Black Hull
Authors: Joseph A. Turkot
Copyright © 2013 by Joseph A.
Turkot
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HORROR:
FANTASY:
SCIENCE-FICTION:
BLACK HULL
FUGITIVE DOSSIER
NAME: Mickey Compton
AGE: 51 yrs. old
SEX: Male
H/W: 5’11” 185 pounds
COMP: Pale, Brown Eyes
M/S: Divorced
CHILDREN: 2 males
BIRTHPLACE: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
United Countries of America
EDU: Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, class of May 3094.
GOV SERVICE: 24 yrs, NASA F.R.I.N.G.E.
Terminated.
Reason for termination: Second Degree Murder.
ASSETS: $-324,606
SENTENCE: 30 year term in UCA
Penitentiary.
ALERT
:
SUSPECT HAS FLED THE SYSTEM, AND IS
CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS. PLEASE REPORT ANY PERTINENT INFORMATION TO
LOCAL UCA OFFICIALS.
The lid of the cryosleep chamber
whooshed. Everything was black.
Mick rubbed goo from his eyes and
released the straps around his torso one by one. He sat up.
It shouldn’t be
dark
. Naked, he stood; his fingers worked along a cold metal wall, groping
for a switch.
What the hell is going on?
His hand ran into a smooth
encasement, lifted it, found a circular knob within.
He pressed in.
Nothing
—no light lit
the chamber.
It’s too cold
. . .
Has the ship lost power?
His skin pricked with goosebumps. A
barely audible whir beat in the walls—
life support is on
. He stumbled
toward a door, felt for its manual entry hook, pried it out. He stepped into a
black corridor.
No more light than the cryosleep chamber
.
Clothes, or find someone?
Mick traced his
way back into the sleep chamber, found his wall-trunk, and dressed himself.
He traced a steel notch running the wall
out into the corridor. Each footstep clanked loudly against metal floor grates.
The ship isn’t running main power, I can’t hear her
. His pulse
quickened, his brain dumping adrenaline.
He rushed along the wall, anxious to
reach the next door. Finally, his thumb found another manual latch and wrenched
it up.
Light!
It came from a row of fluorescent dots,
their amber glow faintly guiding him across the room. He waited for his eyes to
register shapes from the black.
His blind fingers recognized the feel of
curved plastisteel:
a computer terminal
.
The control station. This is
a pod.
He knew it instantly, before his eyes had acquainted with the dim
amber. He plodded forward, squared to the terminal.
What happened?
He
searched for a familiar switch. Circuitry awoke, broke the silence:
the main
computer has auxiliary power
. A screen lit, blinding him. He closed his
eyes, blinked endlessly, then stared back at it, waiting for something to come
into focus.
COMMAND>
The letters blinked, piercing green. He
swiped his finger across the screen. The line of text elongated:
COMMAND>INPUT
He traced two fingers down from INPUT.
COMMAND>INPUT>STATUS…
The computer was thinking.
How much
power is left?
The screen went black, flickered, then turned off, dead like
the rest of the ship.
God damn it!
STATUS:
x02899182v223a
AUX. PWR: 17%
EPU: LVL 6
Seventeen percent. Life support on
intermittent. Running when it has to. God damn cold
.
The number next to AUX. PWR dropped to
16.
Do I keep her running, try to find out what the hell happened, or sit
tight?
Mick watched the screen, looked around the room: his eyes had
adjusted to the dim light, and his intuition had been correct: he was in a tiny
pod used for emergency escape, but from where had he jettisoned? And why?
What
was our mission
—
a smuggling run?
A number fixed in his mind:
100,000
UCD
. They had been returning, too, the mission a success.
What happened?
He couldn’t remember, he’d been sleeping—they all had. It was a year-long
mission; Christopher would have been ten years older, relative to Earth’s time.
Ten years mission time traded for thirty
in prison
.
That was his sentence, if he couldn’t
pay up: thirty years in the UCA Pen. But he had found a way out, a sympathetic
friend in a high position of the UCA judicial branch. They’d made a deal,
details all covered: A ten year smuggling run, a politician’s hot payload of
rare ore, and deletion from the database.
Just do this one last job, and it
will go away. Fuck it
. That had been his mindset.
He traced his index finger down in the
line of an I, then quickly drew an O. The computer came on with full
power.
“Computer, last known navigation…”
“M-Class System, Gliese 581.”
“How the fuck did we get out there?”
No response.
“Computer—how did we get close to
Gliese? We were on a course from Zubenalgubi for Earth.”
“Carrier ship Crake S.O.S. recorded at
sixteen hundred hours, November fourteenth, three thousand twenty.”
“An S.O.S.?”
“Correct.”
“Registration of carrier ship Crake?”
“Unconfirmed or corrupt data.”
“Come on, you piece of shit.”
Alone. Drifting in the void. Barely
enough power to last another a day
.
Corrupt data
.
“What is the power req for a full-range
scan?”
“A full-range scan will consume eight
percent power. A short-range scan will consume six percent power.”
“How long will intermittent life-support
systems last at current power usage?”
“Eighteen hours.”
Continue to drift in the cold? Wait for
something to spring from the black, and save me? Or give it one last scan for
something, anything, out there in range . . .
“Any data on cause of pod ejection?”
“Main engine valve explosion on mother
vessel Crake.”
Valve explosion?
Mick thought of
his children’s faces, his ex-wife, his friends at the docking station. The
images were muddled.
Ten for thirty
. He wondered how many had met this
cold fate: dying in space.
To freeze; to ease into hypothermia.
There had to have been hundreds who’d gone before him.
The thought
comforted him.
“Can you double check engine power?” It
had been a joke. The computer misunderstood.
“Central power, failure. All thrusters,
failure. Recommended course of action: use intermittent life-support systems in
wait of rescue. ”
“Is there any record of an S.O.S. after
the explosion on Crake?”
“No records retrievable.”
Mick thought about the polished
F.R.I.N.G.E. ships he used to pilot: new, fitted with any and every technology.
Black hull ships—smuggling vessels—like the Crake, were old. Crake was two
hundred years old. Its computers were retrofitted, but nothing else new had
been used. Newer ships were protected under UCA law—black hull freighters flew
under-the-radar by way of their outdated computer systems and
black hull
cloaking technology.
No light, no signal, issued from a black
hull ship.
“Might as well…”
“Your command does not register, please
repeat.”
“Go ahead. Full range scan.” Mick lay
slumped against the cold steel of the terminal casing.
“Initiating full-range scan. Please
allow three minutes.”
Drifting through the void. A valve
explosion. Gliese 581?
Doesn’t make sense. There are stories of
aliens from there. Earth-like they say. A goldilocks world. Maybe that’s what
happened. Intercepted. Or maybe things just go wrong. Remember God? That
thought is strange: someone who looks out for you no matter what.
I’m a criminal floating in space. Dead
space. Intermittent life-support. No records, no engines, no power.
Mick closed his eyes. His skin pricked
up as the cabin cooled. The ship whirred, no longer dead silent.
A short
life-span remaining
. A minute passed. Another. The rinds of life dripped as
from a sieve.
“Full range scan return: no trace of
heat anomalies, no trace of cross transmissions, empty matter analysis.”
“Computer…”
“Awaiting command.”
“Power remaining?” He didn’t have the
energy to look at the screen.
“Six percent auxiliary power remaining.”
“How long can I last with ILS?”
“Twelve hours.”
“Does this ship have a suit?”
Say yes
.
“No.”
Who the hell put me in this damned pod?