e-Ghosts of Rogue Planet

Chapter 21

I was convinced that the robot in the chair was the controller, and if I could knock him out, the monster would not be able to do anything. I turned my cutting laser and aimed it at the robot driver. I had no idea where to aim it, but I noticed that the driver robot had a round object with what appeared to be a crystal window on its chest. I aimed my laser beam at the window and upped the power to maximum.

At first, it didn’t look like anything was happening, but the chest mounted object began to glow red. The monster machine was nearly on top of us when the robot driver exploded. The monster stopped dead.

“Wow!” James exclaimed, grinning from ear to ear. “That was awesome.”

I turned the laser back onto the crystal pipe and hoped that they wouldn’t send any more monsters because the battery in the laser cutter would only last so long.

“I think it’s working,” Marie said. She was watching it from the side.

“I wouldn’t get too close to that, if I were you,” I yelled.

She backed away, and it was just in time because the pipe fractured into thousands of shards of quartz.

“You did it!” Marie yelled. “The cable lines are cut.”

The lights in the nexus dome went dark.

“I think you killed the e-ghosts,” James said.

“We’ll only know for sure when we get back up to the ship,” I said. “Hopefully, COMA has gained control of the ship’s systems so that we can get the hell out of here.” I removed the cutting laser and packed it up for transport back to the shuttle.

We got aboard the shuttle and I activated the main control unit. “Hey, it still works.” I punched a button to set the launch in motion, and within a few minutes we were headed back to the main ship.

“I’m not getting an acknowledging signal,” I said. “COMA is still down. The good news is that the bay door is still open. I’ll back the shuttle into the hanger bay and we can close the bay door manually.”

“How are we going to get COMA to function?” James asked.

“I hate to say this, but we’ll have to do a reboot. It’s never been done, but I see no other way.”

“That sounds risky,” he said.

“It is, but risk taking is what we do out here in the unknown.”

I backed the shuttle into the bay and we climbed out in our space suits after we waited for a half hour while the air pressure in our suits decreased to the normal one atmosphere. That was hurrying the decompression routine, but I felt we could get away with it under the circumstances.

We floated back through the axis tunnel to the crew compartment, removed our space suits and immediately went to the command center. A small door next the command console held the main circuit breaker to COMA’s processing unit. I used a key that only I had to open the door and pull the circuit breaker to the off position. All the lights went out.

We used flashlights to see what we were doing.

“Okay, this is where we pray. I’m going to turn the main circuit back on.” I pulled the breaker to the on position and the lights flickered back on. After a unnerving delay, the main screen lit up with the cryptic message: Command Operations Module Artificial Intelligence is now on line, followed by COMA.”

I smiled. “That’s COMA for short.”

“Good day,” a more subdued computer voice said. “How may I be of assistance?”

“COMA, load the RP205 Mission into memory.”

We waited for ten minutes before receiving a conformation. “Good day, Ryan Taylor, and you too, Marie Gonzalez, James Vincent and Alisha Wilson.”

“Good day, COMA. I assume that you are prepared to fulfill your programming.”

“I am, Ryan. Why are you concerned about my willingness to perform this mission?”

“We need you to initiate the Return Protocol as soon as possible.”

“Engine ignition will commence in fourteen minutes and five seconds.”

I blew out a relieved breath. “I hope that this works. I don’t want to get stuck here.”

“I’m glad that you are along on this mission,” James said. “You certainly know how to work around very difficult situations.”

I smiled. “Marie and I had plenty of practice on our two previous missions, didn’t we, babe?”

Marie giggled. “You’re funny, Ryan. We are just lucky.”

“I prefer to consider us as being blessed.”

They laughed, but it was relived laughter.

We made it back and were treated to accolades and medals for our bravery under duress. Marie and I returned to our boring jobs of training new junior astronauts on how to work and survive in space. They listened intently to what we had to say because they realized that we were truly the most knowledgeable veteran space explorers in NASA.

By the way, James and Alisha were assigned to a project team with the mission of colonizing the rogue planet. In the meantime, NASA experts began working on a way to prevent the rogue planet and Earth from colliding or causing either one or both of the planets from moving out of orbit.

Thanks for reading this story. I plan to write a second sequel in the near future.