One Man's Choice
Expedition Epsilon Part 2 - Sometimes it all boils down to one decision
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The Chosen Path — “Perspective: Daniel, present”
Expedition Epsilon
Part 1: One Man’s Choice
Onboarding
“Welcome to The Evolution, humanity's fresh start.” SWAI-H, the hospitality model, echoed through the giant room in a sweet, calming voice. A rather large hologram of a woman that resembled flight attendants from a decade long past, the 1950’s, stood in the middle of a large room – it served as SWAI-H’s avatar. The slightly transparent woman gestured towards a long hallway where a group of people were waiting. “If you are a new arrival please head down the main hallway to start the onboarding process. If you are lost, please direct yourself to the map at the console located right here next to me so we can get you on your way.”
“She’s pretty,” Olivia said while riding on Flanagan’s shoulders, “Can we have one that looks like mommy?” Flanagan’s head bowed a bit after she said that, Olivia noticed. She knew her mom was gone, but she didn’t know how to process it at her age.
“Ye, that may be possible little wean,” Flanagan replied in his thick Irish accent. He felt a stinging feeling in his heart for the family, similar but much less so than the feeling he had when he lost his wife to a hyper aggressive cancer that attacked her pancreas and brain. They could have saved her with the advanced medical capabilities at their disposal, but by the time it was found it was already deep within her brain. They offered the chance of surgery with a staggeringly low survival rate of 8%, but she opted to wait out the cancer to spend 5 more months with him. Those were the hardest months of his life – possibly harder than the months following her death. He wouldn’t wish that pain on his worst enemy.
“Hey, mister!” The young boy, Alex, ran up to Flanagan and tugged on his shirt. “My dads still back there, he’s not following you.”
Flanagan looked back to where they had come from and saw Daniel sitting up against the wall sobbing into his knees. He had been there, in that exact same position, many times.
“What’s wrong with daddy?” Olivia asked Alex, “Is it because mommy isn’t here?”
Alex just looked at her with tears welling up in the corner of his eyes. She may not have been old enough to process what just happened, but he sure was. Before there was a commotion Flanagan knew that he had to act.
“Houl yur whisht, listen up kids,” Flanagan said in a matter-of-fact tone, “I’m gonna cheer yer daddy up. Why don’tya go play with the funny lady? Just click the buttons on the console next to’er. If anyone comes up to ye and tells ye to stop, just tell ‘em the Seekers gave ye permission. Got it?”
Alex nodded. Flanagan lowered Olivia down to her brother and they both ran off to play with the “funny lady”. He wasn’t fooling Alex, it was written all over his face. He could tell though that he was trying to distract his sister from the trauma that he was going through – what a good big brother does.
Daniel’s ears were still ringing from the gunshots that saved their lives and concurrently crushed his world. The ringing was amplified by dissociating from himself and focusing heavily on the noise. He didn’t hear Flanagan approach, but he felt the tap on his knee. When he looked up from his drenched denim pants he saw Flanagan sitting next to him and the ringing lessened.
“Sorry, ye know, Helios is right – It won’t get easier. Not for yu, or ye kids.” Flanagan started in, rather pessimistically. “Ye know what does change though? Yer strength. One day at a time ye will start to recova yurself and yer ability ta move on.”
“What If I can’t?” Daniel managed between sobs.
“Not an option, mate.” Flanagan sighed, “Look’a yer kids over there, tey need ya. More importantleh ye need yourself. I would know, I lost mo anam cura.”
“You’re what?” Daniel perked up trying to dissect the odd words.
“Meh love.” Flanagan said with a deep sorrow in his eyes. “Meh wife, mate.”
Daniel’s full attention was on the depressed Irishman now. He wanted to ask, but he wasn’t sure if it would offend Flanagan or upset him to the point of not wanting to talk anymore. He decided he had nothing left to lose. “How’d you lose her?”
“Aye, that’s teh question mate. Teh same as everyone else; it was just’er time to go.” Flanagan looked him in the eyes, “It doesn’t matter how they go, in the end we all die. What matters is teh time ye spent with’er and how it was spent. If ye really must know, she had cancer. They found it too late’n it was deep in’er brain. Mo anam cura chose ta spend her remaining time with meh, instead’a goin’ under teh knife.”
“I’m sorry, that must have been awfully hard.”
“Aye, mate. Just count yerself lucky that ye didn’t know she was going to die. That was harder’en anyting.” Flanagan took a deep breath before patting Daniels knee, “Ting’s will get easier mate, just don’t check out on yerself or yer kids before they do, eh?”
“I won’t. Thanks for tal–” Daniel was interrupted by a strange commotion.
“Welcome to the Evo–. Thank you for selecting the map, this is whe–. Cafeteria is just dow–. Please select a desti–. Please sele–. Pleas–. Pleas–.” SWAI-H’s basic dialogue options could not keep up with the speed at which the children were pressing the buttons on the console. They were laughing at the holographic woman that was twitching from the fast paced change in animations.
Flanagan looked over with a smirk on his face, “Little shitehawks.” He looked at Daniel, who had a small grin on his face from watching his children laugh. “That’s what ye live for mate. When teh world is shite, you keep on goin’ for them.”
“I will always keep going for them.” He told Flanagan as he stood and offered him a hand up. He took Daniel's hand and before he could be hoisted up SWAI-H’s hologram looked directly at Daniel and spoke to him.
“Daniel Grayson and family, please report to the bridge.” The flight attendant avatar told him in a cold voice that was void of the sweet tone her previous pre-programmed voices had. She also pulled up the map for him, “The bridge is located here, however, I see that you are being guided by Specialist Kyle Flanagan. He should be able to show you the way.”
“Aye, I know teh way. Grab teh little shitehawks and let’s leg it.” Flanagan told him, straightening back into his normal demeanor
Daniel told his kids to follow Flanagan and they both ran over; Alex pulled on his dad’s arm until he agreed to hold his hand and Olivia tried jumping on Flanagan for another piggy-back ride. He muttered something in Irish akin to what he thought was cursing before Flanagan picked up his daughter and placed her on his shoulders. Daniel smirked at the kindness of the rough Irishman. When he looked down at Alex he noticed that his head was down, so in an effort to cheer him up a bit he hoisted Alex up on his shoulders. Both of the men walked down the hallway towards the bridge with giggling children on their shoulders.
The Bridge
A large and extremely thick quartz glass window at the head of the bridge looked out into the depths of space observing the magnificence of the milky way’s disc. Just out of view, the sun blasted its rays across the bow of the Evolution that extended out a ways past the window. The bridge was manned by a dozen or so personnel that were all silent and staring at the arguing soldier and scientist.
“You shot his wife?!” Miranda said seething through her teeth, glaring at Helios with her stark white eyes.
“Uh, no. I shot the man that shot his wife. Whether me shooting him caused him to shoot or not doesn’t matter. She’s gone, and the rest of the family made it aboard.” Helios argued back.
“I can’t believe you. Imbecile.” Miranda huffed in disbelief.
“This is the thanks I get for losing one of my men to rescue you, rescuing over 100,000 people and over 2000 MVP’s? You fuckin’ kidding?” Helios angrily asked Miranda. “Not to mention I could have just left the poor sap at that checkpoint to be shot since no one told me he was even supposed to show up in the first place.”
Kai stood in the background eating mental popcorn over the feud, enjoying every second of it. He thought it was funny when Helios got angry because his face turned a shade of red that reminded him of the lava flowing off the shores of Hawai’i from Kilauea.
“Okay, Okay, I’m sorry.” Miranda apologized — a flashback to Ramirez’s death haunting her mind. “Ramirez was a good man, one of your best, and I regret his death. We had no way of knowing where Daniel and his family would appear. He was located in Wisconsin, and had to make it to one of the safe zones in Los Angeles, Houston, Tallahassee or New York. There was such a slim chance he would even be able to make it to one of them, I mean you saw what happened down there.”
“The hell does this guy mean to you anyway?” a calmed Helios asked, but still slightly annoyed.
“Daniel and I grew up together and our fathers were the ones that discovered Epsilon at Hawking.” Miranda told him, as if she owed him an explanation. “His father is orbiting above Mars right now overseeing a mining operation led by drones on the surface. We weren’t able to contact him after the solar storm, but we are assuming that he is staying put to await further instructions. Our plan is to swing by mars to pick him up once we fuel up using the sun as our fuel source. He is essential to this trip, and if we left his son behind I’m not sure he would be mentally fit for the mission.”
“Daniel Grayson is on his way from Onboarding, Dr. Ricci.” SWAI-A, the assistant model, chimed in from the wrist monitor she had strapped to her arm. This one was customized for Miranda, and she had given it a nickname. “ETA: 12 minutes.”
“Thank you, Saia.” She said quickly.
“Anyway, as much as I have loved this conversation, we need to get ready for launch.” Miranda told Helios and Kai in a back to business, serious tone. She shifted her focus over to the acting captain, Cpt. Dunwall, “Are we ready for launch?”
Helios and Kai observed the Captain, an older man that served his entire life in the space branch of the United States military. He was well groomed with a clean shave and buzz cut, so stiff he could have been hiding a 2x4 up his ass and smelled of cheap cologne. Out of the 24 other captains selected and residing on the ship, he was the one that most closely resembled the part.
“Yes doctor, SWAI-C is doing the final checks and we should be ready momentarily.” Cpt. Dunwall told her.
“Great, make an announcement to the ship. Something inspiring and hopeful; these people just lost more than we can imagine. We have all lost our home.” She told the captain. He nodded in approval and clicked on the intercom. Kai nudged Helios and looked at him with cheerful eyes, speaking almost telepathically to his best friend. Helios got something along the lines of “I bet you he's gonna say some cliché shit.”
Before the captain could start his announcement, the bridge turned red and alarms started blaring. Everyone perked up immediately.
“What in the hell is going on?!” Miranda shouted over the alarms.
“There has been a breach Dr. Ricci, at observation deck one.” Saia told her from her wrist. “Unidentified biological organism detected.”
“Observation deck one…that’s on the way here from Onboarding. Saia, where is Daniel?”
“Observation deck one, Dr. Ricci.” Saia responded. Miranda’s eyes grew wide in fear and she looked directly at Helios and Kai. They nodded and took off, taking strides of over 10 feet at a time on their cybernetic legs.
Observation Deck One
Daniel and Flanagan were walking around the giant window that wrapped around the observation deck to show the kids the view of Earth when alarms erupted out of nowhere and the lights turned red. Daniel looked at Flanagan as if he had an answer for what was happening. Flanagan returned the same look.
Suddenly sparks were flying in every direction, metal creaked and snapped under the weight of something as it fell out of the ceiling and into the large observation deck with a giant thud. The black mass that fell through the ceiling stood up in the debris, revealing itself to be an exceptionally small, but terrifying tardigrade. The ugly insect-like creature couldn’t be any taller than an average adult human. Luckily for the group, it was unaware that it was in the presence of others.
Daniel’s eyes grew in terror as he took Alex off of his shoulders carefully and placed him on the ground. He put his finger to his lips in an effort to keep him quiet. He listened to his father but Flanagan had no such luck. When he reached up to grab Olivia she started shrieking in fear of the beast. He couldn’t pull her down fast enough to silence her before the tardigrade whipped around to notice them.
“Ah shite.” Flanagan muttered under his breath. He knew he had no time to call for backup – he had to act now. Pulling out his sidearm that was chambered in .50 AE armor piercing rounds, he then handed Daniel his bowie knife made of the same material as Helios’s sword. “I’m gonna distract teh fucker while ye get yer kids outta here mate. Get ready.”
The tardigrade let out a harsh hiss before closing its transparent faceplate, signifying that it was about to charge. Before it could think about its plan of attack, Flanagan began running back towards the other end of the room while blasting the beast with armor piercing rounds that did nothing more than dent its armor. Suddenly the creature bolted forward at a terrible speed toward Flanagan. This tardigrade had apparently evolved with massive saltatorial legs to take giant leaps, such as a grasshopper would.
There was not much Flanagan could do in the seconds that it took for the tardigrade to be on him besides try to pistol whip its head in hopes that its faceplate would loosen. No such luck. Suddenly the world was upside down for him as the tardigrade smacked into Flanagan, sending him flying past Daniel and his kids who were trying to sneak out in the direction of the bridge. He smacked into the wall outside of the observation deck's door and fell to the ground limp.
Daniel and the kids paused and looked at Flanagan’s unconscious body slumped on the floor a few feet from them for a brief second. Daniel felt the urge to panic and run, but he knew that he wouldn’t be fast enough, let alone with his kids. A moment of calm came over him – he knew what he had to do.
Right next to the doorway that Flanagan flew past, Daniel spotted an emergency override switch to close the door. It took him seconds to push his kids into the other room and smash the button causing the door to slam shut. No time to say goodbye, give them a hug or to say that he loved them – his actions would have to do. He could hear banging and screaming on the other side from Alex and Olivia, but he tuned out the noise. Daniel stood with the bowie knife in his hands and turned towards the tardigrade that was getting ready to pounce on him. He waited.
“Ain’t nothin’ you can take from me now, accept my life. Come get it motherfucker.” Daniel said in a scarily calm voice.
The tardigrade flung itself at Daniel with all of its strength, but he had thought ahead. Since this one relied on jumping, it couldn’t control its movement mid-air. He sidestepped and allowed the beast to slam into the door he had just shut, face first. It fell to the floor for a second, dazed, and Daniel seized the moment. He jumped on its back and wrapped his legs around the torso as tightly as he could so he could stay behind the monster. It was really difficult to stay on as the spikes that littered the beast's abdomen kept piercing into his legs. It started thrashing trying to knock him off, and he knew it was only a matter of time until it did. Daniel started stabbing at the faceplate trying to find a weak spot but the blade just kept bouncing or sliding off the thick armor. Finally, after repeated attempts, the knife caught on the edge of the faceplate and allowed him to dig the knife underneath. Pulling as hard as he could on the handle of the knife, the faceplate started to give way and eventually snapped off leaving the face exposed. Unfortunately, the knife flew away with it.
The tardigrade recoiled in pain, and was bleeding a black blood-like substance from where the faceplate was torn off its head. It hissed and barked out of anger until it finally hatched an idea of its own. Before Daniel could react, the intelligent creature recoiled its strong hind legs and jumped straight up smashing Daniel into the ceiling as well as impaling a few of its abdominal spikes into his rib cage.
Daniel slumped off the back of the tardigrade, gasping for air and holding his ribs. The foul creature stood above him, as if basking in the glory of another successful kill. He held his hand up in an effort to stop the beast from killing him. It was pointless; the creature took hold of his arm in its mouth and ripped the arm clean from Daniel’s shoulder. He wanted to yell in pain, but he didn’t want his kids to hear him die in such a gruesome manner. Instead he thought of his wife and his children and drowned the pain out with memories of a better life. In this moment he felt happiness that his wife went quickly, instead of at the hands of one of these monsters. All that mattered was that he saved his children – he could die happy knowing that. The monster latched onto his lower jaw and ripped it clean from his head; darkness followed.
Helios and Kai turned the corner to see Daniel’s children screaming and banging on a closed door, as well as Flanagan slumped on the floor.
“Shit. Kai, take Flanagan and the kids and move back now.” Helios ordered. Kai did exactly as requested by throwing Flanagan over his shoulder and ushering the kids away behind the corner that they just came around.
“GO!” Kai yelled from around the corner.
“Open the north door of observation deck one Miranda!” Helios yelled over his comms.
A second later and the door opened to a gruesome scene. Daniel lay on the floor missing an arm and his jaw. The tardigrade was about to start working on the rest of his head when the door opened and its focus became Helios. He noticed immediately it was a jumper and that its face-plate had been torn off. Easy kill.
The tardigrade hissed at him, standing over its kill, while Helios walked into the room slowly and hit the emergency override switch to keep the beast cordoned off from the rest of the ship. He walked around the room without his weapon drawn to appear as an easy target, anticipating the movement of the tardigrade. In a ridiculously short amount of time – seconds – Helios noticed the hind legs flex and recoil before whipping his sword out from his back and holding it in front of him. A second later and the beast lay in front of him, impaled through its face and twitching from the electricity coursing through its body.
“Miranda, it's dead, open the door and send medical down here now!” Helios demanded over the comms. He ran over to Daniel who lay motionless on the ground not breathing. The door opened and Kai ran in.
“The kids are safe, Flanagan took a nasty hit to the head, but he’s good.” Kai told him before noticing Daniel on the ground and bowing his head away, “Akua ‘a’ole, this is fucked up.”
Helios nodded, agreeing with Kai. “He almost took the fucker down, pried its face-plate off with Flanagan’s knife. Crazy sonovabitch.” He knelt down to shut Daniel’s eye’s as a form of respect, but instead took his pulse first. “Holy shit, Kai, he’s alive.”
This was tough to write as a father, so I leave the fate of Daniel’s life in your hands. I’m sure whatever you pick will lead to a desirable outcome…or not? Find out next time! It would not be possible to create these stories if not for the choices you all make, so thank you for helping me create this wild sci-fi adventure! Keep on choosing and see where this story goes!
Expedition Epsilon will return in 3 weeks after the next issues of Perthro: The Rune of Mystery and Trapped Within Darkness. Look out for the first World Explorer post of Expedition Epsilon, coming out on Tuesday for paid subscribers! You could earn a free premium membership if your refer 3 people, and you will have access to the character sheets! I hope you have a great week, and as always — Choose Fiction!
Yikes, as a mom this was hard to read! Torn between staying in hopes of better care for him and the kids and going because obviously starting isn’t going to end well!