There it stood. In all of its beauty, Andoz XII, the first rocketship ever to visit another planet in the Andozian solar system. And he was going to be the one behind the wheel. He was in control. He was the driver. He was the pilot. He was the rocketman. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and he was going to fly it.

The launch pad and the area surrounding it had a very surrealistic feel to Andrew Cross, one of four who would be making the journey deep into space, where no Andozian had ever gone before. Nothing here seemed entirely real one moment and the next...it was all too real, all too real and all too frightening. But he had to deal with it.

He was a rocketman. He was the rocketman.

Along with him for the ride would be the copilot, Paul Morrison. The navigator, Lewis Gray, and the scientist and ship's doctor, Doctor Nathan Richards. Together, they would be making a voyage the likes of which had never been attempted before in Andozian history. They would be going into deep space. Into the unknown. Straight out of a science fiction novel.

Far far away from The New Order, the Galactic Coalition, Vinda Corporation, was the planet of Andoz, where hyerspace was not even a dream, and the speed of light was seemingly impossible to attain. Intergalactic travel was fantasy, and interplanetary travel was only about to be achieved for the first time. That is, if all went well...

The residents of our galaxy may have looked upon the vastly technologically inferior Andoz XII and scoffed, laughed, mocked, but Andrew Cross was looking at it with amazement. It was his chariot. It was his steed. It was his dream. He was born to fly this ship. He was born to step foot on another planet's soil.

Day One - Takeoff

"Control, all systems are go," Cross's voice betrayed his nervousness, "We are green for launch."

"Roget that, Andoz XII," came the response, Affirming...affirmed. All systems go. Green for launch. Countdown beginning. 20..."

Andrew stared out the small round window to the side, where he could see the the launch pad at an awkward. He realized that this would be his last look at the surface of Andoz for a very long time, and he did not look away, even when Paul asked him if there was anything wrong for the first time.

"Andrew...Andrew?" Paul's voice was far off, distant. As if he was screaming over the engines and could barely be heard, but the engines were muffled, Cross realized, and his voice was quite clear, "Andrew?"

"Huh...yeah?" Andrew snapped back from his daydreaming.

"Focus buddy," Paul grinned, winking, "This is no time to be zoning out on me. You're the rocketman, remember?"

"Yeah, sorry," Andrew gave a fake smile. He was nervous as hell, "I'm the rocketman."

"Atta' boy. 10 seconds, man," Paul's grin turned devilish, "Any last words?"

"Yeah," Andrew grinned back, this one genuine, "Goodbye Andoz."

Paul chuckled, and so did Andrew, until he realized he only had five seconds before he would be leaving his planet. The planet he had been on for his entire life. Why was he scared of this? He had been training his whole life for this moment! But still, something seemed weird...wrong, even...no. He was the rocketman. There could be no doubts. He was the rocketman.

"3...2...1...ignition. We have ignition. I repeat, we have ignition."

Goodbye Andoz.

Day 231 - Nightmare

Two hundred and thirty-one days. It had been two hundred and thirty-one days since Andrew Cross had had his feet firmly planted on the ground. He thought about that number, two hundred and thirty-one. It had been utterly meaningless to him before, a number with no significant meaning. But lately every number of days they had been out here seemed more significant than the last. Right now, to Andrew Cross, two hundred and thirty-one was more important than the date of his birthday. More important than he and his wife's anniversary...well, that was really a given, since he never remembered it. Two hundred and thirty-one was important.

If only Andrew realized just how important.

Paul Morrison floated into the cockpit just then, the usual devilish grin planted on his face. His pose was altogether comical. Arms behind his head, legs crossed, floating as if he was reasting upon his back, with his head propped to one side so he could look at his long-time friend. Andrew couldn't help but shake his head and laugh. Paul had a way of making people laugh no matter what the situation. An altogether admirable trait.

"What are you doing in here?" Andrew asked, struggling to keep a straight face.

"Some diagnostics checks," Paul casually replied, floating over to one of the consoles.

"Nuh-uh," Cross grabbed him by the leg and pulled him back, "Its my shift. I'll do it."

"Frack Andrew, every shift is your shift!" Paul put on one of his fake serious faces, only because he didn't really know how to make a real serious face, "Take a break, man. I got it. Your a frelling workaholic, even millions of meters away from your bosses!"

"I..."

"I got it, man," Paul assured him, "Go take a break. Catch some sleep, masturbate, I dunno, something..."

"Shut up, Paul."

"Roger that, sir," Paul's fake serious face dissolved, "Now get the hell outta my cockpit!"

The Andoz XII was a very large ship, but most of that was sytems, cables, and the like. The actual crawl tunnels and living areas for the crew members were very cramped and tiny. Not a one crew member was claustrophobic, and that was no coincidence. They were to be spending a very long time in such an environment, and they couldn't deal with any of the crew freaking out.

As Andrew floated through one of the crawl tunnels, he patted one of the walls, smiling. This was his baby. This was his ship. He was the rocketman. There was a slight tremor, causing Andrew to frown. What was Paul doing? In an instant, there was a very large noise and the world went black.

Day 232 - Where?

When Andrew came to, he realized the cockpit he had left had changed very dramatically. Consoles were sparking, a couple had been completely pulled from their panels, releasing cables and wires, many of them cut and also sparking. The room was very dark, and at first Andrew thought the lights had also gone out, but then he saw a whsipery hint of one of the emergency lights. It was clouded...by smoke.

"You're awake," came a voice. It was Paul's, "Our luck must be changing."

"What happened?" Andrew asked, groggily, and then turned a glare at Paul, "What did you do?"

"What did I do?" Paul asked, shaking his head, "I didn't do anything. I was running the diagnostics check like I said, and then bang, whatever the frell happened happened. I got knocked out too, but only for a little while. You got a pretty nasty bruise there, though. You've been out of it for a day."

Andrew reached up to touch the wound, and met resistance. He realized then that his helmet was on, and so was Paul's.

"Life support failed a couple hours ago," Paul said, picking up on Andrew's confusion, "I had time to dress the wound with what I had, so you should be okay."

"Where's Lewis? And the Doc?" Andrew asked.

"They..." Paul looked away, and Andrew realized this had been the first time he had not seen the man smiling or hiding a smile, "When...whatever happened...most of the ship...it snapped off, Andrew...they...they're gone."

"Frell..." was all Andrew could say. And he repeated it, again and again.

"I did some diagnostics checks," Paul said finally, trying to change the subject, "We're pretty stable right now, so no unexpected deaths hiding in the corners, but we're dead in space. We can't move. Can't get anywhere. Especially not back to Andoz. And we don't have that much oxygen..."

"Frell...frell...frell..." Andrew kept whispering. His gaze drifted toward the main viewport, and his eyes widened to the size of saucers, "Frell."

And his mouth did not close again like it should have.

"Maybe if I...no, that wouldn't work," Paul rambled on, unaware of his only surviving crewmates blank expression.

"Paul..." Andrew whispered.

"Maybe...we're fucked, aren't we?"

"Paul." Andrew managed to say loudly.

"What?"

"What the frack is that?" Andrew asked.

"What is what?"

Paul followed his gaze out the viewport, and his mouth did not shut either. Neither of them could speak. What was it. They had no idea, but they'd soon find out, they were heading straight for it. The name Astral Astoria would soon become very important to them.

Just letting you know that I am working on a post for this. I'll nix this post when I get it done, or if I'm too late. :)

Datapad Workstation Terminals, Two Weeks Ago

Datapad, for most computers got a nickname sooner or later, was busy crunching the usual eschew of movement vectors and fuzzy-math that he specialized in.

“Datapad’s pretty busy today,” commented one of the computer technicians.

“Yeah,” said another, a tall man dressed in garish red. “Four-Eyes came back online yesterday, and he’s finally been able to get back up to speed. Heh,” the man chuckled a bit, “I think he got tired of the vacation.”

The first man stared blankly at his fashion-mistake of a friend. “It’s a computer,” he said flatly. “It doesn’t think, or get tired.”

The man in red opened his mouth to protest, but was cut off by a raised hand.

“Whatever. Four-Eyes is online again you say? About time, I was wondering when we would be able to do some long-range scans of this sector. However friendly that 'Vinda Corporation' may be, I still prefer Four-Eyes’ sensor sweeps to the data they gave us. Horribly low-detail stuff too, you can’t even tell what the average population density is on a given spot on a planet.”

The tech shuddered.

“You remember that stint I did in Data Analyzation? Well, as part of the training course we had to do manual calculations of that nature. Population density, rock-formations, etc. We even had to send out raw probes to get up-close images of the plant’s inhabitance. I never want to have to handle that much raw data again. Let the computer take care of it.”

The rouge-tinted man nodded heartily. “Absolutely. That’s what they are for, right?”

They went back to work.



“So… did you loose a bet, or something?”


Data Analyzation and Information, Thirteen Days Ago

“Sir, something for you to look at.”

The Data Engineer handed a pad to his superior, a paunchy fellow with a bad beard.

“Something Datapad cranked out. Looks like there’s a small bit of ship headed towards us. At its current speed it will take thirteen days, two hours and five minutes to impact.”

The paunchy man nodded.

“Send it on down towards hull defenses,” he droned, speaking as a man who had said that phrase far more than he wanted to. “And while you’re at it, ask those blasted networking monkey’s when we’ll have the network back up again. All this footwork is killing productivity.”



Hull Defense and Repair Systems

A low-level technician glanced up as a light flickered on, and a low tone droned.

“Looks like that bit of space debris,” he said, after glancing at the readout and then at his checklist of Things to Deflect Today. He tapped a few buttons, cycled some control cylinders, and was about to activate the Direction And Redirection Beam (DARB), when a warning light flickered on, and another, slightly more intense tone beeped and booped.

“Eh… oh.” He muttered, before grabbing a headset.

“Sir? Yes, this is DARB station #34. I have a bit of space derbis coming in, but I’m getting life signs. Yes, my thoughts exactly. I will do so, Sir.”

Not putting the headset down, he punched another number.

“Yeah, this is DARB station #34. I’ve got an incoming piece of scrap, and it’s got lifesigns…….No, I’m not kidding………..no……..yes, I know I can’t grab them……….I am aware of that, Sir………………….that’s why I’m callin----……… yes sir, it should already be on your sensors now……………right………thank you Sir.”

He set the headset down.

“Frelling morons,” he muttered, as he ticked item number one hundred and seven off of his checklist.


Tractor Beam Systems

“STAT STAT STAT” barked an urgent voice. “Get number four online now! We’ve got a bit of staz out there that needs a gentle hand and it needs it now, before it becomes atoms on the deflector screens!”

After that, there was nothing for her to do but watch in satisfaction as her crew moved like a well-oiled machine. Hers was a most important position. The Astral may have had weapons that could disintegrate enemy ships in an eye-blink, crushed planets like child’s toy’s, or snipe a single weapon emplacement off of a fighter, but when was the last time they had been used? Not in her memory. But the Tractor Beam Systems were active nearly every day, bringing in ships, moving them out, and sometimes deflecting space trash that DARB missed.

The wrecked shuttle, for it looked like a shuttle to her, was gently plucked from space, and maneuvered to a small and empty docking bay.

“Looks like massive damage to it, Ma-am,” said one of the Beam Operators.”

“Alert the Medbay, and …” she paused for a second considering the options. Every film she had seen started just like this…. Her husband had mentioned it just last week.

“Have security deployed as well…” she concluded. She’d get a tape of this event, and give it to her overly-enthusiastic male counterpart.

The hull gave a tremendous groan, and right away the amount of warning alarms blaring away doubled. The ship was not made of durasteel, or any metal nearly as strong, and the effect the tractor beams were having on it was not necessarily what the crew of the Astral Astoria had intended.

Steam hissed out from an exposed pipe as the tractor beams crippled its flow. Smoke, something they had already been in no short supply of, now filled the entire cockpit. Andrew was literally blown backward as the steam hit him head-on, unable to stop his momentum in the zero-gravity environment.

The rocketman crashed rather hard into the opposing wall, smacking his head hard enough to drive him to the brink of unconsciousness. Luckily, his suit had not been breached, but that didn’t seem to matter much, given their current state. Whatever that gigantic thing they were headed toward had been, it was quite obvious that it was trying to kill them. Either that or something else was.

He was roused from a half-asleep state by the cries of his comrade, and for the first time since the tractor beams had hit them Andrew remembered that he was not alone in this ship. As the smoke cleared rather quickly, Andrew could see Paul, his face half-shrouded by his visor and Cross’s own half-unconscious state.

Paul was grasping desperately onto one of the pipes that had fallen to rest at a forty-five degree angle, and for a moment Andrew wondered why. It was at this moment that he first realized the hull had been breached, and vacuum was seeping into the cockpit of what had once been the Andoz XII. He wondered vaguely why he was not being sucked out into space, and, looking down at his mid-air state, realized that he was, or would have been if part of his suit had not become snagged on something jutting out from the wall behind him.

Andrew realized that Paul was desperately reaching out toward him, and he wondered why. He seemed perfectly safe. For a brief moment, his vision cleared and he saw the expression on Paul’s face. It was contorted with pain, and the man was probably screaming, but Andrew’s since of hearing had long-since left him. He could not hold onto the pipe for much longer.

Andrew slowly raised his arm, stretching out his fingers in an obviously futile effort to grab his crewmate. He was nearly gone at this point, nearly in the dreamless sleep of unconsciousness, but his eyes were wide open in an effort to stay awake, to help Paul. He knew he could not, this had already registered with his brain, but he could not give up. He was the leader. He was the rocketman.

And then it happened, as if in slow motion. Paul’s grip on the pipe failed, and he was sent sweeping out toward one of the, by now probably many, holes in the ‘ship’. For a moment he grabbed hold of another piece of ship jutting out right at the hole, but then large piece of metal on Andrew’s side of the ship gave way, and was sucked away into the hole Paul was half-in, half-out of. The chunk of metal hit him dead on, his grip failed once more, and Paul Morrison was gone.

“Paul…” Andrew whispered, unable to say much else.

And then it was black.


*************


Andrew regained consciousness a few moments later, the sudden jolt of artificial gravity and a very rough landing startling him into the waking world. His suit had depressurized seconds after the ship had entered the safe portion of the docking bay in which it had been placed, but Andrew had not noticed. He had been unconscious when it had happened.

He crawled over to the computer terminal which, miraculously, appeared to still be working…slightly. He unceremoniously slammed his hand down on a button, and the ramp to the ship slowly lowered to about half-way and then fell off completely, crashing onto the hangar bay deck.

The Astral Astoria security team arrived a few seconds later. The first one through what had been the entrance to the cockpit was human, and Andrew stared at him with wide eyes. A million questions buzzed through his head. A human being? Here? How? Where was he? Andoz had saved him? Impossible. The second member of the Andoz security team through was not human.

Whether or not Andrew fainted or lost consciousness once more will forever remain a mystery.

"Well, what is he then?"

The medic shrugged. "Nothing I know of. Pretty similar to human though. Close enough that I don't have to worry about hitting something weird in there, should he decide to require a scalpel."

He shrugged again, the dark humor making him grin in a twisted manner. "He's coming around."

Many pares of eyes slid sideways, and rested upon the foreign alien laying on the medical examination table.

"Welcome to the Astral Astoria," said a kind voice that belonged to a pretty human woman. She was dressed in an official looking uniform. "Don't be alarmed, you're in a medical bay."

Pieces of time mushed together, stopped, reversed, moved forward again. Andrew’s life was a jumble. Events in his life no longer followed any real chronological order. He was married, born, chosen to be rocketman, died, and crash landed on the Astral Astoria. That didn’t seem entirely right to him, but it was as close as he could fit it.

A myriad of images swirled before his eyes. Many were familiar to him, moments from his past life. Some, however, were entirely new. Aliens abound and almost all of them, they looked as if they were straight out of some creepy science fiction movie, only they were real…not only amazingly lifelike, but in the back of his mind Cross knew that they were really real.

The images sped up and sped up until he could barely tell what they showed, he didn’t understand what many of them meant and then…

There was Paul, his face horribly disfigured, body metallic silver from the extreme colds of space. Gods, he wished they had not fished him out from among the wreckage.

Wait, what? Before he could think about it he was whisked away again.

Andre was deposited at many other moments oddly unfamiliar to him but at the same time so…fitting, before finally…

"He's coming around."

Andrew’s eyes cracked open, everything around him a blur. He could distinctly make out at least four people in the room, maybe more…probably more, but he couldn’t tell. Most of them were distinctly human, but some of them took on a not entirely normal-looking shape that reminded Andrew far too much of his weird sort of…time travel dream.

“Welcome to the Astral Astoria. Don't be alarmed, you're in a medical bay.”

“As…As…Astoria…” Andrew managed. Surprisingly, the woman spoke Andozian (Basic, as we know it), “No…no.”

“I don’t think he understands,” came another voice, that of a man’s.

“My crew…” Cross mumbled, and for a moment they mistook it for more incoherent babble, “Deep space exploration…no Astoria…no nothing…explosion…there was an explosion…and then…Gods, Paul…”