Rogue

Chapter 2:Rock of Edges

Well, that was new. We hadn’t had something puncture the hull since the dreadful encounter with the hell-sent dreadnoughts of Space Command. Rogue 1 was a maintenance vessel. Its crew were mechs that ran repairs around Craven II. Each mech was always accompanied by three armed guards. It was impossible to get within five feet of them-well, almost.

On the day we broke out I fabricated something from the limited spices aboard the space prison and sprinkled it into the guard’s broth with the help of Kento the chief Chef aboard Craven II. Still not sure what Derya had on him, but he came through without a word. In twenty minutes, guards were busy taking shifts in the bathroom-well, more like taking shits. Michi, a hacktivist that hacked a NASA rocket and flew it to his backyard in Taiwan just for sport, played around with surveillance and locks. Van Veeken, a humongous Dutch footballer with a side hustle of severing heads from shoulders, was our muscle, clearing debris-human and otherwise-out of the way to the hangar deck. Derya was the designated driver. We had a few others with minor duties like fetching Derya bottles of ale to keep her sober on the reigns.

The shame we caused the Union of Worlds ricocheted across the corners of the quadrant like gamma-ray jets from a pulsar. Not just because we escaped from an impregnable fortress, but because we left them holding their backsides in their palms, capping those eruptive volcanic caves as they hobbled awkwardly over to the men’s room. We had a good laugh over rum and ale at that while we sailed away, steadily soaring towards the outer, colder reaches of Sol’s system where they couldn’t find us.

Until they did.

And they weren’t laughing.

“Hayloom, analyze and identify debris.”

Lights bounced in blues, flickering off the raven-black surface of the hardy debris. It had a sheen, a wet glimmer like a deadly hide of a venomous serpent. I cast a curious glance around its serrated edges, at the points of contact with the metal of the ship. It was mangled, jagged, like the claws of death corporeally materialized. A chill ran icy fingers down my back at the thought. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. But then again, we were in widely unexplored depths of space.

Foreign element detected;

Material composition: unknown.

Hayloom announced.

Yeah, plenty helpful there Hayloom.

Okay this was officially beyond my specialization. First, space rocks were way beyond my league. I dealt with crustal rocks. They were softer, pro-life. Second, I thought all elements in Sol’s system were documented. Homogeneity of the universe on large scales would be put to the test if we had happened to bump into a compound of unknown composition here.

I tapped the comm button on my helmet.

Time to take this to a higher power.

It beeped the old Earth style, dialing over short range.

“Michi, come in,” I called. I waited a few seconds, the customary wait time before it is appropriate to holla again. Michi’s baritone crackled into the comm before clearing like a cloud of cigar smog.

“What's up?” He spoke calmly, like he was chilling under the stars on a sandy beach at a tropical island, soft breezes whispering past his ear as billowing waves crashed in the distance, building a catchy tune to which he wiggled his toes.

“What do you mean, what's up? Haven’t you seen the alarms around you?”

“Oh, I disabled those. I receive notifications directly to my Kleon now,” he said, again infuriatingly calm.

“So you are aware there is a hull breach, structural integrity of the frigging ship may be compromised and we may be going to explode soon?” I added salt and pepper to the dish before serving him on a knife’s edge.

“Oh yeah, I’m aware.” Dude didn’t flinch an inch.

“And?”

“And it’s not my department. Call me when an alien virus floods our system. I’m gonna hang up now. Bye.” The line beeped and the call ended as abruptly as my last relationship with Tamira. Poor thing must have been devastated when I suddenly vanished from the face of the Earth.

I cursed. Hard.

The hull was starting to creak, making little mewling noises like it was in pain, as though conceiving a massive bear-shaped disaster. I dialed him again.

“Listen to me you little…there is a frigging log jammed into the hull the size of which would send you running scared into your mommy’s skirt. Now I need to know how to fix it because last time I checked, I am a goddamn farmer!” I was done taking s**t.

“Did you say a log?” Michi intoned, more tease than intrigue laced in his tone. I didn’t answer.

“This is Derya’s field. Why don’t you call her?” He asked.

“Derya and I are not on speaking terms at the moment.” I blinked at the heavy realization of my predicament. Derya spoke to me more than anyone else on the four-person crew. The day we stopped speaking one of us would be dead. And at the moment I was looking like the favorite candidate.

“Okay, dude. I don’t know what to…oh hey Derya…what…what the ever-loving fuc…” The line went dead. I cursed again, this time smashing my armored fist into the wall. Metal creaked and the foreign rock shifted slightly. Air rushed out, purging from the inside like a cannon ball. I was flung towards the hull, and only managed to stick out my foot to avoid slamming into the log. It shifted again, plugging the c***k.

I dropped the two feet I was hoisted by the pressure differential, landing feet-first.

On the bright side, it seemed Derya had found Michi in his cozy corner and grabbed him by the…ears.

The line beeped.

“Hey Michi, you alright there in your little corner of parasite?” I said in jest.

“Hey Klein, I got Derya here for you. She’s grabbing me by my…ow!” A few crackles came through as the comm device presumably changed hands-roughly.

“Klein, you got some huge ones on you boy! You better not die before I find you.” Derya’s commanding voice flooded the comm channel.

“Look Derya I’m…”

“Save it for your eulogy!” She started, “Describe the object to me.” She demanded.

Sighing, I started forging words to paint a picture for Derya. I walked around the rock, scrutinizing it inch by inch. I didn’t have the foggiest idea what I was looking at.

We were nearing the edge of the Oort Cloud. Not many expeditions had made it this far, none crewed. So, we were at the cusp of making history, just breaking the fog into the cold and murky basement of Sol’s system. We had better get used to bumping into old diapers and dirty soaking socks.

When Space Command caught up with our maintenance vessel despite Michi’s magical cloaking technology, we couldn’t fight them. Not only was our ship old and painfully sluggish, it was ill-equipped for a firefight. Two dreadnoughts dropped in on us unannounced and fired giant hooks into our rear and front. They had us buzzing in place like a dragonfly trapped in a spiderweb.

And then they boarded us.

Van Veeken and Derya were already converting paper towels into cutlery for slicing jugulars. I barely convinced that them we were sorely outmanned and sourly outgunned. Michi was busy shoving everything he owned from music to codes into a digital pouch for safekeeping. If Space Command wanted us dead, one of their pulse bombs would have done the job perfectly. They wanted something. I felt it in my bones.

They were not in the slightest concerned with the two crew that were blown out of their bunkers to continue their slumber in the eternal freezer of space. Or the two that were suffering acute radiation exposure. They wanted to speak with our leader.

When Derya stepped forward, hands steadfast across her chest, a face mottled with the paint of death, and no pulse or sweat visible, even Van Veeken, all 6 foot 6 of him, stood still. Turned out we had caught the attention of the Union of Worlds, and we were kind of celebrities back on Earth. They couldn’t just execute us as was the plan. So, they had a proposition. More of an order really.

A few years back, they had detected something beyond the skewed orbit of Pluto. Something big. It was making waves, sending rocks within a million miles vibrating ever so slightly. The thing is, when it disappeared from their radar, it didn’t take any of the rocks with them, which was weird if it was indeed the infamous Planet X.

As of a few weeks before our unceremonious capture, the rogue object was back. It was basically a suicide mission venturing that deep into space. A billion miles plus change. No scientist was willing to volunteer. And since the Oort Cloud was pretty thick, their telescopes couldn’t make heads or tails of the object. The last probes that were sent over there found it gone, and then stupidly ran into unscheduled debris hailstorms.

So, if we could, please, go find out what the hell was going on over there, the Union would really appreciate it. Their “pretty please” was hidden signal for the noose around each of our necks for public show should we decline.

Derya convened a council of four-well, three and a half since Michi was more worried about his new algorithms being confiscated. She said we could take them. Van Veeken agreed, grounding out coarsely that he loved our odds. Michi wasn’t really there. I managed to convince Derya that we should go but only as an adventure to make a new discovery. Whatever it was out there, we would be the first to discover it. She was a woman of science, and making this into a science mission rather than a suicide squad kind of thing was more palatable.

Therefore, we had set out after Space Command repaired our ship-not that we were incapable of handling repairs. We had Derya, she was just short on supplies. We travelled across the expanse of Sol’s system. Two years and eleven months we toured, harvesting fuel from moons along the way.

And now we were here.

A group of rogue outlaws.

Hunting for a rogue celestial object.

Breaking new ground.

Well so far, the new ground was breaking us, but Derya was on it.

“Get back over here, Klein. That’s a frigging order!” Derya commanded. I was about to tell her she wasn’t a real captain when the line was abruptly cut. I whooshed out a lungful of air laden with frustration.

Damn it Derya! I'd done maintenance around the ship long enough to tell a valve from a vent. Sure, I was a botanist, but I was just as much a spaceman as anyone abode. And there may be more qualified hands out there, but I had responded first. And I was here-at the devil’s mouth staring into one of his fangs.

I had to do this.

I had to.

I cast quick searching glances around the compartment. There had to be something here. The walls were thick and reinforced. There was no opening…nothing I could unplug and use to plug the hole. Improvisation was a code I lived by, but in this moment I realized there weren’t a lot of options available to me. I sighed and reclined against the wall adjacent to the rock jutting nose-first into the ship.

That’s when I saw it. Pretty. Cubed. Fitting. With runes of primrose and galactic spirals. I pushed off the wall and stood under it, regarding it carefully, carving it in my mind.