Transmissions From Escape Pod X

It is not easy for me to tell the story of the USS Horizon’s fateful encounter with the Robot Planet Skyron.  So bizarre was the experience that even many of my closest colleagues continue to doubt its validity, but I can assure you that there has to this date been nothing else that has weighed as heavily upon me.  Like the Venus expedition, it cost the lives of friends.  However, it was only when I returned from the Robot Planet that I understood what Captain Fleming meant when he told me of the burden that came with command.  The life of every crewman truly is in his or her Captain’s hands, and when we finally made our escape, each lost life was a life I had lost.  I felt them all, but none more than that of Ian Pym.  I have always thought of myself as an explorer, a starseeker, but after what we saw on that world, I was ready to leave it all behind.

We did not set out searching for the Robot Planet.  In fact, there was no reason to believe that our mission would be anything more than a routine science expedition.  An electromagnetic disturbance in the Andromeda Sector had caught the attention of a few of the Institute’s scientists.  As our Science Officer Nadine Harrington was highly regarded in her field, it fell to us to investigate the phenomenon.  It was to be the last of a series of nineteen missions that had seen us in space for nearly six straight months.  I had already made plans for Rana and I at a private resort in Napa Valley.  Many of my crewmen had made similar arrangements.  Each of us had his or her mind on something other than the mission.  In retrospect, disaster was inevitable.

We made a quick stop at A-7, the final outpost on the way to the Andromeda Sector, to retrieve Chief of Security Solomon.  During a mission to Mars a month earlier he had lost his hand to friendly fire and had to have a replacement surgically attached.  It was good to have him back, but there was something about that new hand that disturbed me.  The further we got from home, the more often it needed to be repaired.

More disturbing was the behavior of my XO.  As detailed in my previous transmission, Peter Rothman had no desire to serve on any ship as anything less than a Captain, and he was becoming increasingly confident in his ability to do so.  He had challenged my authority on several occasions recently, and while his professionalism prevented him from doing anything but grumbling, I began to worry about the effect that his small rebellions would have on the rest of the crew.

As we approached the Andromeda Sector, I ordered the helmsman, Ensign Gomez, to ready the ship’s full-body sensors.  My orders were to travel directly into the disturbance, in accordance with Nadine’s recommendations.  The electromagnetism had been weakening consistently for forty-eight hours.  Only a four-hundred percent or more increase in intensity could do any measurable damage to our ship.  Rothman, however, believed that I was creating an unnecessary risk by dogmatically following those orders, and recommended – almost demanded – that we request a Kaled probe be sent from the A-7 satellite.  It would take more than a day reach us, I said, and we didn’t have time for delays.

Rothman didn’t relent.  He said he was placing the ship’s safety first.  I said that I was just following the Institute’s orders.  That sent him over the edge.  He accused me of using the chain of command as an excuse for ignoring his input, and said that my reputation as a “loose cannon” flew in the face of my sudden adherence to protocol.

He was right.  I had always believed, as Captain Fleming believed, that when in space the Captain’s discretion overrides all regulations.  A Captain is the law, and any challenge to that law threatens the entire enterprise.  I had on more than one occasion let that belief drive me to actions that others would consider rash and foolish.  I had openly flaunted regulations and patted myself on the back when I turned out to be right.  It was more than habit – it was a joyous ritual.  So why then was I so reluctant to defy orders this time?

It was because of Rothman.  I didn’t want him to be right.

I called up Nadine, putting the two secret lovers face to face and even enjoying it a little bit when she backed me up.  Then all of that pleasure went away and I was left empty.  I went to see Dr. Pym for a conversation to boost my spirits, but he wasn’t having any of it.  I could tell that he had been drinking.  There was something going on inside him.  He was in pain.  Real pain.  I confided to Rana later my suspicion that he had begun to draw parallels between this mission and our last mission on the Boundless – that fateful trip to Venus.

Soon I would understand.  As we neared the heart of the disturbance and began our scans, I too began to feel unease creep over me.  I tried to block it out, tried to ignore it, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that at any moment something could – and would – go horribly wrong.

I was right.  Nadine burst onto the bridge, breathing heavily and with panic in her eyes.  She informed me that she had analyzed the disturbance and discovered something that none of us had suspected.  This seemingly natural phenomenon had a definite point of origin at its center – a planet.  Worse, it was being controlled.

Suddenly the energy levels surged.  I felt panic swell inside me.  I ordered a full reverse, hoping that we could escape this trap before it was fully sprung, but it was too late. Before we could react, it was over.  There was a surge.  Ensign Gomez’s console exploded, killing him.  Auxiliary power kicked on.  We were dead in the water.

I made my way to sickbay to check on the wounded.  Dr. Pym was already at work, but it was obvious that he wasn’t himself.  He seemed lost, stumbling from patient to patient.  Not wanting to give him the chance to do more harm than good, I pulled him aside, leaving Dearborn in charge.  When I got him into the next room, I chided him for his inebriation.  He lashed out.  “Damn it, Joseph, stop yelling at me!

Joseph.

I was stunned.  I tried to tell him that I knew what he was feeling, that I had lost Captain Fleming just as he had, but he wouldn’t even let me get the words out.  “You know nothing! I knew Joseph Fleming for twenty years!  We worked together!  We traveled together!  We played cards and got drunk together! And I watched him die.  I was the best man at his wedding and a pallbearer at his funeral.  You didn’t go through that.  You went through nothing like that.  All I wanted was to go away, but then you called me back.  You said you needed me on this ship, couldn’t do it without me, and I said, you’re my friend, why not? And then you take us here.  To this unexplored corner of the universe.  Well, the last time I went to an unexplored corner of the universe, I saw my best friend die.”

And for the first time since I had become Captain of a starship, I felt truly and utterly helpless.  No matter what I did, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t break through the wall that this old friend of mine had built around his soul.

Captain Fleming could have.  Captain Fleming would have found a way to speak to Pym, but I couldn’t.  I went to Rana and told her.  She looked at me with sympathy and then said, “There will come a point, Robert, when you will have to stop asking yourself what Joseph Fleming would do, and decide what you will do.”

She was right, of course.

But I didn’t have time to think about that then.  Rothman called me to the bridge, and when I arrived, I was informed that the distance between the planet and the Horizon was decreasing rapidly.  We weren’t moving.  The planet was.  Forrest hadn’t made any substantial progress getting the engines back up.  There was no hope of escape.  We had no choice but to prepare for the landing.

What happened next… what happened next was the most horrifying experience of my life.

I am continuing work on Escape Pod X’s audio transmission system.  This requires extensive internal repairs and minor external ones.  It is not an easy task, and I have not had to perform anything like it since my days at the Space Academy.  Although my supplies are limited, I am confident that with time, I will be able to successfully complete the repairs and begin audio broadcasts.  These text-based transmissions are able to reach only a small number of you, but my audio transmissions will be able to be picked up by anyone who is listening.

It’s a calculated risk.  My alien attackers, if they choose, could easily use the transmissions to track me and eliminate me.  But as I sit here in the confines of this escape pod, I realize that death is certain if I do nothing.  And if left alone to drift through space for the rest of my days, madness will come first, followed by annihilation.  There is no hope at all if I do not take this risk.

I find my mind drifting back to my first mission.  As a commander fresh out of the Academy, I was assigned to the USS Boundless, a research vessel captained by the legendary Joseph A. Fleming.  Fleming was a unique figure in the history of the Institute – a bold explorer, but not a natural one, he was far more comfortable at home with a glass of wine in one hand and a fishing pole in the other than he was plumbing the depths of space.  I suppose he must have felt compelled by duty or honor to leave Earth behind and go exploring in the stars, but I know now that that was not his first, best destiny.  Fleming was a man out of another time – an age when men could be men, and were expected to be.   And everyone knew it, including Fleming himself.

In those days, we had not yet harnessed atomic energy as a means of propulsion in space, so the territory into which we could venture was still confined to a few neighboring planets.  The expedition to Venus was to be a landmark in the history of space exploration, and it was a great honor when Captain Fleming selected me to serve as his Executive Officer.

Our crew was made up of the Institute’s top men, including Dr. Ian Pym, a personal friend and mentor from my days at the Academy.  Unfortunately, we were also saddled with Harold Novak, a science officer assigned to the ship by bureaucrats trying to protect their own interests.  Novak was an intolerable man, incapable of understanding the nature of a manned space expedition or the delicate balance that Captain Fleming needed to maintain to keep us all focused and sane.  We all treated him as a distraction.  He would ultimately become something much worse.

Still, when we arrived on Venus, all seemed well.  The landing was smooth, and thanks to the Interositer aboard our ship, our bodies were prepared for the planet’s atmospheric and gravitational conditions.  Our initial survey found an unusual variety of plant life, much of which may have had practical applications on Earth, particularly in the field of medicine.  It was on the second day, however, that we discovered Venus’s real treasure – it’s people.

The Venusians are blue-skinned humanoids, and on the whole tend to be slightly large than Earth’s people.  They possess powerful telepathic abilities, which facilitated communication with them.  They also, we noticed, seemed to be entirely female – there was not one man or boy among the party that greeted us.  Still, we didn’t pay any attention to that fact at the time.  It didn’t seem important, especially not in the face of such unspeakable beauty.

We were brought before the Venusian Queen Maia, a regal woman with piercing eyes and a powerful voice.  We were treated with care by her staff, all of whom seemed to regard us with strange caution.  Despite the odd nature of our circumstances, I was too distracted to even suspect sinister intentions.  My mind was on one thing and one thing alone – a Venusian woman named Rana, with whom I fell quickly and deeply in love.

It was not long, however, before a series of events placed the crew of the Boundless in opposition to the Queen.  The unexpected destruction of our ship – with much of the crew still aboard – left our numbers severely depleted.  The murder of Ensign Jonathan Odell by one of the Venusian warrior women lead to an open confrontation between Captain Fleming and Queen Maia.  Finally, Harold Novak revealed himself a traitor, choosing to side with the Queen in exchange for all of the Venusian pleasures she might provide him.  And it was only then that we learned the truth of this planet.

A gender war had resulted in the brutal, oppressive men of that world being cast into space, leaving only the women behind.  As mistresses of Venus, they built a shining society for themselves.  But they were faced with one challenge that they could not overcome – reproduction.  With no males, the species would go extinct within a century, and the women had grown desperate to avoid their fate.  Reconciliation with Venusian males was out of the question, and when our ship landed, we immediately became subjects of interests.  We were tested constantly without our knowledge, and it was determined that some of the crew were compatible for breeding.  Odell was not… and neither was I.

Novak had agreed to become their stud, but the rest of the crew would not.  The survivors – Captain Fleming, Dr. Pym, Lieutenant Cannon, and myself – escaped certain death thanks to Rana’s timely intervention, and with her, we made our way to the Wastelands, where no Venusian dared tread. We had no plan, no hope.

But in the distance we spied an unusual sight.  It appeared to be a sort of lighthouse, scanning the stars.  With no other options, we approached, and found inside the last thing we expected – a Venusian man.  His name was Merak, and he and he alone remained.  It was his task, he revealed, to shine his light on the stars, so that when he brothers chose to return, they would be able to find their way home.  Calmed by his eons of loneliness, Merak welcomed us warmly, and provided us aid.  He told of us a secret ship that he himself had one day planned to use, and urged us to take it.  As we left him, I found myself in awe of him.  On a planet ruled by barbarism, his nobility and grace was touching.

We found the ship in a secret cave, but with the Venusian women in hot pursuit, we were forced to take drastic measures to ensure a successful launch.  Lieutenant Cannon gave his life to slow their forces.  Then Captain Fleming did the same.  I remember asking him why he couldn’t come with us, why he had to stay behind and give us the chance to leave.  He turned to me and said, “Because damn it, all of those people that died were my men!  Their lives were in my hands!  And I have to atone for them!”  Then he turned his back, and wouldn’t speak to us again.

His sacrifice gave Dr. Pym, Rana, and myself the opportunity to make it home.  When we launched our ship, the flames from the exhaust fried everyone and everything in the cave.  We assumed that there were no survivors.

The technology from the Venusian ship was reverse-engineered and integrated into our own fleet, opening up new vistas of exploration.  But the cost of life on Venus was so great that it would take time before man again found the nerve to search the stars for life.  Dr. Pym and I both faced court-martial, but were acquitted on all counts.  Rana was subject to intense scrutiny for a time, but eventually she and I were given license to wed.  She has since been my constant companion, on Earth and off it.  Until now.

For a time we feared a Venusian invasion.  However, when another Earth ship traveled to the planet three years later, they found no threat.  In fact, they found nothing at all.  In the time since we had returned home, the planet Venus had been scorched of all life.

As I float through space, alone in my escape pod, I find myself remembering the Venusian man Merak.  He was alone, with little reason to believe that his people might return.  For years, I wondered how he could have kept himself alive in the face of such utter despair.  And only now, when faced with a similar situation, do I understand.  He survived on hope.

I am alone.  I have no reason to believe that rescue is coming.  All I have is hope.  Hope keeps me alive.

Th#s is …. testing….#… This is Captain Robert Juli#s Cl_rke, USS Horizon.  Our sh#p has been destroyed by #_##___# don’t… know if anyone e#se mad_ it o_#… attempting to boost si#na—-

Transmission Disrupted