Europa (Deadverse Book 1) (3 page)

- Joyce -

Joyce Hunter typed furiously on her keyboard. The clacking of keys echoed in the disturbingly quiet room. Bothered by the silence, she stopped for a moment, rolled backwards on her chair, and reached down to open up one of the vents. She usually closed them. She liked the communications hub. The computers and servers in the room heated it up, and she detested the cold stale air from the vents. Today though, many of the servers were off for maintenance, and she hated the silence more than she hated the cold.

She finished up typing the message and began to review it.

“Central. Entry 798. Subcommand 17.

The drones are fully awake and are having their biological components resupplied. Roberto Palmeira is running diagnostics alongside Drone AI. Zero issues have been reported. Captain Hoarry is running internal simulations on the AI software.

Awaiting confirmation from Indianapolis regarding go ahead on artifact entry.

Also requesting confirmation about supply pod 89. Please send shipping information. We have not received any shipping information in two weeks.”

She sat back and rested for a moment. She was the communications officer for the research station. She hated Europa. She hated being stuck in the tiny frozen tin bucket. Joyce was a beach girl from South Carolina. She hated ice.

So many years ago, she had applied for the Europa mission, just like thousands of others had. She was sitting on the beach surfing on her phone when the images started flooding social media. A tiny spec of green, millions of miles away, coming towards earth. She was interested in just that aspect of the story. And then NASA had turned the Hawkings Telescope towards the object. It was the first time the ultra-modern telescope had been used to take pictures of something so close, relatively speaking. The pictures that came in blew everyone away.

It was not a comet. It was something from another solar system, or galaxy. The sleek green object had the appearance of an exploded diamond. Several smaller objects ‘flew’ around it like Remora fish on a shark. It could have been something created by nature deep in space, except that it had entered the solar system at light speed, and was now slowing down. Objects in space only slowed down if it was intentional.

Joyce remembered the excitement, the fear, the jubilation, the anger.

She had tried out for the mission never expecting to make it. She just wanted to say that she had. She was a burst laser communications expert and had given many of her years in service to the US army. She joked she was one of the few Americans left that fought in the army. Most were Mexican or Canadian. Or the drones.

She shuddered thinking about the wires.

She passed the first round of interviews and worked her way up the ladder, leaving behind far more experienced candidates, never really expecting to get chosen. When it was down to the last six candidates, she was relieved when she wasn’t chosen. The job offers that came in just because she had made it that far had been her true desire. Then, the main guy that was chosen got cancer and she found out she was number two on the list. She had already made such a big deal about not getting chosen on social media, in order to beef up her reputation, that she couldn’t turn the offer down.

So here she was, on the frozen moon of Jupiter. It turned out she was vastly over-qualified. Her one and only job was to communicate with mission control in Indianapolis and to parse over any data sent to the station. She ran an internet hub, although nearly all of that was done automatically now. She had automated their entire antiquated system in six days.

That was two years ago. She had been bored ever since.

That is, up until two weeks ago.

She had told Ben first, of course. He said to not tell anyone else.

Every six weeks, starting six weeks after they had left from Earth’s orbit, NASA had sent a supply pod. It contained food, medicine, organic material for the plants, new experiments, clothing and many other essentials they needed to survive on frozen moon. Like clockwork, every six weeks, give or take a day, the pods would arrive in orbit. Connie DeVicio, one of the base’s lab engineers, was also trained to use the only SEV, the Small Entry Vehicle. DeVicio called it a tin can with a rocket, and so the name had stuck. She used hydrogen harvested from the moon ice to fire off into orbit, dock with the pods and deorbit them onto the surface.

She would have to tell her soon. The next pod was due to arrive in two weeks. Thing is, Mission Control always sent a detailed launch log each time they sent the supplies up. Two weeks ago, when she expected the next one, nothing had come through. In fact, nothing came through. No emails, no IMs, no videos. The only data coming from earth on the laser were Captain Hoarry’s encrypted messages. She saw the data, just couldn’t see their content. She had really thought about cracking them.

Not yet. Probably just a glitch in Indianapolis.

Maybe.

- Susan -

Susan loved Europa. She stood up and wiped some of the dirt off on her pants, nearly instinctively, then stopped. She thought about her tightly braided blonde hair. Surely, there would be dirt in her hair that would need to be extracted as well. Every spec of dirt was needed here. She would have to wash her pants in a separate machine to extract the dirt from the water. At least the system worked well.

She looked around in her brightly lit dome. Green was everywhere.

She was familiar with the experiments. Plants had been grown on space stations and in several other space missions. They knew it worked, just that it didn’t work this well. All those experiments had been conducted over a small time period. The longest one was two months. On Europa, she had the best results from an ongoing experiment for growing plants off Earth that anyone had ever had. And they grew well. Beans, tomatoes, squashes, different kinds of corn, rice and a whole myriad of herbs. The mushrooms did especially well, growing to sizes she didn’t even know was possible. So successful was her dome, and by her own mathematics, she was sure that she could feed the entire crew of the mission from now on, and maybe even expand.

Of course, that would mean a vegetarian diet. Most on the base would not be OK with that. They still liked their imported meats and assorted other animal products.

Of course, she was about to take a step in that direction. Two dozen eggs, shipped somehow in some kind of preservation chamber, were due to arrive in the next pod. She was going to incubate them, if they survived the trip, and start raising chickens in her green dome. The real experiment of course was to see how Earth animals would do in a low gravity environment for more than two months. She had hoped to have them mature enough to lay eggs before they left the moon, but odds were they wouldn’t be ready on time.

Susan took a deep breath. It was the only place on the base where the humidity reached upwards of 80%. It was really the only place that still smelled of home. She walked the small path between the two largest sections of the garden. The soil underneath her was perfectly prepared by her, the amounts of nitrogen, calcium, magnesium and potassium carefully measured and recorded. Her destination was the far side of the dome, where several hundred-foot-long rows of spinach grew. She had planted them here for this very purpose. The deep green plants were ready the week before, so her timing was nearly perfect.

“Are those it?” Bobby’s voiced echoed on her wrist band. He was following her on camera.

“Beauties, huh?”

“Looks good. Wish I could have some.”

“There will be plenty left over.”

She reached over to the wall and brought down a small machine. It was about two feet high and had high tracked wheels on either side. She sat it down on the ground with the first row of spinach directly underneath it, with its tracks on either side of the row. She tapped a few buttons and the little robot hummed to life and began moving forward slowly. Susan reached back quickly and attached a small wagon to the end of the robot. It also sat high above the row. As the robot moved forward, it reached down into the soil, pulled the plant out and handed it to one of its tiny mechanical arms. That arm in turn moved the plant backwards underneath the robot and up into the wagon.

“How long will it take?” Bobby asked.

“Till it’s all harvested? Probably two hours. Once the harvesters get it all, they will dump it in the washers and the plants will get processed. You should have your finished product in five hours.”

Susan listened and heard only a pause. After a few moments, Bobby replied that would be OK.

Of course it was OK. She had sat with the Brazilian two nights ago, after he had completed waking the drone soldiers. They had the food necessary to process into the feeding paste that was intravenously fed to the drone soldiers, but Susan had brought up the idea to use their plants instead. She calculated the calories and necessary nutrients the soldiers would need and came up with her own concoction. In a few months, they would leave the base to head back home and all the plants here would be left to die off, so at least they would be put to good use.

Ben had agreed.

She had processed the corn and tomatoes the day before, and the beans weeks ago, and now they were all ready. She had opted for the corn instead of the potatoes, but she could use the tubers if needed. For all she knew, the soldiers were only going to be used for a week or so, and then put back into stasis and back on their slow drip of nutrients that kept their bodies alive.

She watched as the big wagon began to slowly fill up with the harvested spinach. She had designed both the harvester and the wagon. She was, as nearly everyone else on the base was, an expert at the top of her field. She was also officially single, like every other person on base was, with the exception of Captain Hoarry and Ben Kelly.

It had been one of the prerequisites for the mission. No attachments. For the longest time, the mission was seen as a one way trip. That it had succeeded thus far, without nearly a hitch, was an extraordinary achievement. Of course, very few of them had remained ‘single’ on the trip, and her situation was by far, the most complicated. Returning to Earth wasn’t exactly something she looked forward to. Still, that day was not too far off.

- Glorin -

“Commander, I don’t know how many times I have to reiterate this, but there is no need for the soldiers. They are just consuming resources we may need ourselves.”

Glorin Ignacius the Third sat directly across from Captain Hoarry and Commander Kelly. The two appointed leaders of the mission did not like the billionaire, and had made it very clear from the start. They had also voiced their vociferous opposition to the fact that the man would be leading the expedition into the artifact itself. They felt a money manager had no business delving deep into the possibly dangerous secrets from beyond the solar system. He barely had any business coming on the mission. But there he sat. His influence on the mission was undeniable, and Glorin knew it well.

“There is no chance that you are going alone,” Charles pointed out, matter-of-factly.

“I don’t need to go alone. I could take a small group, the botanist, surely the IT department would be useful, or the communications officer. At the very least, one of the engineers that had helped dig it out.”

Charles and Ben looked at each other, trying hard not to roll their eyes. The man had been trying his hardest to sleep with nearly every woman on the base. Despite his wealth, and his offers, no one had taken him up on his multiple offers. He had actually started to become a bit of a recluse as other mission crew members began pairing up. Ben found him repugnant and Charles just considered him an idiot. Despite that, they knew they were all here because of him. And mission control had already made it clear he could go into the artifact. Thankfully, they also ordered the use of the drone soldiers.

“We are sticking to the plan. You and me and the soldiers.” Charles wasn’t going to beat around the bush. “When we’re in, we’ll take a quick look, drop some flying drones, take some pictures, and get out. Once we have more information, we can make new plans.”

Glorin glared at the two men then slammed his hand down on the wooden desk. He had brought the giant desk with him on the initial flight, a luxury item. He tried to stare the two men down, as if in a gunfight, but the two leaders weren’t about to back down. And he knew it.

“Fine. But I’m telling you now, we won’t need to go back. We will have all our answers on day one.”

With a wave of his hand, he dismissed the men as if they were meager servants, and then spun his chair around. Charles smiled slightly, then got up. He could tell Ben was fuming, but he put his hand on Ben’s shoulder. He waited for the Commander to leave the room, and as he was about to leave himself, he stopped.

“And Mr. Ignacius, leave Susan alone. I think she’s said no more than enough times.”

With that he stepped out and slammed the door shut.

Glorin spun around, hoping to see the Captain’s back, but the door was already shut.

“Big man thinks he owns everyone on this moon. He knows nothing.”

Glorin opened his desk drawer and pulled out a journal, setting it down with a heavy thud on his desk. He opened it and began scanning the pages. There were hundreds of pages filled from edge to edge with his writing, as well as maps and diagrams he had drawn as well.

“I am the only one that knows. Years and years of research, a lifetime of discoveries. They have come back to humanity in its time of need, and all they can think of is taking soldiers inside the temple.”

He turned a few more pages. There were maps of Egypt, the Yucatan peninsula, Rome, Calcutta, and the Bermuda Triangle. The self-professed xeno specialist had traveled the whole world for clues about extra-terrestrial visitors from the long forgotten past. He was certain he had found them. There were clues all over the world of benevolent beings that had come to Earth and helped fledgling civilizations. He had posted the information all over the internet and newsnets, but few believed.

They all believed in his money though. They called him a kook when it came to aliens, but a genius when it came to money.

“You can’t have it both ways. In two days’ time, we will be on board the vessel and I will be there to greet our helpers. Mankind will be saved.”

He talked out loud a lot.