The Ghost of Clark. Part 2: A Chance for Hope
Vest hesitated at the door to the life pod. It is rather coffin-sized, he reflected. Just big enough to hold four in a circle facing each other in a standing position, or lying down, depending on orientation. His hesitation was not the confines of his hope for survival. That was only an intrusive thought. His hesitation was the why, the data.
Integral scans 20.6%
Once he was inside the life pod, its reinforced and lined walls would disconnect his wrist device from the shipās remote connection. Whatever he did, he needed to do it now. With likely seconds to act, and standing on the cusp of hope. He keyed up the remote connection to the science station. And began the processes of emergency data transfer and storage. The ship contained a hardened data storage appliance. The size of a good book and three times as heavy, this device would receive all of the shipās mineralogical, astrological, and optical scan data, then disconnect the cabling from the storage appliance. The appliance, in turn, would activate a sustain-and-stabilize mode until it could be retrieved. Theoretically, the data in the device could survive indefinitely.
Data Transfer started; 12% complete. Estimated time to completion: 12 minutes.
Twelves, what are the chances? But twelve minutes was a long time; he wasnāt sure ā¦
Integral scans at 20.2%. Evacuate Now.
He did not have time. He would have to trust the systemās ability to complete the transfer. Vest thrust himself forward into the life pod and awkwardly fitted himself into the standing restraint. Activating a tactile switch at his side, the restraints tightened against his suit and braced the sides of his head. The experience was confining and unnerving, his ability to move stripped from him, and his field of vision offering only a faint glimpse of the shipās corridor at the fringes of his visor. Another tearing sound roared through his ears, another volley.
Integral scans at 1-
Silence, both visually and audibly.
The corridors and the life pod abruptly descended into a momentary void of incomparable darkness. The alarms ceased, his wrist device displaying disconnected in flashing yellow. The emergency lighting slowly glowed to life in sick orange. The auto-ejection should have continued, was designed to continue, even in the event of a full system failure. Confined, Vestās thoughts started to boil, to rage. The fear that had been held at bay by movement and purpose was rising like flood waters, faster than reason could dam it back up. āBreathe, focus on breathing.ā Vest chanted to himself, finding it hard to focus on something so erratic. āThere is an emergency manual operation in the pod.ā
The act of giving himself instructions cleared the black specs forming in his vision: āFind it, pull it.ā He blindly reached above his head with his still-functioning hand and wrist. He strained against the head brace to grant himself just a minimal more of vision. He found it, neck aching, grasping it, and stopped. In the corridor, an ethereal shadow floated just outside the hatch, reflecting the sick orange glow of the emergency lights, but also emitting a faint brilliance of the rest of the Mirrored Ban. The effect was a partial corporeal. In that moment, his breathing slowed and the hairs across his arms and neck raised. Light seemed to pulse from within and along thin lines of the semi-organized scattering of the silicate that had transitioned into the ship. A different fear washed away the fear of confined death. For a moment, he made eye contact with something. Yet there were no eyes, no face, nothing his brain or mind could use to represent a thing capable of making eye contact. But in the seeming seconds, he felt his eyes being searched by another pair. Like the accidental eye contact with someone you might know. He pulled the lever, the hatch slammed closed, followed by a rapid succession of five lights and a buzzer. A violent thud brought the bile to his throat as the life pod ejected away from the William Clark. A chance of hope for survival.
The William Clark heeled away from the rapidly departing life pod, obeying the laws of motion. Its systems past the point of ability to obey the commands its central computer desperately issued. Too weak to continue, its life energy nearly let out in full into the surrounding space, with the core sputtering and cooling. The Pirate corvettes, seeing the last life pod depart and the prey no longer struggling, ceased their onslaught. Unconcerned with picking up survivors, āmore mouths to feedā the pirates joked and laughed, they followed the Clark as it sank into the swirling rapids of the Mirrored Ban, intending to feast upon their reward.
Years gone by, and Vest still felt confined and tumbling through space. It was expected by Vest and others that parts of the Clark would have shown up on the black and grey markets, maybe even the entire ship. Or that it would later be seen as a pirate itself. Ill-fitted and retrofitted to issue destruction from a shadow. Vest feared and hoped that an encrypted data vault would be auctioned to the highest bidder for a year-long decryption process. Expectations were not honored. No part of the William Clark ever surfaced. Nothing. After a decade, Timothy Vest, always the hopeful, decided it was still out there. Something must have discouraged the pirates from consuming the ship whole. Maybe the radiation leak or the exhausting effort of navigating deep in the rapids of light and reflection. Vest had ten years to create mental models as to why, but little way of validating the what-ifs he had concocted. But with the most recent message he had received from the original expeditionās backer, the word āapprovedā was highlighted across the summary. After ten years, he had the means to validate. To retrieve the data, find out what happened. The chance of hope, in going back. And to look the mirrored ban in the eyes.