Debris (Patreon)

The Bellerophon sat motionless in space, its Weird-Field drive had sent it hurtling across the Solar System, and now it was still. The crew were nervous, and rightly so. One of the, many, quirks of the Weird Field drive was its cooling-off period. Any WF ship had a maximum range that could be covered in one trip before the WF drive would power down, effectively a stand-by mode. In this state only comms and life support were at full power, thrust was shut down completely. For most WF ships, and for most voyages, this wasn't an issue. The majority of WF ships had ranges that would allow for multiple trips in and around the inner Solar System, and because they all had shakedown missions, their limits - range and cool-down periods - were well known. The Bellerophon was an unknown in this regard. This was its first trip. There'd been no shake-down, there was no data on range or cooling-off period. While it may seem crazy for a crew to take a ship out with all these unknowns, it was understandable in the circumstances. The Bellerophon was hot. Stolen right out from under the noses of the UN at the Dresden shipyard. The crew had punched straight out of the roof of the assembly building and programmed a route as far from the confines of the inner Solar System as they could. If they were lucky the ship would have enough range to get them beyond Jupiter, if they weren't they could be stranded within the orbit of Mars.

They got lucky. Kind of.

The Captain of the Bellerophon was John Martz, a petrochemicals billionaire who had failed several times to get a license to build his own WF ship. His business had numerous contracts with the European shipyards, supplying both raw materials and processed components, which gave him access and security clearance. His accomplices were two shipyard employees that he'd bought off, and two of his trusted inner circle - Haddon Russell, an ex NASA astronaut with a background in military engineering, and Liza Kurros, a physicist who had worked at the Belo Horizonte shipyard in R&D. Haddon was effectively Martz's security and ops guy, Liza was science. John himself had enough inside knowledge of the WF programs to be able to pilot the Bellerophon. The two shipyard employees, Devlin and Muralt had served their purposes and were under orders to simply sit still and do as they were told.

"Where are we exactly Liza?" Martz said as soon as they'd come to a halt. The Bellerophon's nav screens had yet to be fitted, so while they could technically plot a course, much of the information they needed wasn't readily available. Liza had a laptop hooked up to the internal systems, but was struggling to patch in to the navigation and positioning menus.

"Hard to say boss, sorry. We can't be too far out. The drive was only active for three hours."

Martz cursed. Trust his luck to steal the ship with the smallest range of any WF ship built. Three hours out probably meant they were probably still within the orbit of Mars, and well within range of the UN Security scouts.

"Get me a fix. Use a bloody sextant if you have to!" Martz sank back in to his seat and tried to work out how they could explain this to the UN. They almost certainly couldn't. Maybe he could blame Devlin and Muralt. Say they had kidnapped him. 

"I'm going to check supplies." said Russell quietly. Knowing Russell that probably meant he was going to check the weapons they'd brought on board.

"Liza, can you turn us around? That way I can get a rough idea from the size of the disk of the sun how far our we are."

Liza nodded and started the ship in a slow, gentle spin. The diamond dome of the cockpit would dim automatically as the sun came in to view to protect the crew. 

"Are we banked? Where's the bloody sun Liza?" Martz barked?

"No. We haven't deviated from our path. We headed straight out. The sun should be…" Liza's words trailed off. She pointed out through the cockpit in to space.

"What?" said Martz.

"There. That's where the sun should be. Is. That's where the sun is." She looked at Martz, and he could see the shock on her face.

"Get that laptop working and hooked in to nav now." Martz looked to where Liza was pointing. Where one star shone much brighter than all the rest with a pale yellow glow. It couldn't be. WF drives operated at far higher velocities than fusion motors or the chemical rockets of the last century, but they didn't work at unimaginable speeds. The fastest WF ships could travel 3 million kilometres in an hour. Meaning a trip to Mars could be done in less than a day, and a voyage to Jupiter in around ten days. The Bellerophon had travelled for less than three hours. Even the fastest WF ship would be somewhere between the orbits of Earth and Mars in that time. The sun would barely look any different from that distance. 

"Swing the ship around again Liza. Perform a 360º rotation so we can see where we are. This can't be right." Martz spoke calmly but inside his heart was hammering at his chest.

All the crew members watched intently as the field of stars swung by. For five minutes nobody spoke as Liza tracked the ship around on its axis, allowing a view of every part of the sky. 

Only one star stood out from the rest.

"Got it." Said Liza as her laptop chimed and beeped.

Everybody looked at her.

"We are… 11 billion kilometres from Earth. Over 73 AU from the sun."

There was complete silence in the cockpit. The sun shone weakly at this distance, no brighter than Jupiter on a clear night from Earth. The Bellerophon was out beyond the orbit of Neptune, beyond the dwarf planets Pluto, Haumea, Makemake and Eris. 

"Christ! We're almost at the Heliopause. Nobody has ever been out this far." Russell looked shell-shocked. As an Astronaut he'd been to the moon many times, and was in the first team that landed on Ceres. This was different altogether.

"Can we scan the surrounding area Liza? Is there anything else out here?" Martz was concerned. This was supposed to be impossible, even for a WF drive. It should have taken five or six months to get out this far. Instead they had taken three hours. His delight at discovering a new operating mode of the WF drive was tempered by his thinking about the cooling off period. Some WF ships needed a couple of hours after reaching their maximum ranges in one flight, some needed three or four days. The WF Bluebird need eight weeks between its maximum range flights. There didn't seem to be any logic connecting range and cooling off period. The Bellerophon was well equipped, given how quickly they'd had to pack supplies, and was probably good for a week for five people. A month if they rationed everything starting right away. Any longer than that and they'd starve to death long before anyone could reach them or they could make it home.

"Russell - I want to know how long cool off we have. Figure it out. Check everything we have for signs that the drive is powering up again.

"Yes John. I'll see what I can do." Russell started checking read outs on the systems that had screens installed, and hooked his laptop and tablet up to those that didn't.

Martz instructed Devlin and Muralt to catalogue all the supplies they had, and to start sorting the food in to daily rations.

Looking out at the sun Martz was absolutely torn. He was on the brink of greatness. Even stealing the ship could be forgotten if he came back with the knowledge of how to reach this far out, or to travel this fast. But they could die out here. The ship might need a ridiculously long cooling-off period after such a trip, or maybe they wouldn't be able to replicate the speed with which they came out. If they had to travel back to Earth at standard WF speeds they'd still starve to death.

"Liza, how's that scan coming along? Anything?"

"Not yet John. Empty space so far."

"I need you to do something else while that scan is working - find me the nearest settlement. What is there around Neptune right now? Anything else out that far? I want a back-up destination for when the drive is back online." 

"On it." Liza replied, and Martz knew she would be. He trusted her as much as he trusted Russell. He was glad they were here. The two stooges from shipyard were a different matter. He'd needed them to gain security passes and to operate the loading bay trucks to stock the Bellerophon.Now they were out in space they were excess baggage. 

Russell looked at Martz, and nodded in the direction of the two strays.

"Not yet." Said Martz, gesturing with his hands for Russell to wait.

"Got something!" Liza brought her laptop over to Martz and Russell. "There's something out there, about 8km out. I'm not sure what it is."

"8km? That's ridiculously close after an 11 billion kilometre journey. What are the odds?" Russell studied the read out on the laptop. It displayed a a fuzzy mass, with some vaguely geometric shapes just visible.

"Can the manoeuvring jets get us that far?" asked Martz.

"Easily." replied Liza, "It'll just take a couple of hours".

"Take us to half that distance. Let's have a look before we get too close."

As the Bellerophon slowly approached, details became clear on the screen. In reality whatever it was, was just as black as the space outside the ship. Stars winking on and off the only indication that there was anything out there at all. The screen on Liza's laptop revealed a mass of machinery, tangled and broken. Sheets of metal were torn and drifting together in a lazy swirl. 

"Take us to 1km. And hit the lights." Martz stepped forward and put his hands against the cool curve of the cockpit dome.

It was a Weird Field ship. Broken apart. It was drifting in space in thousands of pieces. Parts of the WF drive were easily recognisable. The pods and cylinders of the drive mechanism, the fins, some of the Helium and liquid Lithium tanks were all visible. But all damaged, scored, scarred. 

"What the hell happened to it?" said Devlin. Martz just stared at him before turning to Russell.

"Was it attacked? Or does that look like an internal malfunction?"

"Hard to tell. It almost looks like its been disassembled. Some parts are obviously damaged, but others are untouched. Also, it didn't explode - the debris would be spread out."

Martz looked and saw that Russell was right. Despite the fact that the ship was in pieces, those pieces were all roughly in the same volume of space that the ship would have occupied.

"Liza. Are you still scanning?" Martz asked brusquely.

"No. Hang on. Scanning now."

Martz looked over to Liza, almost exepcting what came next.

"Shit! There's something there now. It's, it's fucking huge!"

Liza swung the Bellerophon around, putting the WF wreck behind them. In front of them, blocking out the light of half the stars in the sky, was a massive ship. Bigger than anything Martz, or anybody, had ever seen. Distance and scale were notoriously hard to judge in the hard vacuum of space, but this, whatever it was, was huge. Possibly thousands of metres across. It dwarfed the Bellerophon.

Martz looked at the ship in awe, and in fear. He felt like an ant in its presence. Devlin and Muralt were shouting, panicked. Russell was asking Martz what he wanted to do. Liza was studying the laptop, looking for answers.

Martz just stared. All the answers were there. Surely this was the first contact with the senders of the messages that gave Earth the WF technology? This was first contact. This was far better than discovering a faster way of travelling around the Solar System. This was the most important thing ever to happen to humanity and Martz was right here. He'd be the one to communicate with aliens. His would be the name in the history books. John Martz, captain of the Bellerophon, the first man to meet an alien.

At the centre of the giant ship, a glow. Brightening. From a glow, to a glare, obscuring the details of the ship, bleaching the Bellerophon with its cold light. 

Martz shielded his eyes and cursed.

The light expanded like the surface of a bubble. Impossibly bright. It hit the Bellerophon so hard its inertial dampers failed. The contents of the ship, including Martz and his crew were cast across the cockpit like rag dolls, breaking against the diamond dome. The sphere of light from the alien ship pulsed, contracting and then expanding in the blink of an eye. Each pulse inflicting more damage to the Bellerophon, it came apart at the seams. Gases freezing in the cold of space, air from the lungs of Martz and his crew sparkling in the mess of debris. The light winked out, leaving the Bellerophon a mess of components and materials. A spaceship in kit form for distant explorers to ponder.

Martz was right about one thing, but wrong about another. He was the first man to come in to contact with alien life, but this wasn't the aliens responsible for sending the message. It was aliens that were the reason for sending the messages.