New Frontier - Chapter One
Chapter One – Now
Space is a silent and vastly dead expanse, yet filled with
marvels of life, twists of physics, furnaces of unimaginable fire, and
wastelands of matter-shattering cold. There
is no greater ocean for humanity to sail, no more perilous journey, and none
more yearned for by generation upon generation.
Tentative steps into the endless frontier inevitably are loosened into
giant leaps, but adventure brings with it failures as often as glory.
Light years from Sol and the comforts of home, humanity’s
greatest leap lay strewn across hundreds of miles, now little more than
smoldering wreckage of dreams feebly forged into reality. The once sleek and vaguely arrowhead shaped
craft so many people cheered on its way was drifting wounded and listless. The daring vessel, audacious by design, the
main body accompanied by four sets of engines jutting from either side, shot
through space scattering bodies and shards of metal and freezing vapor leaking
from its own wounds. It was the
culmination of centuries of leaps and stuttering steps forward in science and
engineering. The Argos, now rent down
the middle nearly in half, and the scar ran forward from the reactors at the
aft reaching for the bow.
Bodies floated in space among the debris, some of them sucked
out so suddenly into the void that the immortal looks on their faces weren’t
even surprised. They had been asleep, or
monotonously going through their shift, now they were frigid corpses floating
among the charred debris. Summersaulting
about its axis three quarters of the Argos continued to make an orbit around a
red and purple planet, no sign left of their assailants.
From the missile tubes arrayed along the bow and reaching back down
the starboard side of the ship the second, third, and fourth decks looked out,
ripped open, the scar exposing the interior of the ship only stopping at the
stern where the secondary airlocks and engine room resisted with doubly
reinforced bulkheads. Most of what was
exposed was the crew quarters and mess hall, and most of the victims of the
initial onslaught had been off duty. The
emergency systems to seal off hull breaches at the doorways were methodically
coming on-line, but they couldn’t move nearly as fast as a vacuum.
The tear stopped just short of the science labs, now mostly
stripped bare of experiments and instruments.
Banging through the doors and gaping openings supplies, equipment, and
people from all over the ship flew and crashed, drawn up toward the grasping
expanse of space.
Hector de Anza felt himself flying through the air, as
everything else not strapped to a bulkhead, ripping out of the ship. He thrashed about with his hands and feet,
anything to grab hold. Even in the rush
he could feel the air getting thinner and the temperature plummeting. He’d never thought of himself as a man afraid
of dying, but he didn’t know if the savior would find his soul out here. Then he prayed passionately for all the poor
souls he couldn’t save, even if he didn’t yet know his own fate.
Catching on a storage locker in the lab it took all the
strength the man had to hold fast, his legs still streaming out behind him as
space tried to lay claim to him as well as the air whipping past, even amidst
insanity and desperation Hector called out to his God. He couldn’t resist and chanced a glance past
his feet. What should have been a
corridor lined with crew cabins was open to the endless black.
He lashed out with his free hand as another body started to
flash past in a bid to save at least one more.
He caught hold of the poor man by the elbow but his hand slid down his
arm as he nearly ripped loose. Hector
finally gripped him by the hand and fought to keep him from flying free.
Hector held on as tightly as he could, but he felt both the
man’s hand in his as well as his hold on the locker slipping. With a breathless, soundless, scream he gave
his all to save both their lives. He
felt himself drifting off into oblivion. Hector wasn’t strong enough to battle the
nothingness of space, no matter how desperately he wanted to hold to life.
No matter how vehemently he squeezed Hector felt the crewman
slipping from him. One second Hector
could still feel him, hand in his, and the next he was watching as the poor
crewman flew into the void. Hector
looked the wretched man in the eye, saw terror marking his face, the last few
gasps for air which wasn’t there, and the glossy look of peaceful death which
washed over him at last.
Even as he watched the crewman die the emergency bulkheads were
sliding into place. What felt to him
like an hour of insanity and pain in truth lasted no more than ten seconds
since the air first began to vanish out the rent hull.
As soon as the new bulkheads locked down into place sealing off
the laboratory from the rupture the swirling rush of air died almost at once
replaced with near nothingness. The
quiet hurt nearly as badly as the earlier tumult, and carried an eerie pall and
omen of the tomb. Hector’s sweaty hand
slipped off of the storage locker, as much from exhaustion as because it was now
safe. The air was still thin, and his
body floated in the absence of gravity.
The temperature had plunged to well below freezing in an instant and his
body could hardly take the strain.
With a howl of frustration that he couldn’t suppress Hector
tried to struggle on, the sharply steep stairs that they’d taken to calling a
ladder that led down to the engine room was only a few feet away and he tried
to glide over to it. Stars were popping
before his eyes, and he could barely move his limbs as he tried to swim and
spun about.
Having
made it all the way to the ladder Hector looked down the steps towards the
chaos of sparks and torn equipment below and he had to close his eyes to gather
the strength to go down. With a last
deep breath he tried, but he passed out just thinking of all he had to do. The cold clawed at him and the weak air left
his lungs begging. He drifted into the
blissful abandon of unconsciousness.
