Volume 5: Gamma-20, Chapter 5.36

It was the first good night’s sleep we’d all got in quite a few days considering how hard everyone had been working. Following along with the tight schedule, everyone dressed and showered for the day, then had a feast to hopefully tide us over for some time since we’d need to start rationing food once we were on the shuttle.

We didn’t want to waste any time, so we’d already packed all the gear we’d need for the journey; extra jumpsuits and toiletries, as many rations and medications as we could fit, even extra tools to help with repairing the communications system.

It was quite sad, but the

Jessipie-90

crew had to abandon most of their property; living on the vessel for 20 years, they didn’t just pack for a trip or vacation, they brought their

lives

with them. Most of them had mementos from home, some had projects they’d been working on for years, and of course everyone had all manner of comforts that made living on a deep space freighter bearable. They would each only have room for one small suitcase, so sacrifices had to be made what all they had to leave behind.

For the most part everyone packed things that couldn’t be replaced, and for Zemman he spent some time in Cikirna’s room to try to find something that would best represent their time together.

We had to go through the ship shutting down various systems and transferring their final logs into Gadow’s emergency records. He put everyone to work for that, giving us each a tablet and having us scan through every digital console we passed—he even conscripted our team.

Another final protocol for a vessel, even though it was about to be destroyed, it still counted as us abandoning the ship and the cargo, so Gadow wanted to make sure we followed all the company rules to hopefully set the crew up for future employment.

Everyone was starting to get a little nervous as we were cutting it close on time due to being delayed by a few systems that had been downed back when the first warp gate collapsed; since the comms system was down, Gadow couldn’t properly record the distress beacons he deployed, and after a couple hours of trying, we simply had to abandon it and hope the company wouldn’t fault the crew for a lack of records.

We were finally done with all the shuttle preparations, all our supplies were packed, and

Jessipie-90

had most of its systems properly shut down and recorded; with just under three hours until we reached the point of no return, we were finally ready to launch.

Everyone gathered together in the day room/command center of the emergency shuttle; before I thought it would only house a dozen people comfortably, but now that we had just under a dozen people inside, I could confirm it was anything but comfortable. We had enough cots for everyone in the single bunkroom thankfully, but having to share one washroom with 10 people was going to be a nightmare.

But still, it was necessary to survive.

I was also worried there’d be nothing for us to do while drifting through space for cycles on end, but at least Reim showed me she brought along her tablet so we could play some games, along with Zyno who downloaded several thousand Imperial shows and movies on his, but with only a tiny hover screen to project it on for everyone to see.

It was bound to be like the worst road trip in history.

We all buckled into our seats in the central room while Willa and Gadow headed to the cockpit. Since

Jessipie-90’s

systems were all automated, they didn’t have any reason to have a pilot, so we were quite lucky we had Willa there who could fly the shuttle.

We could start to feel the rumblings of the increased gravity now we were getting so close to the singularity, it was starting to overpower the artificial gravity on the vessel even.

We needed to make our escape soon.

“Everyone secured in their seats?” Gadow’s voice called out from the overhead speakers.

Fierra looked around quickly, sitting in a chair just outside the open cockpit, “All clear, captain.”

“Copy, we’re going to disengage

Jessipie-90’s

repulser shielding, then unlock the shuttle from the bay and engage the shuttle’s shielding.” Gadow explained.

I warned Gadow before we absolutely couldn’t underestimate Predazoan speed and told him the switch from shielding to shielding had to be done as fast as physically possible; it would be just a second of vulnerability, but there was no denying a second was all Gamma-20 would need to destroy the shuttle.

“Disengaging now.” Gadow declared, and I gripped the edge of my seat as I braced for it.

Nothing seemed to happen for a few moments, then Gadow’s voice rang out again, “Sorry, disengaging now.”

Again, nothing happened, and people started looking around concerned and confused.

“Zyno, can you come up here?” Gadow asked, and at that a few people started to panic.

“What the hell’s the holdup?” Num demanded.

Reim beside me grabbed my hand, her eyes wide with freight, “Adam, what’s going on?”

I pulled my hand away from hers and unbuckled my seat, “Just a second, I’ll check.”

I headed up to the cramped cockpit that barely fit Willa and Gadow in their flight seats, now with Zyno and Fierra right behind them.

“No, look, see? I can’t access

Jessipie-90’s

systems remotely.” Gadow said, showing Zyno his tablet.

Zyno grabbed the tablet out of Gadow’s hands and started tapping around, then shook his head, “This has nothing to do with my repulser shielding, the error is totally on

Jessipie-90’s

side.” He showed the tablet to Gadow, “See? You haven’t even accessed my shield’s program; this is still part of

Jessipie-90’s

defense system.”

“And what does that mean?” I asked.

Gadow looked up at me, then back to his tablet, “I don’t know, I

should

be able to access

Jessipie-90’s

control program from here.”

I crossed my arms and leaned against the doorframe, “We didn’t shut off the wrong system while putting

Jessipie-90

mostly offline, did we?”

Fierra shook her head, “You can’t shut down

Jessipie-90’s

central programming, that’s to prevent the ever-unlikely saboteur from shutting down the ship so it would be vulnerable to pirates or something.”

“So what gives? Can’t we just jettison into space anyways, leave

Jessipie-90’s

shielding active instead?” I reasoned.

Willa turned around to look at me, “The shuttle can’t disengage from

Jessipie-90

while the repulser shielding’s active; right now, we’re contained within the shielding too—locked up tight, unable to escape.”

I turned back to see most people had gotten out of their seats and wanted to know what was going on, a low rumble of speculating slowly growing louder as panic threatened to settle in.

I turned back to the cockpit, “Okay, so what do we do?”

Gadow shook his head slowly, “We’d have to disengage the shielding manually from the command center on

Jessipie-90

.”

“Oh, shit.” I barely breathed.

If someone had to go manually shut down the shield, it would mean everyone would be vulnerable until the person returned and they could activate the shuttle’s shielding. That, or the person who went to

Jessipie-90’s

command center would have to go down with the ship—stay behind so the shuttle could immediately activate its shielding once they were clear of

Jessipie-90

.

Bad choices either way.

Gadow stood up in his seat, “I’ll go.”

Fierra’s eyes grew wide, “Honey, no!”

Gadow shook his head, “I’m sorry sweetheart, but it’s a captain’s job to sacrifice himself for his crew when it’s required.”

Fierra moved forward, trying to hug Gadow in the cramped space, “But you can’t, there

has

to be another—”

“Nobody’s sacrificing anything, captain.” I said firmly.

Gadow looked at me then, clear doubt written on his face, “I’m sorry Adam, you said yourself how a Predazoan would only need a second to destroy the shuttle, so once I head to

Jessipie-90’s

command center, the rest of you—”

I pointed at his chest, “You’re not going back on

Jessipie-90

.” I hooked my thumb back at myself, “I am.”

“Adam, what are you talking about?” Zyno asked.

I held my hands out, “I’m the

best

chance of everyone getting out alive. Remember all my crazy genetic modifications? Some of those military researchers tested me to see just how fast I can run, and they clocked me at

1800 miles per hour

.” I gestured to Zyno, “What’s that in feet per second?”

Zyno looked up as he did some quick math, “That would be…2640 feet per second.”

I smiled then, “Exactly, and I don’t even think it’s a full 2600 feet from here to the command center.”

Zyno shook his head, “Right, but you’re forgetting the physics Adam; you won’t be able to hit your 1800 mph speed right away, nor could you sustain it with all the twists and turns on

Jessipie-90

.”

I shrugged, “Okay, so maybe I take 10 seconds to make it back here. Don’t you think that’s worth the risk, rather than sacrificing one of the few survivors we have left?”

Gadow and Fierra exchanged a look, and I could see Fierra was desperate for Gadow to take the deal.

“One second or 10 seconds, it’s a risk either way, but if you insist on sacrificing yourself by going to the command center instead, it’s a guaranteed loss.” I insisted.

Gadow shook his head slowly and then sighed, “That isn’t a gamble I can ask people to make without—”

I turned back to look at the rest of the crew, “Everyone, we’ve got a small problem, but we have a fix ready and need people to weigh in.” I raised my hands together, “

Jessipie-90’s

repulser shielding needs to be deactivated from the command center.” I held my left hand up, “Captain Gadow wants to sacrifice himself and go down with the ship.” I lowered my left hand and raised my right, “I can head to the command center and rush back to the shuttle in like 10 seconds thanks to my superspeed.”

“Keep in mind, we’d be vulnerable to Predazoan attack during those 10 seconds.” Gadow said over the loudspeaker.

I waved him off, “You’ll be vulnerable either way, but at least this way your captain doesn’t have to pointlessly sacrifice himself.” I waved out to the crew, “What do you guys say?”

The crew moved in to discuss it amongst themselves, talking quickly and almost frantically, and for a few moments I was worried they wouldn’t be willing to take the risk and would rather Gadow just sacrifice himself.

Finally, they broke apart and turned towards me.

“If you

promise

you’ll make it back to us quickly, we’ll trust you to shut down the shields.” Lummy said.

Zemman nodded along, “Yeah, we haven’t made it this far to just start throwing people’s lives away at the first inconvenience.”

“Right, our captain’s place is with his surviving crew.” Num added.

Saba shrugged, “What’s 10 seconds compared to what we’ve survived so far?”

Reim turned to me, looking quite stern, “You better not be trying to sacrifice yourself either, alright? We expect you back here right after the shields are down.”

I looked at Durgo, legitimately curious what he was thinking.

Durgo’s voice modulator let out a low hiss, “Put those illegal genetic modifications to good use for once, alright?”

I couldn’t help but smile at his response, then turned back to the cockpit.

“I assume you guys are all good with the new plan?” I asked.

Gadow sighed, “No, but it seems I’ve been outvoted.” He favored me with a soft smile, “Thank you Adam.”

Fierra looked like she just barely stopped herself from crying, “Yes, thank you so much Adam.”

Willa nodded at me, “I’ve seen you move—even carried me back in the crystal storage tank, I believe in you all the way.”

I turned to Zyno and he just threw his hands up in the air, “Well hurry up and get on with it! We aren’t blessed with unlimited time now, are we?” He snapped, and I just rolled my eyes.

I turned and made my way to exit the shuttle, and the crew I passed patted me on the back and thanked me for saving their captain, and when I passed Reim she rushed forward to trap me in another fierce hug.

“Seriously, you better not be trying to disappear on us either.” She said, holding on as long as she could until I had to pry her away.

“Don’t worry, I’m not dying anytime soon, promise.” I said, then threw them all a casual salute, and then headed for

Jessipie-90

one final time.

***

I only had a couple hours until we ran out of time, but I wanted to use what little time I had to make sure I’d take the fastest, most optimal route back to the emergency shuttle.

The shuttle bay was on the basement level of

Jessipie-90

, connected by a long hallway that led to a ramp that brought me back up to the main level. Another hallway took me to the outer ring with all the recreation rooms, connecting to the center ring with the crew quarters. In between all that (in the opposite direction as the ramp that led to the shuttle bay) was the command center.

I decided to do a test-run to see how long it would actually take me to go from the command center to the shuttle bay, and after kicking off the wall as though I was a track runner and pushing myself as hard as I could, moving through all the twisting hallways, I made it back to the bay in around 12 seconds.

“Alright, that’ll do.” I said to myself.

Jogging through

Jessipie-90

alone, it was honestly quite creepy, and the constant power surges that caused the lights to flicker certainly weren’t helping. The flashing yellow warning lights were constant now, over all the doorways and in the middle of every long hallway. Thankfully the voice had been shut off days ago, now only announcing how many hours we had left until disaster on the hour ever since we counted down to the last six hours.

Even with the artificial gravity active, I could still feel a weird pull as I moved, and there was a rumbling beneath my feet after every power surge. I noticed some panels had even popped out of place, and that pleasant lighting that used to follow people on the ceiling to look like sunlight peeking through clouds stopped working, with some of the panels straight-up broken.

There were exposed wires on some of the walls, with relief valves hissing out steam sporadically. Now more than ever it looked like I was in a horror movie.

“Now would be a really shitty time for a Xenomorph to jump me.” I muttered to myself.

I made it back to the command center and went to the center console; Gadow walked me through the whole process, and even though a lot of this future-tech was beyond me, the process of working through menus wasn’t so complicated even I could screw it up.

I scrolled through the list of systems that were still running—life support, artificial gravity, lighting, heating, ventilation, pressurization, and then defensive shielding.

“Here we go…” I went into the submenu and opened the panel that would unlock the lever to deactivate all defense systems for the entire ship.

Just then, before I could get to the lever, I heard the door open and saw Durgo standing there.

I was more than surprised to see him appear now of all times, “Durgo? What the hell are you doing here?”

In response, Durgo held up a plasma pistol and pointed it at me.

“So clever, and yet you never saw this coming, did you?” His voice modular hissed.

My jaw dropped then, “Oh, you’ve

got

to be fucking kidding me!”

Of course, why didn’t I see it before? The Empire had been trying to get rid of me the moment the Lord Generals took over—and now would be the perfect time to get away with it. I had my suspicions before Eve would survive if my failsafe activated while she was in void space, so maybe that had been the plan all along. Or maybe they just straight-up disabled the original heart monitor failsafe a while ago and were waiting for when they could kill me without Eve thinking they were responsible. Now they could blame it on the failed mission, have me die here in the Derrion System, and no one would ever know what happened since my remains would be crushed and consumed by the void singularity.

Holy shit, had they planned

all

of this—the initial collapsed warp gate, Eve getting trapped in the void, and even the mission with the impossibly valuable cargo failing to give them a great alibi for why they

wouldn’t

want the mission to fail?

I wasn’t as geared up as I normally would be, only equipped with a single proton blade and a plasma pistol, but I was sure I could still take out Durgo before he could kill me.

Of course, before that I wanted to know what this was all about.

I crossed my arms and leaned against the computer console, “So, the Empire’s finally making its move against me, is that it?”

Durgo tilted his head to the side, “What do you know?”

I shrugged, “Only what I can guess, but I assume you want to control Eve on your own without me, so I figure this was always the plan.”

Durgo nodded, “Alpha-03.”

I slashed a hand through the air, “Don’t call her that! She’s more than just a tool or an asset, and I’ll die before I let the Empire control her!” I shouted.

Durgo shook his head slowly, “You really love her, don’t you? Or at least you think you love her.”

I scoffed at that, “Enough with that manipulation shit; I love Eve same as she loves me. The only people trying to manipulate us are you and the Lord Generals.”

Durgo’s voice modulator made some weird, coughing hiss then, and I realized he was laughing; I’ve only heard him laugh a couple times, and it was always unsettling.

“I take back what I said about you being clever; you’re honestly the dumbest, most ignorant fool I’ve ever seen in my life.” He hissed.

I took that moment to activate my superspeed and pull my pistol out, then pointed it at Durgo, “Doesn’t matter, once I reunite with Eve we’ll make it our mission to rebel against the Empire and bring the Lord Generals down, so there’s no way I’ll let you stop me here.”

Durgo barked out such a harsh laugh the voice modulator crackled with painfully high-pitch static feedback.

“You really don’t understand what’s going on, do you?” Durgo asked.

I was about to ask what he was talking about, but then he reached up for his voice modulator and unhooked it, revealing a wide-open maw of several rows of jagged white fangs, looking like a huge lamprey mouth. Then, his mouth grew wider until two huge, black centipede mandibles snapped out menacingly.

My eyes grew wide as my blood turned to ice as I finally caught on to what was happening.

“Oh fuck, Gamma-20!”