II
A large screen on the back wall of the room suddenly flickered to life. A loading bar appeared, along with a short jingle that announced he monitor's startup. The screen then went entirely blue. Against the blue backdrop, some white text scrolled by, then some slightly larger text appeared centre-screen. It read:
INTERCEPTED TRANSMISSION
Origin: T-CLASS FREIGHT SHIP :JMC XH-12
Computer Ident: XH-12 : 10TH GEN HOLOGRAMMATIC : 6000 SERIES
INITIATE MESSAGE PLAYBACK
A loud beep then sounded from the monitor, before an audio message played, which was laced with static. It said:
"This is an SOS distress call from the mining ship XH-12. The crew… only… ship's cat, which was safely sealed in the hold when the… the ship… mechanoid also survived, Series 4000 Unit K-2X4B-523P, but sustained major damage as… an airlock. Message End.
Additional - Please send help… food supply has run out, and the cat… quite hungry."
The monitor beeped again, and Archie's voice announced "End of Transmission". Then the screen turned itself off. For a few minutes, nobody said anything. We all simply sat in silence and tried to understand the message. With the static blocking the audio so much throughout the message, it was hard to know what had actually been said. Eventually, Nathan broke the silence.
"What's a JMC ship doing this far out in the first place?" He asked. It did seem strange for the XH-12 to be out here in deep space. After all, it wasn't built for extrasolar travel. Just planet-to-planet and planet-to-moon journeys, generally speaking.
"Not a clue." Alan replied. "That's what we need to find out. Could be adrift, or on an erroneous course."
"Didn't Archie say the ship's computer was a 10th Gen Hologrammatic?" I asked.
Cara nodded. "I see what you're getting at." She said. "10th Gen Holly's don't exactly have a brilliant navigational capacity. Didn't another JMC ship disappear off the radar a few years back?"
"Anyway…" Alan announced, once again cutting our conversation short. "The best way to find out what's happened is to send over a support team. Jones, Holmes and Smith. Tomorrow at noon we'll be close enough for you to take Syracusia 1 over there and go aboard."
Leaning back in my chair, I looked around the table and saw that Nathan and Cara were also slightly frustrated by this announcement.
"Why us?" Nathan asked, to which Cara and I agreed.
"It's simple really," Alan explained. "Goddard and Nicholson are engineers. They don't have clearance to leave the ship until we reach Earth or an evacuation order's issued. As for me, I'm the Officer Commanding, and it's my duty to keep watch over the ship, no matter what."
"Bullshit," I announced, knowing that Alan's excuse was a blatant lie. "You only want to stay aboard because you're too scared to leave the ship."
"How dare you speak to a superior officer like that!" He snapped in response. "I am staying here because I'm the ship's commander, and that's the end of it, alright?!" His face was red with anger. But out here in the depths of space, he knew he couldn't lift a finger against me. It was my word against his, after all, and I had the rest of the crew to back me up.
Getting to my feet, I headed for the door to go back to my quarters. Everyone else got up to do the same, but before reaching the door, Alan stopped us.
"Wait." He said, smacking his hand against the table to get our attention. "One more thing. Archie says the mail room's overflowing with crap sent for you lot. Isn't that right, Archie?"
"Indeed it is, sir." Archie replied. "Over the last thirty-two months, whilst you have all been in hypersleep, the ship has received 27 postage capsules: 13 from Royal Mail of Earth, 7 from Direct Martian Mail, 5 from Lunar Postage Services and 2 from the Ganymedian Postal Department. The contents have already been sorted and will be distributed to your respective quarters shortly."
"Thanks Archie." Said Alan. "You hear that, everyone? Better to look through your post now than wait 'till we get back to Earth. So that's what you can all do for the rest of the day."
I groaned on the inside as we all pushed through the door and back downstairs to our quarters. We'd been woken up 16 months ahead of schedule and all we had to look forward to was opening the post. Oh, the joy of long-haul. To make matters worse, tomorrow me, Nathan and Cara were going to board a ship that we'd never even heard of to find out why there was seemingly no-one aboard. Oh, and the ship's computer had gone haywire. It just got better and better.
Reaching my quarters, I stepped in and saw that the hypersleep pod had retracted into the wall and a full-size single bed had risen from the ground. The printer beside my desk had also produced a few things. I went over to it and pulled out a set of blank timecards, the next three month's calendars, and a duties roster for the next fortnight.
"Oh, that's just great." I sighed, reading the first column of the roster. "I'm cooking tonight." I sighed and slumped down on my desk chair. I opened the drawer and stuffed the timecards in, then left the calendar and the roster to hang up later. That was when I remembered the post. I placed my head face down on the desk and groaned.
"Archie, send in the post." I mumbled. "I might as well get it over and done with."
"Of course, sir." Archie replied. A small hatch in the ceiling above me opened, and a long tube slid down until it was about a foot above the desk. Suddenly, hundreds and hundreds of letters began to fly out from the tube, at such force that the breeze made me wince. Over the noise of the torrent of mail, I heard Archie continue.
"You have 914 letters from 237 different sources. There are also 14 parcels for you in the mail room." He announced. Then suddenly, the flow of letters abruptly stopped, and the tube retracted into the ceiling.
'I shouldn't have gone for long-haul', I thought to myself. 'Earth to Pluto, that's what I should have done. I could have had a six-month journey, no hypersleep necessary, and best of all, been within satellite range. That way, all I'd have to do was log-on to a computer and check my emails, rather than sifting through a metric ton of letters. But no. I had to go long-haul. I had to take 8 years in deep space, didn't I?' Leaning back in my chair, I began to wonder about the XH-12. This ship which Archie had only discovered yesterday, which tomorrow I'd be going aboard for no other reason than to find out why it was out here. I wondered whether the crew were all dead, or if they'd all evacuated. I wondered if the ship was derelict, and if it was, was there anything worth salvaging?
As I wondered, I looked up at the wall monitor, upon which Archie had graciously displayed a clock. It was 9 o'clock already. Lunch was at noon, and took about half an hour. The same went for tea, which was at five, but I had to be in the kitchen at four to start making it. That gave me… five and a half hours to start on my post. I decided I'd go up to the mail room and get my parcels first. The letters could wait for now. As I got up to leave my quarters, I stopped before the mirror and gazed into it. My face was grey, I had huge bags under my eyes, and apparently I had a faulty hypersleep pod, because despite shaving before we went under nearly three years ago, my face was covered in stubble. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I broke away from the mirror, and left my room to go upstairs for my parcels.