Andrew Mayden

by Andrew Mayden

 

Twilight. That was her name: Twilight Ouellette. She was lieutenant second class aboard the intergalactic ship River Horse. Or rather, had been the ship River Horse, now it was lifeless hulk floating in space.

Steel tipped boots pounded a steady rhythm as the young woman walked the baroque corridors she had once thought of as home, but now were her tomb. The echoes of her boots reverberated off the deck plating, highlighting the emptiness of her world, and made the darkness all the more terrifying.

Ty marched the hallways carrying a walking stick she had found in storage along with a standard issue military bowie knife, although she knew she was never going to need it, on some basic level it felt good to have the sense of security the weapon provided.

The woman patrolled the ship as she did every morning. Routine was the basis of her life here, something born out of absolute necessity.

Deck 4 Section 08, became Deck 4 Section 09.

She passed through the crew quarters tapping her stick as she walked. Once these room had housed her unit. Once these hallways bustled with activity as so many officers of the River Horse went about their assigned duties. There was a Rec Room with the pool table. A gym with weights and a row of treadmills. It had been a tedious, cramped life aboard ship. But she hadn’t realized just how joyful it was at the time. Now it was all she could think about. Nostalgic thoughts about the way things had been. And about the friends she had lost.

She reached the familiar spot. She stretched out a hand, fingers brushed the plaque by the door. Section 09 Room 419. Her patrols took her past her old room once every nine days. Her breath came ragged and deep. Ty punched the button next to the door. Of course nothing happened. Not since the power had gone out. She set the stick beside the door and grabbed the edge with her fingertips. She pulled. The door slid open. Soon the door would slide closed along oiled tracks. She stepped inside.

The room was as she left it. The bed was made. She had been fastidious about that. She always wanted to come home to a tidy room after a long duty shift. That bed hadn’t been used in months, and it was still just as neat as she last left it.

Beside the bed was a nightstand. Ty ran her fingers over each object. A dead watch. A USB with personal files. A framed picture. A thin layer of dust covered it all. The air recyclers had long since died. Still there was very little accumulation. One human on board just didn’t produce that much of a disturbance.

Ty picked up the picture, although she could no longer see the picture it felt good to touch it. She recalled that day in her mind. The picture was of a young woman alongside her parents. They looked as proud as could be standing beside the woman in the crisp cadet’s uniform. The newly minted officer was tall and androgynous, and like most people had bronze skin and small almond eyes. Her racially diverse traits were shared by both parents. She was the product of globalization. Part Asian, part Caucasian, part African. The only difference between her and everyone else on Earth was the proportions of each.

Ty tossed the frame back on the desk, not bothering to stand it up. Her Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder cried in protest. Things should be put back properly, angled with the corner of the table. She sighed and obliged her demons.

With her daily rounds completed, Twilight left Section 09 and returned to the Dome. Located atop the ship, beside the crenelated bulk that held the bridge, a section of the ship had been set aside as an arboretum. At the time, the decision was controversial. It was less functional, more psychological. There was no way it could serve as a back up for the artificial life support system, not with over a thousand crew. Nor could it provide enough food in any significant amounts. But now that’s exactly what it did. It oxygenated the whole ship. It fed the whole crew.

Ty entered the Dome. She breathed deep. Fresh air was something she knew not to take for granted. Peach trees, cherries and pecans, even a single willow tree filled the roughly circular garden. Mixed in among the trees were other plants. All of them food providing, there were potatoes, strawberries, blueberries and broccoli. It was an odd mix, but then again, it was only intended as a way of providing a treat as a break from an otherwise monotonous diet of processed meals.

Beneath the willow, a small collection of gear lay in precisely arranged order. A sleeping bag. A military AR-55 rifle with scope and spare clips in easy reach beside it. There were two pots and utensils, a ringed pit for an evening fire. The remains of last night’s dinner gelled at the bottom. Slices of tofu and potato chunks, mixed in a chili sauce.

She lit a fire and stirred the pot.

Laying back on the grassy patch, she thought about the rest of the crew. Did any of them survive? If so, there was absolutely no way of knowing. The planet Erna was below. It was so close. Cosmically speaking the distance was infinitesimal. She could almost reach out and touch it. Yet close wasn’t good enough. That small distance of space that separated her from the planet below changed the course of her life.

River Horse had dropped out of light speed near Erna. A thousand plus colonists eager to get to work, especially after being stuck on board for more than a decade. What none of them knew at the time was that Erna had rings. Incredibly narrow, the ring was only a quarter of a mile thick. And they were mostly made of rock, not ice. That was an essential detail in spotting rings, light reflected off the ice. Not so with the dark rocky rings of Erna.

The ship hit the ring, tiny rocks shooting faster than a bullet from her AR rifle. A sizeable rock tore a gash starboard side. Atmosphere vented, bulkheads closed in rapid succession to stymie the flow. She had been in the officer’s mess staring out the window at their new home when it happened. A micro meteor smashed a hole in the wall in front of her. The room decompressed. Less than a second was all it took for the room to become a vacuum.

She had no warning, no reason at all to close her eyes. As soon as the pressure dropped to zero, her eyeballs exploded. The last thing she saw was that virgin world that had almost been home. Capillaries in her skin burst. The air burst out of her lungs. Then a forcefield blocked the breech and the pressure returned.

When she woke, the power was almost gone and the crew was gone.

All the landing pods were gone, so it seemed everyone had managed to abandon ship but her. However, Ty later came to learn that they hadn’t the time to properly load all the gear. That meant the food and supplies for a thousand colonists was all for her. And that meant they were on an alien world with nothing but what they had on them when they scrambled into the pods.

She had no idea what happened to them after they left. Did any of them make it to the planet below? Where they ripped to shreds by the rings? Did even a single pod make it through? She would never know. Earth wasn’t planning on sending another ship to Erna. Without supplies, the colonists would find life difficult, however that did not make it impossible.

Despite her lack of knowledge concerning her shipmates, her own situation was no mystery at all.

The River Horse was tidally locked to the planet. It was an easy thing to happen to a ship, especially one in low orbit. As the planet orbited the star, the ship orbited the planet, the two were in perfect sync. There was no power anymore, but she still had inertia. She was spinning on her axis, that’s what created the artificial gravity she enjoyed. This also meant that on the ship there was a regular day and night, just as on the planet’s surface. The sun would rise over the planet and illuminate one side of the ship. As the ship orbited the planet, the sun would pass over top, and then would set behind the planet.

The situation reminded her of a toy she had as a child, more like a science project really. It was one of the reasons she was interested in science. She thought of that science project often since being marooned on this dead ship in orbit around an alien star.

The project involved a clear plastic ball with a small opening. As per the instructions, she had added a precise amount of water, lichen and a single brine shrimp egg. Then she sealed the ball and left it on a shelf by the window. Every day she went to that ball and watch and waited. She hoped she had been careful enough with each proportion. At last she was rewarded. Soon, a perfectly balanced ecosystem existed within the sphere. The shrimp egg hatched and the little critter lived in the salty water. The lichen grew and replenished the air supply. The shrimp ate the lichen, and the waste from the shrimp fertilized the lichen. It was a lesson in biology. A self-contained ecosystem. All of it existing to support a single organism.

The only catch was that the system couldn’t possibly last. Sure, it could be perfectly balanced, and in theory would last well beyond the life span of the shrimp, but such a small ecosystem couldn’t maintain itself forever. Given enough time, something would eventually break the balance. With only a cup of water, a few clumps of vegetation, and a single animal, it wouldn’t take much to throw the whole thing off. And when it did, the whole system crashed.

That’s what she was here on the River Horse. A single brine shrimp in a hermetically sealed world. The plants provided her with food and air, she in turn cared for the plants. There was enough water to create a sustainable system. It condensed on the ceiling and walls and dripped back down to the soil. The hull of the ship was tidally locked to the planet below allowing for a regular night and day cycle.

The only problem was, just like the little ball with the shrimp, it would all come crashing down around her. It was only a matter of time. Ty wondered just how long her little world could be maintained. Eventually the ship she was on would become uninhabitable.

One of the oxygen producing trees could die, throwing off the delicate balance. Or a single bad season of potatoes (her staple food) and she would starve. A solar flare would irradiate the ship killing all life aboard. And of course, a hull breach in the wrong place would kill everything in a matter of seconds.

In theory she could live to be a hundred years old and the system would maintain her life. In reality, she could die at any moment. Even now though Twilight was an optimist. She had lived her life looking for the adventures that she thought were hers. She had joined the military and enrolled in the colonization program to tame an alien world.

Now her home was a dead ship orbiting a distant planet. In this final passage of her life, all she could think about was the things she would never do again. She would never see her parents again or play with her niece. She would never eat a steak or have sex. She would never hear her favorite song or take a swim on a summer afternoon. Her heart cried at the simple pleasures she would never enjoy again.

She thought about the dome above her head and wondered just how long the glass would hold.

Copyright Andrew Mayden 2018