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LIAM, PERCY, AND the rest of the bridge crew anxiously watched Jameson’s live feed broadcast on the largest monitor at the front of the bridge. They grouped tightly together as Jameson entered the ice-covered building. The first room was bathed in darkness, the only illumination provided by the light on his space suit which only reached a distance of twenty feet before losing the battle to the dark and fading away.
Empty. The room consisted of only four frozen walls. On the far side of the room was an open door. Jameson left the room and looked left and right down a dark hallway. The center of the building was to his right so he went that direction. More doorways lined both sides of the hallway. Some lay open like the room he entered in, others with doors closed—forever frozen shut. He noticed right away how tall the doors were, at least a foot and a half taller than their own standard doorways. In each open room he peeked inside, but one after another came up empty.
The hallway opened up into what must’ve been the building’s lobby. It was two stories and above him icicles hung dangerously on the ceiling. If one above him were to fall it’d no doubt impale him. He swept left and right searching for anything distinguishing. There. Near the back wall to the center was a four foot high rectangular object. If this room was the lobby of the building then it looked like this might have been a desk. He reached out and tried to brush the frozen frost away, but no luck.
Next to the desk on either side were staircases that wound up in curves to reach the second floor. Jameson took one last look around the lobby in case he missed anything then carefully began climbing the left staircase. With each step he slammed his foot down to dig the cleats in to avoid falling down the slippery staircase.
The crew on the bridge watched his slow progress without speaking. Jameson took each step slowly making sure he was as secure on the icy steps as possible before climbing the next one. Liam glanced out the starboard window bay at the moon below. The Hawking’s pilot kept them directly above Jameson. They orbited too high above the moon for Liam to see the city properly.
Back on Triton, Jameson reached the second floor. Like the floor below, the stairwell landed into a hallway too long for his light to penetrate fully. Again, some rooms were open and empty, others locked behind frozen doors. He repeated this process on the other end of the hallway past the lobby and had the same result.
“Seems this place has been emptied out pretty well. I’m going to try another building,” Jameson said as he made his way down the staircase.
“Wait. Captain, aim your light up on the opposite wall,” Liam said.
Jameson stopped halfway down the stairs and adjusted his light to shine on the wall above where the front door might be somewhere under the ice.
“What do you see?” Jameson asked.
“Just keep your light pointed right where it is.” Liam stepped closer to the monitor. To the others in the room he said, “See right here? Through the ice.” He pointed at something on the monitor.
“I don’t see anything, sir,” Jon said.
“See this darker coloring? It makes a line. Then another here and here.”
Stacy came closer to examine more closely. “Maybe.”
“No. I see it, too,” Percy said.
“I have an idea,” Stacy said. She went to the computer terminal attached to the monitor and adjusted the image settings making the dark lines a bit more prominent. “Give me a minute.”
“What do you see?” Jameson asked.
Liam answered him while Stacy worked at the keyboard.
“There, this should make the image clearer,” she said.
On the monitor the darker lines were enhanced and the computer even picked up on some patterns they couldn’t see themselves. The lines were highlighted yellow and were spread out horizontally.
“What is that?” Percy asked.
“They look like symbols,” Jon said.
“It has to be their writing,” Liam said. “Words above the front door.”
“I recorded an image,” Stacy said.
“Jameson it looks like under that ice is writing of some kind. Symbols we can’t make out.”
“You have better eyes than me. I don’t see anything. I’m going to keep going to another building.”
Carefully, he made his way down to the first floor and turned right back to the hole in the exterior. Once outside he gave a wave to Debra who was still sitting in her cockpit. “How are you doing in there? Staying warm?”
“Nice and toasty. Keep staying safe.”
He told her he was going to the smaller building fifty yards away—the first one Liam put a hole through.
On the bridge Percy turned off the intercom relay to Jameson. “So this was them, wasn’t it? It had to have been.”
“I think that’s likely,” Liam said.
“You think they had a base out here watching us?” Stacy asked.
“Watching us, planning their attack. Waiting for us to be at our weakest,” Jon said. “Once their main ships came from their homeworld they abandoned it.”
“Remember we know nothing for sure,” Liam said. “Speculation is all we have. Just because it’s been abandoned doesn’t mean they took over Earth.”
“We need to tell the passengers,” Percy said. “I’ll relay to the rest of the security department and then I think they need to know.”
“Ultimately that will be up to Jameson when he comes back. Until then this doesn’t leave the bridge. Everyone understand?”
The bridge crew and Percy agreed. They refocused on Jameson’s trek on Triton. The second building he would explore now only a few yards ahead, but Jon was looking out the window bay. He thought he saw something odd, but when he looked for whatever caught his attention, all was as it should be. He disregarded it as nothing and returned to the monitor.
Jameson climbed into the second building. This one was only one story tall and considerably smaller. While the other was empty besides the one desk, the opposite was true here. Frozen and unidentifiable debris spread throughout the room he was standing in. He had no choice but to walk on the debris shattering some beneath his feet. He tried to pull a piece off the floor to examine more closely, but it was frozen to the spot and if he pulled too hard it would break apart.
More debris littered the building—none of it recognizable. He did find more frozen furniture including a desk and an overly large but narrow chair which fit the description Liam and Debra gave of the alien who boarded his ship. Anything small that he thought he could grab and bring back with him was either too frozen to remove or shattered in his grasp.
“I’m going to check out one more building, Debra,” he said.
“Take your time. You still have plenty of oxygen.”
“Copy that.”
Back on The Hawking’s bridge, the group examined images taken of the debris trying to identify what any of it could be. Again, possible movement out of the window bay caught Jon’s eye who was standing closest. He stepped to the window trying to identify what exactly had drawn his attention twice now. Down to the right was the moon while way to the left in the distance was Neptune. The space between was filled only with the twinkling light of stars.
Not trusting his eyes, Jon went to his computer station where he had access to the ship’s radar. While waiting on the dish to realign, he checked up front to measure Jameson’s progress. His captain was back outside and looking up at a high spire that opened at the top like a blossoming flower. Jon couldn’t help but marvel at the ingenuity and engineering that went into constructing a base like this on an uninhabitable moon.
Jameson reached the third building. This one’s entrance was a more challenging climb and he could feel the cold penetrating his gloves when he applied pressure to pull himself up into the hole.
“Damn. Debra next time remind me to double up the gloves. I think they’re faulty.”
“They don’t double up. Just try not to touch anything too long, okay?”
Jameson flexed his fingers trying to ball them into fists. “Yeah, I won’t.”
No debris or anything else was in the room. Jameson squeezed through the smaller doorway out into the building at large. Down a short walkway he came across a large room with fifteen frozen circular tables and chairs of different sizes. It appeared to be their dining hall. For a second he wondered what kind of food they ate.
Jon’s radar came online as the dish finished its realignment. He watched the screen populate first with Triton and then Neptune, followed by what he knew must be Neptune’s other moons based on their size. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Jameson’s light beamed on the expansive dining room wall. Beneath the ice he saw a circle. Unlike the symbols in the first building this was easy to see—the ice much clearer. Lines connected the circle to others of varying sizes. Some small, others relatively large. He counted nine with the largest one coming first. It hit him immediately. He was looking at a map of the solar system. The sun at the beginning connected to Mercury, then Venus, then Earth, and on and on. The last circle would be Neptune.
Ping. Jon glanced down at the radar screen. A dot in the far distance—hundreds of thousands of miles away. Ping. The dot moved a little closer. He looked out the window bay and saw nothing except the same horizon filled with stars. But was it his imagination or was one of those stars twinkling more than the others? Its light refracted in an odd way. Ping. The dot moved again, slowly coming their way on the screen, but expeditiously out there in space. Jon walked to the window bay not taking his eyes off the strange star. The ping behind him from the radar confirmed that it wasn’t his imagination—the star was coming closer.
“Mr. Donovan—Captain?”
“What is it, Crouch?”
“I picked up something on radar. And I think it’s getting closer.”
Liam joined him by the window bay followed by the others. “I don’t see anything out there besides the stars.”
“It’s in the stars. You see that one above Neptune’s rings? It doesn’t look right. The radar pinged it at three hundred thousand miles away, but it’s moving fast as hell.”
“Shit.”
Liam turned on the intercom to talk to Jameson. “Captain! We need you back on board. I think we have an approaching vessel.”
“Come again, Donovan. An approaching vessel? Another ship?”
“It could be. It’s far away, but moving in this direction.”
“An STS?”
“I don’t think so. Get back here Jameson.”
“I’m on my way. Tell everyone to prepare for battle.”
Debra listened to the conversation and began prepping the Z48 for takeoff. The last building Jameson entered was out of her sight. If she could fire up the engines she could fly over and meet him, otherwise it would take him a few minutes to get back to her.
Jameson moved as quickly as his space suit and the low gravity allowed. He couldn’t believe his luck. Down on the surface of some moon while the people he was responsible for might be facing another attack. He had to hurry.
Using the low gravity he jumped up to grab the edge of the hole to climb back out. The intense cold somehow was even worse through his gloves. Cold pain was all he could feel in his hands as he pulled himself up and through the empty hole landing softly on the other side. Both hands near frozen, his fingers curled where he gripped the frigid edge of the hole.
Above a one story structure across from him he saw the top of Debra’s Z48 rise above the ground. He took off in her direction while looking down at his ice cold hands trying to flex them back into working order.
Debra saw him down a pathway between several structures running toward her. He had his hands in front of his face—not looking where he was going. Not far in front of him she saw something else, too. A small amount of gas escaping the frozen crust and leaking into the little bit of atmosphere there was. Jameson was about to run right on top of it.
“Landon! Look up!”
But her warning came too late. The geyser erupted at the worst time when Jameson was only feet away. She watched as his body launched high and backward. His legs hit the top of a structure sending him spinning over it in a flying cartwheel.
“No!”
She heard his scream on the intercom. The moon’s low gravity took its time pulling him back down to the surface. Finally, he landed hard into the side of a structure. He wasn’t moving. Debra quickly unbuckled herself and put on another space suit. The process was taking too long. She had to move faster. She got her boots and helmet on and entered the airlock. The ten seconds it took to depressurize the room felt like an eternity.
At last the light turned green and she took off running as fast as possible in the gravity. She saw him lying along a frozen wall, head leaning on his shoulder. She lifted his helmet and looked inside. A trail of blood leaked from his head, dripping over his closed eyelids. The computer display on his arm showed no vital signs. Captain Landon Jameson was dead in her arms.
“Fuck me.” Percy had his hands on top of his head staring in disbelief at the bodycam feed from Jameson’s suit. “Did that just happen? He’s dead?”
The bridge crew stood in incredulity.
“Debra. Can you hear me?” Liam asked. “Sizemore, are you there?”
No response.
“Crouch, why isn’t she hearing me?”
“Not sure, Captain. Hang on.”
Captain? Just great, Liam thought. How could Jameson be dead? After everything he’d been through. He was a veteran of the Panama conflict, he’d survived a millennium in space, and now he lay dead on a frozen wasteland because of a gas eruption.
The mantle of leadership again fell on Liam’s shoulders—right in time for a possible crisis. He had to take his eyes off the live feed and somehow find the focus to deal with whatever or whoever was on their way. He hurried to the radar screen. To his dismay the mysterious object was unwavering in its progress. Now only two hundred and twenty-five thousand miles away. It was moving fast—too fast. He told the ship’s pilot to start turning around.
“Percy, make sure all the passengers return to their quarters. Rednour, keep me informed on how close our new friend is approaching. Crouch, radio status?”
“No signals are coming in or going out. I think they’re jamming us.”
Of course they were, he thought.
In the live feed monitor, Debra was dragging Jameson’s body back to the Z48. Within minutes she would be taking off and flying into an unknowable situation and Liam had no way of informing her to stay back.
“Sir, the pilots are prepping the Z56s.”
Good. However, he worried how effective they would be. The enemy was formidable a thousand years ago. Who knew what their capabilities would be now?
“Two hundred thousand miles away, Captain,” Rednour shouted.
Still only a light in the distance, but at their pace they’d be on them in minutes. He was about to give the order for the Z56s to take off when the lights and equipment flickered. The chronic growl of the thrusters they grew used to fell silent.
“Status?”
“Sir, I have no control,” the pilot said. “Everything’s been overridden.”
“Weapons?” he asked an officer manning the ship’s exterior gun turret.
“Negative, sir.”
In the space of minutes their captain died, communications jammed, and now they had no control of The Hawking. Liam felt helpless. He’d been in bad situations before numerous times, but he knew he could always fight his way out. This time was different. There would be no shooting his way out of this. He doubted the Z56s could even exit the airlocks and he couldn’t even fire the ship’s own defense system. They lost control.
“Percy, passenger status?”
“My team’s making the rounds. And they made an announcement on the intercom.”
At least they would be safe from the initial conflict. But were there enough weapons on board to defend them all? Not likely, he surmised.
The strange light of the approaching ship slowly grew more discernible. An outline began to take shape. “Rednour, status?”
“One hundred and fifty thousand miles, sir.”
“Okay. We have to assume they will try and board us or possibly send an envoy. We have five Z56s in each of our docking bays. I want three in each to have weapons armed, but to hold fire unless I give the command. Everyone with a gun prepare to move in wherever they board. Nobody fires without my say-so. We may be vastly outnumbered and the safety of the passengers is our priority.
“Percy, I need you to take everyone here and go to the arsenal. Load up and be ready.”
“Yes, sir. You heard him everyone, move your asses. After me.”
The bridge emptied out with the exception of Liam who observed the radar screen. He ran through theories in his mind. Did their presence on Triton trigger a warning system or alarm alerting them of their presence? It’s possible they had a satellite dish of some kind out here that their own scanners failed to pick up. Or maybe they never stopped watching their floating ship for the last thousand years and once it became clear they were awake they decided to come finish the job.
Five minutes after the crew left to arm themselves, the ship was slowing down and entirely visible out the window. It was larger than the one they encountered leaving Earth and it featured a similar design, but now with more hard edges instead of completely curved, almost like they merged their own designs with the STS ships.
Ping. Liam looked down at the radar and saw it was registering a smaller craft on its way from the large ship. The boarding party. “Stand by everyone, they’re sending a ship,” he said on their internal communication radio that still worked. At least they hadn’t taken away everything.
He watched the ship on radar until it was close enough for him to see it outside the window bay. It was similar to the craft he flew to attack the thrusters on the first alien ship, but this one had a bulkier mid-section no doubt for carrying passengers. Its wings looked like an eagle in flight and they were the prey.
“Captain, the outer airlock door is opening at Docking Bay One,” a voice on his radio said.
“Very well. Everyone, proceed to Docking Bay One. Weapons ready, but hold fire. I’m on my way.”
He had no time to pick up his gun from his quarters, but he knew where Jameson kept his in his office, so he grabbed it on his way to the elevators and tucked it in the backside of his pants. The ride down was excruciatingly long, but it gave him a minute to think. The aliens sent only one shuttle. What does that say about the situation? It says the aliens are confident in their superiority. They believe the battle to be already won and only want to demand their surrender. He’d have something to say about that. Or perhaps they’d come to negotiate a truce. He could live with a truce with the proper restrictions.
Every able body of the crew that was capable of fighting packed into the docking bay. Liam fought his way through the crowd—many still unaware of their captain’s fate. As ordered, three Z56s hovered in midair weapons prime. He could see only the top of the alien craft over everyone’s heads. An alien voice broke the prolonged silence. It was a language he only heard once just weeks ago from his perspective.
“If you can understand me, our captain will be here momentarily,” another voice from the front said.
Liam rushed through the crowd, edging between bodies until he saw the back of Percy’s head at the front. He made his way there and stood next to him. The alien craft was two or maybe three times larger than the one he stole. It dwarfed their own Z56s. One alien stood in front of the craft’s open doorway blocking the view making it impossible to know what was behind it.
“I’m here. I am the captain of this ship,” Liam said, trying to sound as authoritative as possible. Confused susurration drifted in the crowd behind him, but he paid them no mind.
The alien in the doorway turned its head to find the one who spoke and replied in its own foreign language. It started to descend the craft’s staircase with long minacious strides. No one dared to speak as it approached Liam. It stopped inches away and peered down with its strange vertical eyes from its impressive seven and a half feet height. Its gray head tilted left and right taking judgement of the man standing before it.
“Do you understand me?”
Before the being could answer, Percy had his gun raised, muzzle aimed at the alien’s head.
“Percy, what are you doing?”
The alien glared at the smaller man with the gun.
“Keeping my captain safe.”
“Put the gun away. Now.”
Percy hesitated. His desire to keep Liam safe conflicting with the order to stand down. The gun stayed up.
“Stop this!” a voice from behind the alien shouted.
A human woman stood in the alien craft’s open doorway.