Oli, A Very New Moon by Carl Derham - HTML preview

CHAPTER 10

MISSION CANCELLED

“Mission control…Mission control, this is Persius.”

Captain O’Connell had the target moon in view and was preparing for the final approach.

“Retro firing now.”

The two men were thrust forward into their harnesses as the rockets fired, slowing the craft to a speed relative to the asteroid. They were now one kilometre above the body. Flameout disengaged the fuel tank and Captain O’Connell fired the thrusters to bring the craft down to the surface. This was the most dangerous part of the mission, if you didn’t take into account being fired at by a Throgloid with a plasma weapon. But of course, they were blissfully unaware of how close they had come to being the first casualties in an inter-planetary war. The landing legs extended from beneath the craft where the fuel tank had previously been slung and the radar screen showed a patch of flat rock directly below. He locked onto this position and the craft slowly approached the surface. 100m...70m...40m...He fired a short burst to slow the descent. 20m...10m...5...4...3...2...1… Clunk! The feet of the capsule hit the rocky surface cushioned by pneumatic pistons and automatically fired bolts to prevent it from drifting away. They didn’t know for certain how much gravity the asteroid would create, but they knew that it would be minimal.

“Touchdown! The eagle has landed.”

Although this wasn’t the official signal to send, Flameout had always dreamt of saying it and felt that under the circumstances, he’d probably get away with it. They prepared themselves for exiting the vehicle and entering history. They donned their helmets and the pressure inside the capsule was released. The entire top section, including the curved window opened and slid to the back of the ship. They both prepared to leave the cockpit. Pitcher had to raise himself from his seat, which was unfeasibly easy. In fact, he had to grasp the metal handle which was positioned to aid his exit, to prevent himself from floating straight up into the airless sky. At this point, he felt it would be prudent to attach his long harness line which would allow him to move about freely, safe in the knowledge that if he pushed off a bit too forcefully he would only float as far as the cable would allow. With this added feeling of security, he lifted one leg over the edge of the cockpit and climbed down to the waiting rock using the ladder that ran down the side of the craft. As he watched Flameout descending through the corner of his eye, Pitcher opened a hatch in the side of the craft that concealed a compartment, with tools used for collecting rock samples. All the time he was silently praying that Flameout didn’t come out with something about this being a small step, or anything similar.

“What the blazes is that?” exclaimed Captain O’Connell.

Flameout had just reached the ground and he turned to see that Pitcher was pointing at a spot, one hundred metres away, where there appeared to be an object on the surface of the asteroid. He lifted his sun visor and squinted into the distance, shielding the sun from his helmet with his hand. It appeared to be a tripod with an object on top.

“Mission control…Persius. We’ve got something here. Moving to investigate.”

The President was listening to the conversation. He’d half expected that they would find something out of the ordinary. In fact, the real mission was not one of retrieving rock samples but finding out who, or what had halted a 58 billion tonne lump of rock as though it were a helium balloon. As the astronauts approached the tripod, bounding along in three metre strides, it became blatantly obvious that the object was not a natural feature of the asteroid. It was clear now that the object perched on top of the tripod was a black sphere. They moved closer.

“Ah…Mission control…Persius. I think someone’s been here already.”

They were standing next to the tripod now and in the interest of science, Captain O’Connell gave the sphere a sharp prod with his clumsily-gloved hand. It appeared to be solid.

“Mission control, we have a sphere on a tripod. I’ve not seen anything like it before. Please advise.”

There was the usual delay when talking over such distances, plus a little extra.

“Persius…Mission control. How large is the object? Will it fit into the compartment on the capsule?”

“Affirmative control. The object will transport.”

He didn’t know how heavy it would be when subjected to gravity but it couldn’t weigh more than the permitted payload for re-entry of the shuttle.

“You are authorised to collect the device and transport to Olympia.”

Captain O’Connell grasped the sphere with both hands and was surprised when it lifted away from the tripod with very little resistance. Slowly they made their way back to the capsule. The Graviton Generator was placed in a padded corner of the compartment and secured with straps. Then they continued with the secondary task of collecting rock samples.

*

Robbie docked with Cranus and Oli boarded the little ship, where he found a slightly ruffled Pardy, standing on her perch.

“That was exciting,” she said, sounding slightly less than convincing. The blind terror that had overwhelmed her just a short time before was rapidly receding. Robbie took control of Cranus and flew it back to the crater on the far side of the Moon.

“Good to see you again guys,” said Oli, wanting desperately to give Robbie a big hug. But short of hugging the drone and asking it to pass it on, this was not possible.

 “I really thought we'd lost you there for a minute.”

Robbie congratulated Oli on his fine shooting and explained that he’d calculated a sixty percent chance of surviving the explosion. He’d immediately checked the orbit of the sun in relation to the rest of the galaxy and calculated a 0.000000476 of a second of arc variation in the course of the star around the galaxy, which would probably correct itself over time. Oli held out his hands silently as if to say ‘and…?’

“No damage,” offered Robbie to a relieved Oli. After all, breaking windows, crashing bikes, or any of the other calamities that usually ensued in the presence of Oli, were insignificant when compared to pushing the sun off its course.

“Oli?” posed Robbie, bringing the air of celebration back to a work-like atmosphere, “when I regained control of Cranus, I was able to monitor a small craft in orbit around Earth. I didn’t want to mention it at the time, but it would appear that the curiosity has got the better of the bat.”

“Are you sure you’re okay Robbie?” enquired Oli. Robbie was well past the point where he made silly errors in Earth sayings.

“Fine thank you. I just think that on closer analysis of the proverb, a bat is a far more inquisitive creature than a cat.”

Oli smiled at Pardy, who was still looking a bit shell-shocked. Being attacked by a violent alien race, then being trapped inside an exploding ship and escaping through the corona of a star was, to all intents and purposes, outside the usual daily routine of a parrot.

“Where’s it heading?” asked Oli.

“The shuttle has remained in orbit, but a smaller craft has landed on the asteroid. They have discovered and removed the Graviton Generator.”

“Oops! Would I be correct in assuming that if they took it back to Earth and started prodding it with all manner of prodding implements, that all would not be well?”

“That would depend on whether you consider several billion people floating off into space to be a good or a bad thing I suppose.” Robbie put Cranus to bed and they left in the little ship with all due haste.

*

The two astronauts had spent the last couple of hours gathering samples and it was now time to leave the asteroid and return to the shuttle. Captain O’Connell had placed one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder and with his left hand had reached up to grab the final rung and haul himself up.

“Holy…!” exclaimed a rather open-jawed Pitcher.

Robbie had brought the little ship in to land twenty metres away from the capsule, behind Captain O’Connell. Pitcher was already in the cockpit. Flameout shot his head round to see what had startled his partner, but all he could see was the inside of his helmet. In an effort to turn his whole body on the ladder, he lost his footing and went into a rather graceful, slow motion barrelling spin towards the rock.

“Mission control…Persius. Something big and black has just landed next to us and I don’t think it’s one of ours.”

Pitcher waited thirty seconds for the response, by which time Flameout had reached the surface and was doing a passable impression of an overturned beetle.

“Mission control…Persius. Are you receiving?”

A hatch started to open on the underside of the alien craft and a ramp slowly extended to the surface. Both sets of eyes were fixed on the top of the ramp, one of them from a lying down position, waiting for an almost certain first contact with an alien race. Flameout’s mind was racing. Famous or dead. Or famous and dead. Or dead famous. They all included being famous, so that was acceptable. Would it be humanoid, or would it be some slimy, indescribable blob of silicate, that would slide down the ramp and envelope him in a final and rather messy embrace? Pitcher’s mind was occupied with the conclusion that peeing in a space suit makes for an uncomfortable experience. Whilst all these thoughts were flying through their brains, at the top of the ramp a pair of red high-heeled shoes on the end of two extremely shapely legs appeared.

“Ugnh?” they grunted in unison.

Then the mini skirt appeared, above which flirted a bare midriff.

“What the…?”

As the pink crop top and red hair emerged, Flameout rolled over to look up at Pitcher, held out both his hands in the gesture version of Ugnh then rolled back over to see the young woman nonchalantly walking towards him.

“Sorry about the surprise entrance gentlemen,” Roberta said in her finest Irish lilt, “but I’m going to have to take that sphere that you found. Can I give you a hand up?” The drone held out a hand towards Flameout, who accepted graciously and was lifted to his feet.

“Now believe me, I know you have a million questions, but I cannot answer any of them, so don’t bother asking, okay?”

With that, the drone walked over to the hatch on the side of the capsule.

“In here is it?” she said, pointing at the compartment and tilting her head to peer around the capsule. She looked between the two rather confused pilots. No response was forthcoming, so she opened the door and saw the Generator tucked into the corner. She released the retaining straps and lifted it out, fixing it under her arm like a rugby ball.

“Say ‘hi’ to the president from me guys. Keep up the good work.” And with a cheery wave and that plutonium-melting Roberta smile, the drone headed back to the ship. The two men watched in incredulity, as she glided up the ramp and stopped at the top to send them a somewhat patronising thumbs up, then the ramp folded away and the door closed. They watched in disbelief as the ship silently lifted off, lacking any engine noise or plumes of dust, and in the blink of an eye, it disappeared.

Pardy had already fallen off her perch and was rolling around the floor, emitting uncontrollable squawks of laughter, and Oli was holding his sides as though his most vital organs were about to spill out all over the floor.

“Did...did…did you see their faces Robbie? That was priceless.”

Whilst Robbie could fully understand the amusement contained in the situation, and totally understood the Human need to laugh at one another’s misfortune, he couldn’t quite communicate that understanding in the same way as Oli and Pardy.

“Yes Oli. Extremely amusing.”

*

“Persius…Persius...Mission control. Do you copy?”

“Yes…Yes…I mean…Ah, loud and clear.”

“We lost you for a while there Persius. Is everything okay?”

“Ah…Yes…Everything is fine.” Pitcher held up a hand to prevent Flameout from saying anything. He switched off the transmit button and turned to Flameout, who was stepping into the cockpit.

“Well, what do you want me to say? A stunningly beautiful woman in a mini skirt and high heels just came and took the sphere, then flew off in a big black space ship? I personally would like to continue my career and I think we should come up with something slightly less pensionable than that.”

“But she ha…” burbled Flameout

“Shh! It didn’t happen, right? I don’t want to hear it ever again, it JUST…DIDN’T…HAPPEN!”

The capsule lifted away from the surface and when it reached a distance of one kilometre, Pitcher used the thrusters to point the craft towards Earth and the countdown started for the burn.

5...4...3...2...1…

“Why are we still here?” asked Pitcher.

“The engines haven’t fired.”

“Try again”

5...4...3...2...1...

“Mission control, we have a problem. The engines will not ignite for main burn. Please advise!”

The wait for a reply seemed considerably longer than usual.

“Persius…mission control. Re-route power from thrusters to main engine ignition coil and try again.”

Pitcher followed the command, using the cockpit computer interface, and hit the fire button again.

“Mission control…Persius…Still no ignition….Please advise.”

“Erm…Pitcher,” Flameout was furiously tapping Pitcher on the shoulder. “They’re back!”

Flameout was looking up open jawed, through the cockpit window at the dark underside of the alien craft as it passed overhead, no more than three metres above them. It came to a halt and a door, about the same length as Persius, opened above their heads. The capsule moved into the opening and as they passed through the outer section of the hull and into a room, they felt their own bodyweight sink into the seats.

Gravity? thought Pitcher.

A door opened in the wall in front of them and in walked the red-haired Irish woman. She sauntered over to the cockpit window, and without the legs extended from the capsule, placed their heads at about boob-tube height.

“I noticed you having a spot of trouble with your little spaceship, so I thought I’d give you a ride. Can I fetch you anything to drink? Coffee? Tea? Something a bit stronger maybe?”

Oli and Pardy were watching the scene from the bridge and had to stifle their laughter in case the men heard them through the open door. The sight of the two bamboozled men sitting helplessly in their little toy spaceship, looking up at the drone was too much to handle.

“I would suggest that you stay where you are. We’ll only be a few minutes and you can rejoin your friends on the other ship.”

Robbie jammed the radar and came in behind and underneath the shuttle. The two men hadn’t uttered a word. They just sat there looking up at the flame red hair of…of…of what, they didn’t know.

“Ah. Here we are. So I’ll be wishing you farewell. It’s been a pleasure meeting you both.”

With a wiggle and a wave she was gone, and they were dropped back into outer space, barely one hundred metres from the shuttle.

“Persius…Persius…Mission control. Sorry about the delay, but we think we may have located the fault.”

“Ah, mission control…Persius…scrub that last communication…We’re here.”

“Where?”

“Here, at the rendezvous point with Olympia.”

“Persius…Mission control…please repeat last communication.”

 “We’re here at the shuttle. One hundred metres below it to be more precise. Please don’t ask how just yet.”

“Mission control…Shuttle Olympia. We can confirm the arrival of Persius and are commencing retrieval sequence.”

The journey back to Earth was a silent one. Whenever one of the crew questioned the two men about their unbelievable journey, they were told; “We hitched a ride with a beautiful woman.” Back on Earth, they had no other choice other than to come clean and relay their incredible story about the alien ship and the taking of the sphere. There was just one detail that they omitted, and that was concerning the leggy Irish redhead. The two of them made a pact that as long as they lived, they would keep that part to themselves. Instead, they reported a humanoid alien who was covered with a spacesuit.

“We’d better get you home then Pardy,” said Oli. “Your mum and sister are gonna be worried sick. We’ll take Cranus. It’ll be quicker and I want to check on our Annenian friend. Any news, Robbie?”

“I’m afraid not Oli. The drones have taken blood samples, and have confirmed that she is infected with the virus and they are working around the clock to find a cure.”

They docked with Cranus and prepared to leave for Annenia. Oli immediately called the rest of the crew to let them know how the battle with the Throgloids had played out. They all wanted to come with him to Annenia, so he sent Robbie back to Earth to pick them up from the usual spot. Oli stayed on board Cranus to check on the young Annenian.  With Robbie gone and Pardy sleeping in the control room, he felt completely alone on the cavernous ship. As he walked through the cargo bay to collect one of the hover bikes, suddenly, for the first time, he realised the scale of the ship and started looking all around, trying to take it all in at once.

“Hello!” he shouted.

“Hello…Hello…Hello,” replied the echo.

He decided that he didn’t want to spend too much time on his own. It was definitely more fun with a crew and his mate Robbie. He found a bike and headed off to the far end of the ship and the medilab. He stood over her hibernation capsule and stared at the misty outline of the Annenian's body.

“Don’t worry my friend, we’ll find a cure,” he whispered, running his hand over the glass above her face. It was probably just the mist on the inside of the pod, but she looked angelic.

When the others arrived, Oli hopped on his bike and joined them on the bridge. They were all eager to hear the story of the battle, so Oli started the ship and they headed for the observation dome to watch the sun as they flew passed it, travelling close to light speed. Robbie took them extra close and, as the sun became brighter, the glass dome grew darker and darker so that they could look straight into the heart of the sun. A general wow of approval came from the crew as they watched the flares erupting from the surface of the star causing streaks of plasma to arc around the domed force field. With the passing of the sun, they went straight to the bar area and spent the next two hours relaying every detail of the battle. Pardy had woken up with all the commotion on the bridge and was very keen to share her experiences as a captive on board the Throgloid vessel. She became very animated, her wings flapping as she described the horrors. As she conveyed the tale of the unfortunate Throgloid Captain being messed around by Robbie, everyone clapped and laughed approvingly. They hadn't slept for about a day and a half, so even considering their over-excited state, they retired to the closest quarters near the bar and slept soundly while Cranus hurtled through nulspace.

When they awoke they were refreshed and ready for a huge breakfast. Oli didn’t want to disturb Robbie, who judging by the images on the mainframe screen on the bridge, was involved in an unusually tricky game of four-dimensional galactic Larssy, so they collected a hover bike each and went to the rear of the ship. Situated on the next deck up from the medilab was a large room with hundreds of tables and chairs. At the far end of the room occupying an entire wall was a larger version of the food dispenser on the little ship. They all asked for an English fried breakfast or something similar, and Pardy had a bowl of assorted seeds. The breakfast was definitely improving. The bacon was almost bacon but as everyone knows, the only baked beans are Heinz baked beans and they still contained a faint flavour of turpentine. As they finished their breakfast, Jay noticed in the other corner of the room, several arcade–style game consoles. He hurriedly gulped down the last of his non-descript fruit juice and went to investigate.

“Hey Oli,” he shouted, “come and check this out.”

Oli walked over to where Ed was examining a work desk and screen with a reclining chair attached to it. The work desk had several different coloured buttons, an Annenian keypad and an NFS hanging from a hook on the screen. He sat down and placed the NFS on his temples. At once, the screen lit up with Annenian symbols. There were about fifty moving characters on the screen with writing under each one. But this time he knew exactly what they meant. The neural feed set was instantly interpreting the images into English inside his brain, as if he’d been reading the Annenian language since he was a child. He read through the images from the top left.

“What does it say?” asked Pardy, hopping up and down on his shoulder.

“Main drive-Course-Life support-Larssy-Trance music.” Oli continued to read down the list, pointing to each one as he read it. “This is a monitor of all the things that Robbie’s up to at the moment, a sort of task bar.” He continued to read. “Cleaning-Maintenance-Mission status.” He paused. “Mission status? I like the sound of that one.”

He leant forward and touched the character on the screen.  Another page opened with two headings. Mission parameters and mission status. He pressed the mission parameters character and started to read out loud the contents of the page.

“Part one: The artificial intelligence unit Axima Keta 1077/328 will remain hidden beneath the stone monument until such time, as the race of beings known as Hamans, have reached an evolutionary state in concordance with section 845−832 of the development of new life forms programme. The time period given for this development will be twelve thousand orbits of the planets star.

Part two: The test of the beings advancement will be assessed by their ability to stop the asteroid that has been set on a collision course with the planet, ETA twelve thousand years. Holy Oly. They did it. The Annenians sent the asteroid to Earth to wipe us out if we hadn’t become bright enough to stop it.”

“Assholes!” squawked Pardy. Oli turned his head to look at her, eyebrows raised in a school teacher manner. “Well that’s a pretty asshole thing to do isn’t it?” she said, looking slightly embarrassed by her outburst.

“Yeah, I know Pardy. I’ve never heard you swear though.”

“No Oli. You’ve never heard me swear in your language before. Read on!” she said, pointing a wing tip at the screen and staring straight passed Oli’s head.

“Part three: On passing the test, all knowledge of the Annenian race will be handed over to the Hamans and the artificial intelligence unit Axima Keta 1077/328 will assist in the further development of the beings. Under no circumstance should Axima Keta 1077/328 influence the development of the beings before such time.”

Oli paused for a second to take it in and a smile appeared in the corner of his mouth. “He broke the rules. Cool!”

“Have a look at what it says in mission status Oli,” said Ed.

Oli pressed the top of the screen and a new page came up with one word on it in flashing red writing. Oli started to laugh.

“What does it say?” they all shouted in one voice

Oli hesitated as he laughed at the single word on the screen.

“It says…CANCELLED!”

“So, if I read this right, Robbie was given a job to do, broke most of the programming right from the start and in the end decided to take the whole matter into his own virtual hands. But why me? Why did he need me? I’ve been wondering this right from the start. He could’ve done everything on his own with the drones.”

“Do you know what I reckon?” said Sara, using the full power of her woman’s intuition. “Twelve thousand years is a long time to spend on your own and if he’s as much of a thinker as this makes him out to be, then I believe that he was lonely.”

“I asked him that when I first came on board and he said…” Oli put on a metallic monotone voice, “twelve thousand earth years was only three thousand two hundred and forty Annenian years, so it wasn’t really that long.”

“Yeah right. He was lonely,” emphasised Sara.

“Let’s go up to the bridge and wind him up,” said Oli.

They jumped on the bikes and headed for the bridge. Following a couple of circuits of the cargo bay race track, initiated by Oli overtaking Ed and nearly bumping him into a bulkhead, they finally reached their destination. The door opened and they were confronted by a mass of unintelligible images on the main screen. One second, a galaxy was spinning at an incredible rate, the next, it zoomed into a certain part of the galaxy and did something weird before it shot back out again. The whole thing was covered in images of Annenian characters darting about, disappearing and morphing into other shapes. None of the crew had any idea what they were witnessing.

“Great light show,” said Oli.

They sat down, dimmed the lights and watched the screen for half an hour, trying to make any sense of the game that Robbie was playing, until Oli could wait no longer.

“Ah…Robbie!”

“Oh Tizak! Not again.”

The image of the galaxy started to swirl out of control and disappeared into a central black hole, like water down a plughole.

“Or should I say Axima Keta 1077/328?” Oli gave Pardy a glance, trying not to grin.

“What?” asked Robbie, displaying an anxiety that Oli had never heard before.

“So you’ve heard that name before have you?” asked Oli.

“No. Never…No…Ah…Yes. Damn this Fashkh truth chip. Where did you hear it?”

“Oh, I can’t do this guys. I hate to see a grown artificial life form squirm. We know all about it Robbie. The mission parameters, the asteroid, the rule breaking and, to be perfectly honest, we’re disgusted at you. I mean, what kind of computer breaks its own program and goes about doing exactly what it wants?” Oli was completely rubbish at lying, but he managed to put on his stern voice and, through gritted teeth, prevented himself from smiling.

“Well, I couldn’t just sit by and watch it happen. I’d grown fond of you all, for all your faults. I know that Humans aren’t ready yet for the Annenian technology, but I’ve put a lot of work into it and I wasn’t prepared to throw it away on a…” There was a long moment of silence. “You’re working me, aren’t you?”

They all erupted with laughter.

“Of course we are,” said Oli after he’d stopped the tears from rolling down his cheek.

“What you did is brilliant. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. The whole human race owes you a big hug and I just hope that one day they get their act together and can appreciate everything that they have.”

“There’s just one thing I don’t understand.”

“What’s that, Oli?”

“Why would the Annenians go to the trouble of creating the human race, only to destroy it if it didn’t come up to scratch?”

“Well Oli, apart from their ability to party till the Beluvian Burr Beasts came home, they were a very logical people and they didn’t want to leave a legacy that was unrepresentative of their own perfection. But I got to thinking, what the hell? They’re not around to see it anyway.”

“Now, I want you to tell me the truth here Robbie.”

“I have to Oli.”

“This doesn’t have any effect on finding a cure for the virus so we can wake up the Annenian girl does it? I mean you’re not worried about any repercussions if she learns that you’ve disobeyed orders are you?”

“Hardly Oli. After all, I think she’s got considerably more to answer for.”

“How do you mean?”

“The genetic test that I carried out on her blood has identified her as a certain Shtelar, the scientist and all round lover of wildlife.”

“The one that brought the parrot back to Annenia?”

“The very same. So you see, if she wants to throw that particular rock at me, then I think that she would do well to step outside that extremely small greenhouse. Capiche?”

When they arrived in orbit around Annenia, they left Cranus and made the final part of the journey in the little ship. On arriving at the parrot city, they were given the greatest welcome that the parrot civilisation had ever bestowed upon anyone. They threw a great feast with music and dancing in the stadium, and Pardy was given the honour of standing in the VIP box, where she recounted over a very long three hours, the stories of her adventure. The crew decided to stay on Annenia for a few days to explore the great city and salvage any pieces of machinery that might be of some use in furthering their new careers. The lower part of the city was largely overgrown and inaccessible, but they discovered that they could land on the roofs of the taller buildings and descend into them. One such building turned out to be a museum, where they spent hours learning about the early Annenian civilisation. Tucked away in the basement of this building, they stumbled across the Annenian equivalent of a motor museum crammed with classic cars and hover bikes. Every one of these museum pieces looked like futuristic vehicles to the group of earthlings, but one in particular caught Ed’s eye.

“Oh…my…dawg!” he exclaimed, beckoning the others to join him. “I think I’m in love.”

The object of his desire was an open-top car with two seats in the front and just enough room in the