Hello again Fanficians! The following is a first installment of an original story
that has been kicking around for a while. For those who are following
BG Cross this will in no way will interfere with that story's progress.
Enjoy! 


THE DARK TRAVELLER

By Andy Skuse (c) 1995

Part 1 - Heaven Can Wait

Earth Colony 238 - Jupiter Satellite Europa
2073

     Somewhere well beyond the grasp of earth's gravity, a young traveller
placed his hand on the thick synthi-glass window that separated him from
the cold of space. Even the many layers of stratified silicon yielded to the
intense sub-temperatures that fought tirelessly to invade the traveller's
vessel. He pulled his tingling hand away from the frigid porthole and stared
at the purity of the stars outside. They seemed no closer to him now, even
though he had come almost four-hundred million miles from his home on
earth. Tiny pinpoints of energy, their light thrust out from millions of giant
furnaces burning silently in their solitudes. Each destined to die someday. A
day the young traveller would not likely be around to see.
     The sun's unfiltered light suddenly pierced the window as the freighter
turned in its approach of the spinning, Ramsey Docking Facility. The huge
space craft continued to swing in a slow, wide arc to mate with the docking
target that jutted out from the girder-laced space station. Strobe markers
guided the freighter's initial insertion before the comdock system took over.
For a moment the silence throughout the freighter was broken by a gentle
impact shudder as the vehicle finally locked into its mooring bay. The young
traveller shielded his eyes and stared out the window one last time. His long
journey was over but he was looking forward to his new life as an earth
colonist's son and future scientist. He collected his things and headed for the
freighter's egress station.
     His father was a micro-botanist, assigned to monitor the growth rate and
general welfare of the hydroponics department on the scientific research
colony recently settled on Jupiter's ice-encrusted moon, Europa. Colony 238,
as it was known on earth , consisted of a small central hub that encompassed
the living quarters, around which a handful of multi-government-funded
research labs were situated. A network of sub-crust level tunnels connected
the various departments to one another. Scientists were urged to share their
findings with their colleagues by their Earth-bound directors in a spirit of
cooperation. A spirit borne from the peace that now existed between a new,
capitalist China and the rest of the free world.
     As the young traveller walked through the freighter's hatchway to the
platform where his father stood waiting, he recalled his mother's decision to
remain on Earth. She did not share his father's ambitions of space exploration 
and discovery but they had married anyway, knowing full well that someday
the family would be smaller for a few years. And when the day arrived for his
father to leave, the time had seemed to pass by so quickly that the young boy
made a vow to join his father someday, wherever he was going. Now, that day had arrived, his relocation created out of circumstance. Four months earlier
the boy's mother had died in an accident, the victim of an aircar guidance
malfunction. He had been a passenger that day, and the horror of the crash
still haunted him. Narrowly avoiding death himself, he was left to wonder
why it had happened and why he was still alive and his mother was not. His
youthful self-image of immortality had been shattered violently and far too
soon in his young life.
     The middle-aged man standing on the platform had the faintest traces
of tears in his eyes as he tightly embraced the son he hadn't seen in three
years. He marvelled at how he had grown so quickly since he had left. The
images from the tiny viewphones at the colony were heavily distorted at
best, providing a ghostly picture that could not convey the changes of time
on the human body. He had grown into a young man in the blink of an eye.
     The boy held on for a moment longer and then scooped up his belongings
and followed his father to the shuttle departure zone. The gravity here was
only half of earth's, enough to allow a normal walking motion but at a slower
pace, once you'd adjusted. The traveller soon found that the reserve of
nervous energy he had worked up before arriving had suddenly run out,
leaving his father with a quiet companion on the thirty minute journey to
Europa's surface.

     The boy awoke with a start as the shuttle gently connected with the
airlock tunnel at Colony 238's docking area. His father smiled down at the
sleepy face beside him and helped the boy to his feet. Gathering up his
belongings once more, the boy trudged off the shuttle and entered the
Colony's Main thoroughfare known simply as 'The Hub'. The passageways
leading away from The Hub had signs pointing to their eventual destinations
with fanciful names like 'The Ice Pit' and 'The Mines of Moria'. The boy smiled
at the last one, a reference he recalled from one of his father's tattered books
he'd read when he was thirteen. As his father helped him load his belongings
into a waiting battery-powered cart, he imagined the creature that might
dwell in these particular Mines of Moria. After all, this was a fairly new colony 
and although the early surveys had produced no signs of life, there was still
the possibility that they'd missed something.
     Zooming through the dimly lit corridors towards his father's lab, the boy
was struck by the absence of visible activity. He had expected a virtual beehive 
of scientists buzzing with excitement as endless streams of new data came
pouring in over their computer screens. But the rooms that he could see were
each populated instead by one or two technicians with sweaty brows, their
noses buried deep in computer manuals. His father revealed, after polite
questioning, that the computer network was experiencing some problems.
Problems that sometimes had no explanation. Down time was increasing, and
at the present rate, the research station could soon be in jeopardy.
     The boy frowned, unable to understand how such an exciting place
could ever be shut down. It never dawned on him that his young mind
wouldn't accept defeat because of broken equipment or lack of funding.
These places were just supposed to be explored. In the spirit of the explorers
that had gone before them, these things just had to be done. There was just
no two ways about it. If something was wrong here, it should simply be fixed
and then everyone could carry on with their amazing discoveries, no matter
how much it would cost. Although the boy's sense of immortality had been lost 
forever when his mother died, the thoughts of a dreamer still lived on.
     The cart slowed to a halt in front of a large, hangar-sized area, filled with a 
myriad of plants in all shapes, sizes and colors. His father explained that
many of the plants were simply grown for consumption but a few, more
exotic varieties, were cultivated for research on varying durations of exposure 
to Europa's atmosphere. None of the earth plants ever survived the ordeal of
a trip to the colony's outer airlock. If the cold didn't kill them immediately, the
radiation that strayed from Jupiter's powerful radiation fields eventually did.
The boy looked at his father in wonder as the importance of the radiation
shield that protected the colony loomed large. Europa suddenly seemed like a
very different place than he had imagined a few days ago.
     His father showed him around the research area and then took him
on a short tour of The Hub, pointing out the important sites, places his father
said he would soon get to know very well. The long trip from Earth had
worn him down more than he knew. By the time they had arrived at his
father's quarters, the boy was fast asleep. The scientist carried his son's
limp body through the spartan living area and set him down gently on his
bed. It had taken the last three months to get transferred to larger quarters so
that his son could have his own bedroom. The boy was getting to that age
where he would want privacy, some space to himself. Space inside the
research colony was at a premium and the price of the transfer had been
steep. But he knew that this would be important to the boy, and to him. He
did not know how long they would be here together if the project sputtered
back to life. Perhaps for the rest of his life. He hadn't a clue. But that was
something he preferred not to think about yet.
     He stared down at the sleeping youth, wondering what he might be
dreaming  about. He had seen the excitement on the boy's face and the
youthful energy he exuded at the prospect of a new, potentially rewarding
life at the boundaries of man's otherworldly travels. In time the excitement
would wear off as the boy realized that Europa did not reveal it's secrets
without a fight: an aspect of the colony's existence he was growing more
concerned about each day. The computer problems were the least of their
difficulties. It seemed that the incidence of problems throughout the base's
many life-support  and Earthlink systems was growing at a rate that defied
rational explanation. The environmental system had shut down several times
giving everyone an incredible scare and the communications with Earth had
deteriorated markedly, leaving them to rely on an ailing backup system. At
first the problems were viewed entirely as machine malfunction but as the
colony entered its third year, its more superstitious inhabitants began to talk
of foul play and the possibility of outside interference. This second theory
was ridiculous to the botanist but a growing number of his colleagues claimed
to have experienced events that could only be explained by someone
*outside* the facility causing the malfunctions. When asked to report their
evidence publicly they refused, knowing that their credibility would be at risk. 
Yet still, the reports of alien interference persisted until that very night, when 
the unexplained, explained itself.

     The first explosions shook the colony's structure without damaging it
beyond repair, but as the boy  woke up to the blaring evacuation alarm  and
the rumbling of shock waves, a second wave of much closer, subsonic
thumps reverberated through the facility, commencing its collapse. The
attack had been so swift that a distress call had not yet been issued to the
Ramsey Docking Station, though even if it had, there would be little left when
help finally arrived. The Hub had held up better than it's outlying spindles but 
the central airlock had been compromised and death was imminent for any
who managed  to find sealed pockets of air among their laboratory chambers
or living quarters. Crumbling and crashing down, the colony was slowly giving
in to the mysterious invading force, and the cold of space was stepping in to
claim the stragglers.
     Outside the boy's window, four bat-like ships in formation flew silently
overhead and disappeared from view. He turned suddenly to face his closed
door as sounds of an argument erupted outside. The boy lay shivering in his
bed, paralyzed by fear as he listened to his father's angry shouts and the
short replies in a language he'd never heard before. A vaguely humanoid
shape burst through his door and took aim at his head with an intimidating
weapon of some kind. While his assassin hesitated, the boy's eyes darted to
the room beyond where two more of the humanoid figures stood over his
kneeling father, one figure with his weapon aimed at the scientist's head. The
boy screamed as the alien fired the energy weapon, piercing his father's head
and killing him instantly. The scientist's body slumped to the ground and the
two assassins exited the room silently, leaving the boy to face his own peril.
     Turning back in horror to his unsure, would-be assassin, he noticed
that the invader was wearing a helmet, filled with a liquid of some kind that
obscured most of its facial features. The boy peered at the blurred, yellow
eyes that stared back at him through the murky visor. Time seemed to stand
still as he studied those eyes and saw in them a fear equal to his own. Eyes
he could never forget. Eyes he promised himself he would *never* forget.
     Before he could inspect the being before him to any greater extent, the
alien finally raised his weapon assuredly, and fired. The boy never felt a
thing.

     When he awoke, the boy's first instinct was to go someplace, the location of
which he did not know. The powerful urge overwhelmed him, making him
momentarily blind and blocking out any other thoughts. He struggled against
the urge, knowing there was something important he must do first before he
departed. The struggle grew into a battle with some unseen primal force that
tore at his soul to follow it, but he would not give in. Just when he felt his
defense was slipping away, the urge was gone from him, just as suddenly as it 
had arrived. And so was his blindness.
     He stared about him in shock when he saw what was left of the colony's
once sturdy structure. The Hub had been levelled and the research labs were
nothing but rubble. Little was left standing to identify the original structure's
purpose. From the corner of his eye he noticed movement. Turning to face the 
activity, he saw four humans in EVA suits sifting through the rubble. The
shuttle he had arrived on earlier was parked at the docking tunnel, attached
to what remained of the mooring mast. The boy called out to the probing
figures but his voice made no sound.

That's when it hit him.

     He looked down at his body and saw only a faint, shimmering outline of his 
former self. Looking *through* his body he could see the dirty, blue and grey
ice crust that covered the entire moon. He looked above him. There was no
radiation shield left or any structure around him to protect him from the
radiation, but he was not in any pain. He was also breathing regularly, as far
as he could tell, but he was sitting outside in the vacuum of space. As the
reality of his situation quickly swept over him, threatening to engulf him in its
insanity, he remembered the cold. He placed the shimmering outline of his
right hand onto the icy, blue surface beneath him and felt nothing. No
burning, tingling or even the sensation of contact. No feeling at all. He stared
back at the four space suited rescuers who continued to sift through the
debris, oblivious to the boy's new understanding. He had died in the alien
invasion but had not been escorted to the nether world where he would have
expected to go. For some reason he remained exiled at the site of his death to
ponder his new existence. An existence that suddenly filled him with
immense fear.
     As he sat out in the open and stared up at the stars trying vainly to cry, he
suddenly remembered the sight of his father's death. A horrible few seconds
that he wished he could forget. He wanted desperately to cry but the tears
would not come. And then the strange, water encased faces of the aliens
who'd killed him and his father entered his mind. He was astonished at his
memory as his assassins face came back to him in sharper detail then he
thought he could recall. He remembered the fear in the creature's eyes and
now he understood it. The alien looked younger than the other two he had
seen, perhaps even his own age. The hesitation to pull the trigger, added to
the fear in it's eyes- it was a moral dilemma for the alien that only
compounded the boy's confusion as to why the attack occurred. One thing
was clear. He would never forget the young alien's face.
     Standing upright, he felt a strange surge of  energy run through him that
he instinctively understood. Turning one final time to look at the remains of
Colony 238, the boy then reached out his hands to the stars, turned away
from the destruction and closed his eyes. A sudden sensation of movement
prompted him to open his eyes again. He had taken silent flight among the
stars, moving faster than any ship ever could. He looked down and saw the
rapidly fading disk of Europa and Jupiter's gaseous bulk shrinking beneath
him. He felt no joy from the experience, just amazement at his new found
ability. He soon discovered that certain aspects of his former self were gone,
leaving only an unenthralled spirit behind. But an emotion left to him by the
forces that be, ate at him now, pushing its way past his fear and awe into his
brain. It was anger. His father's death suddenly flashed through his mind,
playing over and over again. Why had they killed him? Who were these
invaders and what could the destruction of a peaceful research colony have
accomplished? Suddenly he felt a purpose for his new *life*. He must find
the frightened face behind the watery mask, that had taken his life and the
young alien's companions that had taken his father's life as well. Where to
start he did not know, but whoever they were, they could not hide. He would
search the entire universe if he had to. And he knew inside that he had the
rest of eternity to do so.

End of Part 1
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BG Cross
askuse@execulink.com
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