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Black Hull
Black Hull Read online
FOREWARD
Copyright © 2013 by Joseph A. Turkot
MAILING LIST FOR NEW JOSEPH A. TURKOT RELEASES
OTHER BOOKS BY JOSEPH A. TURKOT
HORROR:
House for Sale
Living Alone
FANTASY:
Darkin 1
Darkin 2
Darkin Short Stories
SCIENCE-FICTION:
Bug and Shadow
1
BLACK HULL FUGITIVE DOSSIER
NAME: Mickey Compton
AGE: 51 yrs. old
SEX: Male
H/W: 5’11” 185 pounds
COMP: Pale, Brown Eyes
M/S: Divorced
CHILDREN: 2 males
BIRTHPLACE: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United Countries of America
EDU: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, class of May 3094.
GOV SERVICE: 24 yrs, NASA F.R.I.N.G.E.
Terminated.
Reason for termination: Second Degree Murder.
ASSETS: $-324,606
SENTENCE: 30 year term in UCA Penitentiary.
ALERT:
SUSPECT HAS FLED THE SYSTEM, AND IS CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS. PLEASE REPORT ANY PERTINENT INFORMATION TO LOCAL UCA OFFICIALS.
2
The lid of the cryosleep chamber whooshed. Everything was black.
Mick rubbed goo from his eyes and released the straps around his torso one by one. He sat up. It shouldn’t be dark. Naked, he stood; his fingers worked along a cold metal wall, groping for a switch. What the hell is going on? His hand ran into a smooth encasement, lifted it, found a circular knob within.
He pressed in.
Nothing—no light lit the chamber. It’s too cold . . . Has the ship lost power?
His skin pricked with goosebumps. A barely audible whir beat in the walls—life support is on. He stumbled toward a door, felt for its manual entry hook, pried it out. He stepped into a black corridor. No more light than the cryosleep chamber.
Clothes, or find someone? Mick traced his way back into the sleep chamber, found his wall-trunk, and dressed himself.
He traced a steel notch running the wall out into the corridor. Each footstep clanked loudly against metal floor grates. The ship isn’t running main power, I can’t hear her. His pulse quickened, his brain dumping adrenaline.
He rushed along the wall, anxious to reach the next door. Finally, his thumb found another manual latch and wrenched it up.
Light!
It came from a row of fluorescent dots, their amber glow faintly guiding him across the room. He waited for his eyes to register shapes from the black.
His blind fingers recognized the feel of curved plastisteel: a computer terminal. The control station. This is a pod. He knew it instantly, before his eyes had acquainted with the dim amber. He plodded forward, squared to the terminal. What happened? He searched for a familiar switch. Circuitry awoke, broke the silence: the main computer has auxiliary power. A screen lit, blinding him. He closed his eyes, blinked endlessly, then stared back at it, waiting for something to come into focus.
COMMAND>
The letters blinked, piercing green. He swiped his finger across the screen. The line of text elongated:
COMMAND>INPUT
He traced two fingers down from INPUT.
COMMAND>INPUT>STATUS…
The computer was thinking. How much power is left? The screen went black, flickered, then turned off, dead like the rest of the ship. God damn it!
STATUS:
AUX. PWR: 17%
EPU: LVL 6
LF-SPPRT: SET TO [I]
Seventeen percent. Life support on intermittent. Running when it has to. God damn cold.
The number next to AUX. PWR dropped to 16. Do I keep her running, try to find out what the hell happened, or sit tight? Mick watched the screen, looked around the room: his eyes had adjusted to the dim light, and his intuition had been correct: he was in a tiny pod used for emergency escape, but from where had he jettisoned? And why? What was our mission—a smuggling run? A number fixed in his mind: 100,000 UCD. They had been returning, too, the mission a success. What happened? He couldn’t remember, he’d been sleeping—they all had. It was a year-long mission; Christopher would have been ten years older, relative to Earth’s time.
Ten years mission time traded for thirty in prison.
That was his sentence, if he couldn’t pay up: thirty years in the UCA Pen. But he had found a way out, a sympathetic friend in a high position of the UCA judicial branch. They’d made a deal, details all covered: A ten year smuggling run, a politician’s hot payload of rare ore, and deletion from the database. Just do this one last job, and it will go away. Fuck it. That had been his mindset.
He traced his index finger down in the line of an I, then quickly drew an O. The computer came on with full power.
3
“Computer, last known navigation…”
“M-Class System, Gliese 581.”
“How the fuck did we get out there?”
No response.
“Computer—how did we get close to Gliese? We were on a course from Zubenalgubi for Earth.”
“Carrier ship Crake S.O.S. recorded at sixteen hundred hours, November fourteenth, three thousand twenty.”
“An S.O.S.?”
“Correct.”
“Registration of carrier ship Crake?”
“Unconfirmed or corrupt data.”
“Come on, you piece of shit.”
Alone. Drifting in the void. Barely enough power to last another a day.
Corrupt data.
“What is the power req for a full-range scan?”
“A full-range scan will consume eight percent power. A short-range scan will consume six percent power.”
“How long will intermittent life-support systems last at current power usage?”
“Eighteen hours.”
Continue to drift in the cold? Wait for something to spring from the black, and save me? Or give it one last scan for something, anything, out there in range . . .
“Any data on cause of pod ejection?”
“Main engine valve explosion on mother vessel Crake.”
Valve explosion? Mick thought of his children’s faces, his ex-wife, his friends at the docking station. The images were muddled. Ten for thirty. He wondered how many had met this cold fate: dying in space.
To freeze; to ease into hypothermia. There had to have been hundreds who’d gone before him. The thought comforted him.
“Can you double check engine power?” It had been a joke. The computer misunderstood.
“Central power, failure. All thrusters, failure. Recommended course of action: use intermittent life-support systems in wait of rescue. ”
“Is there any record of an S.O.S. after the explosion on Crake?”
“No records retrievable.”
Mick thought about the polished F.R.I.N.G.E. ships he used to pilot: new, fitted with any and every technology. Black hull ships—smuggling vessels—like the Crake, were old. Crake was two hundred years old. Its computers were retrofitted, but nothing else new had been used. Newer ships were protected under UCA law—black hull freighters flew under-the-radar by way of their outdated computer systems and black hull cloaking technology.
No light, no signal, issued from a black hull ship.
“Might as well…”
“Your command does not register, please repeat.”
“Go ahead. Full range scan.” Mick lay slumped against the cold steel of the terminal casing.
“Initiating f
ull-range scan. Please allow three minutes.”
Drifting through the void. A valve explosion. Gliese 581?
Doesn’t make sense. There are stories of aliens from there. Earth-like they say. A goldilocks world. Maybe that’s what happened. Intercepted. Or maybe things just go wrong. Remember God? That thought is strange: someone who looks out for you no matter what.
I’m a criminal floating in space. Dead space. Intermittent life-support. No records, no engines, no power.
Mick closed his eyes. His skin pricked up as the cabin cooled. The ship whirred, no longer dead silent. A short life-span remaining. A minute passed. Another. The rinds of life dripped as from a sieve.
“Full range scan return: no trace of heat anomalies, no trace of cross transmissions, empty matter analysis.”
“Computer…”
“Awaiting command.”
“Power remaining?” He didn’t have the energy to look at the screen.
“Six percent auxiliary power remaining.”
“How long can I last with ILS?”
“Twelve hours.”
“Does this ship have a suit?” Say yes.
“No.”
Who the hell put me in this damned pod?
He couldn’t remember anything but finishing the job in the Zubenalgubi system. The pick-up had gone smooth. No valve explosion. No getting in a pod. No evacuation emergency. Just going into cryo to wake up back home, pay for the wipe. Trade ten years of mission time for thirty in prison. A second chance to see his children grow up. And Karen. A good injustice.
“Engage ILS.”
“Authorization required.”
Mick rose from his corner and walked to the computer. His fingers wrote a familiar pattern on its screen. The lights dimmed, turned off. Two amber dots remained softly alive, winking. The auxiliary power hissed, turned off. He walked to a porthole. A small latch turned, his fingers raised its velviplastic screen.
A new black appeared: a softer, gentler black, speckled with distant suns. He leaned against the pod wall, looking into space.
How many others are still alive? No ships pass the route we took—no UCA ships. What are the odds that another black hull ship passes and detects this pod? Three billion to one?
No. Those were good odds.
The temperature dropped. Goosebumps enlarged on his forearm.
Jack London wrote about freezing to death. It hadn’t sounded so bad. Hadn’t it been pleasant to warmly die upon the Yukon? Why not here? ILS ensures a gradual exit—there will be no want for oxygen. Comforting . . .
He left the porthole, the sight of the gentler black, returning to the metal dark of the pod interior. It smelled like detergent.
A clean black hull pod. A clean grave.
He closed his eyes.
I love you boys. I love you Karen. I love you guys. I’ll miss you, too. A lot. Please don’t forget I loved you, even though I fucked it up. I’ll always love you.
A tiny noise broke the silence: ILS clicked on, its humming enough to subdue the siren in Mick’s head.
4
“System charged.”
Did I dream that?
Mick rubbed his arm. Still cold. The cabin was dark, barely lighted by a thin row of soft-glowing Christmas lights.
Why do I have to wake up? There’ll only be an hour or two left of ILS.
He rose from the floor and approached the terminal screen.
COMMAND>
The green letters burned his eyes. He blinked. His fingers stroked right along the glass.
COMMAND>INPUT>
A down swipe.
COMMAND>INPUT>STATUS…
A moment of dread. Anticipation.
Why the hell couldn’t I stay asleep?
STATUS:
AUX. PWR: 98%
EPU: LVL 6
LF-SPPRT: SET TO [I]
It can’t be. I am dreaming.
He turned to the cabin behind him, to the soft black-within-black of the porthole he’d left open. He looked back to the screen:
AUX. PWR: 98%
Not a dream.
He drew an I, then an O on the glass. The computer came to life. Lights brightened. He blinked and held his eyelids together hard.
“How has auxiliary power increased?” His voice quivered with boyish excitement.
A new hope? Not yet.
“Record of charge at twelve hundred hours.”
“Who charged it?” He ran to the porthole, saw nothing but the speckled bands of deep space. He opened the other two portholes, saw the same.
“Charge authorized by XJ71.”
“Information on XJ71.”
“XJ71, first generation android of Corp Tech Industries. Patent year twenty-six fourteen.”
Twenty-six fourteen? Jesus Christ.
“Where is XJ71?”
“No tracking record for XJ71.”
“Full range scan, immediately.”
Mick waited. Adrenaline surged through his veins. A black hull operation headed by an ancient android? The thought tested itself in his head.
What else could it have been? It charged the pod within the hour—it had to be in range still.
“Full range scan return: no trace of heat anomalies, no trace of cross transmissions, empty matter analysis.”
“Impossible.”
“Recommended course of action: intermittent life-support systems in wait of rescue.”
A dream. He ran around the cabin, then down the lone corridor of the pod, past the cryo chamber, into the escape hatch chamber. It was lit. He inspected everything. No trace of entry.
A sharp metal bracket caught his head as he raced back to the cabin. A spell of dizziness brought him to a stop. Would someone charge the pod and leave me to die anyway? He looked at the computer screen. Same numbers. Computer error? Malfunctioning from the explosion? His fingers began a series of rapid movements over the glossy screen. Errors. Nothing returned.
“Computer—show full pod history.”
“Cannot access pod history. Corrupted data.”
“Check engine thrusters.”
“Thrusters A and B have failed.”
“How the hell did we get from six percent power to ninety-eight?” The computer didn’t register Mick’s anger.
“Record of a charge authorized by XJ71.”
“What time did XJ71 authorize charge?”
“Twelve hundred hours.”
“Information on XJ71.”
“No information returned—corrupt data.”
A full reboot. I can live without ILS for thirty minutes. No space suit. I don’t have any other option.
He ran to a corner terminal, removed a panel, and began entering a series of commands into a small console. Several wires moved, twisted, untwisted. The cabin went black. Soft light from space broke the uniform dark of the pod. Mick shuffled around, removed a tiny flashlight from a shelf, returned to his hands and knees. The air grew colder.
C’mon you piece of shit.
He fiddled against the small space under the terminal, rearranging wires, plugs, cords, components, capacitors. His fingers were too big.
“You piece of shit.” NASA F.R.I.N.G.E. ships are wireless now. Wireless.
The amber dots glowed again. Power ran through the wires.
If this doesn’t work? Voices spoke to each other in his head: Then we go to sleep. Why are you asking me that?
A picture flashed before his mind’s eye: a picnic with his two sons, his wife, when she had been his wife: A frozen piece of time, before the charges. His son played with a toy rocket. He was telling stories about the beginnings of space flight. His wife looked at him with admiration. A pioneer and a genius, the press had called him. He had whispered many stories to his children as their eyelids failed them; he’d inspired them, ta
ught them principles, adventure, what it meant to be a good man.
The screen blinked green as he turned the terminal on again and applied full power. I/O. The cabin lit up.
“Auxiliary power level?” Though the screen told him ninety-seven percent, he needed to hear it from the computer.
“Ninety-seven percent.”
“Record of auxiliary charge?”
“Charge authorized by XJ71 at twelve hundred hours.”
“Information on XJ71.”
“XJ71, first generation android of Corp Tech Industries. Patent year twenty-six fourteen.”
“What kind of ship was XJ71 in?”
“No record of tracking for XJ71.”
Same thing. It’s just troubleshooting, you can figure this out. You’ve done this a million times. Go through each step. Take your time.
Black Hull
Darkin: A Journey East