The Force of Temptation - Chapter One, Page One

Sparks were flying all around as the emergency lights lit up the room in a deep maroon glow. People were rushing all about, some trying to fix the damage, while others were attending to the various people sprawled out on the long infirmary beds. The Captain had been injured, nothing critical, but enough to drive him from leading his ship, and that meant his injuries were fairly severe.

“Get me some more gauze over here!” The Chief Medical Officer was trying to maintain control over his entire staff, but the blaring sirens and flashing lights were distracting, and made everyone tense. Joan Belks had been on many Earth going vessels where medical emergencies, and reacting during high stress situations was fairly common, but most of her staff were fresh from basic training as this mission was never intended to be under these circumstances.

Groaning the Captain shuffled on the medical treatment bed before being pinned down lightly by one of the young but strong nurses.

With a strong, persistent ringing noise still in ear, and what felt like the weight of the ship upon his ribs, he shouted out to the Doctor, with coughs between each word, “what is the status of my ship?”

Joan, looking over at the still bleeding Captain sighed as she wondered why so many Captains are so willing to kill themselves off to keep in command. “Your ship is doing fine, but if you do not sit still, I will have to put you in a medically induced coma until you are all healed up.”

A simple gesture from the Doctor, and one of her nurses had the injection ready to go. The Captain could see it from his peripheral vision, and knew the Doctor was not fooling around. He settled himself and took stock of what he could feel, see and remember.

Several days earlier, the Captain, Malcolm Rothchild, was doing as he would most other days. They had been on a mission from Earth to find a suitable planet to either mine natural resources to bring back to Earth, or find a suitable planet for a colony. Earth had been nearly reduced to a moon-like environment because of human ignorance with regards to pollution, energy generation, and manipulation of plants and animals over hundreds of years.

At first, everyone assumed there would be some scientific way to fix the planet, but once that was no longer an option, a large colony was developed on both Earth’s moon and Mars where over ten million people were living, and waiting. It was said that Earth only had another fifty to one hundred years left of Human sustainable resources remaining, and so most people still calling Earth their home, were living in large dome like structures without access to that outside world.

Captain Rothchild had been on his mission for nearly eight months now and they had found nothing. His ship, was one of two sent out to search, and in his limited communication with his sister ship, both Captains were beginning to think this mission futile.

The E.S.S. Solum was the smaller of the two ships, with only five full decks, and a crew of twenty-five. Most of the size of the ship was taken up by its one hundred foot long engines, an experimental drive that allowed the ship to bend and twist space to such extremes that they could move at a rate that would be compared to approximately twenty-four times light speed. A rate that scientists only ten years prior to the mission assumed would be impossible.