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ASTEROID

  Brett P. S.

  Copyright © 2015 Brett P. S.

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I – RADIO SILENCE

  CHAPTER II – MARCO POLO

  CHAPTER III – RAZOR’S EDGE

  CHAPTER IV – LIFT OFF

  Chapter I

  Radio Silence

  Helene sat snugly in the cockpit of an S3-81 star fighter, an older model not ordinarily meant for deep space travel. However, a few grand in credits and a couple dozen paperclips later, this modified fighter served as a makeshift exploration marvel of a science crew on a tight budget. Helene brought up vital signs on her dash. Everything looked good enough. The rear corner of the cargo hold had a small crack, but it was too small for anything important to come loose and fly away. Hopefully they could fix it this time around.

  “This is exploration module 3,” she said over the communication channel. “Hey, is anybody listening?”

  “Sorry, Madame Kirsch,” the mic screeched.

  “Listen, I’ve found something,” she said.

  “There’s nothing in that sector worth mining.”

  Helene stared out her viewport. An asteroid the size of a football field floated about a quarter mile from her fighter, marked with deep grooves and pot marks from smaller impacts. However, the most noticeable unique quality was a deep crater that grew into it like a cavern. Her fighter’s sensors fizzled whenever she scanned the depths. Whatever was in there was giving off a massive magnetic disturbance.

  “I’m going into radio silence for a while, Hammond. I’ll be back in an hour.”

  “What’s this now? What did you find, Helene?”

  “I don’t know. There’s a crater on this asteroid gone dark.”

  “That ship is old. Could be a calibration mishap.”

  “You don’t really believe that,” she said. “It’s worth a look anyway.”

  Helene sat and waited for confirmation from command. She glared out her viewport and watched the readings scroll across her user interface. A static wavelength blocked out normal dimensional readings, leaving the interior of the cavern to her imagination. However, if she set out on foot, she could make use of short wave scanning equipment to map out the structure from the inside. Maybe, if she was lucky, she might find something worth a trip back. Only a handful of elements produced a magnetic disturbance of this magnitude and most of them sold well.

  “Be careful, Helene,” Hammond said over the communication channel. “If you’re not back in 30 minutes, we’re sending someone down there.”

  “Come on,” Helene said, rolling her eyes. “I said an hour!”

  “You have 30 minutes, Helene. Make them count.”

  Chapter II

  Marco Polo

  Helene’s boots set down on porous rock, and she activated her adhesion module. She tapped each one against the ground for the sensors to acquire a good target substance. As long as the makeup of the asteroid didn’t change drastically, she should be fine. Helene saw her breath wash up against the front of her visor. Her suit began adjusting for the lack of heat since she left her fighter, sending a rush of warm air from the compressor located between her shoulder blades.

  The cavern was massive with a height of about ten meters, and the depths went on until darkness overtook her sight. Without a nearby sun, the space around her was already dark, and while her ship did light up the extremities, it couldn’t fit deep inside. Helene brushed her gloved fingers across a dash on her EV suit’s bracer, activating a pair of high-powered lights on top of her visor and the built in short wave scanner. She watched the readout on the dash as the scans penetrated deep inside the cavern. It was like a three-dimensional model and the data gathered might facilitate a future expedition.

  “Here goes,” she said to herself.

  Helene walked into the dark of the cavern, turning left and right to scan the area with greater accuracy. In hindsight, her lights did little to illuminate the dark crevices, being too concentrated in their rays. Helene relied primarily on the readout from her dash, which took the data in real time.

  “What was that?” she yelped.

  Something moved. Could be signs of a cave-in waiting to happen, but just to be sure, she stepped over to the source of the disturbance and examined the area. She didn’t find any rocks strewn out across the porous flooring at the site of the anomaly.

  “What’s this, now?” she said, noticing a small groove.

  It looked like a claw dug deep into the rock. Two in fact. She traced the direction, and they led further down a corridor right into the source of the magnetic disturbance. Helene shined her lights in the direction, and for a moment, her heart skipped a beat. Something long and spiny slithered out of her sight. The creature, whatever it was, stood no more than two feet in height, covered in spines and leathery skin. She checked the timer on her readout. Ten minutes on the clock so far. How could something live without oxygen? What kind of life form could do that? A new kind of extremophile, perhaps.

  Helene reached down by her waist and gripped her fingers around the handle of her plasma pistol. She examined one side to check the remaining reserve of plasma bolts. Still half full. Good then. Worse comes to worse, she’ll have a new specimen for Hammond back at the lab.

  Chapter III

  Razor’s Edge

  Helene crept around the bend with her pistol in one hand while her eyes clung to the dash on her bracer. The path winded a ways before she started noticing a peculiar trait about the walls of this cavern. She didn’t pay much attention until after she spotted the creature, but these walls didn’t form naturally. Something carved them, and crudely to boot.

  “A nest,” she said. “That has to be it.”

  As she cleared the final corridor, Helene’s eyes lit up. A myriad of colors reflected off her visor’s lights. Small stones clustered in the center of a pitch-black chamber with the creature enveloping them. It was much larger than she thought, at least four feet in height with a tail six feet long. A snake-like creature that didn’t seem to breathe bared its fangs at her.

  Helene held up her pistol and primed the release. One shot should do the trick, though she couldn’t help but eye the stones. She took a quick glance at her dash and noted the increase in static from the readout. For a short wave scan, that was strong interference.

  “I’m guessing I can’t talk you into parting with a few of those, can I?” she asked.

  The creature continued its snarl as it backed up, guarding the cluster of precious stones. A strange reaction. It was almost as it if heard her in the deafness of space. Helene eased her finger to the trigger and aimed for the head, but the animal bolted before she could react. With tiny claws, it dug into the walls of the chamber faster than she could have ran. Helene fired a bolt, but her reaction time fell short of the beast’s impressive speed. It jumped across the chamber and lunged at her with rock-worn claws and bleach-white fangs.

  In a knee jerk reaction, she thrust her pistol into its jaws, keeping it inches from her face as she pushed to get free. The creature chomped down, its fangs breaking the surface of the gun and a thought ran through her mind. It wouldn’t take much to poke a hole in her EV suit, despite the armor, given the sheer strength of the creature’s jaws.

  Helene gathered her strength and threw it off, though in the process, her firearm flew to the side of the chamber. Her first instinct was to go for the gun, and she did reach for it, but she stopped once
two black eyes locked in on her movements.

  “Easy now,” she said, backing off. “I’m just going to be on my way. No hard feelings, right?”

  That didn’t seem to work though, but it was worth a try. It arched its back and its tail flung about, lashing at the walls of the chamber. As it stared at her, Helene noticed something. The eyes didn’t appear to move as it stared at her, and the creature’s tail romped around the area where her gun had fallen until it made contact at last. With a swift motion, it flung the weapon backwards into the cluster.

  “My, you’re a frugal collector,” she said. “But you can’t really see me, can you? Not until I move.”

  Helene brought up her dash while it readied to pounce and deactivated her adhesion module. She felt the weightlessness as she floated up in her EV suit. The creature twitched its head left and right, flapping its tail about in what she surmised a complete mind blow.

  “Now, we get to play tag,” she said. “Better watch the edges.”

  Helene checked her dash. Ten minutes left. Plenty of time.

  Chapter IV

  Lift Off

  Helene drifted back into the corridor connecting the asteroid’s cavernous entrance to the interior chamber. She left the rocky crag filled with precious stones and floated elsewhere, into the deep. It didn’t appear to react to changes in light, but the creature burrowed its claws across the walls of its nest haphazardly. Its tail whipped around and lashed the rock with thick spines.

  Her EV suit had small boosters mounted to the shoulder pads that she could control from her dash, though with limited fuel. It wasn’t enough to navigate all the cracks and bends she went through to get this far inside, not by a long shot. As she approached the first bend, Helene grinned.

  “Catch me if you can.”

  She tucked in her knees and rotated her body, kicking off the wall to propel her body further into the maze. The caves were silent, no sounds other than her own breathing as her heart rate shot up. Helene directed her visor to the starting point of her trajectory, and the lights caught a mangled mess of leathery skin and spines clawing at the porous rock, carving out bits of minerals from the firmament.

  The next bend drew closer. With barely enough time to react, she thrust herself off a fresh rocky wall and flew through the air as the creature tailed close behind. It stopped at the origin, giving a momentary pause before lunging in her direction, swiping at her boots with a hooked finger. Helene tucked in her feet in time to avoid a deep gash.

  “Boy, you’re a quick learner,” she said.

  Helene propelled herself off the next face with double the force from the last time. She put her legs through the paces to stay ahead of it, but with each turn, the creature inched closer. The last bend before she reached the root. Helene pushed off with her legs and used a bit of fuel to rocket her forward, but it didn’t work well enough. The alien extremophile slung two clawed fists at her visor, and she parried with her arms, but a single thick piece of bone carved through her suit above her wrist.

  Air was leaking through the open tear, so she clamped her gloved hand across it in hopes to stave off the process for a while longer. She glanced up to see starlight and the reflective surface of her fighter sending the lights back to her. She checked her dash. Four minutes left. Oxygen levels and pressurization looked good for now. As long as she kept the tear taken care of, things would pan out all right.

  Her EV suit didn’t allow for much flexibility, but clamping down on her left arm with her right hand, she managed to arch a few fingers across her dash. It took a few tries to get the movements down, but her index finger controlled the left shoulder booster, and her ring finger took charge of the right shoulder booster. Her pinkie toggled between rotation and thrust.

  Helene scanned the open cavern with her visor’s mounted lights in search of the creature as she boosted toward her fighter. Nothing to see yet. Visibility was low without relying on her dash for visual information, but she kept her eyes open. It was a quiet journey as she boosted softly toward her fighter, nearly a meter from the cockpit and she didn’t catch a wink from her pursuer.

  “Guess he didn’t want to stick around.”

  Territorial maybe? This asteroid was its home … more or less. As quickly as she could, Helene popped open the hatch and climbed inside, warming up the thrusters for the trip back. She pulled back a few meters to exit the proximity of the magnetic disturbance. Her sensors flickered on, and the fighter’s dash lit up with static.

  “Hammond, are you listening?” she said.

  A few seconds of static passed before a voice echoed through the communication channel.

  “You’re back?” Hammond asked.

  “Listen, Hammond, I found an extremophile, some kind of alien living inside an asteroid.”

  “Inside?”

  “Yes. It tore a hole in my suit, so I’m heading back, but I want a team down here by this time tomorrow.”

  “You found something else then, I take it?”

  “Not sure, but I think this one’s a collector.”

  Helene grinned at the thought of those rocks. If colors meant anything, they were valuable enough to make a real difference for the research station, but hell if that alien monster didn’t make her work for it. Part ways through her return flight, the cargo hold rumbled and wouldn’t stop. She eased up on the engines, but that didn’t make a difference. Definitely had to get that patched up before her next flight.