The signal flashed brightly in the dark night. The primitive code rang out through the black of space. SOS!
A starship received the blinking signal, pinpointed its exact location, and went to high warp, blinking out of space and time. The ship was ugly, long and cigar shaped with huge engine pods slung along the hull.
“Slow down and fall into orbit,” Captain Artemis Foreman ordered, sitting down in the captain’s chair.
“Yes sir,” replied a crew member who proceeded to carry out the orders.
A portal opened in space and the gray ship fell towards the red planet below.
The reason they were here was that a small and very rudimentary light signal was picked up by a satellite and sent down to Earth’s surface. When the signal was analyzed, it was found to be Morse code from the mid-twentieth century. The actual signal read: SOS! Viking 1 to Mission control. SOS! The Morse code had been pinpointed to a remote and sparsely inhabited world on the edge of human space. In a spark of hope, NASA sent Artemis and his ship to go intercept Viking 1. Having faster that light speed, it took the Akbar, Artemis’s ship, two weeks to reach the planet that the weak signal was coming from.
<><><><><>
Artemis met the search and rescue team at the landing bay to wish them good luck. The team was composed of five people in white space suits. They each had laser pistols and keypads for controlling the antiquated control panels on Viking.
The team entered the shuttled and it lifted off. They expertly maneuvered the shuttle out of the bay and it rocketed down to the surface of the planet.
The shuttle rocked violently as it entered the atmosphere, and then it leveled out slowly as it got into the clouds. The small shuttle slowly circled the planet then landed, ten feet from the cracked and broken hulk of Viking. The team got out, collected their gear, and then began hopping in the light gravity over to the probe. One of the team members opened a control panel of the side of the space probe. Inside, crammed in with all of the other wires, was a little black box, emitting a small harsh beep. One of the technicians pulled the signal emitter out and found a wire running deep into the innards of the probe.
A signal came from the surface back to the ship.
“Sir, we’ve got a problem,” one of the crew members said through his radio, “There’s some sort of beacon here that’s not in the schematics. What should we do?”
“Uh... Ignore it,” Artemis replied in an uncomfortable manner.
“I think we should cut the beacon out.” Stephen said to Artemis.
“First, find out what it’s connected to.” Artemis said.
The crew man pushed aside bundle after bundle of wire, and found that the beacon connected to a large black cube deep within the inner wiring of the little probe. Artemis saw the cube via a camera on Stephen’s Helmet.
“It looks like a battery. Cut it out.” Artemis said finally, after contemplating the video feed for several seconds.
The crewman complied, cutting the wire with wire cutters. The beep stopped and then a soft thud erupted out of the black box, then the covering seemed to melt away, and harsh bright, light erupted from it, then fire. Dust and fire expanded from the box, killing the search and rescue team instantly, vaporizing rocks and scrub. From space, the planet seemed to have turned inside out. From a specific point on the surface, the planet had turned bright red and with stunning silence, imploded, collapsing in on itself. Artemis stared in shock at the planet which had now become the size of a large asteroid. Then in an explosion that rocked the ship, the world disintegrated sending chunks of rock and half frozen lava spewing towards the Akbar. Artemis ordered the ship away from the dying planet. They hit high warp and became nothing more than an infinitesimal speck in the vastness of space.
<><><><><>
Artemis sat in his ready room, pouring over the events of the last ten minutes of the search and rescue teams lives. He watched the transmitted video, the fire, and then bright light and finally the camera melted into nothingness, ending the transmission. A crewman entered, saw him and backed out of the room, leaving Artemis alone to his thoughts.
“Wait,” Artemis said loudly, “Come on in.”
The young man entered, saluted, and said slowly, “Sir, we just received a radio transmission from a ship near the explosion sight.”
The man drew from his belt a hand held data tablet. He turned it on and waited a few seconds, first there was a crackle of static and then voices.
Mayday, Mayday. To any ships in the area. static. disturbance. Both static nacelles static leaking. Help! Then there was static and a roar filled the ready room, then static.
Artemis seemed to shrink in his seat as the crewman left the room.
Oh my god, Artemis thought, I am responsible for the deaths of over three hundred people. This is it, the end of my career.
Artemis stayed in his ready room and quarters, the entire trip back to Earth. He was court-martialed, but acquitted. Artemis Foreman never captained a ship again.
Earth discovered soon after the incident, that an alien species they’d originally considered friendly, had tampered with Viking 1. The armed forces of all of Earth began a terrible war with the alien species.
<><><><><>
(Three years later)
The shuttle was dwarfed by the colossal hulk of the star cruiser as it sped towards the flashing lights on one of the landing bays. There was a brief flash of light as the shuttle slid through the energy shield. As it settled onto the platform, a side hatch hissed open, and a tall, thin figure stepped out and headed for the turbo lift at the end of the bay. Artemis Foreman stepped in and it hummed upwards to the bridge.
Artemis stepped inside the admiral’s ready room and saluted. The admiral stood up, his chair sliding back with a muffled scrape.
“What can I do for you Lieutenant Foreman?” the admiral grumbled.
“Um... Sir, I’ve come to ask if I would be permitted to re-acquire my position of captain.” Artemis asked, putting his arm at his side.
The admiral spat out the coffee he was drinking and started to cough.
“You can’t be serious,” he croaked.
“I wasn’t joking, Sir,” Artemis replied.
“There is no way that I’m promoting you. You were given a very sensitive task, and you blew it. I’m not going to let you jeopardize the safety of this entire fleet. If you think I’m going to make the same mistake twice, you are sorely mistaken.”
“Sir, it’s been three years. I think that I’ve proved my capabilities sufficiently,” Artemis said, his voice pleading.
“No, You haven’t. There is no way that you can “prove your capabilities” enough to make me think for one minute that you can re-captain a ship.
“Sir, that was three years ago.”
“I don’t care,” The admiral said as he stomped around the edge of his desk.
“Sir, just give me this one chance. Please?”
“ NO! It is out of the question. Get out of here, before I have to call security,” the admiral said, coming uncomfortably close to Artemis and pointing towards the door.
Artemis saluted, “Yes sir. Please forgive this intrusion.”
The admiral saluted angrily, then turned and walked back to his desk, picking up a data pad.
Artemis turned slowly, his pride deflated. He walked through the bridge quietly, and got into the turbo lift. It hummed down to the shuttle bay and opened with a soft hiss. He trudged back to his shuttle and it lifted away, drifting down to one of the ships in the vast fleet.
It was Artemis’s last chance at commanding. He never brought the subject back up and he retired from the military five years later. No one asked him about his career, and he never brought the subject up to anyone. His pride was smothered and the unfortunate events that led to his court martial were covered up, causing him the inability to talk about the events, even if he’d wanted to.
In the war, both sides lost everything they had. The war lasted long after Artemis or any of the other crew members on the Akbar were alive. The planets in Earth’s empire were scoured, their inhabitants broken off from communication with the rest of humanity for hundreds of years. The other alien species was completely annihilated, which caused Earth to come under the scrutiny of other, far more dangerous aliens.
Earth was destroyed soon after the war ended, but its inhabitants escaped and reformed their lost civilization on other worlds, away from the attacks of other aliens.
Humanity endured.
Gender:
Points: 8231
Reviews: 214