Elsewhere, Chapter 14
#14 of Elsewhere
"I'm guessing this is where that critter came from," Morrison said as the others entered what appeared to be a storage room--with curved sections cut out of the floor, one wall, and the ceiling. The edges glowed red-hot, indicating the damage had been done recently.
The rest of the team stopped beside him. Roger had kept one arm around Kamala's shoulders the entire way here, and wasn't about to let go now. Judging by her continued trembling, she was still every bit as shaken up as he was.
They stared at the edges cut out of the metal and exchanged a series of glances.
"Another space-time rift." Marissa scratched her head, along the edge of her breather mask, and sighed. "The edges of the repair bay looked a lot like that, after it was cut off from the Io station."
Luana nodded. "I got a look at that, too, when we piled into the shuttles and hauled ass outta there. It's the first thing I thought of when I saw this."
"I wonder what's causing those?" Otto muttered.
"I need more information to even speculate on the matter," Astra said through one of her two mobile platforms.
"Whatever it is, I just hope it's something that can be stopped." Shakira leaned against the wall and shook her head. "Who knows how much damage it could do if it keeps happening? Or even worse--happens more frequently?"
Otto shivered. "I think we've all got enough nightmare fuel to last a few months, as it is."
She chuckled. "Yeah, I'm trying not to think of it--or anything worse--myself." She glanced over at the new arrivals. "How's the other team doing? Nobody was hurt, I hope?"
"Lopez wasn't damaged," Astra said, "but the creature flipped him upside-down when it bulldozed past him. He's back on his feet, but seems to be upset over the incident. The rest of his team is unharmed, but they had to go back to the ship to clean up."
Shakira raised an eyebrow.
"Their path ahead was blocked by the creature Kamala dealt with. The path behind was blocked by one of its massive droppings. There was no other way to escape."
"So they had to go through the--eww!" Shakira shuddered and twisted her face up. "I know they didn't have any other option--but still...eww!"
Kamala tossed a shaky smile at Roger. "I'm suddenly thinking what I had to do a few minutes ago wasn't all that unpleasant, considering."
He grinned. "It was a whole lot sexier, though. My girlfriend, the action hero."
"Heh. Action heroes don't come as close to pissing and shitting themselves as I did, though."
"Well, they just don't let on, is all." He winked at her before glancing around at the others. "Well, what now?"
"I'm bringing more mech units over to help close the outer hatches and explore the station." One of Astra's platforms waved a hand at the door. "I recommend an attempt to access the station's computer system and find a record of what happened here."
Seth nodded slowly. "I'm definitely curious as to why this place is empty. And we might also find out where and when we are."
"We may also find useful supplies or equipment. I have fabricator units that can manufacture small parts, but in the event of catastrophic damage, we would be in serious trouble unless we were near a station with sufficient repair facilities."
Roger turned to Kamala. "You feel up to looking around some more?"
"Sure. I'm not gonna let another nearly-being-killed-horribly experience slow me down." She aimed a lopsided grin at him and he laughed softly.
"That's the spirit."
She kept her upper arm around his shoulders and her lower arm around his waist as they followed Astra out the door.
"Let's get back to it, then." Morrison held Luana's hand and headed for the door. "See how long it takes us to get into trouble again."
#
"You sure this is the control room?" Shakira paused inside the doorway and squinted into the darkened chamber beyond.
"I figure there are two possibilities," Lopez said. "The logical places for the control center would be either at the top of the structure, or in the very center, where it's well protected by the bulk of the station. That's what I'd expect of a military installation, which this place doesn't appear to be. Since this appears to be a civilian operation, this tower is the likeliest location."
Hmm. Okay, I guess that makes sense. Shakira stepped aside so Lopez could aim his spotlights into the room.
Otto ducked under Lopez and between his front legs to join Shakira. Kamala slithered after him, followed by Roger. Morrison remained in the hallway. When Luana flicked him a questioning glance, he muttered, "I'm gonna keep an eye out for any more giant critters. Go on inside and see what you can find."
She nodded, kissed him, and caught up with the others.
"I may as well stay here, too," Zuri said with a shrug. "I have no idea what any of these things are, and would only get in everyone's way."
One of Astra's mobile platforms paused as its twin walked past Lopez. "Tank has just reported that she and her team have finished cleaning up and are ready to return."
"I'm glad to hear that. I just wish it hadn't been necessary. If I could've stopped that thing--"
"Your actions saved the lives of your crewmates. If you hadn't delayed the creature's attack for as long as you did, it's likely they would have been killed before Kamala could arrive on the scene and lure it away."
"Astra's right." Marissa smiled and patted Lopez's front-left leg. "You saved their lives. Ours, too, probably."
"I hadn't thought of it that way." Lopez shifted his legs slightly, pulling them in and raising his body a few inches higher. "Thank you."
"Any time." Marissa smiled again and moved off along the wall. "Now, if we can just find the light switch...."
Kamala waved her ultratool around. "There's power coming to this room. Looks like someone just turned all the systems off when they left."
"I wonder what's keeping us in the air, then," Marissa muttered.
"Must be a completely separate system." Seth aimed a flashlight at the wall on the opposite side of the door from her. "Probably has multiple redundancies, too. Wouldn't be a good idea to position a station like this anywhere outside a stable orbit without a ton of backup systems."
Shakira chuckled and turned slowly, taking in the room. Her cybernetic left eye amplified the light coming in through the door and from Lopez's spotlights, but it wasn't quite enough to see clearly. She could make out a huge central console and rows of instrumentation lining the wall to her right.
"Hmm." Kamala continued sweeping her ultratool over the walls, ceiling, and floor. "I think I can see the wiring--or, rather, the power conduits. Not really wires, but they serve the same purpose. Looks like this set leads from the lights in the ceiling to...right about..."
She slithered over to a panel to the door's left.
"Here."
"I_really_ don't like the idea of pushing buttons when we don't know what any of them might do," Shakira muttered, and Otto slipped his hand into hers.
"Well, I have a pretty good idea what this one does." Kamala shrugged her upper shoulders and reached out to the panel with her lower-left hand. "Besides, we won't be able to learn anything about this place if we don't push at least a few buttons."
"Yeah, good point. I just...after what happened to that other ship..."
Otto put his arms around her.
"Well, here we go." Kamala pushed the button gently and held her breath.
The lights in the ceiling faded on and she blinked a few times and waited for her eyes to adjust.
Roger glanced around and finally sighed. "Well, at least there's no ominous voice counting down."
Kamala laughed and rubbed her lower hands together. "Well, I guess we're in business."
#
"Damn it," Roger grumbled. He glanced up and found several of the others staring at him with wide eyes and gaping mouths. He waved a hand and shook his head. "No, relax, we're not about to blow up."
Morrison sighed and rubbed a hand over his face.
Otto glanced at him and Zuri standing outside the door, and chuckled. "We've just finished looking through the memory core and found it mostly empty. There's some software here and there, but most of the core is blank."
"We think the remaining software is for environmental systems and whatnot," Shakira added. "Keeping the power running in case it's needed, keeping the...whatever it is that's holding this thing in the air...running. Stuff like that."
"I don't recognize the language the code is in," Astra's mobile platform said. "But we're hypothesizing that the main core has been purged of any vital information such as records, personnel files, and any proprietary or classified data."
"Hmm." Seth leaned against the central console and glanced around at everyone. "The crew, whoever they were, did appear to have left in a hurry. Maybe they were under attack."
"Another possibility is that the station had already finished its mission or reached the end of its expected operational duration. Perhaps purging the central computer's memory and leaving all the hatches open were steps in its decommissioning process. Possibly a process that was never completed for one reason or another."
"You said some of your platforms found evidence of other rifts," Kamala said. "If those things popped up rapidly enough, the crew might've simply decided to abandon the station before a critical system was damaged."
"That is another possibility, yes." Astra smiled. "My other platforms and your exploratory teams have finished sealing the outer hatches and are now pressurizing the station with an atmosphere you can breathe. If someone notices our tampering and comes to investigate, we may be able to ask them what happened and where we are, if they are not hostile."
"That's good to know." Kamala leaned against the console and tapped her ultratool on her palm. "Hmm. If no one comes to claim the station, we just might have ourselves a home base. Or at least a waypoint."
"The station does have facilities capable of fabricating parts for ship repairs." Astra nodded. "I will leave a team of mech units here with enough instructions to operate autonomously for the near future, and place probes in orbit to alert us to any changes. The mechs will also continue to explore the station and report anything they find. If no one else comes here, we can attempt to place our own software in the memory core and use this station as a port."
"Sounds good." Kamala sighed. "I guess we should keep exploring this area of space. Won't find any answers sitting here waiting, and if someone else does show up, we can always come back."
The others nodded. Shakira chuckled.
"I'm a little nervous about staying in a big chunk of metal floating high in the air, anyway. I mean, Otto and I spent over a year in a tower that was hovering above the ground, but it wasn't nearly as high up as this, and it wasn't in a Jovian atmosphere."
"Good points." Roger glanced around. "Well, if no one has any objections, I guess we'll head back to the ship and keep looking around."
The others exchanged glances and nodded or shrugged. They filed toward the door. Kamala slipped her lower-right arm around Roger's waist and smiled.
"Onward, then."
#
"I dunno about this." Otto paused in the open hatch while everyone else walked across the landing platform to their shuttles. "I feel like we could still learn something if we keep poking around."
"Probably not a whole lot we can find out with the computer's memory core purged." Shakira put her arm around his shoulders. "Astra's mechs can keep exploring and send us video and audio files of anything they find. I'll feel a lot better once we're back on the ship."
"On solid ground." Otto nudged her shoulder. "In space."
"At least we'll be enclosed in an armored hull. Here, we're on a huge chunk of metal held in the air by I don't even know what kind of technology. If the wrong piece of equipment breaks and this thing plunges out of the sky, the atmospheric pressure will crush us to a pulp before we get anywhere near the ground."
"That's comforting," Morrison muttered. "Now I really wanna leave."
Luana chuckled and swatted his ass.
Otto laughed, turned back to the shuttle, and put his arm around Shakira's waist. "Maybe the next planet we visit will have a solid surface we can la--"
The entire structure shuddered and everyone stumbled.
Shakira's fist clenched around a handful of his shirt and twisted it as she regained her balance. She glanced around and sucked in several quick breaths.
"What's--oh,shit!"
The floor tilted slightly and everyone leaned in the opposite direction.
"We are losing altitude," Astra said. "Everyone into the shuttles."
"What the hell happened?" Kamala grabbed Roger's hand and surged forward as the floor continued tilting into an ever steeper angle.
"A rift has opened near several of my probes on one of the lower decks, in what is likely the engineering area. It cut off a large piece of machinery which, judging by the sudden loss of stability, was likely the mechanism keeping us in the air."
"We're falling out of the sky?" Zuri bolted past the others and threw herself into the nearest shuttle. She grabbed a handhold and reached out to Seth and Marissa, who were the closest to her. Marissa caught her hand and grabbed Seth's belt to prevent him from sliding across the platform and off the edge.
The floor continued tilting and Otto noticed an odd sensation--almost as if his stomach were rising up through his chest.
We're falling faster. Oh, fuck! He tightened his grip on Shakira's hand and lunged at Zuri's shuttle, pulling Shakira behind him. They squeezed past Zuri and slumped against the passenger seats in the back.
The floor had reached a nearly forty-five degree angle and the shuttles began sliding toward one side of the platform.
Shakira moaned and clamped her hand around Otto's.
Kamala appeared in the hatch. She shoved Roger inside, grabbed onto a handhold, and shouted over her shoulder.
"Grab onto me!" She grunted and grimaced and arched her back. A moment later, Hitomi appeared in the hatch with the end of Kamala's tail coiled around her.
"Everyone is aboard the shuttles except Lopez," Astra said as she took the pilot's seat and fired up the engines. "I'm sealing the hatch and pressurizing the compartment.
Once the hatch closed and the alien atmosphere vented and replaced by a breathable one, everyone inside removed their masks and oxygen tanks.
Otto leaned over to stare out the front window and found Lopez clanking across the sloping floor as if he were on level ground. Seth glanced out at him and grinned.
"Magnetic footpads. Lucky bastard."
"We're not leaving without him!" Tank snapped over the comlink.
"That is correct. Hold on." Astra lifted off and maneuvered the shuttle sideways. "Matching the structure's downward velocity. Lopez, attach yourself to the top of this shuttle."
He turned to the right and clomped down the incline toward the shuttle. She tapped the controls and inched it up toward him to meet him halfway.
"Quickly. In a few more seconds, we will be unable to climb out of the atmosphere."
Shakira settled into one of the seats, buckled the harness around her, and continued sucking in deep breaths. Otto took the seat beside her and clasped her hand.
Four thumps shook the roof as Lopez magnetized his feet to the shuttle. Astra veered away from the platform and pushed the main thrusters to maximum burn.
"We are clear. Returning to orbit."
Seth and Marissa released long, whooshing breaths and practically collapsed into a pair of seats across from Otto and Shakira. They buckled themselves in, leaned toward each other, and shared a passionate kiss.
"Did everyone else make it?" Roger took a seat, clicked the restraints into place, and put his arms around Kamala.
"Confirmed. Everyone has been accounted for."
"Lopez?" Tank's voice over the comlink.
"I'm okay."
Tank sighed. "Good."
Kamala turned to stare out the main viewport. Otto turned in the same direction and caught a glimpse of the huge air station plunging into the red-orange clouds hundreds of miles below. He winced and averted his eyes.
Kamala shook her head slowly. "Why the fuck couldn't that have happened_after_ we left?"
Roger chuckled and kissed her.
The clouds outside the cockpit grew thinner until there was nothing but the blackness of space.
"Gonna need to change my panties," Tank grumbled.
"Setting a return trajectory to the ship," Astra said.
"Yeah," Morrison muttered, "let's get the hell away from this planet. And see how quickly we can get into another life-threatening situation."