P R O M I N E N C E
There are
nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.
-George Carlin
PART
1
WELCOME
TO PROMINENCE
“This will only hurt for a minute,” states
Dr. June, as she prepares the IV needle. The luminescent blue liquid inside the
glass vial swirls around as if alive, but I take no notice; I have to receive a
dose of it anyways.
The room is fairly spacious; a hexagonal
shape, with a raised platform in the middle. The space is dark and the blue
strips of light on the walls and ceiling only give off a bit of an
illumination. The platform is where Dr. June and I are, I in the medical chair,
and her next to me. As she gives me the injection, I can feel the humming of
the starship as it whisks through the vacuum of space.
The needle stings for only a brief second,
but I shrug it off as Dr. June allows me to rise. I stand up and pull the small
suction cup sensors from my arms.
“Looks like you’re good to go. Any
questions before we enter the atmosphere?” She is young; probably in her
twenties and new to the operations.
“Um…no June, that’ll be it for now.
Thanks,” I respond, grabbing my sleek black helmet and preparing to exit the
room.
“Mr. Romulus, you will call me: DR. JUNE,”
she instructs coldly, cleaning up her medical supplies and putting them in
their metal cases next to the platform. I raise my eyebrows.
“Oh, feisty, are we?” I ask.
“No, just intelligent. You should try it
sometime.”
I just roll my eyes and turn towards the
light-outlined door on one side of the room. She takes no notice of my leaving.
“John, there you are, we’ve been waiting.”
The Commander greets me quickly, his sleek
black almond-shaped helmet hiding his face. He wears a dark combat suit, with
armor adding even more bulk to his limbs and chest, and in his hand is a metal
rod. I can only hear him over the sound of the HeliCraft preparing to take off
through my own helmet’s earpiece.
The hangar is massive; high ceilings and
balconies rising way above the rest of the spaceship. On either side of me and
the HeliCraft are openings into space, guarded by transparent shields. In a few
minutes, I will be entering the atmosphere of a planet new to mankind.
“Well, Dr. June was being a bit of a
slowpoke. You know those newbies,” I respond, making sure that my armor is
secured into its place. “Why do we even need the combat gear?”
“John, I don’t know when you are going to
start listening at the briefings. It’s obvious, isn’t it? A new planet means
new wildlife, and new wildlife could mean new threats.”
The HeliCraft’s rotors pick up speed, and a
blast door in the side of it opens, revealing a small seating area and a few
other men in identical armor.
“C’mon, John, we’ve got a planet to
colonize,” says the Commander, and he guides me into the HeliCraft, which only
has room for a cockpit and about six people to sit in the passenger area. It is
painted with dark green camouflage, plus the golden insignia that marks our
affiliation.
I climb up quickly into the vehicle,
sitting down in a vacant seat and using the two metal handlebars next to me to
hold myself down. The other men in the craft don’t even glance at me. The
Commander doesn’t join; instead, he swings the blast door shut and seals us
inside the HeliCraft, which almost immediately lifts off the hangar floor and
hovers out into the vacuum of space. I can hear the artificial gravity activate
itself.
It’s pitch black in the passenger area. I
just sit and hang on for dear life as a wave of nausea falls over me; I hate
flying. The others make no sound, either.
Only a few moments pass, until we feel the
heat build and the flight begin to bounce. The HeliCraft rattles as we enter
the atmosphere.
Then the shaking stops. I look around and
listen to the new, soft hum of the vehicle. The sounds of someone moving around
make me curious, and I try to follow the sounds of footsteps, leading straight
to the blast door to my right.
The door opens, and glowing orange light
enters the chamber. I hold my arm up to block the sun’s magnificent rays, and I
can almost taste the winds of the great and mighty ocean.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” says one of the
other men into his communication link, “Welcome to Prominence.”
I let the sun embrace me and I stand up,
weaving over to stand next to the man that opened the door. And then the glory
of the planet becomes clear to me.
The ocean is spectacular and stunning, its
mighty waves crashing over each other as if locked in battle. The water is a
glittering golden hue, and the light from the two suns above shimmers on the
surface. I hold on in awe, letting the rapid sea winds soar around me. Just a
few meters away, up in the cockpit of the HeliCraft, I can make out one of the
pilots as he turns and gives me a thumbs-up.
“It’s breathtaking,” states the man next to
me. He wears armor identical to mine, and his voice is strong and mature; probably
just a few years younger than me. “We’ve come so far, and this is worth it.”
“I agree,” I respond, turning to face him,
“It IS breathtaking.”
He
nods.
“Name’s Shawn. Shawn Cassander,” he says,
kindly, looking out over the sea.
“I’m John Romulus,” I say, reaching out to
shake his hand.
He
returns the gesture. “Welcome to Prominence.”
As the winds threatens to throw me out of
the HeliCraft, I squint into the distance, and start to take notice of
something. It looks like a tower, rising out of the ocean, a spire like that on
top of a skyscraper.
“I SEE IT!” exclaims Shawn, and the others
in the chamber snap to life, some standing to join us. In the distance,
becoming clearer now, are two stone spires, rock towers that rise high above
the waves, which crash onto the cliff faces and make thunderous sounds. I can
feel my jaw drop; the sight is breathtaking.
We ride parallel to the nearby continent
shore, which, like the two spires, is made of stone and is cut off at a long
cliff face. The walls of rock are too high to see what is past them, but my
eyes are instead fixed on trying to make out the outpost at which we have been
stationed.
Then it comes into view. Nestled in between
the two adjacent spires is a round structure, held neatly in place. It doesn’t
look like much; only three levels. But as we near the outpost, it seems to grow
in size.
“It’s a feat of human architecture,”
comments another person in the chamber, with a voice of a female, “I read about
it somewhere.”
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WELCOME TO PROMINENCE!”
says the pilot over the speakers in the passenger area. We cheer for a brief
second. “GET READY TO LAND!”
We all rush back to our seats, closing the
blast door and once again sealing ourselves in darkness. The ride gets bumpy,
as we lock into landing mode. I just sit, tense, in my seat, waiting for the
moment when I will be able to walk out onto solid ground after three weeks of
traveling through space on the Tiberius.
My heart races at the thought of what my new laboratory on Prominence will be
like; new equipment, a new head scientist, new technology. It’s time to settle
in for a while.
Then the bumpiness stops, and the rotors slow
to a halt. The nausea rushes away from me and I open my eyes. We have arrived
on a new planet.
A fierce ray of golden sunlight bursts into
the passenger area as the blast door swings open again. I follow Shawn and the
others out onto the solid floors of the outpost, almost dizzy with a mixture of
excitement and anxiety.
What I see is beautiful in a strange way.
The top of the outpost is made of a tan-colored metal, and is divided into five
sections that are connected by thin bridges. I can see into the level beneath
me, which is shaded with dark blue light. The tops of the two spires cast a thick
shadow over the structure, and on their tops are two watchtowers. The outpost
itself is much larger than I would have expected, probably about 70 or 80 feet
in diameter. Troops in small squads of six march around the perimeter, looking
out over the sea. Judging by the smaller amount of people out on the upper
deck, it is the morning.
The other new arrivals and I all line up
just outside of the HeliCraft, standing at attention. We have landed in the
center section of the top of the outpost. It occurs to me that now, because we
are on the planet, we can take our helmets off. I shake my head to let my hair
loose a bit and then hold my helmet under my arm. The others follow my lead,
and I can finally get a look at them.
Shawn, next to me, is a redhead with thick
hair and lots of freckles all over his face. His eyes are a piercing green
color. He is young, probably in his mid-twenties. Next to him is the girl,
around his age. Her hair is short and done in an unkempt sort of pixie cut, a
dark brown hue. Her eyes are an electric blue. Next to her is another male, in
his thirties. He has a gruff look on his face and a few scars over his left
eye. His goatee beard is oddly thicker than his jarhead haircut. He is
practically bumping shoulders with a woman his age, whose hair is already
silver, despite her age, and whose eyes are just as gray as her bouffant. And
finally, on the far end, there is a man with a jet-black crew cut, a long chin,
wide black sunglasses, and a communication headset. His arms are crossed in a
mysterious way.
We are called to attention by the outpost’s
commander. He walks up to us, in full armor and with helmet on, slowly. We all
can almost sense the tangible power coursing through the air as he nears us.
Commander Lynch: the most respected and powerful person to explore the Milky Way Galaxy.
The commander removes his helmet, but then
I realize: she’s not a man.
“Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Commander
Kassandra Lynch, spelled with a ‘K.’ You are to address as nothing but
‘Commander,’ do you understand?”
“SIR, YES—”
“AHEM.”
“MAM, YES MAM!”
“Better! Ladies and gentlemen, you are here
for one reason only: to do whatever research you do down there on the science
deck. So don’t go around pretending you’re a soldier; YOU AREN’T.”
We nod ascent. Kassandra is tall and thin,
with an aged but menacing face and an unnaturally blonde hairstyle that is
swept to two sides and soft-looking, almost shaggy in appearance. Her lips are
curled into a sneer.
“Alright, let me get the roster,” she says,
pulling a touch screen panel out of her utility combat belt. It comes to life
and she uses her finger to scroll down and call out our names.
“Jack Baines?”
“Here,” responds the mysterious-looking man
with the headset. His voice is deep and smooth.
“Shawn Cassander?”
“Here.”
“Maura LaRosche?”
The older woman with the gray hair raises
her hand. “Present,” she says.
“Marthus Morain?”
The gruff-looking man, his voice deep and
somber: “Here.”
“Aubree Morgan?”
“Here,” pipes the pixie-cut girl. She has a
look on her face not unlike that of Commander Lynch.
“And…finally…John Romulo?”
“Um…that’s John Romul-US—”
“I don’t care. Are you here or not?”
Taken aback, I look at the others. They
don’t even look at me.
“Yes.”
“Good, Romulo, that’s how you talk to a
commander.” She sticks the device back into her belt. I roll my eyes, but just
slightly, so that Lynch can’t see.
“Alright, Baines, Cassander, LaRosche,
Morain, Morgan, and Romulo: it’s time to meet your new head scientist.”
------
Continued.....
c. Taylor Ward 2013. All rights reserved.
