The Whorls of Jupiter

Chapter 16 The Womb

August 6th 2521

Oddie's head lolled about and he slowly blinked. The bridge of the Prominent Rage was illuminated only by emergency lighting but was otherwise still. It's too still. As a crewman of a Jovian ship you learned to always feel the low vibrations of an airborne ship, the slight changes in angles as the winds shift, the low thrum of the maneuvering thrusters. Oddie listened and there was nothing. The Rage was as silent as a tomb. There's no noise either. Oddie unbuckled himself and looked around. There was no sign of the captain. The window on the bridge was completely black. Oddie squinted and realized that the window was covered by recessed armored plating. Instinctively he keyed the controls to open it to see where he was but there was no response. Just a lone readout: Error. Please check sensors. Error. Please activate power.

Oddie stepped through the halls of the Prominent Rage uncertain of what to do. The ship was derelict and powered down. There was no sign of La Trois. Instinctively he went to the armory slowly using the manual controls to open the blast doors at each checkpoint. He took a pistol and slid a flashlight attachment on the barrel and took two additional flashlights that he stowed in an ammo pouch. He also took one of Keun's firefly grenades. Doublechecking his seals he made his way for an exit. Oddie stood in the airlock terrified and keyed the door open. The air hissed away and he stepped outside into a pitch black void.

Outside he could hear thunder rumbling in the distance but saw nothing. He drew his pistol and activated the halogen light and watched as it cast a long beam across the empty space. The air seemed transparent enough. He could illuminate the railings of the ship and he stepped outside. There was no wind, no air resistance, no movement. He pointed the light down and it reflected outwards, illuminating hundreds of meters. The ground was a dull shiny grey. What the fuck... He took one of the miniature flashlights and activated it, tossing it to the ground below when he heard a splash. The light vanished instantly. Little silver ripples emanated from the splash.

"Having fun Oddie?" La Trois asked.

Oddie screamed and turned to find the captain watching him from atop the Rage.

"What the fuck?!"

La Trois's white cataracts glowed eerily in the darkness but he didn't answer.

"Where are we?!"

"My ancestral home Oddie. Where we all began. The Womb."

"Is this the core of the planet?!"

"That is what you'd call it, yes. I find it difficult to refer to it in such a vulgar way however."

Oddie paused and tried to do the math in his head and shook his head in frustration. He barely remembered how to add fractions but understood the world enough to know they all should've been squished out of existence. "How the hell are we alive?!"

La Trois snapped his fingers and the black sky folded into an array of massive manta rays that drifted away, illuminated by countless flashes of lightning. Oddie spotted a massive looming dark sphere obscured on the horizon. As the lightning flashed across the sky, the obsidian sphere's details remained obscure and lightning behind it gave it an eclipse like appearance. Oddie trembled as the largest manta ray with a two pronged head flew towards him and swooped over, landing behind the Prominent Rage and curling up, floating in the metallic sea. "We don't have a name for them in your tongue, but their bodies create spheres of influence that allow for life to exist where it normally wouldn't."

The open sky flashed continuously so rapidly Oddie felt as if he were standing in a brightly overcast day on earth. "How could we not have known about this?"

"No living human has ever descended past the habitable zone and lived. Those creatures have little reason to ever venture into the habitable zone." La Trois leapt down near Oddie and Oddie trained his gun on him.