Hestia, part 1-Intruder

 

The boy set his small hand on the controls. He’d grown up on the Atlas b-402, yet had never seen this room before. At least, not in person.

He’d spent years sneaking around the walls and vents and abandoned rooms. Rooms where sleeper pods lay, but not the ones with important people. He knew to avoid those. In fact, he knew the location of every single camera on the ship.

His parents, primarily his mother, had always told him to avoid the places where he could be seen.

He knew he was being recorded now, yet he did not care.

With what he would be doing next, it did not matter.

They were going to pay, for what they did to his mother, they were all going to pay. And then, then he would be free.

First Mate Cera Casanova looked up from her spot in the control room, sat next to her friend and colleague, Communications Officer Tim Hopkins. He sat up straighter in his chair, pointing to the screen. With his right hand, he zoomed in.

“See, right there. I told you. That’s the kid.”
Cera knew every person on board this ship, had memorized every single one of their records. She did not know this boy.

He was scrawny, underdeveloped, with flat, greasy dark hair. Worst of all, he was clearly a teenager. How had she escaped his attention for so long?

He was walking slowly, yet with purpose, toward the control panel.

She was immediately on her feet.

“What the hell,” she muttered.

“I told you he was real,” Tim said, but Cera was already out of the room, bolting down the highway.

She knew Amelia had given birth to an illegal child sixteen years ago, but this…where had he lived? How had he evaded capture for so long?

Her feet pounded on metal, taking her as fast as she could to the engine room. She had gotten lazy, slacked on her training. She had never thought something like this would happen, not after nine-hundred years on this ship.

Her great-great grandparents had never seen the planet Earth, and she herself would never see their destination. She, as well as many generations of her family, had resigned themselves to a lifetime in space, tunneling through the endless expanse.

She could not let centuries of work go to waste because of some kid. Whatever he was doing at the helm, she would stop him. She would-

Suddenly, the alarms began to blare, lights opening up from the wall and pulsing red all across the bridge. Cera covered her ears in sheer shock.

Shit, she thought. Shit, shit, shit! What was this kid doing up there? She picked up the pace, nearly losing her balance at the next bend in the corridor.

Finally, she reached the doors to the engine room. They did not open. She swiped her employee badge, typed her code into the keypad.

A sharp buzzing. A message ran across the pin pad: Emergency protocol in place.

“What?” she asked aloud, repeating her former actions. Again, a buzz. “What the fuck?”

She moved to the entrance, blood boiling, heart echoing in her ears. Her fists pounded against the doors.

“What the hell are you doing?”

The boy looked up from the panel he was working on disabling. A small grin appeared across his face. So they’d discovered his crimes. 

“Isn’t it obvious?” he replied. “I’m turning off the ship.”

“Why the hell would you do that?”

He shrugged. He knew she couldn’t see him, but that man with the beard in the comms room could. He smiled up at the camera. He was the snitch, after all, and the boy knew it.

“Dunno. I feel like it.”

The door echoed with the force of a blow. “Are you stupid? You’re going to kill everyone on board!“

Her stomach twisted violently with the sound of his laughter.

“I don’t care!”

“You’re going to die too, kid! If we crash into that planet, you’re done for! Your mother too!”

“Don’t you dare bring her into this!” Something shattered inside the engine room. Cera backed away from the door. She was coming on too strong. She inhaled deeply, trying to level her thoughts. She had trained for this.

“Hey…hey, kid,” She responded cautiously. “Amelia’s a good friend of mine. She’s my friend.”

“If she’s your friend, why’d you lock her up?” he retorted sharply. “Why’d you kill her?”

“Kill her…?” Cera pressed a hand against the door, as if she could reach through and pull him through. “We didn’t kill her.”

“Don’t lie to me!” Another shatter. Cera winced, and hoped whatever it was was replaceable.

“I’m being honest with you.”

“B-but that comms officer, he told me they were gonna kill her for breaking the rules!”

“We-we don’t do that. We have a prison, but we don’t do executions on this ship. Hang on, kid, just hang on. Just please stop breaking things. I will get through to your mother, okay?”

She reached for her walkie. In a voice quiet but harsh, she asked, “Tim, what the fuck did you say to this kid?”

A brief bout of static before Tim’s voice came through, “I…I told him they were gonna have her neck for breaking such a core rule. I-I didn’t mean it. I was just trying to scare the kid.”

“Goddamn it, Tim. Get me through to Alice.”

“Sure thing.”

The communication cut off. A few tense seconds passed, and then in the hallway Alice’s voice peaked up, “Sorry, Sir. I can’t get through to the engine room.”

“That’s because the kid cut it off completely. I don’t know how he knows how to do that, but he figured it out quick.” She sighed, gripping the bridge of her nose. “Put Amelia on the phone before this damn kid blows us to kingdom come.”

“Got it.”

A moment too long for comfort passed. Amelia’s voice echoed through the hall. “Cain?”

A pause, then a rushing of feet. “M-Mom?” Inside the cabin, Cain pressed his palms to the door. “Mom, you’re alive!”

“Son, what are you doing?”

“I’m-I-I thought you were dead! I thought-”

“No, hey, no, Cain. I’m fine. I’m okay, I promise. I am okay. Please, just let Officer Casanova in.”
“I-I don’t know how to do that.” He looked around nervously at the engine room. He hadn’t thought this far through his plan. He hadn’t thought this would happen.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll walk you through it.”

“Just…please tell me you’re okay.” He sounded close to tears.

“Hey, hey, sweetie, I’m fine. I’m fine. I promise.”

“Okay…”

Cera stood unmoving with her hand pressed against the wall as Officer Perez talked her son through each step to unseal the engine room from the rest of the ship. Just when Cera dared breathe a sigh of relief, believing that everything might be okay, all of the lights in the corridor flickered and then went out.

Shit, she swore again, moving for her radio. “Tim, what’s going on?”

Loud static erupted from her walkie before a distorted Communication Officer came through the line.

“Repeat yourself, I-I couldn’t understand you.” Cera grasped the bridge of her nose, trying her best not to sound frazzled. This situation was rapidly spiraling out of her control, and she was going to have to act quickly in order to change that.

The emergency lights clicked on. A pale light ominously lit the way down the hall away from her position.

“I’m not an engineer, so I can’t speak to what exactly that kid was doing in there, but it’s pretty torn up.”

“But he didn’t touch any of the functions of the room he’s in. This kid is smart.” Too smart for his own good, she thought. Or worse yet, he’s a very lucky dumbass. “Amelia, you still with us?” she called.

“Y-Yes. Sorry. I thought I lost contact for a moment.”

“Hang on,” Tim said. “I think I can patch her into the cabin now.”

And suddenly Amelia’s voice was in the engine room, and Cera was alone, staring out into the dimly lit corridor that turned into darkness.

“Tim, have you heard from Colin?” The Captain had yet to make an appearance on the scene, and Cera was starting to get nervous.

“No,” he replied. “I’m starting to get worried. Half of my cameras just went out, but before they did I didn’t see him anywhere. I think he’s still in his room.”

“Can you still call his room?”

“I think so.”

“Do it. He needs to be out here doing his job.”

A few minutes later, Officer Odeya Fikri appeared in the walkway. Cera breathed a sigh of relief. “Fikri, please tell me you can get in these doors.”

She rested a hand against the doors.. “I can, but the instructions I left with Amelia are taking too long.”

“Meaning?”

“You’re not gonna like the way I do it.”

“That’s fine. We’re running out of time.”

She set down her tool bag and got to work. Ripping open the control panel on the side of the door, she started working at the wires and gauges with the precision of a master and the violence of an amateur.

Within a couple of minutes, the doors slid open.

“Oh thank god,” Cera cried, rushing into the engine room. She pushed past the nervous teenage boy and started checking all of the controls to see what still worked.

Waving a hand at the boy, she said, “Fikri, get him out of my way before he makes an even bigger mess.”

First, she attempted a system evaluation.

A buzzer sounded. ‘Non-functional’, responded the robot voice.

“Dammit,” she muttered. She would have to check the whole system manually.

She checked the autopilot functions. Completely destroyed. Shit. She slammed a hand down on the chair beside her. Her palm throbbed with the pain, but she pushed it aside as she began to check other functions.

Navigation, ‘nonfunctional’.

Systems mapping, ‘nonfunctional’.

Manual pod maintenance, ‘nonfunctional’.

Farm bay, ‘nonfunctional’.

Air filter system, ‘nonfunctional’.

Starboard engine, ‘nonfunctional’.

“Fuck,” she cried. “Fuck, no, fuck!”

Officier Fikri appeared beside her. “I think you might need my help.”

Cera sighed. “Yeah, thanks.” She tossed a look around nervously. “Hold on, where’s the kid?”

“He ran to find his mother.”

Cera only nodded, accepting the help as the two women continued their work on checking the systems.

Escape pods, ‘functional’. 

She breathed a sigh of relief. At least she could get some people out of here. They spent several minutes at this. Cera had forgotten just how many functions were on this ship, how much really went into making this thing run over the course of hundreds of years.

And yet, this boy had ruined it all in a matter of minutes.

Generations of hard work.

Cera, eyes wide, staggered back away from the control panel. Officer Fikri looked back at her, concern in her deep brown eyes.

“I don’t think that we’re going to fix it,” she realized with a start.

As if the universe wished to further prove her point, something snagged the ship and jolted it violently.

Both women struggled to maintain their footing.

“What the hell was that?” Cera asked, looking out the front window of the engine room. It was one of two sizable windows on board the Atlas b-402, the other being the observation deck.

“I…I think we’re caught in the gravitational pull of that planet,” Fikri responded.

The women exchanged a look, suddenly communicating with one another as if by telepathy. Prior to today, Cera had only interacted with Odeya out of necessity, but now, they worked together as one, well-oiled machine. They now shared a singular mission: they could not allow this ship to crash.

If they did not soften the blow of this landing, all 820 people on board this ship would die. 

By some stroke of luck, the coms were still functional. Pressing the page button, Cera spoke harshly into the microphone,

“Attention all Crew of the Atlas 402. This is Second Mate Cera Casanova. We are currently facing a critical emergency. I am working with head Maintenance Officer Odeya Fikri to restore enough power to land safety on the planet below. However, if you wish to vacate the ship, I would highly recommend moving toward the escape pods located on the Port and Starboard sides of the ship. Everyone else, secure yourself for landing. Please contact Communications Officer Tim Hopkins for any further information. Thank you.”

Odeya grinned at her. “That’s why you’re the second in command, huh?”

“Get back to work,” Cera snapped. “We’ve got to save this hunk of metal.”

Five minutes later, the gravity tugging violently at the ship was forcing the women to their feet. They had never experienced real, planetary gravity before, and this planet in particular was forcing them to use every bit of strength they could muster. 

Finally, though, Odeya clicked a button and the lights in the cabin flickered off completely. Cera had expected this. They had rerouted power to the propulsion systems in order to have even a slim chance at landing this system intact.

“Are you ready?” She asked, turning to the First Mate in the darkness.

“No,” Cera responded, clicking on the emergency flashlight.

“Me neither. Let’s do this thing.”

The pair completed their final preparations, then rushed as fast as they could manage to the sides of the room where they strapped themselves in. Cera snapped her eyes closed, gripping the bars beside her as the ship began to plummet.

Sweat met her brow as the sheer heat of entering the atmosphere engulfed the entire ship. She prayed nothing important was set ablaze.

For a moment, they were free falling, and Cera feared they had done something wrong, had miscalculated somewhere.

Then, the propulsion system kicked in, the nadir boosters working to counter the gravitational force of the planet. She breathed a sigh of relief, and it came out shaky. She opened her eyes to see Odeya staring in awe at the planet below, her brown eyes shimmering from the reflection of light. 

The landing was hard, and it shook the whole ship. Cera feared that if they weren’t fastened in, they might have been violently thrown against the walls like ragdolls.

But the ship was still intact. They were still alive.

Odeya let out a nervous chuckle, and a cheer, throwing a fist in the air. “We did it!”

Cera breathed normally at last. “We did it.”

Now came the hard part.