The Firebrand is not what anyone would consider to be a handsome ship. It is, in fact, what most people would describe as a garbage heap held together with bond-o and spite. From a purely objective standpoint it resembles a particularly ugly housefly which has lost it's wings, a roundish, squattish ship painted non-reflective grey. It moves like a fly as well, unfolds two spindly legs and grabs the hull of the derelict SVSF Ontario, flips it's body around to land with a soft thump as the magnetic pads on it's feet attach to the surface.
There are three crew members on board, though only one is currently in the cockpit. She is a thin woman with dark skin, though whether from genetics or exposure to the elements is unclear. Wild white hair has been tamed down somewhat under a red polka dot bandanna, a microphone rig sits loose round the neck of her athletic shirt. Her name is Ra'haal, but nobody but her boss ever calls her that, to everyone else she is Hal.
Another crew member, this one also female but younger, steps into the control room. She's wearing an atmospheric suit, helmet clamped under one arm, a pair of goggles shoved up into her unkempt hair. The name tag on her chest reads Taylor.
"What have we got?" Taylor asks.
"Looks like there's minimal life support and gravity generation." Hal taps a few buttons. "That's weird."
"What?" Taylor leans over the seat to look at the readings.
"Ok, here's where the main engines started failing, see the power drain here? Then they fixed it somehow for awhile, then it goes out again and we don't have anything until..." Hal taps a reading on the screen. "fifty years ago, the whole deck lights up, something accessed the command computer. It ran for 72 minutes and 30 seconds, then shut down again. And here, this is from 9 hours ago. Another power surge. "
"Ok, so someone else has landed and checked this place out." Taylor shrugs.
"Yeah, except there's no record of any airlock being opened, and no external damage- so how did they get in there?"
"Somebody in stasis woke up." Taylor says. "That switches to emergency solar power, right?"
"That's what I thought at first, too." Hal shakes her head. "But there's no record of anything but standard maintenance checks in the deep freeze, far as I can tell they've never been used. And besides, what, somebody came out for awhile, got back in, came out again, and then vanished, all without connecting to any registered power supply?"
"What were they carrying in the cargo bay?" Taylor asks. "Somebody had to still be on that ship somewhere."
"Most of it is books, a few crates of antique furniture, stuff from an old school on Oraxacon Beta. And I do mean old, you're talking gas powered Bunsen burners and Erlenmeyer flasks here."
"Wait, I thought the ship took off from Balatraz station."
"It did." Hal says. "They transferred the shipment there."
"Why?"
"Doesn't say." Hal taps a few buttons, shrugs.
"So it was on it's way to a collector?" Taylor asks.
"Man, don't you ever read the briefings?" Hal sighs.
"Hey, I do the computers, that's all I care about." Taylor says. "Dave deals with all that other stuff."
"All what stuff?" The third crew member appears, wearing a suit identical to Taylor's save for the name tag.
There is a click and beep from the control panel and Hal grunts. "Alright, we're in. Have fun, you two."
Dave and Taylor put their helmets on, drop into the air lock booth. Dave secures the hatch into the Firebrand and triggers the release sequence. A red light flashes three times then stays on, ten seconds later exterior vents open and a blast of pressurized non-volatile gas forces all of the existing air away. The vents close with a soft whirring sound, bright lights sweep over them, sterilizing the exterior of the suits.
The adjoining airlocks slide open, and the two step into the SVSF Ontario, the first people to set foot on the ship in at least fifty years. The corridor they have entered is dark, the lights on their helmets send long silver shafts into the shadows.
"Can you get us some light?" Dave asks.
"Uh...yeah, hang on a sec." Hal says.
There is a soft rumble as she activates the engines on the Firebrand, gently rotating the larger ship to bring their side in line with a nearby star. Sunlight sweeps in through the windows like a time-lapse video, settles into bright strips.
"So, what's the story with this stuff?" Taylor asks. "Hal said it's antique furniture down in the cargo bay. You got a buyer set up or something?"
"Maybe." Dave says. "It depends on exactly what's down there. If it's what I think it is, then it's worth a great deal to the right person."
"And you think it's..." Taylor prompts him.
"There's this mythical- supposedly mythical- place. A town or a school or a hospital on Earth in the 1900s...the details vary, but the basic idea is that the people wherever this is, was, were somehow using what looked like ancient technology in a very advanced way. Medicine that was hundreds of years before it's time, teleporting over vast distances, possibly even bending the laws of space and time."
Taylor shrugs. "There are lots of stories like that. What makes these so special?"
"Eh, PR mostly. The guy who wrote the first stories said he'd found or bought or been given this diary that described all these things. Of course, he wrote that as well, and distributed copies...but there are some people who think that there was a real diary that the fake one was based on."
"Ok, so what does that have to do with a bunch of junk from an old school? If this guy had some document, wouldn't it have been in his house on Earth when he died?"
"Ah, here's the thing-" Dave grins. "This school we've got boxed up in here, it's from one of those recreation villages. They went and bought up tons of old estate stuff...including, according to certain sources, a lot which was rumored to contain the original diary. Unfortunately nobody ever found out, since the shipment was lost."
A deep moan echoes down the hall as if in response to his words. It is followed by a heavy twang and several soft popping sounds. The hull of the ship singing as it's dark side warms in the light. It happens in almost all ships, though the ambient noise is usually enough to drown it out, and Dave and Taylor are used to hearing it but still they stop, turn to look down into the shadows.
They have come to the control room, the door is closed and locked, the release button dark. Dave pulls a panel from the wall to expose the manual door crank, a large gear with a handle that folds out with a squeak. The mechanism resists at first but he puts his shoulder to it and the crank turns, the door slowly slides open.
The control deck is dark, no windows here. A yellow light is blinking on one of the consoles and Taylor walks over, presses a button beside a monitor. The screen lights up, a cursor blinking in the top left corner.
"Auxiliary console has power." Taylor sits down at the control seat and begins throwing commands at the machine in rapid fire keystrokes. "You got that re-rout done yet?"
"You're good to go." Dave says, closing the panel.
Several of the other screens come up, flash through rapidly scrolling code, go dark, come back on again. Two of them display blank screens in a rather painful shade of blue, the third shows a pattern of rotating geometric shapes as the operating system boots up, then sweeps to a menu.
"Ok, we're in." Taylor says.
Taylor works on the system for another minute or so as Dave walks around the control room, looking at the various panels. A rumble from below deck indicates activation of the secondary power source, the atmospheric system and lights come up. Dust swirls into the air in the control room and is immediately sucked away.
"Alright, we'll have full gas exchange in about fifteen minutes. Interior temperature 85 degrees Fahrenheit and falling." Taylor says. "That's weird, I can't access the ship's log. There's not a cable unplugged over there or something, is there?"
Dave obligingly checks the wiring again. "Nope, problem must be further down."
"Hal, can you access the log from there?" Taylor asks.
"Ah...no, looks like there's a break in the line somewhere. Let me see...OK, logging box is down one deck, almost right below you. Conduit runs through an access tube, you've got an entrance by the door there." Hal's voice, hollow in their helmets. "You want the yellow line."
Dave finds the access, which opens into a narrow corridor lit by bands of bluish light. Bundles of colour coded wires and tubes run down both walls, a series of handles is set into what is currently the ceiling. He finds the yellow conduit and presses his signal sensor probe against it. A glowing rectangle seems to materialize in front of his face as his helmet display activates, a flat line running horizontally down it's length.
"Yeah, we got no signal. Looks OK up here, goes down a floor up ahead, I'm gonna check over there." He walks along, tapping the wire with his probe occasionally.
He stops at the intersection and looks down, the lights are bright for perhaps a hundred yards then dim abruptly for a section before failing completely. He can feel himself being pulled straight down into the shadows, on low power the specific directional gravity doesn't function and he is simply being drawn toward the core of the ship. The handles that run along one side of this corridor now look like a ladder down into a well.
"There's definitely a break in power down here, lights are out." He swings out over the void and begins to climb down, watching the yellow line.
There is a crackle in his ear and he stops. "Come again?"
"...losing your signal." Hal's broken voice.
"I've got him." Taylor's voice is clear. "It's the shielding down there. Dave, switch to OC554, I can pick you up here and boost it."
"Rodger." Dave switches his audio/visual feed. "That better?"
"Uh...yeah, reading you. You're good to go." Hal says.
He starts to climb again, passes the dim lights and steps into darkness. The air seems to get colder, press in around him, though he knows it's just his imagination, he can't feel anything through the suit. He tilts his head down, sending a shaft of light into the blackness. There is a flash of dull metallic light at the end, the floor of the next junction.
Dave drops off the bottom of the ladder, lands with a soft thump. The yellow conduit curves to run along the wall, as he looks the lights on his helmet sweep down.
"Well, that's your problem right there." Dave says.
"Woah." Taylor is obviously watching his feed in the control room. "What the hell is that?"
"I dunno." Dave frowns as he tries to make sense of what he's looking at, starts to walk slowly forward.
The corridor shortly ahead of him has been invaded by what look like silvery roots, some of them thick as his torso. He pulls out his bioscanner and passes it through the air but gets no response, whatever this stuff is, if it was ever alive it's not anymore. He can see that it's either eaten through or broken several of the conduits, his yellow one included.
"Ok, I'm gonna keep going." He says. "See if I can just pull the box, it's gonna be a royal pain to run direct connect through here."
The ship's logger is set into a large, heavily reenforced box which is almost impossible to penetrate without a key. Dave has one, but as it turns out he doesn't need it, the box is sitting open.
"What in the world..." Taylor says.
"Logger's still inside." Dave says, leaning in and detaching wires.
"Yeah, this place is super weird." Taylor says. "Where are all those...whatever they are, vine things, where are they coming from?"
"Um..." Dave looks around, the logger clamped under one arm. "looks like they've come through this shaft over here, they're so thick I can't even see down there. Where's this go?"
"Ends at Cargo Bay 4." Hal says.
"That's where those antiques are, right?" Taylor asks.
"Yeah." Dave says. "Looks like maybe quarantine failure. I've never seen anything like this, though."
"Where's that stuff from?" Taylor asks.
"Oraxacon Beta." Hal's voice.
"They've got lots of fungus there." Dave says. "I bet that's what this is, it probably went crazy in the atmpsphere here."
"Is it dangerous?" Taylor asks.
"I don't think so, and even if it was, it's dead dead." He taps on one of the vines. "Hollow, desiccated, just a shell."
"Keep your suits on, and I want level 5 decontamination." Hal says.
"Yeah, yeah." Dave says, turning back toward the access he'd come through. "I'm heading back up there, you got something to hook this into?"
"Of course." Taylor says.
Back on the control deck, Taylor plugs the logger box into a port on the main console. One of the large screens comes up, displays a menu for a split second before dissolving into a flurry of CMYK boxes.
"Drive is corrupted." Taylor says. "I can clean it up some, but it's going to take awhile."
"You do that, I'm going to go check out the cargo bay." Dave says. "Remember, if the serial killer comes while I'm away, don't run up the stairs."
"Oh, would you just go." Taylor laughs, waving him away.
She pulls a thin black box out of one of her pockets, a narrow plastic shell with several ports along one side and three lights and a power button on the other. Taylor attaches the data extractor to the corrupted logger and turns it on, the bottom light pulses to let her know it's working but the other two stay dark, when all of them light up and hold it will be done. She puts it down on the top of the logger and walks over to look at the various other pieces of equipment in the control room.
The data extractor beeps and she goes back, two of the lights are on and glowing, the third flickers.
"Alright, I'm looking at our history here, still waiting on video..." She says. "Situation normal at launch, we have the landing and pickup here...ok, hang on, there are some errors showing up. Lets see...that's two weeks out and there are some power outages reported around the cargo bay- it got so bad here they had to re-rout the door systems. Ooh, and there's some nav-com weirdness going on here, we've got a spontaneous course change, lets see the log for the repairs..."
Taylor taps a few buttons, looks at the column of results.
"Wow. Looks like the nav-com went bad, they had to replace the whole unit. That's really unusual, they normally show errors right away, this one was fine until a month after they grabbed their shipment." She shakes her head.
"That stuff I saw down in the logger room must have gotten into it." Dave says.
"You'd think there would be some note about that." Taylor frowns, brings up the comments on the log. "If it was there, they couldn't see it."
"Microscopic spores?" Dave asks.
"Could be." Taylor says.
"Great. You two are definitely not getting back on my ship without being hosed down." Hal says.
"What about the new system?" Dave asks.
"Uh...here we go, two weeks and it starts to go bad, same story. Lets see...we have a switch to manual navigation here, there's a docking request but...then it's canceled here, no reason given. Course alteration to..." Taylor frowns. "Nothing- I mean, there's nothing mapped there. Out in the middle of nowhere, far as I can tell. Engines failed and she's been drifting out here ever since."
"So what happened to the crew?" Dave asks.
"I have no idea. No emergency pods launched, no note of crew member deaths." Taylor frowns. "Nothing in the log that would indicate some sort of system failure."
"Well, I'm at the cargo deck where this all started, lets see what's inside." Dave says. "Yeah, I see where they jacked the door, I've got an open/closed switch here and...it works."
The double doors slide open and Dave is looking into the darkness of the cargo bay. "Lights are out."
"You should be able to open the viewshields from the manual control box, you'll have a crank. Should get enough light in there to see by, I can pull you around if I need to." Hal says.
Dave steps into the dark room, which feels uncomfortably like a cave. He pulls a flashlight off of his belt and it joins the beams on his helmet.
He glances down and pauses. "Can you see this?"
"What is that?" Taylor asks.
"It looks like..." He pulls a probe from his belt and leans down to press it into the material. "It is. It's snow."
"It's what?"
"Snow. As in the white stuff that falls from the sky in winter."
"Atmospheric controls must be on the fritz." Taylor says.
The room is full of large shipping containers, easily thirty feet long, made of heavy corrugated metal. Covered with snow they have taken on the appearance of a town draped in frigid darkness.
They bear various stamps, stickers, and inventory sheets, and Dave stops at the nearest one to look at the invoice.
"What's that say?" Taylor asks.
"Beds, folding, boys dorm, 150 count." Dave reads.
"Sounds exciting." Taylor says.
" Any luck with the log?" Dave asks.
"It's working, but it's taking forever. Whatever did this jacked those files up bad. I mean, half of this looks like it's been re-encryped somehow. It's like it was altered to work on a completely different system, but only the voluntary logs, not the automatic ones."
"Sounds like somebody was looking for something." Dave comments.
"Control booth should be straight ahead." Hal's voice comes through his speaker.
There is a line of containers blocking his way, Dave turns to go around them and stops. The huge boxes here have been scattered in a loose curve as though from an impact, though it must have been some time ago as the snow drifts high and undisturbed around them. The same vine like substance he'd seen earlier has grown from the containers, though now rising from several feet of snow the impression is more that of an ancient forest. The long tendrils have arched up into a dome, branching out to form a delicate looking lattice. The gaps between the thin branches are pale with a thin layer of ice and snow.
"Are you getting this?" Dave asks.
"Hal?" Taylor asks. "You ever seen anything like it?"
"Beats me." Hal says.
"I'm going to go check out that dome." Dave has to move slowly in the snow, finds a large gap and clears a path through.
He steps in and stops, for a moment feeling a spinning sense of unreality. He's not sure what he was expecting to be here, but it certainly wasn't this.
Outside the dome is the cargo bay of the Ontario in the year 2255. Inside, it appears to be a city circa early 1900s Earth, decorated for Christmas with wreathes and ancient electric lights. It is night, snow drifts from a sky heavy with clouds.
"Wow. Can you guys see this?"
His speaker responds with a burst of static. He frowns, turns around to look at the wall behind him...and there is no wall. He walks back a little way, hoping that it's been hidden by a projection, but the city just seems to go on.
Up in the control room, Taylor frowns and taps her transmitter. "Dave?"
"What happened?" Hal asks.
"I dunno, I lost him." Taylor shakes her head. "Must be interference from something in the cargo bay. You getting anything?"
"Nnooo..." Hal says. "Wait, I've got something here...there's some sort of power flux but..."
"I'm going to go down there, check it out." Taylor says.
"Roger that."
Dave considers the options. The entire cargo bay could have been altered, intentionally or not, to project some sort of interactive game. But...he frowns slightly, even new systems can't fool the sensors on the suit, not without hacking into the thing and these suits are guarded more heavily against that than normal. According to his independently functioning equipment it is at it appears to be- the snow is snow, the air is cold, the gas and gravity register as though they are on a planet.
He could be under the influence of some psychotropic, which would certainly explain why his suit sensors are working. Dave thinks back carefully, shouldn't there be some sort of inconsistency in his memory if that were the case? But the last few days all line up perfectly, right up to stepping into this strange little town.
He's not prepared to completely rule out a hallucination or dream, but if he's considering all possibilities, then the last one is...Well, the last one is that he's somehow stepped through into another place and time.
He starts to walk again, the boots of his space suit crunching softly on the snow. The road ahead is brighter, and after a few blocks he has come to an area filled with closed cafés and small boutique stores. There is a small park beyond, he can see the lighted windows of more stores on the other side.
The snow in the park had been disturbed at some point the day before, the new snow has a distinctly lumpy and ragged look. There is something else in the park, he realizes, wonders how he hadn't noticed the box right away. It's perhaps nine feet tall and half as wide, painted a vibrant deep blue.
It looks out of place, but familiar. He approaches slowly, when he is at the edge of the park a light mounted on the top comes on, the lit words above the door come to life, followed by a yellow glow from the windows.
"Police Public Call Box?" Dave reads aloud, then laughs. "Nice try, but that's the wrong model."
The box is the only thing that looks as though it's been inserted from the wrong time period, though he's not completely sure of his accuracy when it comes to the sort of items he's seen so far. He casts his eye around again, stops with a frown.
Just down the street, at an intersection, he can see what he recognizes as an actual police phone from the 1920s, a tall pole with a small rounded box mounted at a comfortable height for an average adult. Now, that just confuses things even more.
He starts across the park, in places the snow here has piled up to his knees and he finds himself breathing hard as he wades closer to the box.
Dave reaches out and puts a gloved hand on the box. He can't feel it, but he can see the texture of the wood, the slightly chipped and faded paint.
There is a squeaking crunch behind him and he turns, expecting to find a person or perhaps a dog. What he sees instead is something he registers as a snake or worm rising up out of the snow. It has no discernible head, but the rounded end waves menacingly in the air. Two more come up on either side, completely blocking his escape.
Dave steps back, hits the box, presses himself against it as he stares at the things which are clearly about to attack. The middle one lashes forward, it's end opens out into a wide mouth, plunges toward him. He lifts his hands defensively, turning his head away and closing his eyes.
The wood behind him drops away, someone grabs the back of his suit and yanks him hard enough to make him topple back and fall over. The door slams shut again, the thing slams into it with a heavy thunk. It pulls back, shakes it's head end, twists round as though looking at the others. The three of them sink back under the surface, waiting.
Taylor stops at the cargo bay door. It's standing open, she shines her light inside. All she sees are shipping crates, no snow. She walks into the shadows, the beam of her flashlight sweeping around.
"I thought there was snow in there." Hal says.
"There was, it looked like there was..."
Taylor walks down a row of containers, after several minutes she comes to the part of the cargo bay where Dave had seen the snowy dome. All that is here now, however, is unbroken floor surrounded by the scattered crates. Several of them have burst open, spilling their contents, most of which appear to be boxed books and office furniture. The control booth for the cargo bay is visible against the back wall.
"There's nothing here." Taylor says. "Nothing at all."