The Protogen Generation

To the limit Pt. 2

CONRAD'S P.O.V.

The adastra, as old and beat up as it was, still held true in its orbit around the planet we found ourselves floating by. After a couple orbits, it was made apparent that Aureon wasn't the planet outside our windows.

The rough shapes of land looked similar to those on Aureon, but the coastlines were completely different. There was a particularly large gulf within one of the landmasses, with its opening blocked by a large thin island.

The weirdest difference Kyle and I have noticed is whenever we passed over the dark side of the planet. The dark land was illuminated, almost completely. Aureon didn't have such widespread city lighting at night, there just weren't that many protogens. Its population was only slightly above 100,000. The planet we were orbiting looked like it could have had a population of millions, If not billions.

Besides mapping the planet, Kyle and I were busy with locating the EX-5, although with little success.

"Is the receiver set to the distress frequency?" Kyle asked me, "It shouldn't be too hard to pick up their transponder."

I continued to mess around with the radio, "The emergency transponders weren't designed to be heard from orbit." I said, "And I don't think descending down into the atmosphere is a great idea."

"I see your point," Kyle said, folding his arms. "We risk alerting whoever lives down there of our presence."

And we couldn't possibly know if the planet's inhabitants would take kindly to our arrival. They might try to kill us, or they might try to be our friends. Maybe even both.

Who knows what might have happened to the EX-5. What if they were taken prisoner? Or worse, killed.

This concern was heavy in my mind as I searched endlessly scanning the planet for the lost spacecraft.

"What if they didn't land?" Asked Kyle, who had now taken off the top of his flight suit and was wearing Michael's hoodie instead.

"Maybe..? I doubt they would have lasted a week in orbit without hearing from anybody." I replied.

"It's worth a shot." Kyle said, pointing at the computer console in front of me.

"I guess so." I said. The chances of us finding something in our orbit wasn't very high, but at least trying wouldn't have been the worst idea.

I pressed a couple buttons on my console, which began scanning our orbit path. Initially, garbled static was all I heard. This process of changing the radio frequency, scanning, and changing the frequency again continued for well over 20 minutes without anything notable happening.

As I turned the radio dial for what felt like the 500th time, the radio static turned into intelligible speech.

"kshhhhhhhh-ton this is the ISS, We are beginning the power cycle of the node 3 thermal system as planned."

I froze. Kyle, who had been listening, stopped moving as well.

"Did you just... find something?" He asked carefully. Before I could respond, the radio answered for me.

"Copy, ISS. Continue with the power cycle. Update us on any irregularities."

"Understood Houston, cycling node 3, standby."

Kyle and I watched on in silent confusion. "That's not the EX-5! Where is this coming from!"

Frantically, I checked to find its origin. According to the computer, the broadcast was coming from below us, on a nearly perpendicular orbit.

As we neared closer to the signal's origin, it became clear where it was from. Scans showed a large structure, over 100 meters in length. Thankfully we were well out of the way, and didn't risk any collision with it. (300ft)