-Hey guys! I know it´s been a while since I published something but here I am with Space Oddity III. This story will be about Dudley and my OCs. So we probably won´t jump back to Petropolis this time. Anyway, enjoy :D -
It is indescribable. Like every single time and you would never get used to it. The first time when you put on the tight but comfortable suit, the helmet that is lighter than it looks, the gravity amplifying boots with integrated rockets for longer jumps. The first steps inside the ship with your gear which made you look like more muscular version of yourself. The calm breaths with which you want to persuade your body to calm down.
The sudden panic as the airlock slowly lowers the pressure and you hope that all parts of your suit are air-sealed. Your last gaze to the man next to you, your buddy the astronaut that accompanies you on your spacewalk. He can´t see the fear in your face through the black visor of your helmet, like you can´t see his.
And then the moment the gates open and you dive into the middle of the stars getting surrounded by this all-embracing greatness and this grave stillness which is almost tangible. You start walking and even if you walked since you are one year old it feels like you make your first steps.
Clumsily you stumble over the ground although your boots provide you with a small and almost one G strong gravity field. And then it happens, you fall.
Desperately you grab everything that can give you support and hinder you from colliding with the ground, that can help you to stay standing. But you will fall, it´s just a matter of time.
It´s inevitable, it´s just part of the process. And when you finally lie on the ground you realize, like on earth, that is just a simple fall. A fall like you´ve been through a thousand times. Nothing that kills you, at least nothing that does that definitely. Of course accidents happen but that the exception, not the rule.
And in the moment you stand up after it, a marvelous feeling of relief grabs you and throws you into a pool of euphoria. Even if everyone says that the moments before the fall were terrible they also all agree that the euphoria after that was more than worth it. If they could, they all would want to relieve this feeling.
Dudley´s first steeps were quite a while ago. A long while to be honest. He made so many trips outside in his suit that, by now, he could move in it like in every other garment. But the many practice had took their toll. Due to them the space had lost a big part of its magic to him. Not all of it, of course.
Although enough to chat with his buddy instead of gazing at the stars in awe.
"No! No freaking tips, Isaac." Said the man with the broad shoulders, who walked next to Dudley, through the microphone of his helmet in the usual angry tone he owned.
"Come on!" I giggled amusedly from the bridge of a ship far away from those two. "You know how bad he is in that. He has other qualities."
"Okay, first that sounds really weird." Dudley stated with a stern voice and an undertone that implied that he wasn´t as unamused as he sounded. "And second… is the answer energy-field-manipulator?"
"Try it again." The man meant and patted the dog on the shoulder part of his orange space suit.
"You are close, Dudley." I meant through the radio and spun on the chair in my lab.
"Dammit Isaac!" The man cursed. "No freaking tips!"
"Seriously, René, that is just a tiny piece of advice."
"Oh yeah? Then you can teach him, great Advisor." René growled irritatedly.
"Uhm… no, go on, I will shut up." I meant remembering the last exhausting time I tried to teach the dog something. After that I shut the com-link, dedicating my attention on something more important. The dog and the man were on their own.
"I love that sound." Dudley said grinning.
"What sound?"
"Isaac being silent." The dog enjoyed the loud dirty laughter of his friend. He joined in and let the tension in him go for a few seconds.
"Well, indeed, it´s a good sound." René meant as his laughter wore off and became a loud giggle.
"Okay actually he is an okay guy." Dudley smiled. "If he doesn´t starts talking science."
"Hell yes." Moaned René like most people do when the walk out of a 90 minute long lecture held by me. "Sometimes I think he just wants to make people´s mind spin."
"Remember when he tried to explain me the spectral anomalies of the energy emissions of anti-mater reactors?"
"The thing when positrons and electrons of with weight variation?"
"Exactly. I think I had a headache for three days after that." Dudley meant and narrow his eyes to slits. "But I got my revenge… terrible revenge."
"What did you do?"
"You know that he sometimes sleeps on his table?" he grinned mischieviously. "I glued his head to it."
René burst into laughter and was so loud doing so that Dudley´s ears hurt. He just wished he could change the volume of the integrated speakers in his helmet.
"You sick dog." The engineer meant blinking away tears of laughter.
"I take that as a compliment." Dudley said feeling a little bit proud about his prank.
"How long did he need to get his face off the table?" René asked eagerly.
"About 1 hour… by the way, that stays our secret."
"So he has no plan what happened? I like that." René patted Dudley´s back what made the dog hiss.
"Oh, sorry." Meant the Engineer. "Still the thing with explosion?"
"Indeed." He meant slackening his features. Reluctantly he tried not to remember the incident 3 weeks ago in which he not only lost the third ship under his command but also was hit by an explosion that had burnt his whole back.
Fortunately, what was more than luck under these circumstances, his whole crew survived. Survived again to be correctly because he still had every single member of the crew that was with him on his first under his command. That was absolute record in the Alliance.
"It heals slowly." Mumbled René tapping on a display on the wrist of his suit. As he had touched it the display started emitting a few holograms with a light blue color which he eyed critically. "Look at that." He gave Dudley a nudge on the arm with his elbow and pointed at one of the holograms.
"Gravitational interferences." Dudley smirked. "Well, we wanted that, didn´t we?"
"I know Duds, but… I hate this plan."
"I don´t like it either…" Sighed Dudley and pinned his gaze back onto the grey rock on which they were walking. "But I trust Powers, at least his plans."
"I thought you´d hate him." René raised his eyebrow high up looking at his friend without moving his head from the direction in which he walked.
"Oh I do." Declared Dudley like he just explained utterly basic thing. "I still haven´t forgiven him that he has lied to me."
"Dudley that´s about 600 years ago… you are pretty resentful." René said and in front of Dudley´s eyes the flashbacks of the moments back then on the bridge of the Leviathan. The moment when his whole world proved to be a lie.
"How long I keep my grudges is my business, René." Dudley said frostily.
"No it isn´t only your business. Your permanent anger against Powers is clearly interfering any situation in which you two you are involved." The engineer said almost casually while checking his display again and again.
"Are you referring to something in particular?!" growled Dudley.
"Cekirge attack 16 years ago." René simply said and grinned at the dog who started frowning. Every time when they talk about this René brought up that incident.
"What happened there has nothing…" Dudley was about to say his usual phrase in situation but René countered with his own standard sentence.
"Power´s order was to abandon the ship but you were too stubborn."
"I needed to prevent the core from destabilizing."
"Oh come on quit that bullshit!" The engineer shouted in exasperation he had heard this answer from Dudley way too often.
"That´s no bullshit." The dog said calmly and looked bored at the display on his wrist.
"It is the biggest I´ve ever heard! You weren´t even close to a terminal! No the only freaking thing you did was get stabbed by this Cekirge zombie asshole!"
"Well, glad he had a knife." Dudley said casually.
"You have no idea how god damn lucky you are? If that zombie had been in the second metamorphose state we wouldn´t have this conversation right now." René meant and slapped Dudley at the back of his helmet.
"But he wasn´t so let´s not deepen into that." The dog said and summoned the end of the conversation with this sentence. It wasn´t time to talk anyway.
Dudley checked the display again. They were so close that they should see them any second now.
"Duds, rendezvous time." René meant as the dark edges of a gigantic, bulky battle ship which heaved itself gradually above the asteroids horizon.
"Wow…" Exclaimed Dudley surprisedly. He had heard in the briefing how big that ship allegedly was but as he saw it in front of him he knew that Powers' word couldn´t describe its hugeness in any way.
"Shitty ship." Huffed René completely unimpressed.
"Wha… Why that?" the dog turned to René and looked at him in disbelieve. "Do you look at this ship right now?!" He pointed furiously at it. "Do you even see it?"
"Yeah, it´s big, so what?" The engineer shrugged. "The only thing the engineers did there were compensating something."
"What´s wrong with you?" Dudley shook his head and turned back to the ship.
"Nothing. But this ship is just spitting in my face… in every engineers face." He looked angrily at the vessel and if his helmet hadn´t hindered him René would have spit towards the ship. "It is just big, nothing else. No new shields, no new on-board computer system, no new weapons. Just big. Big reactor, big shield, emitter's big guns. Strictly built according to the motto: If you can´t build it better build it bigger."
"But that is better, I mean… we have no chance with our ship against that." Dudley meant and looked towards the horizon which was covered by the ship. And still not everything of the ship had risen above the rim of the asteroid.
"The next technology generation will have." René simply said.
"If Isaac and his team make another breakthrough."
"When. I bet they are close to the next…" René didn´t finish his sentence, the shining light which the ship beamed down on them simply startled him too much to continue what he wanted to say.
The ship above them hovered calmly like it was pondering what it should do with the two hikers on this sparse asteroid. For a second it seemed that the vessel would maybe turn of the light and fly on, but the big blue energy sphere which it then shot towards a point further afar from their position made their intensions clear.
"There goes the shuttle." Sighed Dudley as within the boarders of the light cone the gravity started to turn. First smaller stones, then bigger boulders were pulled towards the ship and the pull finally got so strong that the true astronauts were sucked into the ship.
As the pull wore of and the gravity normalized again, René and Dudley found themselves in a big loading bay surrounded by a battalion of Union soldiers which were pointing with their palms at them.
"All of these fuckers are ready to fire, Duds." René hissed putting his hands up.
"I know… just give them no reason." The dog said and followed slowly René's example. Actually expected Dudley them to shoot. He didn´t know why but he had the strange feeling that today was the day it would all end.
But he had this feeling almost every mission. It started at the 80th anniversary of his extraction out of the singularity. This was the day he realized that his world, no matter if it existed or not, must have forgotten him. Kitty, Keswick, the chief, his mom… all the people he loved and cared about must have been dead by then. Even if he had returned on that day it would be very likely that his child would also be dead by then.
There was no one waiting for him. Going back had no sense. And for himself his existence also didn´t. From that day he was more daring, what was the best thing he could do actually. He was on many missions others hadn´t done and he had earned quite a lot of respect through that.
But also today he was proofed wrong as two soldiers out of the circle that formed around them had marched up to him and René and started tying them up. Not with robes of course, they used magnet handcuffs. Basically two metal armlets which were attached to the wrists of the person and then hold together by magnetic force.
These handcuffs maybe seemed like a simple hammer could break them but actually not even the most common combat phaser classes could scratch them.
After the usual, and obviously mandatory, part in which they both were forced onto their knees they waited for the even more necessary part in which an authority would greet them.
But that didn´t happen. Over long corridors that glowed slightly red due to a lot of alarm lights which spread their red light onto the usual whiteness that ruled the shiny white hallways, they were brought to their cell.
Dudley had always wondered why all hallways had the same white color on every ship of every fraction. But the answers he had get as he once asked the question were disillusioning. The best answer he had ever got was from Meternagel who simply said. "Because it looks more sci-fi." Well, he was kind of right with that.
After the guards had made sure that both of them really had no chance to flee, by putting some cuffs around their feet too, they left the room and locked the door tightly. Now they were alone, together. Just them and a weakly gleaming light on the ceiling which seemed to get lower the longer you look at it.
"Well… here we are now." The dog said.
"Yeah, no shit Sherlock." René said and stood up, what needed some time because of the footcuffs. "And… what now?"
"Uhm… the waiting game I guess…" Dudley meant and looked up to the ceiling. "Is… is that a visual effect or what is wrong with the light?"
"Who the hell cares?" René asked and hopped around.
"Is it getting low or is that… oh could you stop doing this ridiculous bunny hop?" Dudley moaned with an annoyed tone as he saw René hopping around like a mentally disturbed rabbit.
"There has to be a way out of here." The engineer huffed as he jumped around. "And I´ll be damned if I don´t find it!"
"Then be damned, just stop hopping around. You make my head hurt." Dudley leaned against the hard cold wall behind him. "This is actually way better than expected…"
"You kidding?" René looked utterly surprised at the dog and stopped hopping around.
"No, I thought we would sit in some kind of cells with force fields instead of walls and permanent torture."
"Usually it is like that…" René meant slowly. "Without the torture of course. We weren´t captured by an intelligence agency."
"So it´s okay to torture for secret agencies?" asked Dudley raising an eyebrow.
"This shit is frowned upon among all humans…"
"But the agencies are…" Dudley was about to finish the sentence but René interrupted him rolling his eyes.
"Duds, don´t start this debate!" He said and leaned against the wall where he let himself glide down to the ground. Sitting on the solid steel he pulled his legs closer to him. "Shit… have I mentioned that I hate waiting?"
"About 20,000 times since I know you. But hey, cheer up. Don´t you know that´s character building?" Despite of their desperate situation Dudley was able to force a smile.
"I hate you." Frowned René what amused Dudley so much that it made him smile even wider.
"Come on… we just have to kill some time, don´t worry."
"Waiting for an unfair trial which will sentence us to a life in a dirty Union prison." René tried not to sound too hopelessly as he summarized what would probably happen next.
"That´s just how it goes." The dog meant shrugging nonchalantly. "And if we are lucky, we can share a cell and became best buddies until death."
"Thanks, but no thanks." Meant René and looked at his friend like he had suggested becoming best buddies with benefits.
"Okay, if you don´t want." The dog yawned relaxed and stretched.
"How can you be so damn chilled?" René walked to Dudley and flopped down on the ground opposite him. "You realized where we are?!"
"Indeed but…" Dudley leaned his head back and looked to the ceiling. "…I don´t know, I´m kind of… not afraid of being here."
René leaned his head to the side looking like a confused chicken at Dudley´s smile for a brief moment.
"Oh…" he then meant and shook his head. "I understand…" René had read the smile in Dudley´s face. He knew this kind of smile, although he couldn´t say that he had other references than Dudley, but he had seen it often enough on the dogs face to interpret it.
"600 years, René." Dudley said as his voice started to tremble and the smile on his face faded. "Even if my homeworld exists, and I don´t know if I can believe these memories or not, everyone I knew would be dead by now."
"I knew Duds…" sighed the engineer. "But come on, cheer up. I mean your life isn´t that bad. You are captain of a ship you are famous... relatively famous… and you… you…"
"See?" Sighed the dog and beat the back of his head against the wall behind him. "I should have never took that flight… if these memories are even true."
"Now come on Duds…" René meant thinking hard with what he could cheer the dog up. "Think about the good things. The ship… fame…"
"You already mentioned that." Dudley squinted his eyes tiredly like someone who looked directly into the smoke of a fire.
"Yes… you had a little get together with Liz, didn´t you?"
Hearing that made the dog grin coyly and blush. "I…"
"Yeah, rumors spread fast in the fleet." Grinned René happier about hearing possible rumors than about the fact that he made it to light up Dudley´s mood a little bit. "Now tell me, how was it? And don´t come up with this 'A gentleman never tells' shit."
"Well okay…" Dudley opened his eyes and fixed his gaze on his friend "But I´ll stay discrete though."
"Spit it out." Meant René and started grinning getting ready for a nice load of gossip from the first hand.
"Well, here´s the short version. We came together, had a lot of fun for a short while and then realized that we both were too different. But we separated as friends." Dudley watched René's gaze going from the greedy grin to a disappointed frown.
"Come on!" He protested. "Details!"
"Nope." Dudley said and leaned his head against the wall again now with a slight, triumphing smile.
"Don´t be an asshole, tell me." The engineer laid one hand on Dudley´s shoulder and shook him gently. "It would kill time, come on!"
"No… but how about another story?"
"I don´t believe that you have something that is as good as…"
"I beat Isaac in a game of chess." Dudley meant cutting his friend short.
"Yeah, sure." René chuckled in a way that it sounded like a growl. "I don´t want to hear fantasy stories, I want to hear about your relationship with Liz!"
"I mean it." Dudley said emphatically and grinned insolently.
"Oh come on!" René meant but this time he really growled. "Isaac is maybe not the best chess player in the universe but he takes part in tournaments sometimes. No way you beat him. No freaking way."
"There was a way." Dudley said nonchalantly. "I cheated."
"Cheated? You cheated Isaac?" René rolled his eyes. Dudley saw that he still wasn´t believing him but he at least he had successfully guided his attention away from Liz and him.
"Yeah, I also learnt that this wasn´t a good idea. It was 100 years ago in his lab…"