Titan: A Science Fiction Horror Adventure (NecroVerse Book 3) Read online

  Contents

  Welcome

  Day 10

  EGCSS Freighter “ATLAS”

  EGCSS Tugboat “Betty”

  Establishing Boundaries O’clock

  2108 Hours

  2125 Hours

  2145 Hours

  2340 Hours

  2145 Hours

  Day 11

  0015 Hours

  0100 Hours

  Clock Reset

  0215 Hours

  0402 Hours

  0630 Hours

  Pulling apart by the seams

  Deconstructed

  1000 Hours

  Kicking over rocks

  1100 Hours

  1300 Hours

  Reconstructed

  Zero Dark-Troubles

  Is there a doctor onboard?

  2200 Hours

  Triage

  Time to build

  The Good Lives

  The Chair

  +10 Days

  0001 Hours

  0220 Hours

  0315 Hours

  Start the Countdown

  -8:02 Until Entry

  -6:52 Until Entry

  -6:22 Until Entry

  -5:20 until Entry

  -4:52 Until Entry

  -4:02 Until Entry

  -3:42 Until Entry

  -3:15 Until Entry

  -2:48 Until Entry

  -2:16 Until Entry

  -1:45 Until Entry

  -Pull yourself together

  1 Hour until Entry

  -Return to Sender

  -:45 Until Entry

  -:25

  -:7 Until Entry

  Dark Savior

  +:04 After Entry

  NecroVerse Continues in…

  About The Author

  Welcome

  Thank you so much for reading Titan, the 3rd novel in my NecroVerse series. This series is the culmination of my life-long love of science fiction, horror, gothic stories, and everything inbetween. If you enjoy this book and want to connect, please consider the following:

  Joining my Reader Group on Facebook

  Checking out my Website

  Follow me on Amazon, to receive updates on upcoming releases.

  And lastly, please consider leaving an honest review on Amazon. Often times, this is the only way to keep us going, but also to help other readers decide to give our books a chance. Again, thank you, and I hope you enjoy the adventure!

  by

  Aaron Bunce

  Autumn Arch Publishing

  Iowa

  www.AaronBunce.com

  Copyright © 2021 by Aaron Bunce

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or literary publication.

  Publisher’s note

  This is a work of fiction. All names, places, characters, and incidences are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual people, alive or dead, events or locations, is completely coincidental.

  A product of Autumn Arch Publishing

  Cover art: Mauricio Caballero

  Cover art–colorist: Joel Chua

  Cover art–typography: Christian Bentulan

  Interior design: Aaron Bunce

  Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-7338095-5-9

  Amazon KINDLE: B0935HL9PG

  1st Edition–2021

  Day 10

  EGCSS Freighter “ATLAS”

  2055 Hours

  “Five days, two hours, thirty-seven minutes, and five seconds,” Manis Nazzar mumbled as he stared at the glowing com screen. He watched the seconds tick by on the small clock. “Twenty hundred and fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven seconds…” That was how much time he’d already spent cooped up on the stinky freighter. The only number more depressing was the number of days, hours, minutes, and seconds until the lumbering vessel would arrive anywhere meaningful.

  He finally managed to peel his eyes away from the screen and looked to the far corner, where the small thermo cube sat nestled against the wall. The liquid crystal display shone blue in the room’s dim light.

  –20°

  The small unit hummed, the screen dimming in response. A moment later, the readout changed.

  –18°

  Despite the fact the little freezer had kept an incredibly even temperature range of negative twenty-one to negative twenty-two degrees, Manis couldn’t help but watch. It wasn’t his fault. It was the numbers; they always snared his brain. They locked onto his focus and refused to let go until the idea of looking away made him sick to his stomach. At least, that’s how it was as a child, an adolescent, and a young man. Until the treatments, surgeries, and chem patches, that is. He’d made so much progress, healed the fractures in his mind.

  –17°

  No! It wasn’t just him.

  –16°

  The temperature had never dropped below negative twenty before and it just ticked down four degrees Fahrenheit. But how much time had passed in those four degrees? Was something wrong? Was the cooler breaking down? A one-degree drop felt like an understandable shift for such a small unit, two-degrees would set him on edge, but four felt catastrophic. Hell, it had been filled with freeze-dried snacks when he first took over the cabin. And there was no telling how many hours of use it had before now. Was it not designed to maintain such a low temp?

  “Positive twelve degrees to negative twenty. Negative twenty for five days, two hours, thirty-eight minutes, and nineteen seconds,” he murmured, eyeing the display. He almost walked over and popped the cooler open, to check on the few samples he’d managed to save from Dr. Misra’s lab cooler. He wanted so desperately to see them, hold them, to make sure they were still frozen and intact.

  “Few” denotes less specificity. There were three. One fell out and was lost. Two are left. A pair. A couple. His foot moved forward, taking him towards the cooler, his hand reaching for it.

  “Nope. Nope. Keep it closed. They stayed cold enough in your pocket from there to here. There to here. It won’t fail me. It won’t. Keep them frozen, like Misra would want. What they need.”

  With a monumental effort, Manis turned back to the screen and started typing again. His stomach flip-flopped and he swallowed against the corresponding wave of nausea. He started typing again, his eyes flicking spasmodically up to the ticking clock in the corner.

  His message was the same as the last fourteen communications just like it–down to the wording, punctuation, and formatting. He read through it again, then again, and five more times as his hand hovered over the send icon.

  “Five days, two hours, thirty-nine minutes, and one second.” His eyes snapped back up to the clock once his readthrough was done. That was how long he’d been on the freighter. How long he’d been safe. But it wasn’t how long since he’d slept last. That number was bigger. By at least another eighteen hours.

  The seconds ticked by, snaring him again. Manis hated the clock, hated time. It was the one thing he couldn’t control–always moving, speeding up and slowing down when he wasn’t looking.

  “The message has to be perfect. It has to be perfect. And send. It has to send. It has to. Has to. To send. It won’t send unless it is perfect. That is it. That is the case here,” he mumbled. His mouth watered anew as a fresh pain blossomed in his head–one either tied to his compulsive need to re-read the message one more time before sending it, or because his eyes wanted to snap up to the clock. Part of him wanted, no needed, to push the send i
con. But it was always one more reread, another quick glance to the clock, or God forbid, turn and stare at the temperature gauge on the thermo cube.

  To find errors.

  To see inconsistencies.

  Those wouldn’t do.

  The words, the numbers, they needed to be right.

  They needed to move properly.

  So much depended on it.

  There was too much at stake. It had to be perfect. No errors.

  Seconds ticked by as he refused to blink, the dark screen and green, blocky font pounding into his eyes and straight through to the mushy matter behind them. His finger twitched towards the send icon but stopped. Once more. He had to read it once more. He might have blinked and missed something.

  “It has been five days, two hours, forty-one minutes, and fifty-five seconds since we pulled away from Hyde. They need to know what happened. I need to tell them. They’ll want to act. They’ll need to plan. A plan takes time. Time is always against us. Misra was right. Her work was right. The sample will show that. I have to get them the sample.”

  A pain flared in his back–the muscles along his spine tightening, twisting his body so he could turn and check the thermo cube again.

  “No. The message is more important at the moment,” he snapped and checked the address line once more to make sure it was perfect.

  To:AdminExecMOBurkhardtERobert_EG425_MarsStation000501

  A muscle twitched in his arm as he considered the send-to address. He’d typed it a thousand times and yet it always looked wrong, the characters seemingly shifting like those on the small, digital clock.

  “Shit. No! Not done. I’ll just type it in again,” Manis cursed, as his finger inadvertently brushed against the screen. His muscles, his arms, were so tired. No, it was his whole body. His being was beyond weary.

  The send button glowed blue, and the message minimized, revealing a lengthy list of communications just like the one he’d just typed. Five days’ worth of typing, reading…fixating. All alike. No, exactly. To the word. They were all bracketed by X’s, indicating that none had sent. He looked to the small icon attached to the next message down. [Resend] Manis moved his finger to push it, but the muscles in his back tightened like a gently turning screw.

  He blew a loud raspberry and clenched his hands into fists. The newest message flashed green, and then blue, the pixelized Planitex logo spinning for several long moments. It was sending. The system was doing what he needed it to do. But he couldn’t trust the system. He could only trust his eyes. His ears. Finger. Him.

  The icon abruptly flashed yellow and was replaced by another red X.

  The junior executive screamed and turned on the spot. The screen was full of failed messages, all asking him if he wanted to try again. But he couldn’t. Do it. He couldn’t trust those messages. They were ineffectual, tainted in the moments since he hadn’t been able to look at them. Manis couldn’t trust them. The message, his message, had to be perfect. He had to know that it was.

  Manis spun towards his cot and caught sight of the thermo cube.

  –14°

  He ripped the cheap sheets free and threw them against the wall. He jumped up onto the mattress and kicked his tiny, worthless pillow against the near wall. His fist cracked into the bulkhead, knocking a magnetically hung mirror to the ground. His hand throbbed, but it was just pain. The glowing screen caught his eye, all the irritating little buttons standing out, [Resend] calling to him to push them.

  “I won’t. They’re all lies. How can I send them if my eyes aren’t the last…the last to make sure they perfect? But no. They won’t send anyway. Why? Why won’t they send? Why are the zeros and ones lying to me? Why are they sabotaging me?”

  He spun on the spot before dropping to his knees on the thin mattress and turned to look at the thermo cube. The small, blue screen hung there. Teasing him.

  –14°

  His face snapped back around to the wall screen. The list of messages was right there, at one point all written perfectly, read, fixed, and re-read. Manis burped, sour stomach acid coating his throat. Another pain registered in his stomach. No, his bladder. He’d had to pee for some time but kept putting it off because of the words and numbers, the samples.

  Details.

  Words.

  Lies.

  Blood.

  If he didn’t read them all again, that’s what they would be.

  Tainted. Fouled. Untruths.

  He pulled at his hair, gnashed his teeth, and smashed his fists onto his thighs. The pain burned in the back of his head, thrumming in time with the one in his chest, arms, and fingers. It pulsed, begging him to push on the screen. To type the words again and read them. To make them perfect. To send them. This next one would send. It had to. Had to.

  “Fuck!” he screamed, silently, and pounded his fists against his forehead. The junior corporate assistant fell forward onto his chest and lay there for an excruciatingly long time. That was all it was, time. Fifteen minutes and twenty-one seconds of it. Enough for the thermo cube to raise another two degrees.

  “Five days…” he started to count, but realized he’d lost count. The thought made his heart race, and he almost threw up.

  Manis moved his eyes towards the clock on the screen, but froze. It wasn’t his terminal that was the problem. Someone somewhere on the ship was blocking them. That person was probably opening them and messing with his words, too. They probably had control over his clock, making the numbers speed up and slow down to trick him.

  Deceiver. They are remotely raising the temperature of the cube as well.

  –12°

  It wasn’t just him. The numbers weren’t lying.

  “Find them. Make them unlock the terminal. You’re a g-g-goddamned executive. They shouldn’t be reading your messages anyway. The gall. Liars. They’re false.”

  He peeled his face off the sheet, tears having run down his cheeks and dampened the fabric.

  “Deal with them, the liars. First things first, get a message sent off ship. To make contact. The sample. You’ll feel better once you could get the stupid words out of your brain. The numbers cannot go up. Frozen must stay frozen. Find another freezer.”

  The urge to pee doubled, an agonizing impulse burning in his bladder, so Manis rolled limply off the cot. He slumped into the small berth’s head, pulled himself free of the suit and let go, splashing at least half onto and around the stainless-steel bowl in his haste. The floor was already shiny with the stuff. It didn’t matter. They had people to clean up that kind of stuff.

  He pushed his dick back into his white jumpsuit and closed the zipper, a spot of moisture forming from inside almost immediately. It didn’t matter. Didn’t. He needed to go find out who was blocking his messages. From his job. Important job.

  Manis turned and hung in the doorway for a moment, fighting a fierce battle. His obsessive impulses told him to go to the com screen and type again, just in case it worked. To type as many times as it took, until his fingers bled, the screen broke, or it worked.

  But he had clarity now and pushed the impulse aside. The answer was a person, or people, not just the words. He had to find the people responsible.

  The crew knows why it won’t send. They’re blocking it. They are working against you. Go find out who it is and make them fix the problem. You are Manis Nazzar, Executive Junior Assistant to mining operations on Hyde fucking station. You are a tenured officer of Planitex Industrial. And this is a Planitex vessel.

  He spun and walked right into the cabin door, his face bouncing off with a dull thud and bony crack. With warmth blossoming on his face, Manis punched at the control pad, his third attempt finally catching the open icon.

  The motor hummed and the portal whisked open, the passage’s cool, fresh air billowing in and over his face. His cabin smelled stuffy, rank. Like dead things.

  “Five days in one room. Five days making the words perfect,” he muttered over and over to himself.

  Manis took a moment and colle
cted himself. He straightened his suit, smoothed down his flyaway hair, and wiped his eyes dry. The fresh air calmed him a bit, the dull pain in his head subsiding enough for him to organize his thoughts.

  “Straight to the point,” he said and set off down the dull gray passage.

  He let his eyes crawl over the walls–pipes, coils, and coolant ducting exposed like the arteries of some metallic beast. The ship was ugly. An industrial tool, like so much of Hyde station, guts and bones laid bare. All substance and no style.

  It reminded him of the station, his horrible assignment there–how he had to prove himself to senior executives, eat shit before they would accept them as one of their own. They enjoyed plush offices, platform views of some of the most beautiful places in the solar system.

  That thought brought the message back to the surface in his mind, a sharp pinch immediately setting in behind his eyes. A clammy cold immediately took to his skin.

  He just needed to get his message out, then he could rest and perhaps put his addled brain back together. He’d fallen apart before, so many times. But he always came back. One way or another–pills, holo-therapy, gene therapies.

  The central passage took him towards the fore decks, a series of recessed ladders sitting to either side. They led down to the holds. Only this time they weren’t full of palladium, tungsten, or nickel, but people–weeping, breathing, sweating people. Potentially infected people.

  Bodies moved around him, appearing from the ground and walls as if melting out of the metal substructure. They clawed at him, mewling, sniffling, and begging.

  “Are we going to be okay?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Will the company take care of us?”

  “I’m scared…”

  He heard all their voices, felt them touch him, but couldn’t respond. A response would require him to think of something, anything other than his message and the sample. He couldn’t do that. They were too important.

  They were there all along, he told himself. He just hadn’t noticed them, curled up, clutching blankets, or sleeping against the walls. There weren’t beds for everyone. Berths were for important people. Like him. He just hadn’t left his room since they’d departed.