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pumpkinpatch-daydreams · 2 years ago

Text

Heist hijinks: he said-she said.

[Start at the beginning]

Length: 6,793

Reading time: 28 minutes

Content warnings: deception, gaslighting, domestic abuse, pinning blame.

Note: no sexual themes or content.

Evelyn reveled in the silence that followed. She could launch them out into space, but that felt too risky. She wasn’t a bad person, she didn’t want to hurt anyone, she just wanted them to learn their lesson and finally stop bothering her with petty nonsense. Planning on letting them bake in their fear for an hour or two, she took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then turned to head back to her room.

There was a figure taking up most of the doorway. Evelyn jumped and squealed like she had just seen a ghost, her face fell when she recognized it was Nullian, Ella’s little pity friend and trained lap dog. Standing up straight she was the perfect height to head butt him in the nose, the only thing stopping her from doing so was the fear this crazy hobo might develop a mean streak. “God! We need to put a bell on you!”

“So I’ve been told.” He gave her an awkward smile like he was the one caught in the middle of something.

“What do you want?” She barked.

“I heard screaming all down the hallway. What’s going on?”

“Nothing, it was just my sister being over dramatic. Don’t worry about it.”

The smile didn’t weaver, but his eyes narrowed and scanned the room. “Where is she then?”

“God don’t look at me like that, it’s creepy.”

He stepped into the room and started making his way over. “I heard Ella screaming, where is she?”

“I don’t know, she stormed off just before you walked in.” She started backing up. This guy was bad news from day one and she knew it.

“Why was she screaming?”

“She’s always screaming and crying for no reason.” She tried to stay firm but she felt a quiver threatening to come out. She felt her backside press against the hard corner of the control panel counter behind her.

“Is that right? I don’t think it is.” A rough edge came into his voice “So why don’t you tell me what was making her scream and where she is now?”

He was inches from her now, she started leaning back to try to put any distance between them. “I don’t know! She’s not here! I don’t know! She just starts freaking out sometimes! It’s not my fault I didn’t do anything.” She was all but laying back on the counter now.

“Lier! I know you were doing something to her again!” He slammed his hands down on the table either side of her.

There was a crunch under the heel of his palm. The screens all blinked red and showed a warning symbol on their screens. Evelin almost had the wind sucked out of her as all the pod doors slammed shut and began air compression in unison. Tammy’s voice calm and collected as ever came on over the speakers “Emergency pod dump sector C activated. Stay clear.”

Nullian looked up at the announcement dumbfounded, then down at the now shattered cover and the still compressed button. “…Oops.”

Evelyn shoved him and he let the force knock him back a few paces. “No! No no no! Oh god no!” She frantically scanned over all the buttons, switches, levers, and screens searching desperately for a hint, a clue, on how to cancel the action. “Make it stop! Make it stop!”

“Oh, uh, how?”

“I don’t know! Do something!”

Her panic was contagious. “I don’t know either! Uh, uh. We should get Oron or Braxten, they can fix this!” At that moment they heard the unmistakable sound of the pods uncoupling from the ship and saw them speed past the windows, ejecting out in all directions. He watched them go with wide unblinking eyes. “It’ll be fine right? Those pods are old and half of them are broken. They won’t be missed, right?”

“You idiot!” Tears started streaming down Evelyn’s face “Ella was in one of those pods! You’ve murdered her!”

“What!? Why in the world would she be in There!?”

Evelyn shoved past him into the hallway crying. He watched her go, then watched the pods shrink until they were nothing more than a dot merging with a galaxy of stars. He stood stock still but his mind was racing. Was Evelyn telling the truth or was she just messing with his feelings again? She must be, right? Why would they be in a pod otherwise? Someone with knowledge of how all this space stuff works would know how to get those pods back, right? They had to, right? Did his carelessness really just kill one of his only friends? She wasn’t really in that pod Evelin was just trying to get a rise out of him… right?

The screens returned to normal, the warning sign blinking back out of existence, Tammy’s voice came over the speaker once more “Emergency pod dump complete. Thank you for aiding in the safety of our ship. Stay safe!”

Evelyn returned with Ignatius of all people in tow. He looked confused and concerned in equal measure as he was pulled into the room, his gaggle of friends lumbering in behind like ducklings after their mother. Jed broke away from the group to investigate the dashboard.

Her face was wet with tears and snot streaking down her cheeks and chin. “He killed her! He finally killed her!” She was wailing.

“I… I didn’t kill anyone.” Nullian stammered, his anger and confidence had melted away the second the pods ejected. He hadn’t killed anyone, right? Killing someone meant crushing their windpipe beneath your hands or slicing their flesh open and spilling out their blood. All he did was press a button.

She shot an accessory finger at him “You launched the pods!”

“I-I. I mean. I guess I did but-“

“He shoved Ella in and launched her into space!” She cried horrified and indignant.

“That’s not what-“

“I tried to stop him! I tried to save her but he was too strong!” She collapsed to the floor, her face in her hands as she melted into sobs. “He shoved me aside and launched her into space!”

“Woah woah woah.” Iggy put his hands up as if he were trying to soothe a startled horse. “Let’s all take, like, 5 steps back here. You, big guy,” he pointed at Nullian “What happened, go.”

He was getting really tired of people pointing at him, but he pushed that gripe down for now. “I heard Ella scream and-“

“He was attacking her!” Evelyn wailed.

“Came to see what happened. Didn’t see Ella anywhere but saw Evelyn. I asked her where Ella was and she was being sketchy about it so I asked firmer.”

“He attacked me for trying to protect my baby sister! Look what he did to my arm!” She raised her arm to show the bruises that had begun to form from where Candace hit her.

“I leaned against the dashboard over there and some glass broke and I guess that made all the pods… fall off?”

“Stop trying to down play what you did! Murderer! Murderer!”

Iggy wasn’t really listening to Evelyn’s interjections, he already got her side of the story on the walk up. “Okay, well, I’m not sure about all that. But what I do know is this pod bay has a distinct lack of pods. Hell that kinda defeats the purpose of a pod bay, don’t it? Our ass are grass if the big boss up in the captains chair found out we lost 6 whole pods. Looks like we are going on a pod hunt. And if we find Ella in one of those pods, well… we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.” He spun around with a flourish to face his group. “Alright men! Looks like we’re going on a scavenger hunt! Jed! See if you can pick up trackers and possible trajectories of those bad boys. Birdie! Team up with Jed if any of those pods land anywhere hostile I want to know the fastest way we can get in and get out no mess no fuss. Lee! Secure us a scavenger ship big enough to fit…” he did a quick head count “6 people. Ella can sit in a lap on the way back if we find her. Champ! You’re on snack duty!” He started clapping his hands “Alright people let’s hustle! One of our own might be on one of those pods and I want to see her back here by supper time!”

His group scattered like roaches after the lights come on. Jed making a beeline to the control panel while the rest all but clamored over each other to get out of the room to their assigned tasks.

“Hey!” A young teenage girl piped up “If there’s only going to be 6 seats where am I going to be sitting? You have another thing coming if you think I’m going to sit on your or one of your goon’s laps.”

Iggy twirled on his heel to face her, then bent at the waist to be down at eye level with her. “Easy! You’ll be sitting in your room.”

She stamped her foot and held her fists at her sides stiffly. “Hey! Ella’s my friend! I’m coming too!”

“You’re also a little pipsqueak that keeps messing up my missions! You’re sitting this one out.”

“That’s not fair!”

“Okay how about this, you look to make sure Ella isn’t hiding out on the ship somewhere after all and next time someone gets jettisoned out into space you can come too. Heck if they don’t make it I’ll even let you poke the body. Deal?” He held a hand out.

She crossed her arms. “Okay fine!” She barked as she sulked out of the room, ignoring his hand.

Working like a well oiled machine, It took the group only 20 minutes to get ready to head out. Amy-lee managed to set up a medium sized scavenger ship without anyone raising a brow. It wasn’t particularly hard, there were few people that gave the bays any thought when they were this far off planet side. As long as they didn’t kick up too much of a fuss and were quick they could get the pods back before Oron or Lulian noticed anything amiss.

Chance was able to scrape together about two days worth of rations, mostly taking on the form of peanut butter bars. While he searched he noticed their supplies were running slim. He couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be before they’d have to take on some drastic job to make ends meet again. There were so many mouths they had to feed now, he had noticed that Oron had become more reclusive. He likely had another half baked get rich quick scheme cooking up. He worried what kind of miracle Oron expected the crew to pull off next. He shook his head clear as he shoved the bag of Peanut butter bars into one of the cargo compartments. Now was not the time to worry about all that, Iggy put him on a task and he needed to focus.

Birdie presented Iggy with her notepad. She had a hand drawn map of the surrounding solar system with a tiny doodle of the ship in the center. There were 6 dotted lines going off in all directions with notes and arrows to label different things to keep in mind.

Iggy looked over the doodles. He’d had enough experience deciphering her maps that most would consider him an expert Birdie decoder at this point. “So we’re on the same page.” He lifted a hand to keep count on his fingers. “Pod one’s boosters shat the bed immediately and now it’s fallen into orbit around the B.S. Lucky. Pod two was going out into deep space until it went out of range, Pod three and six hit a meteor when their signals gave out, so those are both probably wrecked, four managed to shoot down erratically before suddenly changing direction and making a beeline to the Nio system, and five managed to get sucked into a planet’s gravity and it’s now sending out a crash report.” when he ran out of fingers he raised the pad a little to gesture the extra number.

“Yup. That about covers it.”

He tucked the notebook into the pocket of her plaid shirt. “Oh we’re so boned.”

Birdie’s mouth trembled. “Do you think Ella really was on one of those pods?”

“I hope not.” He brushed away the thought before it could take root and throw him off his game. “Anyway we’re grabbing the one in orbit first, then checking out the signal coming from planet side.” The thought that there was only a 1 out of three chance that Ella was still alive on one of those pods tried to claw its way into his conscious mind and choke him up. He gave the emotion floating up a mental waffle stomp and went back to the task at hand. “Alright! Let’s head out! We don’t have time to be burning daylight! Nullian you’re coming too.”

Nullian blinked. Up to this point he had leaned against the wall and got lost in his own thoughts as he stared off into the universe beyond the glass dome of the floor. “Wait what? I am? Don’t you think I did this?”

Iggy shrugged. “What better person to point the way then the perpetrator?”

Without waiting for a response, Iggy stood tall as he strode to the other bay with Nullian, Birdie, and Jed keeping pace behind him. Nullian hesitated briefly, weighing what he should do before slinking after the group. Jed kept making an awkward hop step every few paces to try and keep up with his longer legged cohorts. He silently grumbled to himself about how it was unfair for everyone else he knew being so freakishly tall every time he hopped until he took his place in the pilot’s seat. “Alright let’s leave smashing bodies for the bedroom and buckle in everyone.” He announced.

Birdie scrunched her nose “Don’t be gross.”

“Ay,” Amy-Lee grinned “if I want to smash on a potentially dangerous under cover retrieval mission there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

Iggy raised a brow. “Who are you proposing to smash in this scenario? Nullian?”

Nullian was sliding down into a seat at the back of the craft during this exchange. When he heard his name he felt his face get hot and he attempted to hide inside his own shirt.

“Yeah? What if I am?” Amy-Lee crossed her arms in mock offense “You don’t know my life.”

“No thank you…” Nullian all but squeaked from his where he hid inside his own clothing.

“Ooo, shot down. Better luck next time.” Iggy laughed as he sat down and buckled up. “Now sit down and buckle up before I skee ball your ass off his thing.”

“Like you’d have the guts to try.” She retorted as she buckled into the seat.

“Alright. Everyone buckled in?”

There was a chorus of “yes”s from around the craft.

“Good!” He clapped his hands “Okay everyone welcome to the flight, there will be in-fight snacks courtesy of whatever Chance dug up in the kitchen. in case of emergency put your head between your knees and kiss your ass goodbye because there are no emergency exits. Today’s mission is to retrieve as much of the skimmer pods as we can and, maybe, a rescue mission.” He made a point to make obvious eye contact with Nullian, only his gaze was transfixed on his own feet as his hands gripped the straps of his harnesses like a child gripping a backpack. “A couple of these things landed planet side so remember, work together, stick together. I’m looking at you Jed, I know you’re an excitable space boy and all that but that doesn’t mean you can go getting distracted and wandering off somewhere.”

“Hey! I got lost at a station ONE TIME.” Jed protested.

“And you’ll never get lost again under my watch.” Iggy retorted. “Everyone got it? Good. Let’s lift off!” He sat down and buckled in next to Nullian.

“It’s only liftoff when we’re planet side. In space it’s takeoff.”

“We can call it turbo shit for all I care, let’s go!”

Jed shook his head, but he was smiling. He hit the eject button and craft uncoupled from the massive ship with loud ‘cha-dunks’ that vibrated through the craft as it began floating off into space. The porthole they were connected to moments before quickly whizzed away, then back around again, as the main ship spun like a top without them. He tried to ignore the burn marks on the side of the B.S. Lucky’s otherwise white exterior where he got a little trigger happy with the throttle on previous flights. The craft floated away a mile or two before kicking off the engine. Everyone pressed back into their seats as they took off.

The retrieval of the first pod was easy. The craft had a set of claws on the front for situations like this. It was only a matter of getting a good grip and gently guiding it to the ship bay close enough for the magnets to take over the rest in the zero gravity environment. they could see through the windows that, outside of whatever was happening with its engines, the pod was pressurized and intact. However there was a twinge of worry in Iggy’s chest when he saw it was empty. When the pod connected with the B.S. Lucky fully Iggy clapped and congratulated Jed on a job well done briefly before they moved onto the next task. Jed had no idea if Iggy didn’t realize that the act of pod retrieval wasn’t particularly difficult, just a little fiddly, or if he just wanted to be encouraging, but either way he appreciated the recognition for his efforts.

As soon as the pod was secured they took off to the nearest system to check out the one with the distress signal. It was a Terrestrial planet, small, brown, and rocky orbiting a dwarf star. though nowhere near the habitable zone around its star. Hopefully the pod was mostly in one piece or this was going to get tricky.

“So.” Iggy said to Nullian “got an idea which pod she’s in?”

Nullian never moved his gaze from the floor. “No. I didn’t even see her. I just heard a scream and Evelyn was acting weird so I figured something was up. I-I didn’t mean to launch the pods. It kinda just happened.”

“It’s not like there’s a maze in there. You didn’t think to check the pods before going around hitting buttons?”

“No… I didn’t This this would happen.” He didn’t like they kept asking questions like they were trying to trip him up in a web of lies, but he couldn’t help but start to doubt himself, second guess if how he remembered it really happened the way he thought it did. Things seemed to be different from what he remembered more and more often since he joined the crew. He feared his years in captivity may have busted his mind in ways he didn’t anticipate.

“Yeah I wouldn’t plan on a full ejection either. I know the B.S. Lucky is older than everyone here combined and held together with duct tape and thoughts and prayers but they really need a like, “hey are you sure?” Pop-up for these sort of things.”

Nullian nodded solemnly.

“Hey, chin up. We aren’t making funeral arrangements yet. It’s not over until we find her.”

“Or see her splashed across an astroid somewhere.” Amy-Lee piped up.

“Hey! None of that doom shit! Leave that back at the ship we are in a mission here!” Iggy barked.

She rolled her eyes and the crew fell silent once more, everyone’s eyes focused on the brown planet in the distance slowly growing larger.

As everyone’s minds started to wander away at what the destroyed pods meant for the ship as a whole, the possibility of a little girl may very well have suffered a horrible death in one of the busted pods, the likelihood they may find a dead body. As things started to get too deep in their individual mind scapes a sneeze broke the silence.

“Bless you.” Iggy said automatically as he looked around. He couldn’t see who sneezed. “Wait. Who was that?”

Everyone looked at each other, no one fessing up to the sneeze.

“Ah heck, crafts haunted.” Birdie joked.

“You don’t think that was something decompressing, do you?” Chance asked with a grimace of worry.

“Hang on let me check. Everyone sit tight.” Iggy unbuckled himself from the chair, then righted himself with the ships current state of gravity. Due to the direction of the jets currently pointing and the acceleration, “gravity” at the moment made what was previously the back wall into the new floor. The force wasn’t as strong as his home world’s, or even the gravity created by the B.S. Lucky’s centrifuge, but it was enough to be inconvenient at a time like this. It created a feeling of trying to swim in heavy clothing, possible but difficult to float up away from the new floor. He used the seats of his crew members as anchor points to navigate around.

“Watch out, it looks like Iggy might smash on the mission after all.” Amy-Lee jeered playfully.

They joke got a couple of chuckles from Chance and Jed, but not much more.

Iggy ignored her as he checked the storage compartments situated around the outer rim of the cabin. He popped one open and a series of Peanut butter bars slowly fell out towards the back wall like waterlogged leaves sinking to the bottom of a pond. The second one was full of thick plastic bags of water. He closed that one before they could slosh out and become a pain to put back later.

He had to clamored over Chance’s chest to get to the third compartment, apologizing the whole way despite Chance not showing any indication that he minded at all. He popped the compartment open to see Audrey curled up inside, due to poor planning she was currently squished inside the small space having to do a crumpled head stand to stay in he compartment. She tumbled screaming out onto Chance’s chest, Chance screamed from the startling commotion and suddenly having a child on his chest, Iggy screamed in frustration at finding his shitty little cousin on the ship he explicitly told her she wasn’t allowed on, Birdie screamed from startle at all the sudden noise, and Nullian clamped his hands over his ears as he watched on wide eyed.

Jed roared over the commotion “Who the fuck is dying and why!?”

“Audrey‘s about to in a second!” Iggy yelled back.

“Stop screaming and get off me! Your elbow is in my bladder!” Chance protested, smushing his hand into Audrey’s face to try and gently push her off. He didn’t dare raise a fist to the girl or try to shove her off. He was less gentle with Iggy as he grasped his head like a basketball and shoved him off over the side of the seat.

The cousins both tumbled slowly down to the back of the ship as they continued to squabble.

“What are you doing here!?” Iggy demanded.

“Helping look for my friend, duh.”

“You were helping by staying back at the Lucky!”

“That was a horse apples busy baby work job and you know it!”

“Well what do you expect to get done coming along besides be a pain in my butt and getting in the way!?”

Her cheeks puffed like she was underwater and about to run out of air.

“Well!?”

“I couldn’t just sit back and do nothing while my friend is floating out there somewhere lost and scared!”

“So you decided to be a nuisance and compromise my stuff instead!?”

“Hey!” Jed called from up front “Quitcha bull and sit down before we get planet side! I’m not turning around now so it is what it is.”

“Pick a lap, buttercup.” Iggy stated as he climbed back into his own seat.

She looked around at her options. Chance was already annoyed at her, Jed was driving, Nullian creeped her out, she was certain Amy-Lee would use the opportunity to put gum into her hair, and there wasn’t a chance in hell she was going to snuggle up to her jackbutt cousin. She decided her best bet was Birdie and climbed over.

“Oh hello. I guess we’re seat buddies now.” Birdie smiled down at her as she unbuckled herself and refashioned the straps around the both of them.

Amy-Lee looked over the back of her seat, straining as hard as she could to see them. “congratulations on being promoted to airbag.”

“Be nice.” Birdie scoffed.

“Why? She’s a little trouble maker.”

“And? So are you.”

“When I’m causing trouble it’s endearing. Besides I’m normally doing something productive, not crashing a search party.”

“How is doodling big “A”s on walls productive?” Audrey accused.

“It’s the anarchy symbol and it’s a silent rallying cry to the little man to band together to stand up against our oppressors! It inspires people to enact change! I’m making a difference!”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

“I sleep great, thanks.” She turned around and slid back down into her seat.

Things were quiet again as they pulled near the planet. Soon it engulfed their field of vision. Up close they could see how stony it was, with great mountains and canyons breaking up its landscape.

“We’re going in.” Jed alerted “there’s no atmosphere so it should be a smooth landing, but brace yourselves just in case. I don’t want to see anyone getting whiplash because they were leaned forward ogling some rocks when we hit a random gas pocket.”

Nullian did as he was told, leaning back into the seat, head upright, and double checked the straps were secured. It felt like every time he got into one of these smaller ships he learns something new he should be worried about. He didn’t feel particularly secured, so he put his legs up and pressed his feet against the back of Chance’s chair, pressing himself further into the seat. He had no idea if this actually made him any more safe but it made him feel better.

The sense of gravity shifted again as they were pulled into the planet orbit, then through it. Stomachs raised into throats but the ship glided down to a few miles above the surface and began cruising along, occasionally lazily weaving around mountains. Jed turned on a Radar, a little blue disk with a rotating line akin to a submarine sonar came to life and started scanning. There was nothing on it for some time before the dot pinpointing the skimmer pod’s signal appeared at the very edge. As soon as it came on Jed changed course to head for it.

Through the windows they could see the crash site. The pod had touchdown and skidded several miles before coming to a stop, leaving a long streak of gouged stone and parts in its wake. The fact there was enough of a pod left to send a signal at all was a miracle. The bulk of the crash sat half buried under dust and dirt of the planet’s crust. What could be seen of it was battered and dented like it was dragged down the highway behind a truck for an hour.

Nullian looked over the crash. “If Ella’s in there, do you think she could be okay?” He asked the crew.

“Nah.” Jed blurted “the second that thing touched down it would have popped open and lost compression like a shot soda can.”

Birdie grimaced at the bluntness “well, the skimmer pods have live cargo compartments, don’t they? They have their own line of oxygen. If she climed in there before the crash there’s a chance she made it.”

Iggy absently pet his non existent beard as he thought. “There’s no way to physically check without risking her life out here if she’s in there at all. Jed, do you think you could connect a line or a make a seal with the pod?”

“Are you shittin-“

“Hey! There’s a baby here!” Iggy warned

“I’m not a baby I know swear words!” Audrey protested.

“Are you kidding me!?” Jed continued “that thing is toast! I’m shocked it still has power! Even if it wasn’t do you know how hard it is to get a seal when a lip is covered in a light layer of dust? Never mind a metric tone of dirt and rocks!”

Iggy grimaced “alright, alright. Can you at least like, pick it up and tow it back to the lucky’s bay?”

“I can try. This is going to be the shi- shootiest game of claw ever.”

He punched in a command and a set of mechanical claws descended from the bottom of the craft. The screen was taken up by a camera feed showing what the claws were doing.

Slowly manoeuvring the ship closer, he managed to hook one of the claws under the half buried pod and clamp it down to secure it. However he stopped the clamp a second too late and everyone saw the pod buckle slightly under it.

“Eek.” Birdie squeaked in fear as she saw the indent of the claw.

“It’s fine, it’s fine, I got it.” He reassured, hoping that on the slim chance that little girl was still alive in there that he didn’t just dig her grave.

He gently lifted the craft, a large pile of sand, rocks, and debris falling silently from it to the ground below as he did so. There was silent thanks the pods were as small and light weight as they were or else they would need a much bigger craft to pull this off. He managed to secure the pod, but before he left he opened the hatch below and plopped a tracker that was safely nestled in a glob of sticky goo down where the pod once was so they could find this location again if they had to retrieve the other parts.

Things were silent as they towed the pod back to the B.S. Lucky. When they grew close they slowly drifted in the massive ships orbit as a realization hit all of them at once; how would they get permission to drop the pod off without alerting Oron?

“So… what are the chances we call and someone who won’t ask questions picks up?” Iggy asked.

“Er, pretty high I think actually. When I was getting food Oron was in his room.” Chance offered.

“What about Lulian?” Birdie asked.

“Just call them and if we get into trouble, screw them. What are they going to do? Drown us like a bag of puppies?” Amy-Lee offered.

“They could sell us at the next station to cover the cost of the pods…” Nullian stated quietly.

“They… wouldn’t do that… right?” Birdie laughed nervously.

“I don’t see why not.”

“Wasn’t there something about leaving the doomer attitude at the Lucky?” Amy-lee reminded.

“If they decide to get rid of us somehow, we’ll figure something out together. Jed, call them.” Iggy settled.

Jed took a deep breath, and hit the button to open the com lines. It took a few moments before it was answered and a video feed was put up on camera. It took a longer than it should have for everyone to recognize what they were seeing, a plump man with a bushy well groomed beard laying across the captain's chair with the mic resting on his stomach as he curled it’s wire around his finger like a teenage girl on the phone in an old rom com. “Hello! B.S. Lucky, Calric here standing in for Captain Oron, who do I have a pleasure of speaking to this fine day?”

It seemed he couldn’t find the screen with the video feed, or didn’t care to. “Oh, uh, hello Mr. Locke. It’s Jed.”

“Jed? Are you outside the ship? Did you get cramped up inside and go on a space walk?”

Iggy leaned his head over into the walkway to be seen. “There was an emergency, there might have been an accidental jettison in some pods were sent out that may or may not have had someone inside them. We just brought one back, can you open one of the decompression bays and let us put the pod in?”

“That’s so scary! Sure, I don’t know about all that but I’ll put Pax on it asap and send my husband down to check up on any wayward passengers.”

“Thank you so much Mr. Locke I owe you one.”

“No problem! I’m going to go do that now, bu-bye!” He pressed a button on the captains dash. A coffee machine spluttered to life in the background. They watched him get up from the chair and trot out of the room, the coms still on.

“Uh, Mr. Locke? The com line?” Jed tried, but he was already out of ear shot.

“Forget the phone, let’s keep an eye out for a port door.” Iggy suggested.

Jed nodded and everyone watched until a few moments later towards the bottom tip of the ship where the end stopped spinning, and a new light cut though the abyss as the doors opened for them.

Normally this door would be to connect ports with a much larger ship, but the craft they were in and the pod remains they were carrying were both small enough to squeeze through and deposit the wrecked skimmer. Once satisfied that the scrap was securely inside they inched their way back out and clear. Moments later the doors clamped shut and they knew the room it was in was being re-pressurized. Hopefully, if Ella was in there, she would be tended moments later by Dr. Locke and would be fine.

They watched for only a moment, letting it sink in that that pod was their best bet to getting Ella back alive and even that was slim, before Iggy spoke up. “Alright! Off to the next one! Pod four.” He pointed in the direction he best guessed the pod went in with its weird flight pattern “to the Nio system we go!”

“Shouldn’t we drop off Audrey?” Birdie asked.

“It would take too much time to dock and pressurise, it’s not worth it.”

With that they were off again, heading off to the system. It was quite a ways off the beaten path, but the other pods were either flying off with much too much of a head start to even hope to track down or likely won’t have enough left to scoop up without skimming through astroids with a net like they’re trying to clean a swimming pool. When they drew close they saw the Nio was a blue giant system. Audrey’s face was pressed against the window like a kid looking upon the majesty of a candy shop. She loved the giant stars, blue giants were her second favorite. She loved how they glittered like diamonds in the sky. Her love for the blue stars were surpassed only by red supergiants, the potential for the elderly stars threatening to supernova at any moment excited her, but the blue giants were still very pretty to look at as far as star rankings go. Even better than brown dwarfs considering their luminosity.

As they drew closer she spotted one planet orbiting the star in the habitable zone was a strangely shape blue and green planet. It was always a grab bag if planets produced life, normally what was needed was the planet to be in the habitable zone around any given star, and to have a life seed that was hearty enough to survive the harsh conditions of the first few millennia to take root in evolving on said planet. Often times conditions were rather similar for a planet to produce life though some were more harsh than others.

She pointed it out “guys look! A seeded planet! Let’s check it out!”

“Hang on hang on, we have to find the pod first.” Jed shot her down.

“Well if Ella is on the pod then if it landed there she might be alive if it has a good atmosphere.”

“Do you know how hard it is to land on a planet with atmosphere? Even if she did land there she would have crashed.”

“Yeah but if she survived the crash she wouldn’t have to worry so much about decompression.”

“Assuming the atmosphere isn’t toxic. Just admit you want to play space explorer on a seeded, likely dangerous, planet.”

Despite the argument the prospect gave Iggy hope. “We’re going to be looking over all the planets anyway, so we aren’t going out of our way here, so why not start with that one, work our way in towards the star, then hit the others up on the way back?”

“Fiiine.” Jed groaned and Audrey did a celebratory wiggle in her seat that startled Birdie.

They headed down to the planet, their stomachs collectively dropping as they drew near and the gravity began to pull them in. It wasn’t long until Tammy’s voice came over a speaker in the cabin “atmosphere detected. Wings deployed.”

The ship felt like it jumped as the wings unfolded from below and caught air. The steering stick Jed had been using up to this point had arms extend from its stem to create a wheel to keep the aircraft level. Screens lit up showing where the craft was in relation to the planets surface. Jed put in a request to test the atmosphere once they were low enough to get a good read. Tammy’s voice came over again “atmosphere sampled. 30% oxygen, 68% nitrogen, 2% carbon dioxide.”

“Oh neat! oxygen is a little high but it’s safe to breathe.” Birdie determined from the statistics alone.

“We can go exploring!” Audrey declared.

“We’re not exploring, we gotta look for the pod.” Iggy corrected.

“We can do both.”

“Hey, how strong is that scanner?” Birdie inquired.

“Uhhhhh….” Jed looked over the screens “not sure on this model. Why?”

“If it’s strong enough, maybe you can have it scan for titanium deposits. Unless there’s a bunch of titanium sitting around on this planet’s surface we can use that to find the pod.”

Jed grinned “Birdie you’re a genius. Hell, if it works well we might be able to do that to get the two out of the astroid belt.” He dipped closer to the planet, just over the trees. He kept an eye at the surrounding terrain levels as he turned on the scanner. There wasn’t anything right away, but that might’ve meant there wasn’t a lot of metal laying around this world. He wanted to make one pass over the surface before declaring the scanner wasn’t strong enough or the pod simply wasn’t there.

They were almost done with a full lap when a blip appeared on the screen. It was a circular dot that glowed bright blue on the black screen. “We got something. Since it’s breathable do you want to check it out on foot?”

“Mmm…” Iggy pondered “yeah, but just Nullian and I, we don’t need everyone out there. Especially Audrey.”

“What!? Why not!?” Audrey protested.

“Because you’ll get distracted by some alien thing and go running off, never to be seen again!”

“No I won’t! I’ll stick right to your side like glue! Promise!”

“No, we’re just stepping out long enough to check things out, hook up a couple of cables to tow it out, and climbing right back. Nothing interesting.”

She crossed her arms and pouted.

As they grew close they saw a large ripped hole in the canopy like someone shot a cannon through a sheet close to where the titanium deposit was. They used that as their entry point. Large thick leaves slapped against the hull of the craft as they were forcefully shoved out of the way. All at once the pod came into view. Tattered parachutes trailed behind it along the ground and tangled up in the trees. The pod itself looked to be mostly in one piece, it lay on the ground belly up like a dead frog with all its windows smashed out. The surrounding the area glittered with crushed glass.

Iggy turned to Nullian “I hope you got thick shoes.”

——————————————————————-

Path Trajectory:

[Return to follow pod]

[continue to end]

#sci fi #science fiction #oc #oc writing #short story #writing #writers on tumblr #Nullian #Ignatius #Jed #Champ #Evelyn #Birdie #Amy-Lee #Audrey #Calric Locke

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