Alia relaxed in her captain’s chair and concentrated on the huge, wall-sized monitor that broadcasted the view in front of the ship like a window. She had charted the ship to unknown territory using the navigation schematics created by the Interstellar Panel, but as the ship passed into uncharted territory, the holographic maps became useless. The ship gathered intelligence for transmission back to the IP navigators, but it could not be synthesized in real time and the maps all went dark.
“The stagnant magnetic field is interrupting our connection to the IP,” Nebuchad, the only of her crew still with her in the command center of the ship, said evenly. He had prepared his captain for this eventuality before they started their journey. The uncharted territory had remained so because of the intensity of the magnetic field that emanated from the celestial bodies contained therein that disrupted communications and navigation equipment.
“Switch to co-pilot operation; I will back up the sensory autopilot,” Alia said, and a panel opened from the floor. Then a platform like a desk with many buttons and controls rose from the opened panel. Alia rested a hand on it when she was satisfied with the height.
“Permission to engage third pilot control,” Nebuchad said.
“Granted,” Alia said in response, though both spoke in a monotone that was an indication of their familiarity with the procedure of operating an IP exploratory ship. “Captain requests confirmation of navigation backup on all three pilot controls.” The communication lines were open between central command and the navigation hub located at the bottom of the spacecraft and Alia spoke to them without changing her position.
“Backup ready on all three controls, Captain,” Alia and Nebuchad heard over the intercoms of the command center.
The ship proceeded in a tense silence for a while. The crew of the ship was minimal, just fifty or so people on a ship designed for hundreds, and the ship was usually quiet. But as the captain and her second in command carefully watched space for threats, the command center had fallen into a tense silence that was palpable. The field of space they moved through was cluttered with debris, and Alia had set the ship to move at a relative snail pace to avoid calamity.
And then the field of space began to clear and both Alia and Nebuchad stared in awe at the object that emerged in front of them. It looked like a giant, black golf ball floating space.
“That seems to be the source of the latent magnetic field,” Nebuchad said. “What do you think it is?”
“A ship?” Alia said. “Maybe a planet, are you seeing the teleomometer readings off this thing? There’s so much information emanating from it. Too bad we can’t catch and decipher anything.”
“So we land, find out first hand.”
That was not IP protocol. Without contact with the IP to record the location of the ship and to monitor the vitals of each of the ship’s crew, an exploratory ship was forbidden from making landfall on anything. Nebuchad knows this, and Alia was struck by his suggestion.
“This is no time for humor, Abed. Gather as much intelligence as we can and then we’ll head back…”
Nebuchad shut off the communication between the command center and the navigation hub. Alia shot him a look of concern that became harder and more stern with each passing second.
“Lieutenant, restore communication at once! You will face discipline…” Alia started but she did not finish before Nebuchad stood and entered a complex code into a keypad on the wall that caused the command center to eject from the massive spacecraft, and soon wings and jets folded out of the metal that encased the command room, and Alia and Nebuchad were alone in a ship. It had happened so fast that Alia hardly had time to react. Nebuchad sent a message through his headset to the navigation hub of the big ship to maintain their position.
“We will make landfall on this mysterious vessel and find the source of the magnetic disruption.” Nebuchad worked diligently to pilot the small ship and he paid no mind to his Captain’s anger.
Alia was furious and she stood from her chair. “What are you doing?!”
“What we came here to do Captain. They said you weren’t quite ready to be back after your encounter, but I couldn’t imagine sitting second to anyone else for a mission like this one. Is it true what they say?” Nebuchad’s tone changed, like he was asking questions to refresh his Captain’s memory. “Your ship was overrun by the Ointite Mind Snatchers Cabal on the outskirts of the planet? And you saved your entire crew by battling their leader on the mental plane of existence?”
Alia remembered some of that. She remembered the feeling of successfully delivering a craft of refugees back to their homeworld of Oin, only to be ambushed by the Cabal, but her memory had been spotty since then. The battle on the mental plane lasted about five minutes to spectators, but Alia and the leader of the Cabal fought one another fiercely for what felt like a decade on the mental plane. She remembered taking the mission to the uncharted regions, though she can’t remember why the mission objective had intrigued her so much. They were meant to discover the source of magnetic disturbance and rescue any possible survivors from a recently lost vessel that had wandered into the uncharted territory, but Alia had been struggling to position herself in her physical present after the encounter with the Cabal leader. Her perception of the world seemed to skip forward, sometimes an hour and sometimes full days, as through her life were a poorly edited movie, and her superiors at the IP had assigned Nebuchad to her care in her rehabilitation for his expertise in consciousness. He was a captain like Alia, an Earthling with a background in psychology who had come to the IP for the chance to explore the universe. The mystery of the uncharted territory presented itself after he had been with Alia for a while, charting her involuntary lapses in consciousness. He thought that the experience might revitalize her, she had not been on a ship in quite some time by that point. The supervisors were hesitant because Alia’s memory seemed to be unreliable, but Nebuchad had a hunch and he knew that the mission would be just what Alia needed.
Nebuchad explained all of this to Alia in their command room ship. Alia listened and eventually sat while the ship landed on the giant golf ball.
“Very good, lieutenant,” Alia said as they suited up for a space walk.
“You lose the track, but it’s easier and easier to get you back on,” Nebuchad said with a smile. He strapped a weapon to Alia’s back and then turned while she did the same for him.
It’s not hard, she thinks, just one step at a time.
The gravity of the object they landed on defied its size, and the two concluded that they had landed on the surface of an artificial planet.
“Do you see any openings?” Nebuchad asked.
Alia shook her head and looked around her at the bleak, black landscape. And then she saw a tall form with horns approaching. It should have been intimidating, but Alia knew as the silhouette came into view that she was right where she needed to be.
“I am Solse,” the tall creature said as it stood in front of Alia and Nebuchad. It wore protective gear in the vacuum of space and it had a line of communication compatible with the communicators inside of the suits the humans wore, and it translated between them.
“Is this your ship?” Alia asked.
“No, I have been wandering the surface for a while now. I would say that I’m lost but I’ve been over and over this place.”
“What is this thing, do you know? How can we get inside?”
“I know a way in, but I have never been inside. I don’t know what would happen to me inside. I know what to expect here and maybe something out here will jog my memory as to why I’m here.”
“Show us the way inside,” Nebuchad said eagerly.
“What is the last thing you remember before finding yourself here?” Alia asked Solse. She empathized with his apparent amnesia.
“I remember hearing the voice of a God, and then nothing has been the same sense.”
Alia sharpened her eyes at Solse. He looked like a giant ram with ornate horns on either side of his head and he seemed to be very kind. She wanted to help him find himself. Or maybe she hoped that helping him would help her.
“Let’s go,” Nebuchad said, practically pushing at Solse’s leg; Solse was almost twice the size of the humans.
They followed Solse to a hatch in the surface that the tall man lifted with ease. The three stared in at what looked like the ariel view of a planet from a plane flying overhead.
“Come with us,” Alia said to Solse. “Abed and I will be your wings.”
When he agreed, they each flew into Solse’s armpits with the powerful jet boosters of their spacesuits, and they lowered Solse into the atmosphere of the planet.
PRL Serials 