CH4
Kate rubbed her hands together. "Now for the fun part. … How do we get in past the storms without getting ripped to shreds." Kate was exaggerating, but it was fun to see Lanie squirm.
It was now 3 days later:
Kate used those 3 days to observe how the storms interacted with whatever barrier was out there that kept them out. Part of what she was looking for was if it kept the storms out, would it keep them out too. It was a barrier of some kind after all.
Kate also spent part of the time with Lanie making sure everything was tied down or in someway held in place. It was likely to be a bumpy ride.
Kate also spent part of the time looking over all the systems that she tagged as being a priority.
Then two hours before they started to move towards the barrier Kate went over all the emegency procedures if they needed to use them.
How to seal a breach in the hull, where the fire extinguishers were located, and to run for the shuttle if anything major happened. That shuttle was going to be their life pod if they had to.
In preparation for that case, they moved some of their blood supply into the shuttle along with some of their clothes.
"Ready?" Kate asks as she herself does what Lanie is doing. Tightening their restraints in anticipation of a bumpy ride.
Kate had decided on a certain area to try and make her run through. The problem was that the storms were unpredictable. It might be clear when she decided to go through, only to find out the storm had expanded just as she reached that spot.
"Applying thrust." Kate calls out.
Everything was fine, the hole she had chosen was actually getting a little bigger, so she increased speed. Kate wanted to get there before it closed on them.
"Almost, …. Almost." Kate knew they just needed a few more seconds, and then everything went straight into the toilet.
There was a sudden large movement of the ship. "We've been hit. … We've got at least one hull breach in the cargo/storage area." Kate calls out, noticing that the ship suddenly jerks again. "Make that 2 or more now."
Lanie undoes her restraints and jumps up and runs for the cargo/storage hold, grabbing one of the sealant kits along the way.
Only a few minutes later Lanie had all three locations sealed with a temporary patch and a sealant to hold the patch in place.
"How bad?" Kate asks noticing Lanie come back.
"Two were little holes, however the third looked more like a rip." Lanie tells her.
Kate instantly starts cursing internally. That rip, unless repaired, was only going to get bigger. It meant she was going on a spacewalk, however first things first. Where were they and was it worth it?
"We'll deal with the holes again later, for now let's see what we've got." Kate starts scanning the system or what she hopes is a system.
"There is a sun in the center; I'm seeing 4 gas giants, one of which has large rings around it.
Two of the gas giants are huge and both have a number of natural satellites around them.
The next four look like rocks, two of the four look like they are in the sweet zone, so maybe we will get lucky." Kate kept scanning and looking at her screens.
"Ooooo this is interesting." Kate is mostly talking to herself and starts working to bring what she had found up on one of the large screens.
Up on the screen comes a camera angle of watching a group of 2 different colored groups on a green field filled with white stripes that had large numbers on them, with dashes of short lines on each side.
A large group on one color was on one side with another large group of color on the other. Then Kate found the audio for what they are seeing.
"Who's Steve Mariucci, Steve Young, Garrison Hearst, Terrell Owens, Jerry Rice?" Lanie asks as she is listening.
Kate was nodding her head. "And who's Dennis Erickson, Warren Moon, Joey Galloway, and Rickey Watters?"
"They both seem to want that little brown thing as they try to go from one side to the other with it while the other color tries to stop them." Kate has noticed.
"Looks like they only get 3 tries at it before they give the ball(?) to the other color." Lanie has noticed, getting Kate to nod her head.
"This and a lot of other signals are coming from the third planet in the system." Kate points out.
"Well at least they look like us, but why are they speaking a language we know? This place is isolated, how is that possible?" Lanie was confused.
Kate and Lanie watch for a while while Kate pilots them closer to the third planet in the system.
"They seem to be going through a lot of players. This Steve Young guy and others were barely out there at all." Lanie points out.
"The people talking are calling it a pre-season game. Something about needing to look at all the new guys to determine if they want to keep them." Kate points out.
Kate continues to pilot them closer and closer. "The third planet has a natural satellite that orbits it. One side seems to always face the planet while the other is always in darkness.
I'm thinking of landing on it somewhere on the dark side so we can study the planet and then decide what to do." Kate offers. "Besides we need to land someplace so I can go outside and repair the damage."
Kate and Lanie spent the next 3 weeks studying their new home, trying to learn what they could from a distance. A lot of it was watching what was called TV.
Will and Grace, Charmed, Dawson's Creek, Hornblower, Price is Right, Toon Disney, Pre-season football game between the San Francisco 49ers and Seattle Seahawks, Who's Line is it Anyway, That 70's Show, Babylon 5, Bob the Builder, Don't try this at Home, Alias Smith and Jones, Xena: Warrior Princess.
Kate had tested her suit before sealing it up and going outside, walking the surface of the moon and the skin of their ship repairing the holes from the outside as well as other damage.
"What do you think?" Kate asks Lanie as they sit in the lounge watching an episode of Babylon 5.
"This planet is confusing." Lanie didn't understand this place.
"They don't have space travel, the near and far orbit is filled with debris from launches out into space. 2,465 artificial satellites along with thousands of pieces of junk." Kate points out.
"Countless countries each with their own language. What they call news casts occasionally gives reference to wars." Lanie adds.
"They are completely protected from the effects of Tormented Space, and yet they don't ever mention its existence. And since they don't have space travel, they certainly didn't create the barrier." Kate points out.
"There is no mention of our kind, so nothing has changed." Lanie is dejected. Just once she would like to find someone who wasn't afraid of them, being hunted their whole lives was tiring.
"We can't stay out here forever, so where do we live? It looks like we need ID's, money and countless other things." Kate offers.
"We need to be able to speak their language, which seems to limit us a little." Lanie points out.
"If we want to blend in and not get noticed, we need a big city. The bigger the better maybe." Kate offers.
"We need blood, so hospitals and natives. The bigger the city there is likely to be a greater difference between those that have and those that don't." Lanie points out. Knowing that for now, they fell into the "have not" group.
"What little we know it sounds like we only have two choices. Someplace called London and one called New York. … London looks to be on an island, so leaving it would prove to be more difficult. New York sounds like it is denser making living there more tight quarters." Kate offers.
"We don't have to stay there no matter which one we pick and how do we get there?" Lanie offers.
"The ship is too big to hide so I think we leave it here and take the shuttle. It weighs less so we could land on a roof somewhere. We can sleep in the shuttle if we need to for a short time." Kate offers.
"We don't have much refrigeration on the shuttle." Lanie points out. Meaning they were going to have to bite people to get the blood they need. It also meant they would need to be very careful, until they got better established.
"We can get the money we need off the people we bite, but to stop that means we need jobs, and for that we need ID's." Kate points out trying to follow her parent's teachings. They may be vampires but they are not killers. They were different from several of their kind.
"New York?" Lanie asks, liking it over London due to London being on an island.
Kate started nodding her head. "New York. … You load the shuttle while I shut down the ship for its long sleep. We may need it someday." Kate offers.
"I'll only take what blood we can carry, the rest will need to stay here. Do we use the scanner first before we leave?" Lanie wondered how Kate wanted to do this.
Kate scrunched up her face. "We drink only when we need to, which will likely be more often than we have been for the last few months." Kate shook her head. "We drink before we leave. That way we will have time once we are there before we have to again. Save the bags as long as we can." Kate offers her opinion.
Suddenly Lanie looked sad. "Think your parents will find us?"
The topic now made Kate sad and wishing her parents were here. She wasn't ready to grow up and be out on her own. They weren't mean and fixated on killed anyone. Neither had her parents, and yet they were being hunted to extinction, simply because they need blood to live.
"I hope so, they are better at this than I am. But we are soooo lost in Tormented Space. … I don't know Lanie, I honestly don't know." Kate wiped away a tear that escaped. She had to be strong and grow up. They were about to go down to a strange planet they knew very little about to live. They might never actually leave it again, dead or alive.
Kate decided on the same method she used to approach the planet with the hospital, drop like a stone until they were really low in the atmosphere before leveling out.
Kate chose to drop over the ocean and the approach nice and low, just above wave height. "WOW!" Kate was looking at her screens.
That got Lanie's attention. "What?"
"They may not have space travel, but their skies are full of aircraft. … What a mess." Kate could see air craft all over the place. There did however seem to be a corridor established between continents.
"Great! … This New York seems to be a hub for their aircraft. They've even got them going in circles over it." Kate moaned.
"Is London any better?" Lanie offers, since London was on their list.
Kate however shakes her head. "The traffic between the two is thick. We're going to just have to come in nice and low to avoid it all. I'm picking up a lot of voice communication between them and someone.
Sounds like orders on where to fly to and what elevation to be at. I think if we stay as low as possible we'll stay off their system and not have them send someone out to ID us, visually." Kate offers.
"Ok, here goes, better hang onto something, it's going to get bumpy." Kate warns Lanie, who already knew what to expect from last time.
Just like last time they were bounced around in their seats even though they had strapped themselves in tight.
Kate leveled out at 1,000 feet quickly and then gradually took them down to just above the water and made her way towards the city. It was all lit up, except they could only see it on Kate's screens.
"It looks pretty, lots of tall buildings." Lanie liked that part at least. There was lots of water near it too.
Kate needed some elevation as soon as she crossed over into land. It may be dark out, but this city was still very much active. People and cars were everywhere. Watching the news casts, they had worked out that all the yellow cars were taxi's that you had to pay to use.
They both decided they would just walk, since it wasn't tiring in any way. "We need someplace to land, so we can get out and explore." Kate points out.
"Most of these buildings look old, some are like really old. How much do we weigh again?" Lanie wasn't seeing anything on Kate's two main screens that looked useful.
Kate knew she was right; they weighed too much to land on a lot of these buildings. "Let's keep looking, keep your eyes out for something newer looking with enough roof space."
They couldn't afford to just keep cruising around the city just above the top of some of the buildings, someone was bound to spot them and raise the alarm.
"How about there?" Lanie leans over Kate to point. "The building looks newer and it's only 5 stories tall making the drop down to the street easy. Granted there are taller buildings a little near it that can look down on us." Lanie liked it and it looked like a lot of the flat roofs in the area had something on stilts above it, whatever they were.
"Ok, open your door and look out, if it looks like the roof is about to give way, yell." If the roof did collapse and take them with it, it would likely damage their shuttle and they really would be stranded.
Kate was standing with Lanie at the open door. "Shall we go take a look around at our new home?" Kate asks smiling since neither of them have a choice.
Together they are standing at the edge of the building looking down to make sure there is no one close and no obstacles in the way, and then take a step over the side. Falling feet first to land on their feet bending their knees a little as they do.
Stepping out onto the street, looking around to make sure they know this building and how to get back here.
There is a little street traffic and only a small amount of foot traffic. Kate motions a direction to start walking since it doesn't matter. Later they will take a different direction and see what that way is next time.
It turned out their starting point was the more quiet area, since they were soon saw a lot of people on the streets up ahead. Since they were not quite ready for that, they elected to make a turn and go someplace quieter.
Since it was easier to not get lost by just going straight after turning left, they soon found themselves crossing a bridge. It was long with two big columns made out of stone with cables spanning the distance between them and still more cables vertically from those down to the roadway. It looked really old and needed repairs.
A couple of hours later they were a lot deeper into that area of the city. It was also a lot quieter with fewer cars and no people out on the sidewalks. It was late, so they both attributed part of it to that.
Kate and Lanie knew they were there but didn't think anything about till one of them spoke. "You two looking for a party?" He was smiling, but it was a fake smile since it didn't reach his eyes.
"Just exploring, thanks." Kate answered and worked at continuing to walk, however him and one of his friends were in the way and crowding her.
"Exploring is boring, we have just what you need for a really good party." He was in Kate's face while two of his friends crowded in behind them.
"Not interested, thanks." Kate responds.
"It wasn't an invitation." His smile grows as he grabs Kate from the front while one of his friends does the same from behind. With his other two friends doing the same to Lanie.
Kate takes a hold of the guy in front of her and spins in place taking him with her, breaking the hold of the guy behind her and throws him into the brick building next to them.
Kate could hear the sound of him impacting the bricks, hearing several bricks breaking. Not hearing two of his ribs breaking along with his right shoulder and right arm. Nor did she pay any attention to his broken ribs puncturing his right lung.
Lanie grabbed the guy in front of her and promptly broke his right arm and then kicked her foot into his right kneecap, breaking it and dropping him like a stone.
The guy behind Kate tried wrapping his arm around Kate's neck from behind. Kate simply lifted his arm up and bit his arm and started drinking.
Lanie spun in place and grabbed the arm of the guy behind her and bit him and started drinking.
Kate and Lanie stopped after they were sure they were both unconscious and then let them drop.
Kate stepped over to the guy she threw up against the building and picked him up, and noticed that he was bleeding out his mouth. Kate then bit him too and started drinking.
Lanie bent over to the guy lying on the ground who by now looked scared for his life and no longer interested in a party. Lanie picked him up easily and bit him too and started drinking.
Kate and Lanie then started searching both of them. Only one of them had a wallet and two of them had loose amounts of paper on them. They were green with a number and a portrait in the center.
They also found little white bags that had a white powder in them.
Two of them also had what looked like a weapons on them. Kate and Lanie quickly debated what to take with them and what to leave behind. Since they didn't really know what any of it was, they took all of it and work out what it was later.
Looking around and not seeing anyone, Kate picked up the first guy and jumped up onto the roof of the lowest height building in the area and dropped him there, watching Lanie do the same for another.
Shortly they had all four up on the roof and were back down on the ground and started walking back to their shuttle.
"Any idea what we've got?" Kate asks as they are walking back across the bridge.
"The powder in the bags is likely a drug of some kind. If they are selling it, that would make the green paper money." Lanie speculates. "What's in the small leather case?"
Kate pulls out the wallet. "What is likely money." Kate stuffs it into her pocket with the rest of it. "I don't know what these are." Kate held up five little pieces of plastic. "They have numbers on one side and a black stripe on the back. The names on each are different." Kate tosses them one at a time over the side of the bridge.
They both are easily aware of the countless cars passing over the bridge going both direction even this late into the day.
Then Kate pulls out another small card made of plastic. This one had a picture of the guy she threw up against the building. "It says drivers license. Date of birth, color of eyes, along with a set of numbers and other words. Something called Bronx, NY." Kate explains.
There were also some smaller cards made out of paper, that all had what looked like names on them with numbers and the same Bronx, NY.