*
“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.