Into The Void (28 page)

              Captain Steele floated close to the object that was next to his ship and grabbed hold of it. The debris out in the dimensional rift were incredible. He had no idea of where to begin looking. There were shadows that were cast by a strange green ambient light. He looked up into the sky and didn't see a single source of light but instead the entire area had a ambient green light coming from all directions yet there were no shadows being cast on the outside of objects but the light difference on the surface of ships was so different than the space between them. He also couldn't see an edge to the rift where the light could be emitting from.

              Captain Steele climbed around the outside of a very long cylinder in shape object. He wasn't really sure what is was, but it wasn't very tall. He stood up and walked over the top of it when one end of it started to point downward like a piece of wood sinking in water. He quickly backed up. He wasn't looked forward to falling down into a dimensional rift, if that was even possible. He climbed down a side until he saw an opening. He peeked inside but it was too dark to see into. He looked back at the surrounding ambient light that was coming in equally from all directions. He wondered why the lightning was so much different inside a ship than outside, despite an equal amount of light moving into the ship through the hole. It was so different that it was like shadows were only being cast inside a ship but not outside it.

              Captain Steele saw the hole was just big enough to climb into and climbed into it. As he did he felt gravity pull on him and he fell 10 feet and hit the floor hard. His suit said that the gravity inside the ship was at 5.4 times Earth's gravity. He smiled knowing he had been surprised by worse and that this was a walk in the park. He carefully raised his rifle to the high ready and started to make his way around the object. The object was made of some kind of metal but he wasn't sure what kind. He quickly picked up a sample and made his way to what he thought to be the back of the ship careful not to tip it downward again. After moving several yards it didn't tip downward like it did when he was outside and on the top of it.

              “Is it possible any of those dimensional rifts that have been theorized could have physics that don't work normally?” Captain Steele asked.

              “Lots don't have physics working under normal conditions because dimensional rifts are not normal conditions,” Jamie said.

              “Noted,” Captain Steele said moving ahead.

              Captain Steele moved ahead carefully. He would come to spots where there were holes twice the length he was and would carefully navigate his away around. He finally got to the end of the ship when he found something that resembled an engine.

              “Will this work Jamie?”

              “No. That looks to be using technology several centuries old but its not from any known race. It's not compatible with ours. Interesting, I wonder how it got here. I would love to run some tests on it. If you could be so kind as to bring back part of it I would greatly appreciate it,” Jamie said.

              “Will do.”

              Captain Steele collected a sample and made his way back to the hole he first climbed in. He decided that he needed to be careful and be able to keep track of where his ship was in all this clutter. It would be easy to loose track of it. He used his DSSM's navigation interface to make a navigation point so he could always find it. He jumped up and climbed back out the hole and climbed to bottom of the object before seeing a ship below him. It was about a 50 foot drop and he let go and pushed himself towards it by using his legs to push off from the object he was just holding onto. As he did the object he was just holding on to was pushed away.

              “It seems physics work differently inside an object than outside the object,” Jamie said as Captain Steele landed on the new object passing by several pieces of debris from other objects.

              Captain Steele looked up and saw the object he was just touching run into another object pushing that object away. It set off a chain reaction of objects colliding together. The ship he landed on moved downward slightly as he landed. He walked over the top of it for a while until he came to a massive hole in it. He looked down and he could see all the way through it to another hole at the bottom. The ambient light was entering the hole and but not lighting up the inside of the ship.

              The ship had a massive room with a small rod running the entire length of the room and what appeared to be catwalks running along its length. Captain Steele thought it looked promising and jumped into it. He landed on one of the catwalks close to 500 feet below the hole. He looked down the length of the entire ship. He could see way off in the distance about 5 miles in one direction and it had a large opening. He looked back in the opposite direction and couldn't see all the way to the back. He was curious as to what this ship was. He started walking down the length of it towards where he thought the bridge, and the opening he saw, would be.

              When Captain Steele made it to the bridge near the massive opening he found what he thought would be a console. He tried to activated it but without any luck. He then kicked it and a screen flickered on. He quickly set up a link to Jamie so she could download the information and try to make use of it.

              “You getting anything?”

              “It's a jumbled mess and hard to pick up but it looks like you are on a floating warship. This ship is incredible. This thing appears to be about one astronomical unit in length. That's the distance from the sun to earth, or roughly 93 million miles. I would only imagine that it was used to harness the power of a star and shoot it out away. I'm not sure how it could do that.”

              Captain Steele walked back to the hole and used his suits DSSM thrusters to overcome the gravity the object had inside it and then left through the hole. He reached the top of the object and went to his right. He looked over the edge and found another object and jumped to it. When he landed he was going to be about 1,000 feet below his ship and at about at the 2 o'clock from his ship. He moved past several other objects carefully looking at them to see if they could be what he needed. He looked carefully but none of them looked to be what they needed. He could spend a millennium looking for the parts he needed if he looked everywhere so he had to be selective.

              Captain Steele landed on the object and the object started moving off in the direction opposite he was coming from. As it did, he looked up and saw that it was going to hit another object and he ducked as the object he was on struck the second object causing the second object to fly right over his head.

              “Possible incoming debris Jamie, make sure your on the alert,” Captain Steele said as he looked back toward his ship.

              “Will do.”

              Captain Steele decided to jump from the object he was on as there was no telling when it would stop moving. He saw a ship a bit above him and jumped to it causing the object he was just on to propel downward. He was quickly learning that he would end up destroying lots of things just trying to get the parts they needed. He decided to check on Jamie to make sure the debris didn't hit their ship.

              “You alright there Jamie?”

              “Yeah.... I'm okay.”

              “Everything alright?”

              “Yeah. It just came close and I have no thrusters to dodge stuff here. Please be more careful John.”

              “I'll make sure to be. Sorry about that.”

              “It's perfectly alright John.”

              Captain Steele slowly landed on the ship he was aiming for. He carefully walked across the surface of it until he found a hole to climb though. This ship was a cube that was broken up into many rooms. He carefully searched each room for the engine room. He finally came across it and knew instantly that it was far too damaged to be salvaged. The entire room looked like it had been engulfed in flames. He carefully searched for the bridge.

              “Any idea why there are no corpses here Jamie?”

              “No.”

              Captain Steele found it incredibly eerie that there were thousands of ships here and not a single body. He finally found the bridge and looked for anything that would resemble a console. He looked and failed to find anything so he started to walk around the bridge. The bridge was the only room that wasn't square. Every other room was a perfect square. The bridge was more of a trapezoid. This meant there was wasted space. He quickly tried looking for what was in this extra space. He found what appeared to be a latch in one of the corners of the rooms. He pulled it and shocked by what he found.

Chapter 21

Veiled Kismet

              Captain Steele pulled the latch and a pile of weapons piled out onto the floor from the behind the door.

              “Weapons? If the weapons were stored up like this it means they weren't expecting to be attacked. This mean that it was an accident that they got here or at least not by their own choice. Something either brought them here or they accidentally stumbled here as well,” Captain Steele said.

              “I agree,” Jamie said.

              “You be careful up there Jamie. There's enough weapons here for a several squads.”

              “You do the same John.”

              Captain Steele carefully picked up the weapons and examined them. It was two circles that overlapped at about 1/3 of the way into each other. They looked a lot like a three dimensional Venn Diagram. He wasn't even really sure how to hold them or where the barrel was. They were so foreign to him that he carefully bagged two of them and moved on to the other wasted space. He looked for the latch, found it, then pulled it. When he did what looked like grenades poured out. He carefully bagged some of those and moved on. He found his way out of a hole in the cube when he noticed another object in the distance. He carefully jumped over there. He really had to be careful what objects he picked because there were so many of them and he could spend forever in here. Also if he wasn't careful he could get lost in all the debris despite the navigation interface.

              Captain Steele carefully landed on the object. The object appeared to be made of wood.

              “Is this wood Jamie? Can you tell from where you are?”

              “I can't... tell.”

              “Your sure your alright?” Captain Steele asked.

              “Yes. I'm running possible string theories of how we got here and I am not... finding any answers,” Jamie replied.

              “We'll get out of here. You'll find a solution. You always do. Keep at it.”

              Captain Steele continued to move up this object that was at a 50 degree incline. He could hear the creaking of wood as we walked on it. He found a hole that even had the wood splintering in it and climbed though. He grabbed a sample of the wood and headed for what he thought was the back of the object.

              The ship was a complete mess. There was wood, wires, and chunks of stuff Captain Steele couldn't identify everywhere. He decided that whatever was in here was probably crap and not worth salvaging but he was interested in finding a console to learn what he could about the ship. He came to what he thought was the bridge and was fascinated to find a computer without a holoscreen. He had only read about these things. Every computer once had a big thick glass screen and a physical keyboard that had actual buttons on it. They had been completely phased out nearly 1,500 years ago, in 2,500. There were only a few left in a museum on Earth. He marveled at it before trying to figure out how to turn it on. He finally found a button and pressed it. Normally, with holoscreens you just touched where the screen was and it would come to life. It flickered to life and a read out showed up on the screen. It looked like it was booting up. He plugged Jamie into it through a port in the back.

              “Getting anything Jamie?”

              Captain Steele waited for some time.

              “Jamie? You alright?”

              “Yes,” Jamie said sternly.

              Captain Steele had been around her long enough to know not to piss her off and just left it at that and continued on his way. He grabbed the device he plugged into the back of the compute, made his way out of the bridge's window, and jumped upward to another ruined ship. He could see the engines on this one were too far gone. He jumped to another ship and felt like he stepped in a puddle of mud when he landed. He quickly realized that the ship was organic.

              “Got an organic ship here Jamie.”

              Captain Steele waited several minutes.

              “Jamie? If your okay I need you to say so.”

              After waiting for several minutes without hearing a reply he tried again.

              “Jamie if you can hear me I
need
a reply.”

              “I hear you... I'm... working.”

              “Okay. If you need anything let me know. We look after each other. Okay?”

              Captain Steele waited for a reply but didn't get one.

              “Okay?” He asked again.

              “Okay,” Jamie said.

              Captain Steele reexamined the object and made his way to top where he found a hole. He looked down and could see what appeared to be a wound that created the hole. The ship looked like it was a living organism that was long dead. The wound look like a massive bullet wound to the head only instead of flesh and a skull it looked like rock that was damaged. It looked
just
like a bullet wound only all the organic flesh was rock, grass, and mud. He looked down inside it and could see vines that he thought were the veins of the organism. He jumped down the hole after weighing the possible dangers. The scientific side of things was extremely important, but the danger was extreme. However, because there were no other once living organisms here other than him and this thing he assumed that either this was the thing that was eating all the living creatures that entered the dimensional rift or there was nothing living in the dimensional rift except him for whatever reason. He also figure that because of the wound being as bad as it was this thing was probably long dead anyway and making it safe to jump into it.

              Captain Steele took some samples and moved through the object. He saw a mud like substance dripping from the walls and vines. He could also see water dripping from the ceiling to the floor. He could tell there were several floors, and each were about 6 inches taller than he was. He walked around until he found a slope at a 55 degree angle covered in mud that slid down to the next floor. He decided to carefully slide down this. He figured that the slope was the equivalent of stairs. After sliding down it he walked around until he found the back end of the object. He looked at it and saw what he figured were the engines. They were round in shape and looked like dark pockets of water being held together by a thin film of a gelatinous like substance.

              Captain Steele knew there was absolutely no way to use them so he just left it. He wanted to find the bridge. He looked at the vines and saw they didn't lead anywhere in particular but went up into the rock between the floors. He knew he wouldn't be able to follow them to find anything big because they went into the ceiling making them hard to trace so instead he wandered around the ship without any clues as to where he should be going. He walked around the ship and found it to be relatively spherical in shape. It appeared to only be about 35 to 40 feet tall. From time to time he could see what looked like tree trunks extending upward and he assumed they were support beams. He came across an object near the center of the second lowest floor that was made of dirt that had vines going into it. The patches of dirt were powdery like they hadn't seen water in ages. He blew on it and part of it became dust, some floating off away from the patch of dirt while other particles of dust just floated around the object. It made him think this object had it's own gravity that was separate from the rest of the ship. He was positive this was the creature's heart, or something equivalent to a heart. He took a quick little sample and continued to try and find the bridge. He was pretty sure it was probably near the top, where a brain would be.

              Captain Steele climbed the slopes to the top floor and wandered around until he found what looked like lava floating in a spherical shape with bits of dark gray clouds circling some of it. There were vines that went into lava and out of it and he was surprised they didn't catch fire. He decided to try and get a sample and scooped some in to a vial. He walked around it looking at it. He was positive that it was lava and it even had chunks of rock in it like lava might. The outer part of this ship was covered in green grass with light brown rock just under it. He was positive he was inside some kind of organic species. He followed the vines to what he hoped would lead him to the eyes near by and found a single slot where the vine went up into the rock above him. He looked out in front of him and he could see out of the ship. He looked at the vine going upward into the rock and he knew that just above him was the top of the organism. He knew that what he was looking out of must have been its eye.

              Captain Steele went back to the wound and climbed out and headed towards the front where the vine lead. He made it there and looked over the edge and back at the object. There it was, dark red rocks that protruded slightly from the rest of the object. He knew that that must be its eyes. He could see out from inside, but not see in from outside.

              “This is incredible. Have you been watching this?” Captain Steele asked Jamie.

              “No.”

              “Well your going to want to see it when I get back to the ship. Your going to love it,” Captain Steele said.

              Captain Steele wanted one last look at the engines. He climbed back down into the organism and made one last walk to the engines. He checked them out, studied them, then decided to poke the water sacks. As soon as he did snow shot out at him at a 90 degree angle from the floor, then the sacks lit up with bolts of lightning and the creature shot forward knocking him forward onto his stomach.

              “Holy...” Captain Steele said in surprise, “Wow. This thing can move.”

              Captain Steele wondered for a moment how he could utilize it for the engines and realized that the level of biomechanical engineering to make it work was beyond his ability to imagine and probably beyond their chances of using. They needs parts to fix an engine, not to replace the current one with a prototype engine freshly extracted from the end of a dead creature.

              Captain Steele got back on top of the creature. He looked around and saw that everything was different. He was apparently quite some way from his ship now. Even is navigation interface on his DSSM suit was telling him he was too far from his original point to be able to locate his ship. He decided to look around to see if anything looked familiar. He looked around when he noticed a ship he recognized: The Space Shuttle Endeavor.

              “That burned up upon exit centuries ago. They retired that shuttle then brought it out of retirement for travel between planets in Earth's solar system by massively retrofitting it. It burned up in the year 3,500. What's it doing here?” Captain Steele asked Jamie.

              “Jamie?”

              Captain Steele waited for an answer and failed to get one.

              “Jamie?”

              Captain Steele looked around for his ship or any other he would recognize that was close to his ship. He looked at everything near by and failed to find anything that looked familiar.

              Captain Steele waited. He knew something was wrong. He needed a vantage point. A point to orient himself. He decided the Space Shuttle would be a good point because it was so easily recognizable. He floated over there carefully landing on the Space Shuttle Endeavor. He didn't know what it was doing here and he knew it burned up upon exit in the early 3,500s.

              Mankind saw that the design of the early Space Shuttles built by the United States of America were some of the best ever built by man. They saw how well it stood up to the test of time in a museum so they retrofitted it with modern technology and reinforced the structure in the year 2,500. It was continually retrofitted while remaining roughly the same shape and size. It was used as part of the Deep Space Exploration Missions to explore deep into mankind's own solar system.

              Mankind had finally confirmed a red dwarf, known as Nemesis, at approximately 1.5 light years away from the sun, in their own solar system but just beyond the Oort cloud, and launched the furthest manned expedition of the time to reach it. Nemesis was originally theorized as being a possible reason for numerous extinction events on Earth. Once the theory was made public the scientific community went to work trying to prove if it existed or not. The initial proof showed that it couldn't exist and therefore it didn't exist however that was discredited in the year 3,000 when it was first visually spotted by a satellite orbiting Iapetus, a moon of Saturn. When it was proven to exist it rocked the scientific community who had looked for it for decades a millennium before. The scientific community also noticed there was a gas giant, Tyche, orbiting Nemesis as Nemesis orbited our own solar system. This was the first time a red dwarf was spotted orbiting a solar system that also had its own planet orbiting it.

              The mission to reach it was attempted in the year 3,500 because of several large objects past Neptune large enough to have their own gravity were in semi-straight line. This semi-straight line was then used as a sling shot to over come the pull of the solar system's gravity, namely the sun's.

              The mission started on Triton, a moon of Neptune, because it's location being the furthest mankind has settled away from the sun in the solar system with a well established trading route and significant industrial manufacturing. Triton was also a well established colony in the solar system at that time. Mankind was excited to be able to realistically reach for the stars again. The Space Shuttle Endeavor was retrofitted with a new engine and equipment and it's launch was first manned mission past Pluto. Pluto and it's moons weren't as well established as Triton and trying to get all the necessary parts out to Pluto for a mission just wasn't as realistic.