NaNoWriMo 2017: Hellstar-1/2

HELLSTAR-1

EXT. DEEP SPACE

Stars in their multitude. The shadowy arc of the galactic plane cuts crazily at an angle, slowly spinning like an unfixed horizon.

A ragged SPACESHIP tumbles along with us, rolling, fixed in our view. It's no polished gleaming wonder; instead it's grimy and rough, slipshod and framework-beaten. There's no clear cockpit, just a messy expanse of tangled superstructure like a wall made of cranes.

The rear of the ship is ripped off, trailing a few hundred meters behind the front, twisting at a slightly different rate.

PILOT

(VO)

I was pretty sure that I wouldn't be making my cargo on time this run.

CRATES spill out of the gap between front and rear, a fist full of different colors but all three spherical tanks within the frame of a rectangular prism.

CLOSE ON A CRATE MARKED "INDUSTRIAL EQUIPMENT" SPORTING A BIOHAZARD SYMBOL

PILOT

(VO)

That load of apes for the mines on Proxima wasn't going to make it. Too bad. I liked the big lugs a lot more than some of the crew I've known. Cleaner, for one.

INT. COCKPIT OF THE TELOMERE EXTENT

It's close. Nothing in the pit is further away than an upraised hand. SCREENS cover most of the surface with a vast array of feedback and monitors. It's a cacophony of distinct sounds that mean something to someone who grew up with it.

EOWARD SUMPTER (the PILOT) sits enveloped in the pit, hands on a couple of manual controls. A featureless facemask hangs around his neck above a well-worn seal-suit. The top of his helmet tilts back behind his head. Several recently bleeding cuts line his temple and the side of his neck.

The COMMUNICATIONS PANEL glows a hazardous reddish-orange. Many other tell-tales are also bright neon red, including FUEL and CYCLING. LIFESUP remains mostly green. Ish.

He taps on the panel and makes a subtle adjustment to a frequency spread.

SUMPTER

(filtered)

Repeat, this is the Telemere Extent, flagged out of Limnal, en route to Proxima. Engines are down, fuel is gone, and no escape pod is available. Any ship, respond.

(unfiltered)

Loop that, Tel. It's a long walk to the corner grocery.

The OUTLINE OF THE TELEMERE in one corner of the displays blinks in time with a voice.

TELOMERE

The nearest grocery is within an eighteen-thousand year spacewalk, Pilot Sumpter. If you start now --

SUMPTER

-- I could make it by dinnertime. You have a dark sense of humor, Tel.

TELOMERE

I'm not the one that had his ship blown up by faulty maintenance.

Sumpter looks pained and begins unsnapping bits of the suit connected to the seat-rig. Hoses click out of either wrist, several clamps loosen at hips, shoulders, and neck. His helmet lifts back into place, looking a little silly over the absent face-mask before he locks it up into place.

SUMPTER

I'm telling you -- it was sabotage. Somebody at Limnal wants us dead.

He begins to float upwards and out of the seat, turning in the zero-G to slide over the rig.

TELOMERE

I would bet on your ex, that little boy at the trade emporium. He seemed awfully sad to see big money like you float out the airlock.

Sumpter shoots a venomous look over his shoulder at the console.

SUMPTER

Are you suggesting that a prostitute sabotaged our ship because I frequently spent a lot of money to diddle some tight ass?

The rim-lights around the panels dim as Sumpter opens the narrow hatch over the rig and floats through.

Lights on the comm panel fade as one begins to glow on the side of the helmet's HUD.

TELOMERE

I suppose you could have been paying him to make sure the mid-ship scrubbers were off. I never observed you doing such a thing, but I tried not to pry into your personal business.

INT. INFRASTRUCTURE CONNECTOR

The spine of the ship would normally extend half a kilometer but somewhere in the nearest third it's pinched and twisted off like a troubled giant's toy. The pilot's pit opens directly onto the spine's ribbed, cavernous space.

SUMPTER

Fuck.

Sumpter's eyes trace the lines of the nanotech-forged dull black walls to the break. Hatches run the length on all six walls. Several, more toward the broken end, yawn open -- one or two with starred space visible beyond.

TELOMERE

Perhaps I should have pried more.

Sumpter turns to a storage module beside the pilot's hatch and tugs it open. Inside are a variety of weirdly shaped bits, each a different color. He snaps vectored thrust units to shoulders and knees. A heavy cutting saw snaps onto his forearm.

With a sigh Sumpter pushes off with short blasts from the verniers down the spine

SUMPTER

Maybe you should have. Or at least monitored the cameras.

TELOMERE

The ones you haven't fixed in twelve years? Those cameras are the ones to which you refer?

Blank lenses glitters in the corners of the spine archway.

SUMPTER

That would be they, yes.

TELOMERE

It's probably better you didn't. I don't want to know what horrors I'd have seen here.

SUMPTER

Worse than seeing who blew up half your body?

TELOMERE

Don't be silly. I have backups. If anything, at worst I'd simply get better looking.

A large shard of broken infrastructure drifts in the way. Sumpter pushes it out of the way, legs braced against one wall. Pneumatic muscles in the suit writhe and compress as it shifts very slowly.

Starlight reflects off the helmet as he pushes off into the Great Dark outside the break and turns.

CLOSE ON HIS EYES

SUMPTER

Have I said "fuck" yet, Tel?

HELLSTAR-2

INT. PROXIMA TRAFFIC CONTROL HOLDING CELL

Eoward Sumpter is sweating. A little bead of water crawls as if on little spider legs from the corner of his face, down his cheek (near-furred with stubble), then dangles from the side of the cleft of his chin before it drops.

He catches it in mid-air with little effort. Gravity is low.

A holding cell looks about the same anywhere. The station has curved walls because it's a huge disc. There's old-school metal bars on the opening. There's a toilet and a small sink. There's a smallish table. Sumpter sits at it.

Across the table is an older gentleman whose badge reads DEREK LOUGHLIN and whose face reads "good cop." The Proxima uniform is light blue with brighter blue work-light piping (now dim).

DEREK LAUGHLIN

You're telling us that the entire back end of your ship blew loose so that someone could steal your shipment of genetically and cybernetically uplifted apes?

Sumpter, in prisoner green but no handcuffs, leans onto the table.

SUMPTER

That was my thinking at the time. Well, my thinking at the time was, "fuck, am I going to die?" and then "fuck, what's happened to my ship?" and only then was it "fuck, where's the apes?" But yeah.

Badge SY HAMPTON, young, strictly over-dressed for this in a perfectly pressed Proxima uniform whose LEDs had probably been individually polished. Harbor patrol, the badge says. Hampton leans against the door to the room, cross-armed, annoyed -- classic bad cop.

Sumpter glances at him a moment before Hampton lunges at the table.

SY HAMPTON

(angrily)

I don't believe this shit!

SUMPTER

You know, you're going to have to work on this routine. Your timing's terrible. Ever try some improv? Wonders for the timing.

SY HAMPTON

Don't distract from you hanging yourself. The only person that knew where you'd be and when was you. And you know shipping uplifts is illegal --

SUMPTER

-- in Arcen space. In which I was not.

DEREK LAUGHLIN

But you had been.

He makes a few gestures on the table surface and the navigational data from the Telomere Extent swims up from the depths. A few pages get flipped, then an animation of the ship's position in 3-space turned to face Sumpter.

DEREK LAUGHLIN

This is your ship, right?

SUMPTER

(scowling)

Yeah, sure it is, but...

Leans closer to the table. Spins the nav data left and right as he considers it.

SUMPTER

That's not my nav data. It looks like my nav data, even smells like my nav data, but it's not. Look...

Zoom in on the transition between jump space from Limnal through Arcen.

SUMPTER

This is not my ship. My ship is rated for three engines of the big, 150 petawatt kind. Cargo engines. Look at this transit burst -- it's huge. That's a ship with at least 1500 petawatts. Like three Sols of jump.

Sumpter looks up with a lifted brow.

SUMPTER

You've confused my scow with some kind of military ship. I'm flattered, but you've got the wrong guy.

SY HAMPTON

And yet, that's the data from your nav station. You're too stupid to have scrubbed the archives, apparently. Typical.

Sumpter is getting annoyed and grits his teeth.

SUMPTER

You've got my fucking ship. You've got the back end towed here, anyway. Does it havethree secretly concealed military-grade engines on it?

DEREK LAUGHLIN

We don't have the back end of your ship. No one does. You were unconscious for hours, maybe days, when your beacon found someone. Good suit, by the way.

Sumpter's eyes widen.

SUMPTER

Are you telling me that someone stole the back end of my ship?

Hampton stabs a few places on the table and spins up some projections. The back-end of the Extent is nowhere to be seen. Sumpter is strung to a couple of handholds just outside the pilot's pit.

SY HAMPTON

I'm saying you set the whole thing to explode to cover the smuggling when your buyer bailed, killed all the product, but managed to almost kill yourself in the process, you dumb fuck.

Sumpter looks physically ill.

SUMPTER

You think I... My own ship. My own cargo. Just to smuggle some quasi-saponts that I then burned anyway? What the fuck? What the fuck, man?

DEREK LAUGHLIN

Settle down, Eoward. Sy, why don't you go bring us some coffee?

SY HAMPTON

Do you really think now is the --

DEREK LAUGHLIN

Now. Black, right? Two, black.

Hampton grumbles to himself as he keys the door, blows through with kicks and handgrabs, and it latches behind.

SUMPTER

He really is terrible at bad cop, you know.

DEREK LAUGHLIN

I know. Captain's kid. What you gonna do?

Sumpter continues flipping back and forth through the animations and the images captured from his rescue.

SUMPTER

What'd Tel tell you?

DEREK LAUGHLIN

The ship's computer? Nothing. Core was wiped of intelligence when we got there. All the data in the world, but no brain to think it. Hampton'll say you blew Tel's brains out before the tail end to cover your criminal enterprise. Poorly.

SUMPTER

You know that's bullshit, right? Tel was my friend. More, Tel was the only real hope I had of getting out.

DEREK LAUGHLIN

Apparently not. You're here.

Sumpter puts a finger on a few log file entries.

SUMPTER

Pure dumb goddamn luck. We got nosed by a ship way out of the trading lanes, the Nostromo. Not enough to drop it out to catch us, but enough for it to relay a burst home. Me being alive was an acident of the highest order.

DEREK LAUGHLIN

Maybe. Maybe.

Hampton returns with three silvery spheres of something. Tosses them casually in the low G and they arc slowly.

Laughlin catches his and casually decapitates it one-handed, straw down the gullet between his teeth.

DEREK LAUGHLIN

Nectar of the gods, or the next best thing.

SY HAMPTON

So, you ready to spill it, Sumpter, or do you go back into the hole for a few months, see if that loosens your tongue. Probably lube that tongue right up, yum yum.

SUMPTER

You're being gross.

DEREK LAUGHLIN

We can't hold him.

SUMPTER

What?

DEREK LAUGHLIN

We've got nothing on you, Eoward. Surveilance shows nothing but maintaince bots running around even before your Liminal stop. You're crew-minimal, just you and the ship for the whole run. Every bit of data is meticulously kept, including the incriminating jump signature. The Tel could have been blown by a surge when the tail-end blew; bot-brains are kind of sensitive to such things. We've got nothing.

SUMPTER

Wait, you said Tel might've been fried at detonation? But I was talking to Tel once I came to. We set up the beacon. That was well after the blast.

Hampton leans on the table.

SY HAMPTON

Are you fucking with me, kid?

SUMPTER

"Kid?" I've probably got 300 years on you, "kid." Relativity is a bitch. But no, no I'm not fucking with you.

DEREK LAUGHLIN

That's not in the logs. They go right up to the explosion.

SUMPTER

Yet the beacon was running. The Nostromo automated report says so.

He turns said report around and stabs a finger into it.

Laughlin looks at the plate. Then he pulls another panel to him and skims it. Flips up the nav trace again.

DEREK LAUGHLIN

I have a bad feeling about this. And a crazy, crazy story.

Sumpter puts his hands over his face and his head hangs.

SUMPTER

Fuck.

DEREK LAUGHLIN

What if -- the computer done it.

SY HAMPTON

You're fuckin' kiddin' me.

DEREK LAUGHLIN

It's not even cliche. What if the AI cut a deal with someone, somehow. It had access to comms, you went to a lot of out of the way corners of the shipping net, it had access and means.

SY HAMPTON

Motive? We do need motive to pretend to be cops here.

DEREK LAUGHLIN

I'm working on it. But mechanically, it's possible. Tel was your partner, right, Eoward?

SUMPTER

Yeah. Friend, too, but partner first.

DEREK LAUGHLIN

With access to ship maint at every port of call, its own finance pool to keep up the ship, and free time enough to do whatever it wants.

SY HAMPTON

You're being a little creepy about a machine, Derek.

DEREK LAUGHLIN

It's a mind. It wants things. Maybe it wanted out. Maybe it wanted something better than that life.

SY HAMPTON

Maybe it cut a deal to have its girlfriend, the Nostromo, come find it after it killed its partner, framed him for the cargo destruction, then hitched a ride along the way. Nostromo's a popscicle ship, right?

DEREK LAUGHLIN

Cryo-sleeping refinery, yeah.

SUMPTER

"I'm not worried. I've got backups."

SY HAMPTON

What?

SUMPTER

That's what Tel told me after. "I'm not worried, I've got backups." I thought it was just being literal.

(beat)

Fuck.

Everyone leans away from the table slowly.

SUMPTER

So we have a rogue AI on the run, possibly with an entire cargo of uplifted apes full of cobgnitive implants and strength enhancers, dropped off somewhere between middle-of-fuck-all space and wherever the Nostromo was headed.

Laughlin cascades data through his fingers on the table.

DEREK LAUGHLIN

LV-426. Ass-end of nowhere. Given the Nostromo's engines, they weren't exactly burning down the sky to get there. Lots of random backwater shit between you and there. Tel could have jumped off anywhere.

SUMPTER

That son of a bitch.

SY HAMPTON

But what's he doing in there? Its like some kind of weird old film with a mad scientist and smart apes.

DEREK LAUGHLIN

Let's hope not. A lot.

EXT. AGRICULTURAL COLONY AG-4423A

A green gem of a world. Too much landmass and green to actually be Earth, it's obviously occupied even from space. Cargo haulers lumber through orbit between stations and drop to the surface to load and unload. Every ship might as well be anonymous.

EXT. COLONY HUB 6

The hub has a pre-fab core, like a ring colony if someone decided to build it on the ground. A central spaceport radiates spokes for heavy traffic out to an even heavier traffic outer ring. Super-heavy trucks and the like rumble along at ludicrous speeds. Smaller flying transports (and quad-sized city busses are still smaller) bustle personnel around between facilities bolted to the walls or growing up from the ground itself.

Beyond the outer ring stretch an uneven series of sectors, truncated pie-pieces with less individual capacity, enclosing factory complexes, residential areas, commercial zones, the works. Each of them roughly 65km long, give or take a third.

EXT. CH-6-FAC-3

Huge. Menacing. Mechanical. If it was designed it might be brutalist but because it was assembled as if grown it's merely impersonal and foreboding. This is not a place for humans. Exposed piping is wherever it's convenient, not where it's safe. There are warning signs, but they're ill-maintained and probably in the wrong places.

This is a machine place, for machines, by machines.

It's odd to see an ape on the roof.