From the desk of Vitasta

From the desk of Vitasta

Notes: This is my tribute to the Star Trek Universe, which I love.

Time: irrelevant

Chapter 4:

We had been slowly making our way to the Warcraft hanger for the better part of the day stopping only very briefly to eat some breakfast on the way. It's hard through the atmospheric suits, to settle down and to eat, and the entire process takes too long, so we had decided then to fill up our bellies as much as we can, because stopping again would mean a delay of another good 2 or 3 hours of daylight. You see, before we can eat, or even shit or take a piss, we need to set up a perimeter fencing and get artificial atmosphere and gravity adjusted for our bodies. This kind of time, I refused to give to these activities anymore. I wanted to get to the hanger before nightfall. We could spend the night there, and in the morning of the next day set up the craft for space travel. Ferrying it back to camp then would not take time at all, because the craft can travel at high speeds through the asteroid desert plains, and we would make it back to camp before nightfall. If of course, everything went according to plan. The Tom was not very enthused about having to walk this great a distance without taking anymore breaks, and I did feel like I was putting a lot of undue pressure on the boys, and it would take at least 7 hours of walking before we made it to the hanger structures. 

"If we wait another fifteen minutes, it will add at least an hour and half to our journey Frizz", I told the Tom, "We need to push on now."

And so we continued on our little adventure tour. The team was abuzz with anticipation, and the boys kept talking incessantly about the message from the First Men, of what it could mean in the war effort, of how they might get back to New Paris, or better even, get a chance to travel to Earth. Perhaps it was their immaturity and their enthusiasm, but I wasn't so sure about this. I still didn't fully believe that the message we received indeed came from the First Men. Why now, why would they send us a correspondence on the war now, after we had lost everything. What had they been waiting for? Us to make first contact? If they were this powerful alien species, and they cared about what happened to us, maybe they should have intervened before. I mean, the telepaths, they practically worshiped them, and they have let the Agency continue to wage war on their civilization. What kind of tyrannical gods were they? Those that waited for all their disciples to perish in a war they didn't start, at the hands of an enemy that didn't even regard them as sentient beings? But my thoughts were broken when we started nearing the salt pans of the asteroid. 

"Listen up!", I bellowed through the comm, "We need to be extra careful. One misstep and we will all sink into the salt sea. You need to walk in a single file, and follow that path, can you see it?", I said pointing to the meter wide yellow basalt pathway we had made to cross the pans safely, "Walk on the path, stay behind each other and we'll be fine. It'll be about 2 maybe 3 hours before we clear the pans. And we can't stop here anywhere, because if we run out of daylight, there is no way we can set up camp here for the night, do you understand." 

Well, we trooped along. The pans were one the main reasons it took so long to reach the hanger, but our adventure was just starting, and starting that is, to take a turn for the absurd. 

We were about an hour into our journey across the salt pans when one of the boys in the rear slipped on something. Since we were tied on a line, that led to all of us getting pulled back and landing on my knees.  Luckily the three of us didn't lose footing off the basalt track and managed to pull out the boy as he kept sinking deeper into the salt sea. We lost a bit of time there and by the time we recovered and moved forward, we had started to lose daylight. We changed position, I was in the lead, followed by Frizz, the Tom, and then the two boys, but now I put Frizz in the lead, since he had been with me to the hanger once before and I took the rear to make sure there were no more mishaps. It was almost dusk now, and soon we could see the outlines of the hanger in the horizon. That's when Frizz starting squealing. 

"Ooooweeeee," he said, "Look ! Look! Look! Look!! Can you see that?! There's someone out there! Jata, look!!"

"Don't be absurd!", I said thinking it was probably the wind, but I took out my binoculars and gave it a look anyway since there was no way I would be able to get the Tom from jumping and squealing. Well, what I saw stunned me. I could see lights flickering around the hanger camp. "What?!", I exclaimed, "What is that?! Who's out there?!"

"Maybe we should signal them." one of the boys said. 

"Maybe," I muttered. "Let's wait till we get closer. We need to clear this pan before we can set up any equipment. Let's move faster."

Pushed now by the mysterious lights we started making our way across the pan a lot faster. Soon, the silhouette of the hanger became clearer and the dancing, flickering lights became brighter to observe. By now, we were almost walking in darkness, but then we had almost cleared the pan as well. From the end of the pan to the gate of the hanger was only about a 20 minute trek, and we were feeling a little relieved to have reached closer to the hanger. But the mysterious lights made me feel uneasy. Who could be out there? They had to have come from the camp, but I didn't know if anyone was leading an expedition out, and even so if they did come without anyone knowing, what were they doing at the warcraft hanger. I know stories of young boys who go out into the asteriod wilderness to camp out, but this far out? I was scared for the status of the warcraft. I decided in my mind to send a signal first to Sita at the base camp and ask her about this before we send out our location to the lights. We were almost clearing the salt pans now, and in the darkness the hanger was now completely out of sight, but the lights, they kept flickering, as though they were also sending someone a signal.

Once we cleared the salt pans, I asked the boys to set up the radio equipment. "I don't know who's out there Frizz. But I'm going to call base camp first." But then it happened. As soon as we got the equipment out, and set up the radio for transmission, Frizz let out a  squeal again. "Eeeeeeeeee!" He said, "There's coming!"

I looked back towards the hanger and sure enough, those lights, at least three of them were moving towards our location at high speed. And before we could react, they were upon us. "Oh my god!" one of the boys said. I agreed with him. It was unbelievable. "They're angels!", someone added, and I could not disagree more.  They were some kind of fireflies alright, and by the looks of it, they could breathe in space, if they needed to breathe at all. 

"Get down!" I screamed over the comm as the glowing insects got close to us. But when they got near enough, they stopped and hovered around us. "What are they?!" the boys were yelling, but Frizz got up and extended his hand towards the fireflies. "What're you doing?" I bellowed, but the fireflies got close to his hand, almost touched it and started their weird dance again. 

"They want us to follow them," Frizz said, "they don't mean us any harm."

Slowly we all got up to our feet, and with the dancing flies all around us, slowly flickering, and lighting the path ahead, we walked up to the hanger.

There, the flies settled down on the warcraft hull. "What's going on Frizz", I said to the Tom, "what are these thing!" 

"I don't really know, but I am sure they are harmless."

Once inside the hanger we set up the perimeter fencing, and adjusted the atmosphere in the hanger camp. Finally we could get out of the atmosphere suits and break for a meal. It had been a long and exhausting day, and I set up the radio signal to alert the others to expect us back at camp tomorrow with the craft. The minute I started the radio, the flies came over me again. 

"Maybe they don't like the frequency." one of the boys said, even as a fly came over to him and settled on his hand. "Hey," he exclaimed with excitement, "they're friendly."

"I can do without the bugs." I said, "but I have to contact the base."

Silence. The radio had died. Then I noticed a large swarm of flies on the antenna unit. I tried to shoo them away, but that's when it got ugly. As I attempted to free the antenna unit to send out a signal to the camp, one of the fireflies bit me. Shortly thereafter I passed out. 

What happened next was what was told to me by Frizz and the boys. They said I had fallen into a deep sleep after the insect bite, and had slept for almost 12 hours. It was already midday by the time I came to, and the repairs on the warcraft were pending. Frizz said that after I was bitten, they tried to get rid of the flies, but were unsuccessful. However, after a while, they simply flew away on their own, and that they haven't returned since then. Frizz had contacted base camp, and there would be a vet waiting to see me after we returned, but no one on the camp had ever heard of these creatures."They were eating the outer hull of the spacecraft", Frizz said pointing to the small holes on the exterior of the craft, but from what I could make out, there was minimal damage. "And look at this," he continued, "we managed to kill of the bastards."

I looked at the dead firefly in front of me. It was a big insect. And it had knocked me down with just one bite. We needed to hurry and repair the craft and get out of this region of the asteroid. Time was running against us. 

Walking Across Salt-pan Lands. Image Source: Mentioned in Image Watermark 😎

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