Way back when I was a kid, I wrote two sci-fi space operas for an ongoing homemade comic series. They were popular with the kids in my school. Too popular, because someone decided they wanted it more than I did! I hadn't written in the sci-fi genre since then because I feel it necessary to be serious about the balance between the story and tech. I didn't want to get overwhelmed by either. Well, after so long a silence on sci-fi I've worked out the bugs and present this Preview for my upcoming short-story series, 'The Pandora Ultimatum'.
THE PANDORA ULTIMATUM
By H. Wolfgang Porter
Warning klaxtons reverberated from every quarter of the Interstellar Transport. The warning is beamed directly into my Personal Heads Up Display. I smack my face hard and the display puts the warning graphic and audio feed on mute. It still flashes in the lower part of my vision but not as large or bright. The transport lurches and then I’m thrown off my feet. I compensate for the sudden twist my body makes and I avoid smashing head first into the display console. I manage to salvage the rest of the fall but come to a brutal stop against a bulkhead stanchion. My PHUD winks out for an instant as I endure the wave of feedback otherwise known as ‘pain’.
I can hear explosions rattling the transport’s decks. The Holo Display I nearly opened my cranium on comes alive with visual boxes filled with the frantic faces of crew and passengers screaming from other areas for assistance. I get to my feet and try to make contact, but the Holo image erupts in a blizzard of data corruption. I try to call up the hard light control panel, but my body’s electrical field won’t activate the matrix. In another burst of data corruption, the panel comes back online and there are dozens of viz boxes blank or filled with static.
The screams get worse and one by one the viz boxes go down. I work the control display with fingers flying in an effort to contact the Transport’s Control Section. My efforts pay off and I bring up the image of a young woman with blonde hair and yellow-green eyes. She is disheveled and bleeding from a scalp injury. I note how the trail of blood seems to split her face in half. Screaming into her display I hear, “By the Galactic Core! Help us!” Behind her, random energy discharges wreak havoc and there are screams other than hers resounding in my ears. I move in closer to the display as if it will help and yell, “Control, what is your status?”
The young woman now crying screamed, “Control Systems are off-line! We’ve lost orbital integrity!” The information causes me to blink hard as the many implications of what she relayed hit me all at once. “Can you compensate for orbital drift?” The transport lurched again, but I hang on. The woman wasn’t so lucky. She flies from view and the visual feed shows only energetic mayhem as the various displays in the Transport’s Control Center burst with catastrophic data corruption. Amidst the din mixed within the audio feed, I suddenly detect the unmistakable sound of laughter. It does not come from anyone I can see scrambling to get out of the Control Room.
To get a better look before Control’s main display goes down I voice command, “Display, pan right 90 degrees!” The display does as commanded and I see the young woman in the grip of... something. It tears at her and her Protective Body Membrane as she screams and thrashes about. I then notice her status display which pops up during what the Transport’s AI deems a medical emergency. Her name is Lori Nyo. She is 75 standard Earth years old and is a Grade 1 Modified Human with standard enhancements. Despite her modified physicality, the ‘thing’ has her pinned and shreds her PBM like ancient Kevlar. I then realize what it is doing to her and then the visual feed goes down with data corruption.
All the viz boxes are down. Hundreds of humans, androids and alien beings Med Stats all flash red with the words, ‘Off-line’. Dazed, I look about my compartment and recognize I am alone. I quickly call up the vis feed showing the Transport’s exterior. High above the ‘Super Earth’ Aipotu circling its yellow star ‘HESTIA’, I can see the warning graphic ‘Off-line’ flash ominously from the Control Center feed. Data corruption has taken down secondary and tertiary back-up systems yet, the display showing the counter rapidly rattling down kilometers until the transport breaches the atmosphere works perfectly.
As per protocol, I work to cut through the data corruption and get audio only contact with the Aipotu Planetary Net. “EPIMETHEUS Supply Co-operative Transport DROMEDARY, it is evident you have catastrophic loss of orbital controls and will descend into the atmosphere within 30 Earth Standard Minutes. Please have all personnel proceed to all functioning Particle Wave Transport Stations immediately for emergency evacuation to Aipotu.” “Aipotu Planetary Net, this is Transport DROMEDARY, we are suffering catastrophic data corruption and do not advise Emergency Particle Wave Transmission!”
The Aipotu Net is a planetary network controlled by AI. It paused for a moment running various scenarios and then the display graphic ‘EXTERIOR SCAN’ popped up. No sooner started I snapped, “Aipotu Net, we are suffering catastrophic data corruption! Do not scan this Transpor....” The audio feed shutdown and that laughter continued. I looked once more at the exterior viz display and Aipotu was looming larger. Knowing how planetary AI’s think, I dashed towards the compartment hatch. Aipotu’s Net would treat the DROMEDARY like any other harmful space debris or asteroid and use its planetary defenses to deflect or shoot the offending matter out of the sky!
Though unlikely to affect its many firewall’s and built-in defenses, Aipotu’s Net would not allow any chance of data corruption to infect its systems. Without access to Particle Wave Transmission and data corruption fouling every system aboard, the AI will choose to protect itself and the planetary population at the expense of any survivors aboard the dying Transport. Lurching harder than before, I could tell the DROMEDARY was firmly caught in Aipotu’s 1.7G gravity field and wasn’t getting out. I took a hard shot in the ribs from the edge of the compartment hatch and once more my PHUD nearly went down. I took in a sharp breath and stepped out into the passageway. My PHUD came back up and through the smoke, something big moved.
I didn’t waste time trying to figure out what it was. I raced down the passage and could hear the heavy sounds of something large and powerful coming up behind me! I had to reach the nearby cargo bay. There were a set of ancient ‘Escape Pods’ my companion the Captain kept as souvenirs. Without PW Transmission, they were my only possibility for getting off the transport before the inevitable. I slid to a stop in the cargo bay and someone slammed the manual override actuator causing the hatch to crash heavily upon the deck as it shut. Despite the growing flames in the cargo bay, I could see it was a bald human male no doubt of high grade modification who’d closed the hatch. “The Shielding System’s down!”
The man’s words yelled over the din struck almost hard as the edge of that compartment hatch. With the Shielding System down and the PWT offline as well, there was no way to evac the Transport! Even with the fully functional Escape Pods at hand, it was over. Then, a jarring thud struck the manually sealed cargo bay hatch. Again and again, something pounded at the Micro-Crotanium alloy hatch which regularly withstood the stresses of Particle Wave Transport across interstellar distances hard enough to make expanding dents!
“Shit! We gotta’ get the fuck out of here!” The man’s language was ancient and course, but absolutely correct. Yet, I had no solutions. The pounding continued and I wondered what could have possibly caused this disaster? Out of my periphery I saw something familiar lying on the debris covered deck that made me shudder. It was a Transport BOLSTERED OLLA Fortification Level X or ‘BOX’. It was open and it should not be. Not at all! I looked in the BOX and its containment field was offline and whatever had been held within was gone. I looked about the cargo bay and through the spreading wall of flames I saw copious amounts of blood and androidal functional fluids. There were also torn bodies strewn about.
I recognized at that moment, a Transport BOX that should not have been opened had been and now a lone crewman and me were all that were left as something horrible fought to make its way into the cargo bay. The Transport DROMEDARY was hurtling towards a fiery crash planetside and in moments Aipotu’s AI would turn its planetary defenses upon us. Two perfectly good Escape Pods sat prepped and ready, but there was no way to get off the Transport. Worst of all, everything that was happening had been my fault. My designation is PAnd0RA 001 and this is my story....
© 2012 H. Wolfgang Porter. All Rights Reserved.
