow that now filled the entire front viewport.
"Twenty seconds till contact," the officer from Navigation informed.
Captain Jonas Relo nodded. He mentally counted down the time and never blinked his eyes. He kept starring, waiting for the inevitable journey into the unknown.
New story out! Halo: Below the Brine
(it's the best story you're not reading!)