Star Fields

Jason Star and Molly Fields meet under the most trying conditions and team up to explore the universe to find intelligent life. But first they must contend with many tribulations on their journey into the unknown as they work to save the human race. What wonders will they discover? What dangers will they meet?

Jason tells this adventurous story.

This story is based on several of my previous themes and is pure science fiction. This work is entirely mine. No one else would be crazy enough to write it.

I want to thank @samnathis - Samuel Saycon - for the fantastic cover art. It's way better than I could have come up with.

Copyright © 2019 by John Shirey. All rights reserved.

Part 1 Inception

Chapter No.1 Awake

Life is precarious in this pernicious universe.

I awoke as if a switch had been thrown in my brain. It was as if I had gone from death to life. I couldn't see anything or move but I did realize that I had just been revived from stasis. I slowly gained the ability to move my arms so that I could remove the mask over my eyes. Everything was blurry, which is what I expected even though my eyes had been kept moist by the mask.

I slowly removed my IV and the bio monitors stuck to my chest and forehead. I tensed when I had to remove the catheter. I hated that!

I was ready to attempt sliding out of the stasis chamber and standing up while supported by a walker. Every muscle in my body ached, but I was still able to stand up, albeit slightly bent over. I was wearing a hospital gown that if I didn't tie the two halves together correctly, my ass would be exposed.

I looked around at the other stasis chambers and they were unoccupied, which made me assume that I was the last to be revived. I slowly made my way out of the stasis chamber and down a hall along the crew cabin deck. I was surprised that I didn't encounter anyone. Evidently, they were at their assigned stations.

I arrived at the elevator, and after allowing the door to slide open, I carefully shuffled my way in and gave my order.

"Command Deck."

The elevator quickly rose to the top deck of the star cruiser. The door swished open to reveal a large circular room with various stations around a console ledge. Only one individual was present on the deck, although this marvelous creature wasn't human.

By the middle of the twenty first century, most mundane tasks had been relegated to human-like androids, which were technically considered artificially intelligent beings. The individual I was looking at was one of the latest X-1000 series female android model converted from the infamous S-700 sex-bot line. They were purposely designed to appear as voluptuously proportioned, anatomically correct human females. However, in this particular case, the unit that was functioning as the helmsman was attired in a typical Space Command uniform made from a soft elastic material that dutifully conformed to her impressive curves. The gray uniform consisted of a long-sleeved tunic and pants combination held together at the waist with a thin plastic belt and her feet were encased in flexible elastic shoes. Her face was deliberately made to appear as if heavily made up with luscious red lips and enhanced eyes with copious amounts of eye shadow and mascara. Her short, brilliantly platinum blond hair was neatly trimmed.

A small label at the right of her tunic identified her as Judy.

She looked over at me and smiled. "Welcome to the command deck, Jason." Her voice was just slightly lower in pitch than a typical human female, but it had a sensual ring to it.

I looked around and frowned. "Where is everyone?"

Her smile faded into a pout. "They are no longer with us, Jason."

Both of my eyebrows shot up. "What happened?"

"There was an accident. Three thousand, two hundred and fifty-one days into our mission, the mains failed, taking us out of warp."

My mind immediately considered what that would entail. She was referring to the power mains that provide electrical power to both the engines and the rest of the ship's systems. That would have eliminated artificial gravity, environmental control and shielding. It would have also shut off power to the stasis chambers.

"How . . . how long did it last?"

"Twelve days, ten hours and twenty-two minutes. There were only three of us activated and able to restore the power to environment and gravity."

"There were supposed to be fifty crew members on this mission. How was it possible that I was the only one to survive this . . . this accident?"

"We attached a battery pack to your stasis chamber, but it only lasted for two days. We were forced to inject our bio-agents into your blood."

That revelation made me flinch. There had been no research done on such a risky procedure. The bio-agents she was referring to were nanometer-sized robotic devices that were able to perform as assassins to bacteria or viruses and could dissect and repair DNA. The androids had an artificial fluid running through their veins to maintain their living flesh over titanium skeletons. The problem is that their flesh was not based on human flesh. It was designed to resist all infectious agents and be resistant to radiation, heat and cold. Their circulatory fluid was not the same as our blood. I had no idea what their robotic agents would do to my biological systems. I did realize that the agents were capable of converting water to oxygen and hydrogen and shepherding the oxygen molecules to prevent cell narcosis. The fact that I was still alive attested to the efficacy of their fortuitous action.

I sighed. "I suppose I had better get cleaned up. Where's my quarters?"

"You name is attached to your cabin door, Jason."

After staring at her for a moment, I turned and shuffled into the elevator.

"Quarters deck!"

The elevator sunk down one level and the door swished open. I made my way out into the main corridor and saw that my name was fastened to the Captain's, or what would have been his, quarters. As soon as I approached the door, it slid open.

I was greeted by two female androids. Alice and Ellen were platinum blonds like Judy. Strangely enough, their faces were different in subtle ways. Alice had slightly larger eyes than Ellen, but her lips were just a bit slimmer.

"Welcome to your quarters, Jason," Alice said in a higher pitched voice. "We will take care of you now."

They ushered me to the luxurious bathroom of my fabulously large quarters. They sat me down on a bench and proceeded to clean shave my beard and cut my hair very short. Then, they stripped off my gown and shoved me into a shower unit that soaped, scrubbed, rinsed and dried my body without me doing anything.

They dressed me in a uniform much the same as they were wearing, except I had on underwear and they didn't.

My badge label identified me as Jason Star, Engineer. I went to a full-length mirror to check out my new duds and immediately saw that something was wrong. I looked at least thirty years younger and the prominent scar above my right eyebrow was gone. I got that in a bar fight when I was a freshman at the Space Academy. I never had it cosmetically fixed because I fantasized it as a badge of courage. I reasoned that this anti-aging effect and blemish removal was the result of the android agents doing their thing.

I had reservations about the incident that resulted in the death of the crew. It was hard for me to believe that it just happened by accident. I decided to return to the command deck and check out the engineering log. Everything that has anything to do with the operation of this vessel is logged automatically.

Judy glanced over at me when I sat down at the Engineering station and activated the screen. She smiled and I nodded back to her. I pulled up the log record and called up the time that she had reported for the incident. That's when I realized that something was wrong. There was no record of the power grids going down from an overload. The only conclusion I could come to is that they were taken down by command. Sure enough, that's what the record indicated. I slouched back in my chair and rubbed my face. That meant that this so-called accident was deliberate. It suggested that the androids did it to murder the crew.

I decided not to confront them with this conclusion. They could easily kill me. They were inherently stronger and quite capable of landing a blow that would stop my heart or crack my skull.

It was possible that I was wrong and that there was some power glitch in the ship's systems that could have resulted in grid failure. I began a survey of the various ship's systems to see if I could locate a fault. What I found made me flinch. I found that one of the stasis chambers was still active.

I turned to Judy. "Is there another person in stasis?"

She answered immediately. "Yes, Jason."

"Why haven't they been revived?"

"That is for your decision."

I blinked several times. "I want them revived, please."

"Revival has begun," she announced after a few seconds.

I knew that her positronic brain was in contact with the main computer and all it took was a thought to cause something to happen. The only reason she was sitting at the helms control station was so that she could have input from all of the navigational sensors.

I had to know who it was that was the only other human on this vessel. "Show me their profile, please."

The profile consisted of a photo and professional history. It was a woman with the name Molly Fields. Her age was listed as fifty-two, the same as mine. I tried to visualize what she would look like now that the bio-agents had taken over her physiology, but I was distracted by her credentials.

"Oh my God! She has two PhD's, Astrophysics and Quantum Mechanics." I turned to Judy. "Does that mean she outranks me?"

"No, Jason. You are in charge."

That indicated that they had made that decision before they murdered the crew. I decided to look at the entire crew to see if I could determine why Molly and I were not killed.

I scrolled through the profiles and found that every one of their job descriptions, including those of two other women, was listed as being Military. That meant that Molly and I were the only non-military crewmembers. The recruiting literature indicated that this was a colonization mission, a journey to an Earth-like exo-planet to establish a human presence. Nowhere did the itinerary indicate that it was to be a military exercise.

Military plans would be considered secret and not part of any documentation. However, I decided to plough through the materials list to determine just how military this mission was.

What I found was disturbing. There are four thousand female androids on this vessel, but only twenty-five are activated. The rest are on stand-by. There are one thousand battle droids, basically robot soldiers. The ship's stores have six thousand BFG's. These are the standard issue weapon capable of firing plasma balls and high detonation rounds. The flight deck listed the usual shuttles, but it also included twenty FX-100 series fighter craft. These babies could take out a planet. The ship was also fitted with plasma cannons, rail guns and anti-matter missiles. No doubt about it, this was definitely a military mission.

A crazy thought crossed my mind. Could these androids have evolved to become sentient? The obvious motive for murdering all of the military members of the crew was to avoid being destroyed in a war. Self-preservation is an intrinsic human emotion. Evidently, these androids somehow knew that this war would result in many casualties. In order to prove that this was the case I would have to know who the enemy was and what their military capabilities were, and the only possible source of this knowledge was with the androids.

The bad news is that we could be in imminent danger of being attacked, and I have no idea by whom or even where their home world is.