Post by BlueWinter on Sept 24, 2009 15:43:43 GMT -5
Vulcania
Prologue
Prologue
The operator was bored. Staring up at the huge black screens on the wall in front of him and chewing on a sandwich, he realised that nothing interesting would happen. Certainly, he was being paid, but the sum wasn’t enough for staying up all night, waiting for nothing to happen. Twelve nights he’d been at it, and nothing had changed since his first shift.
The operator in question was sitting in a secret space command centre in the Nevada Desert. Two months ago, a separate division of NASA called Section 2 launched a secret probe to a distant planet newly discovered. This planet was named H618A and what interested the scientists and astronomers was that H618A was the same size as Earth, in a solar system, and had the right conditions for life. NASA’s Section 2 couldn’t wait to get there. Of course, the probe would take several years to arrive and apparently had to go through several asteroid fields to get there. And that was why the operator was sitting in his comfortable chair now, almost falling asleep. At the back of his mind, there was the fact that he was working for a secret government project, and if he was caught asleep instead of looking after the probe, he would be fired immediately. However, this thought did not come into the light, but merely lurked in a dark corner of his brain.
Just before he drifted off, a beep brought him back to his senses. The beep continued at a regular pace, boring into his tired mind. He opened his eyes reluctantly a gazed up at the main screen. It was taken up by a huge expanse of black, with white specks dotted in. This was the video feed coming across space from a camera attached to the front of the probe heading for H618A. In the bottom right-hand corner was the radar display, which showed anything in space around the probe.
As the operator looked up at it, the beeping stopped. He leant back in his chair again, thinking it was just a false alarm. However, something on the screen caught his eye. Their was something visible from the camera feed. A bright object, that seemed to be getting larger. And he knew larger meant closer. He fired up his computer and looked for any mention of an asteroid field in this area. Then he realised, even with its advanced ion engine, the probe wasn’t even out of this solar system, but it was well past the belt between Mars and Jupiter. He glanced up again the object was much larger now. As he watched, it seemed to curve through the void towards the camera. Asteroids did not do that. Yet the radar was not showing anything. This mysterious object could only be a number of metres away now, but nothing showed up on the radar screen. The operator walked forwards slowly towards the massive screen, intrigued. Any thought of calling for help had vanished. He watched as it drew even closer to the probe, and he saw something incredible.
The object was streamlined. He could see, clearly now, that it was shaped, tapering to a point at the front. A strange glow seemed to be coming out of the end of the ship. It was small, and seemed to be built for speed. It was now so close that it went outside of the picture, but in seconds, the camera shuddered violently, as if the alien ship had crashed into it. All this time the radar had remained dormant and silent. However, now the alarms started.
Suddenly, the tense silence was ripped apart by sirens issuing from the monitors on the wall. One by one, each system on the probe was being knocked out. The radar was gone, just like that. The operator took a step back, utterly terrified. He was just about to pick up a phone to call for help when a horrific, demon-like face appeared in front of the camera. It had a head that looked metallic and fierce red eyes. It opened its mouth in fury, then its hand descended on the camera and the monitor was filled with static…
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